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Here’s What It’s Like to Work at Planned Parenthood

by LatoshaGood Posted on November 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last night, Bryn Greenwood, who worked for Planned Parenthood in the late 90s, tweeted about her experience:

I worked at a #PlannedParenthood clinic in Kansas for 3 years. My coworkers & I were subjected to the following acts of terrorism:

Gasoline was poured under our back door & ignited 4 times. Twice while the clinic was occupied, causing patients to be evacuated.
Butyric acid (used as a stink bomb) was poured under our doors & into ventilation system so many times I lost count. Clinic evacuated.
2 cherry bombs were left on our doorstep after hours, causing damage & clinic closure. Imagine what it’s like going to work after that.
We received hundreds of phone calls, threatening to torch our clinic & to kill the “murdering whores” who worked there.
3 times someone drove by at night & shot out our windows. Picketers stood on the sidewalk & harassed employees as we swept up broken glass.

Our clinic didn’t perform abortions. We did well woman exams, pregnancy tests, dispensed birth control, & treated STIs. Our clinic offered free & low cost services in a low income neighborhood, but every day the “pro-life” movement tried to frighten us. The goal was to make us afraid to come to work, to make us quit, to make us close the clinic. That’s terrorism. That’s how terrorism works.

This is what life is like for women’s health providers, even ones who don’t perform abortions. I guess I’d urge caution about calling this terrorism, since I’m not sure it does us any good to expand the scope of crimes that are part of the “war on terror.” Historically speaking, that hasn’t been great for liberal values. Still, it’s hard to argue that the goals and methods aren’t pretty terrifying—and that’s even without Greenwood mentioning the personal threats implicit in photographing license plates and publishing names and addresses of clinic workers, which are common tactics.

After two days of near silence, Republican presidential candidates are finally “praying” for the victims of the Colorado attack. They could hardly avoid it when they were booked on national TV—and anyway, praying is always okay, even for sinners. Especially for sinners, in fact. It’s a turn of phrase that doesn’t risk showing even the slightest desire to protect Planned Parenthood from future attacks. Republicans might not want Planned Parenthood workers killed, but they sure don’t seem to mind if their angry hordes do everything just short of that.

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Here’s What It’s Like to Work at Planned Parenthood

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The French Have Begun Bombing the Capital of ISIS

by OpalHarbison Posted on November 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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The French have begun bombing the Syrian city of Raqqi:

French warplanes struck Islamic State militants in Syria on Sunday, a French government official said, two days after attackers linked to the terrorist group carried out a coordinated assault on Paris that killed 129 people.

Prior to the attack on Paris, France had been sparing in its strikes against targets in Syria.

News reports in France said the airstrikes were focused on Raqqa, the city in northern Syria that is the self-proclaimed capital of the Islamic State.

This is unrelated but I was curious to know what life is like in a city under ISIS occupation and stumbled on this story from last year, which has the following surreal quote:

Abu Ibrahim al-Raqqawi, a pseudonym for a young anti-IS activist from Raqqa, told Al-Monitor the situation was dire. He said, “People in Raqqa are outraged. There are a lot of immigrants who came and joined IS: Americans, British, Germans, Europeans in general and from around the world. They are given special treatment, pampered by the organization.”

He added, “They are given the best homes and cars while locals pay taxes. They took the abandoned houses — some left behind by Christians, others by Sunnis — while those in the city who own more than a house are forced to give all other houses to the immigrants.”

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The French Have Begun Bombing the Capital of ISIS

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These species survived the last ice age but couldn’t survive people

by KristanTwp Posted on October 20, 2015

These species survived the last ice age but couldn’t survive people

By on 20 Oct 2015commentsShare

Screw Myers and Briggs. I’ve got a new personality test for you.

Read the following statement and choose the response that most accurately depicts how it makes you feel:

Statement: Ten thousand years ago, 22 species of birds, reptiles, and mammals on the Bahamian island of Abaco miraculously survived the rising seas and shifting climate at the end of the last ice age. Then, 1,000 years ago, humans showed up and took them out like trash on pick-up day.

Responses: A) Damn right! Humans are and forever will be the masters of this planet. B) Humans are everything that’s wrong with this world, and the sooner we die off, the better. C) Interesting … I wonder why this happened and what it means for species now dealing with both humans and climate change.

Now, based on the Psych 101 class that I took in college, here are your results: If you answered A, then you’re a psychopath; if you answered B, then you’re not helping; and if you answered C, then congratulations! You’re thinking like a scientist.

In a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Florida researchers report that out of 100 species analyzed from fossils found in a flooded cave on Great Abaco Island, 17 bird species went extinct around the end of the last ice age, while 22 bird, reptile, and mammal species survived, only to succumb to humans a few thousand years later.

Here’s more from a University of Florida press release:

For species that were lost at the end of the ice age, climate change, habitat change and rising seas, with resulting smaller islands, may have caused their populations to become too small to remain genetically viable, resulting in inbreeding, (lead author Dave) Steadman said. A January 2015 study co-authored by Steadman found the Caribbean’s first humans depleted species as small as bats on Abaco. The new study shows several other species that endured until human arrival were lost to activities such as hunting and starting wildfires, he said.

The researchers plan to go back to the island later this year to study more fossils and get a broader picture of who died of what and why, according to the press release.

“What we see today is just a small snapshot of how species have existed for millions of years,” Steadman said. “The species that existed on Abaco up until people arrived were survivors. They withstood a variety of environmental changes, but some could not adapt quickly or drastically enough to what happened when people showed up.

“So, there must be different mechanisms driving these two types of extinctions. What is it about people that so many island species could not adapt to? That’s what we want to find out.”

What is it about people? I ask myself that same question every day on my way to work. Does that make me a sociopath? Who knows — I’ve only taken Psych 101. Either way, hit me up when you find the answer, Steadman.

Source:

Ancient fossils reveal humans were greater threat than climate change to Caribbean wildlife

, University of Florida.

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These species survived the last ice age but couldn’t survive people

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Boehner Resigns, Cruz Explodes, Shutdown Averted

by JoannP96cg Posted on September 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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The always charming Ted Cruz reacts to the news that John Boehner will be resigning from Congress next month:

If it is correct that the speaker, before he resigns, has cut a deal with Nancy Pelosi to fund the Obama administration for the rest of its tenure, to fund Obamacare, to fund executive amnesty, to fund Planned Parenthood, to fund implementation of this Iran deal — and then, presumably, to land in a cushy K Street job after joining with the Democrats to implement all of President Obama’s priorities, that is not the behavior one would expect of a Republican speaker of the House.

Unsurprisingly, this isn’t true:

Following Boehner’s announcement, House Republicans said there was agreement to pass a clean spending bill to keep the government open. Several members of the Freedom Caucus, the conservative group which led the revolt against Boehner’s leadership, said they will now support the spending bill without demands that it include language to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood.

So no deal with the evil Nancy Pelosi was necessary. Imagine that. I guess we’ll have to wait and see about the cushy K Street job, though.

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Boehner Resigns, Cruz Explodes, Shutdown Averted

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Everything You Need to Know About California Climate Change in One Chart

by frantalocuridemunca Posted on September 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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You’ve heard a lot about California’s current historic drought. But the state is also experiencing some of the hottest temperatures on record, and the latest data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show just how warm the past couple years have been. In the graph below, courtesy of a tweet from the Pacific Institute’s Peter Gleick, each dot represents the average temperature over the course of a year, from September of one year to August of the following.

NOAA

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Everything You Need to Know About California Climate Change in One Chart

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Marco Rubio Uses Cecil the Lion to Shame Planned Parenthood Supporters

by SOYTerri5434 Posted on July 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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Today, Marco Rubio couldn’t resist attempting to conflate two recent controversies—an American dentist’s admission he killed Cecil the lion and a sting operation currently targeting Planned Parenthood—for the following take:

The tweet, aside from demonstrating a clear lack of grammar skills, mirrors similar statements from the likes of Rush Limbaugh asserting the same blend of crazy. Rubio should probably lay off of Twitter and get back to actually doing his job.

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Marco Rubio Uses Cecil the Lion to Shame Planned Parenthood Supporters

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Democrats Introduce Sweeping, Historic Bill to Protect LGBT Rights

by FredManifold32 Posted on July 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Members of Congress introduced on Thursday a historically comprehensive bill that would create federal standards to protect LGBT people from discrimination in housing, workplaces, schools, public accommodations, and financial transactions.

Same-sex marriage is now the law of the land, but most states still lack laws explicitly prohibiting discrimination against LGBT people in other areas. “This means that while same-sex couples can today legally marry, tomorrow they could lose their jobs, be kicked out of a restaurant, or be turned down for a mortgage, just because of their sexual orientation or gender identity,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), a cosponsor of the bill, said in Washington before its introduction in the House and Senate.

The Equality Act, as it’s known, would expand the Civil Rights Act of 1964—which outlaws discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin—to also include protections for LGBT people. Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), who became the fourth openly gay member of Congress five years ago, cited staggering statistics to support the bill. He said 63 percent of LGBT Americans have reported experiencing discrimination at some point in their lives, and that 56 percent of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people have experienced discrimination when trying to get health care. “The current system, this patchwork of protections and lack of protections for the LGBT community in our states, is not working,” he said Thursday.

But the Equality Act will likely face opposition from Republican lawmakers. In 2013, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would have prohibited discrimination in the workplace on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, passed in the Senate but died in the GOP-controlled House.

Only 21 states explicitly outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation, and of those, 19 states plus Washington, DC, also prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity, according to the Human Rights Campaign. For a better sense of the fragmented landscape, check out the following maps on employment discrimination, housing discrimination, discrimination in public places, and credit discrimination, courtesy of the Movement Advancement Project, a Colorado-based think tank.

Employment discrimination and sexual orientation/gender identity Movement Advancement Project

Public accommodations laws generally cover anywhere someone is when they are not at home, work, or school, including retail stores, restaurants, parks, hotels, doctors’ offices, and banks. – See more at: http://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/non_discrimination_laws#sthash.yu3LZkag.dpuf

Housing discrimination and sexual orientation/gender identity Movement Advancement Project

Public accommodation discrimination and sexual orientation/gender identity Movement Advancement Project

Credit discrimination and sexual orientation/gender identity Movement Advancement Project

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Democrats Introduce Sweeping, Historic Bill to Protect LGBT Rights

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The Texas County Where Sandra Bland Died Is Fraught With Racial Tensions

by SunnyTabarez783 Posted on July 17, 2015

Mother Jones

Around 9 a.m. on Monday, Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old from Illinois, was found not breathing in a Waller County, Texas jail cell, where she was declared dead shortly thereafter. At a press conference on Thursday evening, Waller County officials said that while the investigation is ongoing, preliminary evidence showed Bland had hung herself using a plastic bag that lined a trash can in her cell, and that prior to her death she had asked to use the phone to call her family. Over the weekend in jail, Bland had been in contact with family members to try and post bail, county officials said. The news of Bland’s death, which the county sheriff’s office attributed to “self-inflicted asphyxiation,” has raised questions about how a woman who’d been driving through the area to start a new job wound up dying in custody, as well as suspicions about foul play.

Bland, who friends described as an outspoken critic of police brutality, was booked into the jail three days earlier, after getting pulled over in Prairie View by a state Department of Public Safety trooper. The trooper claimed that Bland was uncooperative and that she kicked him, at which point he arrested her for “assault on a public servant,” the Houston Chronicle reported, citing a DPS spokesperson. A bystander’s video purporting to capture the arrest, first posted by the an ABC affiliate in Chicago, shows a trooper holding a woman down as she shouts “You just slammed my head into the ground. Do you not even care about that? I can’t even hear!”

Following her death, Bland’s family members and supporters have spread her story on social media, organized protests, and petitioned for the US Department of Justice to investigate the case. One friend told reporters that Bland was “strong mentally and spiritually” and that she would not have taken her own life. On Thursday, Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis said investigators would review any evidence of stress that may have contributed to Bland’s death, including a video she posted in March, in which Bland says she is suffering from “a little bit of depression” and PTSD.

Whether or not it was suicide, Bland’s death comes amid an ongoing national conversation about race and criminal justice in America, and casts a spotlight on a county apparently rife with racial tensions. In 2007, Waller County Sheriff R. Glenn Smith was suspended—and eventually fired by city council members—while serving as police chief in Hempstead, a city in Waller County, following accusations of racism by community members. Less than a year after his firing, Smith was elected county sheriff. When asked about the accusations on Thursday, Smith said his firing in 2007 was “political,” and denied that he was a racist.

The history of Waller County’s racial tensions doesn’t end there. In 2003, the Houston Chronicle reported that two prominent black county officials, DeWayne Charleston and Keith Woods, claimed they were the target of an investigation by the county’s chief prosecutor because of their race. Charleston had been accused of keeping erratic hours and falsifying an employee time-sheet record, according to the Houston Chronicle. Charleston and Woods claimed the Concerned Citizens of Waller County was behind those accusations, and said that the group was conducting a Ku Klux Klan-like campaign against black officials:

Charleston, the county’s first black judge, said a county grand jury has interviewed him, although he declined to elaborate. And Woods, the four-term mayor of Brookshire, is facing questions about his role in the last city election.

“I do believe race plays a big part in what DeWayne and I are facing,” Woods said. “I feel that way because we’re the ones obviously not being given the benefit of the doubt (when) we face contrary decisions by the district attorney.”

Kitzman, 69, a retired state district judge, denies any racist implications in his interest in the two men. He says he’s simply doing his job by looking into complaints brought to him by residents.

Houston Chronicle reporter Leah Binkovitz also pointed out that a disproportionately high number of lynchings have been recorded in Waller County. According to the advocacy group Equal Justice Initiative, the county saw 15 lynchings of African Americans between 1877 and 1950.

Bland’s death has also raised questions about conditions at the Waller County jail, where in 2012, a 29-year-old white inmate named James Harper Howell IV, hung himself with the bed sheets in his cell. When asked about the 2012 death on Thursday, Smith responded that his staff had been monitoring inmates but that “these incidents occur in jails.”

Source – 

The Texas County Where Sandra Bland Died Is Fraught With Racial Tensions

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FBI: Background Check Failure Allowed Dylann Roof to Get His Gun

by KendricI79 Posted on July 10, 2015

Mother Jones

In a statement on Friday, the FBI said a background check flaw allowed Dylann Roof, the suspected gunman behind last month’s fatal shooting in Charleston, to purchase the gun that killed nine people inside a historic black church. From the Times:

A loophole in the check system cleared the man, Dylann Roof, to buy the .45-caliber handgun despite his having previously admitted to drug possession, the bureau said. Those conducting the background check did not have access to that police report.

“We are all sick this happened,” said the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey. “We wish we could turn back time.”

Speaking to reporters about the loophole, Comey said Roof had admitted to previous drug possession charges, but the background check flaw failed to alert authorities and thereby prevent Roof from obtaining a weapon. According to NBC News, “unlawful users” of controlled substances are prohibited from buying a gun.

The vast majority of mass shooters over the last three decades have obtained their weapons legally, according to a Mother Jones data investigation.

Following the massacre on July 17, President Obama expressed his continuing frustration with Congress’ inaction on gun control, reminding reporters, “This kind of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries.”

Earlier this week, Roof was indicted on nine counts of murder, one count of weapons possession, and three counts of attempted murder.

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FBI: Background Check Failure Allowed Dylann Roof to Get His Gun

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TPP, TPA, and TAA: Explaining the Unexplainable

by ConcepcionHargis Posted on June 18, 2015

Mother Jones

Even granting that I haven’t followed the TPP treaty debate all that closely, the latest maneuvering to get it passed is a little puzzling. As you may recall, the original strategy was to pair up TPA, which most Democrats oppose, with TAA, which most Democrats like, in hopes of attracting enough Democratic votes to pass the whole package. With these preliminaries out of the way, Congress could then vote on TPP itself. It didn’t work. Dems voted heavily against TAA anyway, because they knew it would sink TPA too. So what’s next?

Hold on. That probably barely sounded like English to some of you. Here’s an acronym primer:

TPP = Trans Pacific Partnership, a trade treaty between the United States and bunch of other countries around the Pacific Rim. It’s been under negotiation for years and will be ready for a ratification vote soon.

TPA = Trade Promotion Authority, aka “fast track.” This comes before the TPP vote, and guarantees that the treaty text will be submitted to Congress for an up-or-down vote with no amendments allowed. Without it, the treaty is dead, since obviously all the other countries won’t allow the US to unilaterally makes changes.

TAA = Trade Adjustment Assistance. Trade agreements with poor countries often lead to job losses in the US, as jobs get moved overseas. TAA is a laundry list of measures designed to help workers who lose their jobs because of the treaty, and it’s supposed to make trade treaties more tolerable to organized labor. It very decidedly failed to do so this time.

Now go read the first paragraph of this post again.

Right. So where were we? Oh yes: The TPA+TAA package bombed with anti-treaty Democrats, and it needed at least a few Democratic votes to pass. So what’s next?

On Thursday the House will vote on just the fast-track portion—also known as Trade Promotion Authority, or TPA—on the understanding that the workers’ aid would be approved later.

….In a renewed push to win support for the fast-track bill, Mr. Obama huddled Wednesday at the White House with pro-trade Democrats. House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), meanwhile, said they would find a way to separately pass legislation renewing the workers’ aid program, also known as Trade Adjustment Assistance or TAA, hoping to shore up the Democratic support necessary for the new plan.

Hmmm. TPA actually passed the House last week, even though TAA had already been voted down earlier in the day. So I guess the idea here is that pro-treaty Democrats will vote for TPA as a standalone bill too. I mean, if they were willing to vote for it last week after TAA had been defeated, why not vote for it this week with no TAA? Following that, it’s just a matter of sending the standalone TPA bill to the Senate and finding out if a few Democrats there will still vote for it even without TAA.

It’s all a little weird and desperate, but it might work. Republicans are swearing that if TPA passes, they’ll bring up TAA for a vote later, which is supposed to appease Democratic concerns about job losses. Dems only voted against TAA in order to kill TPA, so if TPA has already passed there’s no longer any reason for them to vote against TAA.

Of course, even if Republicans allow a vote on TAA, it also needs a few Republican votes to pass, and the problem here is the opposite: Republicans have little reason to vote for TAA once TPA has already passed and there’s no longer any need to appease Democrats. But Democrats can’t pass it alone. They need some Republican votes too. So do they trust the GOP leadership to deliver those votes?

Jesus. What a rat’s nest. If you didn’t understand any of that, try reading it again. And then again. If it still doesn’t make sense, just forget the whole thing and eat a quart of ice cream. You’ll be better off.

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TPP, TPA, and TAA: Explaining the Unexplainable

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