screwing it up

Dear Apathetic and Cynical Democrats:

If anybody screws up our momentum and advantage, it's going to be you. You're sitting there, wallowing in your learned helplessness, telling yourself that you already worked hard, and it didn't make everything all better. Can't you just sit this one out? You'll have the bonus of being right about yourselves: you can't do anything, nothing that you manage to do will matter, and nothing that you do which matters will last.

I don't want that. Do you? Maybe. Does it have to be that way? No. You were laying groundwork before, and you were laying it for this. You think it won't make a difference whether you work to get more Democrats in office or not? You think it won't? Why? It did last time. Six months ago we got the first piece of our health care reform passed, and a lot of it goes into effect today. Right before the mid-term election, things have changed.

Health Care Reform Changes Effective Today

Starting today, for example, insurers won't be able to exclude children from coverage because of pre-existing conditions. Rescission, which led to many Americans losing their coverage when they needed it most, is forbidden. Young people can now stay on their parents' plan until age 26. Preventive care -- including colonoscopies, mammograms, and immunizations -- must now be covered without co-payments.

Republicans intend to take all of this away, of course, and will fight tooth and nail next year if voters reward them with a majority.

For more details, the White House has a website dedicated to the new law, and you can probably find some good stuff in there.

I'm posting this as a reminder to everybody that this, new credit card regulations, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Tribal Law and Order Act, and a host of other things are why you guys need to get up off your asses and make sure that the Republicans don't take back the House this November. The few small reforms we've managed to get done are all things that they hate, and they absolutely will take them away if we invite them in the door. You know it and I know it.

Yeah, I know that a lot of Democratic candidates aren't really anything special. Frankly, though, you have two choices. You have one party that's going to pay lip service to your interests, and another part that gets itself re-elected by telling their constituents you are a bunch of greedy, lazy, godless, ignorant, freedom-hating terrorist sympathizers. There's a limit to what the Democrats are going to give us, but learned helplessness is not the answer.

This November, I need you to vote. You remember what it was like when the Republicans got their way. You remember Bush's second term when he could do whatever the hell he wanted, push whatever partisan horseshit came to his mind, and just in general actually do what his insane voter base had put him in office to do?

I want us to have that too. Don't fuck it up. It's about more than the Presidential elections. Some of your Congresscritters are up for re-election, and Indiana, I am looking at you when I say this: You aren't going to make America more progressive by getting lazy and letting Republicans get elected. We're only going to get more truly-progressive Democrats in office if we make it clear that they don't have to play to the radical right wing to get elected. The more Democrats there are overall, the safer it is for the progressives to come out and do what we voted them in office to do.

So do not fuck it up. We need more than a majority. We need a supermajority, because right now, a minority of the house can block things like common-sense election reform. We need there to be fewer Republicans in the House and Senate. This is not a time to rest on our goddamn laurels and say, "Well, we got really close! Good for us!" Now we're close enough that we can see the finish line, so don't fuck it up.

President Obama made a good point last night, and I wanted to close with it.

“The single biggest threat to our success is not the other party,” the president said at the Roosevelt Hotel. “It’s us. It’s complacency. It’s apathy. It’s indifference. It’s people feeling like, well, we only got 80 percent of what we want, we didn't get the other 20, so we’re just going to sit on our hands. We’re not going to go out there. It turns out bringing about change is hard. I thought it was going to be easy. I liked the cute poster of the Obama campaign. I enjoyed the inauguration. It was great when Beyonce and Bono was singing. I didn’t know that we were actually going to have to grind it out, that sometimes we’d have setbacks.”

He's got us nailed, guys. I thought we were proud of finally standing up and fighting for something. Remember how excited we were to use the words "President Obama?" You know why? Because we fought. We fought for something, and realized that we're more powerful than we thought we were. That little voice in our heads telling us nothing we do matters? It was there then, too, and it was dead wrong. It's still wrong.

Remember how Candidate Obama absolutely destroyed his opposition to become President Obama. That was you! What you did once, you can do again. You're no weaker now than you were then. You're no less now than you were then, and you're starting off much closer to your goal. Don't sell yourself short. Selling yourself short is the only possible way that you're going to fuck this up. So don't.

Things Republicans tell environmentalists:

I hear a lot of oddball stuff at the door from people who don't believe that what Citizens Action Coalition does matters. We generally go for the consumer rights angle with these people, since talking to them about the air they breathe doesn't work (it just reminds them that Rush Limbaugh doesn't believe in global warming), talking to them about the water they drink doesn't work (since most of them have enough money to buy bottled water and do), and talking to them about their rates going up doesn't always work either (because they believe that standing up to the utilities will only increase the cost of doing business and therefore raise their rates in the end).

All that I can deal with. It's really not that unusual or difficult, since it all amounts to one thing. "None of those things can happen to me. I have money, therefore I am invincible."

But there are a few things that they bring up that are really sort of mind-bending. Not all Republicans are dumb like this; there are a lot of them who are far more environmental in their approach than they want to admit (perhaps because it might get them associated with liberals to admit that they care whether we pollute our groundwater). Some of the best logical disconnects I've seen are as follows:

"Wind and solar can't replace coal. What we need is more nuclear." Never mind the fact that wind and solar can and--in some states--do replace coal. The good bit is what often follows. "In France they get all their power from nuclear, and they've even got a way to recycle the waste so that it's clean now, too. That's what we need to do."

That's right! I have heard hardcore Conservative Republicans tell me that America should be more like France. Are you seeing why this totally blows my mind? The appropriate reply to them is obviously that French citizens pay half or more of their income in taxes, a huge amount of which goes toward paying for their nuclear program. Don't believe nuclear is expensive? Then why do nuclear states have electric bills twice as high as non-nuclear states. If Republicans want their rates or their taxes to go up, they should pick which way they want to pay. Either way they will.

AND ANYWAY WHEN DID THEY WANT US TO BECOME MORE LIKE FRANCE WTF

I also love hearing from these people that nuclear is so clean because the reactor only puts steam into the air. What the fuck do they care? These people don't believe in global warming anyway, so it ought to matter to them that the reactor puts out less air pollution, but at the expense of

• contaminated water (and less of it, since nuclear power plants require billions of gallons of water that they're legally allowed to take from nearby cities' drinking water in a drought, since the choice between thirsty poor people and dying crops is cake compared to a nuclear meltdown),
• national security risk (since even a decommissioned nuclear plant is an awesome target for a terrorist attack, and we can't mine all our uranium in the USA anyway, often getting it from countries that don't like us),
• higher utility rates,
• and the use of taxpayers as collateral for everything nuclear-related (see the Price-Anderson Act, which means that if a company wants to build a nuclear plant and defaults on their loan, if a company makes a mistake and the plant melts down, or really anything goes wrong, they're not liable; taxpayers are).

So yeah, it's a little better for the air, but all of those others things outweigh that. They should outweigh that even further for Republicans.

So why are they so pro-nuclear? Because the coal-dependent utility companies who make more money by spending more money (and yes, they're paid based on their expenses, which means their projects don't have to be successful or efficient--just expensive) did an advertising campaign decades ago talking about how great nuclear power was for the environment. These ads stopped because those companies got sued for lying in their ads, but not everyone knows that or cares.

Now, the fact that our government is actually acknowledging that global warming happens means that this is coming up again. They're being more careful not to state that nuclear power is actually environmentally-friendly at all (since now they know they can get sued over it and will lose), but they're still pointing out that this'd be an awesome way to reduce our carbon footprint (never mind that 1% of our coal plants in this country go to power uranium refinement and that'll only increase if we build more nuclear power plants).

This is something I hear a lot. "You guys aren't in favor of nuclear, are you? You've kept them from building any nuclear plants in this state; I don't support you guys."

The appropriate answer is, "Nuclear power is expensive, and if we let utility companies charge you for a nuclear plant, your rates would double. Everyone's rates would double, which is our members don't want. Also, we're not the ones who shut down Marble Hill. The regulators did that because the spending had gotten so high that it was no longer the project they'd approved. We're just the ones who got ratepayers a refund for all the money that had been wasted building a plant that never went online. We keep rates low in Indiana. Is that work you can support?"

At which point I point them back down to our support statement, and if they say no, I walk away and hope their neighbors are smarter than they are. Staying and arguing wastes my time, and only lets people like that think they're important.

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.)

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?

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.

Entertaining twist with the US economic crisis

This is for folk like me who've maintained their sense of dark humor as the US tries to pick itself up during a huge economic downturn. The stimulus bill did pass, and it did so largely on the strength of one party's influence in Congress (both in the House and Senate). A few Republicans crossed the aisle to vote for it in the Senate, but mainly the minority party had no interest in the project because they wanted to concentrate solely and completely on tax cuts, viewing infrastructure projects, state aid, and health care investments to be a waste of time.

Unfortunately, the bill was seriously curtailed before passage as an effort to court Republican support that they declined to give even after having many of their demands met. For a good breakdown of the winners and losers in the final version of the bill, check here. For those folk out there who want to know what the stimulus actually does, I would check that link. It'll give you a good place to start to look up the worth of the individual projects.

The humorous part? Legislators voting against the stimulus and then immediately turning around and bragging to their constituents about all the money coming to their states to help them out.

The final vote on the $787 billion measure broke down exactly as expected.

What's more, it was legislation the minority party wanted nothing to do with. Three Senate Republicans broke ranks, while zero House Republicans backed the plan. That, in and of itself, isn't especially surprising -- there were philosophical differences, coupled with strategic considerations, alongside a desire to embarrass the president.

What is at least a little surprising, though, is seeing some of the same Republicans who rejected the package issue press releases touting the spending measures in their districts. (...)

In Mica's press release about the stimulus package, for example, he not only applauded the spending for his district, he neglected to mention altogether that he opposed the bill. Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), who also issued a press release claiming "victory" for an Alaskan contracting program in the bill, also failed to mention that he voted against the measure that he's so excited about.

They're not the only Republicans who are suddenly deeply interested in obligating the federal government to help keep their states afloat. Governors--both Republican and Democrat--had been pushing for the stimulus package to get passed. I know that the list in this article isn't comprehensive, because my own governor is not mentioned and--despite his apparent unwillingness to bail out anybody below him--seems positively thrilled to receive money coming down from the federal level.

In the states, meanwhile, many Republican governors are practicing a pragmatic — their Congressional counterparts would say less-principled — conservatism.

Governors, unlike members of Congress, have to balance their budgets each year. And that requires compromise with state legislators, including Democrats, as well as more openness to the occasional state tax increase and to deficit-spending from Washington. (...)

The National Governors Association sent a bipartisan letter of support to Congressional leaders of both parties, signed by its Democratic chairman, Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, and Mr. Douglas, its Republican vice chairman. “The combination of funds for Medicaid, education and other essential services is critical for governors as they work to manage the downturn in their states and improve government for the long term,” it said.

Mr. Crist even campaigned last week with Mr. Obama in Florida for the recovery package.

“Whether it’s teachers or people on road crews helping our infrastructure, those in the health care arena as it might relate to Medicaid, all of these areas are important, all of them can produce jobs,” Mr. Crist said, adding, “Regardless of what your party is, Republican or Democrat, it really doesn’t matter. We have a duty and an obligation to the people who elected us, no matter what our position happens to be, to work together to get through this thing.”

Summary: Republicans in the legislature were under all kinds of pressure to ignore the needs of state and local governments, and even to ignore the requests (demands?) of governors from their own party. So they voted against the stimulus bill, but as a compromise they took good news back home that help was on the way (possibly in the hopes that their constituents won't notice their legislators were willing to let them hang for the sake of pleasing guys like this one, who evidently run the Republican Party now.

That's your update. I just have to laugh at this, because the alternative is to go right the hell out of my mind with indignation.

Who's Running the Republican Party?

It's exactly who you think.

Victory and Defeat

As Reed, the head of Butler Democrats said:

"Yes, that's right: the state that at one point had the largest population of KKK members of anywhere in the country, a state whose politics had long been corrupted by racists and segregationists, a state that had not elected a Democrat for President in 44 years, a state that re-elected George W. Bush in 2004 by a 60-40 margin, this same state elected a black, liberal, intellectual Democrat named Barack Hussein Obama as President!"

Indiana: dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world, but by a much wider margin than any of us expected. I think the final count was about fifteen thousand votes' worth of difference.

I'm amazed. We figured Obama would win the presidency, but Indiana? Really?

We waited to start drinking until Indiana's results were certain, but we did it! Guys, we shoved Indiana into the blue. As Suzanne said,

Obama has reminded us that this country was not just founded on the promise of financial opportunity. It was founded on the promise of -ideaological- opportunity. Of liberty and equality.

Until now, it's been fashionable to be cynical. But I think that's been to hide the pain we've felt as a society, for being so let down, for falling so short of our ideals.

And now, suddenly, it seems that this election tells us that the idealists are still a majority in this country after all.

THAT gives me hope.

Me, too. Other great commentary on this follows.

Daughter of slave votes for Obama

Amanda Jones, 109, the daughter of a man born into slavery, has lived a life long enough to touch three centuries. And after voting consistently as a Democrat for 70 years, she has voted early for the country's first black presidential nominee.

Historic Election Stirs Homeless to Vote

Frederick Williams, a Marine Corps veteran scraping by on unemployment benefits, describes his living situation as "not homeless but close to it" and says he never cared enough to vote -- until Tuesday.

At age 43, Williams shuffled into a Los Angeles homeless shelter carrying his worldly belongings in a small travel case and a knotted plastic bag and proudly cast the first ballot of his life with guidance from poll workers.

Williams said he voted for Barack Obama, whose message of hope and bid to become the first black president of the United States stirred him like no other politician.

"This is history in the making. I wanted to be part of that," said Williams, who lives in a transient hotel a few blocks from the polling station at the Los Angeles Mission.

"For once in my lifetime ... someone really cares about the small people out there."

Williams was one of hundreds of people -- many first-time voters lacking permanent dwellings -- who cast ballots this year on Skid Row, a 50-block downtown area believed to harbor the highest concentration of homeless in the United States.

Poll Analysis!

Digging through the numbers, we see:

* Obama won self-identified independents (52% to 44%), and self-identified moderates (60% to 39%). I guess no one believed the whole "maverick" thing.

* While Obama did far better with white voters than most recent Democratic candidates, McCain still won every age of whites -- except whites under 30, who strongly backed Obama (54% to 44%).

* Obama narrowly won among men (49% to 48%), and won among women by a large margin (56% to 43%).

* For all the talk about Obama being unable to win over Hispanic support, Hispanic voters backed Obama by more than a 2-to-1 margin. McCain's Hispanic support dropped 10 points from Bush's four years ago.

* Obama won Roman Catholic voters, another group he was supposed to lose.

Fear.

I started making some notes the other day about the presidential election, the turning points, the strategies, etc. And it occurred to me that the entire Republican strategy was based on nothing but fear. Fear of change, fear of hope, fear of a skinny man with a funny name. Fear of socialism, fear of a tax increase, fear of government. Fear of anything that looked, sounded, or might be perceived as foreign. Fear of the light at the end of the tunnel -- it might be a train. (...)

It was striking to see how Americans responded to the fear-mongering. Obama's lead over McCain in the polls grew in the face of the economic crisis, but the lead even more when McCain and his party tried desperately to scare Americans. The more we were supposed to feel afraid, the more voters responded to Obama's message. The more intense the smears against him, the higher Obama's favorability ratings.

There were quite a few messages for the political world yesterday, but one came through loud and clear: We don't want to be afraid anymore.

Photos of Reactions Around the World

But lest progressives get too caught up in our victory, there is still a lot of work to be done. Proposition 8 (the California proposition being pushed by the LDS church to ban gay marriage and probably annul the marriages already performed) is looking strong. As someone with great respect for the establishment of marriage (something I didn't understand until I was in a years-long committed relationship of a my own), this saddens me.

As arctangent said, "I want to celebrate, I really do, but Yes We Can (But No, Gays Can't) is a rather difficult message for me to rally around."

Ballot Measure Results from CNN

The commitments of homosexuals were declared invalid in Arkansas (where they are now forbidden to adopt children), California and Florida (where they are now unable to marry their partners).

Stay strong, guys. This is your country, too. We haven't forgotten you. But here's my question: Where were YOU?

Constitutional ban on same-sex marriages passes by 238,000 votes statewide. (...)

And hey, San Francisco... the entire city cast only 177,000 "no" votes?! What gives? That's less than Pride Day! Where are the other 500,000 of you on this issue?

Help us out, here. We love you guys and we know you love each other. I know it's hard to be told again and again that you aren't capable of the same feelings and commitments that straight people are, and I know it's hard to be an exhilerated newliwed and then to have it taken away by people who claim they "don't discriminate."

But if you don't fight, who will? I know that it hurts to lose out on the Prop 8 battle because the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints spread terrible lies about you and about this Proposition.

Right now there's a push to get the LDS church's tax-exempt status revoked because they used a religious organization to influence politics. Some info on that is here. At first I was on board with it, since I think that they were way out of line here. However, they were well within their rights even if they have permanently lost the respect of non-homophobic people nationwide.

So we may not be able to justify stripping them of their status with the IRS, but you can bet that the next time Mormons come to my door, they'll hear from me. And they will have some explaining to do and they will not enjoy it. Because if they're no friends of yours they're no friends of mine.

I know how much this must hurt, even if I probably can't really feel it as keenly as you must be. But I'm here. As long as you're still fighting, I'll be right with you. We'll get there.

The Vet Who Did Not Vet

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.

Are they that stupid? Really?

Palin and McCain are starting to scare the shit out of me. Their response to one key question has said a great deal about them, and about the people supporting them. The question is, "What do you do when your campaign makes no sense?"

SHIFT THE BLAME

I know that people like to blame that damned liberal media as much as they like to blame those damned liberal "experts" and damned liberal foreigners. I know that when their candidate's campaign is involved with something truly ridiculous it's easy to blame the people showing a recording and not the people in it.

Yes, I am aware that Palin's comments were edited in the interview with Charlie, so she actually wasn't as ludicrously incoherent as she seemed. I am aware of the fact that overciting that interview isn't really fair as a result. I am not aware of any reason why this excuses everything that goes down at the McCain-Palin Two Minutes' Hate rallies. I am not aware why we should refer to recordings of people shouting for a presidential candidate's death as "the way the biased media portrays Palin."

I know that no one wants to see links from the Huffington Post, but this article does have videos that you can watch for yourself (which is why I'm linking it). Be forwarned that the very last video on the article has a stupid tendency to autoplay, so you might want to scroll down and pause it as quickly as you can.

GET THEM TOO ANGRY TO THINK

My main problem here is only partly that McCain and Palin are creating a vicious and dangerous hateful atmosphere at a time when people are most vulnerable to it. This essay from a very well-known priestess explains pretty well my feelings on the subject of the Republican candidates and the responsibility they bear for the conduct of their supporters.

In the normal course of events, I'm a pro-anger kind of a gal. I came up through the feminist ranks in the seventies, when we were energized by the realization that all our lives, we women had been told to be 'nice', sweet, to placate the guys and not get them riled up. If we got angry, we either looked 'cute' or were unattractive raging b-words (rhymes with Witch).

Anger was a rational response to the constrictions and dis-empowerment we faced and women, and it became a driving force in our efforts for cultural change. Ironically, one of those results is Sarah Palin's candidacy. It is a triumph of feminism that we have so changed the culture in this country that the same kinds of reactionaries that wouldn't have voted for a women in 1968 and would have opposed a woman voting in 1908 now have to turn to one to energize their base.

Anger, however, is a dangerous emotion. Like fire, to which it is often compared, it can regenerate the forest when it burns through low and fast, or jump to the crowns of the trees and burn thousands of acres, devastating life and land.

McCain and Palin have been piling up the trash to start on burn pile on a red flag day, when economic drought and winds of fear and panic are whipping it out of control. For that, they bear a huge responsibility. They have deliberately used innuendos, outright lies, and personal attacks to create an incendiary atmosphere. Palin has stood silent while her supporters chant to kill her opponent! That is tantamount to instigating and condoning political violence, if we must speak of 'terrorism'. McCain has protested some of his followers excesses, but in condoning the strategy that feeds on fear, suspicion and thinly veiled racism--but his attempts are like trying to beat out a few sparks in the tall grass after he has fed the blaze.

Those of us who lay claim to some form of spiritual leadership should absolutely condemn the tactics of personal attack. We should call our politicians and our communities to think, speak and act from our best selves, not our worst, from respect and compassion, not from stoked-up rage and hate.

Now, I grant you, it's not going to mean much to McCain or Palin to learn that a Witch thinks they are behaving in a despicable and immoral way. Might even encourage them. But I call on you, sisters, brothers and freres of other faiths, especially you Christians whose voices will carry more weight, to speak out strongly in condemnation of the politics of hate. Speak to the McCain campaign, to your own congregations and coreligionists. Become the dampening rain that can douse this particular fire. A raging wildfire creates its own wind and weather, and feeds on itself. Regardless of your political convictions, hatemongering hurts and endangers us all.

This is only part of my problem. The rest of my problem is that McCain and Palin are creating a dangerous and ugly climate for this election, and belatedly covering themselves as though they had no idea things had gone so far. Creating a mess and then shifting the blame. Obama mentioned once, "In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is — you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps — even if you don't have boots. You're on your own. Well it's time for them to own their failure."

OWNING FAILURE

Your rallies turn into angry racist scenes from 1984 and you're hoping to blame the media for reporting it? Tough luck. No consistent stance on anything? Can't argue with the policies of a candidate you've been forced to concede his plan on Iraq, concede that perhaps we should talk about education after all, and claiming (in a ludicrously ironic twist) that "we have got to give people choice in America and not mandate things on them" when it comes to the rights of health care patients, except of course if those patients are women.

What do you do when your campaign makes no sense?

Tell lies about ACORN's voter registration efforts (if you don't like the Slate, check out ABC)so that you can keep people from voting and pre-emptively delegitimize the election if your ticket loses. Never mind that ACORN is required in most states to turn in every ballot they receive, but were attentive enough to flag the ones they felt might be a problem. Never mind that now ACORN employees are receiving death threats because of those lies.

Tell lies about Ayers. Be sure that when you do this you wave away concerns about your own associations. Those say nothing about your judgment, and you should virulently oppose any such "guilt by association" attacks.

Tell lies about Obama's tax policies.

No one will know the difference. Voters are stupid and aren't paying attention.

VOTERS ARE STUPID

I know Barack Obama wouldn't want me to "give up hope" and slam whole swaths of America's population as being too dumb to save, but it's what I believe. A large percentage of voters are stupid. Give them a smile and a wink and they'll believe whatever you say! Especially if it means your ridiculous lies give them excuses not to vote for Obama, when in many cases they'd already decided for other reasons.

Keep in mind that this will only work in parts of the country that are "pro-America." You and I may not know the difference, but Sarah Palin does. Makes me wonder what she thinks should be done about these other areas.

Michelle Bachmann has a good start. "What I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out if they are pro-America or anti-America. I think people would love to see an expose like that," she said.

I bet she has in her hand a list of names that were made known to her as being un-American and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the legislature. I bet she already knows. I bet it's somewhere around 51.

What do you do when your campaign makes no sense? Quit fussing with little lies. Man up and tell the big lies. You should "fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation."

I won't even tell you who pointed out the efficacy of that particular tactic. The comparison is so ugly that no one really wants to go there. Even when they should.

But come on. What else can you do when your campaign makes no sense? When smaller lies aren't working well enough or fast enough to make people frightened and angry enough? Tell bigger lies.

Because voters are stupid.

THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC

Y'know, I love reading about people's experiences and observations. I think there's something to be said for finding out what other people see, and in the current political climate it's easy to miss out on opportunities to observe McCain and Palin supporters in "their native environment," surrounded by other supporters without supervision by those dastardly 100% Jesus-Free Marxist Wiccan Jihadists (no, really, watch this video because it's long but gets better and better as it goes) like Obama and his ilk. They can't possibly spending all their time crying for the death of Barack Obama at one of McCain-Palin's regular Two Minutes' Hate rallies.

Turns out that, no, sometimes they have the decency to be self-righteous instead of violent. I guess it's an improvement.

Upon entering Starbucks, I immediately realized that the McCain/Palin folks were having a little meeting. I saw several women in dresses wearing pink buttons proclaiming "Women for McCain/Palin". A few of them brought their husbands who were sporting buttons saying things such as "Sportsman for McCain/Palin" and "NOBama". I sat down at the table next to the group just as they were starting their meeting.

As soon as the last member of their group came in, they prayed. In their prayer they begged that God "deliver the country from the evil socialists" and even prayed that "Obama find God". Well, damn, how offensive I thought to myself. (...)

They talked a little more about how Obama would destroy our country with "free health care" and "gay marriages". The feared his daughters would probably play loud rap music in the White House while world leaders were staying. They feared that Muslim would become our official religion. One of them even feared that "the Muslim language would be taught in schools." Priceless.

They went back to the fact that they all believed McCain would lose this election, but they were excited that Palin would probably run in 2012. (...)

At that time, I decided to pull out my laptop. You see, I have an Obama sticker on it. Well, one of them noticed and gave the rest of them a look and said SHHHH! One of the men didn't notice and kept talking. He said that "Obama is part of a sleeper cell and he will use our own nuclear weapons against us." One of the women nodded her head in agreement. Finally, the woman who noticed me said in a soft voice, "there's an Obama supporter behind us...BE QUIET". The group suddenly got quiet.

They changed the subject for a while, but on the way out the door one of the men told me "you are a disgrace to white people if you vote for that man."

One blogger commenting on this little account had this to say:

This isn't a movement; this is a psychotic break occurring simultaneously in millions of people. One wonders if mental illness, paranoia to be exact, is a communicable disease. And to all of the professional evangelical Democrats who claim if we just acted a little more friendly towards religion, Democrats could gain votes (although we seem to be doing just fine with black Protestant voters....), how do you respond to this:

"you are a disgrace to white people if you vote for that man."

Do you think that has anything to do with abortion? This is tribalism wrapped in a veneer of religiosity. Someone tell me how exactly we're supposed to reach these 'values' voters?

I have to say. I'm not sure whether this has squelched my curiosity or stimulated it. I rather I wish that I, like an acquaintance of mine, were headed to a Palin rally in the area tonight. I could bring my little ethnographer's notebook and take notes on the capering and posturing of these exotic humans.

And again, because I can't get enough of this video: 100% JESUS-FREE MARXIST WICCAN JIHADISTS WITH BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA AS THEIR SMOOTH-TALKING VOODOO MASTER.

Here's a better question than how we're supposed to reach out to these people.

How can you even satirize them anymore?

"Just a little cut"

Louisiana Republican Backs Poor Sterilization

The idea is to pay poor women $1000 dollars to go in and get spayed. Now, you know me. I love the idea of lots of people getting spayed and neutered, because if we care enough for the pet population to adopt instead of letting them breed like crazy, I feel like this should apply to humans as well. If it didn't come with serious hormonal consequences, I'd have had the surgery long ago. But here's the problem: LaBruzzo thinks he can eliminate generational poverty by simply keeping them from eventually outnumbering rich people (and passing on their defective poor-people genes into our otherwise-wholesome American gene pool). Seriously. That's what he wants.

LaBruzzo acknowledges that some prefer tackling poverty through education reforms and family planning programs, but he says he's looked into this, and found these traditional approaches to be ineffective. It's led him to think the whole pay-for-poor-women's-sterilization tack might be a good idea.

Point the first: Why are we sterilizing the women? [insert detailed explanation of women as vessels of culture to be protected or destroyed accordingly] Vasectomies are cheaper and less invasive, so you can do more of them. When you want to use tax dollars for this, shouldn't efficiency factor in?

Point the second: We should sterilize rich people instead. That way the people who're in the best position to support children have to adopt all these kids that have no parents. Because really, it kinda sucks that the people most likely to insist that women give up unwanted babies for adoption are pretty likely to be having so many kids of their own that they don't actually take in any of these kids they wanted to be available for adoption.

So yeah. Give all the rich men vasectomies. Give the ones who go along with it another tax cut to console them for the ones Obama is going to allow to expire. If wealthy folk want to sterilize one group for economic reasons, I wonder if they've ever considered putting their own organs on the metaphorical chopping block.

Showing our faces in public!

Bob Parks says of Pagan Obama supporters, "I am so glad Republicans aren’t this messed up. I wouldn’t be able to show my face in public."

You're an ass. You're also ignoring your own nutters.

But mainly, Bob? You're an ass.

Home foreclosing? Michigan doesn't want you voting.

Voter Suppression in Michigan?
They "will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” according to party chairman James Carabelli.

State election rules allow parties to assign “election challengers” to polls to monitor the election. In addition to observing the poll workers, these volunteers can challenge the eligibility of any voter provided they “have a good reason to believe” that the person is not eligible to vote. One allowable reason is that the person is not a “true resident of the city or township.”

The Michigan Republicans’ planned use of foreclosure lists is apparently an attempt to challenge ineligible voters as not being “true residents.”

The hell, people. If it weren't bad enough that lots and lots of people are losing their homes because of the mismanagement of our economy, now the same party responsible for tanking things so badly wants their victims to stay away from the polls as well.

One expert questioned the legality of the tactic.

“You can’t challenge people without a factual basis for doing so,” said J. Gerald Hebert, a former voting rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Department who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.-based public-interest law firm. “I don’t think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.”

The article takes a while to come right out and call this vote suppression, but eventually they do.

“At a minimum what you are seeing is a fairly comprehensive effort by the Republican Party, a systematic broad-based effort to put up obstacles for people to vote,” he said. “Nobody is contending that these people are not legally registered to vote.

“When you are comprehensively challenging people to vote,” Hebert went on, “your goals are two-fold: One is you are trying to knock people out from casting ballots; the other is to create a slowdown that will discourage others,” who see a long line and realize they can’t afford to stay and wait.

This is yet another reason to doublecheck your voter registration. You can register to vote online now, and if you're already registered, you really need to use this site's tool to doublecheck that your registration is still valid. This isn't just for people in Michigan. Vote suppression is a big problem. VA hospitals aren't allowed to have voter registration drives. Stricter ID laws don't actually really help with voter fraud (since it's not really common for people to try and vote a billion times under different names--it's hard enough to get people to vote once), but they do keep people who don't have the money to keep around certain forms of ID from voting (for example, naturalized citizen papers for legal migrants, or passports for the rest of us).

It's one thing to make sure that everybody voting brings a valid ID so that you can check to make sure they should be there. It's quite another to have coordinated, concerted efforts to keep as many people as possible from voting. I question any party that needs to do that to win. Hell, I question any party that wants to do this to win, since it says a lot about how much they really care about representing their constituents.

And before someone says, "This isn't McCain's fault! These are just locals being assholes, and you can't pin that on the actual official campaign," I want you to check this part out as well.

The party is creating a spreadsheet of election challenger volunteers and expects to coordinate a training with the regional McCain campaign, Graves said in an interview with Michigan Messenger.

When asked for further details on how Republicans are compiling challenge lists, he said, “I would rather not tell you all the things we are doing.”

Go check your registration. Michigan's not the only state with a history of this nonsense. It's not uncommon, which means you guys need to be careful you don't get screwed over. We call this an ownership election! If your vote is invalidated because you're not the kind of person they want in the polls, you're on your own. You need to stay up on this to make sure that you can vote in a party that *gasp* wants you to vote.

Damn, Gloria.

Gloria Steinem. You and I, we've had our differences. We have, really. There've been times when the phrase "calm the fuck down this isn't about vaginas" crossed my mind, and times when it came right out my mouth before I could stop it.

But you definitely nailed it this time. Thanks to kaiserbrown for linking this. I went ahead and linked to sources so that no one can claim Steinem's talking out her ass.

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does."

Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband.

Damn, Gloria. 

Even-Handed Campaigns and Coverage

Lying about Fact-Check.org like they're not going to call you on it is... an interesting strategy, guys!

A McCain-Palin ad has FactCheck.org calling Obama's attacks on Palin "absolutely false" and "misleading." That's what we said, but it wasn't about Obama.

We don't object to people reprinting our articles. In fact, our copyright policy encourages it. But we've also asked that "the editorial integrity of the article be preserved" and told those who use our items that "you should not edit the original in such a way as to alter the message."

With its latest ad, released Sept. 10, the McCain-Palin campaign has altered our message in a fashion we consider less than honest. The ad strives to convey the message that FactCheck.org said "completely false" attacks on Gov. Sarah Palin had come from Sen. Barack Obama. We said no such thing. We have yet to dispute any claim from the Obama campaign about Palin.

I'm getting really tired of these assertions that both sides are running dirty campaigns, both candidates are dirty greedy lying criminals, and there's just no point in reading anything about politics, or heaven forbid voting, because it's all lies anyway.

House did say everybody lies. He also said, "I lied when I said that."

Look. Saying "there've been smears on both sides, politics is just like that" is untrue. I'll stop short of saying anyone who claims it is a liar, because perhaps it's cynicism or simple ignorance talking. It's much more fair to say there are stupid rumors about both tickets' candidates, but that only one campaign is actively encouraging these nonsensical smears.

For example, there've been wild accusations online that Palin is a witch because of the names of her kids (because two of them happen to match the names of two TV witches whose shows aired after the kids were born). Not only did Obama state that people need to leave her family out of this, his campaign didn't bring those attacks to the fore with a supporting ad from the campaign.

Contrast this with McCain, who saw crazy conspiracy theories online about Obama being the anti-Christ (google "Obama Nicolae Carpathia" and you'll see what I mean), and instead of denouncing or ignoring them McCain's campaign aired that dog-whistle ad calling Obama "The One." There is a big difference in the level and type of attacks on the Dems and Repubs sides here, so treating this election like it's everybody smearing equally is inaccurate and deceptive.

Wild and stupid rumors are spreading on both ends of the political spectrum, but only one candidate is encouraging them: McCain. Grouping Obama's campaign in with McCain's is either a startling display of ignorance about what these campaigns are really doing, or it's a deliberately deceptive attempt to drag Obama down to McCain's level in the minds of people who aren't paying enough attention to know the difference.

Steve Benen has a good essay over at Political Animal called "Thinking like a Republican."

The Washington Post's E. J. Dionne Jr. had a column four years ago this month that's always stuck with me. He noted, in the midst of the last presidential campaign, that Republicans are not above lying, but Democrats just can't bring themselves to do the same thing. "A very intelligent political reporter I know said the other night that Republicans simply run better campaigns than Democrats," Dionne wrote at the time. "If I were given a free pass to stretch the truth to the breaking point, I could run a pretty good campaign, too."

I thought about the column when I was chatting this morning with a friend who works in Democratic campaign politics. We commiserated over the fact that Obama has become efficient in responding to the constant barrage of deceptive attacks from the McCain campaign, but doesn't launch deceptive attacks of his own against the McCain campaign.

My friend asked me what Atwater/Rove/Schmidt would do if they worked for Obama. What kind of attacks would they make against McCain? It got me thinking.

You should go check out the rest. The comments don't really answer Benen's challenge for the most part, but some of them do. It's just for fun of course, since there's no way that Republican tactics would work for Democrats this election cycle, but it's interesting to see what the campaign would look like if both sides really were running smear campaigns. And yes, it's very different.

Most people spend the comments bringing up things that are true, which totally spoils the fun of playing Karl Rove for an evening.

John McCain says he has a plan to catch Osama bin laden -- but he isn't telling President Bush. That leaves all Americans vulnerable to a terrorist attack from Enemy #1.

Why won't John McCain help us get bin Laden, so America can be free of that terrorist threat? -MarkH

The hell! That's just pointing out that he's got a foolproof plan to protect our country and hasn't shared it with anyone with the power to put it into practice. We're not here to point things out. We're here to make them up! Gawd!

McCain denounced his country during time of war. At the time, he said that he did so under torture.

Nowadays, he agrees with Bush that the things done to him were NOT torture, just ways to get the truth in an interrogation.

So, McCain denounced his country without ever being tortured. -John

See what I mean? It's clever, but it's totally off-topic, by dint of it being merely unflattering. All that's doing is pointing out McCain being inconsistent and fucking himself over. Pointing out hypocrisy is not what we're here to do, people! We're here to lie our asses off and see if we can think of anything to match Benen's earmark slam. Come on, guys! What's all this reflexive honesty bullshit?!

Yes, I realize that we can completely destroy McCain's credibility on nearly all domestic and foreign issues using actual verifiable truths, and so does Steve Benen. The point here is not to encourage people to talk about McCain cutting off support for Israel, but to make people realize that the reason we're not hearing the same trash from Obama that we hear from McCain is not that McCain has no weaknesses to exploit. It's not that Obama can't. It's that he doesn't.

One guy posted an interesting little quote in a comment, and I'll leave you with it.

"If the Republicans stop telling lies about us, we will stop telling the truth about them."
--Adlai Stevenson

Dear Sarah Palin:

Madame, please to be stopping all this lying every time you open your mouth.

-Ashley

Compassion and Choice

I'm going to be charitable and assume that the pro-life stance is not just primarily about protecting children, but is solely about protecting children. Let's take away all those debates about economic and social parity between men and women. Let's take away all the questioning of heteronormative gender roles and Christonormative social norms, and the adoption system that reinforces them.

Let's talk about protecting children.

Currently in America there are 500,000 children in foster care, according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

On any given night in America, over a million children are homeless. Being homeless doesn't just mean no shelter, compromised hygeine, and no guarantee of safety. It also means a staggering rate of mental illness and compromised educational opportunity, according to the National Mental Health Association.

Every day, worldwide, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes according to The Lancet.

About 20 million children are homeless and over 2 million are dead because of armed conflicts worldwide in the last decade, this according to UNICEF.

This is why, if I ever raise children, I feel a strong moral imperative to adopt. This is why, if I ever call a young person my son or daughter I do not plan for them to be of my own blood.

This is why, if I become pregnant, I will do my damndest to have an abortion. Y'know why? Because if I'm going to pour resources into a child, I can think of children who need it a lot more than the one I'd be producing.

Stop telling me I hate children. That I'm a babykiller. That I'm a destroyer of families, a reaver of responsible moral values. I intend to have an abortion to stop the introduction of more children into a world that's got enough needy children already. You want to turn every single abortion discussion into an appeal to emotion? You really want to go that low?

I can play that game, too.

I think every single person who deliberately conceives children of their own instead of taking in a child in need (and they're all around us, guys) is being self-serving and short-sighted. I do. I think these people are allowing themselves to be complicit in a system where the only children that are recognized as needing safety, food, and love are one's own, where the children we value most are still aspirin-sized parasites, while real living, breathing, thinking, feeling, suffering children are left to their plights because millions of parents who could be doing something for them are creating more and more children instead.

Every time I'm slurred as a babyhating militant women's libber out to destroy families I have bitten my tongue when it comes to this particular argument because I didn't want to come out and say it. But now I will.

You say I'm devaluing the lives of children by planning to have an abortion should I become pregnant. I say that pro-lifers are devaluing the lives of children by sanctifying a fetus above a needy child who quite simply to them matters less.

I use two forms of protection and am still considering more permanent sterilization options (that, let's face it, are expensive and invasive for women). But you can bet that if I become pregnant despite that, I will have an abortion. Without hesitation. Without guilt. Without permission.

And I'll be thinking of you. I'll remind myself how glad I am that "pro-lifers" and their lust for forced birthing don't get to force me to make the wrong choice, to make a choice that I believe will be exacerbating a global child welfare disaster that could easily be fixed if more people cared for existing children as much as they cared for a smear of cells less distinct from my own body than the normal flora in my gut.

I'll be wondering why the hell more women aren't right here with me, putting live children first.

So don't rail at me about protecting children like it's never occurred to me that they need it. I am a thinking, discerning, moral human being, and thinking, discerning, moral human beings are able and obligated to decide for themselves how best to serve the world in their time here. We are able and obligated to choose. I choose contraception and abortion, as many times as I want them. I choose adoption, every time I want a child.

That's my choice. Why should you get a veto? Why should the moral choice of this woman be worth so little, and dismissed so easily? I'm pro-choice, and we believe in morality, too.

If given a choice (and I will demand one), there is a direct moral conflict for me between bearing a child of my own blood and caring for suffering children who are already here. When in conflict (and I've stated that it always will be), my obligation will be to these living children first. Why are all these living children less important to "pro-lifers" than the children I may abort? Why do they want women like me to be forced to bear children, when I know in my heart that children worldwide are better served if I avoid breeding at all costs?

Call it the Bob Barker school of child welfare. Spay and neuter yourselves. Adopt a child in need.

To clarify: I'm not demanding that all people have enforced abortions until there are no more needy children. I can understand people choosing personally that, when they get pregnant, they're not comfortable getting an abortion. Oopsie babies happen, and I know not everyone can be as cavalier about it as I am.

What I can't excuse morally even if I understand it emotionally is deliberately creating more children when you know that there are already kids out there who need you. Resources are limited, and you can't take care of every kid. But I believe it is wrong to deliberately create a new child instead of adopting. Not everyone has to make that choice, but it is a moral choice I have made, and not mere selfishness as it gets portrayed by anti-choicers.

If all we're going to talk about is compassion for children, I think it shows a lack of compassion for children to deliberately breed more instead of caring for the ones who need care.

Freedom of Assembly at the Republican... Assembly

Massive police raids on suspected protestors in Minneapolis

Several of those who were arrested are being represented by Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers' Guild. Nestor said that last night's raid involved a meeting of a group calling itself the "RNC Welcoming Committee", and that this morning's raids appeared to target members of "Food Not Bombs," which he described as an anti-war, anti-authoritarian protest group. There was not a single act of violence or illegality that has taken place, Nestor said. Instead, the raids were purely anticipatory in nature, and clearly designed to frighten people contemplating taking part in any unauthorized protests.

Nestor indicated that only 2 or 3 of the 50 individuals who were handcuffed this morning at the 2 houses were actually arrested and charged with a crime, and the crime they were charged with is "conspiracy to commit riot." Nestor, who has practiced law in Minnesota for many years, said that he had never before heard of that statute being used for anything, and that its parameters are so self-evidently vague, designed to allow pre-emeptive arrests of those who are peacefully protesting, that it is almost certainly unconstitutional, though because it had never been invoked (until now), its constitutionality had not been tested.

Federal government involved in raids on protesters

So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protesters who have committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to track what they do. And as extraordinary as that conduct is, more extraordinary is the fact that they have received virtually no attention from the national media and little outcry from anyone. And it's not difficult to see why. As the recent "overhaul" of the 30-year-old FISA law illustrated -- preceded by the endless expansion of surveillance state powers, justified first by the War on Drugs and then the War on Terror -- we've essentially decided that we want our Government to spy on us without limits. There is literally no police power that the state can exercise that will cause much protest from the political and media class and, therefore, from the citizenry.

Beyond that, there is a widespread sense that the targets of these raids deserve what they get, even if nothing they've done is remotely illegal. We love to proclaim how much we cherish our "freedoms" in the abstract, but we despise those who actually exercise them. The Constitution, right in the very First Amendment, protects free speech and free assembly precisely because those liberties are central to a healthy republic -- but we've decided that anyone who would actually express truly dissident views or do anything other than sit meekly and quietly in their homes are dirty trouble-makers up to no good, and it's therefore probably for the best if our Government keeps them in check, spies on them, even gets a little rough with them.

After all, if you don't want the FBI spying on you, or the Police surrounding and then invading your home with rifles and seizing your computers, there's a very simple solution: don't protest the Government.

This is why we need judicial review. I know there are people on my friends list who don't like the idea of the Judicial branch "making law," since that's the Legislative branch's job. However, the Judicial branch is here to evaluate laws that are brought to them and determine whether they're Constitutional or not. If they're not, the Judicial branch has the legitimate power to strike down those laws, effectively changing our legal code by ruling that certain parts of it should never have been passed.

By what understanding of the First Amendment is this crap okay? Our courts had better do their damned jobs here, even if it gets them labelled "activist judges." This shit, now that it's been invoked and can be challenged, needs to be thrown out and America needs to take a good hard look at itself, wondering how we let ourselves come to this.