You know, I’ve been telling my staff nine months, ‘They can’t pass this bill.’ And finally my staff wrestled me to the ground last fall and said, ‘Mr. Boehner, we have to quit saying this because they’re gonna pass this bill.’ And I looked at my staff and I said, ‘Alright, I’ll try to throttle it back a little bit. But it’ll be over my dead body.’
Women and Abortion →
Recently AntiTheistAngie (http://angietheantitheist.blogspot.com/) has caught a lot of grief for Livetweeting (http://twitter.com/antitheistangie) her abortion. Because of health, economic and other issues (she already has a special needs child) when her birth control failed, she decided on RU-486, a chemical abortion. In order to demystify the experience, because on researching it for herself, what little information and personal stories she did find freaked her the hell out, she decided to broadcast her experience to the world.
I applaud this.
However, in response she has suffered a whole lot of death threats from the “Pro-Life” faction. People have threatened the life of her four year old son. They’ve called her a whore and a liar. WWJD? Apparently he’d start screaming epithets and killing people. Funny, I don’t really remember that part of the Bible.
You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.
You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.
You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.
You didn’t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.
You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.
You didn’t get mad when we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said illegal war.
You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.
You didn’t get mad when you saw the Abu Ghraib photos.
You didn’t get mad when you found out we were torturing people.
You didn’t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.
You didn’t get mad when we didn’t catch Bin Laden.
You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.
You didn’t get mad when we let a major US city drown.
You didn’t get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark.
You finally got mad when.. when… wait for it… when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all ok with you but helping other Americans… well fuck that. That about right?
But screaming hysterically that it’s cheating to
pass legislation with a majority just proves that these folks’ great
reverence for the constitution is based more on their love of wearing
funny hats than anything that’s written in it.
Why we need reform NOW.
A friend posted this in his Livejournal.
I’m a fan of Keith Olbermann. Sure, sometimes he’s a blowhard, and gets a little worked up, but he’s usually right, gives generously of his own cash to causes ($50,000 to free health care clinics alone), uses humor as well as the facts to hammer the right-wing idiots, and frankly the Left needs more people like him who get a little worked up over the issues of the day.
And his father is dying.
This is one of the worst things that can happen to a family, to have a loved one sick, in near-constant pain, and dying. This is what is at the heart of the Heath Care Reform debate, because in the middle of all this pain and suffering, the last thing people should have to worry about is how they’re going to pay for the treatments that will keep someone alive.
So Wednesday night, before the Health Care Summit, Keith did a special comment about what’s really at stake in this whole fiasco. And if you’ve gone through this yourself, it might be a bit hard to watch as he walks you through everything that his father has had to go through.
It’s raw, emotional, and well worth watching. As he points out, at least he’s lucky enough that he can afford to pay for everything that’s been done so far, unlike far too many people out there.
The main debate right now seems to be whether or not Health Care is a Privilege or a Right, with Democrats seeing it as something everyone should have, while the GOP thinks it’s something that you are personally responsible for managing, like a driver’s license or cable. Except that getting cable won’t bankrupt you if it goes on the fritz. Or you won’t be denied a license because you crashed your bike when you were seven.
The Right says “Oh gosh, it’s just horrid that these bad things happen to people, but these things happen and we just can’t pay for everyone,” which really means “Screw you, buddy, I got mine, get your own.”
One of America’s founding documents says:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men
Note that the first Right listed there: Life
Life.
Life.
LIFE
That’s what this comes down to. This is a battle for life. And our Founding Fathers say right there that the role of Government, it’s main damn job, is to secure it.
I bet you won’t hear Glenn Beck make that point or agree with that conclusion as he does his next rant about what the Founding Fathers “really” wanted for our country.
We hear, all the time, about insurance companies denying coverage for people because of pre-existing conditions who then die from their illnesses. People who needlessly died when they didn’t go to the doctor because they couldn’t afford it. We hear it so much, it’s become a near-constant drone. What does that say about us as a country, and the GOP as a political entity?
How many fucking people have to DIE for this to get through to people and the GOP in particular what’s at stake?
Not that we should be surprised because their budget guy last week put out the GOP alternate budget that eliminated Medicare and Social Security to save money. The GOP’s core principle is “You can do it better yourself, so you’re on your own.” They fought the creation of Medicare, of Social Security, of regulation of the airlines, or of our food supply, or the safety of our workplaces. They fought every piece of legislation that gives us any kind of a social safety net so people don’t suffer and die. Because they don’t think we owe each other anything. (Funny how that doesn’t apply to police and fire departments…)
That any charity should come from people, not the Government. That business will have the best interests of people at heart, and if they don’t that people will go to the competition. We saw in the era of the Robber Barons and the Great Depression how fucking wrong that mindset is. There are some things only the Government can do, because they’re just too big for us to do on our own.
This debate is about the right to life, which they claim to support. But that support for life apparently stops at birth, then you’re on your own, buddy. We can debate the best ways to pay for this. We can debate the best ways to cut costs. But we can’t debate the basic need for Health Care reform. People’s lives are in the balance.
It’s about life. How many more people have to die?
Abortion escort story
Like a lot of shit, this reminds me of a clinic escorting story. Once upon a time a couple got out of their car and approached the clinic, and seeing a bunch of protesters approach them, the gentleman said in no uncertain terms, ‘the baby’s already dead, so you guys can go away. We’re here getting surgery.’ The escorts rapidly got the message, apologized for approaching and for their loss, and tried to clear a path to the clinic doors as best they could.
Our friendly neighborhood protesters did not get the message quite as clearly. One winner protester in particular demanded to know why they were choosing to support Planned Parenthood, and the clearly annoyed gentleman responded ‘because the hospital won’t do it; Planned Parenthood are the only people who will.’ And then this incredible thing happens: Our friendly neighborhood protester makes the most incredible breach of common decency I have ever seen in my life, and begins yelling at this man for letting his partner have the dead fetus surgically removed when it is clear that it is God’s will that she give birth to this dead fetus, the risks be damned, so she doesn’t have this abortion. In an incredible stroke of luck for the escorts this protester does not get levelled by the patient or the patient’s companion.
Since this happened I don’t think I’ve ever been surprised at anything the broader pro-life movement has done, no matter how unbelievably ugly it is. A very eye-opening and memorable event for me as an escort.
People like that are basically the reason I started this blog. Also for Sarah Palin.
This just is more evidence that anti-abortion activists are more concerned with controlling women than they are with saving babies. The behavior they exhibited toward this patient is absolutely disgusting and hateful, and it is not the behavior of sane, mature adult humans. If a child acted this way toward its peers, we would punish that child and attempt to train the behavior out—and if training and punishment did not work, we would take the child to mental health professionals. Adults behaving this way are deeply mentally ill, and this seems to be a socially permissible outlet for their psychotic behavior. Why are we, as a society, not calling this behavior out for what it is?
Armed with a copy of the Constitution that is little more than a magic word to them, Tea Partiers decry the result of 234 years of political evolution that is America.
The concept of taxation appears to be particularly troublesome to [tea partiers]. While naming themselves after a colonial tax revolt, they appear not to have any appreciation that the taxation by King George was followed closely by levies for support of our brand new nation. The income tax, as we know it, was placed into effect by the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913. Prior to 1861, the taxes required to operate the country were levied exclusively on the rich and through protectionist tariffs.
T[o] be equal, in the eyes of the law, is to be unique and different but have access to the same rights, despite those differences. Women are different but equal. Minorities are different but equal. Handicapped people are different but equal.
Global Weirding
Reposted from a friend’s LJ entry.
I like the new meme in circulation (no pun intended), “global weirding.” Because it circumvents the dipshits who say, WELL IF THERE’S GLOBAL WARMING WHY DID IT SNOW TODAY HURR HURR HURR!!!
Well, even though we’ve got such prosaic evidence of overall warming such as a change in growing zones in the U.S., the weather isn’t getting uniformly warmer and drier everywhere. Warm and dry climates are becoming more so, while chilly and wet climates are becoming more so.
Up here, it was damn near impossible to grow anything last year because we had three whole weeks of sun and heat, all in August. I was getting symptoms of seasonal affective disorder in June. I couldn’t find any local garlic that didn’t have mold on it, and I was lucky that my very first try at growing tomatoes gave me 10 small ones, only one of which turned red on its own. A search on “2009 crops ruined rain” turns up a lot of other examples, the most drastic one being the wheat crop in India.
The “weirdness” comes in with bizarre storm patterns. You never used to see tornadoes or tornado warnings, for example, in places like California and Maryland.
Of course, the aforementioned dipshits are going to say, “Well, at first it was ‘global warming,’ now it’s ‘global weirding.’ Can’t keep your facts straight, eh?” Authoritarian personalities consider changing one’s mind to adapt to new evidence a weakness, you see. All we can hope for is that ordinary people continue to start listening to their own eyes and memories instead of the anti-science right.
Doctor Gets Court Order to Confine Pregnant Woman Against Her Will →
Burton was showing signs of potential miscarriage, so her physician ordered bed rest. Burton explained that, as a working mother of two toddlers, bed rest simply wasn’t a viable option and then proceeded to ask for a second medical opinion. Seems reasonable, right?
Her doctor, however, was having none of that. Rather than refer Burton for the desired second opinion, he instead felt it necessary to contact state authorities, who then proceeded to force Burton to be admitted to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital against her will and undergo any procedure the doctor felt like prescribing. [Emphasis mine —Camille] When Burton had the audacity to request a change in the hospital in which she was being treated, the court denied her request. Three days into her forced hospitalization, Burton miscarried.
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