Consistently Inconsistent

I was listening to my podcast of Bill Maher's 8/28 episode a few minutes ago.  It was "Overtime," in which the panel answers questions from the audience, and after a bizarre argument about the Iran deal, Maher changed the subject by asking California Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher about his marijuana bill.

Rohrabacher has co-sponsored, and the House passed in June, a medical marijuana amendment.  He replied to Maher:  "I am very proud... that we believe... in personal responsibility, we believe in doctor/patient relationships, we believe in making sure that you have limited government and maximum of individual freedom.  Well that means that you should let people smoke marijuana if they want to."

Fortunately, I was heading into my own yard at that point, because my head spun around like Linda Blair possessed of the devil.  Right wing-nuts have that effect on me.

My reaction this time was because I distinctly heard Rohrabacher, during the show just minutes earlier, put his stupid on in order to argue why Planned Parenthood should be defunded.



Rohrabacher was able to perform some incredible feats of illogic to support his "limited government" while jumping ship on the "maximum of individual freedom" part of his stated ideal.  As Wendy Davis looked on in disbelief, Rohrabacher defended the goal of shutting down the government in order to force the defunding of Planned Parenthood with:  "selling of body parts and how to get a fetus out of a woman's body so they can sell the parts, that's a little unnerving."

When Maher corrected him by saying that a) it's legal, b) it's fetal tissue, not body parts, and c) fetal tissue has been used to solve a lot of medical problems, the idiot Rohrabacher replied, "You're trying to tell me that's what these body parts are being sold for?"

And then when Davis referred to the loss of health care for 180,000 women by Texas' defunding of Planned Parenthood, Rohrabacher said smugly, "There are 9,000 clinics in the US that provide those services to women."

Which sounded a lot like Jeb Bush's comment that he's not sure we need a half a billion dollars for women's health issues.  Nine thousand clinics across the country?  Well, what are you women complaining about?

Meanwhile, if you change the reality of fetal tissue to body parts, fetus to baby, woman to mother, well, damn, you can reshape the whole argument.  And then all that nonsense about "personal responsibility,... doctor/patient relationships, limited government and maximum of individual freedom" becomes a government that needs to make laws to govern women's decisions about their bodies, and that monitors the woman's doctor/patient relationship.

Funny how the argument changes when it's about women.