Anyone who thinks they have all the Answers before they've even heard the Question - is Dangerously Deluded! Real Truth Requires Vigilance, Perseverance and Courage, regardless of Party and who wields Power. Left, Right, Center, Corporations, Government, Unions, Criminals or the Indifferent.
Yes, that's right the South Dakota GOP is literally and seriously considering making Murder - a legal option if the person being killed is a Doctor who provides abortions.
A law under consideration in South Dakota would expand the definition of "justifiable homicide" to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus—a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. The Republican-backed legislation, House Bill 1171, has passed out of committee on a nine-to-three party-line vote, and is expected to face a floor vote in the state's GOP-dominated House of Representatives soon.
The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Phil Jensen, a committed foe of abortion rights, alters the state's legal definition of justifiable homicide by adding language stating that a homicide is permissible if committed by a person "while resisting an attempt to harm" that person's unborn child or the unborn child of that person's spouse, partner, parent, or child. If the bill passes, it could in theory allow a woman's father, mother, son, daughter, or husband to kill anyone who tried to provide that woman an abortion—even if she wanted one.
Essentially this bill would make this type of argument part of the law.
Roeder: The blame for the death of George Tiller belongs more with the State of Kansas rather than me. Had the courts acted rightfully I would not have killed George Tiller. The State of Kansas permits, protects and promotes the slaughter of these children. George Tiller was their Hitman. Do you expect ordinary people to just sit back and watch this happen?
We fought a bloody civil war while our courts denied personhood to people of color. 37 years ago the rights of the unborn were similarly denied, and in 37 minutes a Kansas court found George Tiller innocent and me guilty of murder
There's just so much wrong with that it's hard to figure out where to begin. Clearly he is trying to equate Dred Scott with Roe v Wade -the problem with that is that sad though it may be, Dred Scott was correctly decided since at that time the Original Constitution included the 3/5th language for African Immigrants as well as the Fugitive Slave Clause.
This Constitutional Flaw wasn't corrected until the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were Ratified.
In the case where George Tiller was acquitted, he wasn't accused of performing illegal abortions - he was simply accused of not getting an independent second opinion before performing the procedures. While those on the right like the rail about the "Rights of the innocent" they seem to completely ignore the women - mostly girls - whom Tiller was trying to help.
When you look at the actual complaint against Tiller you find that of the 19 counts against Tiller - 7 of the cases were for girls who were just 15 years-old, one girl was just 16 years-old, two of them were only 14 years-old, one was just 13 years-old and one was only 10!. Only 3 of them were over 18 years old.
Most of these girls were in fact raped by members of their own family, usually their father.
If a ten-year-old in this situation doesn't deserve to be protect and isn't "Innocent" I don't exactly know who is.
And now South Carolina would make helping this girl - essentially a non-judicial Capital Offense - while the rapist scumbag who put her in this situation gets what, a pat on the back for "nailing" her? Where is the argument for birth control to avoid unwanted and unplanned pregnancies? Where is the argument to provide better and simpler adoption services for babies born to parents without the means or ability to care for them?
If this doesn't make you sick to your stomach you might be suffering from compassion deficit disorder.
Although the Conservative like to call themselves the "Party of Life" - the real facts when looked at in cold objective terms shows that they are anything but "Pro-life". Their policies of abstinence-only education which mandates that students by lied too about the effectiveness of condoms and other methods of birth-control.
According to the CDC Abortion Surveillance the actual rate of Abortions in America was virtually flat-lined during the Bush Era and Republican Control of Congress, and in the 2006 begin to increase.
The importance of this doesn't come into full relief until you see how this contrasts with what was going on just prior to it, specifically what happened between 1992-1995 while Bill Clinton was in office just before the Gingrich Congress rose to power.
Bill Clinton spearheaded initiatives focused on comprehensive - and Accurate - sex education, until he was pushed into promoting abstinence-only programs by the Gingrich Congress.
Abstinence-only programs encourage participants, typically teens, to abstain from sex and don't discuss contraception, except to point out its failings. The program got its start in the 1996 welfare-overhaul law and was later expanded by the Republican-controlled Congress.
But many say the programs haven't been proved effective. A 2007 federally funded study by Mathematica Policy Research, a nonpartisan group, found that participants in four programs had just as many sexual partners and those who did not participate and had sex at the same median age as non-participants.
Other studies have shown that 85% of teens who signed up for abstinence-only "Plegde" programs to refrain from pre-marital sex break that pledge within 18 months.
"But if you’ve got kids who’re saying, 'I’m going to abstain. I’m not gonna have sex.' So they’re not going to get pregnant. They’re not going to have a sexually transmitted disease. Isn’t that improving public health?" asks Bradley.
"Well, it would if they didn’t have sex," says Bearman. "But they do eventually have sex, and then they have unprotected sex, and that doesn’t protect you."
Based on those interviews with more than 20,000 young people who took virginity pledges, Bearman found that 88 percent of them broke their pledge and had sex before marriage.
What's worse is that in the meantime those same programs have told these kids that "condoms don't work" because they are only 98% Effective when used properly, and just 88% effective when misused. So not only are these teen still having sex, since they're been misled they're having unprotected sex - ala Bristol Palin.
"The downside is that, when they have sex, pledgers are one-third less likely to use condoms at first sex," says Bearman. "So all of the benefit of the delay in terms of pregnancy-risk and in terms of STD acquisition -- poof -- it just disappears because they’re so much less likely to use a condom at first sex."
Why do they not use condoms?
"They’ve been taught that condoms don’t work; they’re fearful of them. They don’t know how to use them," says Bearman. "Their peers don’t use them. They have no experience with them. They don’t know how to get them. They’re hard to get access to. For whatever reason they don’t use them, that has long-term consequences."
Other studies show that comprehensive sex education is far more effective than abstinence only programs.
Stoking the fire, a study published in the April edition of the Journal of Adolescent Health found that those who received comprehensive sex education were 50 percent less likely to become pregnant than those who received abstinence-only education. The study also found that those who received comprehensive sex education were 60 percent less likely to become pregnant than those who received no sex education at all.
"I do think that there's strong evidence that comprehensive sex education is more effective at preventing teen pregnancies," said Pamela Kohler, lead author of the study and program manager at the University of Washington's Center for AIDS and STD. "I think we pretty much debunked the myth that comprehensive sex education causes teenagers to have sex."
President Obama has restored funding for fully compreshensive Sex Education in, but whether the damage done by the wrong-headed ideas of Conservatives can be undone and the downward curve on the number of unwanted and unplanned pregnancies leading to abortions remains to be seen.
In this clip Bill O'Reilly seriously attempts to make the argument that the only torture that ever took place under George Bush was the Waterboarding of KSM, al Nishiri and Zubaidah. He chooses to ignore that report from the International Red Cross which shows that nearly everything they did to those men held in both the Black Sites, GITMO, Bagram AFB and Abu Ghraib was either cruelty or torture, not just what was done to those three. FBI Agent Soufan? and the CIA Inspector General's report have both debunked the claim that we found "valuable information" using these techniques, and that these actions were ILLEGAL (as Juan Williams eventually points out) to which O'Reilly says...
Billo: You can dance "the law" dance - all day long. Laws are passed by people and they can be changed.
Juan: Torture is Illegal
Billo: You're hiding behind semantics and meaning Juan rather than getting to the crux of the matter, the Attorney General ruled that Waterboarding was legal
Let just remind Bill that the Attorney General, is not A JUDGE and can't "RULE" on anything. Not to mention the fact that the memo which were issued to authorized various enhanced techniques were vigorously opposed by attornys in the State Dept and NSA, and were eventually all rescinded - while the authors of those memos are facing potentially disbarment.
Bill then goes on condemn George Tiller for his medical practice, which as Juan points out repeatedly, was completely within Kansas Law. There had been a trial of Dr. Tiller which ended in March, but unfortunately for O'Reilly rhetoric he was aquitted.
Kansas law prohibits aborting viable fetuses, which is generally midway through the second trimester, unless two doctors certify that continuing the pregnancy would cause the woman "substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function."[28] Tiller went on trial in March 2009, charged with 19 misdemeanors for allegedly consulting a second physician in late-term abortion cases who was not truly "independent" as required by Kansas state law.
O'Reilly claims that Tiller would perform abortions for "any reason", but that simply isn't true.
On the issue of the Recruitment Office Shooting and the Killing of Private Long, I agree that this issue has not been addressed or talked about nearly enough - but I don't think the reason is bias in the media against addressing Muslim Terrorism. I think the issue is simply that NO ONE IS ARGUING IN FAVOR OF THIS SHOOTING and making excuses for it the way that they are for the Killing of Dr. Tiller. Even in his own segment O'Reilly spend much more time arguing with Juan over Dr. Tiller and Gitmo than talking about Private Long, because there's no Controversy over that subject.
In this clip from Rachel former Evangelical Anti-Abortionist Frank Schaeffer calls out the Pro-Life movement for not standing up and helping to STOP the violence and vandalism which is occurring at Women's Clinics and attacks on Doctors.
If those people who are Pro-Life like this person here, don't want to be associated with murderers like Scott Roeder, they need to do more than just complain and whine when these types of crimes happen, they need to help stop them.
I sympathize which his feelings here, as a Black Man in American I know exactly what it's like to be held responsible for every other guy who might look a little bit like myself and have to deal with people and law enforcement who prejudge my likelihood of being a potential criminal based on generalizations and statistics that don't apply to me individually. Every time someone says "Black Men are 8 times more likely to go to Prison", and use that as a justification for Racial Profiling and disparate Sentencing, I get what it's like to be lumped into a group that you personally have nothing to do with.
However...
There are things that can be said in opposition to people like this one who made this comment in response to a Keith Olbermann clip on Youtube.
x FREE Scott Roeden is a HERO for killing Dr. Tiller!
They lie to us saying that "we are a nation of laws"...
Yet our courts have unjust "laws" that allow "doctors" to commit genocide and eugenics to murder thousands of innocent lives.
It is up to righteous people to break these laws and kill these murders!
Tiller killed over 60,000 innocent lives!
Killing terrorist Dr. Tiller was HEROIC!
Watch this video and then ask WHY Obama promotes killing babies:
watch?v=XghfFjVY_KU
This is the kind of person that drives us to talk about Domestic Terrorism and the danger of idolizing a murderer. This is the kind of person that is giving Pro-Life groups a bad name. This is the kind of person that needs to be opposed, or else this nation will soon be drowning in blood.
Just recently on Hardball, Laurence O'Donnell took on Pat Buchanan over the issue of whether President Obama should be Welcomed at Notre Dame. O'Donnell countered that despite his support of the Death Penalty and his war against an unarmed nation - both of which were opposed by the Catholic Church and the Pope - yet Bush was welcomed at Notre Dame without objection.
O'Donnell: Can you identify the Catholic principle that says that the killing of fetus is worse than the killing of an adult?
Buchannan: Everyone of those people in Texas (executed by Bush) was Guilty of Murder. We kill enemy soldiers in War Time, the lack of moral clarity here is astounding!
In any event, the principle set forth in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church remains valid: 'If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.'"
About the effectiveness and guaranteed Guilt of those under the Death Penalty. the Innocence Project would seem to shed considerable doubt as over the last decade over 200 persons have been found Completely Innocent of the charge, including those on Death Row and even four murder cases in Texas.
As the pace of DNA exonerations has grown across the country in recent years, wrongful convictions have revealed disturbing fissures and trends in our criminal justice system. Together, these cases show us how the criminal justice system is broken – and how urgently it needs to be fixed.
We should learn from the system’s failures. In each case where DNA has proven innocence beyond doubt, an overlapping array of causes of has emerged – from mistakes to misconduct to factors of race and class.
Countless cases Those exonerated by DNA testing aren’t the only people who have been wrongfully convicted in recent decades. For every case that involves DNA, there are thousands that do not.
Only a fraction of criminal cases involve biological evidence that can be subjected to DNA testing, and even when such evidence exists, it is often lost or destroyed after a conviction. Since they don’t have access to a definitive test like DNA, many wrongfully convicted people have a slim chance of ever proving their innocence.
Bottom line, there is currently no way to know exactly how many innocent people have been executed by the U.S., but the simple numbers indicate that it has happened and it will happen again.
The other issue is clearly abortion, many of the right have this as their signature issue - yet the stats over the past 30 years that when they've had the chance to implement genuine improvements - they've fallen down on the job. During the Clinton Administration there was a marked and DRAMATIC drop in the number of Abortions in the U.S. (most likely attributed to his comprehensive program of sex ed, and condom use)
Republican efforts at Abstinence Only programs have completely failed and put more and more of or young people at risk by arguing that "condoms don't work", even when they DO WORK 98% of the time when used properly. The result has actually caused an increase in teen pregnancies (Bristol Palin!?) and abortions for certain states (usually Red States) and a complete halt to the improvements that we had been seeing under President Clinton. (President Obama intends to re-instate the Clinton programs and bring the number of unwanted and unexpected pregnancies down - and so too the number of abortions)
Embryonic Stem Cell policy is another objection coming from some Catholics at Notre Dame, but the reality is that they have yet to offer a strategy that might possibly "save" the hundreds of thousands of fertilized and unused eggs that are currently being produced by fertility clinics. Until they successfully stage a project to conscript hundreds of thousand of women to adopt and donate use of their WOMBS to bring these egg/children to full term (not to mention feed, clothe and educate them for 18-20 years) they need to accept the reality that the vast majority of these potential lives are going to be lost. Just as we Strive for the Greater Good with organ donations, either the parents/donors have control of their own cells of their own body or they don't. It should be their choice, whether their cells/organs are to be adopted or to be donated to help save the life of others - not someone elses choice.
What I also find problematic in the "All Life is Sacred, except for those lives I don't like" approach is that it could easily be argued that infants are precisely as innocent as the "pre-born", yet America has a infant mortality rate that is frankly ridiculous. We lose 28,000 infants to poor health care every year, we are 29th in infant mortality among all industrialized nations - but still the "Right to Lifers", so often not only support the Death Penalty (even against the innocent), they oppose guaranteed Health Care for Children.
Why is it people can have a "Right to Life", but they can't have a "Right to Living Free of preventable Disease?
In the wake of the Supreme Court's landmark decision to ban so-called "partial-birth" abortions even when the health and life of the mother are endangered, it's about time we began to look at some of the likely results and consequences of this decision.
First lets start with what the legislation of the 108th Congress specifically prohibited under S[3]:
The Congress finds and declares the following:
(1) A moral, medical, and ethical consensus exists that the practice of performing a partial-birth abortion--an abortion in which a physician deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living, unborn child's body until either the entire baby's head is outside the body of the mother, or any part of the baby's trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother and only the head remains inside the womb, for the purpose of performing an overt act (usually the puncturing of the back of the child's skull and removing the baby's brains) that the person knows will kill the partially delivered infant, performs this act, and then completes delivery of the dead infant--is a gruesome and inhumane procedure that is never medically necessary and should be prohibited.
This proceedure as described is known as Dilation and Evacuation (D&X) and according to a report from Raw Story when this issue began to be originally raise in 1992, the proceedure which was invented in 1992, had only been performed twice on pregnancies older than 24 weeks (which is the Roe mandated cut-off).
In their act, the Congress argued that late-term abortions, whether they were before or after the cut-off, should be prohibited simply because the procedure itself induces labor and thus the baby once being "partially born" should be allowed to complete the process.
(H) Based upon Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992), a governmental interest in protecting the life of a child during the delivery process arises by virtue of the fact that during a partial-birth abortion, labor is induced and the birth process has begun. This distinction was recognized in Roe when the Court noted, without comment, that the Texas parturition statute, which prohibited one from killing a child `in a state of being born and before actual birth,' was not under attack. This interest becomes compelling as the child emerges from the maternal body. A child that is completely born is a full, legal person entitled to constitutional protections afforded a `person' under the United States Constitution. Partial-birth abortions involve the killing of a child that is in the process, in fact mere inches away from, becoming a `person'. Thus, the government has a heightened interest in protecting the life of the partially-born child.
Yet D&X or "partial-birth" isn't the only procedure that at this point to protect the health and/or life of the mother under conditions where the fetas has become essentially non-viable, but is not neccesarily still-born.
What the guys on sidewalks with giant pictures on sandwich boards don’t tell you is that {D&X} was developed as an alternative to an older, more ghastly procedure: dilation and evacuation. This is when the mother is partially dilated and some sort of grasping tool is used to pull the fetus out—piece by piece.
This procedure is somewhat dangerous to the mother, though, as bones begin to calcify at about 13 weeks gestation (24 weeks is the legal point of viability, at which time states are allowed to limit abortion rights), and shards or even entire body parts can be accidentally left in the uterus after the fetus is dismembered inside, causing infection and other injury.
Congratulations, right-to-lifers! Now that the safer alternative is illegal, this even more horrific procedure is what doctors will once again have to resort to. You haven’t stopped a single abortion, but you’ve placed the slutty mother’s life at risk. You must be proud.
So with all the above in mind, let's see what law describes as actions, if performed by a doctor ,are now a Federal Crime (and note that there are some loopholes and exceptions.)
Sec. 1531. Partial-birth abortions prohibited
`(a) Any physician who, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, knowingly performs a partial-birth abortion and thereby kills a human fetus shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both. This subsection does not apply to a partial-birth abortion that is necessary to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself. This subsection takes effect 1 day after the enactment.
`(b) As used in this section--
`(1) the term `partial-birth abortion' means an abortion in which the person performing the abortion--
`(A) deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living fetus until, in the case of a head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother, or, in the case of breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother, for the purpose of performing an overt act that the person knows will kill the partially delivered living fetus; and
`(B) performs the overt act, other than completion of delivery, that kills the partially delivered living fetus;
As I read this legislation, it appears that the two partial-birth abortions noted by Raw Story would be exempt from prosecution if it was likely the mother would die, but not neccesarily if she might be at risk of significant injury including sterility. The doctor in question would have to demonstrate to their local medical board that the life of the mother was at risk.
His other option would be to perform the far more risky, Dilation and Evacuation.
The question then is exactly who would fall into the group of women needing this procedure to protect their health, but are now prohibited from receiving this care by law?
According to this Chart from the CDC (below) Over the past 15 years the rate of abortions has taken a significant downturn.
It should be noted that several states (Alaska, California, West Virginia and Oklahoma) have not provide all of their data to the CDC since 1998, but even which that limitation this overall sampling is instructive. Between 1994 and 1998 the number of legal abortions recording by the CDC fell from a total 1,333,520 to 1,186,039 a total drop of 147,481 per year or 11%. However that level of decline has not continued, based on the available numbers - excluding the non-reporting states - 1998 total was 884,273 which by 2003 had reached 839,713 for a reduction of 44,560 per year or just 5.03%. In fact, between 2001 and 2002 the abortion rate actually increase by 1,400. (Which indicates that Howard Dean was quite right to say that abortions have increased under George W. Bush)
One truly alarming state is that fact that childen less than 15 are significantly more likely to have an abortion (in ratio to 1000 live births) than women of other ages. (See Figure 2)
Fortunately the stats indicate that only 4,581 such abortions occured in 2003 (only 0.6% of the total) however the general trend for the past several years has been for abortions specifically among teens and young teens to be on the increase, which may explain why the overall abortion numbers have remained essentially flat since 2002 (See Figure 3)
(From Table 5. Not shown) The 2003 stats for legal abortions for children less than 15 years of age is 4,229. In 2002 that figure was 4,196 which is the lowest it's been since the 70's, reversing the trend of previous years where in 2001 it was 4,319 and in 2000 it was 4,537.
Not only do children of this age range have a higher rate of seeking abortions, they also have a higher rate of seeking late abortions (after the first 16 weeks of gestation) where procedures such as "partial-birth" are more likely to be employed due a several problems with the fetus and/or pregnancy.
Even though the available CDC data indicates that only 1.4% of abortions occured after the 21 week gestation period (and prior to the 24 week cut-off) that still accounts for over 9.383 incidents in 2004. Clearly not all of these procedure would fall under "partial-birth" procedure and even for those that did, only some could legitimately be used to protect the life of the mother and thus be protected by the current exception in the law - while others would be prohibited.
The National Right to Life Coalition has claimed in 2003, using numbers from the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), which they assert are more accurate since they don't they survey doctors directly rather than depend on reporting through the states, that the number of "partial-birth" abortions in 2000 was over 2200.
For the second survey in a row, AGI asked abortionists how many of what it calls "Dilation and Extraction" (D&X) abortions the abortionists performed. These are partial-birth abortions. AGI projects there were some 2,200 performed in 2000, which it says represents only 0.17% of all abortions.
At this point it's very difficult to tell exactly what the impact will be. It's possible that some doctors may attempt to dodge the law in order to fulfill thier hippocratic oath and preserve not just the life but also the health of their patients. Some may simply option for the riskier, but apparently still legal evacuation procedure since no actual birth, partial or otherwise occurs. And still another group may comply with the law and allow severe injury to their female patients in order to protect themselves from prosecution and jail.
But what we do know is that a high and growing proportion of these women will be young girls, particularly teenages under the ages of 19 and even 15 who will be permently affective by this supreme court decision for the remainder of their lives - if they're lucky enough to survive at all.
Please enjoy this post while listening to the sweet sounds of Selling Jesus by Skunk Anansie.... tis fitting accompanyment
"They want your soul and your money, blood and your bones..."
Yet again we've entered the silly season - and the Global War on Christmas and Common Sense™ has yet again treared it's very ugly head, so I decided to do a bit of opposition research and find out exactly what's on the agenda of Wingnut Christians?
What I found seemed fairly innocuous on the surface - but once you began scratching things started to turn ugly quite quickly.
I spent part of Sunday afternoon listening to KKLA Radio (The Voice of Faith and Reason) in Los Angeles, and a show called "Life on the Line" which discussed the issue of abortion. Mostly what I found though wasn't that they were making any specific arguements against abortion - although they did do some bragging about shutting down a number of abortion clinics - it was mostly about recruitment and organization for their "Army of Life".
The host of this show is someone many of us have grown familiar with, it was Father Frank Pavone.
At first I couldn't place him, the name didn't register with me immediately until I finally recalled Terri Schiavo. Father Frank was the pastor who had sat with Hannity outside Terri's Hospice, where he was joined by Operation Rescue's Randal Terry.
During the show none of this was discussed, certainly not Mr. Terry's connection to the bombings of abortion clinics and the murder of doctors, the programs goal instead was to help foster chapters of like-minded "Pro-Life" Christians across the nation - and they repeatedly pointed to a series of anti-abortion talking points located on their website.
For example, who would not acknowledge the right people have to be free of the type of coercion we hear about in the "one-child policy" of China? The freedom to seek to raise a family, with the number of children one desires, within the framework of moral law, is a right that needs to be defended from efforts to coerce one either to have or not to have children.
But there is a big difference between the choice to have a child and the choice to kill a child. Because abortion kills a child who already exists, it is in no way a "right."
One wonders conversly, is there a right to kill a mother? Pro-Life advocates often seem to completely ignore the health issues and dangers which a problem pregnancy can place a mother. There are many conditions where a mother can be harmed by a pregnancy, particular if the pregancy is echtopic (where the fetus has lodged itself in one of felopian tubes, instead of the womb). An abortion in this case may be the only method to save the mother's life.
Pro-Life advocates have also strongly argued against all forms of late-term abortions, even when the fetus can not be saved - (or else we'd be discussing a pre-mature birth) and the health and life of the mother remain at serious risk. How is their position "Pro-Life" at all, since their insistence that the procedure not be performed would leave all parties dead on severaly injured?
The language of the supporters of legal abortion in our country includes many references to "rights." This is true also on an international level. At the present time, moreover, abortion supporters are seeking to declare abortion to be an international right and even a "human right."
What is the purpose of an attempt like that, and how is it being made?
The purpose is to circumvent whatever progress may be made on national levels to maintain or restore legal protection to the pre-born. Many countries still have such protection on some level. But many more are drawn into the fierce battle over whether that should remain the case. Each side, moreover, sees the right they are defending as an absolute.
Hold your horses there. I do not believe that the pro-choice position is so irresponsible as to claim they abortion is an absolute right. Pro-Lifers often make the claim that Pro-Choices want "abortion on demand for any reason and at any time" and that simply isn't supportable.
Pro-Choicers support contraception, which would make an abortion completely unneccesary, especially use of emergency contraception which - much like the Catholic approved "Rhythm Method" - seeks both to avoid fertilization and and to prevent any potentially fertilized eggs from attaching to the uterin wall - yet Pro-Lifers oppose contraception. Odd, no?
No matter what the majority may say to the contrary, we will always maintain that the right to life must be protected. Abortion supporters have also admitted that whatever the majority may say to the contrary, the "right" to abortion must be protected. With a world made ever smaller by modern communication, the battle is more and more about the international right to life.
The effort to make abortion an international "right" is being advanced by means of United Nations Conferences, and by a particular combination of phrases and declarations. "Women's rights are human rights" is one of the code phrases now used in such circles.
And the converse would be "Women aren't Human?"
When this is combined with the assertion, "Women have reproductive rights" and the further assertion that "the human rights of women are universal," then despite the truths that can be found in each of these statements, the door is also opened to the conclusion that the right to obtain an abortion is a reproductive right which is universal and, in fact, a human right. A country, then, which protects its unborn children by law, would be seen as offending human rights which should be enforced internationally.
So from here you can see the push to circumvent international law, and international human rights as being anti-Life, or rather anti-pre-Life. Hence we see the strong right-wing support for anti-Internationalist such as former recess UN Ambassdor John Bolton.
To Pavone, American Law is higher than International Law - and oh-by-the-by God's Law is higher still.
The Human Rights angle is an attempt to oversimplify this argument, the truth is that the problem here is one of comparitive rights -- if both Mother and Child have a right to live, and most would agree that the do, the question truly is whose rights are dominant?
Pro-Lifers are failing to address that question, because it undermines so much of their point, thus you can see their attempt here to undermine the very existence of Women's Rights and Mother's Rights. To them Women have to rights over controlling their own reproductive processes and abilities other than that of being a benign vessel, mere chattle to serve the devine purpose of procreation.
They fear choice, because choice means freedom as well as responsibiity.
Most people admit that abortion is wrong; surveys show, in fact, that half of all Americans are willing to call it "murder." (See, for example, the January 1998 New York Times/CBS News Poll).
Yet a disturbing number of these same people will not do anything to stop it. They say, "I believe abortion is wrong, but I do not want to impose my morality on others." In other words, it's wrong, but it's a private wrong. If I think it's wrong, I won't do it. If someone else does it, that's none of my business.
Call me a nitpicker - but 1998 was almost a decade ago. What do people think now?
Here's a Web poll from About.com asks: If abortion really is murder, should there be exceptions for the life and health of the mother?
No, the exceptions are hypocritical. No mother would kill her child to save herself. (93) 26%
Yes for the life of the mother, no for her health. (28) 7%
Yes for the health of the mother, no for her life. (3) 0%
Yes for both the life and health of the mother. (118) 33%
I don't know. (8) 2%
I don't care. (104) 29%
In this case - the "Yes, even if abortion is Murder, there should be legal exceptions to protect the health and life of the mother" - Wins.
Here's another web poll (again not scientific) that currently shows that 43% consider Abortion a Choice, while 38% consider it Murder, while 18% say it's "Not That Simple".
Opinions vary, but I would tend to opt for Door Number #3 myself.
Back to Father Frank.
This attitude has been expressed in a bumper sticker that says, "Against Abortion? Don't have one!" and in the assertion that the opposing sides in this controversy should simply "Agree to disagree."
Yet we simply don't look at most moral problems this way. We do not hear people say, "I would never abuse my child, but if the other person wants to do so, that’s her choice." Nor do they say, "I would never commit a violent crime, but if someone else chooses to do so, that's none of my business."
Thusly, one womans reproductive choices become an issue for the community and society to address - because you see - it's child abuse. Or rather Pre-Child Abuse.
The fact is that some choices have victims, and when somebody’s choice destroys somebody else’s life, that’s everybody's business. It is, after all, the business of love to intervene to save our brothers and sisters in need.
Call me a cynic, but listening to a Catholic Priest prattle on about how people should intervene to prevent harm to "our brothers and sisters" when the Catholic Church refused to do exactly that when their own Priests were abusing our "our brothers and sisters" -- ok, mostly brothers - leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But maybe, that's just me. Certainly the sentiment is laudable, at least in theory.
People need to know that abortion is their business. They need to de-isolate the issue. People understand that we have to intervene to help the poor, the AIDS victim, the drug addict, the victim of crime and war. Even if we do not know their names, or have never seen the faces of these victims, we know it is our business to help them. There is no reason to isolate abortion in a category of its own, where all the rules of human decency suddenly change. Who is the child scheduled to be aborted today? That child is your sister, your brother.
Again more unintended irony/comedy. A post on a site entirely dedicated to the issue of abortion which is in support of a radio show entirely dedicated to the issue of abortion is claiming that "There is no reason to isolate abortion in a category of it's own".
That's a good one. Henny Youngman needs material like this.
The truly funny part is that he's correct, Abortion shoudln't be isolated and divorced from other life issues such as War and -gasp - Healthcare. How can you argue that everyone has a right to live, but they don't have a right to have access to the tools, facilities and personel who can save their lives?
The first thing that has to be noted when examining the relationship between abortion and child abuse is that abortion is child abuse.
So things have relationships with themselves now? Is that like Auto-erotica?
Dismembering a born child would certainly be considered among the worst possible forms of abuse. Medical textbooks and court testimonies use the very same word, "dismemberment," to describe what is done to an unborn child by abortion. How, then, is this not child abuse?
Technically, no argument. And what kind of abuse is allowing a mother to die from an echtopic pregnancy because there are no qualified clinics or doctors available to deal with reproductive health issues and preform a neccesary D&C procedure to protect that woman's future ability to have children? (A procedure my own wife received after both an echtopic pregnancy and a miscarriage a decade ago.)
Oh, wait that's right - Women aren't human - and stuff.
Follow me now as we take a trip into the Crusian elements of Father Frank's argument.
Allowing the abuse of an unborn child, then, creates an atmosphere in which -- more quietly and secretly -- we justify the abuse of born children. The child becomes the scapegoat for our unresolved conflicts. As the Israelites in the Old Testament placed their sins upon the goat, who was then led out into the desert, we allow the child, particularly when still in the womb, to suffer for our sins.
The two forms of child abuse -- on the unborn (abortion) and on the born -- reinforce each other by a mutual causality. Abortion results in more post-partum depression, which inhibits bonding with subsequent children. Conversely, the wounds of abuse are echoed in the essentially self-destructive act of abortion later in life.
Vicious Cycle that - abuse, abort, abuse, abort - is this like a bad romance novel or what? He goes on about the Child Abuse angle for a while, both here and here. But I think we already have the gist. Abortion is bad. Mm 'kay?
This is not a debate about whether or not we should do research to assist the perennial fight against disease. The Church does not oppose research. But the task of research, the efforts to cure disease, and the ability to manipulate nature has certain moral parameters. Consider some history.
The prosecution in the World War II War Crimes Trials pointed to a key source of the deterioration of ethics which resulted in the Nazi killing program. That book was "The Release of the Destruction of Life Devoid of Value," by Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche. Hoche was a doctor of medicine. He writes,
"A child was sick with a rare and scientifically interesting brain disease and was almost certain to die within 24 hours. If that child would die in the hospital, I would have the opportunity by autopsy to find out the reason for the sickness...It would have been easy to give the child an injection of morphine to hurry his death by a few hours. I did not because my personal desire for scientific research was not an important enough good to overcome the obligation of medical ethics. It would have been a different question, however, if to decide as mentioned in the present case would have resulted in the saving of many lives. The question would have had to be answered yes because of the higher good."
Ok, so first off - he's using Nazi doctors to make his point. Always a wise choice to tug the heart hate strings.
Second off, he didn't need to play the Nazi-card because his arguement is pretty much Star Trekian.
"The Needs of the Many, Outweight the needs of the Few - or the One!"
The main problem with this argument is that the blastocysts which would be used for this experimentation - are going to be disgarded anyway.
In his scenario, the child is going to die within 24 hours anyway -- so why exactly does he need to "Hurry his death" in order to perform the autopsy, did the kid have a hot date in 12 hours?. I don't mean to be crass, but what was the rush? It seems it would be perfectly ethical to let him die naturally, and request permission from (him if possible and) his parents for a autopsy to help others.
Most of the thousands upon thousands of fertilzed embryos which are currently being held in storage as a result of invitro fertilization will eventually - die. They can not be kept viable forever. Now, I think most of us all three sides (our side, their side and the truth) of this argument support the idea of having these embryos adopted and implanted into willing surrogate mothers - and I find it quite interesting that Father Pavone never even attempts to find recruits for such adoptions in his entire argument, although as I mentioned above he's doing plenty of recruiting - that option simply isn't possible for the vast majority of them.
Wouldn't it be insteresting if just half the people who Father Pavone would have standing out in front of Abortion Clinics were instead - out adopting unwanted children?
Why is it the Pro-Life crowds seems to stop caring about the young once they're no longer Pre-Children. Why don't they care about pre-natal healthcare? Why did their Lord and savior George W. Bush sign the Texas Futile Care Law which allowed a Hospital to decide to shutoff life-support to a 6-month old baby against the wishes of her mother, simply because of her inability to pay for the care?
Why doesn't the "Culture of Life" spend any of their energy - on the Living?
The truth is that their goal here isn't to protect and defend the innocent - it's to grow their own ranks, it's to increase their own power in influence in the nation and the world. It was clear from listening to that station the Christianity is Big F-ing Bu$iness..
They're Selling Jesus to the masses like Big Macs and Quarter-Pounders.
The most chilling section of Pavone's radio show was the end - whereas we all know that Jesus never addressed the subject of abortion - Pavone claims that he did address this when he said during the last supper to "Remember him".
Pavone deconstructed this statement to - "Re-member" - meaning to keep and bring the members of his church together and to avoid letting them be "Dis-Membered" as they would be in - wait for it - an abortion!
Reality TV is generally a wasteland of amped up game shows gone all voyeur on our asses.
Instead of spending 30 minutes each week (or weekday) watching a new set of contestants vying for some extravagant prize (A New Car - A Dinette Set - or maybe a Million Dollars) by answering trivial persuit questions, squeezing through a water willie - we get to watch the same people for 24/7 for 6 months.
Oh Joy.
But there is a reality show that actually has an extra Supersized dose of Reality in it - and that's Morgan Spurlock's 30 Days on FX. If there was ever a show with the potential and power to truly reshape hearts and minds this is the one.
This show takes one person with a particular ideological or political bent, and asks them to live 30 Days in the shoes of someone else they completely disagree with.
In the first season we had a devout Christian spending 30 Days living with and living as a Muslim in middle America. There are no guarantees, no scripting. Anything could happen. The visitor could change their opinion, the family/person they're living with could change, or neither could learn or discover anything they didn't already know or feel.
The season premeir this week featured, as the show usually does, one person with a decidedly Red-State-of-Mind in the midst of Blue Staters. In this case it was a Minuteman - fresh from the Arizona border where he had been doing his best to "protect this nation from invaders who wish to destroy it" -- who voluanteered to live with a family of illegals in Los Angeles for 30 Days.
Frank the Minuteman was himself a Cuban Immigrant, spoke fluent spanish -- but like many Cuban's (including Alberto Gonzales) have become since the Bay of Pigs and Elian Gonzales incidents - he was virilently right-wing. "The Law is the Law. The only right these people have is the right to be deported."
Frank moved into a cramped one bedroom apartment with a family of seven - led by Rigoberto and his wife Patty who had crossed into the U.S. 12 years ago bringing his wife and oldest children. The two youngest were born in the U.S.
During the first portion of the show, there were some predictable debates back and forth - mostly between Frank and Rigoberto's oldest daughter Armida (a 3.8 grade ave High School senior with hopes of attending Priceton) on the issues of immigration, and the relative rights of persons who've violated U.S. immigration laws.
They attended immigration rallies together. Frank :" These people chanting 'U.S.A' don't really mean it. And what's with the Che Guevara t-shirts - doesn't that represent Revolution?" He was pretty far gone. There was even on fairly scary moment when the depth of his anger become evident as Frank pounded on the table to emphasize his point that "Illegal Immigration is a crime".
The various members of the family tried, but they couldn't break through, as Rigoberto told his Armida - in spanish - "He has to make his own decision, you can't change the world". But one thing that Frank did respond to was the caring and commitment that the family had for each other, how generous and giving their were to allow him in their hom and how hard Rigoberto worked as a handyman collecting $20 to $30 at a time doing odd jobs to provide for them.
Not being a man of stone, Frank eventually warmed to them, particular Patty as he helped her pick up cans and plastic for recycling for small change ($2-3 at a time) which she dutifully put away into a can to help buy Christmas presents for the children. (So far she had saved about $30 for the year -- and from what I could tell this was somewhere around May) When Patty spoke of her parents and Rigoberto's brother who were still living in Mexico and not being able to risk seeing them for the last 12 years - his children only remembering their grandparents dimly - Frank understood as an immigrant himself how heart-wrenching that could be, so he voluanteered to take a trip into Mexico to visit their parents.
While there, he had a chance to see first hand the conditions that Rigoberto's brother lived in. Decades of filth caked on the floors - "You can't clean this - it's just packed into the walls and floors". Cockroaches everywhere. He met the grandparents, and then Rigoberto's brother offered to show him where Rigoberto used to live in Mexico.
It was a shack.
Not even that, it had only two brick walls and a curtain for a front door. After 12 years the local plants had grown into the middle of the single room building. It had no running water. No heating. No air conditioning. No toilet. (They went out in the bushes). They ran a hose from down the street for water, and also had a nearby well -- which when Frank saw it had turned into a filthy disgusting mudhole.
It was at this point that Frank finally realized what the consquences of his "Just send them back to Mexico" rhetoric really meant to these people. He realized why Rigoberto's daughter tried so hard in school, why Rigoberto worked so hard doing odd jobs - yet continued to wish for the oppurtunity to start his own business using his mind and his hands. An oppurtunity he will never get without documentation.
He finally got it. Telling him wasn't enough, he had to see it for himself and then he understood. He wouldn't have stayed in Mexico if he had to do so under those conditions and there was simply no work to be had, no chance to make life better for your family - if there was no hope.
It was an amazing turn around. Not that Frank didn't still believe in our immigration laws, he did - he simply felt that some other options need to be explored. The situation isn't so black and white as he'd once thought.
If a man this hardened in his beliefs can learn to change his view, if he can progress and begin to empathise with those he formerly thought of only as freeloaders and criminals - there just might be hope for many of the rest of us yet.
The next Episode of 30 Days is airing tonight, featuring an American who had lost his job to outsourcing an decides to go to India to get it back. Future Episodes will flip the script on the Red/Blue dynamic that has dominated the show so far and place an Athiest in the middle of Christian Church, as well as an Abortion Supporter in the middle of Pro-Life group.
FYI I have no personal or professional affiliation with FX Networks, I just happen to think this show is far more than just a bunch of mindless visual pablum - it accomplishes what I think is the highest aspiration of telecommunications - to speak on issues that matter, are important, and potentially very powerful. Maybe I'm wrong - but you all should at least give it a chance to see for yourself. Besides giving Conservatives a red-hot truth injection, It might even manage to change a few Blue-Stater ideas about the Red States.
The challenges and conflicts we face on many issues, from Religion to Immigration to Terrorism and all challenging - but not insurmountable. If we approach them with empathy and understanding instead of anger - we just might find a way through them. We certainly won't if we don't bother to try.
One of the definitions of madness is the repetition countless times of the same action, always expecting a different result. For more than half a century, the Israelis have been applying the tactic of massively disproportionate retaliation to every provocative act of resistance attempted by the Palestinians, expecting every time that this would bring peace and security to all the people of the Holy Land. Every single time they have done this this, it has backfired. Every single time.
The national philosophy (it is really deeper and more significant that just a military tactic) that underlies this devotion to massive over-reaction, and particularly its corollary, collective punishment, is obviously and demonstrably foolish and futile. It does not intimidate or deter the Palestinians, and it never will. It hardens their determination to resist and to defy. I don't care whether you consider the Palestinians to be terrorists or common criminals or freedom fighters or national resistance heroes. If you are an intelligent and sensitive human being, you learn from your past mistakes and you make a rational decision to try something different. The Israeli leadership for all these many generations has been incapable of performing that really rather simple mental and moral exercise.
This morning Condoleeza Rice stated that the thought that our efforts in Iraq have destabalized the region is "Grotesque". From Thinkprogress:
Today on ABC's This Week, George Stephanopoulos pointed out that the Bush administration repeatedly promised that war in Iraq would bring peace and stability to the Middle East. But as the recent violence in the Middle East has shown, the region has actually fallen deeper into instability and unrest since the war began. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Stephanopoulos it was "grotesque" to suggest that the Iraq war contributed to that instability. Watch it:
But basic common sense tells us that destabalization is exactly what is occuring. As America's reputation for the potential to project overwhelming military superiority has begun to fade in the wake of Iraq, so has the similar reputation of our putative ally Israel. The fear of retribution for striking out and kidnapping not just civilians, but American and Israeli Soldiers has been dulled, meanwhile the anger at our ongoing occupation of what was a formerly soveriegn country has begun to increase. Cynicism has begun to creep in as was recently shown by an exchange between President Bush and Russian President Putin this week. (Thinkprogress again)
During a press conference today at the G8 summit in Russia, President Bush told President Vladimir Putin that Americans want Russia to develop a free press and free religion "like Iraq." To laughter and applause, Putin responded: "We certainly would not want to have same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, quite honestly." CNN's Ed Henry called it a "tough jab." Watch it:
The exchange underscores how the war in Iraq has damaged the standing of the United States, to the point where even modest encouragement for democratic reform is met with ridicule.
Outside the protective bubble of his handlers and neo-con syncophants, Bush's Imperialistic Bullshit gets the response it deserves. Laughter.
While we continue to flounder about in Iraq - maybe we're staying, maybe we're not - Baghdad teeters on the brink of collapse.
In just 24 hours before noon yesterday, as parliament convened for another emergency session, 87 bodies were brought to Baghdad city morgue, 63 of them unidentified. Since Sunday's massacre in Jihad, more than 160 people have been killed, making a total of at least 1,600 since Iraq's Government of national unity came to power six weeks ago. Another 2,500 have been wounded.
In early June, Nouri al-Maliki, the new Prime Minister, flooded Baghdad's streets with tens of thousands of soldiers and police in an effort to restore order to the capital.
More recently, he announced a national reconciliation plan, which promised an amnesty to Sunni insurgents and the disbandment of Shia militias. Both initiatives are now in tatters.
"The country is sliding fast towards civil war," Ali Adib, a Shia MP, told the Iraqi parliament this week. "Security has deteriorated in a serious and unprecedented way," said Saadi Barzanji, a Kurdish MP.
Mr al-Maliki told parliament: "We all have a last chance to reconcile and agree among each other on avoiding conflict and blood. If we fail, God knows what the fate of Iraq will be."
Israel's efforts to break the back of the Hezbollah Militia in southern Lebanon may be very likely to suffer a fate similar to our own in Iraq. As was noted Friday on Keith Olbermann as he spoke with Newsweeks chief Whitehouse correspondant, very often the way that tyranical regimes are brought down are internally. Caesar was taken down by the Roman Senate. Nixon was taken out by his own White House Council John Dean - who remains to this day a "Goldwater Conservative" - and eventually by then RNC Chairman George H.W. Bush - who finally told Nixon "it's time to go".
Hezbollah in Lebanon has to be taken out by the Lebonese government itself. Israel can and should aid in this transition, but to take the lead role in reorganizing someone elses country is to take responsibility for it in total. As Colin Powell once said - "You break it - you own it". Is Isreal ready to own Lebanon, as we now own Iraq? Have they even bothered to plan that far?
Apparently not content to let the U.S. do a self-immolation act in the Middle East by itself, Israel decided to set itself on fire by invading Lebanon. Burn baby burn? Like George Bush, Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, never served in a combat unit and launched military operations without thinking the matter through. In fact, Olmert reportedly never even served in the military. I raise this because there is one simple question Israel cannot answer about the current operations--what is their strategic military objective. Olmert has somehow persuaded the Israeli military to ignore strategy, think tactically, and in the process become really stupid. The events in the next several weeks will expose as myth the canard that you can secure a nation by killing terrorists. No you can't.
What about Hamas and Hezbollah?
Yes, what indeed. In Palestine Hamas is now leading their Democratically Elected Government - but with the Bush Doctrine to spread Democracy through pre-emption, shouldn't the U.S. have respect for the tenents of Democracy, respect the will of the Palastinian people and at least try to work with Hamas -- or does that rule only apply when you happen to agree with the party currently in power?
If the definition of a "terrorist" is one that stages unwarranted attacks on innocents - how does George Bush escape the charge? Or better yet, how does the Republican Party? Many who like to state the George Bush is a Terrorist are missing the big picture, Bush is merely a figurehead - an enabler - for a policy that has been in the formative stages for nearly 30 years. The truth isn't the Bush is a terrorist, that being far too narrow a view, the neo-con wing of the Republican Party is a terrorist organization.
Palestine elected terrorist into their governent, and so did we.
And in some ways, so is the Government of Israel as well as the Hezbollah militia's they are currently battling in southern Lebanon. The methods employed by Bush and the current Israeli government are reckless and irresponsible. They might consider it "leaning forward" -- others, fucking insanity. They aren't winning the ideological battle, simple creating more hardened enemies.
The sillyness has even begun to find it's way onto the screens of Faux News:
This morning on Fox News Sunday, [PNAC Signatory] William Kristol argued that the Bush administration's "coddling" of Iran had "invited" the latest aggression, and that the United States should join in the current fighting. Juan Williams pushed back:
You just want war, war, war, and you want us in more war. You wanted us in Iraq. Now you want us in Iran. Now you want us to get into the Middle East. ... You're saying, why doesn't the United States take this hard, unforgiving line? Well, the hard and unforgiving line has been, we don't talk to anybody. We don't talk to Hamas. We don't talk to Hezbollah. We're not going to talk to Iran. Where has it gotten us, Bill?
Kristol threw up his hands and didn't answer. Watch it:
Well, War is good for business after all. Got to keep those military contractors profits up.
I really don't know where all this is leading us, particularly since these events in Lebanon seem to getting the Rapture Right ready for their Beginning of the Armageddon Party.
Via The Talent Show--I too am soooo excited!! I get goose bumps, literally, when I watch what's going on in the M.E.!! But, yes, it is most indeed a time to be happy and excited
And look, the new Left Behind Video Game where kids learn the tactics they'll need as Holy Christian soldiers to sweep all unbelievers from the streets of New York should be ready just in time for the increasing violence in Lebanon to finally reach our own shores.
Chip Berlet has reported on how the game fronts for, and helps to market Tim LaHaye' brand of hateful hateful ideology. In Berlet's view:
So the outcome of Tim LaHaye's "non-fiction" writing, the Left Behind series of novels, and the video game, is the training of young Christian evangelicals to rebel against the elected government of the United States when they decide government leaders are in service to the antichrist. And the task for these young Crusaders is to gun down the agents of Satan and their witting and unwitting allies among the ranks of the non-believers.
And from the Left Behind novels, we know this list is likely to include not just secularists, but also homosexuals, feminists, abortion providers, as well as Jews, Catholics, Hindus, and Muslims...especially Muslims.
Well, isn't that just Special?
Of course, we back in America need not worry right now - not with the right honorable George W. Bush in charge. No, George is just going to completely bungle and fuck-up the Middle-east and the Christian (wing-nut) Army is certain to keep thier weapons holstered until the time is right.
Sure things are pretty bad right now, the fucking nutballs are running the asylum, but just don't let a Democrat (who might actually have some solutions to the middle east issues and stuff) come into office -- that'll fuck up the wingbat's master plan and the shit will be on. Seriously.
<> The other day I wrote a diary Liberal Bashing : The New Racism, where in I examined how the vicious Hate Speach of the Coulters & Bradleys we see now has it's roots in the same blind rabid fear and loathing of blacks, gays, jews and women that America has struggled with for centeries. Since Liberals aren't identified as a unique ethnic class, invective can be hurled at them that would otherwise be recognized for exactly what it is. Hate Speach. Threaten to round up all the Liberals and Gitmotize them, and people may either scowl or chuckle -- but they don't see that these people are more than a little serious about that, and in the process a great many blacks, jews and latinos will be on the firing line first.
In this diary I reveal the behind-the-curtain story that help prompt my observation.
Some who responded to my diary here and on Democratic Underground were actually offended by the suggestion that Liberals may be facing discrimination that is comparable to what Blacks faced during Slavery, Jim Crow, Racial Profiling, Violent Gay Bashing or anti-semitism. Besides the obvious self-centeredness of presuming that one persons victimaztion somehow dimishes anyone elses, the fact is that the War on Liberals actually is developing a body count, as I stated in one comment.
On your broader point on the persectution of Liberals, I think we saw it happen rather violently at Kent State 36 years ago.
There's the case of the Federal Employee with the pro-Peace Bumper stickers being harrassed and forced to move his car by Homeland Security.
"Free Speach Zones". People tossed out of public speeches for the wrong signs and again, bumper-stickers.
Who was Eric Rudolph really targeting with the Atlanta Olymbic Bombing or his previous attacks on Abortion Clinics? What was the Oklahoma City bombing really about - especially considering it was inspiried directly by the "Turner Diaries"?
Just look at who the ACLU FOIA requests have revealed the FBI and NSA are spending thier time surveilling - instead of Al Qaeda?
Imagine if these same activities were occuring, harrasment, arrests, bombings, survellance simply because these people were part of a racial or ethnic group - rather than simply having a particular point of view, one which they have every right to have?
These events are far from an accident or coincidence, a new Jim Crow is coming - in fact, it may already be here.
In his book "Blinded by the Right", former Conservative Hatchet Man David Brock describes his gradual rise through the hard-core Neo-con circles, how he eventually reached a personal crisis point and began a radical shift in his own life and political orientation that eventual led to his founding of Media Matters, to help combat the exact same right-wing media spin and smear tactics that he himself had perfected during the "Trooper-Gate" years.
In the process he had ample oppurtunity to see many of our favorite Conservative pundits not only with their hair down, but sometimes their pants too.
If you don't know David Brock is openly gay, but that is a fact that he hid for many long years as he hurled word grenades at Liberals for the Moonie Times and later the Scaif funded American Spectator. Eventually he was outed, not voluantarily - and he found his relationships with his various Conservative friends changed little - at least on the surface.
It turns out the one of his best friends during this period, after his outing but before his eventual enlightenment was Laura Ingraham - whom he profiles in the book.
Though Gringrich, Limbaugh, and the Spectator already had substituted name-calling for reasoned conservative discourse, Ingraham and a merry band of imitators would bring Limbaugh meanness to millions of American television viewers, stigmatizing Gringichism as ignorant and inane. Laura also was a symbol of trouble Newt's revolution would have in establishing a broad-based appeal to women; she requently attacked feminisim for making women unhappy and resentful, while betraying those same qulities in her commentary. Laura's stock-in-trade was the politically incorrect sound bite. Showing up at one interview in a full-length fox coat, she mocked the "squealing baby foxes, which were cute when they were alive"
Yeah, she's a bitch - that much is clear. One who thrives on her bitchiness, but exactly how did this anti-feminist homophobe behave behind closed doors with opening gay comrade-in-arms Brock?
...of all the conservatives I had met since coming to Washington, I grew closes to Laura. For several months after we met in November 1994, we were inseparable companions. Laura drew me out of my shell; she helped me to relax and enjoy myself among the conservatives. She was amuch more prodigious networker than I was, and she was also a wicked gossip, befriending the likes of Rush Limbaugh and George Will, then repeating their often creepy confidences to me.
Considering what they often say On the Air one can only imagine what David Brock would find creepy by comparison.
Though I was now out of the closet, my socializing was still strictly confined to the conservative political orbit, and I had no romantic life. The more esconced I became in the conservative firmament, the more I felt that it would be easier for the conservatives to accept a nonpracticing homosexual.
So you see, Conservatives have no problem with Gay people - as long as they don't like, act gay - ever.
Laura took the place of a mate. We were out on the town virtually every night together, cohosted seveal parties and dinners at my home, and vacations in souther California with the Huffingtons. [Long before Arriana's split with her gay husband Michael and her own eventual disenchantment with the right] We shared a lot of laughs. Despite her public persona as a voice of Gingrichism, I also saw in Laura a glimmer of humanity, softness and vulnerability, buried beneath all of the role-playing. In candid moments, she confided she didn't believe much of what she was saying on the airwaves. Channeling into our politics our emotional problems [in Laura's case, the pain of a difficult childhood, and her tortured relations with men, whether married or not], we were both trapped in devices of our own making.
So for all you who always suspected that many on the right has been projecting their own inner demons on Liberals, Blacks and the rest of the world, your theories are now confirmed, at least in Laura's case. But how does a gay man become best friends with a rabid homophobe like Ingraham? Denial isn't just river in Egypt.
I hadn't known of Laura's antigay past at Darthmouth, where, along with her then-boyfriend Dinesh D'Souza, she had participated in the infamous outing of gay students, who were branded "sodomites," until I cringed as I read about her Dartmouth Review exploits in a 1997 profile in Vanity Fair. To make matters worse, I was quoted int the piece saying that Laura was unreserevedly accepting of homosexuality, which in my pressence she always had seemed to be.
Let me just stop to point out that Dinesh D'Souza is the author of "The End of Racism" a vicious anti-Liberal tract. (Ironically, If you Google "The End of Racism", the number one hit is a scatching review I did of the book ten years ago still posted on Geocities) According to D'Souza Racism will continue to plague us because of Liberals and the Civil Rights Act, and once we do away with both - things will be oh, so much better.
After reading the article I was chagrined and felt used but never confronted Laura about it, though Congresman Barney Frank, the openly gay Democrat from Massachusetts, did. At a black-tie gala at the Washinton Building Museum, Frank and his companion spotted Laura and me milling through the crowd. Frank approached us and proceeded to denounce Laura's history of gay bashing. I remained mute during the harangue, because I agreed with everything Frank was saying. He then turned to me and snapped, "And if you want to front her, that's fine." I was speechless, red-faced and humiliated. Of course, Frank was right, but I didn't have the courage or self-regard to do anything about it. Blithely, I continued to revel in the gossip-page glitz and heartless sarcasm of my right-wing fag hags--the Ariannas, the Lauras, and the Ann Coulters. {Brock had met Coulter during her Scaif funded behind the scenes work in support of the Paula Jones Case] At this point in life, this transparently empty right-wing circle was all I had.
It wasn't until much later that Brock finally rediscovered his missing spine and realized that Ingraham was role-playing with him, that she still harbored the same homophobic sentiments she'd expressed at Dartmouth and because he was a weapon in their war against the hated Liberals - they tolerated him and allowed him (limited) access into their inner circles, then trashed him behind his back on a regular basis.
To some extent the Naked Hate Speach we've seen coming from the right for the last decade and a half is merely role-playing as Brock mentions. And in some ways it's something much deeper, something driven by their own self-loathing - and like a classic bully they lash out at that which they fear may be a part of their own makeup, yet when those they attack finally stand-up and pop them in the nose -- they immediately collapse on the floor crying and whining, calling for the teacher to protect them from the mean, bad Liberal.
One of the comments on my original diary hit the nail on the head in to response to the issue of whether Liberal bashing is always code for bashing minorities, or whether sometimes the targets really are Liberals themselves.
.Good point about how codes aren't always in play. The people in charge on the right really DO hate liberals and liberal policies...and they ALSO use liberal as code for other groups.
Here's a thought (drawing a little on Thomas Frank's ideas): The people who are really in charge on the right - the corporate plutocrats, the old-money elites, the people who dump the money into the right-wing foundations and think tanks and elections - really do hate liberalism itself, because liberal policies cut into their power. They may also actually be prejudiced, but it's not JUST prejudice - liberal policies themselves really are the enemy of those people. Consequently, the right-wing elites DO attack liberal policies directly (by promoting free-market fundamentalism, attacking unions, etc.). But they ALSO try to turn more people against liberal policies by linking "liberal" up with pre-existing hatreds and prejudices, so that people who actually do NOT benefit from conservative policies (i.e., the vast majority of us) will give into their worst instincts, indulge their prejudices, and blame "liberals" for their problems. The elites deliberately make "liberal" code for the groups people already fear, or feel threatened by. In some cases the fear or prejudice may already be there - the targets really ARE already very racist or sexist or afraid of homosexuals - while in other cases, the fear or dislike may be partially manufactured - e.g., the result of efforts to convince people that they can't get a decent job or make ends meet because of THOSE people (immigrants, gays, women, blacks, unions, whatever) all wanting "special privileges," THOSE people and their "liberalism" are the cause of your problems, not the corporate overlords, etc.... repeat ad nauseum.
I think a lot of the liberal-bashing we're talking about is part of the specific efforts by those who really benefit from regressive policies to "activate" and re-enforce pre-existing prejudices, and to manufacture new ones, and link them all to "liberalism" as a way to defeat policies they really do hate. It's just one part of a larger strategy.
Yes, absolutely -- the goal is Regression. Taking us back to the "Golden Era" of the '50s that Gingrich loves so much. As Justice Alito pointed out during his confirmation hearings, they want to take us back before the Supreme Court got so uppity and actually started to enforce the 14th Amendment in Brown V Board of Education and ended Segregation. These people to this very day -- see that as a mistake, one which they intended to incrementally undo while we Liberals pay them no real mind, cowed and tramatized (they hope) by their incessent attacks on our patriotism, intelligence and even - our right to exist in America.
But I think Americans are made of sterner stuff - and that ultimately once they're ultimate ends are exposed, these people are in for a rude surprise, don't you?
2006 is looking to be a watershed year. The year when Democrats once again reemerge on the political stage, not as the red-headed step child to be soundly batted on the ear -- but as a serious force in our national government. Or will they?
Some veterans of the 1994 GOP takeover of Congress see worrisome parallels between then and now, in the way once-safe districts are turning into potential problems. Incumbents' poll numbers have softened. Margins against their Democratic opponents have narrowed. Republican voters appear disenchanted. The Bush effect now amounts to a drag of five percentage points or more in many districts.
The changes don't guarantee a Democratic takeover by any means, but they are creating an increasingly asymmetrical battlefield for the fall elections: The number of vulnerable Democratic districts has remained relatively constant while the number of potentially competitive Republican districts continues to climb.
Despite the somewhat rosey projections of the WaPo, Democrats have no reason get get cocky, according to thereisnospoon they have completely failed to take a stand.
Some Democratic leaders have been bold (Conyers, Feingold, Boxer, Jackson-Lee and occasionally Kerry), others of the squishy DLC bent are far more cautious - akwardly straddling the middle -(Clinton), while a small minoritity have been little more than Republican-Lite (Leiberman).
But unlike the Lock-step manuever Republicans have perfected since the Attack of the Rowdy Gingrichites in '94, moving the Democratic Caucus in a single direction has frequently been like herding cats. Republicans are precise and clear on what they want. Lower Taxes. A Strong Military (In spending if not in actual practice). More Abortion Restrictions (But little effort for Pre-natal, Foster care or Adoption). Lower Taxes. More Acknowledgement of Faith in the public sphere. Fewer Gay Rights (If not fewer Gays, period). English First (And Only). Fewer illegals workers (but nice low prices for fruit and textiles products). Bigger Business. (Lower wages) Bigger Jails. More Oil (Less Breathable Air). Did I mention Taxes?
Even on sites such as this or DU, finding consensus on specific policy initiatives is not always easy.
Democratic thought is not monolithic, so when the question comes "What do Democrats want..." they invariably fumble it. When John Stewart asked Howard Dean this very question he showed him a door-hanger. A DOOR-HANGER (for voluanteers to leave behind as they canvas the neighborhood) with a list of the (Secret) Democratic Agenda. Which, in case you're wondering, can be found here at http://www.democrats.org/...
It contains six bullet points.
Honest Leadership and Open Government We will end the Republican culture of curruptions and restore a government as good as the people it serves
Real Security We will protect Americans at home and lead the world by telling the truth to our troops, our citizens and our allies
Energy Independance We Will create a cleaner stronger America by reducing our dependance on foreign oil.
Economic Prosperity and Educational Excellence We will create jobs that will stay in America by restoring oppurtunity and driving innovation.
A Health Care System that works for Everyone We will join 36 other industrialized nations by making sure that everyone has access to affordable healthcare.
Retirement Security We will ensure that a retirement with dignity is the right and expectation of every single American.
Not exactly earth shattering stuff.
If you ask the RNC, they seem to know exactly what the Dems want -- to "Impeach George Bush and raise your taxes". Here's Brit Hume of Faux Gnus on the Dems taking Control.
Michigan Congressman John Conyers, who would head up the House Judiciary Committee should the Democrats retake the house, has already held a mock hearing on impeaching President Bush.
As Republicans have become increasingly nervous about whether they will be able to maintain control of the House in the midterm elections, they have resorted to the straw-man strategy of identifying a parade of horrors to come if Democrats gain the majority. Among these is the assertion that I, as the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, would immediately begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush.
I will not do that.
Instead, Conyers promises to setup a bipartisan commission to study and investigate the various failures of the Administration. Again, not exactly earth shattering.
I think we as a nation have a right to expect more. Much more.
Should George W. Bush and Dick Cheney be impeached for gross malfeasance before, during and after 9-11, the Iraq War, the CIA Leak Scandal, Extra-odinary Rendition, Secret Prisons, Indefinate Detention, Torture, Hurricane Katrina, the growing NSA espionage scandal and pissing on 750 laws?
If you ask that question to most Democrats (not on Capital hill, actual Rank and File Democrats) the answer would be a resounding "HELL YES!"
Still, I think Conyers approach to this may be dead on target. If Democrats come screaming into Congress with pay-back for the last 6 years on their mind - they are destined to fail.
I'm not saying that they might not successfully Impeach and possibly even Remove President Bush from office -- I'm saying that if they do this without first successfully making the case to all the American people, Democrat and Republican alike, that this Administration and the Republican Caucas have become a veritable Criminal Enterprise intent on amassing power while raiding our treasury, and exploiting the blood and spirit of our military in the process - the entire effort will ultimately be for naught.
THIS. ADMINISTRATION. MUST. BE. STOPPED.
But we don't need to stage a partisan witch-hunt (ala the Starr/Clinton fiasco).
They must be stopped not because of what they've already done, they must be stopped because of the danger the precedent they've set. The checks and balances of our government must be repaired and restored simply because future administrations (Yes, possibly even Democratic ones) weilding the kind of power that Bush has claimed could destroy the very fabric of our nation.
The Unitary Executive Theory must be permenently quashed as a demented Constitutional aberration that dangerously tips the balance of power completely out of whack.
We are supposed to be a nation of laws, a nation of ideals which our bounded by the articles and amendments of our Constitution. Bush has turned our laws inside out and wiped his ass with the Constitution while this Republican Congress aided and abetted him. Genuflecting at his every abuse.
Ask any Republican friend of yours, if you still have any - would they "Want President Hillary Clinton or President Al Gore to have the kind of power that Bush is nowing claiming with the NSA and 750 signing statements directly contradicing Federal Law?"
If they answer the question honestly, I think they just might surprise even themselves. It's a defining question that goes beyond party affiliation, Red or Blue State, Left-Coast or Fly Over. The answer will determine exactly what kind of nation the United States will be for the next several generations.
If Democrats take over Congress - they've have to put this question to the nation. They'll have to create a Re-defining moment where the country makes a decision about where we are going to go from here -- are we going to continue to excuse and cover-up incompetence and malfeasance by the executive simply because he is the "Commander-in-Chief" and must be honored in a time (endless) of war? Or are we going to insist on something greater, something more noble - that our leaders actually be worthy of their role and duties, and that if they fail they are held accountable in order to protect the nation and the world from the chaos created by their incompetence and mendacity?
I think we can ask, no - demend, for nothing less. Our duty as citizens requires it.
That Re-defining Moment is not yet upon us. Democrats do not need to declare yet whether they are pro or against impeachment and removal - only that they support "Accountability" and restoring our Constitutional checks and balances.
This show takes one person with a particular ideological or political bent, and asks them to live 30 Days in the shoes of someone else they completely disagree with.
