I got nothing to add to this, just up over at TPM:
On Thursday night, hours before passing the tax cut compromise, House Republicans thwarted a bill that aimed to protect girls around the world from being coerced into child marriage. They opposed it because, they claimed, it might fund abortions.
That ordering of priorities is loathesome to me, but at least one could come up with an internally consistent argument to defend it.
__
But, of course, this is your modern GOP, which means that,
The text of the bill does not mention abortion, contraception or family planning. Instead, it directs the president to make preventing child marriage a priority, especially in countries where more than 40 percent of girls under the age of 18 are married. The ways to do that, according to the bill: support educating communities on the dangers and health effects of child marriage, keep young girls in school, support female mentoring programs and….
One more thing. What might that be? Oh. I’ve got it. The bill would…
…make sure girls have access to health care services.
And we all know what that means.
__
We do, don’t we?
__
Well — the House Republican caucus sure does:
It’s the “health care services” provision that had Republicans riled, according to a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner, whose name is on the whip alert and who voted no on the bill.
“The concern was that the reference to ‘health services’ in the bill — under the current Administration — would include abortion services,” the spokesman, Michael Steel, told TPM.
Oh sweet proto-pastalicious mother of the FSM!*
__
Heaven forfend that eight year old girls should have access to a clinic. Let no pious Republican allow any child, anywhere, come within a court ordered 250 ft of mention of the words “family planning.” Let any number of actual, breathing people suffer lest even the hint of ten cents of US taxpayer money somehow roll into the hands of someone who might have performed an abortion.
__
The GOP is not a party deserving of or capable of exercising power. I’m sure the usual suspects will continue to dig up the least grotesque among their leaders to suggest that this might not be true — Mitch Daniels, anyone? But the reality is that the body of the party is hopelessly committed to a series of battles, agendas, and allegiances that will accelerate America’s regression to the mean. We can’t suffer their influence in safety much any longer
__
Pars grandaeva delenda est.**
__
*The virgin bucatini? The Sober Soba? The Unrolled Raviol? Inquiring minds want to know!
__
**Thanks to the corrector of all the abuses I commit against Latinists everywhere, Ian Preston. Any other suggestions for good bad Latin for “the GOP?”
__
Image: Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1434
Zifnab
Of course, they would also cover midwifing, pre-natal care, and infant health.
At what point do we get to start labeling the Republicans the Pro-Still Birth party?
Dennis SGMM
“Educating?” That word alone is sufficient to make the bill unacceptable to the GOP.
TR
Someone once said that you could put the caption “Christ, what an asshole” underneath every single cartoon in the New Yorker, and it would somehow work.
It seems the same is now true for every single action of the Republican Party.
mellowjohn
“Republicanes eunt domus”?
The Moar You Know
Why does the GOP want to protect pedophiles?
TR
@The Moar You Know:
That’s exactly how they’d play this if the roles were reversed.
We need to ask every member of the House why they’re in favor of the forced marriage of eight-year-old girls to old men.
Scott
@The Moar You Know: I would dearly love to hear that some of those asses got accused of this in some future primary… but I’ve stopped expecting that. Evil never gets punished in America. :/
PaulW
What’s the good Latin for “geriatric sex-obsessed assholes?” It’s been 20 years since I last studied Latin and I can’t remember the word for “asshole”… silly me…
PaulW
The People called Republicans they go to the house?
Tim F.
Cool image! I didn’t know that Vladimir Putin was expecting another kid.
Loneoak
Grand Old Pedophiles.
brantl
It’s not latin but how about clusterfuti? Works for me.
gnomedad
By this logic, Republicans should oppose tax cuts because the money might be used for abortions.
Dennis SGMM
@TR:
Because they’re trying to lock up the Mormon fundamentalist vote?
scav
You’ve only just noticed that women rank below the potentially human in the great republican ladder of life? Women are practically the green stamps with which the chosen save their way into heaven and valuable prizes.
jayjaybear
Illegitimi? (From the famously mock-Latin “Illegitimi non cardorundum” – “Don’t let the bastards grind you down”)
TR
@Dennis SGMM:
Now we’re on to something.
If we were Republicans, we’d be sending dog-whistle messages to Southern Baptists — who are already suspicious about the Mormon Menace™ — that this is proof of the evil influence that the LDS has on today’s Republican Party and that they all need to be purged. Make Mitt Romney, Orrin Hatch and Glenn Beck their enemy, and sit back and watch the circular firing squad.
But no, we’re Democrats, so we’ll find a way to blame Obama and then destroy the party with a fruitless Dennis Kucinich primary challenge.
Maody
Thanks Tom Levensen for the Jan van Eyck painting which I have always loved for its inbreeding manlook. Just strangely beautiful and most apt.
GOP is not only a bunch of pedophile and child trafficking lovers, they are the lovers of women as their handmaidens. It’s in the bible, don’t cha know. Handmaidens of the Lord – please say this meet up is a joke
Asshats. Sorry, don’t know any latin.
Maxwel
podex = asshole.
jayjaybear
@Maody:
You have a point there. Hand him a banjo and set him on a rickety porch and you practically have Deliverance.
Tom Levenson
@Tim F.: FTW!
@Maxwel: What I love about the blogosphere in general, and this place in particular, are the odd things one may learn here. Thanks.
@Maody: This is a seriously deep painting, one of my favorites for decades.
El Cid
Well, at least they can keep claiming that they oppose leaving Afghanistan because of their dedication to keep women safe from the Taliban.
Carnacki
@Tim F.: What’s with the weird cat-dog hybrid at Putin’s feet?
catclub
@Tom Levenson:
I am waiting for the Canalettos. Saw them in the Sloane Gallery in London – I could stare for days.
catclub
@gnomedad:
Sounds like a good reason NOT give tax cuts to poor people.
jayjaybear
@Carnacki:
Brussels Griffon, most likely.
gizmo
Tom,
Nice choice on the painting. Scott Horton over at ‘No Comment’ uses old master pictures to good effect as well.
Thanks!
shadow's mom
I read this on TPM with combined feelings of frustration and revulsion (not least because of the face of the sanctimonious Marc Cantor attached to the story).
Of course, no media outlet will ask them why they hold the lives of actual breathing female children lower than the lives of incipient humans, or why they support pedophiles, or how they would feel if their 12 year old daughter died in childbirth because of inadequate prenatal care.
El Cruzado
Not that I think it’s not an asshole move, but I wonder how much of it is the usual Life begins at conception and ends at birth bullshit and how much is it about finding an excuse to STICK IT TO THE (black) MAN.
GregB
I’m sorry but these people are a pack of fucking monsters.
Maody
@Tom Levenson: for sho, Tom L. it is one of the best paintings ever. Did you see the link – now that is scary… must go find more handmaiden art. Am trying to find something about child surrogacy.
The Moar You Know
@TR: Glad at least one person here got it.
Fight fire with fire, fuckers. Or enjoy losing forever. The Good Lawd sent the Dems another freebie. It’s so easy…”why is the GOP helping pedophiles?” “Why is the GOP in favor of pedophila?” “Why is the GOP helping Catholic priests molest children?” “Hey, didja hear that GOP stands for ‘Good On Pedophiles’?”
Good lord, they write themselves.
But Dems will do nothing, dismissing such tactics as beneath them and taking the high road to minority party status, a fate they can seal with “filibuster reform”, AKA “throwing away your last weapon”.
The Republic of Stupidity
Sorry, Tom, but describing them as merely ‘mean’ isn’t nearly strong enough…
Tom Levenson
@Maody: Just saw that link. OMFG!
Or, as Art Linkletter might have put it, people sure are weird, aren’t they?
joe from Lowell
During the debate over the health care bill, the Republicans discovered that there was some money for health clinics in public schools in poor areas. Sounds reasonable, right? Lots of poor kids whose parents might not have health insurance, communities with more health problems, poorer cities that don’t have a lot of extra money to fund these things themselves – seems like a reasonable idea, right?
The talking point from the Congressional Republicans?
“Sex Clinics.” They’re going to put Sex Clinics in middle schools.
WTF is wrong with these people?
geg6
Perhaps they are just taking the example of the Catholic Church in these sorts of issues to heart.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1883598,00.html
Scott P.
I’m curious why you chose the Arnolfini Wedding Portrait to illustrate this post. It used to be thought that the painting shows his wife, Jeanne Cenami, as pregnant, but we now know they never had kids, so it’s not clear if that is intended to express a desire for offspring, or perhaps she is not meant to be read as pregnant at all.
Sentient Puddle
@Zifnab:
I say right now.
Seriously, when your logic for opposing some legislation takes a detour through “provides health care services,” that should be a cue to reevaluate said logic.
catclub
Apparently the GOP read ‘Three Cups of Tea’ and got all the wrong messages.
Education and healthcare: providing them will make them enemies forever.
Killing them with bombs and missiles from drones – nothing better for making friends.
The Republic of Stupidity
@joe from Lowell:
They’ve learned how to get traction from hatred… and they’re simply not smart enough to understand the eventual downside to this… it will catch up to them, and sadly, the rest of us, sooner or later… and it won’t be pretty.
Tom Levenson
@Scott P.: Good question.
I choose it mostly because I like it a lot, and it at least tangentially touches on the subject of the post by referencing marriage (and, with lots of different aspects of the work, the appropriate duties of a wife).
The pose and the appearance of a belly may suggest a desire for children, or, as has been suggested, it might simply be how the fashion of the day in wealthy women’s dress was depicted.
The deeper connection for me is one that I can’t defend (as I don’t know the details of the family — but the picture has always looked to me to depict a much younger bride seen as an ornament to the rich, older man…which in this context seemed appropriate. But I’ll grant you my complete lack of art-historical knowledge to defend this to the death.
But really — it just is a great painting, and I use my self-granted license to bandy art to plop such works up there when I can.
Catsy
@GregB:
This.
The GOP seems to be in a race to identify the most loathsome, hateful position they can get away with taking in their zeal to stop a Democratic president from accomplishing anything that might redound to his credit, no matter how destructive it is. Holding UI benefits and lower-income tax cuts hostage to tax cuts for millionares? No problem. Blocking a treaty to inspect nuclear fucking weapons in Russia? Nobody cares about that. Funding health care for 9/11 first responders? Let ’em die. Opposing the repeal of DADT? Of course.
I know, we can block a bill that opposes child marriage! That’ll show those hippies and their anti-pedophilia agenda!
Fucking monsters. They belong in a long-term, involuntary cult reprogramming facility or an even longer-term jail cell, not in elected office. I’m reminded of a Sam Clemens quote, from a letter he once wrote: “The thing for you is a burial permit. You have only to speak and I will see that you get it.”
At this point it is not possible to be all three of the following at once:
– Loyal Republican
– Well-informed
– Decent human being
BonnyAnne
crappy morning thought (thanks GOP!) but you balanced it out with my 3rd favoritest painting EVAR so all is still well. I will wrack my brain for some more/less appropriate Latin for our Republican comrades, but at the moment (the coffee ain’t kicked in yet) all I can come up with is
GOP: pedicabimus vos et irrumabimus!
gratias tibi, Tom.
joe from Lowell
@geg6:
Nope.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recently put out a statement that “health care is not a privilege but a right and a requirement to protect the life and dignity of each person.”
Perhaps if you’d read the post before commenting, you would have noticed that The text of the bill does not mention abortion, contraception or family planning and that the objection of the Republicans stems from language intended to…make sure girls have access to health care services.
So, no. You don’t know what you’re talking about, and you’re pushing the Republicans’ spin that “health care= abortion.” Well done.
Jane2
I may have misinterpreted this post, but why in the world does the USA think it can pass federal legislation that would apply to other countries?
Despite the loathsome practice the bill was designed to stop, the bill doesn’t mean squat, really. According to the information provided by TPM, the bill really addresses policy, and neither Democrats nor the Obama Administration require legislation to follow through on encouraging education, etc.
shadow's mom
Thought I would call the House Leader’s office directly to ask, politely, why the Republicans support pedophilia and are opposed to providing prenatal care to young women. Unfortunately, his office does not answer the phone and his mailbox is full.
Oh, oops, previous message should have read Eric Cantor, not Marc Cantor
Dennis G.
I was just reading the TPM piece and thought “what a bunch of assholes”. But at least they are consistent. Throughout 1990s and the last decade the GOP has been very protective of entrepreneurs profiting off of the human trafficking of children. Ralph Hall of Texas even entered an attack of a child who tried to fight back into the Congressional Record as a favor to Jack Abramoff and his sweatshop owning clients.
It looks like they want to protect the unborn because of the future profits that can be made selling the girls into sexual bondage.
A real group of pricks lead the GOP.
Sko Hayes
Odd painting of the day, a woman who never got pregnant being painted as pregnant (her hand on the belly is a dead giveaway), someone asked about the dog, but what the heck are those things at the bottom left of the painting?
Anyway, I love old art, so keep them coming.
Other commenters have covered my feelings about stupid Republicans very well, so I won’t waste bytes on that.
keestadoll
Jesus Christ. Unbelievable, except that it totally is believable. Anxiously awaiting the fourth installment of The Divine Comedy where we see yet another circle of hell revealed and it’s the modern GOP being fu#@%d up the ____for all eternity by the three headed Papal Monster.
Maody
In afghanistan, child brides.
Good piece of short journalism, though just the tip of the iceberg all around the world with a short use of google.
GOPers emulate Warren Jeffs.
Karen
Er…
This isn’t just paedophilia. This is the end of the crime of “statutory rape.” Not the act. The law. Sex + Marriage = legal consummation (sp).
Really, since the US is part of the world, those FLDS child brides (which is basically legalized molestation) would now be legal.
I see a lot of 5 year old child brides in our future….
Mnemosyne
@Jane2:
Because there’s money paid to those countries that goes along with the legislation:
Congratulations — thanks to Republicans, your tax dollars will fund pedophiles and child rape.
Mnemosyne
@Karen:
Link, please. Since the law is aimed at stopping child marriages, I’m not getting where you think they’re being legalized and promoted instead.
jayjaybear
@Sko Hayes:
Shoes.
debbie
This is really offensive. I guess the only children they care about when they cry, “Oh, the children!” are the Christian ones.
I remember maybe 5-7 years ago when the NYT Sunday Magazine ran a pictoral feature on child brides in Afghanistan. Nothing but large photos of tiny girls sitting beside ugly, cretinous, wizened old men. To me, they really embodied the concept of pornography.
joe from Lowell
@Dennis G.: Since you brought up Abramoff and the Marianas, I’d just like to take this opportunity (as I always do when this topic comes up) to remind everyone that Ron Bailey, the head global warming denier at Reason magazine, went on one of Abramoff’s fully-paid junkets to the RNMIs, and then came home and wrote a puff piece about them.
thomas Levenson
@debbie: Was this the link ?
Enraged Bull Limpet
what the heck are those things at the bottom left of the painting?
Notice that the woman’s feet aren’t visible. Haven’t you ever heard the phrase “keep ’em barefoot and pregnant?”
Red*cted
Dude looks like one of The Three Storms from “Big Trouble in Little China”.
Jane2
@Mnemosyne: Can a department not redirect funds without legislation? I’d want to know where the $67M goes now…I’d bet the bulk is eaten up by admin overhead.
The bill seems like a political ploy designed to fail in order to feed the mighty wurlitzer of political acrimony.
Capn America
@Tom Levenson:
Hmm so I didn’t know that was his own wife. I always thought this painting was about a young girl who had been knocked up marrying an older man out of social necessity – hence her covering up her noticeable pregnancy bump with her left hand. By marrying this guy, she can protect her illegitimate child (and herself).
Maody
@debbie: @thomas Levenson:
i posted Sinclair’s short video at comment # 50
Dennis SGMM
@TR:
If there was another Democrat who had already convinced me that she or he would do a significantly better job than Obama has done then I’d be up for a primary challenger. To my mind, there isn’t such a person. While there are some very admirable Democrats and although I am deeply discontented with aspects of Obama’s presidency, when I take into account the fractious and sometimes fractured nature of the Democratic party I think (For the time being) that Obama hasn’t earned a primary challenge. In the recent past I had considered a primary challenge to Obama a must. On reflection, I just don’t see anyone looking like the combination of FDR and LBJ that it would take to get my vote in a primary.
Tuttle
Bad Latin for GOP?
Hmm. “Party” should be rendered as factio, elatus for the “grand” and I’ll go with senex for “old” since it has an X in it. And let’s say it’s…. vocative. Why not?
Factio Senecte Elate perhaps?
Mnemosyne
@Jane2:
Nope. Once the House of Representatives designates where money is supposed to be used, it can’t just be moved willy-nilly. That’s what Republican governors discovered when they canceled their high-speed rail projects and thought they’d be allowed to keep the money anyway.
Ah, yes, the good old, “Why should we give any money at all since it might be wasted!” ploy. See also arguments for why Medicaid shouldn’t be funded because it’s possible that some people might see a doctor when they don’t actually need to.
If you think the bulk of the money is eaten up by overhead, you are welcome to prove it. All of this stuff is in the public record, so have at it.
Dennis G.
@joe from Lowell:
The Libertarians were frequent Abramoff junketeers–lots of them went. The same is true with the folks behind Freedom Works. Grifters all.
noelle
All comments about the substance of the article aside…
the Arnolfini Portrait depicts a wedding, and the wedding of an already-pregnant woman would be orders of magnitude too scandalous for the 1430s. It’s simply – a round belly was fashionable/attractive at the time, it signified that you had enough to eat and weren’t sick.
(a round belly and not big thighs, etc, because of the way fashion fixates on one thing and runs with it – the dress emphasizes the shape, and she’d probably be wearing some kind of belly-enhancer under her dress.)
(I know this is one of those paintings that art historians fixate on and obsess over with laser intensity, but this is the interpretation I learned…)
Jane2
@Mnemosyne: Thanks for the clarification….another lovely thing that line-item veto prevents. It’s painful passing a budget, but then departments have much more flexibility once there’s cash in hand.
I’m not saying the money is wasted, I’m saying that offering up such a small amount to affect wholesale cultural change is a sop to domestic politics rather than a serious attempt to influence international issues. It’s like striking a Congressional committee to address something big like child welfare…empty words and not a lot of result.
Maody
@Jane2: i understand your pov, but sometimes symbolic words break down doors so that change and inch along.
Iowa Housewife
This makes me want to cry and throw-up at the same time.
Everyone should be required to read the book “Half the Sky” to see the effects of pregnancy on a young girl’s body.
athena
The Van Eyck is one of the world’s most fascinating paintings. The way scholars talk about it, the dog (Fido) symbolizes faithfulness, the sandals in the left (full of mud from the street) either symbolize sacredness, or that they have just come in from outside. Tis true that the man has been identified for eons as Giovanni Arnolfini an Italian banker living in Bruges, and his wife, whose name was Jeanne Cenami. However, the painting is dated by inscription to something like 10 years before this couple married, so….
The observation that the woman is younger than the man is interesting. In the fifteenth century, women were often married right at the age of puberty (or shortly after), while men often waited til their 30s at least. And since so many women died in childbirth (just like the Republicans seem to want today!), second or third marriages (of older men to younger women) were pretty common. So there is a conceptual link between this image and the topic.
Mnemosyne
@athena:
Keep in mind, though, we’re at a historic low when it comes to the age of puberty. In the Middle Ages, girls would have been more like 17 or 18 when they hit puberty, not today’s 11 or 12.
Still icky to have middle-aged men marrying teenagers, but not quite as squicky as them marrying 11-year-olds.
joe from Lowell
@Dennis G.:
Absolutely. Bailey has also made a name for himself by writing a glowing review of the CEI’s “Carbon: they call it pollution, we call it life,” ads, and for vigorously pushing the line that Rachel Carson killed more people than Stalin via the UN’s DDT ban, right at the same time the tobacco industry was funding their campaign to discredit the UN’s global health programs because they include anti-smoking efforts.
Nothing but shills.
burnspbesq
I happen to agree that the practices that this legislation seeks to inhibit are Bad Things.
That said, I wonder how those who opposed two significant impingements by the United States on the sovereignty of other countries (y’all know what I’m referring to), and profess to be in favor of a broad reading of the Exercise Clause, justify their support of this impingement on the sovereignty of other countries and interference with the rights of citizens of those countries to practice their religions as they see fit.
Nutella
@TR:
Checking for availability of http://www.mormonmenace.org right now!
geg6
@joe from Lowell:
LOL! Damn, you work hard to make me seem to say something I never said, all in order to defend your buddies in the Vatican.
FTR, I read the post and I know exactly what they mean when they say “health care services” and so do you.
Which would, in the same way that excommunicating the doctor and the family of a 9-yr-old girl who was impregnated with twins by her step-father and to whom such a pregnancy was dangerous and potentially fatal and not excommunicating the step-father did, send the message that abortion, for whatever good or bad reason, is bad and evil and that pedophilia is good and just fine. I see little to no difference between the two. The Church would rather see girl children die in forced birth, just like the Republicans would.
mellowjohn
@PaulW:
it’s from “life of brian”
[Brian is writing graffiti on the palace wall. The Centurion catches him in the act]
Centurion: What’s this, then? “Romanes eunt domus”? People called Romanes, they go, the house?
Brian: It says, “Romans go home. ”
Centurion: No it doesn’t ! What’s the latin for “Roman”? Come on, come on !
Brian: Er, “Romanus” !
Centurion: Vocative plural of “Romanus” is?
Brian: Er, er, “Romani” !
Centurion: [Writes “Romani” over Brian’s graffiti] “Eunt”? What is “eunt”? Conjugate the verb, “to go” !
Brian: Er, “Ire”. Er, “eo”, “is”, “it”, “imus”, “itis”, “eunt”.
Centurion: So, “eunt” is…?
Brian: Third person plural present indicative, “they go”.
Centurion: But, “Romans, go home” is an order. So you must use…?
[He twists Brian’s ear]
Brian: Aaagh ! The imperative !
Centurion: Which is…?
Brian: Aaaagh ! Er, er, “i” !
Centurion: How many Romans?
Brian: Aaaaagh ! Plural, plural, er, “ite” !
Centurion: [Writes “ite”] “Domus”? Nominative? “Go home” is motion towards, isn’t it?
Brian: Dative !
[the Centurion holds a sword to his throat]
Brian: Aaagh ! Not the dative, not the dative ! Er, er, accusative, “Domum” !
Centurion: But “Domus” takes the locative, which is…?
Brian: Er, “Domum” !
Centurion: [Writes “Domum”] Understand? Now, write it out a hundred times.
Brian: Yes sir. Thank you, sir. Hail Caesar, sir.
Centurion: Hail Caesar ! And if it’s not done by sunrise, I’ll cut your balls off.
JBerardi
Superstitious nonsense. Moderns science clearly explains how the FSM evolved from a flightless manicotti.
mds
@Maxwel:
There seems to be more than one term that can mean either that or the entire posterior, depending on context. So I guess we have to decide whether Republican members of congress are to be referred to as Podicēs or as Culī. I’m slightly partial to the latter, but don’t really have a canem in the fight.
Karen
@Mnemosyne:
I’m sorry if I was not clear. I meant that if this bill didn’t pass because of GOP opposition, that the statutory rape law has no real teeth? I know we have a law here already against statutory rape. But if the GOP will kill the bill, then in essence, they’re saying they’re not in favor of stopping child marriages?
David
I learned in Art History that the woman in the painting isn’t pregnant.
Mnemosyne
@Karen:
Ah, okay. It sounded like you were saying that the Republicans were right to defeat the bill because the bill itself was some kind of Trojan horse that actually promoted child marriage while claiming to try and prevent it. But you were actually saying that the Republicans are promoting child marriage by defeating the bill.
Your comment makes a lot more sense now. :-)
Comrade Mary
@Scott P.: She’s not pregnant in this painting: she’s just represented as meeting the beauty standards in fifteenth century northern Europe. The art and writing of that time repeatedly present slim, pale, very young women, with fair hair, light eyes, small breasts, a swaybacked posture and some sort of pot belly as the ideal.
In fact, even virgin saints were presented as fitting this body type. See Van Eyck’s own Dresden Triptych with a decidedly un-pregnant St. Catherine at the right. And this wasn’t just a kink unique to Van Eyck, as this image of a starkers St. Catherine of Alexandria from the Belle Heures, by the Limbourg brothers, shows.
The fashions of the time emphasized mass around the belly even in flat-bellied women. The green surcote in the painting is cut like a houppelande, which is a dress made from yards and yards of heavy fabric and fastened just below the breasts. Even the most nulliparous look knocked up in one of these.
debbie
@ Tom Levenson:
Yes, that’s what I was remembering. Thanks. Amazing how the visuals stick with a person so much better than words ever could.
I wish my memory was better, but more recently a case of a little girl who was sold off, escaped, and hitched (at great personal danger) a ride back to her parents got a fair amount of publicity on NPR (and maybe even 60 Minutes). She had fought being married off largely because she wanted to go to school and her “husband” wasn’t going to let her. She was one strong-willed little girl — a good omen for the country’s future generations of women. I believe she ended up getting a divorce.
joe from Lowell
@geg6:
Yeah. Little tip for you: when you do the forced-laughter thing, it just makes you look like you’re trying too hard.
You mean like when I quoted your comment? How awful of me to misrepresent what you said by…quoting what you said.
Indeed I do. And I know exactly what the US Conference of Catholic Bishops meant by the term “health care” when they wrote that “health care is not a privilege but a right and a requirement to protect the life and dignity of each person.”
And I further know that when you claimed that the Republicans were “taking the example of the Catholic Church in these sorts of issues to heart,” you were completely and totally full of shit, as the Catholic Church has long advocated for making health care available to all, and the Republicans’ strategy of demonizing health care has nothing whatsoever to do with the example of the Catholic Church.
You can whine all you want: I’ve got you dead to rights. You mouthed off in ignorance, and you aren’t going to crab-walk away from this by pretending to laugh at it.
joe from Lowell
But, hey, extending health care to everyone, opposing health care for everyone – let’s not lose sight of what’s really important here:
ABORTION AND CATHOLICS! WE MUST HIJACK THIS THREAD SO IT’S ABOUT ABORTION AND CATHOLICS!
Sure, the Catholics are actually on the right side of this, quote-unquote health care issue, but so what? Who cares about health care as health care?
Right, geg6?
BC
@joe from Lowell: Problem with Catholic Church is that they, like the GOP, run away from any principles if there’s a chance that abortions might occur. So health care is a “right”, not a privilege? Tell that to the nun in Arizona who decided that an abortion to save the life of a woman was more important than a principled stand on abortion: her bishop says she is now excommunicated. Tell that to the 9-year-old in Brazil who was impregnated (raped) by her stepfather, but the real villains according to the Catholic Church is the doctor and her mother who gave her an abortion of twins. Guess who the church excommunicated?
BC
Well, we know that “health care” = “abortion,” now don’t we? Remember the GOP always uses the air quotes when they talk about the “health” of a woman as being a reason for abortion. I especially remember McCain using the air quotes for health during one of the debates and just thought is was so odd – but no one else seems to have picked up on it.
RedKitten
I swear, the right-wing has the WEIRDEST dog-whistle sense. As soon as anybody who is not one of their own mentions the word “health”, they immediately jump to the conclusion that “health” is some nefarious liberal code word for “abortion”. I mean, TRY to tell a right-winger that Planned Parenthood offers a wide variety of women’s health services, and the fucked-up Google Translator inside their head changes every word to “killing unborn babies”.
Gene in Princeton
Just say no to Latin.
geg6
@joe from Lowell:
Believe me, neither the previous or the current LOL are faked. The Catholic Church, the one that matters (unlike the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops), prefers dead little girls to “health care” for them. Are you telling me that the USCCB is okay with this legislation, even if these little girls need an abortion? LOL again. Just like the GOP.
Gene in Princeton
@Tuttle: Why not? Because it doesn’t make any sense.
tejanarusa
Comrade Mary:
I am going to ignore the topic of the post because what I could say has been said – but I had to congratulate you for the best and funniest line of commentary@Comrade Mary:
Even the most nulliparous look knocked up in one of these.[houppelandes]
And, oh yeah, that’s the interpretation I learned, too.
And mellowjohn:
you win 2nd prize for one of my favorite scenes in Life of Brian; I’m a language geek who started with 4 yrs of hs Latin – but so long ago I couldn’t have done the corrections of Brian’s Latin anymore.
I must come here more often – where else might there be so many comments on proper Latin translation of appropriate names for evil Republicans?
pluege
especially in countries where more than 40 percent of girls under the age of 18 are married.
…and of course what marriage means in those countries and the vast wasteland of the republican mind, is not a sharing relationship of equals, but instead what marriage means is that:
a) a wife is the property of the husband, and
b) a wife is to serve the needs and whims of the husband, and
c) a wife has no rights, under the law or otherwise
thomas Levenson
@JBerardi: So glad that someone chased that bone.
Mnemosyne
@pluege:
That’s why conservatives hate the idea of “gay marriage” so much. It’s not just the homophobia, it’s that the idea of two adults acting as equal partners in a marriage breaks apart everything that they believe about their own natural superiority. If their wife sees that Chuck and Larry down the street have a mutually supportive relationship where neither one of them dominates the other, she might get funny ideas, like thinking that maybe she should get that same respect from her own husband.