Thursday, July 21, 2011

Hot, Hot, Hot!

*  It is very hot across the nation today.  Thank goodness for air conditioning!  If you don't have it at home or your air isn't working properly, go to a movie or a mall and hang out for a few hours.

* If the Republicans and their Tea Party leaders don't cooperate on the debt ceiling, we all will be hurt.  Even though Tea Party supporters think that nothing will happen if the U.S. goes into default, they are wrong.

Kevin Drum, writing for Mother Jones, provides details on what Americans will lose if there is no debt agreement.  Mother Jones:

  • The doors of federal prisons have been thrown open, because none of the guards will work without being paid, and the vendors will not deliver food, medical supplies, electricity, etc.
  • The border control stations are entirely unmanned, so anyone who can buy a plane ticket, or stroll across the Mexican border, is entering the country. All the illegal immigrants currently in detention are released, since we don't have the money to put them on a plane, and we cannot actually simply leave them in a cell without electricity, sanitation, or food to see what happens....
  • The FDIC and the PBGC suddenly don't have a government backstop for their funds, which has all sorts of interesting implications for your bank account....
***   More information is coming out about the domestic violence problems concerning Ohio Republican Kris Jordan and his wife, Melissa, after a call to the Delaware Co. Sheriff's Department.  Marion Star:

...His 31-year-old wife Melissa called a Delaware County sheriff's dispatcher around 11 p.m. July 11, saying her husband had been drinking.

In a 10-minute discussion with the dispatcher, Melissa Jordan, a law student who was appointed Delaware County recorder earlier this year, told the dispatcher Jordan had a gun in his pocket at one point but put it down.

"He was pushing me around, throwing stuff. Because I called you, he wants ... he says it's over," said said. "This is the first time I've called. He's done this a lot. I can't put up with this anymore."

Now, according to Plunderbund, Kris Jordan is asking for privacy.
Plunderbund:

State Senator Kris Jordan says that he’s entitled to his privacy, even though he’s still under investigation of a crime.  Robert Mecklenborg said the same thing… a week or two before he resigned....

...There is a common thread between Mecklenborg and Jordan.  Both are pro-life, social conservatives who pride themselves as culture warriors.  Both wear their religion on their sleeves as much as their campaign literature.  Both view women as objects to control and use.  Kris Jordan, who his own wife says threatened to end his marriage if she dared to call the police, if she “made the mistake” of making what he was doing a public matter.  They are beyond conservative.  They are misogynistic and male chauvinists. What’s next, a bill requiring a husband’s consent before a woman can vote?  Sign a contract?

Both have mocked the notion that there exists in the United States Constitution an implicit right to privacy in which cases like Roe v. Wade and Griswold v. Connecticut rests on the floor of the State legislature.  Both have supported criminally prosecuting people involved in assisting a woman exercise her constitutional right to make her own decisions about her reproductive organs, only to demand privacy when they become a subject of a criminal investigation, public records be damned.  In their world, conservative politicians accused of crimes have more of a right to privacy than private citizens have on deeply personal medical and health issues....

With the Ohio Republicans supporting the new restrictive abortion bill, and Kasich signing it into law, the women of Ohio have to contend with their invasion of privacy by Kasich and the GOP Neanderthals.  Every single time an Ohio woman goes to see her physician, it is important to realize that besides her physician, Kasich and the Ohio Republicans have invaded the examining room. They have decided what can and cannot be done in that examining room.  It is time for the women of Ohio to throw the Republicans out of the most private decisions of our lives.  Their invasion of our privacy is distressing and disgusting.  If Mecklenborg and Kris Jordan want privacy, they'll have to respect our rights first.