Inexplicably, slouching snake-faced Ohio governor John Kasich is still in the race, probably because he is delusional. Or maybe he’s still hanging in there because of “Ohio”. In a normal election cycle, that would mean something and maybe even get him veep consideration. But Hell hath frozen over and it’s Donald fucking Trump’s nomination to lose, and he’ll just say “fuck the Buckeyes with Terrell Pryor’s disco pants” during his acceptance speech and still carry the state in the general.
John Kasich jumped into a field of crazies and by comparison looked sane. He “accepts global warming”. He’s open to immigration reform. He supports expanding Medicare (originated with that bill called the “Affordable Care Act”), and admits that Republican opposition to the Affordable Care Act is “really either political or ideological.” But when it comes to the ladies, well. don’t let this guy’s sweaters and non-lunacy fool you, he’s getting his ideas right out of the Old Testament.
John “moderate” Kasich is such a terrific candidate on women’s issues. From signing a gag rule on rape crisis counselors that forbade them from referring women to abortion providers, to bragging about how his “hot wife” likes to stay home doing the laundry, to connecting with Latina voters by reminding them that he always tips the hotel maids, John Kasich ought to be surging in the polls.
In a certain puerile part of the internet, there is no more damning a dismissal of the contributions of a woman than “go to the kitchen and make me a sandwich or ‘sammich’.“ It’s a “joke” that is so deeply lame and that is cheered by such deeply lame people that it makes non-terrible men/men over the age of 15 want to do spoken word performances of “The Yellow Wallpaper” just to compensate. It’s the gender equivalent of a “not” joke, but less funny.
Speaking in Virginia last month, Kasich said, “Many women who left their kitchens to go out and to go door-to-door and to put up yard signs for me.” When asked to clarify this later, he said he was referring to a long ago time, before women were allowed to leave their home, aka… 1978!
That Victorian male fantasy, resurrected in the 1950s bout women sittin’ around in their kitchens….in 1978! My mother worked full time as medical doctor and raised 3 brats and still found time to travel to DC to march against the war and for equal rights. My mother-in-law was raised on a farm without indoor plumbing or a washing machine r central heat and put herself through college and grad school. My grandmother immigrated from Germany and worked as a seamstress as a teenager. Kasich is clinging to the ‘two spheres in influence’ foisted on middle class women to keep them chattel. Only middle and upper class urban women were ‘stay at home moms’ and they had extensive staffs of servants. The whole fantasy is dependent on ignoring the ocean of help who worked outside their homes to make the middle class home function. Post WWII, women like my mother were forcibly ejected from the work force and locked in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. Their daughters demanded birth control and the right not to subordinate our lives to a wayward sperm. We refused to see the phallus as sacred. Or special.
Kasich is still misremembering a golden era back when things were different — in 1978!!! — before women worked outside the home. Except for all the women who worked outside the home and comprised nearly half of the labor force. Granted, many of them could only land lower-wage, part-time work because why would any Mister Boss Man take a real job with a real paycheck away from a deserving guy and give it to some broad? But hey. Things have changed now, and once you all calm down and “relax,” your tiny girl brains might grasp the larger point that Kasich LOVES women, especially the ones who’ve “played a major role” in his “political life.” That’s how he got to be governor, so he could sign all those bills to screw over the women of Ohio. And if ladies will take some time out of their newfangled modern “working” lives to help send Kasich to the White House, he’ll screw over all the women of America the same way.
What he meant to say women mostly just sat around in their kitchens — in 1978! — until White Knight Kasich came along and gave them a reason to go outside, but in a more eloquent a way that would not hurt your delicate feelings. ANYWAY, after the sammich comment, a woman stood up and said, “your comment about women coming out of the kitchen to support you? I’ll support you, but I won’t be coming out of the kitchen.” The exchange rocketed around the Internet, as these things tend to do. It was totes funny!
What’s not funny is that the same sammich lovin’, union bashing faux moderate is cutting Planned Parenthood funding and proposing legislation to limit funding to rape crises centers. Get raped in Ohio? John Kasich doesn’t want terminating the pregnancy to be an option. He’s required women to pay out of pocket for “unnecessary” medical procedures before having an abortion. He wants to prevent rape crises counselors from letting a woman know that an abortion was an option. Defunding the ever living fuck out of Planned Parenthood is just another one of Kasich’s super moderate actions. It’s his way of giving back to all us gals, like a friendly “good job!” slap on the ass. He knows what’s best for us, and funding for reproductive health ain’t it. Besides, according to Gov. Kasich’s fellow moderate Republicans in the Ohio legislature, you can get your lady business taken care of at your local food bank, and no babies have to die!
If you’re like me – a non-self-loathing lady – you will find this ridiculous and abusive. It destroys poor women’s ability – married or not – to climb the economic scale. For years, women could not participate in economic development easily because if they were fecund they were trapped with a pregnant body for years. But that’s the way these medieval men want it.
Being the moderate that he is, “pro-life” Kasich knows it’s OK to murder your unborn baby if you got yourself raped or if you might otherwise die. Under another bill Kasich previously signed, moderately, rape counselors are prohibited from telling victims abortion is available to them, so guess you gals just figure that one out on your own, somehow. ALSO, While the Kasich bill grants an exemption to abortions performed in cases of rape, incest and preserving the life of the mother, it jeopardizes the fate of many other vital women’s health programs. For example, the $1.3 million in state grants that Planned Parenthood is slated to lose was allocated toward HIV testing, cancer screenings and programs that help prevent domestic violence and infant mortality. Pffft. Who needs HIV testing or cancer screenings? Sluts, that’s who. Everybody knows if you keep your legs closed or coat them in aspirin, you never get cancer or AIDS. That’s just #science fact. And as far as preventing domestic violence and decreasing infant mortality rates,
we’re sure that Kasich’s insane plan to re-introduce the Crusades will somehow make that happen, right? Ohio’s Cognitive Dissonance Bill…Cutting funding where abortions are performed AND programs that help prevent infant mortality.
Man, it’s a good thing that Kasich is one of those moderate, reasonable Republicans who respects us ladies so so SO much. Just imagine if he were a typical woman hating, conservative extremist. Oh what a shit show Ohio would be in that case, huh? You have got to be pretty fucking self-loathing to be a female supporter of John Kasich.
I used to be more worried about making sure people understood just how terrible Kasich is, what with him doing things like working hard at coming across as Cool Uncle Who Loves Linkin Park. But since he pulled a whopping 7.6 percent in South Carolina and currently possesses only 5 delegates, I’m not really all that afraid of Kasich-mentum. If only the rest of the GOP field wasn’t a nightmare hellscape, I might, even, be glad.
Some of my favorite Kasich stories through he years:
His appointment to the state’s Board of Education. Stanley Jackson’s “background” did not involve graduating from college, or even submitting an application for the job. His heroic moment was back in 1997, when he stepped back and threw a beautiful pass right into the arms of a the opposing team’s corner who then ran it back for a touchdown to lose the game for the Buckeyes. That’s right, Stanley Jackson was a foosball player. As such, he didn’t have to submit a resume for his fancy new job but his Wikipedia page says that he was on the Buckeye team that won the Rose Bowl in 1997, so that’s totes legit. He never actually graduated from Ohio State, so he knows the value of a good education, but who needs it, anyway – Ohio law apparently has affirmative action for rural residents on its school board (quotas!) and Stanley Jackson is “a man of faith” (in Christ is a good bet), and that seems to be enough for everybody. Jackson is black, and his appointment does indeed expand that boards degree of diversity by a wide margin. Might I suggest appointing a stuttering stevedore next?
Kasich being a pissy little douchecanoe at a meeting, slumped in his seat like a bored student, refusing to acknowledge the existence of Democratic candidate Ed FitzGerald, repeatedly talking around pointed questions about why he signed into law a budget that included a provision prohibiting state-funded rape crisis counselors from referring women to abortion services. Instead of answering them, he huffed and puffed and repeatedly refused to answer. Because you can do that as a Republican.
Kasich running president in 1999. Enthusiasm and financial support for George W. Bush forced Kasich to end his campaign months before the 2000 primaries.
Kasich grabbing his good fortune to prove his veep chops while also totally screwing the citizens of his state after five tornadoes ripped through the Rust Belt, leaving Ohioans dead in its wake as well as untold billions in property damage. While the Communists of Kentucky and Indiana were only too happy to grovel to President for Food Stamps for their Dependency Hand-Outs (Ameros), Kasich knew a valuable thing when he saw it, and in this case that valuable thing was putting Ohio’s future where his veep ambitions are and turning down any federal aid for his ravaged state… because earmarks? He did so likably, and reasonably, because he is that mythical Republican of yesternever, whose loathsome extremist conservatism is delivered in a calm voice and with a disarming smile, to soothe and distract you from the terrible things he is saying. He also does that stupid passive-aggressive questioning thing because he has the emotional maturity of a teenage sister grumbling “tell Jackson he can go poop his pants” while sitting next to him at the dinner table.
ANYWAY, back to Ohio’s new abortion laws. SO, abortion is legal, right? But, if are importunate enough to live in a shit state, say Ohio, and you make a legal referral to an abortion provider, under stage law, then that disqualifies you as a health provider from receiving any state reimbursement for any procedure covered by state health funding. I actually don’t see how this is even legal. It’s one thing to exempt a procedure (like the Hyde Amendment did), but it’s an entirely different matter to say that you are going to deny payments to any health provider for things that are covered because they either provide a service you will not pay for or they provide referrals to somebody who provides a service you do not cover when that service is legal. This is just weaseling toward making abortion de facto illegal. If nobody in your state provides abortions because you cut off all funding for things actually covered, it is de facto illegal. That is what it is getting down to. In Ohio, Missouri, and Texas, and soon, Wisconsin. Also Alabama and Mississippi and Kentucky. Ironically, Tennessee is becoming an Abortion Destination, so the state legislators–all Republicans–will have to fix that too
Only Human is a podcast I just started listening to. It spoke with the last abortion provider in Alabama, an OBGYN named Dr. Willie Parker. Dr Parker grew up in Alabama without electricity, one of six kids in a single-mother household. He learned to read by the light of a kerosene lamp. He was also raised in a fundamentalist Christian community that believed abortion was wrong. is deeply religious but also deeply egalitarian. Having been raised in abject poverty, he understood how important it is that women be able to have this service and he specializes in providing safe abortions in the Deep South. He travels between states and clinics amid protests and threats, and treats the same demographic of women who might have gone to his church.
Dr. Parker was altered by a sermon he heard by Martin Luther King Jr., where he alluded to the biblical story of the Good Samaritan — a man who acts out of kindness for the greater good. “The Good Samaritan asks what will happen to this person if I don’t stop to help them,” Parker said. Women in this region of the United States have few options, Parker says, if they aren’t ready to be mothers. The last abortion clinic in Mississippi was attacked last year, and the state moved to block doctors from being able to admitting patients to hospitals after they received an abortion. Parker says the trend of unsafe, secretive abortions are too dangerous to deny women access to care.All I’ve got to say is, Thank the FSM (bless her noodly appendages) that he is term limited and cannot be Ohio governor ever again. And with the abolishing of gerrymandering for state districts,we might be able to kick the goolies off of the TeaJihadis who are responsible for the PP defunding. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers.
Dr. Parker, sadly, is not running for President.
I would go on, but I have cakes in the oven.
No need for reading this. ladies, I know it’s long. Just have your husband explain it to you later.