now witness the POWER of this FULLY ARMED and OPERATIONAL feminist

Had to get up really early to be at the state house this morning, but it was worth it. I was testifying against a bill in a committee hearing to defund Planned Parenthood in Indiana, and I got to be the first of the opposition to speak (right after the lady from Right to Life, sitting there with her mouth all pinched up tightly as a cat's asshole).

I'm pretty proud of how I did, and I think I helped. One of the Planned Parenthood lobbyists asked me to email her my testimony so that they could use it as an example of How It Is Done (eeeeee!) and so I thought I'd relay it to y'all as well.

My name is [my name], here on behalf of Planned Parenthood, mostly because of how much I owe of my own health and success to Planned Parenthood. I'm the first woman in my family to get a college degree. My parents were supportive, but we're a military family and as you're all aware, people don't enlist for the money.

My parents were proud, but when it came to the financial end of a $120,000 education, that was entirely up to me. I had no money left over for doctors. I literally endorsed my paychecks and physically handed them over to Butler University.

It would have been easy to sacrifice my health for the sake of being the first woman to finish, but thanks to Planned Parenthood it wasn't necessary. They clearly don't believe young women should have to choose between an education and basic preventative care, and Planned Parenthood are the people doing something about it.

I'll be 25 in a month and I've only had one routine pelvic that wasn't provided at reduced cost by Planned Parenthood. For years, that made Planned Parenthood the only place I could afford to get checkups. I had one shot to get a degree, and I was willing to put everything else second.

I still did do it. My late great-grandmother, who was a young woman during the Depression, got to see our family, after almost eighty years, produce a woman with a college degree. We're talking about a woman for whom birth control pills might as well have been magic. I wasn't stopped by poverty. I wasn't stopped by the looming threat of pregnancy derailing this dream for yet another generation.

If not for Planned Parenthood, I might have been. I see in this legislation a clear statement that women in my position should have to choose between our health and our education, that I should have had to choose: either I can have doctors or knowledge but not both.

It's 2011... and we can give women better options than that. Planned Parenthood are the people offering better options.

Reliable access to preventative care and birth control were the difference between the women in my family for the past eighty years and this woman now. When you're asking yourself whether you approve of Planned Parenthood's impact on this state, you are asking yourself about me.

Do you approve of Planned Parenthood's impact on my life? Or don't you?

Because Planned Parenthood gives women access to a legal procedure that some people may wish you could keep them from having, are you really going to let my success story be one of the last?

This bill has to go, and by saying so here today I hope to repay in small part the debt I owe to this organization. I'm proud to give this act of testifying and my tax dollars for Planned Parenthood and the patients who need them. Thank you for your time.

There's a chance the bill will indeed fail, because the Democrats on this committee are people I pretty much trust not to be horrible shits. I also don't think it'll pass because they try this every damn year. However, both the House and Senate in Indiana are controlled by Republicans, so there's no saying for certain what fuckery they'll get up to.

I'm going back tomorrow, and this time the mister is coming with me. I mentioned offhand to the Planned Parenthood people that he's a pharmacist, and they told me the House added a bill regulating a RU-486 in a particular very stupid way to the committee schedule at the last minute. I got an emphatic Facebook message from the Planned Parenthood lobbyist ("CALL ME" and her phone number. "Right now?" "YES."). She wants him to be available to read a statement on the bill written by one of his former professors and answer questions if the representatives have them.

The Planned Parenthood lobbyist who alerted me to all this told him that we're her new favorite couple. We're my favorite couple, too. The couple that cockpunches the patriarchy together stays together, yeah?

Stop Defending the Catholic Church: Day 3

Day Three: The Church Hates Africa

Scientists at The Lancet are really sick of the Pope distorting the evidence---AKA lying--about AIDS.

It is evidently the official position of the South African RCC that condoms have not prevented a single case of HIV ever, and that's what they're teaching vulnerable African populations. What could possibly go wrong?

Cardinal who heads the Pontifical Council for the Family suggests that condoms in Africa be labelled as unsafe and ineffective, comparing a condom to a cigarette filter. Way helpful, guys.

The RCC has such a problem with Africa that they're willing to let priests rape African nuns. Presumably they're less likely to get AIDS that way than if they rape African children. Or something. Of course, this plan doesn't work as well if you're still also raping the children. But more about that on Day Four!

If you missed it, here's Day One: The Church Hates Gays, and Day Two: The Church Hates Women.

More of the Gratitude Project

The Gratitude Project was begun several years ago by a LiveJournal user called estaratshirai . The rules are simple. Every day between Lammas (August 1st) and Mabon (the Autumnal Equinox) one must find something to be grateful for in life. No repeats - one can be grateful to people more than once, but it has to be for different reasons.

Monday:

I am grateful to Pedialyte for making sure I don't get low on electrolytes and have a heart attack. Thanks, Pedialyte, even if you are way too slimy-feeling in my mouth somehow.

Tuesday:

I am grateful to Filament Magazine for... existing. Hooray for a women's magazine produced by feminists with what women actually want in mind (so bite me, Cosmo, and your endlessly-repeated 100-something ways to be worthy of a man).

Wow, class privilege wtf.

So unusualmusic linked this post on a debate community which has some of the worst faces of humanity laid out in the comments.

The question:

A single mother has a child with a disease that will kill him if he goes without his medicine. She works two full time jobs but they still struggle. Sometimes the kid's prescription does not get filled right away because she has to pay rent or childcare. One day, the mother is rushing from work to get to the pharmacy before it closes because the kid has been without meds for a week. She has no car and her boss did not let her leave early. She misses the bus because the driver was running significantly early and did not wait to get back on schedule. She does not make it to the pharmacy in time. The kid dies in his sleep that night.

Who is at fault?

The answers? Some people point out that if she's in America, she lives in a country where health care is a luxury, and if it's not a right, then her kid doesn't have a right to it. This is a fucked up place to raise a child who needs health care. My love to the people who point this out.

Less love to people who reply with shit like this:

I feel bad, but the mom. Letting the meds lapse that long just left her wide open for murphy's law to just align like that. Talk to the landlord for an extension? Mention to the boss ahead of time when you need to leave early instead of trying to dash out the door or ask to take a long lunch break and grab it then? Hell, call the pharmacy or the child's doctor to get permission for a friend to pick the meds up for her if she can. There were lots of routes she could have taken and, though she's not psychic, she shoulda known at least one of those could go wrong. It's unfortunate the fates aligned so badly, but it all started with the rent or meds decision. =(

This does just showcase a lot of holes in society these days, but then again, the people on the other side of the situations are probably put out by more than one person needing more time on the rent or are just late with no notice, or needing time off at the last second and they have to find someone to cover. The mom really needed to cover her bases and it sucks that the whole mess was paid for with her child. =(

No prosecution, though, even though the one week of no meds was pretty terrible. =(

Or this!

If the kid was a week without meds, that's just damn neglectful. It's easy to justify it with "reasons" but they still are just excuses.

Fuck you. Fuck you people for not having any goddamn idea what it means to have less than enough. Fuck you all for bolstering your own desperate hope that this could never happen to you by assuming it must happen to nasty lazy shitty people who are nothing like you.

Lots of people said that she should have done anything--anything, anything--to keep the kid's meds from lapsing for a week.

Do anything? Do anything to ensure her kid gets that medicine? If she's working multiple jobs and is never home to be there with her kid, you'll call her a bad mom who doesn't pay enough attention to her family, and if something goes wrong, she'll be to blame. If she sells drugs to get the money, you'll call her home dangerous and take her child away and throw her in jail. If she sells sex to get it, not only is she a bad woman and a criminal, but she's a dirty whore bad woman as well.

Do anything, they say. Do anything. They have no idea what they're talking about. Agh.

Catholic Bishops Enact Plan For “300,000 Terri Schiavos”

For fuck's sake, people.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops released an "Ethical and Religious Directive" this month that would ban any Catholic hospital, nursing home or hospice program from removing feeding tubes or ending palliative procedures of any kind, even when the individual has an advance directive to guide their end-of-life care. The Bishops' directive even notes that patient suffering is redemptive and brings the individual closer to Christ. (...)

A 60Minutes piece this weekend looked at the cost of dying in America, showing that Medicare paid $50 billion in the last two months of patients' lives in 2008. Compassion & Choices focuses on the suffering at the end of life, not federal dollars, but they agree in general with the portrait shown by 60 Minutes. Incredibly, suffering is one of the selling points in the Catholic Bishops' directive. "It's quite specific about the role of suffering in Christian dogma," Coombs Lee explained. "It says that suffering is redemptive, that it's part of Christ's passion. So they are pretty clear on their concern for the suffering of the patient."

I don't need to say any of the things I'm thinking. You already know what they are.

(ht unusualmusic for this gem)

Reposting...

I think copperstewart has the right of it.

I've got nothing against principled outbursts. Indeed, I encourage them and wish our US Congress looked a bit more like PM's question-an-answer period in the British Parliament.

But "Joe" Wilson is a racist with a long history and questionable involvements, and it looks to me like the Obama + immigration context was just too much for an old cracker to bear.

14 Things You Need to Know About Obama Heckler, Rep. Joe Wilson

That's pretty much what I'm feeling right now. I think that if someone actually is a liar, we should call them liars, and our unwillingness to do so for the sake of "civility" has resulted in Republicans telling outrageous lies about LGBT people, undocumented migrants, women, science, Jesus, and damn near every other topic of relevance in our culture. But Rep. Wilson has a serious case of pot and kettle syndrome if he's calling the President a liar for accurately describing the health care reform plans being tossed about.

(And as a side note, I don't think it would be a problem if undocumented migrants were covered by public insurance instead of having to rack up everyone else's bills with their ER visits, and I am incredibly pissed that my tax dollars wouldn't be going to pay for the abortions of women who need them. Also, yada yada fight cap and trade because coal companies don't deserve a bailout and other miscellaneous issues on my mind lately that I haven't been blogging about as diligently as I should.)

A Petition! Because why not.

Please take a moment to sign Sen. Bernie Sanders' petition for single-payer health care:

Whereas:

• 46 million Americans are currently without health insurance;
• 60 million Americans, both insured and uninsured, have inadequate access to primary care due to a shortage of physicians and other health service providers in their community;
• 100 million Americans have no insurance to cover dental needs;
• 116 million adults, nearly two-thirds of all non-seniors, struggled to pay medical bills, went without needed care because of cost, were uninsured for a time, or were underinsured in the last year;
• The United States spends $2.3 trillion each year on health care, 16 percent of its Gross Domestic Product;
• Americans spend $7,129 per person on health care, 50 percent more than other industrialized countries, including those with universal care;
• The U.S. does not get what it pays for. We rank among the lowest in the health outcome rankings of developed countries, and on several major indices rank below some third-world nations;
• The number of health insurance industry bureaucrats has grown at 25 times the growth of physicians in the past 30 years;
• In 2006, the six largest insurance companies made $11 billion in profits even after paying for direct health care costs, administrative costs and marketing costs.

And, whereas:

• Medicare has administrative costs far lower than any private health insurance plan;
• The potential savings on health insurance paperwork, more than $350 billion per year, is enough to provide comprehensive coverage to every uninsured American;
• Only a single-payer Medicare-for-all plan can realize these enormous savings and provide comprehensive and affordable health care to every citizen.

Now, therefore:

• We, the undersigned, urge the United States Congress to pass a single-payer Medicare-for-all program which will provide quality, comprehensive health care for all Americans.

Sign, and if you would re-post in your own journal, that would be super.

(via matrexius and jblaque and ms_daisy_cutter)

Competition "Hurts Insurers"

What are some of the objections being handed around to a public insurance option?

"The president feels that having a 'public option' side by side -- same playing field, same rules -- will give Americans choice and will help lower costs for everybody. And that's a good thing," Sebelius told CNN.

"The president does not want to dismantle privately owned plans. He doesn't want the 180 million people who have employer coverage to lose that coverage. He wants to strengthen the marketplace," Sebelius added.

Healthcare costs undermine the competitiveness of U.S. companies, drive many families into bankruptcy and eat up a growing portion of state and federal spending.

Versions of healthcare legislation unveiled by senior Democrats in the House and Senate include a new government insurance program. But Republicans are adamantly opposed to the idea, saying it could harm private insurers, and some of Obama's fellow Democrats are against it, too.

Kent Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said there is not enough support in Congress for the "public option" even though proponents offer "very good arguments" for it.

"You've got to attract some Republicans as well as holding virtually all of the Democrats together. And that, I don't believe, is possible with the pure 'public option.' I don't think the votes are there," Conrad said on CNN.

You heard it here. You won't get Republican votes if you're putting their constituents ahead of the interests of private insurance companies. Who is voting for these people again?

Debunking Canadian Health Care Myths

Link is here, but you know what they say. People who aren't basing their decisions on facts can't be dissuaded with facts.

However, I still thought this was a good article. This is the trope I always hear from people who care less about numbers and facts than they do about adhering with all proper fanaticism to their superstitious devotion to the unregulated market.

Myth: Canada's government decides who gets health care and when they get it.

While HMOs and other private medical insurers in the U.S. do indeed make such decisions, the only people in Canada to do so are physicians. In Canada, the government has absolutely no say in who gets care or how they get it. Medical decisions are left entirely up to doctors, as they should be.

There are no requirements for pre-authorization whatsoever. If your family doctor says you need an MRI, you get one. In the U.S., if an insurance administrator says you are not getting an MRI, you don't get one no matter what your doctor thinks - unless, of course, you have the money to cover the cost.

And you know what? Here's why private health insurance companies are scared of what it will mean to be competing with a government health care plan (because you can bet they're not opposing it for your benefit):

Myth: Canada's health care system is a cumbersome bureaucracy.

The U.S. has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. The provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with just a 1 percent overhead. Think about it. It is not necessary to spend a huge amount of money to decide who gets care and who doesn't when everybody is covered.

The last thing private insurance companies want is for our health care system to look like Canada's. And do you know why? Because it'll put them out of business. Because they don't love "free market" competition as much as they persuade their prostrate worshipers to love it.

But that seems to be how it goes. That's where blind faith in the "invisible hand" of the "free market" gets you. It gets you working your ass off to help people screw you over, all the while congratulating them on managing to be so much more worthy of your money (or your rights, in many cases) than you are.

Obligatory Swine Flu Post (Or: Why I don't want to make a big deal of it)

Someone else here must have noticed how it only became something to worry about when there was one American casualty. The 152 Mexicans just didn't seem to have the same impact, but one baby in America and the news goes nuts.

And what good is it to them to go nuts right now, at this particular time? Other than the obvious benefits of sensationalism to news networks, swine flu is being used to stoke the white supremacist anti-immigration crazies, which is my main objection to the hysteria. I was reading about it the other day and the top story on my Google news search starts with the following: "311 Swine Flu Deaths! Close the Mexico Border!"

Because, you see, brown people are filthy and diseased. Contact with them will kill you. Never mind that it was white tourists who brought the disease across the border.

For a further rundown of the highly-racialized discussion on this topic, check my acquaintance's blog over here, where she's made a good compilation of examples.

See also here:

With swine flu now hitting the United States, I figured it was only a matter of time before someone started to blame Mexican people. But this is an impressive turn-around, even for Michael Savage and Neil Boortz. Plus they get the "OMG terrorizm!" aspect in there too:

Neil Boortz claims that Mexico doesn't have a CDC, so from the perspective of someone who wants to commit an act of bioterrorism against U.S. citizens, "What better way to sneak a virus into this country than to give it to Mexicans?"

At least one better way comes immediately to mind.

One would think that if terrorists were going to release a virus with the intent of killing Americans, they would do it on, say, the New York City subway system and not on a Mexican pig farm. But there are no lengths to which these guys won't go in order to convince us that we're constantly on high Terror Alert in the face of threats from any passing brown people.

It's phenomenal how easily these guys can fit anything - including a potential global health pandemic - into a one-size-fits-all racist narrative about Mexicans being dirty and sneaky mules. It's phenomenal that they can get away with it even in a situation like this, where the virus was spread outside of Mexico in large part because of tourists. And it's particularly appalling in its victim-blaming - is it so easy to forget that 150 people have died in Mexico, and thousands more are living in fear?

I'm just trying not to participate in something that is becoming so irrational, y'know? All we can do about this is the same thing we do about any illness, unfortunately. It's just that the consequences are worse if we don't*. That's my critique on the whole thing. If I talk a whole lot on my blog or on my forums about this, I feel like I'm feeding this great nasty racist side of it no matter what I say.

So I haven't been encouraging the alarm for that reason, even though I agree it's troubling that it's going after those with healthy immune systems (with the exception of the infant casualty). With that, I leave you with this important website, relevant to your interests:

http://doihaveswineflu.org/



*The consequences are also notable when you consider that our government's phobic avoidance of regulating businesses has created a situation in which citizens are being urged to stay home if they're sick to avoid the spread of infection, but cannot afford to do so because employers are not actually required to give employees paid sick time.

If you actually want to do something to help prevent the further spread of diseases like this one--though likely change won't come in time to significantly affect this outbreak--please consider using this tool to send your Congressperson an email supporting the Healthy Families Act, which will allow workers to care for their health and the health of their families without having to choose between forgoing needed pay and spreading deadly diseases.

This sucks, so to the Americans reading: Do something. Something besides hate on brown people, okay?

You, ma'am, have been counterfucked!

You remember SB 89 that I was so pissed about? I guess you wouldn't if you only read my blog. To recap for those of you who didn't hear me ranting loudly about this on the third reading deadline night...

SB 89 is a bill that the Republican-controlled Senate handed over to the House that originally stated that physicians performing abortions must have admitting privileges at their local hospital. This is ostensibly to ensure that physicians performing abortions have gone through the extensive background checking and whatnot that hospitals do, which is not a bad idea in itself.

The reason this is a problem is that hospitals are loathe to give admitting privileges to physicians who don't live in the area, and most abortion doctors don't perform abortions where they live, because it'll get your family harassed by anti-choicers. The other reason this is a problem is that it isn't necessary. The only thing admitting privileges really gains the woman is being able to have the same doctor at the hospital in case of a complication that she had performing the abortion. This really doesn't make a difference in standard of care as I've had it explained to me, since hospital doctors are just as qualified to take care of her!

The real reason for handing this over is, of course, to shut down all but one clinic in Indiana that performs abortions by requiring doctors to jump through a meaningless hoop with no penalties for a hospital that refuses them admitting privileges simply because of why they want them.

This should never have gone to the House floor for a vote, in my opinion. It should have been killed in committee so that the Democrats whose constituencies are ignorant and backward won't have to vote on it one way or the other. As it was, a lot of Dems had to vote against their own consciences and the best interests of their constituents just because Right to Life will force them out of office in 2010 if they don't. There's no right vote here. Either vote for an unconstitutional piece of legislation, or lose their seat to a Republican who's not even going to consider the Constitutionality of this kind of bullshit.

So of course it passed. The House put language in it which accepted the premise that those performing surgical procedures should have local admitting privileges as long as we apply it to all surgical procedures. Lots of amendments to it passed, including one requiring the woman seeking an abortion to be informed that a fetus can feel pain--despite the fact that one Rep stood up and gave AMA peer-reviewed evidence that this isn't even true for the developmental stage this legislation addresses.

But it did pass. It passed from the Senate to the House, and lots of Reps who understand the notion of "undue burden" as the Constitutional litmus test had to vote for it anyway. A very small number sacked up and voted Nay nonetheless, and they have my gratitude and respect for that. Then it remained to see if the Senate conferred or dissented with the changes that were made to their bill in the House.

I have an update!

Senator Patricia Miller (R-Indianapolis) evidently doesn't like the fact that the bill would now cover all surgical procedures, and also disapproves of the amendment giving funding for preventative health care for women. That's right! These amendments strengthen the case of SB 89 being a bill about women's health, rather than an attempt to shut down most of Indiana's abortion clinics.

So the very things that make it viable as anything more than an imposition of an unconstitutional undue burden are the very things that might kill it in conference committee. If they want to say it's not germane to apply this to all surgical procedures, and if they want to say that it's not germane to amend other considerations of women's reproductive health, they're going to have to admit that the bill is attempting to do something else--something unconstitutional.

Let's hope committee kills it. That way all the Dems will have pacified their constituents by voting to suppress women, but there won't actually be consequences for those constituents' uneducated single-issue voting.

Repost! Important things ahead!

Send Your Comments on the “Conscience” Rule to HHS

from Feministe by Cara

I recently wrote that President Obama was planning to overturn Bush’s last minute HHS “conscience” rule that prevents health care providers from “discriminating” against all levels of anti-choice employees who literally refuse to do their jobs, and is intended to not only restrict access to abortion, but also birth control and reproductive health care in general.

Well he’s gone and begun the process to do exactly that. The 30 day comment period for the public to send in their thoughts on the proposed change opened earlier this week. Which means that just like it was important for you to send in your opposition to the rule when Bush proposed it, it’s important to send in your support for its repeal now. Not because we have reason to believe that Obama will back out of his promise, but because pro-choice causes, women’s health, and access to services needs all of the public support that they can get.

Click here to send your comments to the Department of Health and Human Services. And then, make sure to spread the word and ensure that all of your friends do the same!

So much fail. And yet...

This entry is not just about women or children. So if you, like McCain, don't care how many women's deaths the government causes, just scroll past all this stuff about women's "health" that makes no nevermind to you.

John McCain understands that before Roe v. Wade, unsafe abortions killed women. He said that. "I understand."

He still thinks Roe v. Wade was a mistake. Even understanding and admitting that without Roe v. Wade women die, McCain asserts that it was a mistake that should be repealed for the good of us all. Well. The good of people who matter; shouldn't take too much deliberation to figure out whether you're one of them (hint: you've already been born).



I think that any real "women for McCain" out there should see this video. As well as this one, in which John McCain scoffs at the value Obama places on the "health of the mother."



Ladies, do you get it yet? He thinks that if you're facing the "terrible decision" of whether to get an abortion, that you need someone who'll show compassion and courage. Compassion for your fetus (but disdain for you), and the courage to fight for policy that kills women. He doesn't just disregard women's autonomy. He's disregarding their lives.

I can't vote to put that in office. Neither should the women who, according to NPR and Planned Parenthood had no idea as late as February that McCain was as virulently anti-choice as he is.

They assumed that the "maverick" would break with his party to look out for them.

They assumed wrong. (Check his record yourself if you think this site is lying.)

John McCain. Wrong on education.

Wrong on Iraq.

Wrong on racial equality.

Wrong on health care.

Wrong on the economy.

Wrong on torture. (Despite his earlier principled stance on the issue.)

Wrong on Veterans' issues.

Can he do anything right? I mean, I realize he's a verifiable hardass. Much respect for that from this daughter of an active-duty military family. But the President's job is about more than being a hardass. Has McCain shown any readiness for the rest of those tasks? Or is he just playing the POW card and hoping voters will stop asking too many questions?

The real question is not why he's doing it. He's losing and he's dishonorable enough that he'll do anything to get himself into the White House. The real question is how his supporters can manage to wave these things away.

All I can think of is that it must be philosophy over fact all over again. It doesn't matter whom we hurt, as long as we're doing "the right thing." The "right thing," incidentally, has little or nothing to do with the outcome. As long as we're not Godless socialist elitist European-wannabes from fake America, we're in the right. You read that correctly. We're in the right, no matter who suffers.

The mystery of "values voters."

Proof that anti-choicers care more about children before they're born than afterward.

Last time we had protesters here in Issaquah, I didn’t really mind having them across the street. They didn’t approach our patients or yell hateful epithets like so many protesters do outside other clinics. They smiled and waved. Their signs were not ugly or hateful. Mostly, they chatted on cell phones, read or napped.

In all, I figure more than 1,000 hours were wasted -- roughly half–a-dozen people, there for eight hours a day, for 27 days. I can think of quite a few other ways that those hours could have been better spent.

· raising money to help low-income, single parents
· providing childcare for those who can’t afford it
· snuggling babies born addicted to drugs
· spending time with kids that don’t have a loving, caring adult in their lives
· foster parenting
· adopting a child with special needs
· lobbying for health insurance for everybody
· taking a group of kids outside to learn about the environment and get exercise
· being a reading buddy at a local elementary school
· mentoring at-risk kids

And that’s just off the top of my head.

It takes real commitment and diligence to sit on the sidewalk for 27 days, rain or shine. Think of all we could accomplish if their efforts went toward something we can all agree on -- healthy kids, families, women, and teens.

This really stuck in my head, because it connects to something that has bothered me for a long time.

How many people demanding that unwanted babies be put up for adoption have actually adopted kids? Or are they so caught up in their "children are like flowers, you can't have too many" mindset that they're popping out puppies of their own instead of taking the needy ones from the shelter? How many vocal anti-choicers do you know who have a half-dozen of their own kids, even if it means leaving orphaned or abandoned ones in the system? The next time they tell you they love kids remember this: they love their own. Everybody else's kids are everybody else's problem.

Here's my advice to those people, if they really want to practice what they preach (literally).

If you think that every child has a right to life, start demonstrating that you have some compassion for them after they're born. Start voting in ways that support motherhood and affirm the value of children. I suggest getting involved with MomsRising.org, an activist group dedicated to seeing that problems mothers and their kids face are solved.

Issues they care about:

· Ensuring paid maternity leave for women in America (just like evil socialist moms are given in Europe) so that women can support their kids instead of losing their jobs. In fact, why not paternity leave as well? Don't fathers have family responsibilities as well?

· Affordable childcare, so that families don't get caught in the "can't afford childcare because I don't have a job, can't get a job because I can't get childcare" cycle.

· Healthcare for kids is a priority for moms, so why shouldn't they do something about it? According to MomsRising, "Having a child is now the single best predictor that a woman will go bankrupt. In fact, this year, more children will live through their parents’ bankruptcy than their parents’ divorce. The causes for so much financial distress among parents are complex, but one fact stands out: Fully half of these families filed for bankruptcy in the wake of a medical problem." And no, "the market" doesn't fix that.

Are "family values" a big deal to you?

Really?

Prove it.

If you aren't watching this journal yet, you should be.

Is health insurance a right?

rm has the answer, and I don't feel like explaining it to you beyond that.

Stuff I'm reading today:

Abortion

If you want to read pro-choice women compared to white slaveowners, check out Advance Liberty, Overturn Roe. Bonus points if you can spot Reynolds' complete misunderstanding of Federalism.

If you're interested in a Wiccan perspective on abortion, check out Starhawk's article "Abortion and the Goddess."

Experts on Election Issues

Concerned about health care? Obama's health plan may help more uninsured: report.

Concerned about the economy? The unaffiliated economists surveyed by The Economist prefer Obama's policies to McCain's.

Double Standards

Here is an interesting entry about how Palin benefits from being a semi-coherent uneducated white candidate whereas I think we know how well-received a semi-coherent uneducated black candidate would be.

Who's worse? William Ayers or G. Gordon Liddy? Is Liddy a dodgy enough figure that we should be discussing McCain's close connection to him? Or Palin's marriage to a man who was a member of a party whose founder once said, "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government...and I won't be buried under their damn flag... I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions."

Obama is unpleasantly "uppity," compared to O'Reilly who considers himself proof of the existence of God.

Misc.

The World Health Organization can bite me.

Statistics+Obesity=Whoa

Found a link to a study about The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years on Neuroanthropology.

I have no idea what to think of it. Apparently having strong social ties to people as they become obese means that you are statistically more likely to become obese.

A person's chances of becoming obese increased by 57% (95% confidence interval [CI], 6 to 123) if he or she had a friend who became obese in a given interval. Among pairs of adult siblings, if one sibling became obese, the chance that the other would become obese increased by 40% (95% CI, 21 to 60). If one spouse became obese, the likelihood that the other spouse would become obese increased by 37% (95% CI, 7 to 73). These effects were not seen among neighbors in the immediate geographic location. Persons of the same sex had relatively greater influence on each other than those of the opposite sex.

Whoa, what?

To the extent that obesity is a product of voluntary choices or behaviors, the fact that people are embedded in social networks and are influenced by the evident appearance and behaviors of those around them suggests that weight gain in one person might influence weight gain in others. Having obese social contacts might change a person's tolerance for being obese or might influence his or her adoption of specific behaviors (e.g., smoking, eating, and exercising). In addition to such strictly social mechanisms, it is plausible that physiological imitation might occur; areas of the brain that correspond to actions such as eating food may be stimulated if these actions are observed in others.

I'm glad that statisticians are actually looking at the fact that social networks influence the choices of individuals (since I think asserting otherwise is pretty stupid), but this was something I hadn't expected.

We considered three explanations for the clustering of obese people. First, egos might choose to associate with like alters ("homophily"). Second, egos and alters might share attributes or jointly experience unobserved contemporaneous events that cause their weight to vary at the same time (confounding). Third, alters might exert social influence or peer effects on egos ("induction"). Distinguishing the interpersonal induction of obesity from homophily requires dynamic, longitudinal network information about the emergence of ties between people ("nodes") in a network and also about the attributes of nodes (i.e., repeated measures of the body-mass index).

The use of a time-lagged dependent variable (lagged to the previous examination) eliminated serial correlation in the errors (evaluated with a Lagrange multiplier test) and also substantially controlled for the ego's genetic endowment and any intrinsic, stable predisposition to obesity. The use of a lagged independent variable for an alter's weight status controlled for homophily. The key variable of interest was an alter's obesity at time t+1. A significant coefficient for this variable would suggest either that an alter's weight affected an ego's weight or that an ego and an alter experienced contemporaneous events affecting both their weights.

Do we have any statisticians in the house? I find this very interesting, but I'm not qualified to judge their methodology well.

If anybody is interested, there's a 28-minute video on social contagion of obesity. I'm just now watching it, so I can't tell you just yet whether it's incredibly offensive or what. It's got the scientists who did this study in it, so it's worth watching.