THERE THEY GO AGAIN

"Where do you begin" is becoming a daily mantra.

Not content to bluster hatefully, ignorantly and hypocritically about same-sex marriage, today it's the news that the Catholic Church is renewing its campaign against contraception.

The Catholic bishops of the United States voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to oppose any form of public approval for homosexual activity and criticized the decision by the Episcopal Church USA to ordain an openly gay bishop. No surprise, given their recent rants. But they also decided to launch a public campaign to convince Catholics of the wrongfulness of contraception.

The bishops acknowledged that only 4 percent of Catholics of childbearing age use natural family planning, a church-endorsed method of achieving or avoiding pregnancy by timing sexual activity according to a woman's menstrual cycle.

So instead of waking up and smelling the coffee, they're going after that 96%. Jesus Christ, these guys have no clue.

At a news conference yesterday, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver said that the advent of contraception has led to a raft of social problems, such as same-sex relationships, divorce, and abortion, because it has separated sex from procreation.

'This contraceptive mentality which has been rampant in the last 40 to 50 years is certainly a silent killer,'' said Bishop Joseph F. Martino of Scranton, Pa.

The other day senior Vatican spokesman, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo's said that condoms are useless in preventing the spread of HIV (because the virus seeps through the porous latex) and therefore should not be used, even in AIDS-wracked Africa, where as much as 20 percent of the population is reportedly infected.

So I get two conclusions from all this:

A. If one wants to be a good Catholic in the 21st century, you can't use birth control, and you can't have an abortion. You're rewards for being holy are 1) you get to have sex for a few days every month, or 2) you get to have tons of kids. This would be of particular interest to Catholics in Africa and Latin America, where the numbers of the faithful are much higher than in America, and where of course having lots more kids is the way to raise the living standard.

B. These latest screeds seems calculated to insure that this Church can cause as much death and misery as any other form of medieval religious oppression. They won't be one-upped!

I'm trying hard to see how this rejection of common sense and attempt to reverse hard-fought gains in freedom, consciousness and the right of women to control their lives and future is any different from the life under the Taliban.

MORE GORE

No,this isn't a movie review of Kill Bill.

By now Gore's Nov. 9 speech, co-sponsored by MoveOn.org and the American Constitution Society, is buzzed all over the net.

MoveOn's description of the speech is understatement: "Mr. Gore described the Administration's assault on our civil liberties as un-American and will charge that the Bush/Ashcroft attack on the Constitution is actually a smokescreen that obscures the Administration’s fundamental failure to meaningfully protect our national security, and that their efforts have weakened rather than strengthened America." An excerpt follows below.

You can read (or hear) the speech here: http://www.moveon.org/gore/speech2.html

Two thoughts come to mind.

First, reading this terrific and hopeful speech makes me even more disgruntled at Gore's dismal campaigning back during the coup d'etat of 2000, and Nader's vengeful attacks on the Democrats. Why couldn't Gore have spoken this clearly and eloquently back then?

And second, why can't any of the Democratic candidates talk this way?

Politics and elections as usual disappeared three years ago. So a Draft Gore movement is not as absurd as it would have sounded a few years back, or as portrayed by opposing vested interests. Pundits have claimed it would open old wounds, yada yada. Oh, let's do!

But the Gore we hear from today is way up the evolutionary scale from the one we heard and saw three years ago, while his simian adversary has continued to devolve.

It still may be quixotic, but there are many websites devoted to a draft. A Google search for
"draft Gore" finds dozens. http://www.electgore04.com says "Gone is the stiff, formal Senator/Vice President, Al Gore clearly loved being with the people and the people loved being with him. There is a genuine connection between the man and his message and the people.There is ample evidence that a presidential draft of Al Gore is do-able – the election of Theodore Roosevelt, the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the Barry Goldwater draft movement are proof that it can be, and has been, done in modern times."

Some close friends have latched onto another latecomer, General Clark, who for all that tardiness, is making reasonable advances.

Gore, in this and prior speeches (linked at the MoveOn site) has shown that he had the potential to be the best Democratic president since FDR. His views are clearly more progressive than those of Clinton, who, like Jimmy Carter, should be saying these things loudly and consistently.

So far Gore has resisted any calls to run. Maybe he needs more prodding.

The excerpt:
"I want to challenge the Bush Administration's implicit assumption that we have to give up many of our traditional freedoms in order to be safe from terrorists.

Because it is simply not true.

In fact, in my opinion, it makes no more sense to launch an assault on our civil liberties as the best way to get at terrorists than it did to launch an invasion of Iraq as the best way to get at Osama Bin Laden.

In both cases, the Administration has attacked the wrong target.

In both cases they have recklessly put our country in grave and unnecessary danger, while avoiding and neglecting obvious and much more important challenges that would actually help to protect the country.

In both cases, the administration has fostered false impressions and misled the nation with superficial, emotional and manipulative presentations that are not worthy of American Democracy.

In both cases they have exploited public fears for partisan political gain and postured themselves as bold defenders of our country while actually weakening not strengthening America.

In both cases, they have used unprecedented secrecy and deception in order to avoid accountability to the Congress, the Courts, the press and the people.

Indeed, this Administration has turned the fundamental presumption of our democracy on its head. A government of and for the people is supposed to be generally open to public scrutiny by the people while the private information of the people themselves should be routinely protected from government intrusion.

But instead, this Administration is seeking to conduct its work in secret even as it demands broad unfettered access to personal information about American citizens. Under the rubric of protecting national security, they have obtained new powers to gather information from citizens and to keep it secret. Yet at the same time they themselves refuse to disclose information that is highly relevant to the war against terrorism.

They are even arrogantly refusing to provide information about 9/11 that is in their possession to the 9/11 Commission, the lawful investigative body charged with examining not only the performance of the Bush Administration, but also the actions of the prior Administration in which I served. The whole point is to learn all we can about preventing future terrorist attacks,

Two days ago, the Commission was forced to issue a subpoena to the Pentagon, which has disgracefully put Secretary Rumsfeld's desire to avoid embarrassment ahead of the nation's need to learn how we can best avoid future terrorist attacks. The Commission also served notice that it will issue a subpoena to the White House if the President continues to withhold information essential to the investigation.

And the White House is also refusing to respond to repeated bipartisan Congressional requests for information about 9/11, even though the Congress is simply exercising its Constitutional oversight authority. In the words of Senator Main, 'Excessive administration secrecy on issues related to the September 11 attacks feeds conspiracy theories and reduces the public's confidence in government.'

In a revealing move, just three days ago, the White House asked the Republican leadership of the Senate to shut down the Intelligence Committee's investigation of 9/11 based on a trivial political dispute. Apparently the President is anxious to keep the Congress from seeing what are said to have been clear, strong and explicit warnings directly to him a few weeks before 9/11 that terrorists were planning to hijack commercial airliners and use them to attack us.

Astonishingly, the Republican Senate leadership quickly complied with the President's request. Such obedience and complicity in what looks like a cover-up from the majority party in a separate and supposedly co-equal branch of government makes it seem like a very long time ago when a Republican Attorney General and his deputy resigned rather than comply with an order to fire the special prosecutor investigating Richard Nixon.

In an even more brazen move, more than two years after they rounded up over 1,200 individuals of Arab descent, they still refuse to release the names of the individuals they detained, even though virtually every one of those arrested has been "cleared" by the FBI of any connection to terrorism and there is absolutely no national security justification for keeping the names secret. Yet at the same time, White House officials themselves leaked the name of a CIA operative serving the country, in clear violation of the law, in an effort to get at her husband, who had angered them by disclosing that the President had relied on forged evidence in his state of the union address as part of his effort to convince the country that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of building nuclear weapons."

More Gore.

QUOTES OF NOTE TODAY

Paul Krugman, being interviewed Terrence McNally KPFK 90.7fm, Los Angeles:

McNally: What I haven't heard quite yet is the point which you make very strongly in the book, that the purpose behind the tax cuts is to bankrupt the government, to undermine social programs, so that no one who comes into office after them will have an easy time restoring them.

Krugman: I'm not making that up. That's exactly what the lobbyists and the others behind these people say. The program that the Administration is following looks as if it was designed to implement their ideas. I think it is.

Robert Scheer:

"It takes stunning arrogance for a president to invade an oil-rich, politically strategic country on the basis of demonstrable lies, put his favorite companies in control of its economic future, create a puppet regime to do his bidding and then claim, as George Bush did last week in a speech, that this is all a bold exercise in spreading democracy."

"Bush is not really interested in meaningful democracy in Iraq – just as the U.S. wasn't in Afghanistan or earlier in Iran. In Iraq, the U.S. will not tolerate any opposition to the U.S. occupation. But that excludes democracy, which will not cater to the whims of U.S. foreign policy."

From The Onion, on the anti-abortion campaign:

The Onion asked: "Bush's signing of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act was a political triumph for the movement to curtail abortions in the U.S. What do you think?"

And the answers:
"They've got God on their side. All we've got is science and reason."
"Before I make a decision on abortion, I'll have to review the made-for-TV movies on the topic."
"Is it just me, or have national politics been sorta veering to the right a little since Bush was elected?"
"As an investor in back-alley real estate and wire-hanger futures, I say, 'Whoo-hoo!'"

WE'RE RIGHT, THEY'RE WRONG

That's the title of James Carville's recent book.

I read somewhere yesterday a letter to the editor chastising the editorial policy of that publication--whatever it was. I have donated some Vietnam War memory cells to the Bush administration, since they seem somewhat challenged in this area. Must have included some short term memory cells as well. I wish I could find the letter to reprint here, but it's as gone as, um, yesterday's paper.

Anyway, the writer was upset that a piece appeared in the paper that used the term "anti-choice." He explained that this loaded term was used to frame the issue in such a way as to demean and defame those opposed to abortion, and that the editors should not allow this in the interests of balanced reporting and fairness. He took umbrage, you could say.

Where do you begin?

My first reaction was if I changed the phrase "anti-choice" to "pro-life" and left the rest of the letter intact, well, I could have written it!

This is too surreal.

But it's all too real. The disconnect in that letter between reality and perception was palpable. I have no doubt that the writer believed every word he wrote, and was truly offended.

What's most bothersome about that attitude wasn't that he didn't get the irony of his screed--why should he, after all? He's convinced he's right.

But he isn't; that's what's most bothersome.

Partly because of the stagnation surrounding the so-called debates over abortion, civil unions, same-sex marriage, and other hot-button issues, well-intentioned moderates or pretenders to that designation are urging us all to walk a mile in the other's shoes, to try to understand their point of view.

This, for two reasons: to return civility and intelligence to the discourse, and to be more effective, persuasive. Understanding the other side, acknowledging that your opponents believe they are just as right as you, perhaps even empathizing with some of their issues--that's the way to achieve resolution and harmony.

We pro-choice people should dialogue with the anti-choice people, befriend them, and find common ground.

I'm all for civility in discourse, goddammit. But no fucking way I'm going to give an inch to these ignorant hateful hypocritical pigs. Forget all that goody two shoes crap. Why?

Because we're right, and they're wrong.

There are absolutes. There are truths. Some things are, as the right sees everything, simply black-and-white.

Outlawing or hindering safe abortion is wrong.
Outlawing or condemning non-heterosexual behavior, unions or marriage is wrong.
Laws that restrict consensual sexual activity are wrong.
Executive orders that deny funding to any health-related agency that even acknowledges that abortion exists are wrong
Those who say condoms don't work and lead to promiscuity are wrong.
Those who, instead, promote abstinence exclusively as a preventive measure agains teen pregnancy and STD's are wrong
Those who think there should be few if any restrictions on gun ownership and usage are wrong. Dead wrong.
Those who think liberals, progressives, and anyone to the left of Attila are the cause of all that's wrong with this world are themselves wrong, and are often the cause of all that's wrong. (Though they may be right about Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller.)
Those who think they have God on their side are damned wrong.
Those who censor information that threatens their hegemony and positions are so powerfully wrong.
Those we think we need to destroy a village or country to save it are wrong.
Those who resort to violence and war before it's the last resort and lie about it are lying liars--and wrong.
Those who think government is the source of all evil are wrong. (But not all wrong)
Those who--well, you know.

And to those who advocate that we engage in constructive dialogue with the anti-choice fascists, please go away.

Because we're right, and you're wrong.

CATHOLIC BISHOPS TO PUNISH PRO-CHOICE CATHOLIC POLITICIANS; "MORAL TEACHINGS" IGNORED SAYS BISHOPS

The bishops are debating whether or not to punish, and if so, how. Options are denying honorary degrees, refusing to allow them to speak at Catholic institutions, and excommunication.

Further, the bishops recently published a guide for Catholic voters urging them to consider Catholic moral teachings when deciding how to vote.

That being the case, then all Catholics should lobby for kneepads for altar boys.

Moral teachings? As if the despicable history of excusing and covering up pedophilia for decades (if not centuries) wasn't bad enough, consider this:

"Some Catholic politicians defy Church teaching in their policy advocacy and legislative votes, first and foremost fundamentally on the defense of unborn life..." says Bishop John ricard of Tallahassee.

Meanwhile, A senior Vatican spokesman, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, told a BBC Radio audience in October that condoms are useless in preventing the spread of HIV (because the virus seeps through the porous latex) and therefore should not be used, even in AIDS-wracked Africa, where as much as 20 percent of the population is reportedly infected. The World Health Organization denounced Trujillo's claim but said it had heard similar Catholic Church messages in Asia and Latin America."

Of that 20%, a large share are pregnant women, or women of childbearing age.

So you can see how Church moral teachings protect unborn life.

Here's what one Catholic says about all this: No elected official should be "limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation." --JFK.

Maybe Catholics who have a better idea should break off and form a new sect, one that practices unconditional tolerance and love, welcomes diverse opinions and lifestyles, and basically behaves something like we expect from followers of Christ. You know, like the Anglicans.

THE PRESIDENT IS DEPRESSED

A lobbyist, on his way home from work in Washington, D.C., came to a dead halt in traffic and thought to himself, "Wow, this seems worse than usual."

He noticed a police officer walking between the lines of stopped cars, so he rolled down his window and asked, "Officer, what's the hold-up?"

The officer replied, "The President is depressed, so he stopped his motorcade and is threatening to douse himself in gasoline and set himself on fire. He says no one believes his stories about why we went to war in Iraq, or the connection between Saddam and al-Qa'ida, or that his tax cuts will help anyone except his wealthy friends; the press called him on the lie about Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger, and now Campbell Brown is threatening to sue him for a sexual innuendo he made at a recent press conference. So we're taking up a collection for him."

The lobbyist asks, "How much have you got so far?"

The officer replies, "About 14 gallons, but a lot of folks are still siphoning

SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION

Cases of spontaneous human combustion have skyrocketed, say the International Commission on Unexplained Human Death. Since 2001, there have been 1,051 cases of people bursting into flames for no apparent reason. "Nothing explains the increase,"says a spokesman for the group. "We've considered factors like global warming."

GROWTH AND CHANGE

Candidates and pundits are fond of criticizing a candidate for changing positions, especially on hot-button issues. That's understandable. We and they have good reason to suspect opportunism.

We seem even harder on someone whose positions move to the left. During an election, that's equally understandable. We've been burned before.

But the blanket assumption that all change of political or social views is opportunistic is counterproductive at best.

If one was a segregationist in younger years, cannot one see the evil in that as one matures? If one was anti-choice, can one never be pro-choice? Do we have to lock people in the closets of their past?

What if it's real growth? Is it wise to delegitimize any public figure or politician who exhibits personal growth? We need those people!

We'd be better off if we learn to distinguish the poseurs from the evolved.

Clark seems to be the one this time around getting heat for changing his mind--moving left--and Dean's coming in second. Which are they?

As cynical as I am about our electoral process, I want to give them both the benefit of the doubt. Anyone who moves left in this cultural climate deserves that.

"THERE'S NOTHING PARTIAL ABOUT THEIR EFFORT TO UNDO ROE V. WADE"

That was said by John Kerry shortly after Bush signed that egregious law banning so-called "partial-birth abortion."

It's incumbent upon us to fight the language manipulation and framing that I and many others have recently written about, in the context of this bill, so I will never again use that phrase. To repeat, there is no birth involved, nowhere near birth. Every sentient being knows this.

Apparently everyone except our president and his followers. They really do give sentient beings a bad name.

He said yesterday during the bill-signing circus that "For years, a terrible form of violence has been directed against children who are inches away from birth, while the law looked away." And later he said "The best case against (it) is a simple description of what happens and to whom it happens. It involves the delivery of a live boy or girl, and a sudden, violent end to that life."

In Bush's State of the Union address this year, he said the bill would "protect infants at the very hour of their birth." At least he's consistent.

The signing of this bill will give religious conservatives the Big O, for sure. "Bush...will see his stock among them rise even higher for succeeding where other other Republicans failed, though officials in his reelection campaign were quick to insist that the president did not sign the (bill) for political reasons," says the Boston Globe.

Oh so?

I have no doubt Bush believes abortion is wrong.

But it's simply not possible that Bush doesn't know the facts about this procedure. None of what he said is true. None of it.

Just like it's not possible that he doesn't know the facts about global warming, or the critical role of condoms in preventing deaths from AIDS. Yet he denies global warming is a problem, and censors his own government's reports that it is; he has any mention of condoms removed from the CDC website, because they don't protect and lead to promiscuity, he says.

So why did he say those things about this procedure? Why does the leader of the free world continue to twist and distort and, yes, lie, about such profound concerns if not to pander to the radical right constituency he desperately needs for reelection?

That's not "political reasons?"

DEAN MARTINETTE

I watched the Rock the Vote debate the other night. You could tell it was a rockfest because of the videos. Outkast and Ludacris betta watch out.

So, who had more bling?

Shoo-ee, don't I wish Kucinich or Mosley-Brown had a real chance. One year to d-day, and I'm sticking with Kucinich for now.

I even liked Sharpton better than most of the others. Actually, for all the condemnation of Al-Tawana he's elicited the most supportive smiles from me than any of the others. Some have dismissed him as mere entertainment, but if so it's ready for prime time.

Of the ones who do seem to have a chance at beating Bush, Kerry's always been most consistently liberal--although his vote in favor of the Iraq war resolution was troubling. But the guy is personality-challenged. You can't get warm and fuzzy around him. When he tries for levity or steps down from his loft, it just seems so, well, Gore-like. (That's the Gore of the campaign, not the Gore of SNL.) Don't you want to gutpunch him? Can I vote for a man who looks like the corner of a building?

Liberman? Oh please. Policies aside, can I vote for a man who looks like a frog? If I kiss him, will he turn into a nice piece fish?

Edwards needs to smile less. There's a rumor that he grew up among poor white Southerners. Wonder what he has to say about that.

Clark should have smoked pot. Last week. I wouldn't ask, wouldn't tell.

So, Dean. Why is it I get the feeling he's going to start yelling at me any second? "You clean up your room, young country, or you'll get no allowance for a year." Phew, he's testy. Kerry may have the warmth of an Amchitka fossil, but Dean is gonna gutpunch me if I step out of line.

That leaves Gephardt. Well, he wasn't there, was he? Was he? I didn't really notice.

How Evolved is George W. Bush?

"The amazing thing about talking to people who haven't had access to a lot of the revealing details on the Internet is that they tend to already know, intuitively, what you're saying. Most people know the media polls have been lying all along; Bush is ridiculous. If his level of evolution were the level of American culture, we wouldn't even have invented the car yet."

--John Kaminski-"The Shadow of her Smile"-America's Autopsy Report: The Internet Essays of John Kaminski, Dandelion Books, 2003 www.dandelionbooks.net

SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI

The saddest thing for me about the ascendancy of the radical right in the past two decades and the neocons in the last few years is the popping of another bubble--the dream of at least one nation on our small planet living up to its own credos and the expectations of its citizenry created by those credos.

For all its many transgressions and flaws, America had the most potential to live up to those expectations. We are incredibly lucky that our founders were able to codify the collective wisdom of a group of unusually enlightened people. It wasn't a gimme. The Bill of Rights was, as I noted below, only passed because of horseflies. It could have gone the other way.

With those first 10 amendments as a basis, grudgingly and painfully this nation expanded upon them to create the Constitution as we know it now, with subsequent amendments codifying further rights and freedoms won over much bloodshed and misery. The post-industrial revolution demands for women's and workers' rights and safety, the expansiveness of the New Deal, and the civil rights era Supreme Court decisions have helped to create a body of law that is nothing short of a miracle in a world that has rarely valued the wisdom it contains.

And it was not yet finished. Even in the height of the Reagan 80's, I had hopes that the slow but steady progression towards further institutional wisdom would prevail. The gradual shift of the country rightward year after year, while certainly cause for concern and much wringing of hands, didn't really diminish those hopes.

Now, Bush has.

It feels like the damage he and his cabal have done to our body politic cannot be turned around in my lifetime, and maybe not at all. America as the Country of Great Potential, the one most likely to pass the litmus tests of furthering the cause of human dignity and protecting us from our own worst instincts, is gone.

Billions of words have been written even now about how and why the theft of the dream has come about and who else was complicit in the crime, and I have contributed a few thousand myself. I am sure I will continue to add to that eulogy.

Maybe we'll be lucky again, and kick that cabal out of office. But the empowerment of the forces of contraction and reaction has become entrenched.

Sic transit gloria America--thus passes the glory of America.

WHO FRAMES, MAIMS: partial-birth abortion and the manipulation of language.

Those who win policy debates are often the ones who use language to frame them in ways that connect them to their side on very polarized emotional issues.

There's a terrific must-read article on the larger subject of language manipulation in the September 2003 issue of The American Prospect, entitled "How Republicans Hijack Language" by Deborah Tannen (yes, she of 'You Just Don't Understand' fame).

Ms. Tannen begins by talking about the estate tax. The brilliant Republican strategists managed to change the language and thus frame the debate around the "death tax." She points out that only the largest 2% of estates were subject to this tax, but "change the name to 'death tax' and many more Americans become sympathetic to repeal," she says. "After all, everyone dies. Death is bad enough without being taxed."

The next example Tannen uses addresses 14 or so procedures that these word wizards have clumped together under the term "partial-birth-abortion." "How many would get all worked up about an exceedingly rare abortion procedure...that represents less than one-fifth of one percent of all abortions performed in the United States in 2000? But attach the name "partial-birth abortion" and a second-trimester fetus becomes a half-born baby."

But have we not had enough of the manipulation of language, let alone data, by the opponents of sane medical and reproductive policy?

Nope.

The most obvious rightwing example of language manipulation that even our best progressive journalists fail to consistently expose is "pro-life." Many of us will not use this term, since it of course implies that if one does not agree with the position of the users of this term, then by default one is "anti-life." Tannen asks, "Who among us wants to call ourselves anti-life?"

"Win the name game and you're more than halfway toward winning the battle. Win enough naming battles and you're on your way to winning the war," Tannen notes.

We want to use a much more accurate term, "anti-choice." Many of us do. But we haven't won the battle.

The cynical nature of these ploys becomes more evident when one recalls how few of these demagogues march, protest against, or even mention capital punishment, or war, or the World Bank, or the IMF, or Republican and neocon environmental policies, or 45 million uninsured Americans, or the out-of-reach cost of AIDS anti-virals controlled by Big Pharma in developing countries. What's the ratio of the number of deaths caused by these policies and institutions to the number of pregnancy terminations?

No, the only way they want to demonstrate their "pro-life" bonafides is regarding abortion. At last, have they no shame?

Apparently not, since, as Tannen seems to predict when she wrote that piece last summer, it appears (pending a Planned Parenthood legal challenge) that the language-manipulators have won again, this time those procedures collectively called "partial-birth abortion."

The medical community and many laypeople know that there is no such thing as partial-birth abortion. As William Saletan said in a recent article titled, "The "Partial-Birth" Myth --No, it's not a birth,"...(the procedures) can be particularly disturbing when they're done by extracting the fetus intact, in a manner that looks like birth. But they aren't births.

It's easy for journalists who have covered the abortion debate (and in my case, written a book about it) to gloss over this fact when we talk about the ban the Senate just passed. We know the procedure in question is an abortion that sort of looks like a birth, not a birth interrupted by an abortion. But it's far from clear that we've adequately conveyed this distinction to the public.

I watched the whole Senate debate yesterday. I lost count of how many times pro-life senators used language implying that the procedure they were banning was a birth interrupted by an abortion. The bill's sponsor, Sen. Rick Santorum, opened the debate by saying, "The term 'partial birth' comes from the fact that the baby is partially born, is in the process of being delivered. Â… Here is this child who is literally inches away from being born, who would otherwise be born alive." Majority Leader Bill Frist, the Senate's only doctor, concluded the debate by describing the procedure as "destroying the body of a mature unborn child."

President Bush exploits the same illusion. In his State of the Union address this year, he said the bill would "protect infants at the very hour of their birth."

That's just false. This procedure doesn't take place anywhere near the appointed hour of birth. If you paid close attention to the Senate debate, you might have noticed the part where Santorum said the procedure was performed "at least 20 weeks, and in many cases, 21, 22, 23, 24 weeks [into pregnancy], and in rarer cases, beyond that." He didn't clarify how many of these abortions took place past the 20th week. A full-term pregnancy is 40 weeks. In 1992, the Supreme Court mentioned that viability could "sometimes" occur at 23 or 24 weeks. Santorum described a 1-pound fetus as "a fully formed baby," noting that while it was only at 20 weeks gestation, it had a complete set of features and extremities. But according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the survival rate for babies born weighing 500 grams or less—that's 1 pound, 1 ounce or less—is 14 percent.

Initial reports on the bill passed yesterday don't convey these distinctions. The New York Times says, "The bill defines the procedure as one in which the person performing the abortion 'deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living fetus ...[ellipses mine] for the purpose of performing an overt act that the person knows will kill the partially delivered living fetus.' " The Washington Post says, "As described in the bill, the procedure, generally performed during a pregnancy's second or third trimester, involves a physician puncturing the skull of a fetus and removing its brain after it is partially delivered."

If you haven't been following the debate closely, it's easy to walk away with the impression that the "delivery" is a nearly full-term birth, as the bill's name implies. It's easy to say yes when a pollster asks you whether you favor a "law to make it illegal to perform a specific abortion procedure conducted in the last six months of pregnancy known as 'partial-birth abortion,' except in cases necessary to save the life of the mother." That's the question the Gallup organization asked in January. Based on responses to that question, USA Today reports this morning that the poll "showed that 70% of Americans back the ban."

I'd like to know how many of the people who answered that question understood exactly what they were being asked about."

And that's the point. The opponents chose a term, as ignorant and wrong as it is, that can't help but cause one to cringe--unless one knows the truth. And framing the debate in such a way is intended to obscure that truth.

As to the procedures itself, language aside, there are other angles.

Here's a letter my daughter wrote to the Boston Globe, which was printed in a slightly edited form last week:

"On Tuesday, a ban on "partial-birth" abortion was passed in the Senate. The bill is significantly flawed in that it only allows the procedure to preserve the life (not the health) of the mother, because sponsors of the bill decided that it was never needed to protect the health of the mother. Never? Many Americans would probably consider being forced to carry a stillborn infant to term as jeopardizing the health of the mother. As Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif, said "This is indeed a historic day, because for the first time in history Congress is banning a medical procedure that is considered medically necessary by physicians." The passage of this bill makes me wonder what country I woke up in this morning. For all their rhetoric about shrinking government, Senate republicans (and a surprising number of Dems. too) sure are eager to use government to forcefully micromanage the personal lives of U.S. citizens. I thought we were busy risking Americana lives and spending billions of dollars fighting against that kind of thing?"

If this ban on medically necessary procedures stands up against the legal challenges, how many women will be maimed by the frame?

ARE YOU AN AMERICAN?

Interesting bit. I read this on a bicycling forum site--they had a "jokes" section.
From the language and references, this is of British origin, and written before 9/11

Whether it's funny or not (and parts are) is less important than that this apparently reflects how at least some Brits thought about Americans a few years ago.

I wonder what this would be like if written after 9/11?
__________


Are you an American?
Don't get upset, but I think this is funny. Apologies if you have already seen this.

Subject: ARE YOU AN AMERICAN?

1. You decide that the relationship with your partner is over. How do you break the news you are leaving?

(a) Leave a tearful note on the table and slip quietly away

(b) Calmly discuss the reasons with your partner for your decision

(©) Attack them with a chair in front of a rabble of cheering pumped-up inbreds on national television.


2. You and your mates decide to have a game of football in the park. What do you need to take?

(a) A ball

(b) A ball and 2 coats

(©) A ball 50 crash helmets, 4 tons of body armour, 20 cheerleaders, a marching sousaphone band with a grand piano on a trolley, and a team of orthopaedic surgeons specialising in spinal injuries.


3. You are driving along a country road when you accidentally run over a rabbit. What do you do?

(a) Stop and see how badly injured it is, taking it to a vet if it is still alive

(b) Carry on driving, but hope it is still alive, or if not, that it died quickly

(©) Strap it across the bonnet of your car and drive home hollering, whooping and throwing empty Budweiser cans out of the window.


4. You wake up in the morning with a stiff neck after sleeping in an awkward position. What do you do?

(a) Ignore it. It will probably loosen up as the day progresses

(b) Take a couple of aspirins and get on with things.

(©) Take yourself to a prostitute-addicted TV evangelist faith healer in an ill-fitting wig, who will lay his hands on your head, whilst screaming about the devil in front of an audience of gibbering inbreds.


5. What do you have for breakfast?

(a) A bowl of Cornflakes, slice of toast and a mug of tea

(b) Glass of orange juice, croissant and a cup of coffee

(©) A bag of donuts with ice cream, a 32 ounce steak with six eggs sunny side-up, fifteen pancakes with maple syrup, ten waffles, five corn dogs and a diet root beer.


6. You and your partner decide to take the plunge and get married. What sort of ceremony do you have?

(a) A quiet party with a few friends in a registry office

(b) A church service followed by a traditional reception at a hotel

(©) A minute long mockery at a 24 hour drive-through chapel in Las Vegas, presided over by a transvestite vicar dressed as Elvis.


7. Your 14-year-old son is going through a difficult phase, becoming disruptive at school and reclusive at home. What do you do?

(a) Don't worry. Its just a phase and will pass.

(b) Encourage him to get out more, get involved in team sports or join a youth club.

(©) Take him to an armoury and buy him an arsenal of semi-automatic weapons and enough ammunition to slaughter a small town.


8. You fancy a night in watching something funny on TV. What kind of comedy do you choose?

(a) A sitcom like Fawlty Towers or Father Ted

(b) A sketch show like the Two Ronnies or the Fast Show

(©) A thinly disguised morality play set in a massive lounge where the audience whoop for ten minutes every time an overpaid actor with a superglued grin on his face makes an entrance to deliver a lightweight wisecrack.


9. Whilst getting ready for bed, you stub your toe on your wife's dressing table. What do you do?

(a) Shout and swear a bit, after all, it did hurt

(b) Make a mental note to move the table so it doesn't happen again

(©) Immediately call a hotshot lawyer with an uptown reputation, and sue your wife's ***.


10. You are responsible for the USA's presidential electoral process. Do you:

(a) Count all votes and declare a winner

(b) Count all votes and declare a winner

(©) Let the press declare who's won before the votes are counted; then count only the votes which have been handed in by a deadline whilst not checking if Bud, the hillbilly sheriff of nowheres-ville, has left several thousand votes in the trunk of his Chevy 'by mistake', then force a recount of only some of the votes within just one state and allow only 12 seconds for the recount to take place; then be amazed that the recount hasn't finished by the deadline and increase the deadline by another 3.2 seconds; then ignore all votes and let 4 judges decide the result, making sure the judges all support the same candidate; then ponce around the world telling other countries how to run their own elections.




Answers...

If you answered:

mostly (a)'s & (b)'s then you are a normal well-balanced individual.

mostly (©)'s then do the world a favour and shoot yourself with the anti-tank weapon you carry in the glove-box of your pick-up truck.

WHAT DO MEDICAL MARIJUANA AND SAME-SEX MARRIAGE HAVE IN COMMON?

Have you ever heard any opponent of either one explain how they could cause harm?

The anti-marriage crowd has never--NEVER--stated how same-sex marriage will negatively impact society or the institution of marriage. All they ever do, even when repeatedly asked in plain language even their bent cortexes can understand, is repeat the conclusion. I have heard and read enough of their rants to make me puke, and I have never seen or heard that question answered. Why? Duh!

We can give really sick or terminally ill patients the most powerful drugs on the planet, many of which are derived from Afghani poppies, like morphine, and no one tries to state that this will lead to addiction, or harm the patient, or by extension harm society. In fact, no one blinks at this.

But try to give them a cheap, relatively benign drug with proven efficacy for the problem indicated, and, well, you might as well be trying to restrict marriage to same-sex only.

We'll help doctors who prescribe morphine to the terminally ill get rich, but we'll help friends who provide medical marijuana to them get busted.

Why? What vested interests are being threatened in each case?

Well, in the latter, it's easy: Big Pharma. Like solar energy, medical marijuana is cheap, easy to get, and hard to control or restrict like most prescription drugs. Pharma came up with Marinol, a synthetic derived from the psychoactive ingredient in pot, THC. But it's weak--generally regarded as far less effective than a plain old joint--and costs more. But Pharma makes it, controls it and profits from it. They know it's unlikely that could ever happen with real weed.

And since Pharma controls federal drug policy, we aren't likely to see a change in the near future on the federal level, even though a few states have seen the insanity and evil of the federal approach and have legalized medical usage. The feds, in their infinite wisdom, have busted those who are complying with state law. Conservatives who favor states rights over federal hegemony, where are you now, you lousy hypocrites?

And about that harm to or addiction by the patient--we are talking terminally ill here. After they tell me how same-sex marriage will destroy heterosexual marriage, will they please tell me why a joint will be dangerous to these poor folks, and why morphine won't be. I am not holding my breath.

As for the vested interests in preventing same-sex marriage, it's not as clear.

Organized religious institutions that have made a living off condemning homosexuality of course do not want to see their fragile straw foundations shaken, since that would diminish their power and their hold on the sheep that follow them.

I think there is no vested interest per se in the world of those secular groups and individuals that condemn same sex marriage. Then the thing reverts back to the same old demons progressive humanity has fought against forever: ignorance, bigotry, hatred, fear, and the willingness of those who possess or are predisposed to possessing those characteristics to follow demagogues who espouse them.

There's no end to the calumny of those demagogues in the top levels of the political and religious hierarchies, especially now that they have become empowered by and given a platform by a government stolen by their leadership.

And there clearly is no end to the callousness of their followers.

That the political and religious institutions that oppose these measures even refer to compassion as part of their policies is enough to condemn them to the 7th level of Hell. Would that it could be soon. The suffering they needlessly cause is intolerable, unconscionable, and for their victims often unbearable.

So what to do?

Think Canada. I will start counting how many of my posts end up with a serious consideration of moving to Canada, where in the near future for the whole country if not for most of it now these two issues will be generally non-issues.

Let them have America. They've grifted most of it already. Let's all move to Canada and start over.

They have good beer there, too.

MAUDLIN, TREACLEY PSEUDO-NEW-AGE PIECES OF CRAP

This came over email. At first, I thought it was yet another of those maudlin, treacly pseudo-new-age pieces of crap. Well, some of it is. But even though I'm a card carrying Jewish atheist, I found some of this to rise above the crap level, and actually contain some wisdom. What caused me to bother to post it was the part I italicized, near the end. I'll bear that in mind when I write my next rant about pinhead neocons or rightwing religious blowhards, which ought to be any minute.

Can you find at least two oxymorons in the above paragraph? Can you find at least two morons in the Bush adminstration? Of course you can. Reminds me a joke my late uncle Saul used to tell us repeatedly when we were kids. As we passed a cemetary, he would ask us, "How many people are buried in that cemetary?" "All of them," he would answer gleefully, after we all guessed numbers.

How many morons* in the Bush administration?

*susbtitute any of the following, same answer: hypocrites, liars, corrupt bureaucrats, rightwing idealogues, liars, facscists, oligarchists, plutocrats, simpering wimps--oh wait, that last one was for Colin Powell. Or the democrats.

Here's the post:

To: YOU
Date: TODAY
From: GOD - The Boss!
Subject: YOURSELF
Reference: LIFE

This is God. Today I will be handling All of your problems for you. I do Not need your help. So, have a nice day. I love you.

GOD


P.S.

And, remember....

If life happens to deliver a situation to you that you can not handle, do Not attempt to resolve it yourself !! Kindly put it in the SFGTD
(something for God to do) box. I will get to it in MY TIME. All situations will be resolved, but in My time, not yours.


P.S.S. Once the matter is placed into the box, do not hold onto it by worrying about it. Instead, focus on all the wonderful things that are present in your life now.

If you find yourself stuck in traffic; Don't despair. There are people in this world for whom driving is an unheard of privilege.

Should you have a bad day at work; Think of the man who has been out of work for years.

Should you despair over a relationship gone bad; Think of the person who has never known what it's like to love and be loved in return.

Should you grieve the passing of another weekend; Think of the woman in dire straits, working twelve hours a day, seven days a week to feed her children.

Should your car break down, leaving you miles away from assistance; Think of the paraplegic who would love the opportunity to take that walk.

Should you notice a new gray hair in the mirror; Think of the cancer patient in chemo who wishes she had hair to examine.

Should you find yourself at a loss and pondering what is life all about, asking what is my purpose? Be thankful. There are those who didn't live long enough to get the opportunity.

Should you find yourself the victim of other people's bitterness, ignorance, smallness or insecurities; Remember, things could be worse. You could be one of them!

Should you decide to send this to a friend; Thank you, you may have touched their life in ways you will never know!

Now, you have a nice day,

God

ABOUT THE US IN IRAQ

''Trying to eliminate Saddam ... would have incurred incalculable human and
political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible ... We would have
been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq ...there was no
viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles.
Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for
handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq,
thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have
destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we
hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could
conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.''

In his memoirs, A World Transformed, written more than five years ago,
George Bush, Sr. wrote the lines reprinted above to explain why he didn't go
after Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War.

(Thanks to wb for sending this in to the Gristmill.)

BUSH COURT NOMINEES WOULD OVERTURN LAWRENCE v. TEXAS

"The president elected in 2004 is very likely to appoint as many as three or four Supreme Court Justices, and if that president is George W. Bush, the recent decision overturning sodomy laws, as well as Roe v. Wade, will likely be reversed."

--Chairman Terry McAuliffe-- Democratic National Committee Statement, October 24

Bush's nominees to federal courts--the most unqualified, extremist, and dangerous bunch I've ever seen--makes it clear that his attempt to hijack America the way the Islamic fundamentalists have hijacked both Islam and Islamic countries is not to be dismissed.

Reproductive rights, privacy, affirmative action, parts of the Bill of Rights like separation of church and state--all would be eliminated or marginalized as well, and abominations like the Patriot Acts (I and proposed 2) would be declared constitutional. Basically everything that has made America what it is and what it can be is threatened even more by this turn of events than it already has been or will be by any other channel.

If Bush gets the opportunity to turn the Supreme Court into a tool of his neocon agenda, the future of this country, unequivocally, is lost. Generations will suffer under the tyranny, hypocrisy and moralism of that kind of court.

During the 2000 election campaigns Nader made naive sweeping pronouncements like there is no difference between the two parties. That's ignorant and dangerous, as Nader himself sadly turned out to be. Neither party will address the problem of corporate control of the country, as Nader correctly indicated, but even a centrist Democrat will not pack the federal and Supreme courts with stooges that can be depended upon to vote solely on the basis of right wing ideology.

If there was a doubt before that election of the importance of who sits on the Supreme Court, I would hope that doubt is dispelled forever.

If Bush is reelected, resistance is futile. We will be assimilated.

WISH I'D SAID THAT: PAUL KRUGMAN'S LATEST COLUMN

Actually, I did say some of this in a recent post, but not nearly as well as Krugman did.

A Willful Ignorance
By PAUL KRUGMAN

According to The New York Times, President Bush was genuinely surprised to learn from moderate Islamic leaders that they had become deeply distrustful of American intentions. The report on the "perception gap" suggests that the leader of the war on terror has no idea how badly that war — which must, ultimately, be a war for hearts and minds — is going.

Mr. Bush's ignorance may reflect his lack of curiosity: "The best way to get the news," he says, "is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff." Two words: emperor, clothes.

But there's something broader going on: a sort of willful ignorance, supposedly driven by moral concerns but actually reflecting domestic politics. Surely it's important to understand how others see us, but a new, post 9/11 version of political correctness has made it difficult even to discuss their points of view. Any American who tries to go beyond "America good, terrorists evil," who tries to understand — not condone — the growing world backlash against the United States, faces furious attacks delivered in a tone of high moral indignation. The attackers claim to be standing up for moral clarity, and some of them may even believe it. But they are really being used in a domestic political struggle.

Last week I found myself caught up in that struggle. I wrote about why Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia's prime minister — a clever if loathsome man who adjusts the volume of his anti-Semitism depending on circumstances — chose to include an anti-Jewish diatribe in his speech to an Islamic conference. Sure enough, I was accused in various places not just of "tolerance for anti-Semitism" (yes, I'm Jewish) but of being in Mr. Mahathir's pay. Smear tactics aside, the thrust of the attacks was that because anti-Semitism is evil, anyone who tries to understand why politicians foment anti-Semitism — and looks for ways other than military force to combat the disease — is an apologist for anti-Semitism and is complicit in evil.

Yet that moral punctiliousness is curiously selective. Last year the Bush administration, in return for a military base in Uzbekistan, gave $500 million to a government that, according to the State Department, uses torture "as a routine investigation technique," and whose president has killed opponents with boiling water. The moral clarity police were notably quiet.

Why is aiding a brutal dictator O.K., while trying to understand why others don't trust us — and doing something to create that trust — isn't? Why won't the administration mollify Muslims by firing Lt. Gen. William Boykin, whose anti-Islamic remarks have created vast ill will, from his counterterrorism position? Why won't it give moderate Muslims a better argument against the radicals by opposing Ariel Sharon's settlement policy, when a majority of Israelis think that some settlements should be abandoned, and even Israeli military officers have become bitterly critical of Mr. Sharon?

The answer is that in these cases politics takes priority over the war on terror. Moderate Muslims would have more faith in America's good intentions if there were at least the appearance of a distinction between the U.S. and the Sharon government — but the administration seeks votes from those who think that supporting Israel means supporting whatever Mr. Sharon does. It's sheer folly to keep General Boykin in his present position, but as Howard Fineman writes in a Newsweek Web-exclusive column, the administration doesn't want "to make a martyr of a man who depicts himself as a Christian Soldier, marching off to war."

Muslims are completely wrong to think that the U.S. is engaged in a war against Islam. But that misperception flourishes in part because the domestic political strategy of the Bush administration — no longer able to claim the Iraq war was a triumph, and with little but red ink to show for its economic plans — looks more and more like a crusade. "Election Boils Down to a Culture War" was the title of Mr. Fineman's column. But the analysis was all about abortion and euthanasia, and now we hear that opposition to gay marriage will be a major campaign theme. This isn't a culture war — it's a religious war.

Which brings me back to my starting point: we'll lose the fight against terror if we don't make an effort to understand how others think. Yet because of a domestic political struggle that seems ever more centered on religion, such attempts at understanding are shouted down.

IS BUSH MEAN AND STUPID?

Interesting interview with Molly Ivins today on NPR. She's one of Bush's fiercest critics, author of recent bestseller Bushwacked, and wonderful columnnist. She's a Texan, and said today that she's known Bush much of her life and he isn't mean or stupid, as is often cited, but that his policies are devastating the country.

If he isn't mean or stupid, but his policies are mean and stupid, and result in mean-spirited behavior and action, the result, seems to me, is the same. Mean and Stupid.