One thing Congressional Republicans haven't helped themselves with recently is their war on Planned Parenthood. By a 12 point margin, 49/37, voters say they have a higher opinion of Planned Parenthood than the Republicans in Congress. That includes a 45/35 edge with independents.

Unfortunately for the Utah Republican, Chaffetz’s evidence ended up embarrassing him, not his target. The chart’s data had been manipulated in a deceptive way, and it had come from an avid anti-abortion group, not Planned Parenthood’s annual reports. His winning argument was a disaster, which left the chairman momentarily speechless. The GOP lawmaker eventually concluded he would “get to the bottom” of this.

Well, Chaffetz has now had a couple of days to do that, and as it turns out, he’s still convinced he’s right.



I can appreciate why the Republican chairman was disappointed by how his hearing turned out. He did, after all, expect to make a powerful case against Planned Parenthood, which obviously didn’t happen. On the contrary, Chaffetz’s show trial even disappointed his allies.

Even if we put aside the fact that Chaffetz got the source of the chart wrong – he overlooked the fact that it literally says, “Source: Americans United for Life,” in all capital letters– his proof was gibberish. He and his staff, for example, created a chart with no y axis, rendering the entire image meaningless.

What’s more, over the course of the decade, the numbers really haven’t budged. Vox’s Tim Lee explained, “So it’s not true, as the chart implies, that Planned Parenthood has been performing more abortions while drastically cutting back the provision of other services. The overall number of non-abortion services provided by Planned Parenthood barely changed at all, going from 10.29 million in 2006 to 10.26 million in 2013.”

In other words, everything about Chaffetz’s argument was wrong. Literally, everything. And it’s against this backdrop that the committee chairman still says, “I stand by the numbers."

Chaffetz finally opted to run for Congress himself in 2008, running to the right of six-term incumbent Chris Cannon successfully, and probably ensuring he’ll be in office until he either resigns or gets primary challenger to boot him out of office. Because Utah’s 3rd Congressional District is one of the rightest leaning places in the country, that even before it was redistricted in 2008, it had a +26 R lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index. And that’s where we’ll begin looking at how Chaffetz continued to play at his base.

- Upon moving to Washington in 2009, Chaffetz quickly followed the lead of Tim Walberg, deciding it would be cheaper to sleep in his congressional office than actually get a real place to stay in town (which there was a whole ethics investigation about).

- In Sept. 2009, Chaffetz began a feud with the TSA, when he got into a shouting, swearing match with TSA agents for doing their job at Salt Lake City International airport, and claiming he was specifically targeted by them as revenge, because he voted against all TSA workers having collective bargaining rights.

- In October 2009, after hearing that President Obama had won the Nobel Prize, Chaffetz said, “I just lost all respect for the award. It used to be one of distinction, but it is hard to give it any credibility.“

- Later in 2009, Chaffetz was on Fox News, to demonize United States Census Workers as employing scores of child molesters, rapists, and murderers. That’s not only paranoid and crazy, but could have reduced census numbers when people were too afraid to answer the door when the census showed up.

- His feud with the TSA continued in 2010, claiming the TSA should institute a profiling policy instead of searching everyone equally (including him).

-Rep. Chaffetz went off on the TSA again in 2011, stating again that he felt they should be “behavior profiling”, and instead of body-scanners, and that people should just be allowed to be harassed instead with bomb-sniffing dogs.

- In October 2011, Rep. Chaffetz was pushing for legislation that would sell off federal public lands, to help balance the budget. He’s really big on this idea, having pitched it several times.

- With his own re-election in Utah’s 3rd almost guaranteed, Chaffetz was one of the greatest proxies for fellow Mormon Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential campaign, oddly spending his time running around the country shadowing Newt Gingrich, in particular, in the brief time when Newt gained momentum in the GOP primary. He would spend most of the rest of the year trying to ensure a Romney presidency.

- A Republican budget plan in March 2012 saw Rep. Chaffetz put in an amendment within it that would preserve $40 million in tax breaks for oil companies and pay for it by again, trying to sell off some of our national parks.

- Chaffetz became one of the standout distorters of the truth regarding Benghazi, and while trying to prove a link to show that somehow, some way, the Obama administration was complicit in the death of 4 Americans there on 9/11/12. On October 10th, a month after he was making hay on the subject, CNN’s Soledad O’Brien asked him if he had, in fact, voted twice to reduce the budget for security for foreign ambassadors since taking office. Chaffetz blew it off saying, “When you’re in tough economic times, you have to make tough choices. You have to prioritize things.” But y’know, it was that damned Obama’s fault, still.

- By October 19th 2012, Chaffetz realized the Republicans weren’t getting people fired up enough about Benghazi to help Mitt Romney win the election, so he started claiming there was a coordinated effort by both the White House, and the State Dept (thus, President Obama and Sec. Hilary Clinton) to remove security from Libya. Even Fox News had to ask if he had proof of this, and he clarified it was his “strong opinion”. And he further went on to call Susan Rice’s comments (which have since been proven accurate) “somewhere between an outrageus lie and total falsehood”.

- Perhaps the most outrageous move Chaffetz made while working with the Romney campaign, was that after Mitt Romney claimed on a campaign stop in Ohio, that a Jeep factory was closing because of President Obama’s mismanagement of the American economy. The CEO of Jeep Chrysler actually came out to say, “Uh, no. That factory’s not closing. And I would know, as the guy in charge of the company.” Jason Chaffetz actually claimed that the Romney ad was “100 percent correct and accurate”. Because what does a CEO know about his own company, right?

-In January 2013, Chaffetz decided to talk impeachment… AND Benghazi, not claiming there was any sort of a coverup, but that if the Obama administration didn’t do more to do the legwork to prove he should be impeached… it was an impeachable offense.
By May of 2013, after almost eight months of looking into what happened to Benghazi, no links had been found to show the State Dept. or White House were in any way complicit in affecting security there that would have made them more vulnerable to the attacks. Rep. Chaffetz claimed at that point that it was because Obama administration officials had threatened witnesses. Again, even Fox News thought that was bulls***, with Chris Wallace asking him for a specific example of such a witness claiming that had happened. Chaffetz could not offer one.

-In June of 2014, perhaps realizing that a report was about to be released revealing that there was no wrongdoing found during any of the numerous Benghazi hearings, Chaffetz decided to move on… by claiming that the IRS Scandal was a big conspiratorial cover up, and something sinister was going on there because the IRS lost Lois Lerner’s e-mails, and they could not be recovered. “We’ve got to find those geeks and those nerds,” he said.

- In July of 2014, Chaffetz turned heads by claiming that Mitt Romney would run for president again in 2016. And this time, HE’D WIN. Which was news to Mitt Romney, at the time, considering he had to be talked into even running in 2012.

Right-wing leaders often appropriate progressive themes by calling for rule by “the people,” equal opportunity, and “equality” feminism. Their rhetoric has convinced many voters that the Right offers a more fair and direct form of democratic representation than that offered by liberals and progressives.[1] But an accurate analysis of the Right’s agenda reveals that, while it embraces the rhetoric of democracy, it promotes a constricted, shrunken version of democracy. It’s a version that resembles the United States political landscape before the New Deal reforms of the 1930s and 1940s. By defining democracy in its narrowest sense, the contemporary Right claims the mantle of democracy, even though, since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, its campaigns, policies, and initiatives have attacked democratic principles and undermined democratic practices.

In the 1970s the New Right set out its ideology with shameless clarity. Calling itself a “revolutionary” movement, its leaders declared that they were going to take the country back from the liberals, feminists, and secular humanists who “controlled” the national agenda. In a book that could serve as the manifesto of the New Right, The New Right: We’re Ready to Lead!, Richard Viguerie states, “Conservatives are fighting for …basic rights not merely for ourselves but for all Americans. One of the biggest lies of 20th century American politics is that liberals care about people and conservatives don’t. This is a bum rap put on us by liberals. I suggest it’s conservatives who, by their actions, show real love and compassion for their fellow men.” [8] The New Right repackaged the agenda of the Old Right, while denying that the movement was racist. The New Right’s leaders sought to leave behind the Old Right’s tainted association with the KKK, White Citizens’ Councils, neo-nazi anti-Semites, and even the John Birch Society, while simultaneously positioning themselves well to the right of traditional Republican conservatives.[9]

To become a mass-based social and political movement, however, the New Right needed to attract a following outside of the Republican Party. Republicans have for decades had a reputation as the party of white country club members and big business. But at various times it has successfully painted itself as the party of “the common man,” especially during the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s. Another instance was the courtship by President Richard Nixon’s Vice President, Spiro Agnew, of “the silent majority.” Agnew claimed that most inactive voters were conservative and were best represented by conservative Republicans. Two constituencies were available for the New Right’s recruitment: voters who had supported the presidential candidacy of George Wallace, the white supremacist Democratic governor of Alabama who is sometimes called the father of the conservative movement, and conservative Christian evangelicals across the country.

In recruiting these new constituencies, the New Right’s leaders struck an aggressively populist tone, despite an agenda that served the interests of business and the wealthy. As Chip Berlet describes in his book, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, “…[T]he grievances of many White middle- and working-class people-both a legitimate sense of injury and angry scapegoating generated by the erosion of traditional privileges-could be harnessed to benefit wealthy elites and intensify disempowerment and inequality for millions of people.” [10] As is so often true of right-wing populism, rhetoric about “the people” masks the interests of the ruling class.

"Russia targeted only groups that are not ISIS and it may have targeted groups backed by the US," (intelligence analyst Michael) Horowitz told BuzzFeed's Borzou Daragahi. "It’s really clear that the airstrikes were not meant to target ISIS."

This shouldn't be surprising. Russia is in Syria to prop up Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, Moscow's ally. The main threat to Assad is not ISIS, which the Syrian leader has often tolerated, but rather Syria's non-ISIS rebels — including al-Qaeda's Syrian franchise as well as more moderate rebel groups. These rebel groups (along with the Kurds in Syria's north) are also ISIS's main enemies in Syria.

Assad has.... tacitly tolerat(ed) ISIS in northeastern Syria, while focusing his military efforts on the rebels. This was part of what appeared to be a deliberate strategy to encourage extremism in order to discourage foreign intervention against him.

Both Assad and Putin win, in other words, if the West is forced to choose between Assad and ISIS in Syria. Which is part of why Russian airstrikes appear to be targeting ISIS's enemies in Syria — under the pretext of targeting ISIS.

In South Carolina, where Bush was speaking, five of the seven congressional districts have a greater percentage of white households than black on food stamps, as of March of this year. All of them are represented by Republicans. Of the two where black households are a plurality, only one has a Democratic representative.

The mentions of "free stuff" by Bush and Romney seem to be focused on the current political situation -- one in which Barack Obama has twice been elected president. It doesn't take a whole lot of analysis to figure out a reason that black voters might have turned out more heavily for Obama in 2008 and 2012 that doesn't involve government programs.

But, besides, if the argument is that black voters oppose Republicans because Democrats give them benefits, it neglects a whole lot of elections in which Republicans have won since those programs came into place.

Yes, the Affordable Care Act is new, but much of the new coverage under Obamacare is an expansion of Medicaid, which is 50 years old. There's the (rather grotesque) meme of the "Obamaphones" -- basically reduced-cost or free cell phones for poor Americans. But "Obamaphones" are really "Reaganphones," having been introduced in 1985. And food stamps themselves date back to the '60s.

Aha!, you might think. The '60s are when African Americans started voting Democratic! Well, about that.

It's worth noting, too, that lots of people get "free stuff" from the government. Seniors get a lot of government-program support, but they vote more heavily Republican. (Even older non-white voters tend to vote less Democratic -- though not much less.)

Not to mention corporate tax breaks and so on. Corporations do spend money to ensure tax breaks, but it's safe to assume that in many cases the savings from tax breaks are far larger than the money spent lobbying Congress or contributing to campaigns. Call it "low-cost stuff."

Random guy on city sidewalk: "Hey, I like your body!"
Me: *steady glare at him*
Guy: "Hey fuck you, that's a compliment you bitch!"

‪#?walkingwhilefemale‬

I would like to add that this kind of thing happens to me 3-5 times a week, depending on how often I go outside. I've been keeping it to myself up until now, but decided recently to start posting these interactions to show what it is like to walk while female. Please share your own experiences as well!! Awareness leads to action

I was beaten, my skull was fractured, and I was arrested more than forty times so each and every one of us can register to vote.

Do your part.

"A principal determinant of access to health care in the United States is the availability of health insurance. As is the case with health status, those from lower SES groups in the United States also have worse access to health care, based on this econmic fact of life. However, a growing body of research has shown that, even when people have the same level of health insurance and are treated for the same disease by the same physicians and hospitals, those from minority racial or ethnic groups often get worse care - either not receiving care when appropriate or receiving care that is lower in quality."

- African Americans in 2009 had the largest death rates from heart disease and stroke compared with other racial and ethnic populations; these disparities in deaths were also found across age groups younger than 85 years of age.

- From 2007-2010, the largest prevalence of hypertension was among adults aged 65 years and older, African American adults, US-born adults, adults with less than a college education, adults who received public health insurance (18- 64 years old) and those with diabetes, obesity, or a disability, compared with their counterparts. The percentages of African American and Hispanic adults who had control of high blood pressure were lower than among white adults.

Infants of African American women in 2008 had the largest death rate, which was more than twice the rate among infants of white women.

African Americans in 2009 had the largest death rates from homicide among all racial and ethnic populations. Rates among African American males were the largest across all age groups.

African American adults in 2010 had the largest HIV infection rate compared with rates among adults of other racial and ethnic populations. Prescribed HIV treatment among African American adults living with HIV was less than among white adults.

In 2010, a larger percentage of Hispanic and African American adults aged 18-64 years were without health insurance compared with white and Asian/Pacific Islander counterparts.

In 2011, similar to other racial and ethnic minority adults aged 25 years or older, African American adults had a larger percentage who did not complete high school compared with white adults. Also, a larger percentage of African American adults lived below the poverty level and (ages 18-64 years) were unemployed compared with white adults

Factors contributing to poor health outcomes among African Americans include discrimination; cultural, linguistic and literacy barriers; and lack of access to health care.