Nona Willis Aronowitz talks about her new book "Girl Drive". The public option seems viable, and health care reform opponents freak out, and a new law in Oklahoma invades women’s privacy.

 

Subscribe to RealityCast:
RealityCast iTunes subscription
RealityCast RSS feed

Links in this episode:

Another sex scandal

Pelosi responds to a heckler

McConnell claims health care reform will kill you

Foxx compares health care reform to terrorism

Lieberman begs someone to debate him

Lieberman avoids debating Rachel Maddow and Glenn Greenwald

Lieberman’s ties to the industry

Oklahoma tries to out women who have abortion

Limbaugh blatantly misleads on health care reform

 

On this episode of Reality Cast, I’ll be talking to Nona
Willis Aronowitz about her new book Girl Drive, about a cross-country feminist
trip. Also, the public option seems viable, and opponents of health care reform
freak out.  Plus, a segment on the
Oklahoma law assaulting women’s privacy rights.

 

Because I know that you guys love the sex scandals from
family values politicians.  Here’s
the latest, from now former assistant attorney general of South Carolina Roland
Corning. 

 

• sex
  scandal *

Not only all that, but he was on his lunch hour.  Which just makes the whole thing
seedier.

 

***********

So, the House released its version of a health care reform
bill, and to no one’s great surprise, it has a public option in it. In general,
it’s a very good bill, with a focus on preventive care that lowers costs and
creating competition and collective bargaining that will do the same
thing.  I was also impressed with
the bans on dumping people for having pre-existing conditions or raising their
premiums.  But it was the public
option above all things that is causing the complete panic attack in the people
who are basically coming out as insurance industry shills.  And thank you, Nancy Pelosi, for
pointing that when heckled by a health care reform opponent. 

 

• health
  care 1 *
•  

Now that a public option is officially on the table,
opponents of health care reform have moved from merely spreading misinformation
to lying outright or stirring up ridiculous hysteria.  Mitch McConnell went on Dennis Miller’s show to claim that public
health insurance would kill you.

 

• health
  care 2 *

 

You know what actually kills people?  Not having insurance, which is true for
47 million Americans and climbing. 
But McConnell’s doing that two-fer lie thing, where a conservative
buries a lie within a lie so you don’t know which one to refute.  He’s linking the public option, which
would just be a government-owned non-profit like the Post Office with the NHS
and Medicare, which pay for your care with tax dollars.  That’s a lie. But it’s also a lie that
the NHS and Medicare are bad things. 
Medicare has demonstrably relieved poverty in the elderly, and Britain’s
National Health Services put them at #18 in the world, whereas the U.S. is #37.  So if you want better health care, you
would actually embrace the British system.

 

And Representative Virginia Foxx pulled a favorite scare
tactic out: use the word "terrorism" to rile them up.

 

 

• health
  care 3 *

 

Because terrorists will just kill you, whereas under health
care reform, you might find yourself in a waiting room next to the very poor
people that you tried to keep out. 
Glad to know where priorities lay. 

 

But for my money, the funniest public freak-out has been
from Joe Lieberman, who swings from talking wild wingnut talk to oppose health
care reform to pretending he’s the last reasonable man on earth.  As part of his latter strategy, he’s
been claiming that no one will debate him on the public option. 

 

• health
  care 4 *

 

Do you really want to have that debate, Joe?  Really?  Because from where I’m sitting, it doesn’t seem like you
really do.  Ask Rachel Maddow. 

 

• health
  care 5 *

 

So much for that. 
Why is it that Lieberman is so dead set against a public option?  The main purpose of it would be to set
up competition for insurance companies, so they have to lower their
prices.  The only real reason to be
against it is that you’re siding with insurance companies over the public. 

 

• health
  care 6 *
•  

So that’s where we stand, everyone.  Right now, I think if it was just up to
the House, a public option would be beyond question.  But we’re up against the Senate, and the Senate has a lot
more people taking a lot more money from insurance companies. 

 

************

insert interview

************

 

I apologize in advance for not covering this sooner, but
things have been moving so fast on this, that it’s hard to keep up.  But let’s start at the beginning.  As you may well know, Oklahoma is often
the ground zero for anti-choice nuttiness, and that includes that specific
obsession that anti-choicers have with getting personal information about women
who get abortions.  There’s a
couple theories as to why they’re so damn interested in finding out so many
savory details on women who get abortions.  The most obvious is that they’re trying to intimidate them,
but I think it also has a lot to do with an inability to mind their own
business.  That, and they’re
uptight, weird people who enjoy titillating themselves by thinking about
perfect strangers having sex while imagining punishing them for it.  So here’s the latest in the realm of
self-titillation from anti-choice nuts. 

 

• Oklahoma
  1 *

 

Well, since anti-choicers often take a pornographic interest
in the lives of women getting abortions, well, it makes sense to put this on
the internet with other pornography. 
But what I object to is the taxpayers paying money to use women’s
private information in order to titillate anti-choice nuts.  Those people need to find consenting
adults to make their pornography, and pay for it out of their own pocket.  When you get an abortion, you’re not
consenting to have your private information put online so some right wing nuts
can get themselves all horrified and aroused. 

 

Maddow had Megan Carpentier from Air America on to discuss
this odious law. 

 

• Oklahoma
  2 *

 

This is the danger that you step into with all this talk
about finding common ground on abortion. 
If we define common ground as simply finding ways to reduce abortion,
and not looking too closely at whether or not those methods are ethical, then
you get into this kind of situation. 
Oklahoma is justifying creating porn for anti-choice nuts on the grounds
that engaging women in this non-consensual practice will intimidate them out of
abortions.  Most likely, it will
just make them go out of state for abortions.  But we have to be clear that reducing abortion is only a
worthy goal if women’s rights and dignity are fully respected.

 

• Oklahoma
  3 *

 

And there you go. 
If you have any doubt in your mind what’s going on here, the fact that a
bunch of skeevy right wing dudes took this private information and gave it to
the king of sexual harassment via falafel references himself, Bill O’Reilly,
should wipe all doubt from your mind. 
I’m not going to suggest that these men are sexually aroused by abortion
per se.  But I do think they get a lot
of titillating pleasure out of thinking about women having sex, knowing the
details, and then fantasizing about what it must be like to punish them.  Or acting on it with a public shaming
like this.  Abortion just gives
them the excuse for their behavior.

 

The good news is a judge has put a hold on the law for the
time being.

 

*********

And now for the Wisdom of Wingnuts, the biggest whopper
about health care reform edition. 
We’ve heard a lot, but I have to single out Rush Limbaugh for pure
audacity.  

 

• Limbaugh
  *

 

There is no prohibition on buying private insurance.  You buy it through the Health
Exchange.  Limbaugh is pretending
this is a ban on private insurance, but it’s basically the same, just more
streamlined and competitive.  Gotta
love the way that the wingnuts have started to call this Pelosi care, by the
way.  They couldn’t be more obvious
in their use of misogyny to raise concerns.  Pelosi is the sort of target they love to hate, a target in
a skirt.