If Texas cared about Babies, they would take care of the Babies they have

The Good Ol' Boys in Texas have decreed that they're in charge of women's reproductive decisions, and the little ladies just gotta take it.  If it was just making abortions more difficult for women that would be one thing. (We expect that sort of thing when privileged men get together to use their power.) But they want to make sure women are ground down even more by setting impossible standards for reproductive clinics, by forcing ultrasounds and by banning the Morning After pill--a most merciful choice for avoiding unwanted pregnancies.  Why do all that?  Because you just can't punish women enough for having sex with men.

Men?  Really?  What do men have to do with making babies?  In certain circles (read Texas legislature this time) absolutely nothing.  Only women can get pregnant, so the responsibility for that pregnancy lies squarely on the women.  Here's a thought:  If those men bear no responsibility for those pregnancies, then how about we take away their right to make decisions for women who find themselves pregnant? 

What happened in Texas does not protect women, it punishes them.  It does not protect babies.  There is no provision in that Texas law (Or any other Texas law, apparently.  See below) for the care and feeding of the babies they're demanding to be carried to full term.  Poverty is rampant in Texas and women and children suffer terribly.  I'll believe they're concerned about all living children when I see them taking care of all living children.

Rick Perry signing abortion law in Texas, surrounded by the wimmenfolk because. . .luv, luv, luv those wimmen.

FACTS ABOUT POVERTY IN TEXAS

•  WITH A POVERTY RATE OF 16.9%, TEXAS HAS THE 5th HIGHEST POVERTY RATE IN THE UNITED STATES
•  APPROXIMATELY  842,000 TEXAS CHILDREN LIVE IN POOR FAMILIES.
•  MOST POOR FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN IN TEXAS ARE HEADED BY A WORKING PARENT
•  4.9% OF TEXAS POPULATION – MORE THAN ONE MILLION PEOPLE – EXPERIENCE HUNGER ON A REGULAR BASIS ACCORDING TO THE USDA FOOD AND NUTRITION SERVICE 

    Texas has one of the highest poverty rates in the country with nearly four million people living at or below the poverty line.

    Statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau show Texas poverty rate at 16.9% – well above the national average of 13.3%.

The poor are concentrated in the state’s largest  cities and in the Texas-Mexico border region. Poverty rates are also much higher for the state’s large and growing Latino population and for African-American Texans. 

Child poverty, particularly among young children, is significantly higher in Texas than in the nation as a whole.

(Cross-posted, as always, at dagblog)

Attention: The job opening is for POTUS. Dilettantes need not apply.

When I was a little girl during FDR's time, I remember people in my family talking in hushed, reverent tones about the President of the United States --  as if he were someone so special you mustn't use your normal, everyday voice.  I grew up thinking there was no one in our beloved country who could top the President when it came to being all-wise and all-caring.  I believed that there was something other-worldly, even God-like about Presidents, and I felt safe.

I came of age in the 1950s, in the midst of the McCarthy witch hunts, and all childish notions about the government as citizen protector flew right off the newborn TV screen and into the wild blue yonder.  The Army-McCarthy hearings were televised live, and for the first time in my life I knew real, hair-raising fear.  I understood then the latent, potentially evil power of the government and it terrified me.  Eisenhower was president, and, while my concern over his seeming disengagement from the whole vile circus nearly got the best of me, it didn't deter me from my original thoughts about the presidency in general.

There is the president and then there is the presidency.  One is fleeting, the other is our most cherished institution.

I've worked my way through many presidents since then and even the worst of them haven't been able to move me away from that belief.  We have certain built-in expectations of our presidents, tempered always with the recognition that they're only human.  They will not always do our bidding.  They will often make mistakes.  They will sometimes fail in the most spectacular fashion.  But the underlying hope is that when they wake up every morning in the White House -- the house on loan to them by the people -- they'll remember who they're supposed to be and resolve at the very least to do no lasting harm.

But what I'm seeing now is that venerable institution moving further and further away from any kind of special honor and more and more into celebrity/CEO status.  It is no longer cherished, no longer looked on as both a rare privilege and a breathtaking responsibility.  For proof, take a hard look at the Republican Party's current lineup of  potential presidential nominees.  Unless something major happens, the president's opponent will be one of these frontrunners:  Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, or Michelle Bachmann.  

Look deeper: There is not a serious candidate among them.  They make it understood that they want to be known as presidential without the annoying duties historically relegated to the presidency.  "Duties" is the one word in the job description that gives them the most grief, and the one they're each aiming to adjust once they're in office.  What I'm getting from their debate discussions is that they're falling all over themselves to see who can diminish the office of the presidency the fastest. (The possible exception might be Mitt Romney, but he's keeping mum, waiting to see which way the wind will blow.)

 I don't know.  If one cared, one might want to pass along to them that this is not your ordinary CEO gig.  Yes, there may be some question about whether the President of the United States is still looked on as the leader of the free world, but there's no argument that he (and someday, she) is the sole keeper of the Executive branch of our government.  When you have a country the size of ours (over 300 million people spread out over almost four million square miles) mired in unnatural disasters of epic proportions,  the last thing any serious candidate for the highest government office in the land should be advocating is an end to government interference.  Yet in the course of some 16 debates so far, that seems to be the recurrent theme.  It's as if, in all the grand hoopla, they've forgotten just which job they've applied for.

If they talk at all about joblessness, homelessness, uncovered illnesses, or any other deliberate misery cast upon certain segments of the 99%, it's to place the blame for such predicaments squarely on either the existing governmental busybodies or on the millions of affected people who have the gall to think they're the victims here.  Their fix is to turn the country over to God and the private sector -- neither of which, it should be pointed out, the president will have any control over if their dearest wishes come true.

Their goal, the destruction of a central government, is one that no president before them would have considered, even in the wildest wanderings of their most vivid imaginations.  It's not the kind of remedy past seekers of the office were inclined to entertain.

On the other hand, it's exactly the kind of thing we came to expect from someone like Herman Cain, a guy with way too much money and ego,  a guy who only just wanted to sell his book and thought the way to do it would be to run for, Holy Pokemon!  President!  Of the United States!

But okay, this did not get past me:  Through no great feat of his own, and despite gaffes that might suggest "astonishingly bad comedian" rather than "honorable POTUS",  Cain rose to the top of the GOP nominees list and stayed there for a frightfully long time before toppling.  That means there are a whole lot of people out there who just aren't getting what I'm saying here.

That is just painful.

Herman Cain: How Goofy can a President Be?

Herman Cain is in the news again, this time for allegedly sexually harassing a couple of his female employees some time in the way back. 

From Politico:  The sources — which include the recollections of close associates and other documentation — describe episodes [with Cain] that left the women upset and offended. These incidents include conversations allegedly filled with innuendo or personal questions of a sexually suggestive nature, taking place at hotels during conferences, at other officially sanctioned restaurant association events and at the association’s offices. There were also descriptions of physical gestures that were not overtly sexual but that made women who experienced or witnessed them uncomfortable and that they regarded as improper in a professional relationship.

While I've been waiting for the inevitable comparisons to the "high tech lynching" of  Clarence Thomas for similar behavior against Anita Hill and other female underlings in Thomas's workplace,  I've been trying to think of a way to put this whole thing into some kind of perspective without upsetting and offending my female compatriots.

Here's the best I can do:

Any woman who came of age in the middle of the 20th Century (that would be me) is now scratching her head wondering when the moment of high drama is going to come in this story.  It appears this guy Cain is possibly a creep who doesn't have the foggiest about propriety and good manners, let alone common sense.  Have you seen him in action as a so-called politician?   Have you seen him leering at the end of that goofy ad where his campaign manager slowly releases a mouthful of smoke?    Would it really shock you or even surprise you that he may have made suggestive comments to women who work for him?

 It doesn't shock me or surprise me or, frankly, even give me a moment's pause.  If I had a better memory, I could name you dozens of men I've worked with over the years -- some of them my bosses -- who have done the same things, not just to me but to every person who looked the least bit female.  I'll give it to you that there are men who take it as their right to go beyond innuendo and gestures, but that's a whole different ballgame.  So far all I've heard about Herman Cain's actions are the typically stupid, creepy, laughable pastimes of someone who deludes himself into thinking his position has the power to somehow make him desirable.  (Insert mention of "Mad Men" here.)

Good lord, people of the press, everybody knows Cain is an idiot.  Nothing new here.  Move along.

So let's get to why I can't get too excited about this new revelation about Herman Cain and his nasty mouth.  There are men out there in positions of power who want to take away every right women ever had to be equal citizens under the law.  They are working night and day to bust Roe v. Wade wide open.  There are already a number of states either in the process of, or actively promoting, bans on abortions.  If they're not working on outright bans they're sneaking around looking for ways to stall or discourage a procedure that has been declared legal in this country. (Mississippi is getting ready to decide if eggs are people, for God's sake.)

The House recently passed phony legislation that would stop most private insurance companies from paying for abortions, using the new Health Care law as the phony reason for the need to act.  It won't get past the Senate and they know it, but it can't hurt to send the message once again that, while our children are at risk,  being pro-fetus is where it's at.

 Rick Perry is proud of the fact that he defunded Planned Parenthood in his state, and his isn't the only one.

Mitt Romney wants to pretend he wasn't for legal abortions before he was against legal abortions.

Most if not all of the GOP presidential candidates are prepared to take steps to flat-out outlaw abortions in America. (Including Cain, who, even as I write this, is at the American Enterprise Institute using "genocide" and "Planned Parenthood" in the same sentence.)

If Herman Cain did what they're saying he did, it's a bad thing, sure, but let's get real.  While the press insists on resorting to the ridiculous in order to draw in the shallow,  real government-sanctioned sexual harassment looms large and threatens never to go away.

That's the big story.