So to get Rethuglikans on board with the stimulus, Obama had to kill Family Planning funding.

And so he did.

And not a single House Rethuglikan voted for the stimulus bill. Not a one. Yet miraculously it still passed.

Why did we have to throw poor women under the bus again? What was it we got for that?

Where’s my god damned pony?

to the Republican fucknuggets and their banker friends.

There is no amount of bailout money that will get them to see the light. NO AMOUNT.

There is no tax cut great enough to get them to behave in a moral manner. If we charged them no taxes at all they would be blackmailing us for bailout money because somehow they think they are more important to the country that those of us who go to work everyday doing something that actually produces something.

They do not want to meet you half way.

They do not want to negotiate.

And every time you give into them, by say giving away almost a trillion dollars in bailout money or scrapping family planning funds to poor women – they just think they won. So they will push you further next time. And they will use whatever money they just robbed from the American people to get more Republicans elected.

Bi-partisanship is not in the best interest of the country. If we wanted a divided working together, we would have let the Republicans keep control of the House and Senate. Or we would have elected John McCain.

But we elected Democrats. Please remember that is what you are next time a rethuglikan banker comes with his hat in hand.

Did you know that Ouyangdan and I became friends over child support statistics? It’s true. And there are lots of us single parents frustrated and angry because we didn’t get ourselves knocked up but we are buried under the financial burden alone.

It is one of those things I am sadly well versed in. 70 percent of non custodial parents are behind in their child support payments. 70 percent of parents who don’t live with their kids don’t pay their child support on time and/or in the full amount. So far the measly things we have done to get them to pay haven’t worked much (I think pre-Clinton- who enacted the much tougher laws we have now for support collection- the number was closer to 80 percent).

Of those 70 percent of parents not receiving child support, a good number have to turn to the state to get help for our kids. I certainly do. We suck it up, and do what is in our kids’ best interest by applying for food stamps and medicaid and free lunches and TANF money. And in order to receive help we have to sit through 40 hours a week of Work First job training.

So we have all this infrastructure in place to get custodial parents working, even if it means minimum wage jobs with no future. Why don’t we do the same for deadbeat parents? Parents who, for whatever reason, won’t pay for their children should be made to sit through the same 40 hours a week of Work First training. They can be taught how to get a job, how to keep a job, etc. And they will lose the ability to work under the table because they are going to be spending a lot of time in the Welfare office. Make attendance for deadbeats compulsory. If they miss so many days then they can go to jail for contempt.

I really think that is the kind of motivating force we need to change those numbers so that a majority of children get the support they need and that both custodial and non custodial parents get “job training” and take responsibility for their kids.

We already make poor single mothers do it. If it’s good enough for them, why isn’t it good enough for the dads too?

Almost exactly a year ago, the Kid and I spent 10 days without electricity or heat.

Lots of people seemed shocked to find out that yes, a public utility can shut off your only heat source during the coldest week of the year, even if you are old or sick or have children. They thought it was a law that you couldn’t leave someone in a freezing house. But they were wrong.

And go figure- leaving people without heat during the winter can lead to people freezing to death.

State Representative Jeff Mayes (D-Bay City) and State Senator Jim Barcia (D-Bay City) today called for a review of the tragic death of Marvin E. Schur, a 93-year-old World War II veteran, who froze to death in his Bay City home after Bay City Electric Light & Power placed a device on his home to limit his electric use.

Public utilities are public for a reason. It is our tax dollars that build the damns and the power plants. It is public land that brings the power to the towns and cities that use it. We own the public utility system. All of us. So why do allow this to happen?

For about 5 minutes after the Global Gag Rule was lifted, I felt a wee tiny bit of hope. Okay, so it wasn’t the very first thing he did, and he didn’t do it on Blog for Choice day, but he did it. YAY!

Oh but the cynic’s heart breaks hardest. (Well, not really but I liked the phrase). And today Obama has been cheerleading House Democrats to get them to cut family planning funding from the stimulus bill in order to make Rethuglikans happy.

Yep- Obama is getting Dems who have a majority in both the House and Senate to cut money for birth control for poor women just so a bunch of old white dudes who LOST THE ELECTION feel better.

On the backs of the poor and the brown and the female, our country will be made bi-partisan for all dudes.

I am starting to get jealous of women in other countries. It seems that my president will make things better for them (especially with Hillary as SOS) while making things worse for women at home. Not that you all don’t deserve some love, but it sure would be nice to see some at home too after 8 long years.

I know. Women are oppressed, we shouldn’t criticize them for their choices blah blah blah.

So in the ongoing saga with Kid’s dad, I have now gotten an email from his girlfriend(?) who explains that they can’t pay child support this month but she will gladly bring us a bag of food after she picks up her kids. I’m still picking up my jaw from all the dripping condescension in that email.

Women who date deadbeat dads (or men who date deadbeat moms) are just about as bad as the deadbeats themselves. This is a person who has chosen to be with someone who won’t take care of their responsibilities. But even more than that, this is a person who is using resources meant for someone else’s kid for their own gain.

I’ve dated more than a couple of dads. One of the first things I find out is if they see their kids regularly and pay child support on time. If a dude bitches about how much he’s paying or how evil his ex is, I walk. One particular dude (who was very very good about paying child support, even if he had to borrow it from his family) got a loud lecture when he complained about the cost of gas to drive out and visit his kids. I think I may have pointed out that he spent more on porn than he did on gas and he should suck it up already.

So getting an email from the girlfriend just makes me boil. The girl must have some serious self esteem issues if she thinks she’s made a wise choice. Let’s just hope they’ve got good birth control, cause lord knows neither of them should breed again.

In addition to the parade of assholes it’s one of those quarters where I have a particularly difficult student.

I just had to explain that you won’t see things life sized on the computer screen because it’s a computer screen.

Please guess which gender the student is……

Female students NEVER come to me with this kind of stupid shit.

I’ve been trying to rid myself of magical thinking over the last year. No more belief in fate or karma. I want to eliminate any non-logical beliefs from my life. (Except that whole superstition about your right hand itching when you’re about to get money and your left hand itching when you’re about to lose it- that one always fucking works).

So it’s been a hell of a test the last few weeks when nearly every asshole to cross my path has made a marching band noisy return into my life. The latest (and I blame Anna Belle for bringing it up in comments- I believe she cursed me but I still adore her. Wait- that’s more magical thinking!) is the Kid’s fuckwad father.

It is incredibly difficult to believe that the universe doesn’t have some horribly sadistic plan for tormenting me at the moment, or that there isn’t some big life lesson I need to learn about tolerating assholes who refuse to die like I wish them to. But no more magical thinking. This is just an annoying rough patch and I will survive.

But back to the Kid’s asshole father.

I left him partly because he was a raging drug addict. I almost could excuse his neglect of the Kid for the last 13 years because it really is better that as a fucked up addict he stay far away from the Kid. Almost.

But he tells me he’s been clean and sober for 7 years.

7 fucking years.

And no child support?

WTF is his excuse for that? No seriously. If he got himself clean, then didn’t he have to go through that whole taking responsibility thing? Did it really take him 7 fucking years to remember that he has a Kid he’s been neglecting for nearly his entire life.

And now he “wants a chance to be the father that (the Kid) deserves”.

Except for that whole feeding him and clothing him and housing him part. What he really wants is to show up for a few hours with some age inappropriate toys (that’s what happened the last time he wanted to play daddy) and spend a few hours assuaging his guilt.

After having dealt with my own dad recently, I’ve decided that parents should be made to face the cold hard truth of what their neglect does. So I gave the Kid’s asshole of a father the run down on how hard life is without child support for his kid.

The thing is, I also said he could see the Kid IF the Kid wants to see him. And the Kid is a loving, forgiving kind of person. So he said he’d meet his dad.

But after giving his dad the run down on just how much he’s failed as a parent, the emails have dried up (along with the paltry child support payments I finally started seeing after the state threatened him with jail time). Suddenly doing the actual work of being the father that the Kid deserves seems like to much trouble.

I know him well enough, even after all these years, to be able to tell you peeps word for word what’s going through his mind right now (he did seek help from an MRA group when we split up after all, they are pretty boring in their mindsets). He’s thinking that I’m a bitch for keeping his son from him (which I’m not). He’s thinking that this is all about money and that I’m a greedy cunt (except that most of parenting is about money- making sure your kid is housed and fed and clothed are pretty basic and the amount he’s supposed to pay in child support doesn’t even cover a quarter of that).

But I really don’t care what he thinks about me. What I care about is that he has (and will) look for any excuse to neglect his Kid. And that breaks my heart for the Kid.

As for magical thinking, whatever the universe is trying to teach me right now I don’t wanna know. I just know that the parade of assholes must end sooner or later. There are a limited number of assholes in my personal history for a reason.

I’ve been trying to eliminate magical thinking for the last year. No more

And the anniversary of Roe V Wade.

The question this year is: What is your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new Congress?

My wish (said in total Pinky and Brain speak) is the same one I have every day. I want bodily autonomy to be as much a right as freedom of speech. No one should ever be allowed to control what I do to my own body or how I do it. And no one, not a rapist or a nurse with a godbag agenda or a bunch of old white male politicians in ugly blue suits should ever be able to take that away from me or any other person.

I want that in the constitution cause these dudes should never be allowed near a uterus again.