This is a traumatic thing — she’s, shall we say, she’s uptight. She is frightened, tight, and so on. And sperm, if deposited in her vagina, are less likely to be able to fertilize. The tubes are spastic.
Dr. John Wilke trying to explain the science the bullshit right wing lunatics made up behind how a woman’s body shuts down when she’s being raped. Disgusting.
Read the rest of the article at the New York Times.
(via joshsternberg)
Fixed that for you.
(via wilwheaton)
(via randomactsofchaos)
National media attention has focused on Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) drastic restructuring of the Medicare program, detailing the Vice Presidential candidate’s efforts to transform the current benefit guarantee into a “premium support” program for future enrollees.
But Romney/Ryan’s most devastating changes would impact programs that serve society’s most vulnerable citizens. American who rely on Medicaid, food stamps and Pell grants won’t be afforded the luxury of retaining their existing benefits, should Romney and Ryan implement their plans; these programs would experience immediate reductions if the Ryan budget becomes law (via CBPP):
1. CUTS FOOD STAMPS BY $133 BILLION: Ryan’s budget would send the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) back to the states as a block grant and cut the program by $134 billion. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “an average of almost 10 million people would have to be cut from the program in the years from 2016 through 2022 to achieve the required savings.” If the cuts were to come from benefits, rather than kicking families out of the program, “All families of four — including the poorest — would see their benefits cut by about $90 a month in fiscal year 2016, or more than $1,100 on an annual basis.” Ryan continually claims that the food stamp program is “unsustainable,” even though the numbers show that’s simply not the case.
2. CUTS MEDICAID BY 1/3%: Ryan would treat Medicaid in the same way: transform the exiting matching-grant financing structure into a pre-determined block grant that will not keep up with actual health care spending and send it back to the states. This would shift some of the burden of Medicaid’s growing costs to the states, forcing them to — in the words of the CBO — make cutbacks that “involve reduced eligibility for Medicaid and CHIP, coverage of fewer services, lower payments to providers, or increased cost sharing by beneficiaries—all of which would reduce access to care.” The reductions to Medicaid kick in right away: between 2013 and 2022, the budget makes $1.4 trillion in cuts to Medicaid —a 34 percent reduction. As a result, states could reduce enrollment by more than 14 million people, or almost 20 percent—even if they are were able to slow the growth in health care costs substantially.
3. 30 MILLION AMERICANS WOULD LOSE HEALTH COVERAGE: Romney and Ryan would repeal the Affordable Care Act, including the subsidies for middle-class Americans to purchase coverage and the expansion of the Medicaid program for lower-income Americans. As a result, more than 30 million Americans would lose access to insurance. The popular regulations that prohibit insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and rescinding coverage would also be repealed.
4. CUTS PELL GRANTS FOR 1 MILLION STUDENTS: Ryan consistently claims that increases in financial aid are driving up the cost of higher education, even though evidence doesn’t back him up. The budget Ryan authored, according to an analysis by the Education Trust, would eliminate Pell Grants entirely for one million students. In 2011, 74 percent of Pell Grant recipients had family incomes of $30,000 or less. These cuts would come despite the fact that the price of a college degree has skyrocketed 1,120 percent over the last three decades.
(via oldenough2burmom)
Last week, Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan, the Republican architect of Congress’s radical right-wing budget plan, as his running mate. Ryan has previously cited Rage Against the Machine as one of his favorite bands. Rage guitarist Tom Morello responds in this exclusive op-ed.
Paul Ryan’s love…
Try explaining to them that claiming to be a huge fan of “Atlas Shrugged” while at the same time swearing that you had no inkling about Ayn Rand’s philosophy is exactly the same as claiming to be a huge fan of the 1990s Chicago Bulls while at the same time swearing that you’ve never heard of Michael Jordan.d r i f t g l a s s: For Your Friends Who Never Read Ayn Rand (via silas216)
(via silas216)
Rep. Paul Ryan is considered a single-issue candidate — a vice presidential pick who bolsters Mitt Romney’s argument that this election is about the economy and only the economy.
Ryan hasn’t dedicated much time to social issues. But the Wisconsinite, best understood as an anti-tax, anti-spending purist, has taken positions outside the mainstream on issues like abortion and women’s health.
An examination of Ryan’s record reveals a congressman who, with few exceptions, has hewed to his party’s far-right base on social issues. He has supported a federal ban on abortion even in the case of rape and incest, and a ban on gay adoption.
In January 2011, days after Republicans took over the House, Ryan co-sponsored legislation to declare that “each human life begins with fertilization,” providing fetuses the same rights as a person, thereby permitting states to ban all abortion, without exceptions.
“At the core, today’s ‘pro-choice’ liberals are deeply pessimistic,” Ryan said in a lengthy September 2010 statement titled “The Cause of Life Can’t Be Severed from the Cause of Freedom.” “They denigrate life and offer fear of the present and the future — fear of too many choices and too many children. Rather than seeing children and human beings as a benefit, the ‘pro-choice’ position implies that they are a burden.”
The Romney campaign didn’t respond to inquiries to clarify Ryan’s position on abortion in extreme cases. His campaign has previously noted that Romney supports exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother in his opposition to legal abortion.
LGBT groups are disappointed with Ryan’s record on gay rights. He voted in 2004 and 2006 for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. He also voted against repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” as well as hate-crime legislation. In 1999, he voted to ban gay couples from adopting children in the District of Columbia.
The congressman famously broke with the right wing in 2007 to vote for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which prohibited workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The move won him praise from gay conservatives.
Ultimately, social issues don’t animate Ryan. Despite his ardent pro-life stances, for instance, he has been willing to look the other way and endorse Republican candidates who support abortion rights, as long as they’re with him on fiscal issues.
h/t: Sahil Kapur at TPM
(via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)
![mohandasgandhi:
mohandasgandhi:
As per request, this post is now rebloggable, so that others may share in the disdain for Ayn Rand:
I’ve been awake for 2 days and can barely focus, let alone form any sort of a coherent thought. So, I’ll let her quotes simply speak for themselves.
“Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue.” - Atlas Shrugged
“Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation’s troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen.” - Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
“One can’t love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name.” - The Fountainhead
“What is greatness? I will answer: it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem.” - Playboy Interview (March 1964)
“Businessmen are the one group that distinguishes capitalism and the American way of life from the totalitarian statism that is swallowing the rest of the world. All the other social groups- workers, farmers, professional men, scientists, soldiers- exist under dictatorships, even though they exist in chains, in terror, in misery, and in progressive self-destruction. But there is no such group as businessmen under a dictatorship. Their place is taken by armed thugs: by bureaucrats and commissars. Businessmen are the symbol of a free society- the symbol of America.” - Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
“The hippies are a desperate herd looking for a master, to be taken over by anyone - anyone who would tell them how to live without demanding the effort of thinking. Theirs is the mentality ready for a fuhrer.” - Apollo and Dionysus
“If you mean whose side one should be on, Israel or the Arabs, I would certainly say Israel because it’s the advanced, technological, civilized country amidst a group of almost totally primitive savages who have not changed for years and who are racist and who resent Israel because it’s bringing industry, intelligence, and modern technology into their stagnation.” [video]
“The Arabs are one of the least developed cultures. They are typically nomads. Their culture is primitive, and they resent Israel because it’s the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their continent. When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are. Israel is a mixed economy inclined toward socialism. But when it comes to the power of the mind—the development of industry in that wasted desert continent—versus savages who don’t want to use their minds, then if one cares about the future of civilization, don’t wait for the government to do something. Give whatever you can. This is the first time I’ve contributed to a public cause: helping Israel in an emergency.” - Ayn Rand Ford Hall Forum lecture, 1974
“They (Native Americans) didn’t have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using. What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their ‘right’ to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent.” - Address to the graduating class of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, March 6, 1974
“Poverty, ignorance, illness and other problems of that kind are not metaphysical emergencies. By the metaphysical nature of man and of existence, man has to maintain his life by his own effort; the values he needs—such as wealth or knowledge—are not given to him automatically, as a gift of nature, but have to be discovered and achieved by his own thinking and work.” - The Virtue of Selfishness
Really, I could go on all day but reading her really makes me sick. It’s too easy for Rand to make herself look bad. Then, there’s also the fact that she dedicated her entire life towards criticizing those who relied on government assistance and actually relied on it herself.
With Paul Ryan on the Republican presidential ticket, the media has been questioning his confessed love of Ayn Rand. A lot of people have written great analyses of Ayn Rand’s philosophies but it’s difficult to get a good sense of just how problematic the woman was in full. Most of these works, however, tend to focus on her problematic economic views and rarely mention her views on race. I thought it would be fun to bring this back [I’ve added a few sources that people have asked for to the above] and explore a few more direct quotes from Ayn Rand herself:
“Man’s rights can be violated only by the use of physical force. It is only by means of physical force that one man can deprive another of his life, or enslave him, or rob him, or prevent him from pursuing his own goals, or compel him to act against his own rational judgment.” - The Virtue of Selfishness
“Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.” - Racism, An article published in the September, 1963 issue of The Objectivist Newsletter and included as a chapter in the book, The Virtue of Selfishness - (See: Racist statements made by Ayn Rand in this post)
“The racism of Nazi Germany — where men had to fill questionnaires about their ancestry for generations back, in order to prove their ‘Aryan’ descent — has its counterpart in Soviet Russia, where men had to fill similar questionnaires to show that their ancestors had owned no property and thus to prove their ‘proletarian’ descent.” - Ibid. - I don’t think those two things are the same, Ayn….
“There is only one antidote to racism: the philosophy of individualism and its politico-economic corollary, laissez-faire capitalism.” - Ibid.
“It is capitalism that gave mankind its first steps toward freedom and a rational way of life. It is capitalism that broke through national and racial barriers, by means of free trade… It is capitalism that abolished serfdom and slavery in all the civilized countries of the world. It is the capitalist North that destroyed the slavery of the agrarian-feudal South in the United States.” - Ibid. - Didn’t capitalism give us the slave trade?
“I believe, with good reason, the most unsympathetic Hollywood portrayal of Indians and what they did to the white man. They had no right to a country merely because they were born here and then acted like savages. The white man did not conquer this country. And you’re a racist if you object, because it means you believe that certain men are entitled to something because of their race. You believe that if someone is born in a magnificent country and doesn’t know what to do with it, he still has a property right to it. He does not. Since the Indians did not have the concept of property or property rights - they didn’t have a settled society, they had predominantly nomadic tribal ‘cultures’—they didn’t have rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights that they had not conceived of and were not using. It’s wrong to attack a country that respects (or even tries to respect) individual rights. If you do, you’re an aggressor and are morally wrong. But if a ‘country’ does not protect rights - if a group of tribesmen are the slaves of their tribal chief -why should you respect the ‘rights’ that they don’t have or respect? The same is true for a dictatorship. The citizens in it have individual rights, but the country has no rights and so anyone has the right to invade it, because rights are not recognized in that country; and no individual or country can have its cake and eat it too—that is, you can’t claim one should respect the ‘rights’ of Indians, when they had no concept of rights and no respect for rights. But let’s suppose they were all beautifully innocent savages - which they certainly were not. What were they fighting for, in opposing the white man on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence; for their ‘right’ to keep part of the earth untouched - to keep everybody out so they could live like animals or cavemen. Any European who brought with him an element of civilization had the right to take over this continent, and it’s great that some of them did. The racist Indians today - those who condemn America - do not respect individual rights.” - The Virtue of Selfishness](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvpsm01wVs1qzhl7go1_500.png)
As per request, this post is now rebloggable, so that others may share in the disdain for Ayn Rand:
I’ve been awake for 2 days and can barely focus, let alone form any sort of a coherent thought. So, I’ll let her quotes simply speak for themselves.
- “Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue.” - Atlas Shrugged
- “Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation’s troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen.” - Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
- “One can’t love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name.” - The Fountainhead
- “What is greatness? I will answer: it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self-esteem.” - Playboy Interview (March 1964)
- “Businessmen are the one group that distinguishes capitalism and the American way of life from the totalitarian statism that is swallowing the rest of the world. All the other social groups- workers, farmers, professional men, scientists, soldiers- exist under dictatorships, even though they exist in chains, in terror, in misery, and in progressive self-destruction. But there is no such group as businessmen under a dictatorship. Their place is taken by armed thugs: by bureaucrats and commissars. Businessmen are the symbol of a free society- the symbol of America.” - Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
- “The hippies are a desperate herd looking for a master, to be taken over by anyone - anyone who would tell them how to live without demanding the effort of thinking. Theirs is the mentality ready for a fuhrer.” - Apollo and Dionysus
- “If you mean whose side one should be on, Israel or the Arabs, I would certainly say Israel because it’s the advanced, technological, civilized country amidst a group of almost totally primitive savages who have not changed for years and who are racist and who resent Israel because it’s bringing industry, intelligence, and modern technology into their stagnation.” [video]
- “The Arabs are one of the least developed cultures. They are typically nomads. Their culture is primitive, and they resent Israel because it’s the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their continent. When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are. Israel is a mixed economy inclined toward socialism. But when it comes to the power of the mind—the development of industry in that wasted desert continent—versus savages who don’t want to use their minds, then if one cares about the future of civilization, don’t wait for the government to do something. Give whatever you can. This is the first time I’ve contributed to a public cause: helping Israel in an emergency.” - Ayn Rand Ford Hall Forum lecture, 1974
- “They (Native Americans) didn’t have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using. What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their ‘right’ to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent.” - Address to the graduating class of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, March 6, 1974
- “Poverty, ignorance, illness and other problems of that kind are not metaphysical emergencies. By the metaphysical nature of man and of existence, man has to maintain his life by his own effort; the values he needs—such as wealth or knowledge—are not given to him automatically, as a gift of nature, but have to be discovered and achieved by his own thinking and work.” - The Virtue of Selfishness
Really, I could go on all day but reading her really makes me sick. It’s too easy for Rand to make herself look bad. Then, there’s also the fact that she dedicated her entire life towards criticizing those who relied on government assistance and actually relied on it herself.
With Paul Ryan on the Republican presidential ticket, the media has been questioning his confessed love of Ayn Rand. A lot of people have written great analyses of Ayn Rand’s philosophies but it’s difficult to get a good sense of just how problematic the woman was in full. Most of these works, however, tend to focus on her problematic economic views and rarely mention her views on race. I thought it would be fun to bring this back [I’ve added a few sources that people have asked for to the above] and explore a few more direct quotes from Ayn Rand herself:
- “Man’s rights can be violated only by the use of physical force. It is only by means of physical force that one man can deprive another of his life, or enslave him, or rob him, or prevent him from pursuing his own goals, or compel him to act against his own rational judgment.” - The Virtue of Selfishness
- “Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.” - Racism, An article published in the September, 1963 issue of The Objectivist Newsletter and included as a chapter in the book, The Virtue of Selfishness - (See: Racist statements made by Ayn Rand in this post)
- “The racism of Nazi Germany — where men had to fill questionnaires about their ancestry for generations back, in order to prove their ‘Aryan’ descent — has its counterpart in Soviet Russia, where men had to fill similar questionnaires to show that their ancestors had owned no property and thus to prove their ‘proletarian’ descent.” - Ibid. - I don’t think those two things are the same, Ayn….
- “There is only one antidote to racism: the philosophy of individualism and its politico-economic corollary, laissez-faire capitalism.” - Ibid.
- “It is capitalism that gave mankind its first steps toward freedom and a rational way of life. It is capitalism that broke through national and racial barriers, by means of free trade… It is capitalism that abolished serfdom and slavery in all the civilized countries of the world. It is the capitalist North that destroyed the slavery of the agrarian-feudal South in the United States.” - Ibid. - Didn’t capitalism give us the slave trade?
- “I believe, with good reason, the most unsympathetic Hollywood portrayal of Indians and what they did to the white man. They had no right to a country merely because they were born here and then acted like savages. The white man did not conquer this country. And you’re a racist if you object, because it means you believe that certain men are entitled to something because of their race. You believe that if someone is born in a magnificent country and doesn’t know what to do with it, he still has a property right to it. He does not. Since the Indians did not have the concept of property or property rights - they didn’t have a settled society, they had predominantly nomadic tribal ‘cultures’—they didn’t have rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights that they had not conceived of and were not using. It’s wrong to attack a country that respects (or even tries to respect) individual rights. If you do, you’re an aggressor and are morally wrong. But if a ‘country’ does not protect rights - if a group of tribesmen are the slaves of their tribal chief -why should you respect the ‘rights’ that they don’t have or respect? The same is true for a dictatorship. The citizens in it have individual rights, but the country has no rights and so anyone has the right to invade it, because rights are not recognized in that country; and no individual or country can have its cake and eat it too—that is, you can’t claim one should respect the ‘rights’ of Indians, when they had no concept of rights and no respect for rights. But let’s suppose they were all beautifully innocent savages - which they certainly were not. What were they fighting for, in opposing the white man on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence; for their ‘right’ to keep part of the earth untouched - to keep everybody out so they could live like animals or cavemen. Any European who brought with him an element of civilization had the right to take over this continent, and it’s great that some of them did. The racist Indians today - those who condemn America - do not respect individual rights.” - The Virtue of Selfishness
(via democratsaresexier)
Elizabeth Warren’s New Opponent: Paul Ryan
Elizabeth Warren is taking aim at a new opponent: Paul Ryan.
The Democrat, who is running to unseat Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, has been invigorated by the injection of Ryan into the presidential contest — an opportunity that allows her to play to the strength of her financial background after a long summer of tight polls and an extended flap over her Native American ancestry.
Ryan’s emergence onto the 2012 scene might just give Warren a new wedge against Brown’s claims of independence from his party as he seeks to duplicate his upset 2010 special election win in the blue state state. Expect the Warren camp to keep pounding away at Brown’s ties to Ryan and his controversial budget plan, regardless of what distinctions Brown draws.
An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn).
Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?
Yes, that Ayn Rand.
(via mikewebkist)
What was that Paul Ryan?
(via ohlookanotherfeminist)
Folks, I present to you: proof that even a broken clock is right twice a day, AKA one of the only things I agree with Ayn Rand about.
(via stfuconservatives)
See that was the thing about Ayn Rand, is that as kooky as some of her theories were, there is a LOT of stuff that she talked about that would send the GOP hurdling in the opposite direction. Like everything else, they have cherry-picked certain things from her philosophies without really taking time to read the fine print.
That’s not to say that she wasn’t completely out of her gourd, but in a different sort of way than Republicans.
(via beginningthebeguine)
Of course the Republicans wouldn’t read all of her stuff and only cherry pick what they want to hear. Look what they did to the Bible. I also wonder how many of them know she’s an Atheist too. That’ll really send them running in the opposite direction.
(via bohemianarthouse)
(via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)
#INFP - so true. Who knew? #NoH8 #ProChoice #fem2 #ChildAbuse #AnimalAbuse
Contrarian by nature; Democrat by choice. #p2 #p21 #CTL #Obama2012
Together we MUST take back the power wrongfully seized by banks, corporations, and the corrupt politicians they fund. #OWS #99
#Justice4Trayvon is the other tumblr I branched from this one so I could track the developments in the #Trayvon Martin case.
