Babies or Fetus?

Which ones to throw under the bus?

A number of Republican senators attacked an agreement reached between Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Senate Democratic leaders Saturday, saying it would lead to the eventual reversal of more than 30 years of federal law banning abortion funding. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oka.) said it is “absolutely fictitious” that there is an anti-abortion provision in the Senate Democrats’ reworked healthcare reform bill. “The negotiations, whoever did them, threw unborn babies under the bus,” Coburn said.

From here.

It appears that the clusterfuck mêlée unfolding in the US Senate (or is it Congress?) around legislation to reform the parameters of US healthcare has been distilled to this.

On one side, The Fetus©™ fetishists - Repubs and Dems alike - who are taking their marching orders from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops lobby.

On the other, those who appear to be more concerned about the survival of babies born, the availability of medical care to pregnant women, and their families. The recent World Economic Forum analyzed a number of gender indicators in order to measure for example, differences access to healthcare differences between the sexes. Antonia Zerbesias demonstrates why this is important.

For the record, Canada ranks No. 25 on all these measures, while the US is No. 31. Tops in the world is Iceland, followed by the usual line-up of northern European countries, Finland, Norway, Sweden. As for the bottom of the list, let's just say you don't want to be a woman in Yemen.

But let's cut straight to the maternal mortality chase, which those ''pro-lifers'' focus on. Not only do "weak healthcare systems not prioritize women's health,'' there is evidence that the number of skilled healthcare workers available to support women through pregnancy, delivery and post-natal care had everything to do with women's survival. The women who die, die of "severe bleeding, infection, hypertension'' and then ''complications from unsafe abortion.'' About 20 per cent of maternal deaths are related to diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS -- and then there's women's inability to get decent nourishment.

From here.

So let's be clear on who exactly who gets thrown under the bus if healthcare is not reformed in the US. Yup, yup, you betcha! Women and children - considered by those rabidly opposed to abortions as mere "Gestational Support Units" and "Not-Fetuses".

More teabaggers', assorted rightwing religious zealots' and stupid attention-mongers' indecent repurposing and/or spoliage of respected aphorisms, check out Boris' post at The Galloping Beaver.

Unlikely - some would say unholy - alliances.

Matt Frei has an interesting perspective about an unlikely ally in the environmental movement's efforts to halt global warming.

The evangelical movement is split between those conservative Christians who suspect that climate change is an evil secular plot, concocted by the devil, Al Gore and "the global government crowd" [...] and those who passionately believe that good Christians need to be good custodians of the planet.

Two years ago I went to Liberty University in Virginia, the home of the late Jerry Falwell and asked a lecture room full of students if they believed in the threat of global warming. Not a single hand went up.

I travelled up the road to the Eastern Mennonite College at Harrisonburg and asked a similar number of Christian students the same question. Almost every hand shot up.

Frei observes that the possibility of calm, rational scientific-fact-based discussion regarding climate change has been sabotaged by the "poison of partisan politics and the culture wars".

In the past, ecological activists have made strategic alliances with groups who do not share any common political ground, identifying particular goals such as the protection of wetlands threatened by urban sprawl and working with Ducks Unlimited, for example.

It will be interesting to see how sane conservative christians who are not christofascists, teabaggers or other types of rightwing zealots navigate the divide.

Why are The Fetus©™ fetishists oddly silent?

You might think, given her politics, the woman in the news photograph above would be a natural ally of The Fetus©™ fetishists everywhere, and in particular a sister in the struggle (as it were) with zygote zealots like our own Blob Blogging Wingnut but you would be MASSIVELY wrong.

The woman shrieking into the microphone is Catherina Wojtowicz, an organizer for a Tea Party splinter group at a town hall meeting in Oak Lawn, Illinois. It was there that

Dan and Midge Hough, of Chicago, spoke in favor of health care reform and in support of U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-3rd) at a Nov. 14 town hall meeting in Oak Lawn.

Their daughter-in-law, Jenny, and an unborn grandchild died recently due in part, they believe, to a lack of health insurance. They said Jenny was not receiving regular prenatal care and ended up in an emergency room with double pneumonia that developed into septic shock. Her baby died in the womb, and Jenny died a few weeks later, leaving behind a husband and a 2-year-old daughter.

[Wojtowicz] falsely claimed that the Houghs fabricated their story. In an e-mail, she called them operatives of President Barack Obama who "go from event to event and (cry) the same story."

When the Houghs spoke at the Lipinski event, some Tea Partiers ridiculed them. They moaned and rolled their eyes and interrupted. Midge Hough began to cry.

The audience, Wojtowicz later explained, was exasperated by stories of isolated tragedies that cloud debate over the health care bill itself.

In spite of a ressemblance to HERSELF and similar reactionary rightwing neocon interests, Wojtowicz has no use for The Fetus©™ that doesn't support her political tactics. As well, she didn't apologize to the Hough family for defaming them or for the rude and uncivil behaviour of her mob followers.

Natural and "man-made" disasters.

The science in 2012, the most recent disaster film directed and written by Roland Emmerich is flimsy, the plot is clichéd, the characters are wafer-thin (can't fault the actors, they do their best but how can you wring drama from lines that were telegraphed to the audience 3 scenes beforehand?), and the special effects - though spectacular - feel déjà vu, as though CGI footage was recycled from The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day.

Which leads to thoughts about other disasters threatening to destroy the planet. For example: in C.C.'s blogpost Palin 2012!: flimsy science + banal narrative + shallow characterizations + re-purposed effects = Sarah's strategy to win the White House in 2012, aka Going Rogue.

The next weeks will be bursting with various Palin-flavoured news items and fillers, ranging from knowledge-based and interesting:

When Sarah Palin burst onto the national political stage there was a lot of talk about her distinctive way of talkin', you betcha. Heck, she moved to Alaska when she was too young to speak and grew up in the small town of Wasilla, but doggone it, why did she talk like someone from the movie "Fargo"?

Three University of Wisconsin-Madison linguists tackled the conundrum in a research article to be published in the Journal of English Linguistics next month. The answer lies in something that happened in the 1930s.

to Frum-penned arch:

Palin supporters have constructed an alternative reality in which their heroine is wildly cheered by the American yeomanry, and despised only by a small coterie of sherry-drinking snobs. No contrary evidence, no matter how overwhelming and uncontradicted, can alter this view: not the collapse in Palin's support in just five weeks in 2008, not the statistical studies that show her as the only vice-presidential nominee in history to have hurt her ticket, not her rampant unpopularity with American women, not her own flinching from a second encounter with the Alaskan electorate.

and finally, the glurge.

The Palin graphic was found at this blog: Pink Sheep of the Family. There are more.

ADDED: fern hill here: I hope you don't mind, dBO, but I'm parking this very useful link on your post. It is Andrew Sullivan's The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin: A Summary Before The Next Round. Lots of lies, lots of links.

Oh my MAD.

DJ! has learned, via Broadsides, that Sarah Palin has been cartoonified by MAD magazine. Some may think that's a good thing; any kind of exposure (ahem!) will help the wannabe presidential candidate with her campaign.

I dunno. How far can that MILF mojo Palin has going for her be pushed with the Glenn Beck freaks, teabaggers, the rightwingnutters and the fundamentalist religious zealots before it becomes a liability?

MAD Magazine has a history of savagely parodying US political figures, as well as pop cultural icons - mostly in the entertainment business. Nobody is safe from the snarkiness and silliness that the publication's creative team produces year after year.

Comics historian Tom Spurgeon picked Mad as the medium's top series of all time, writing, "At the height of its influence, Mad was The Simpsons, The Daily Show and The Onion combined." Graydon Carter chose it as the sixth best magazine of any sort ever, describing Mad's mission as being "ever ready to pounce on the illogical, hypocritical, self-serious and ludicrous" before concluding, "Nowadays, it’s part of the oxygen we breathe."

Joyce Carol Oates called it "wonderfully inventive, irresistibly irreverent and intermittently ingenious American." Monty Python's Terry Gilliam wrote, "Mad became the Bible for me and my whole generation."

As Antonia says, the next three years are going to be fun. And funny: ha-ha & weird.

Expect rightwing batshit crazies to spin this.

A very strange event, one with a potential tragic and fatal outcome, currently holds the US in thrall.

A 6-year-old boy climbed into a small homemade aircraft — a balloon resembling a flying saucer — and floated thousands of metres into the air in Colorado on Thursday, local media said. But when the balloon came to earth, there was no sign of the passenger.

The Denver Post newspaper reported that the boy got into the aircraft, which it described as a "home-made flying saucer" at his family's home in Fort Collins and that it then came loose from its tether.

The father of the boy, Richard Heene, said he had been experimenting with the balloon with his sons, floating it just above the ground while it was tethered by ropes. His son, six-year-old Falcon Heene, is said to have climbed into the basket and the ropes came undone. Another brother ran into the house and alerted the parents, according to police.

A National Guard chopper was trailing the balloon which was at one time estimated to be traveling at an altitude of 8,000 feet when it began to lose helium and come back to earth.

It will be interesting to watch the contortions that the usual US rightwing religious batshit crazies, birthers and assorted haters will execute in order to blame this on their president.

UPDATE (by fh): The boy is fine. He was hiding at home the whole time.

A new take on Purity Balls?

Making the rounds on the Islamophobic sex-crazed rightwingnut side of the blogosphere (here's a rather mild Canadian example) are posts based on this BBC report.

A leading Egyptian scholar has demanded that people caught importing a female virginity-faking device into the country should face the death penalty.

Abdul Mouti Bayoumi said supplying the item was akin to spreading vice in society, a crime punishable by death in Islamic Sharia law.

The device is said to release liquid imitating blood, allowing a female to feign virginity on her wedding night.

It is manufactured in China and is reported to be on sale in Syria for $15.

Look at all the goodies packed in there for the shrieeeeking hateslingers.

Death penalty -- probably by beheading -- for importing an innocuous product? Barbaric!

Women needing to fake virginity? Sluts! Atrocious treatment of women under Islam!

Weird obsession with virginity? Hmmm. That one is OK with the wingnutz because they are too.

So, I went looking for a description of the device and found that I missed it when it hit the Intertoobz last December via the Frisky.

From Our Bodies Our Blog:

According to the product description, once inserted the device “will expand a little and make you feel tight. When your lover penetrate [sic], it will ooze out a liquid that look [sic] like blood not too much but just the right amount. Add in a few moans and groans, you will pass through undetectable.”

The post included a link to a company offering it, but, sadly, the link no longer works.

Given that it is made in China -- a place not known for its purity of manufacturing standards -- it would be a pretty desperate woman who felt she had to try to fake her virginity using it. Let alone any worry about the death penalty for importing it.

But then being a woman in a society -- any society -- that treats its women like second-class citizens is often a desperate business.

There. A feminist has spoken.

Frum Gives Permission?

OMFG. David Frum is being reasonable. Again.

In a piece titled 'The Reckless Right Courts Violence', he calls on the rightwingnuts to tone it down. Actually using the word 'incitement', he links to many instances of the wild idiocies coming from radio and telly loony pundits.

All this hysterical and provocative talk invites, incites, and prepares a prefabricated justification for violence.
. . .
Hyperbolic accusation and fantasy murder may well serve a talk-radio industry facing a collapse in advertising revenues—down 30–40 percent over the past two years, reports NewMajority.com’s Tim Mak.

As revenues dwindle, hosts feel compelled to intensify the talk-radio experience, hoping to win larger audience share with more extreme talk. It’s like the early days of the pornography industry: At first a naked woman is thrilling enough, but soon a jaded audience is demanding more and more, wilder and wilder.
. . .
It’s not enough for conservatives to repudiate violence, as some are belatedly beginning to do. We have to tone down the militant and accusatory rhetoric.

He winds up thusly:

If Barack Obama really were a fascist, really were a Nazi, really did plan death panels to kill the old and infirm, really did contemplate overthrowing the American constitutional republic—if he were those things, somebody should shoot him.

But he is not. He is an ambitious, liberal president who is spending too much money and emitting too much debt. His health-care ideas are too ambitious and his climate plans are too interventionist. The president can be met and bested on the field of reason—but only by people who are themselves reasonable.

All well and good, you say?

Well, maybe not.

The first of four (so far) commenters quotes that second-last paragraph and says:

I was with you until that line. Just because you know he is not these things, there are many who believe he is; so have you just given your permission?

*headdesk*

Jon Stewart - the "lefty" that rightwingers hate to love?

In a US cultural and political environment where the level of acrimony rises steadily and discourse has the substance of a chorus of jack-hammers, Jon Stewart's show - on Comedy Central yet! - offers a gentle oasis for minds parched by the blistering hatred that radiates from Fox News and its imitators. From here

... Stewart seems to like hosting conservatives ... In recent weeks, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, and Bill Kristol have stopped by. Since the beginning of the Obama administration, Stewart has interviewed more conservative pundits than liberal ones. (Remember when fans fretted he'd have trouble finding ways to be funny under the new president?) It may be because it's simply easier to tangle with an ideological adversary than to needle a compatriot. A clash of ideas is always more entertaining than an echo chamber. And, for a liberal wit like Stewart, it's easier to stake out a clear position when facing off against a direct opponent. ...

Conservatives like Stewart because he's providing them a platform to reach an audience that usually tunes them out. And they often find that Stewart takes them more seriously than right-wing political hosts, who are often just using them to validate their broad positions, do. Stewart will poke fun, but he offers a good-faith debate on powder kegs — torture, abortion, nuclear weapons, health care — that explode on other networks. "Shepard Smith did the same discussion [on torture]," says May. "He kept yelling me at me: 'This is where I get off the bus! Not in my name!' He wasn't arguing with me. It was just assertions and anger. That's not what Jon deals in."

To be sure, Stewart wants to outsmart and discombobulate his conservative guests. He loves catching them in inconsistencies. "I feel like you just trapped me," a grinning Kristol told Stewart, after Kristol conceded that the government provides "first-rate" health care to American soldiers. "I just want to get this on the record," said Stewart. "You just said ... the government can run a first-class health-care system."

At The Raw Story, Stephen C. Webster observes on the New Yorker magazine story:

... an exceptionally interesting look at the man who is quickly becoming, in this writer's humble opinion, this generation's Mark Twain and easily the most important iconoclast on cable. The man who won Time magazine's "most trusted newscaster" poll appears to have a little trick up his sleeve when it comes to seducing prominent Neoconservatives onto his program: Intellectual curiosity. And they "love" him for it. Who'd-a known?

Not everyone admires him or enjoys watching Stewart stick-handle his guests with finesse rather than slamming them on the boards. Says Andrew Sullivan:

Several of my friends argue that Stewart is toothless, but I think his deference is what sets him apart - both in civility and effectiveness.

How much more "far out" can Palin's fans take?

"... it's another example of Sarah Palin having difficulty figuring out how to enter into a serious debate about issues."

I've long wondered if there would be a point at which Sarah Palin went just a little too far for the political mainstream. A whole lot of political observers noticed the obvious lies, the cringe-worthy ignorance, the petty feuds, and the bizarre behavior, but wanted to maintain the fiction that Palin was a credible political figure. After all, John McCain wanted her to be one heartbeat from the presidency -- and 60 million Americans agreed.

Maybe, just maybe, her "death panel" message on Facebook -- complete with lies, poor writing, policy confusion, and family exploitation -- will be enough to convince the skeptical that Palin really is that far gone?

Gone, gone where? If only she were. But no, Palin keeps bouncing back, like a really really bad case of poison ivy.

Many Republicans and US conservatives are distancing themselves from Palin and her incoherent rambles on various topics. The attention-seeking narcissist also known as Bible Spice and Caribou Barbie added her glurge-y twist to the steaming pile of lies about the proposal to fund public health in the US. Nonetheless, she still has supporters, including Newt Gingrich. From the NYT:

The United States, like most countries, has long had a lunatic fringe who channel in the flotsam of delusion, half-facts and conspiracy theories. But now, with the light-speed and reach of the Web, “entire virtual crank communities,” as the conservative writer David Frum called them, have sprung up. They are fed, in the case of Sarah Palin, by people who should know better.

It would be interesting to read Frum's take, if he dares write about this debacle, regarding his fellow travellers in the GOP.

Afternote: Go read JABbering stooge's 'murrican take on Sa-wah. He blogged and posted at the same time DJ! did. You know what that means?

More religious zealotry disorder.

From Slap Upside The Head, we learn that concern troll and self-proclaimed human rights activist Kari Simpson's class-action complaint against the Ministry of Education has been deemed unfounded. We wrote about Simpson's bizarre and convoluted complaint in March.

And brothers Tevi and Gil Troy compete with her for the dubious achievement of Über Religiously Fixated Zealots. Their attempt to piss all over Mary Robinson is found in the forum it deserves - the New York Post.

Robinson was recognized last month with the announcement that she was awarded the highest civilian honour in the United States - the Presidential Medal of Freedom. President Barack Obama highlighted Robinson's role as Ireland's first female president as well as her tenure as United Nations Human Rights Commissioner. An overview of her considerable accomplishments and achievements can be found here.

The attack on Robinson from a Republican sycophant who likely thanks G-d every morning that he wasn't born a woman and was complicit in supporting abstinence-only sex ed programs under the Bush administration is contemptible. In essence, he and his brother (A tenured prof at McGill? Likely a strategic appointment to support its fundraising efforts with US alumni.) claim that Robinson hates the US because she dared criticize the US for violating human rights in its war on terrorism and she refused to let Israel run roughshod over the United Nations World Conference against Racism held in Durban.

Those suffering from religious zealotry disorder have increased the volume of their shrieeeking and multiplied their extravagant tactics. As reported by the Atlantic magazine, political strategists in the US are developing strategies for limiting the damage they do.

Patronizing opponents is a tried and true tradition in Washington, and Democrats have used the tactic with success. They ridiculed the hundreds of thousands of conservatives who protested the stimulus package as "tea baggers."

But Republicans are just as responsible for the perception. The folks who tend to show up at protest events tend to be to the right of the mean in the party. And, as the spread of the birther movement demonstrates, not a small chunk of these Republicans are reactionaries.

The challenge for the White House and Democrats is that they find a way to separate genuinely anxious conservatives who ask good questions -- even if those questions are provided by conservative groups -- and the crazies who tend to pack town hall meetings.

The time has come for conservatives who are not afflicted with religious zealotry disorder to distance themselves from this yapping mob and to speak up coherently and logically. Don't let the crazies silence you!

Fear + Fury = Hate

In his blogpost: The Angry, Angry ... Left? Canadian Cynic presents a simple strategy for exposing and pre-empting the bully tactics of bellicose rightwing socons.

Since they are becoming more and more extravagant with their claims and bombast, Keeping It Simple for the Stupid is eminently an excellent way to disarm them.

Another blogsite that accomplishes this task smoothly is A Creative Revolution. Pale and Dr Prole have produced a series of posts around Shona Holmes, the organizations that support her obfuscations, and the dis-information campaign that are excellent.

Gone fishin'

Nice work if you can get it ... and you can evade work responsibility if your name is Mark Sanford and you're the governor of South Carolina.

In Canada - and I presume that applies in other countries as well - if you hold a job that involves important responsibilities, you don't spontaneously go incommunicado & AWOL, while not even ensuring that a colleague has assumed your key legal tasks. But an elected official in the US? Not so much, it appears.

The whereabouts of Gov. Mark Sanford was unknown for nearly four days, and some state leaders question who was in charge of the executive office. ...

Neither the governor’s office nor the State Law Enforcement Division, which provides security for governors, had been able to reach Sanford after he left the mansion Thursday in a black SLED Suburban SUV, said Sen. Jake Knotts and three others familiar with the situation but declined to be identified. ...

First lady Jenny Sanford told The Associated Press earlier Monday her husband has been gone for several days and she did not know where. She said she was not concerned. ... Jenny Sanford said the governor said he needed time away from their children to write something.

The governor’s office issued a statement Monday afternoon: "Gov. Sanford is taking some time away from the office this week to recharge after the stimulus battle and the legislative session, and to work on a couple of projects that have fallen by the wayside. We are not going to discuss the specifics of his travel arrangements or his security arrangements."

Thank gawd Sanford is a pale-skinned, English-speaking Republican otherwise US religious fundamentalist rightwingnutters in the state of South Carolina would have worked themselves into a state of shrieeeking frenzy by now.

Update: At Truth, Justice and Tacos, the blogger makes a good point about Sanford taking off for a hike on Fathers' Day and leaving his wife and four sons wondering WTF? Fundie Christian Family Values ©™ anyone?

One final note: Sanford has been acting squirrely for some time now. ... All of this should be deeply troubling to the people of South Carolina. Clearly, something is up with Sanford. Whether it's some kind of weird mental breakdown, or something as pedestrian as an affair, I have no idea. But should Sanford ever come down off the trail, I imagine he's going to have to do a loooooot of PR spinning.

Un grand merci to Canadian Cynic for alerting us to "Building the New Majority Conferenece" (sic).

Shrieeekkk! Breeding lesbians are to blame!

From this moment on, I must stop imagining who else the scathingly idiotic "Religious (don't call us that) Right" are going to blame. A thought crossed my mind the other day, wondering how the fetus fetishists were going to spin their way out of the support they initially provided to Octuplets' Mom Nadya Suleman.

Bruce of Canuck Attitude kindly provided the answer:

As you all know from our secret meetings where we plan out our world domination, the gays are responsible for all the world's ills– or at least that's what Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council believes. Our latest victory, according to the virulently homophobic jerk is to force America's women to turn out litters of children. Nadya Suleman's eight children are not the result of a sloppy fertility treatment, but rather, the result of procreating lesbians.

Shrieeekkk! The Family Research Council's Tony Perkins is quite the little drama queen.

Shrieeeeek! Jihad by Fertility!!!

Or so says one of the posters at Freak Dominion. (That is the second thread there on the disturbing octuplets story. The first one derailed into accusations of, well, I'm not sure what.)

I thought that was pretty extreme, but then I googled around and found Joe.My.God's take on it.

I have to admit, I'm enjoying watching the right-wing blogs spins themselves into an ethical dither over the California octuplets story. Unmarried mother of 14! But she didn't kill the babies! The family is from Iraq! But it's a gift from God! The whole lot will end up on welfare! A lot of the commenters on Free Republic are somehow blaming Obama for this. Because, you know, he create this socialist state that will have to step in and care for the family.

There's a summary of what's known so far, then Joe concludes:

I don't think there ever been a single story until now that hits on every right-wing talking point: immigration, two-parent families, abortion, welfare, religion, Iraq, socialism, fiscal responsibility, etc etc etc. Now if we could just get the mother to be a lesbian too....