So Bob Rae's still an unctuous, spineless, weaselly hypocrite? Carry on then

We can't pretend to be surprised at the Harper Regime's appeal to the socon mouth breathers. That's part of their playbook, and we've known that all along.

But when you read that Bob's not going to whip the vote on Wankworth's misogynist merry-go-round (h/t @JeninCanada), the first thing that comes to mind, as the Dawgster points out, is his failure on a similar matter almost 20 years ago.

Hello, "Progressive Bloggers?" Open asses. Remove heads.

So apparently the administrators at the so-called "Progressive Bloggers" aggregator are prepared to continue indulging members who think it's worthwhile to have a "debate" about Stephen Woodworth's crusade for "the rights of the unborn."

Well, fuck that, and fuck them, sez I. While we're at it, maybe we can have a "debate" about whether black people should have the same rights as white people?

Have you noticed what's going on to the south, ProgBlog mods? Have you been off the planet for the last couple of years? There's a wholesale war on women, in case you hadn't noticed. Republicans are working to roll back abortion rights and control women's sexuality in almost every state. And you want to crack open the door for that up here? We're supposed to keep the Sewer of Stupid from oozing over the border, not let it roll over us.

News flash, folks: you don't get to entertain a fucking "debate" over whether women control their own bodies and still call yourselves progressive. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, things aren't black and white, there's room for nuance and shades of meaning, and you can't reduce everything to ideological litmus tests ...

No. This time, you can. Either you believe in reproductive freedom and personal autonomy for everyone or you don't. There's no fucking middle ground on this.

So with all due respect to the mods at Progressive Bloggers:

Now it may be, as some commenter suggested over at the National Putz, that this is just

the Harpublicans chumming social conservative waters with a disposable Theo-con MP destined to join Stockwell Day counting angels dancing on the head of a pin

but really, that's neither here nor there. They want to have their little wanker debates and socon circle jerks, they can get a room somewhere. In progressive company, that question was settled a long fucking time ago.

Which means that there's a dirty but unavoidable task in front of us. Words and labels are vital, and it's obvious that we need to be vigilant about their meanings so that they, and the conversation, aren't co-opted and colonized. We cannot allow people who think this way to strip words of their meanings and repurpose them. The admins at the so-called "Progressive Bloggers" need to be put on notice.

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On reproductive freedom, there is nothing to fucking 'debate'

The folks at Dammit Janet, the Dawgmeister and Dave over at TGB have already pointed it out, so I'm not going to go through it again. (You can stop the applause, smart-asses.)

I am not going to "debate" about the notion of fetal rights or when life begins or whether or not women have the right to control their own bodies. That's done. Anything that purports to "reopen" such a question needs to be seen for exactly what it is: a transparent attempt to reassert patriarchal control over women's sexuality and reproductive autonomy.

Anyone who wants to have that "conversation" can go fuck themselves. The idea that it could even be entertained in a forum billing itself as "progressive" just strips the word of its meaning.