Slight Fact-Check of Tom Humphrey

Tom Humphrey writes:

Attorney General Bob Cooper says in a formal opinion that the ban on abortion coverage in health insurance in HB2686 could include such ‘morning after’ pills as RU-486.

The highlighted section is false. RU-486 is not a ‘morning after’ pill. It is in clinical trials to be used as a form of pre-implantation birth control, but it is not okayed for use in the manner in the US now. RU-486 ends pregnancy. It is commonly referred to as the abortion pill.

It is a very different thing than the ‘morning after’ pill, which is a high dose of the hormones found in regular old birth control pills. It only prevents pregnancy. It does not stop a pregnancy already in progress.

To conflate the two is very, very sloppy in the least.

But here’s the thing–if the reporters who cover the Hill don’t understand the basics about birth control and the people who represent us don’t understand the basics about birth control, doesn’t that scare you a little bit?

It does me.

What’s Up with Bredesen?

I’ve heard the Commercial Appeal has a policy of not linking to bloggers. It’s so cute when newspapers think they can just asshole the internet into working how they want it to work. It’d be cuter if it didn’t affect friends of mine, but it’s still cute, like they still think they control the flow of information.

But it brings up a dilemma. If you read something at the Commercial Appeal that delights you, but you know those fuckers have a policy of not linking to bloggers, should you bother to link to them? I mean, I don’t mind if people who don’t know about bloggers don’t link to bloggers, but to want to be on the internet and to want to be taken seriously while still thinking you can dictate who your readers pay attention to?

It’s pretty funny to me.

Good luck, Commercial Appeal! I’m sure the next time your owner puts you all on furlough while he builds himself another vacation house or pays to have 25 women, all painted in gold-leaf, cut his toenals while he opens milk just to let it go bad, you can at least take comfort in knowing you refused to link to bloggers!!!!!

Anyway, Bredesen’s totally pwning (that’s an internet word, Commercial Appeal–don’t be frightened. You can learn about it from watching G4 on your television.) Ron Ramsey today. Ron Ramsey, who has a commercial so stupid that, when the Butcher saw it for the first time last night, he asked if it was a parody commercial made by the McWherter campaign. I will have to ask an 11-year-old whether that means Ramsey pwned himself on behalf of McWherter or what?

Ha, okay, I’m done giving shit to the Commercial Appeal.  Here’s the link.

(And, yeah, I know the Tennessean is just as bad. I mean, when was the last time you saw these yahoos link to a blogger? But I haven’t heard that they’ve been forbidden from doing so. I assume they’re just ignoring us.)

I Shake My Fist at You, Representative Mike Turner!!!!

On the left, please find a picture of me in mid-fist-shake at Mike Turner (warning, the realism and artistic talent demonstrated in the picture you are about to see is so stunning that it may cause you to momentarily black out. Please do not view this picture while driving.):

You may be wondering what could cause me to have such heart-felt rage, and perhaps, such wild hair. The wild hair, I assure you, is natural, but the rage?

Oh, the rage is at this comment.

Sure, it seems innocent enough, but I’ll be damned if I haven’t had that song stuck in my head for days now.

And now, of course, dear readers, I move to stick it in yours.

Oh, hey, who knew Dean Martin did this, too?

Hee, Dean Martin just has one of those voices. It just does it for me.  I’m going to need to fan myself a little. Sadly, the hand I used to fan myself while listening to dreamy voices is the one I have clenched in a fist to shake. So, it’s a sad situation.

Edited to Add: Oh, I forgot to share this post with y’all that details a nice way Turner did good this week. I shouldn’t poke fun for no good reason without also doling out props when they’re deserved.

Unfit for Duty

So, what you’re saying is that obesity is the unrecognized nation-wide anti-war protest? A strategy the communities hardest hit by the war employ, maybe subconsciously, to keep their kids out of the military?

And, if so, who can blame them?

I mean, you wonder why else 27% is such an issue for the military. That still leaves 73% of the population useful to them. But when you start looking at the overlap between the communities where the military recruits most heavily and the communities in which the obesity rates are highest, you start to wonder about the correlation, you know?

I’m not saying I buy it. And there’s a real danger of making this all about how Mom is Ruining America’s Youth! Blame the women!!!! But if the narrative is going to be “obesity is something these people are doing to themselves in order to ruin it for us good people,” I love seeing some tacit acknowledgment that there are circumstances in which having an obese child means having a living child; that it can make sense as a survival tactic.

(Though I think there are a lot of reasons people are fat and trying to come up with one overarching reason–“they’re doing this on purpose to themselves!! Aren’t they disgusting?!”–is stupid and cruel.)

In Which I Tell You The True Meaning of HB 2681/SB 2686

Here’s the thing, regardless of your stance on abortion*, we were all losers last night. It’s not because of some high and mighty reason. I’m not going to sit here and lecture you on the repercussions of this bill.

The reason we all lost last night is this–the State Legislature took a good portion of its time–time we pay for with money we are very short on–to legislate about something that isn’t even settled yet. (In this case, we don’t know what the exchanges are going to look like and we don’t know how broadly the language of the bill might be interpreted and whether that breadth might put us in violation of Griswold. Which is fine. As they say, that’s for the courts to decide. Of course, we pay for the courts to decide this.)

If you can overlook the emotional stakes (and, believe me, your legislators are really, really hoping that you can’t), they are legislating in order to reform something that doesn’t yet exist.

When the chips were down–and the chips are down, folks–in a bipartisan effort, your state legislators turned from your real problems to passionately embrace voting on some made up problem.

This means something very, very sad and scary for the state of Tennessee:

They don’t know what the fuck to do to help us.

I repeat, they don’t know what the fuck to do to help us.

And so, they are going to do nothing.  Instead of trying to figure out what would bring jobs to Tennessee and what would make us an irresistible workforce, instead of passing the budget, they’ve turned their attention to theater–to making dramatic votes on made up crap in order to have stuff to put in their re-election materials.

Everyone who voted ‘yes’ on this has told you in as plain a language as our state legislature can give you that they have given up on trying to help us get back to work and have moved on to the important task of trying to help themselves get reelected.

That should put a chill in the bones of everyone in the state, regardless of your political persuasion.

—————-

*Here’s something fun to consider, when you’re feeling cynical. With the amount of money that anti-abortion groups in this state can move, can someone like, say, Fowler, really afford for abortion to be illegal? Or even anti-abortion politicians? If they can’t do stuff like this–“I must ride to Nashville to save the babies!!!!! Vote for me!”–what can they do? There are a lot of anti-abortion “leaders” who are in a high-stakes game of chicken with people who are truly anti-abortion, because one of those groups really, really needs for abortion to stay legal without the other group wising up to it.

And you should totally read Your Liberal Friends on this whole brouhaha.

AND I’m not going to begrudge any pitcher the joys of singing “Long Black Veil.” Which is neither here nor there. I thought I’d just drop in a treat for those of you who’ve made it this far.