Breaking Bannon

A well-intentioned intervention for Steve Bannon. Because I’m worried about him.

TX Professors Sue To Flunk Women Who Get Abortions

I recommend going to the linked article.  It has a lot of information on the lawsuit and how petulant the two men are.  Here are some quotes.  Much more at the Salon link.  Hugs.  Scottie

Even though the plaintiffs suing for the right to flunk female students for abortion include boilerplate arguments in which they feign concern that abortion is “killing,” the legal filing makes it clear that what really outrages Bonevac and Hatfield is that Title IX prevents them from controlling the private lives of students. Along with their anger about abortion, they  grouse about not being allowed to punish students “for being homosexual or transgender.” They also argue they should be able to penalize teaching assistants for “cross-dressing,” by which they appear to mean allowing trans women to wear skirts.

As Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day wrote, the language of the legal complaint is “downright petulant.” The picture painted is of two men obsessed with controlling student lives based on what they’re packing inside their underwear. It should be common sense that college students should be graded on their performance in class, not whether or not their professor resents their sex life or sexual identity. Alas, because the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Texas banned abortion, it’s created a pretext for every busybody who wants to spend less time grading papers and more time working himself into an angry froth over the imagined sexual exploits of his students. 

Even though Bonevac and Hatfield work in Austin, Texas, they filed their lawsuit 486 miles away in Amarillo, Texas. The reason for this is not mysterious: Donald Trump-appointed judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. The right-wing judge has a long and frankly unhinged history of screeching at top volume about the evils of “sexual revolutionaries.” (Yes, that does sound like a compliment, but he doesn’t mean it as such.) It takes very little to draw Kacsmaryk’s sexualized condemnation. Premarital sex, for instance, makes one a “sexual revolutionary.” Using contraception within marriage also makes one an irredeemable pervert. In his legal writings, Kacsmaryk is very clear that sex is only for procreation within marriage, and anything outside of that should draw legal sanction. He has not weighed in on whether there should be restrictions on what sexual positions are legally permissible within the procreation-only marital sex, but give him time. 

 

Salon reports:

“Pregnancy is not a disease, and elective abortions are not ‘health care,’” University of Texas at Austin professor Daniel Bonevac sneers in a federal court filing with professor John Hatfield. Instead, Bonevac writes, because pregnancy is the result of “voluntary and consensual sexual intercourse,” students should not be allowed time off to get abortions.

If the students disobey and miss class for abortion care, the filing continues, the professors should be allowed to flunk students.

Even though Bonevac and Hatfield work in Austin, Texas, they filed their lawsuit 486 miles away in Amarillo, Texas. The reason for this is not mysterious: Donald Trump-appointed judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. The right-wing judge has a long and frankly unhinged history of screeching at top volume about the evils of “sexual revolutionaries.”

Read the full article. No paywall.

Bonevac [screenshot above] can be seen in the October 2016 video below expressing his devotion to Trump.

Judge Kacsmaryk, a former lawyer for an anti-LGBTQ hate group, was exposed last year for failing to disclose millions in stock holdings.

Kacsmaryk was previously exposed for failing to disclose virulently anti-LGBTQ interviews and acting to hide his authorship of an anti-abortion article ahead of his Senate confirmation hearing.

More recently, he upheld a ban on drag shows at a Texas university. Kacsmaryk’s ruling to ban abortion pills is pending before the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on the issue in March.

 

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It’s also not safe as OB/GYNs are leaving the state or retiring to avoid having to practice under such harmful conditions.

Doctors face tough decision to leave states with abortion bans
https://abcnews.go.com/US/d…

 

Sure, but there’s nobody left to care for the women who can’t easily travel to another state to see a doctor.

Where are the new Ann Richards and Molly Ivins? This shit is so whack.

Texas Republicans have gerrymandered and purged voter rolls to ensure that doesn’t happen again.

Remember folks, if you find out during a wanted, planned pregnancy that the fetus is dead and CHOOSE to terminate, that’s an “elective abortion.” These people are as ignorant as they are cruel.

Whenever marriage equality comes up, they all scream about how gay marriage means the end of the human race bc children. So now they want to make it impossible to get an abortion, which means more people will be using contraception. Then they want to eliminate contraception to increase births, many of which will be unwanted.
But that’s the best I can figure their plan is.

 

 

 

Some Joe My God posts I wanted to share but was busy for two days changing my computer browsers.

So what started out to be a simple fix of a malware problem on the blogging computer I used to completely change all my old Chrome tabs into Firefox tabs.  I don’t like the new agreements on Chrome about information gathering no matter who you make your settings to prevent.  Basically everything you do is recorded and sent to Google.  It is frustrating.  Firefox has less work ability and on Chrome I could always recover old tabs if I did not delete them in entire windows, even on other devices.  So far Firefox doesn’t seem to have the same ability.  If I start to lose to many pages or comments, then I will have to switch back.  While privacy is important I need function much more.  I need to be able to switch open tabs from one computer to the other to clean them.   I will try this but it may not last.

Here are the open Joe  My God posts I wanted to share before this all happened.   Enjoy. 

Read the full article. Earlier this week and this morning it was reported that Florida educators are receiving state training on teaching Christian nationalism and teaching that genocides such as the one committed by Joseph Stalin are examples of cancel culture.

Florida Teacher Training Calls Joseph Stalin’s Execution Of 750,000 Dissidents “The Original Cancel Culture”

Read the full article. There more. Photo: Florida education chief Manny Diaz.

And is the republican party dead and reborn as the tRump cult … here is this.

Read the full platform [PDF]. The 2024 platform echoes many of the anti-LGBTQ items seen in the 2022 platform. The platform also contains the many attacks on trans youth now codified into law in nearly two dozen states. Photo: Newly elected Texas GOP chairman Abraham George.

And it total partisan Christian Nationalist news ….

 

And in bigotry thuggish maga right wing behavior wins news … But think about this.  We have normalized and now accept that people going into a store and destroying the merchandise and attacking the staff is OK as long as it fits our religious or political beliefs.  Is this what a civilized society is or has become?

Cultists are also raging in the comments of Walmart’s Instagram post. Sample reply: “Walmart and Pride whatever it is, I hate all this because you glorify everything in this world except what God has created to be from the beginning, which is a family, man married to a woman and their children!! Why don’t you give a true family unit a special month??? This evil agenda to shove all that’s unnatural down our throat will be your downfall one day!! God will not be mocked!! Yes, everyone has a right to choose how you live but why does it have to be glorified for a month??? Just wrong!!!”

Lastly in the SCOTUS corruption news.  

3 really great short videos from Rev. Ed Trevors.

I like all of these because the message in them is so wonderful.  In the first video he talks about a fundamentalist hate preacher and how he is wrong.   Rev Trevors says it is not the job of Christians to burn books, to demonize others, to cause harm.  He talks about what the job of a Christian really is.  Again it is a message I as an atheist can enjoy and agree with.  

In the second video he talks about religious men who blame women for their own sexual feelings and lust, so tell those women they must be completely covered and show no skin so men won’t be sexually excited by seeing them.  The Rev. again shows how this is wrong.  The sexual sin is the man’s, not the woman’s to deal with.  Women shouldn’t have to cover up and show no skin to protect men, men need to take responsibility for themselves and their feelings.   

The third one I included not so much for the religious nature but as a reminder to all of us, myself included, to take down time, me time, just relax and enjoy life.   I hope if you watch them you will enjoy them.   Hugs. 

Proposed Texas GOP platform calls for the Bible in schools, electoral changes that would lock Democrats out of statewide office

https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/25/texas-republican-party-convention-platform/

The platform was voted on Saturday, with tallies expected next week. Other planks call abortion homicide and gender-transition care “child abuse.”

 
Conventioneers listen to speeches during the Texas GOP Convention Friday, May 24, 2024 in San Antonio.
Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune
 
 
 
 

Back because I love the show and try to watch it ever chance I get, some more The Majority Report clips

Trump Doubles Down On “Death To LGBTQs” Pastor

 

“Pastor Mark Burns is running for Congress in South Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District, and has been with me from the very beginning of our Movement to Make America Great Again. In Congress, Mark will help me Secure the Border, Stop Illegal Immigration, Uphold the Rule of Law, Grow the Economy, and Protect and Defend our always under siege Second Amendment. Pastor Mark Burns is an America First Fighter, and has my Complete and Total Endorsement – He is a Good Man, a Hard Worker, and will not let you down!” – Trump, posting to Truth Social.

Burns, an avowed Christian nationalist who regularly headlines QAnon events, first appeared here in 2016 when he jumped up and literally fled a CNN interview after being confronted for lying about his military service and education.

Burns later claimed that his website had been hacked to make the false claims and that he was being attacked for being a black Trump supporter. Trump first posted an endorsement of Burns last month.

In 2022, Burns laid out his plan for executing LGBTQs for “grooming” during an appearance on the show hosted by Holocaust denier Stew Peters.

Burns is seeking an open House seat currently held by GOP Rep. Jeff Duncan, who is not seeking reelection. In 2022 Burns finished second in the GOP primary in a failed attempt to unseat incumbent GOP Rep. William Timmons. The South Carolina primary is June 11th.

 

 

he was being attacked for being a black Trump supporter

No, Marky-diddums. You’re not being attacked for being a black Trump supporter. You’re being attacked for being absolutely batshit fucking insane. One of the symptoms is being a black Trump supporter.

You can see the difference, yes?

Notice that Black Conservatives are bat guano crazy!!
As a Black woman, I find them as scary as White Nationalists. I hope South Carolinians reject this joker.

Sorta like gay right-wingers, I think they are extra shitty because they have something to prove. They prove it alright, but not what they think they’re proving.

Log Cabinettes: Trump is the most pro LGB president ever!!
.
>> Flaming idiots!! Quislings!! 😡

It’s really as simple as this for me.

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In Congress, Mark will help me Secure the Border, Stop Illegal Immigration

 

NBC, May 15th: Mexico is stopping nearly three times as many migrants now, helping keep U.S. border crossings down. Biden administration officials say the increased help from Mexico in slowing migration is proof their relationship with Mexico is more productive than Trump’s approach.

FunFact: Mexico never paid for Trump’s failed wall. PRESIDENT BIDEN got Mexico to spend 1.5 billion on improved border security.

The hypocrisy of all of them is dumbfounding. tRump as the law and order candidate. How can he keep a straight face? And this lying jackass and Robinson give the Black Evangelicals a bad name.

“The laws that are contrary to the word of God, we need to push against it.”

His bible has a lot of words against divorce, yet he’s still a fan of Trump. As the old saying goes, if they didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all…

And the imaginary Sky Daddy does NOT write the laws in this country. In fact the Constitution makes this VERY clear.

Adultery is another thing that the Bible says God objected to — so much so that under Old Testament law (which is the only one which people like Burns seem to care about even though they don’t follow it themselves), the Jewish community executed anyone who was found guilty of committing adultery. Trump has publicly cheated on at least two of his three wives, but Burns evidently has no problem with that (with the result that one is inclined to suspect Burns himself was unfaithful to at least one of his wives — he’s been married twice himself — and especially since there are several other examples of ethical lapses on his part).

It should be of absolutely no surprise to anyone that Burns is one of the “self-anointed/self-appointed” in the sense that he’s never formally studied theology and obviously never made an effort to discuss his beliefs with any other believers in order to check their validity under historic Protestant doctrine. The “churches” of self-anointed/self-appointed hucksters like Burns are nearly always (very conveniently) non-denominational so that the so-called pastor is not accountable to anyone — not even God, since the self-anointed typically recreate God in tbeir own image to suit themselves. No wonder Trump likes Burns. Burns is just like Trump…a charlatan, a control freak, an egomaniac, and a liar.

That boy ain’t right in the head
— Southern Proverb

 

Let’s talk about GOP language and a veto in VA….

They’re Coming for Contraception Next

After Alabama’s recent IVF ban and the ongoing debate over abortion and mifepristone, the conversation has shifted. Conservatives aren’t just going for abortion. They won’t stop until all our rights under the 14th amendment (marriage equality, contraception, and more) are gone, too.

Louisiana moves to make abortion pills ‘controlled dangerous substances

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/05/13/abortion-pills-louisiana-controlled-substance/

You can not give into to these fundamentalist people.   They see any attempt to compromise with them as a chance to take even more rights away.  They are driven to return the country to a distant past where women had little to no rights.  A time when women were not even allowed a credit card in their own name, they had to have their husband or father’s permission or co-sign major purchases.  Doctors would talk to the husband about the wife’s medical problems instead of the woman.  They crave a return to when it was legal for a man to rape his wife, forcer her to please him sexually against her will.  The really see women as only house keepers, child birthing, child raising, and sex objects to please men.  Women are not people to them, women do not equal men in their world.   Sad.   But also these states no have the idea that because the president is a democrat their state doesn’t have to follow the laws and rules the administation makes.  Nope they have decided that red states are superior and above the federal government.   Never mind the constitution claims otherwise, these are republicans who claim to love the constitution yet violate it at will.   Hugs.  Scottie 


Someone possessing the pills without a valid prescription or outside of professional practice could be prosecuted and sentenced to prison.

May 13, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
Mifepristone is one of the two drugs prescribed for medication abortions. Louisiana lawmakers are moving to put it, along with misoprostol, in the same category of drugs as opioids and depressants. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty images
 

Louisiana could become the first state in the country to categorize mifepristone and misoprostol — the drugs used to induce an abortion — as controlled dangerous substances, threatening incarceration and fines if an individual possesses the pills without a valid prescription or outside of professional practice.

 
 

Legislators in Baton Rouge added the provision as a last-minute amendment to a Senate bill that would criminalize an abortion if someone gives a pregnant woman the pills without her consent, a scenario of “coerced criminal abortion” that nearly occurred with one senator’s sister.

A pregnant woman obtaining the two drugs “for her own consumption” would not be at risk of prosecution. But, with the exception of a health-care practitioner, a person helping her get the pills would be.

 

Louisiana already bans both medication and surgical abortions except to save a patient’s life or because a pregnancy is “medically futile.” Lawmakers just rejected adding exceptions for teenagers under 17 who become pregnant through rape or incest.

 

The amendment would list mifepristone and misoprostol under the state’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law, which regulates depressants, opioids and other drugs that can be highly addictive. It elicited a strong reaction from more than 240 Louisiana doctors, who called it “not scientifically based.”

“Adding a safe, medically indicated drug for miscarriage management … creates the false perception that these are dangerous drugs that require additional regulation,” they wrote in a letter sent last week to the bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Thomas Pressly. They noted misoprostol’s other critical uses, including to prevent gastrointestinal ulcers and to aid in labor and delivery.

 

“Given its historically poor maternal health outcomes, Louisiana should prioritize safe and evidence-based care for pregnant women,” they urged.

 

The amendment, written with guidance from Louisiana Right to Life, was added after the Senate unanimously passed S.B. 276 in mid-April. The measure is awaiting a final vote in the House before the session ends June 3, with little opposition expected.

“As Senator Pressly has stated, the medical community regularly uses controlled substances in a myriad of medical situations, including emergencies,” said Sarah Zagorski, communications director for the antiabortion organization. “The use of these drugs for legitimate health-care needs will still be available, just like all other controlled substances are still available for legitimate uses.”

 

The pending language appears to open yet another front in the country’s bitter battle over if and how women can obtain an abortion. Attempts to curtail medication abortions — which now constitute more than half of all abortions in the United States — are part of legislative agendas not just in deep-red Louisiana but in many Republican-controlled statehouses. And in March, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case brought against the Food and Drug Administration by a group of antiabortion doctors seeking to limit access to mifepristone.

 

Pressly did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but in a statement released by his office, he explained that he was seeking to “control the rampant illegal distribution of abortion-inducing drugs” in Louisiana. He said abortion medication “is frequently abused and is a risk to the health of citizens.” By including the drugs on the controlled-substances list, he added, “we will assist law enforcement in protecting vulnerable women and unborn babies.”

His connection to the issue is in part personal. During public testimony in April before the Senate Judiciary Committee, his sister recounted how her then-husband surreptitiously gave her an abortion drug in 2022 when he brought her breakfast for St. Patrick’s Day. They were separated, but Catherine Pressly Herringsaid she had learned she was pregnant with their third child and he had agreed to marriage counseling.

 

After she noticed him serving her “cloudy water,” she said she started having “intense cramping.” Doctors were able to stop the process so that the pregnancy could continue. He was sentenced to 180 days in jail. Under Pressly’s bill, a perpetrator would face a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $75,000 fine.

 

“Through our knowledge of other stories, and from the testimony of local centers in Louisiana caring for women in these situations, the abuse of abortion pills is not isolated to Herring’s situation,” Zagorski said Saturday. “It is very simple for a man to pose as a woman to order these pills online without a prescription, even for a minor, and then to pressure a woman to take the pills.”

While doctors say Herring’s experience is deeply troubling, they remain concerned that her brother’s proposed solution would make mifepristone and misoprostol even harder for Louisianans to get for reasons having nothing to do with abortion. Misoprostol is prescribed for treatment after a miscarriage, for example, and to help stop postpartum hemorrhage, one of the leading causes of maternal mortality in the state.

 

“To OB/GYNs, this is very worrisome,” said Neelima Sukhavasi, an OB/GYN in Baton Rouge and a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health. “There’s no one that would endorse what happened to his sister. But this is a safe medication that has many important lifesaving uses. It’s not addictive.”

 

Misoprostol is also taken to soften the cervix during labor, biopsies for cancer and placement of IUDs. Sukhavasi said she is concerned that Pressly wrote the amendment without consulting physicians or enforcement agencies.

Nimra Chowdhry, senior state legislative counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, echoed those concerns but in harsher terms. She accused abortion opponents in Louisiana of misrepresenting the safety and efficacy of the two drugs — a manipulation “in pursuit of blocking people from care.”
 

This ultimately “turns back the clock on modern medicine,” she said.

Abby Ledoux, vice president of communications at Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, is worried about the “far-reaching” consequences because of the drugs’ other uses.

There are “real questions,” she said, “about what it would mean in practice to open the controlled-substances list like this, including what aspects of state law legislators think manufacturers would follow, even locally.”

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Emily Wax-Thibodeaux is a National staff writer who covers national news, with a focus on gender issues and social movements for the America desk. She is an award-winning former foreign correspondent who covered Africa and India for nearly a decade. Twitter