Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Everybody saw this coming.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Joe Biden can go out like FDR, not by dying in office, but by crushing the fascists.

It’s a doggy dog world.

T R E 4 5 O N

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Let’s finish the job.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Republicans in disarray!

Democrats are back in array!

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

This really is a full service blog.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Monday Evening Open Thread: Project Veritas CEO Jumps Ship

Monday Evening Open Thread: Project Veritas CEO Jumps Ship

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Giles was okay with serving as JOKeIII’s minion, and happy to take over when the board got too nosy about Jim’s expenses, but she is *not* going to jail for him. Per CNN, “Project Veritas CEO quits, citing ‘strong evidence of past illegality and past financial improprieties’”:

Hannah Giles, the chief executive of Project Veritas, said Monday she has stepped down from her role at the right-wing group “effective immediately,” after discovering evidence that the organization has engaged in “past illegalities.”

“Though I had high hopes when I joined the organizations, I stepped into an unsalvageable mess — one wrought with strong evidence of past illegality and past financial improprieties,” Giles wrote in a post on X. “Once such evidence was discovered, I brought the information to the appropriate law enforcement agencies.”…

Giles was appointed to the top job in June 2023, four months after the organization’s previous chief executive, O’Keefe, was ousted from the group.

The removal of O’Keefe from the nonprofit organization that he founded came after an internal memo signed by members of the staff and presented to the group’s board alleged that O’Keefe was “outright cruel” to his employees. Project Veritas later said James “spent an excessive amount of donor funds” on “personal luxuries,” including $150,000 in black car services and a chartered flight.

In August, the Westchester County, New York, district attorney’s office announced it was investigating the allegations against O’Keefe.

O’Keefe has set up another, less visible to normies ratf*cking op-shop already, but I haven’t been able to find much information about its exploits — which, I assume, means it’s not doing all that well. Seeing him indicted for financial crimes would be a nice year-end present, even if ACORN can never be resurrected.

Reader Interactions

129Comments

  1. 1.

    japa21

    strong evidence of past illegality and past financial improprieties

    I could have saved her a lot of time by telling her that was a no-brainer conclusion.

  2. 2.

    Baud

    I shocked, shocked there’s gambling going on in this establishment.

    ETA: Trying to quote from memory.

  9. 9.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    Or as a blogger 15 or so years ago called it:

    “The Claude Rains Memorial Gambling Awareness Award”

  13. 13.

    Nukular Biskits

    With respect to the lead-off tweet, anyone who jumped in to captain the sinking ship USS Veritas was either colossally ignorant of its shady history or, with malice aforethought, didn’t care.

    Either case is not a flattering characterization of Hannah Giles’s judgment.

  14. 14.

    Tony Jay

    “So you took the job in order to hand over documentary evidence of the organisation’s flagrant crimes to the authorities?”

    “No, I took the job to get in on the grift and make contacts, but when I got there I realised O’Keefe had shit the bed so badly I was better off cashing out.”

    Do you –

    A) Mark this person as an awful human being best avoided except to keep them away from any position of influence. Ever?

    B) Put a blank cheque and a job offer to become the New York Times’ latest star columnist in front of her and smile ever so winningly while waggling a pen?

    Over to you, America’s Establishment.

  15. 15.

    kindness

    Project Veritas CEO Hannah Giles was shocked there was gambling going on.  She called the cops.

    ‘Here are your winning Madame Giles’ said an assistant.  Thought everyone here apparently…

  18. 18.

    BeautifulPlumage

    Meidas Touch is reporting that SCOTUS has accepted Jack Smith’s motion for expedited review of his petition!

  24. 24.

    twbrandt

    Giles has a long history with O’Keefe – she posed as a prostitute in the videos that closed down Acorn. She knew what she was getting into when she took over PV.

  26. 26.

    Urza

    I am truly SHOCKED.  Shocked a conservative who would get involved with them would care about illegality.

  29. 29.

    Harrison Wesley

    I guess it’s because I have such a small circle of friends, including some who are a lot further right than I am, but I really am taken aback (how naive!) when I read about these dreadful people.  That doesn’t make me a Pollyandrew, just a hermit who needs to get hit over the head from time to time with reality.

  31. 31.

    lowtechcyclist

    “I stepped into an unsalvageable mess — one wrought with strong evidence of past illegality and past financial improprieties,” Giles wrote in a post on X.

    I think she meant ‘fraught,’ not ‘wrought.’

  33. 33.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    More interesting Jack Smith news:

    Special counsel Jack Smith has extracted data from the cell phone Donald Trump used while in the White House and plans to present evidence of his findings to a Washington, D.C. jury to demonstrate how Trump used the phone in the weeks during which he attempted to subvert the 2020 election.
    In a court filing Monday, Smith indicated that he plans to call an expert witness who extracted and reviewed data copied from Trump’s phone, as well as a phone used by another unidentified individual in Trump’s orbit.
    The data from Trump’s phone could reveal day-to-day details of his final weeks in office, including his daily movements, his Twitter habits and any other aides who had access to his accounts and devices. The data, for example, could help show whether Trump personally approved or sent a fateful tweet attacking his vice president, Mike Pence, during the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol

    ETA: looks like that story dropped fairly recently. The Beast is probably gonna erupt again on his little posting site. No “spokesperson” this time. Let ketchup fly!

  36. 36.

    Alison Rose

    JFC. On a NYT article about the fucking Texas Supreme Court ruling against the woman seeking an abortion, the second comment I see starts out with:

    I am very much against the use of abortions for birth control.

    NO ONE FUCKING DOES THIS. That is an anti-choice canard to make pro-choice people seem like bloodthirsty sociopaths. I’ve known a whole lot of people with uteruses in my life, and some of them were hella slutty (I say that with zero judgment, slut it up, babe), and not a one of them consistently banged bareback and just said “who cares i’ll just get another abortion lol”. He does say he’s against what’s happening to this woman, but the whole comment is just as fucking dumb as the first sentence. This is all Pelosi and Biden’s fault for not passing a federal abortion law!!!! You know, because that would have been so easy and totally possible.

    I hate people.

  37. 37.

    Tony Jay

    @WaterGirl:

    I stood on the slopes of Mount Versimilitude and cried out loud “Make this world comprehensible to me!”

    The Gods heard, but boy are they cruel fuckers.

  38. 38.

    MisterForkbeard

    @BeautifulPlumage: Can Jack Smith request that all the Trump-appointed judges recuse himself, as Trump has insisted Chutkan and McAfee do since they were appointed by Democratic presidents?

  39. 39.

    lowtechcyclist

    @eclare: ​
     

    Your winnings, sir

    Damn, beaten by zhena.

    My mom would have loved you folks. She was a big movie buff, and if that wasn’t her favorite line from Casablanca, it was in the top five for sure.

  42. 42.

    Miss Bianca

    @Alison Rose: You know where they used abortions routinely as birth control? The USSR and other Eastern Bloc countries. Because they *couldn’t* get reliable birth control for the most part.

    Wonder if that’s changed.

  43. 43.

    Ken

    @RaflW: So, uh, what did this person ‘run’ exactly?

    I think the team that’s trying to sort out the FTX bankruptcy is getting paid. As CEO, would she be paid to do that?

  45. 45.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Alison Rose: ​
     

    NO ONE FUCKING DOES THIS.

    I must disagree with you on this semantic point. A backup means of birth control is still a means of birth control.

    If there are women who are taking oral contraceptives, or using a diaphragm or IUD or whatever, but get pregnant anyway and choose to have an abortion, then the abortion is their backup means of birth control, and a backup means of birth control is still a means of birth control.

  47. 47.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Ken: ​
     

    Though with one simple edit, “one wrought with strong evidence of past illegality and past financial improprieties” wrought works just fine.

    You’re right, it does! Nice catch.

  48. 48.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud: ​
     

    Agree, although I also agree that the right thinks it’s used as the primary means of birth control.

    Well, it’s not like those fuckers ever feel constrained by the truth.

  49. 49.

    Nukular Biskits

    @lowtechcyclist:

    I got your point but the fact remains, IMHO, it’s nobody else’s f’ing business but the pregnant woman’s.

    The right makes a big deal with the talking point about women using abortion as a means of “birth control”.  Duh fucking duh.  It’s their decision.

  50. 50.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Alison Rose: People don’t do this, no. Not in the way these psychopaths want people to think.

    I have a friend who’s always wanted to be childless, but doctors literally wouldn’t tie her tubes or do other similar things. So she had abortions when birth control they DID allow her to use failed. I’m told this is not particularly uncommon.

    And these people DO think that she should have been stuck with a baby neither she nor the father wanted, and she’s using abortion as ‘birth control’ to escape the consequences of her actions. Ghouls, the fucking lot of them

  51. 51.

    cain

    @lowtechcyclist: Not to speak for Alison, but I interpreted her message to mean that women do not have the attitude that if they get pregnant they can just use abortion to get rid of it. It’s the attitude, not the mechanism.

  54. 54.

    Another Scott

    Hannah Giles will be joining Harvard’s Institute of Politics – DougJBalloon.

    Probably.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  55. 55.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Miss Bianca:

    Wonder if that’s changed.

    It has gotten better, but per the Guttmacher Institute, it’s still not good.  And if American women of childbearing age had abortions at the rate that Russian women do, there’d be 3,000,000 abortions in the U.S. every year.  So if there’s any RW bullshit going around that the Russians are more ‘pro-life’ than we are, well first of all they’re massacring a metric ton of Ukrainians (and their own soldiers) for no reason other than they feel they should own Ukraine, so pro-life my ass, but also Russian women have a lot more abortions per 1000 women of childbearing age than American women do, since the ‘pro-lifers’ don’t give a single solitary damn about life outside the womb.

  56. 56.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)

    @kindness: I’d say our choices are

    1) She was indeed aware of the shenanigans, hates O’Keefe’s guts for whatever personal reasons you can come up with, and saw this as a wonderful chance to do him over.

    2) She was aware he wasn’t entirely on the up and up, but didn’t realize just how bad it was, and (maybe) acted on the advice of counsel, or just basic common sense.

    3) She knew he was crocked & had turned it into a grift machine, and was either disgusted at the waste of a good rat-f*cking shop or pissed that he’d ruined the grift & the donors had turned off the tap.

    4. She is astoundingly naive and thought the mass of red flags surrounding the office was a drill team that was one of O’Keefe’s theatrical side projects.

    I find #4 is less probable because O’Keefe was pretty blatant and there’s an open investigation. So the cynical options are more likely. I have trouble seeing an open and obvious rat-f*cking operation attracting the innocents among us.

  58. 58.

    Alison Rose

    @MisterForkbeard: Sure, but as noted in my reply above, that’s not what people mean when they say “I don’t like when people use abortion as birth control”. They mean people who literally use no other method, let themselves get pregnant constantly, and get an abortion every time. THAT does not happen, or if there are people who do it, they are an infinitesimal portion of the uterus-owning population and we don’t need to make laws based on what a few complete idiots do.

    ETA: I knew I didn’t want kids very early on in my life. If, back when I had sexual relationships, I’d ever gotten pregnant, I would have had an abortion, no question. But I was always on the pill and also used condoms except for in one long-term cohabitating relationship. THOSE were my birth control methods. Getting an abortion when those fail is not a birth control method except in the most literal sense.

  60. 60.

    lowtechcyclist

    @MisterForkbeard: ​

    I have a friend who’s always wanted to be childless, but doctors literally wouldn’t tie her tubes or do other similar things. So she had abortions when birth control they DID allow her to use failed. I’m told this is not particularly uncommon.

    That’s horrible! What mf’ing business is it of a doctor to deny that to her?

    Well, sure, the doc thinks: she might change her mind someday. But adults get to make decisions for themselves that they may deeply regret later on. We have agency. That’s what it means to be a freakin’ adult.

    Has a man ever experienced anything like that when he wants a vasectomy? ROFLOL.​

  61. 61.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Alison Rose: Oh, absolutely. That is exactly what they mean, and they include a bunch of “and YOU’RE paying for it through taxes and Planned Parenthood” BS as well. Look at all those sluts the Democrats are stealing from you for!

    Ugh. Those assholes make me so angry.

    And the worst part is that they leave women no choices but to get abortions by restricting health care, birth control and family planning and then screw them again by denying them a backup plan that works.

  63. 63.

    Alison Rose

    @lowtechcyclist: It is often quite difficult for women to get their tubes tied. Many doctors will refuse to do it, especially if you’re relatively young, because they condescendingly believe the woman might change her mind one day, and they’re afraid of a malpractice suit or something. If you’re married to a man, you often need your husband’s approval in order to get the doctor over their patriarchal objections. I’ve known multiple women who wanted tubal ligations and couldn’t find a doctor who would perform it.

  64. 64.

    MisterForkbeard

    @lowtechcyclist: She told me that her docs (she had this experience with ~6 of them) split into two categories:
    1. Moralizing assholes who said she didn’t know any better
    2. Doctors who told her that she was young, could get an abortion if she needed to, and that it was a potentially dangerous surgery that couldn’t be reversed so they couldn’t recommend it until she was older

    I think she was almost 40 before she finally got someone to do it for her. In a blue state, no less

  65. 65.

    bbleh

    @Alison Rose: NO ONE FUCKING DOES THIS.

    Oh we ALL know that ALL those slutty-slutty-slut-sluts just do this ALL the time.  They run out and have their slutty-slut sex with ALL those men they have slutty sex with, and then they run to the Inner City AbortionPlex and have their abortions, and then they run out and do it all over again.  That’s just how they ARE.

    As with so many things Republican / MAGAt / Christofascist, it’s not the substance of the matter; it’s the feelings.  And when you’re, er, campaigning in poetry, certain … license is taken with mere facts.

  66. 66.

    Suzanne

    @Alison Rose:

    That’s not what it means when people say that. They mean people who don’t use the pill, don’t use condoms, don’t use anything else, just rawdog it and get abortions every weekend.

    Yes exactly. The common usage of the term “birth control” is the primary preventative means used to avoid pregnancy.

    ETA: Abortions are expensive. The Pill and IUDs are cheap.

  67. 67.

    Lyrebird

    @Alison Rose: @cain: @MisterForkbeard:

    Another problem to my mind is that the right wing loves to scare people, and just one scary example will do.   And you can probably find ONE woman alive in the country who has that casual an attitude about abortion, and if they can’t, they’ll find a faker – I mean how the hell did they get away with taking a fictitious/hypothetical wedding cake drama all the way to the Supremely Corrupt Court???? – and that is enough to  go on, to rail against, and to use to deny everyone else.

    Thank the Spaghetti Monster that there are some cain and cyclist and forkbeard and alison rose people around, too.   And it sounds like enough voters in Ohio know more about reality than the forced-birth-even-if-it-kills-you people.

  68. 68.

    gene108

    Hannah Giles either has good friends or good lawyers because she has the sense to get out and report wrongdoing to law enforcement, so she’s not left holding the bag of shit.

    I bet she had no clue how fucked PV is before taking the job. People running crooked entities aren’t informing the rank and file of their accounting irregularities.

  69. 69.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Alison Rose:

    @lowtechcyclist: That’s not what it means when people say that. They mean people who don’t use the pill, don’t use condoms, don’t use anything else, just rawdog it and get abortions every weekend.

    I’ve spent enough of my life dealing with people who thunder, “THIS IS THE WORD OF THE LORD!” when quoting Bible passages they agree with, then turn around and say, “what the Bible really means here is…” when they don’t like what it straightforwardly says, all the while claiming to believe in Biblical inerrancy.

    So I get this is what you really meant, now that you’ve explained yourself, but I’m always gonna start off with what someone really said.

  70. 70.

    Dan B

    James O’Keefe had (has?) an Only Fans account.  I thought it seemed weird but I looked at him (not on OF) and he does look fit.  It has all the allure of watching Steven Miller or Steve Bannon on a date.

  72. 72.

    Suzanne

    @Alison Rose: I will just note that even tubal ligation has a failure rate. The Mirena IUD (the one with hormones) has a lower failure rate than getting one’s tubes tied.

    Dudes can also get vasectomies!

  73. 73.

    Martin

    @gene108: I bet she did, but didn’t realize that as CEO she might face some legal repercussions for them until the lawyer filled her in. Then she was out of there.

  74. 74.

    Alison Rose

    @Lyrebird: Of course, it doesn’t work the other way. If we point out horror stories of people getting unsafe illegal abortions, they hand-wave it away as though it doesn’t matter since it “hardly ever happens”.

  75. 75.

    Suzanne

    @Dan B:

    It has all the allure of watching Steven Miller or Steve Bannon on a date. 

    Uh, thanks, I guess, for killing any amorous impulse I may hypothetically have had this evening.

    :::barf:::

  76. 76.

    Alison Rose

    @Suzanne: Honestly, if I could have found a doctor to do it, I would’ve happily yeeted my entire reproductive system into the Pacific on my 18th birthday. I knew I wasn’t gonna use it. What did I need my uterus for? Storage? No.

  79. 79.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Alison Rose:

    Many doctors will refuse to do it, especially if you’re relatively young, because they condescendingly believe the woman might change her mind one day, and they’re afraid of a malpractice suit or something.

    A malpractice suit wouldn’t be a problem if the doctor gets a signed consent form for the procedure from the patient, I would assume. That’s not enough?

    If you’re married to a man, you often need your husband’s approval in order to get the doctor over their patriarchal objections. I’ve known multiple women who wanted tubal ligations and couldn’t find a doctor who would perform it.

    That’s bullshit. That’s even worse than needing your husband’s permission to open a bank account or a credit card, which I was reminded of.

    I was browsing the r/childfree subreddit and I came across posts by women talking about how even female doctors do the same thing to them

  81. 81.

    Geminid

    @lowtechcyclist: Casablanca had a great dramatic story. I’d like to see someone do a contemporary version set in St. Louis, at a club on the Mississippi waterfront. Instead of a Nazi officer, the villain could be a Missouri State Police commander trying to prevent endangered women from reaching safety in Illinois. Captain Reynaud’s character would be the City Sheriff.

    Rick, the cynical, apolitical club owner, keeps a speedboat but it’s for water skiing only. “I stick my neck out for nobody,” he tells the Sheriff.

    But then, in walks his old love Ilsa with her sister, and the sister is not well….

  82. 82.

    gene108

    @Martin:

    Part of me thinks someone advised her to a third party accountant to review* the books, otherwise there wouldn’t be anything coherent to turnover to LE.

    My gut feeling is any entity run the way PV was probably does not have good or accurate financial information readily available. There were probably only a few people who had any idea of the state of things, and she wasn’t one of them.

    *EDIT: More likely just compiled what was there to get financials that sort of tied out to reality.

  83. 83.

    Gvg

    @Suzanne: safer too. A lot safer. Especially if there are also medical reasons you don’t want to get pregnant, but even without that, abortions are not perfectly safe. Of course neither is pregnancy which is something the people who want to deny all abortions and birth control refuse to hear. Women still will get pregnant and choose to have children, and risk it, but it has never been perfectly safe. Other people have no business demanding we always have children. It has to be personal choice.

  84. 84.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Suzanne: ​

    Dudes can also get vasectomies!

    That was certainly my plan for when my wife and I were done with having kids. After all, it’s a much more minor surgery than having one’s tubes tied. But then we never were able to have any bio-kids, and then we adopted the kiddo, and then it became moot anyway, since my wife is happily post-menopausal.​

    ETA: But the notion that I would have been refused a vasectomy would have never crossed my mind, and that it’s clearly such an uphill battle for a woman to obtain the analogous surgery when it’s no problem for a man, is just outrageous.

  87. 87.

    Delk

    @Dan B:

    It has all the allure of watching Steven Miller or Steve Bannon on a date. 

    Miller is probably the power bottom in that couple.

  90. 90.

    LiminalOwl

    @cain: Has it been mentioned here that Paxton said he would apply the Texas anti-abortion law despite Kate Cox’s getting a judge’s approval per the law, because (says Paxton) the judge did not have the necessary medical expertise to evaluate Cox’s condition, or that of her fetus ?  I thought I couldn’t despise the man more, but I was wrong.

  92. 92.

    ema

    @lowtechcyclist:

    If there are women who are taking oral contraceptives, or using a diaphragm or IUD or whatever, but get pregnant anyway and choose to have an abortion, then the abortion is their backup means of birth control, and a backup means of birth control is still a means of birth control.

    Birth control prevents a pregnancy, abortion terminates it. Abortion is not a method of birth control.

  93. 93.

    Suzanne

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    A malpractice suit wouldn’t be a problem if the doctor gets a signed consent form for the procedure from the patient, I would assume. That’s not enough? 

    No, it isn’t always. Some doctors have been sued by patients who regret the procedure later, and the fear of lawsuits drives a lot of medicine.

    This is why I’m happy about IUDs being free thanks to Obamacare!

  94. 94.

    Alison Rose

    @Nukular Biskits: Well, I knew without a doubt I never wanted children, and so having to go through 40+ years of periods is a real bullshit deal. I don’t think cis men understand how hellish menstruation can be. Even if it’s not that bad, it still sucks, and for most women, you’re talking around 500 periods at a minimum over the course of your life. Cramps, bloating, gas, period poops, back pain, clots, bleeding through your tampon or pad onto your clothes or bedding, spending obscene amounts of money on hygiene products… It’s one thing to deal with that when you do want kids (although of course, most people only have 2-3 so four decades of it still sucks), but when you don’t want them and never did, it’s extra aggravating. And plus, while I am pro-choice and would have had no problem getting an abortion, it’s not like I WANTED to have to do that, and even using the pill and a condom isn’t 100% effective all the time.

  95. 95.

    Suzanne

    @lowtechcyclist: I have multiple dude friends who got vasectomies without ever having kids and without “permission” from a partner. They just…. didn’t want to have any kids. And that’s seen as perfectly sensible for a man.

  96. 96.

    Eyeroller

    @ema: Well, one could argue that contraception prevents pregnancy, whereas “birth control” is anything that prevents birth. So in that sense, abortion can be a form of birth control.  For a long time there were countries e.g. Japan, that heavily regulated hormonal birth control but allowed condoms (which have a fairly high failure rate) and abortion, the latter of which apparently still requires the male partner’s consent but was still fairly common.

  98. 98.

    kalakal

    @Alison Rose:

    It is often quite difficult for women to get their tubes tied. Many doctors will refuse to do it,

    Exactly what happened with Mrs kalakal. She went through hell with my stepdaughter & vowed never again.

    Catholic hospital with sanctimonious pricks arrogating what should have been her choice to themselves

  99. 99.

    Kay

    I think people now understand that the “exceptions” to the abortion bans are a lie. It’s no more complicated than that – they all lied. I bet if we could get internal communications between the anti abortion lobbyists and the anti abortion politicians when they were jointly drafting these statutes we’d find out they planned the lie – deliberately deceived women.

    The Texas supreme court opinion is gibberish- it’s the same garbage work and reasoning you see in the statutes. No one could navigate this “exception” – it’s a bunch of garbled nonsense.

  101. 101.

    Jackie

    @lowtechcyclist: I was divorced several yrs and had an eight yr old and six yr old and was 36 yrs old when I decided to get my tubes tied AND burnt. I had to endure the (male) GYN asking me “what if I meet the ‘right man’? I retorted “IF I meet the right man, he’s already had a vasectomy.” I was granted the tubal ligation. 1990.

  103. 103.

    Obvious Russian Troll

    @Suzanne:

    Vasectomies have a failure rate, too! One of my wife’s cousins found this out the hard way; they’re now putting the kid through college.

    (Not that I think vasectomies are a bad idea! Men just need to make sure to follow up with their doctors and be cautious in the first few months afterwards.)

  106. 106.

    TriassicSands

    @Alison Rose:

    Although I am a cis male, given your description, I think I have a pretty good idea of what menstruation might be like because of  health problems I have that are unrelated to menstruation. I don’t bleed once a month, but constantly (requiring frequent transfusions). I have severe abdominal pain and cramping, bloating, gas, and unbelievable diarrhea from Crohn’s disease, which also has caused severe Crohn’s related arthritis especially affecting my spine, hips, elbows and shoulders. I don’t bleed into or through a tampon, but after years of being on glucocorticoids, my skin is so fragile that any contact with a surface that is harder than a mere touch, can break the skin and cause bleeding. My sheets have blood stains all over them. Currently, I have at least a half a dozen tears in my skin. I wear protectors on my arms, which are most at risk, but even those don’t always prevent problems. And needless to say there are some “expenses” related to having an autoimmune condition.

    I never thought about Crohn’s as being similar symptomatically to menstruation, but there clearly are similarities. So, even if menstruation qualifies as a relatively mild form of Crohn’s disease, it obviously sucks royally.

    I decided very early on that I didn’t want to have children, so had I been a woman, I would have likely felt the same way you did and wanted to end monthly periods permanently. The only drawback I can see would be that messing with hormones (which, of course, birth control pills also do) can cause additional problems.

    I don’t believe in god, but if I did, I would have to conclude that he/she/it is one nasty piece of work. After all, if a god could create the entire universe as well as human beings he/she/it certainly could have made menstruation, if not fun, then at least not unpleasant.

  107. 107.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Alison Rose:

    @Nukular Biskits: I had a dude once tell me it probably wasn’t any worse than a bad cold. I sincerely hope no women ever slept with that man.

    Classic male toxicity.

    Believe me, I see that every day at work.

    I’ve never claimed to understand what’s it’s like to have a period, but I’ve been hopefully wise enough (?) to know not to trivialize it.

  110. 110.

    karen marie

    @Baud:   My jaw quite literally dropped and those very words fell out of my mouth when I read Giles’ statement.

    Was she unconscious?  Is she going to claim she was drugged up until last week?

  111. 111.

    RaflW

    @LiminalOwl: But of course that same judge would have been able to determine that the doctor erred in granting a ‘lifesaving’ exception, and been cleared to toss the doc in jail for life.

    Also, exactly what @Kay says. It’s garbled on purpose to gaslight people. And control them. Doctors are indeed frightened to ‘use their medical judgement’ as the Court so fakely suggests. The TX supremes know the threat of severe legal repercussions hangs over all this. I’m amazed any OB-BGYs still work in the state. We’ll see if this decision today causes further losses of practitioners. Not that the GOP will give a shit.

  112. 112.

    S Cerevisiae

    OT from the serious conversations: we got our calendars today and they are great, such an iconic picture of our goofball Shepherd Bella, RIP.

  114. 114.

    Alison Rose

    @Scout211: I did see that, and while I get the point of it, it’s kind of like…okay, but cramps are only one aspect, you know? I wish there were a magic spell to make all cis dudes go through a full cycle at least once. Like, actually have it happen in their bodies, with everything that goes along with it.

  115. 115.

    Kay

    @RaflW:

    They’re really not planning on clarifying it – I think because they know the exception is a lie and it will never be applied. This is actually worse than I anticipated – I thought the judicial decisions interpreting these bans would put forth differing standards making them impossibl;e to apply. They don’t even bother with that – the standard is impossible to decipher, let alone apply.

    If there isn’t an exception for the health of the mother then there isn’t an exception for the life of the mother either.

  117. 117.

    Kay

    They’re just going to announce that any expert opinion from a physician that the womens health or life is in danger is “subjective” and therefore invalid. That’s all they did here – it’s a pronouncement that uses the words “objective” and “subjective” but attaches no meaning to those words.

    I have no earthly idea where one would get an “objective” medical opinion using this ruling as a guide because they don’t define “objective”. If the physician’s opinion in this case is “subjective” then they’re all going to be “subjective”.

  118. 118.

    TS

    @lowtechcyclist:

    A backup means of birth control is still a means of birth control.

    100% disagree. Having an abortion is when a woman decides for one reason or another (choice is usually a VERY minute side of it) that she cannot or does not want to have a child.

    Birth control is to prevent conception. Termination is to not proceed when conception has happened.

    Using the terminology of back up birth control – which is nonsense – is SO what the religious right want you to do.

  119. 119.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Kay: A physician saying “you have a cold, take two aspirin and drink plenty of fluids” is a subjective call.

  120. 120.

    TS

    @lowtechcyclist:

    I have a friend who’s always wanted to be childless, but doctors literally wouldn’t tie her tubes or do other similar things.

    My part of the world (Australia) in the 1980s – a married woman had to have her husband’s permission before she could get her tubes tied.

    I told my husband he would no longer be my husband if he didn’t sign the form (we are still married)

  121. 121.

    RevRick

    @kindness: Hannah Giles? The Hannah Giles who played the ‘hooker’ in the scheme that brought down ACORN? That Hannah Giles?
    I guess she grew her virginity back.

  123. 123.

    matt

    I feel bad for O’Keefe that he wasn’t able to fund an entire off-Broadway musical starring himself with donor funds – he was well on his way!

  126. 126.

    WaterGirl

    @lowtechcyclist:

    A backup means of birth control is still a means of birth control.

    If there are women who are taking oral contraceptives, or using a diaphragm or IUD or whatever, but get pregnant anyway and choose to have an abortion, then the abortion is their backup means of birth control, and a backup means of birth control is still a means of birth control.

    I don’t often disagree with you, but hard disagree on this one!

    That is ONLY true if you separate out each word from the general meaning of the phrase “birth control”.

    “Birth control” is what women do in order to not get pregnant.

    Anyone who says “use of abortions for birth control” are stating that women, or at least many women, are not using any method to try to prevent pregnancy.

    To say that sexually active women just roll along doing nothing to prevent pregnancy and figure that if they get pregnant they will get an abortion.  That’s just bullshit.  And it’s dangerous to say that because it just enforces their lies.

    I did not expect to have to have this conversation with the males on Balloon Juice.

  128. 128.

    evodevo

    @zhena gogolia: ​
    Uh, no…it’s like a bout of Montezuma’s revenge for a WEEK, every month…when you phrase it like that, they BEGIN to get a tiny glimpse of the idea…and you can’t beg off work or school – you have to deal. And, of course, it sometimes stains your pants because the flow can’t be controlled LOL AND women make fun of you for being such a snowflake…and running to the bathroom every 5 minutes.

    And what Alison Rose said….AND “smile more!!”

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