UPDATE: VA SENATE SHELVED PERSONHOOD AMENDMENT THIS EVENING.
Rachel Maddow sticks the skewer in Right Wing Virginia zealots one more time as she examines the ultra-sound bill once again. The bill sponsor has pulled the bill. Republicans met with Governor McDonnell this week to discuss the problem he had, being painted into a corner. Some legislators simply blew him off. When it was decided to ‘reword’ the bill, they all decried that they knew not what they did. Rachel calls them out as liars. Of course they knew. They were told by women’s groups and the Democrats that ultra sound involved trans-vaginal ultrasound.
This week we will be gathering information on the vote. You might want to examine if you want to cast your ballot in the future for someone who would mandate that a woman be probed without her consent just to undergo a medical procedure.
Making a list and checking it twice. Gonna find out whose naughty or nice. Woman control tried to come to town.
I love the part where the republicans try to pretend they were ignorant of the “transvaginal” ultrasound. She totally wiped the floor with their lies. They VOTED on the freakin’ language of transvaginal!
The smell of male bovine merde in the Re/Teapublican chambers is overwhelming! I fell on the floor laughing listening to Governor McDonnell tonight on CBS news. And now it has been revealed that McDonnell is really a member of the Taliban minus the black turban and robe–he wanted, and probably still wants, to check the morals of of women seeking abortions. Doesn’t that sound like the Taliban? I wonder if he secretly wants to stone women guilty of adultery.
@George
Probably. Did you see his thesis paper from Regent University? I was laughing over him today. You know the expression about when someone shows you who they are, believe them. I think Maya Angelou first said it.
He is an opportunist. When we all howled over that thesis we got told, that was just a college paper, that was 20 years ago, blah blah blah. Thing is, the R’s thought they were duping us. Obviously McDonnell duped them too. He is just an opportunist. He didn’t stick to the party line when he realized how much crap he would take as a VP nominee with being the prober governer who defined life at conception.
Yup, he was showing us who he was. Some of us believed him, some got fooled.
The Governor has governed from the center by and large and deserves credit for realizing that, once one obtains office, the task is to provide good governance. There’s precious little of that going around these days and it ought to be encouraged. Having said that, there’s no question that he got his shoestrings tied together on this one. I feel badly for him, frankly.
But, for me at least, the real story is this year’s bumper macadamia crop in the General Assembly. Come on, Virginia. We really can do better. I’m waiting excitedly for the anti-kite-flying bill and the measures that will ensure that beheadings, brandings, and hand and tongue amputations take place on high school athletic fields at football halftimes.
I am not real happy with a half baked ultra sound bill. @Scout
Women should not have the state of Virginia tacking on hoops for them to jump through in order to obtain a LEGAL procedure. I am old enough to remember when it wasn’t a legal procedure. There is simply no reason for this. An external ultra sound shows very little when 90% of all abortions take place. If he wants my respect, he will have to send the macademia nuts packing with all their extraneous bills and that includes abortion clinics having to be mini hospitals.
Before all this happened, I would have agreed with you. I am afraid he has shown me who he is.
I don’t disagree with you on the merits of the legislation, Moon, or the idea that it was a decided un-conservative piece of legislation (which you didn’t exactly say, but which is implicit in your comment). I think where we have a nuanced difference is that you seem to see McDonnell as having a central role in this, and I tend to see it as a product of the unruly study hall that passes for our state legislature.
I certainly can come along as far as saying it was a POC legislative idea on many levels and that the Governor and his staff should have been able to stay away from it. Sheesh, even Cuccinelli, who positively can’t resist even the most wacked-out causes if he thinks they stir his political base, manage to steer around the debris here.
@ Scout
The issue is that the proverbial “inmates” (i.e. bob marshall and others) are now running the asylum.
Bob McDonnell has been swept up in the anti abortion/contraception hysteria. His LACK of leadership to moderate the insanity “speaks” volumes.
Perhaps the lesson for the Governor is that the correct response to legislation is to say, “if it passes, I’ll give it a good look” as opposed to saying, “if it passes, I’ll sign it.”
Elena, being a one-term governor (as all Virginia governors are and will be until we get that fixed) demands a fairly intricate high-wire choreography with the General Assembly. I question how much moderating influence McDonnell would have on this bunch. From the outside looking in it appears to me to have been really bad staffing on an issue that should have had a lot of red flags on it. I understand your point of view, however. Maybe this is where the Governor’s head and heart really are. Maybe he actually thought it was a good idea until he saw the Stewart clip (I don’t believe any GOP official ever makes a course correction because of Rachel Maddow). Raucous, side-splitting laughter is the absolutely best antidote to political nonsense. Stewart and his team do this so well.
Lets talk about the other “un-conservative” legislation that has passed. Requiring clinics that perform abortons to operate like a hospital and yet ignoring all the other medical establishments that have much more invasive actual “surgery”.
My son had a gum graft. It required multiple shots of novacaine (not required in a first trimester abortion), it require using a scalpel and cutting away at gum tissue(scalpel NOT required in first trimester abortion), it required multiple stiches(not required in an abortion)and antiobiotics to keep from getting an infection(yes, also NOT required in an abortion). And yet, the periodontist is not included in the over reaching regulation against clinics that also provide abortions.
Is THIS conservativism? I thought conservatives were against unnessary government regulations? Isn’t that a consistent mantra heard through out the Republican party. Or is it that regulations only apply to drilling in sensitive environmental landscapes, wall street/banking, and other commercial endeavors. When it comes to womens health the mantra is so hyprocritical it is laughable, i.e. SNL and Transvaginal airlines. That in 2012 we are actually discussing a womans right to affordable access to contraception is like I have been transported to some middle easern country. Isn’t this America where we are suppose to be free FROM religion?
I too thought McDonnell was going to be smart and run as a more moderate governor. He sure managed to stay far away from the immigration debate. I imagine seeing the GOP primary and the need to become extremist as possible was his reason to revert back to his old self.
I would think it more in his interest to solidify his centrist credentials going into the convention. He’s conservative enough in background and history to have a relatively good hold on that segment of the Republican Party. What he needed to burnish his attraction as a VP pick was a strong indication that he would attract voters in November and not become an issue himself. The primary is going to be between Romney and Paul. McDonnell doesn’t gain anything in that context by backing ill-considered (I almost said “conceived”, but thought better of it) legislation.
Logically I agree Scout, but the emotional social agenda is over taking the GOP. It’s like being in a mob mentality and your thinking becomes clouded. I don’t know who the real McDonnell is to be honest.
Or maybe it was really this scenario. Maybe Bob McConnell has been fighting his authentic beliefs on the issue of women reproduction rights and with the advent of the national birth control insanity and takeover of the VA legislature by the Republicans, he is finally letting his true nature show.
Whatever his reasons, he simply got busted by the national media attention and political self preservation kicked in full throttle.
Too bad Texas wasn’t so fortunate.
http://www.lifenews.com/2012/01/13/court-rules-texas-ultrasound-law-can-be-enforced-now/
and who pays for this unnessesary medical procedure?
http://www.newchoicehealth.com/Directory/Procedure/60/Transvaginal%20Ultrasound
And, the republicans have screwed themselves on their anti government can’t mandate healthcare platform. Not too smart.