Mad Women
It was one of those headlines that you know is fake news, or at least extremely-manufactured news. But, like a train wreck—it’s sometimes hard to look away. A recent Yahoo News (of course) headline screamed, “Disney Princesses Show the Terrifying Reality Facing Women in Trump’s America”. It was linked to an article in Glamour magazine’s news and politics section. Who knew the magazine that feeds women (and men) unrealistic images of how women should look and act had a political section, much less can be taken seriously on a topic they say is a “War on Women”?
Nevertheless, the article sounded the alarm to the women of America that women’s healthcare in the Trump administration may all but disappear. Healthcare, by the standards of women like this, is usually defined by two things: abortion and birth control. So this article claims that any dismantling of Obamacare will be especially devastating to women. The author pointed to a couple of women who wanted to use their writing and illustration skills to help combat the supposed “GOP war against women.”
Illustrator Maritza Lugo and writer Danielle Sepulveres joined forces and imagined life for several female Disney characters if the Affordable Care Act is repealed and replaced. They depict Beauty and the Beast’s Belle (below) as no longer being able to get her birth control; Disney’s first Latina princess, Elena of Avalor, getting turned away from Planned Parenthood (by Cinderella’s evil step-sisters, no less); Pocahontas being denied overage due to a pre-existing condition, and Aladdin and Jasmine are forced to hold a funeral for their miscarried child.
First of all, what kind of a twisted mind do you have that you re-imagine these fictional, innocent ladies as going to a Planned Parenthood clinic or buying birth control? Who even goes there?
Second, what world are they living in if they believe that women didn’t have access to Planned Parenthood and birth control until the Affordable Care Act became law? Women who wanted these services had wide-open access to them long before Obamacare, and nothing is likely to change that. That last scenario with Aladdin and Jasmine is just bizarre—has Trump made some proclamation that parents who experience the pain of miscarriage must hold funerals for them? Where do these women get this stuff?
I’m guessing it comes from people like those who planned and spoke at the rabid rally of women held right after Trump’s inauguration. When you get women like Ashley Judd and Madonna pouring out venomous rants in front of largely left-wing women who take the time to march for rights they already have, you’re bound to inspire other mad women to take something good and pure and turn it into something absurd.
If only they would open their eyes from their fantasy War on Women and fight against some real-world problems that are going on while they whine. Things like the women who leave Planned Parenthood every single day, no longer pregnant, but wounded emotionally and –very often—physically. Or why don’t they cry out for all of the Black and Hispanic babies who make up the vast majority of the innocent victims of Choice inside the walls of Planned Parenthood? How about shedding some real tears for the real women, girls and boys that are lost inside the dark underworld of human trafficking and slavery? Will they be planning any marches on their behalf?
No, but they are planning to continue their “fight” sometime soon (see update below). The planners of the Inauguration weekend women’s march are said to be planning more forms of resistance, like a strike to be held sometime in the near future. No one really knows what they’re striking against or when it will be. It could possibly be held on May 1st. That’s the day that many labor groups like the SEIU will be holding a strike to “resist fascism and autocratic leadership.” Or maybe tomorrow, International Women’s Day, will inspire them to go on strike against whatever it is they’re angered over–which seems to be just about anything.
Incidentally, these women really should be thanking the GOP this week. It seems that Paul Ryan’s new replacement for Obamacare keeps all the things that make it so horrible, and ignores the free market altogether. According to the Washington Examiner, “…the GOP bill preserves much of the regulatory structure of Obamacare; leaves the bias in favor of employer healthcare largely intact, replaces Obamacare’s subsidies with a different subsidy scheme, and still supports higher spending for Medicaid relative to what was the case before Obamacare.”
Nice going, GOP. Now you can own the healthcare mess. What was that some nice lady once said about putting lipstick on a pig?
UPDATE 3/8/17 5:14 CST: They did it! Today, International Women’s Day was “A Day Without Women” where women were supposed to forgo working in an effort to protest “inequality”. Nothing like protesting the supposed pay gap and glass ceiling by not showing up to the job you have—makes sense only to progressives.
Twisted fairy tales: What’s the world coming to when fictional women have to pay out-of-pocket for their birth control?
Bringing Justina Home
If you’re a parent, this story dealing with parental rights should concern you. It’s been quietly unfolding for the past year, flying under the radar of most of the mainstream press as many important stories seem to do.
Imagine yourself in this scenario: you’re the parent of a 15-year-old girl who’s much like any teenaged girl, with the exception that she lives with a disorder known as mitochondrial disease, a rare genetic disorder that causes a weakening of her muscles. She received the diagnosis from Hospital One for this disease, where she then gets treatment for it. Then she gets the flu, and gets to the point where she won’t eat and can barely walk. You take her to that hospital, and her doctor suggests you take her to one of his former colleagues at Hospital Two, which happens to be a children’s hospital. However, she never gets to see that doctor before another doctor steps in, claiming she doesn’t have mitochondrial disease, but in fact has a mental illness. Much to your dismay and disapproval, Hospital Two’s doctors accuse you and your spouse of “over-medicalizing” your daughter and pretty much declare that the docs at Hospital One didn’t know what they were doing. They stop giving her the medications she had been getting to treat mitochondrial disease, and confine her to the psychiatric ward of their hospital against her will and yours. You attempt to re-gain control of your daughter’s health care, but it’s to no avail. The state has stepped in. You’re being accused of being unfit parents because you disagree with Hospital Two’s diagnosis. Hospital Two and the state won’t let you take her home. You now can only see your own daughter for one hour per week during supervised visits. Hospital Two then transfers her to another facility- a residential treatment facility where the supervised visits continue. You watch your teenaged girl go from a young lady learning to live with her disorder to a weak, frail shell of herself confined to a wheelchair. Her hairline is receding…so are her gums. She needs her family but can’t be with them and she’s not being treated for her original disease. What’s more, a judge has ordered you not to speak of your custody battle to the media. For a year, you watch her waste away, fearing for her very life. You’re then told that she will soon be sent to a “farm” of some sort which to you sounds like a place where they send people to die. You decide to do what any good parent would do: you defy the gag order and tell your story to anyone who will listen. You’re then held in contempt of court, threatened with jail time or a fine. You have no money left after a year of battling a hospital and the state for custody of your sick daughter. Now what?
If only this were a scene from some horrible futuristic film, but it’s really happening to the Pelletier family of West Hartford, Connecticut. This is how young Justina looked in January 2013:
…this is what she looks like now:
Something is rotten in the state of Massachusetts, and quite possibly at Boston Children’s Hospital. Justina isn’t your daughter…but she could be.
If you choose , you can help to be her voice. Learn more details HERE, HERE and HERE. Justina’s father, Lou, will be interviewed tonight (2/20/14) on Megyn Kelly’s show on the Fox News Channel at 9pm Eastern time/ 8pm Central.
Share this story via social media, and if you want to take it further and are in a position to do so, you can help this family financially at www.freejustina.com
The Great SNAFU
The scene plays out time after time in Washington, D.C.: a crisis is looming for the American people and our economy, such as we need to raise the debt ceiling again to keep from defaulting on our debts or some such thing. Some Republicans (Ted Cruz, Mike Lee,), concerned as to what this constant spending and borrowing will mean for the future, hold out in some way. They might use their Constitutional authority as the entity with the power of the purse to refuse to fund an enormous law (or parts of that law) that was passed with dubious tactics. They appear to be standing strong against their opponents for a couple of weeks…even the weepy Speaker of the House (John Boehner) seems to want to get some traction in favor of more fiscal responsibility. Under pressure from the opposing party and the public relations department of the Obama Administration (The Media), resolution turns to surrender. At the last minute, usually within hours that the supposed calamity is set to hit, the Speaker along with his too-long-in-the-tooth cronies in his party (John McCain, Bob Corker) come together to “compromise” (give in) to Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama. Democrats celebrate because this time, they not only got everything they wanted without having to give anything, but they have the added bonus that Tea Party Republicans like Cruz and Lee and the whole Tea Party movement as a whole are finished.
At least that’s the story they’re sticking to for now. After the smoke cleared, McCain and others took to the airwaves to lambaste the junior senator from Texas (Cruz) for causing a government shutdown and “holding the country hostage” over the funding of Obamacare. He was called a racist, fascist and a terrorist.
People should know that it wasn’t the Tea Party Republicans holding the nation hostage over Obamacare; it was Obama himself and his party. Many resolutions were passed by the Republicans in Congress that could have avoided the government shutdown, such as allowing the American people to be freed from the mandate to sign up for coverage (as Obama did for big businesses) and making sure that Congress, the President and their staffs would also be subject to the mandate. Obama would have none of it, and Harry Reid refused to even entertain such “nonsense” in the Senate. So there was a shutdown.
The only ones who actually stood up for the people they represented were Senator Cruz and those who supported him. These are people who won their elections because they promised to do all they could to get rid of the (un)Affordable Care Act. It doesn’t seem to sit well with the mainstream media and political hacks from both parties that someone would actually do what they were sent to Washington to do. Obama likes to remind his opponents, “I won.” Well, so did they!
Now, just days after Ted Cruz was called a fascist for attempting to delay Obamacare (especially given its disastrous launch), Democrats in the Senate are calling for the very same thing. They aren’t being called “hostage takers”, “fascists” or “racists”. What just last week was an extremist point of view to media morons now seems like a sane and logical idea when it’s coming out of the mouths of members of the party they support. Funny how that works. But those guys are more worried about the 2014 election and what that could mean for anyone running with a “D” behind their names. Obamacare was, after all, a Democrat creation from start to finish, and passed with no support from the other side of the aisle.
GOP establishment-types like Boehner and McCain make a big mistake in thinking the Tea Party is dead. They seem to suffer from the same ailment that Obama’s signature law has: SNAFU. The military slang means “situation normal: all fouled up” **keeping it clean for a family-friendly blog**
According to Wikipedia, SNAFU means that the “situation is bad, but that this is a normal state of affairs. It is typically used in a joking manner to describe something that’s working as intended” [Emphasis mine]. Republicans seem to like things as they are and don’t enjoy new ideas from any young whippersnappers like Cruz and Company. They’re afraid of success and they lose a lot of elections…and they like it like that! They don’t do a whole lot to differentiate themselves from the other party these days. At least that’s how it seems, and they will keep losing as long as they continue to ignore, chastise, vilify and debase those who were elected because they were true conservatives.
Meanwhile, now that the debt ceiling is being raised again (think of it as giving Obama a blank check) we can all rest easy until it needs to be raised again in February. Actually, the next crisis has been unfolding for some time as Obamacare’s website Healthcare.gov continues to leave people scratching their heads and wanting to throw their computers out the window. Jay Leno summed it up well when he commented, “Today there were more problems with the website. It seems when you type in your age, it’s confusing, because it’s not clear if they want the age you are right now or the age you’ll be when you finally log in.”
Obamacare, a SNAFU that’s working as intended? Yeah, probably so.
Re-creating a famous Monty Python scene…
Liberty Belle Blog 