Most of them are idiots and completely out of touch with the majority of the people. I suspect it's the industries that fund them that keep them in office and set their agendas. The majority of people in Idaho are too poor to contribute to campaigns and the hold that religion has on them keeps them vulnerable to the system.

They ARE idiots, but they are not "completely out of touch with the majority of the people" when you look at their constituents.

Quick example: We ran a pro-choice op-ed by a local doctor who said, among other things, that one of his friends (who has a genetic condition that is known to produce fetuses that die in the womb) would not have considered pregnancy if there was no legal abortion because she didn't want a dead fetus to kill her. This has produced a LOT of rebuttals from anti-abortion people. One of them not only tore apart the doctor but also his friend...the writer said, among other things, that the friend should be ashamed of herself for her conditional love and that a real mother would willingly give her life for her children. We are now getting letters of support for the person who attacked the pro-choice op-ed. Idaho has a very representative legislature: with very few exceptions, everyone up here is that way.

And there are a LOT of "people of modest incomes" who contribute to Republican candidates up here. The thing is, it's not very expensive to campaign for state office if you're an Idaho Republican. Example: the one North Idaho Repuke senator who voted for the ultrasound bill, Steve Vick, is from Dalton Gardens. There are 2400 people living in Dalton Gardens and it's not a huge landmass--you can shake every hand and kiss every baby in Dalton Gardens in a day and a half. Idaho Democrats pay more to campaign because when someone's stupid enough to run as a Democrat in Idaho he gets attacked. Repeatedly and savagely. Republicans don't have to worry about that--just be far enough to the right to make the Reagan Republicans happy (the Reagan Republicans are a group of people who make the real Ronald Reagan look like a bomb-throwing leftist) and you're golden.

I observed. I don't care for your "baron" class and that's where your politicians come from. The ordinary people of Idaho are fine but their honesty and forthrightness is their biggest enemy because it makes them believe everything those carpetbaggers tell them. Also, I saw some almost Taliban like treatment of women there and most people would walk away from those incidents because, as another acquaintance said, "she probably had it coming". REALLY?

Take off your rose colored glasses and look around you for a change with the hard look an outsider would have. Also, it's your industries and the Mormon church that fuel your politicians. What "people of modest incomes" contribute is nothing in comparison with how your politicians are bought by lumber, mining companies and that dominant church.

And that doesn't seem to bother the Gem State Vagina Patrol...if it's not born alive, they figure it HAD to be an abortion.

I'm pretty sure that if you put a bill in the hopper requiring doctors treating miscarriages to ask if the patient lived down an unmaintained road, rides horses, rode an ATV, dirt bike or snowmobile, used a trampoline, jogged quickly or did anything else that could possibly dislodge the fetus, and required the doctor to report the miscarriage as a self-induced abortion (which is probably grounds for criminal prosecution--everything else in this state is) if she did any of those things, it would pass.

Gilead ain't got shit on Idaho.

(he was making a joke in regards to the intelligence of said politician.)

there is now diet coke all over my monitor.

Maybe Social Services/PD may want to take his wife/partner aside and make some discrete inquiries.

But... probably not.

I don't know how the GOP could be more clear on wanting to know the intimate details of what goes on in people's bedrooms or where ever.

it's WOMEN'S bedrooms!

see? enjoyed it = slut = no choice; rape/incest = choices granted WTF

No? Well I predict there WILL be when you get home.

ugg

"consesual" relations.

They're the type of male who once wrote rape laws as property damage laws. They see women as animated flowerpots into which they dump their seed, hoping a male copy of themselves will sprout.

This is why they are my deadly enemy.

I have come across some men who are just downright neanderthal. Of course, they don't see themselves that way. They're MEN. It's their job to put their wives in their place.

Why should it surprise anyone when they're dismissive to other women too?

It's their generation. Their upbringing.

If you worship Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead you might come up with the same mental malfunctions that Chuck Winder suffers from.

... then check back and see whether he sees a difference.

Winder said he was taken out of context, but that isn't true.

He said that the reason he supported this bill that compels women to have an ultrasound test that they want to force women to take before having an abortion was designed, from the very start, to prevent abortions.

He went on to say that he was "saving lives", and that he was "protecting babies" by introducing this bill into the Senate in the state legislature.

But, since fetuses aren't babies, and since fetuses can't have their "lives saved", because they aren't ever born, his logic is all fucked up.
Like the state legislature.

But, the bottom line is, he meant what he said about it the other day, no matter what he says about it later.

According to Republicans, women don't know rape from consenting sex. Black people don't know what's best for them, which is why theu vote for Democratic candidates who secretly hate them. Hispanics, likewise. Except for the Cubans. Poor people would be happier if they just gave away more of the wealth they create by their labor to the overrich.

I find it amazing that Republicans are so tuned in to how other people should think, and how ungrateful we all are for not fully appreciating their wisdom.

they like to control all that you do.

They also like to pick up young men in public restrooms.