Defines a fetus as developing from the “moment of conception” in contrast to the more medically accurate “moment of implantation;”
Starves Planned Parenthood of federal dollars and redirects those funds to other priorities;
Allocates funds for counseling women on alternatives to abortion (based on medically inaccurate information);
Cuts funds to any rape crisis center that mentions abortion as an option;
Requires doctors to perform a medically unnecessary ultrasound prior to performing an abortion;
Mandates all abortion clinics to enter into a transfer agreement with a hospital, but not a public hospital (thus putting women at risk at a time when emergency services may be needed the most).
Meanwhile, Texas Governor Dysenperry and his dyspeptic sidekick, Vice Governor Spewworst, have reconvened a special session of the Texas legislature. To force passage of their precocious Fetal Masturbation Protection bill and forestall any potential filibuster, they have suspended all Senate rules.
Don't give in if your man, boyfriend, husband, toyboy is not voting for your best interests, your reproductive health -- do not sleep with that man …
Do not make him dinner, do not go fetch him a cold beer from the fridge, do not iron that shirt, hell, do not change that diaper... do not make his life a little nicer this summer if he does not "get it" and learn to respect women!
Men, pay attention! Respect the woman in your life by supporting her right to choose, or no more schtupp for you!!
What is it with Brit Hume? I don't mean his embarrassing and
offensive opinions, I'll get to that later, but his face hangs on him
like a corpse propped up in its coffin at some ghastly wake or at best
some dopey cartoon Basset Hound. It's so distracting that the import of
the things he says is delayed in reaching my awareness and often feels
like a slap in the face. It's not that I actually watch him on purpose. Fox News has long since been removed from my TV's menu, but sometimes I see him quoted and my jaw sags like Hume's jowls and I despair. Chewing the cud over Nancy Pelosi's comments about the challenge to the angry white birds party of our changing demographics,Hume gives us:
“Look, I’ve read all kinds of analysis of this… I am absolutely
convinced that this troupe [ now did he mean trope?] that you’re hearing, that says if the
Republicans don’t go for immigration reform much as the Senate has done,
they’re never gonna win another presidential election -- oh,
baloney.”
That's a true conservative
speaking. Things you see, should always be like they were and if they
change, we ignore it until it goes away. Bad things like genocide and
deportation and slavery really don't matter and we should as Brit says,
keep the focus on white people. America was always about white people,
even if it wasn't and if we keep pretending, keep believing, why then we
can fly to Never Never Land with Peter Pan (even if the name sounds a
bit gay) where the sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home and
everyone knew his genetically determined place White men at the table,
black men serving dinner and brown men outside trimming the topiary.
Look, 'these people' don't really vote all that much (we've put so much effort into making that so) and
“So, if you look at it from an ethnic point of view, that addresses the
question of whether you need to get right with the Hispanics,”
America
is all about white people and white people like Brit Hume, or so he
maintains. The Republican party shouldn't waste it's time pretending
that isn't so and you can always depend on that league of white
gentlemen to bring in the votes while the lesser folk, the folk that
live here on our sufferance, keep their heads down lest we send them
elsewhere.
Will they continue to win elections as
they continue to whistle Dixie and have seizures when they hear Spanish
spoken? Yeah, sure, but fewer and fewer and not just because more
people have names like Gomez. The people who lick Hume's spittle, who
watch Fox and drink Budweiser in the evening are being marginalized for
all sorts of reasons and they know it. That's why they watch -- to
pretend they're not doomed to failure and insignificance as the empire
of the past crumbles.
You have to feel sorry for David Dewhurst. It has to be rough to be the lieutenant governor under Rick Perry - I mean, Dewhurst is no Rhodes scholar himself, but when you're second fiddle to a brain-damaged chimp, you must spend a lot of nights curled around a bottle of cheap whiskey, rocking yourself and sobbing uncontrollably.
I mean, he was in charge of the Texas Senate as they tried to ban abortion, and he failed. Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, filibustered for over 12 hours, until they were able to take her off the stage with three challenges: two of them, that she didn't stay on topic, involved her talking about Planned Parenthood and invasive sonograms - both of which are directly involved with abortion. So, bullshit right there.
Then, forgetting that the world was watching, they held a vote after the Senate was required to close down, and tried to fake the record. But the public wouldn't let them get away with that, either, and the vote was declared null and void.
So Dewhurst, being a good'ol'boy from Texas, felt he had to talk tough to hide the fact that he was beaten up by a girl wearing pink sneakers. The sad part is, he isn't very good at it.
Apparently, having witnesses when you try to cheat and break the rules is now called "Obama-style, mob-rule politics" - which I suppose you can understand, considering the back-room nature of traditional Texas politics.
But I think the best part of Dewhurst's sad little rant is what he chose as a battle cry.
Come and Take It!
Why does that sound like a bottom, kneeling in bed and calling to his top? Somebody needs to give Dewhurst some lessons in looking macho before he embarrasses himself further.
So, in the upcoming weeks, we'll hopefully learn the facts about the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case. I know where I stand on it, based on what I've read, but it's always possible that there are details yet to come out.
But, for the moment, let's ignore the whole "Wild, Wild West," shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later attitude that the "Stand Your Ground" law engenders. Just for now, let's concentrate on the trial.
Let's also ignore the fact that the defense attorney opened with a knock-knock joke. A knock-knock joke that bombed.
"Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying," he explained. "So, let me — at considerable risk — let me say, I would like to tell you a little joke. I know how that may sound a bit weird in this context under these circumstances. But I think you're the perfect audience for it as long as you — if you don't like it or find it funny or appropriate, that you don't hold it against Mr. Zimmerman, you can hold it against me. I have your assurance you won't?"
"Knock, knock. Who’s there? George Zimmerman. George Zimmerman who?" West said. "Alright, good, you’re on the jury."
"Nothing?" he added when the jury apparently failed to laugh. "That’s funny. After what you folks have been through the last two or three weeks."
No, really, dude. If you're begging them to laugh, it was a bad joke. Trust me. I should know.
Instead, let's highlight another part of the defense attorney's opening statement. He tried to claim that Trayvon Martin was not unarmed.
"Trayvon Martin armed himself with the concrete sidewalk and used it to smash George Zimmerman's head; it's no different than if he picked up a brick or bashed it against a wall," Mr. West said, "and the law is very specific as to when you can defend yourself if the other person has a deadly weapon."
Really, that is an awe-inspiring defense. In order for it to work, you have to completely redefine the legal definition of the word "unarmed."
Because if Trayvon Martin was "armed," by the prosecutor's definition, then nobody who exists in a three-dimensional environment can ever be defined as "unarmed."
I'd
hate to make anyone think I'm an optimist. I'm not even sure I care too
much about the human race aside from a few individuals, but that's what
pessimism is about -- a cosmic frame of reference that sees no
permanence; that sees everything that is on the way up as inevitably on
the way down.
Perhaps not caring gives a clearer
vision. If it doesn't matter in the end that voting rights are in
peril, or at least under continuing assault, then the failure of the
Texas legislature to pass a bill further restricting abortion rights
despite a ten hour filibuster by Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis, is less
likely to be overshadowed. She might have gone on but was ruled to have
drifted off topic amidst a chorus of boos and catcalls, and the bill was
declared dead at 3 AM.
For those of us who still hope for sweeping reformation and the triumph of truth and justice for all, it's a little and perhaps temporary victory
over the animal meanness of human nature and as Dr Moreau learned, you
can dress up the animal and teach it to walk on two legs, you can make it recite pledges and formulae, you can make up stories about divine origins, but the beast is still a beast and evolution is so slow.
In the biggest disaster since Citizens United, the United States Supreme Court has struck down Section 4 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The majority decision reads in part:
“Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions,” Roberts wrote.
For conservative justices on the Supreme Court, times have changed. For liberal justices, the historical tendency to engage in chicanery and erect new barriers has not changed, according to this dissenting opinion by Ruth Bader Ginsberg:
[The] record for the 2006 reauthorization makes abundantly clear [that] second-generation barriers to minority voting rights have emerged in the covered jurisdictions as attempted substitutes for the first-generation barriers that originally triggered preclearance in those jurisdictions.
Indeed, the Tea Party insurrection against common decency ushered in a new wave of second-generation voting rights restrictions, such as: Voter ID laws, new restrictions on voter registration, new laws that discriminate against student voters, renewed gerrymandering, the elimination of weekend polling and extended polling hours that have resulted in outrageously long waiting lines of up to 8 hours. These newly imposed restrictions have only one goal: To target and suppress turnout among minorities, senior citizens, students, and other key constituencies that can sway the outcome of elections. Even more outrageous than Citizens United, this decision guts one of the most important and effective civil rights laws, according to Jon Greenbaum, chief counsel for the Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights Law, who says:
Minority voters in places with a record of discrimination are now at greater risk of being disenfranchised than they have been in decades. Today's decision is a blow to democracy. Jurisdictions will be able to enact policies which prevent minorities from voting, and the only recourse these citizens will have will be expensive and time-consuming litigation.
Perhaps the time is long overdue to take to the streets. Mass demonstrations. Civil disobedience. And a brick thrown through the window of every Republican headquarters in every city and town from coast to coast! Am I angry?
There is a constant drumbeat from the right comparing Obama to Hitler. I mean, let's ignore the fact that Obama's signature legislation is a method to ensure that everybody can go to a hospital when they're sick without ending up living out of their car. Because that's exactly the same as slaughtering six million Jews and attempting to take over Europe in a bloody campaign of destruction.
Yeah, let's ignore that. Instead, let's ask ourselves why every single time that somebody disagrees with a politician, it's become de rigueur to compare them to Hitler? Why is the litmus test for political arguments the ability to reduce your enemy to the level of the worst dictator in history? Last week, I pointed out an unintentional violation of Godwin's Law, but let's consider the issue a little, shall we?
Following World War One, Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles. This treaty included Article 231, which is commonly called "the guilt clause":
The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.
Using this as a legal basis, Germany was forced to pay reparations to the rest of Europe. Unfortunately, Germany didn't think they'd lost the war - the German High Command told their citizens that the Army had never been beaten in the field, and the defeat was actually due to actions by civilians, particularly Jews, Socialists and Communists (the Dolchstosslegende, or "Stabbed-in-the-Back Legend").
That's right - Hitler didn't start the rumor that Jews were destroying the economy. Antisemitism was well-established in the German culture long before he was born.
So the Weimar Republic resisted the reparations, and defaulted on payments quite frequently. The French and Belgians, realizing that the Germans were able to pay and simply weren't, eventually invaded and occupied the Ruhr valley, which was the center of coal, iron and steel production in Germany.
Take this reduction in raw materials for the Germans and the resulting reduction in cash-flow, and add to it the fact that the German government funded a passive resistance movement among the citizens of the Ruhr by simply printing more money. This led to the famed hyper-inflation of post-WWI Germany.
Technically, the inflation started when the Kaiser decided to fund WWI by borrowing money instead of taxing his people and using his own fortune: the value of the German mark fell from 4 to 9 per US dollar. But the war ended in 1919; by November 1923, the American dollar was worth 4,210,500,000,000 German marks. Or in more concrete terms, in 1919 a loaf of bread cost 1 mark; by 1923, a loaf of bread cost 100 billion marks.
This was the situation when Adolph Hitler rose into power. During the course of his leadership, he brought his people back from the brink of ruin and ensured they could eat.
People want for life to be simple. They want their enemies to wholly evil, so that there's no question that "destroying them" is a bad thing. The reductive power of the human mind wants those we disagree with to have no redeeming features. Homophobes want gays to practice pedophilia and beastiality. Radical conservatives want liberals to be fascists and totalitarian dictators. Radical liberals want conservatives to be inhuman monsters who laugh as children starve in the streets.
The reality is that people are more complex than that. But to see that, to understand the forces that drive someone, is to understand that perhaps evil is not something simple. Perhaps evil and good are in all of us. That bad things are done by good people, and good things are done by bad people, and the world isn't the simple place we want it to be.
Would you like to see the most frightening picture of Adolph Hitler ever taken?
Hitler, holding hands with a little girl and walking in a park. Hitler loved children. He loved animals: he was a confirmed vegetarian and was opposed to vivisection.
Were you aware that Eva Braun took home movies?
Hitler was a human being. It challenges your worldview: he should be a monster, pounding on desks and ordering people to their deaths. But he lived, he loved, he laughed, he played with children.
He also destroyed much of Europe, threw the world into war, and established concentration camps where 11 million people were killed.
Perhaps "good" and "evil" aren't the simple concepts that some people want them to be.
Claims of fetal masturbation, advanced by Congressman Michael Burgess (R-TX) in support of the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (HR 1797), remind me of Gulliver’s Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnag, Glubbdubdrig, and Japan (Part III). As you may recall …
According to Congressman Burgess, the Republican Uterus Emeritus and throbbingcurrent member of the House Subcommittee on Health:
You watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful. They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. They feel pleasure, why is it so hard to think that they could feel pain?
What gives here? Is Burgess talking about fetuses or babies? How is a 15-week fetus developmentally equivalent to a 15-week baby? Perhaps his sentimental attachment to babies accounts for the semantic legerdemain of Lagado men who swap words to bend science: If a baby is cute, and a fetus is cuter, then a male fetus spanking the monkey is cutest of all – and especially venerated by male legislators who flog the log.
The key threshold set by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade legalizes abortion on the basis of viability, i.e. that abortions cannot be banned until a fetus reaches viability at 24 weeks. The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act moves this threshold to 20 weeks – with no exemptions for rape or incest or complications of pregnancy that threaten the health or life of the mother.
Are fetuses capable of feeling pain? Not according to this report from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists:
In reviewing the neuroanatomical and physiological evidence in the fetus, it was apparent that connections from the periphery to the cortex are not intact before 24 weeks of gestation and, as most neuroscientists believe that the cortex is necessary for pain perception, it can be concluded that the fetus cannot experience pain in any sense prior to this gestation.
How will the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act apply to fraternal twins in utero? In the annals of the Grand Academy of Lagado, a male fetus in utero masturbates and impregnates his fraternal sister in utero. Shall we consider this an act of rape or incest or both? How will the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act impact on babushka pregnancies? Shall the newborn male be handcuffed in afterbirth and put on trial as an unborn sex predator? No doubt, Congressman Burgess will ride to the rescue of fetal masturbators with riders nested inside riders until he goes blind.
My friend Tai posted a video to my
facebook page and asked, “For my friends around the world, please
support our fight for a better Brazil!” This was just a few days
ago when there was no US news coverage of the protests going on in
Brazil. I was surprised to see all that was going on and the number
of people taking it to the streets.
Tonight the network coverage began as
the world became aware of a very serious citizenry fighting back
against a corrupt government filled with greedy politicians. What
started as a lament against a proposed bus fare hike turned into a
revolution as people took up the call and focused on serious issues
in their country.
The people of Brazil say they pay high
taxes and see nothing in return. Their schools are inadequate, health
care is abysmal and yet the government will spend billions (I think
they are called real) hosting the World Cup and the Olympics.
Many Brazilians believe this money
would be better spent improving schools, revamping hospitals and
helping their people climb out of poverty.
My friend tells me that in her smaller
city about 20,000 people started making their way to the local
stadium but were met by police firing off tear gas and rubber
bullets. But the government of Brazil is fighting a losing battle at
trying to keep the protests quelled. Over 1 million people are
expected to take to the streets of Rio de Janeiro this evening and it
does not seem that the people of Brazil intend to give up their fight
any time soon.
Of course, nothing is ever a simple
matter, nor are all people in a country of one mind as we can attest
to. Another Brazilian friend, Rafa, joined the conversation and his
take is that while he supports many of the changes, he thinks the
whole movement has gotten out of control and he is in favor a more
peaceful, gradual change. He thinks there are those who are simply
drawn to the chaos and anarchy. Which I think is probably true.
Another Brazilian friend, May is part
of a student union – some of you will remember those from the 60s!
She is also part of the protests and even though she voted for the
current president, she says she should be able to demand the
politicians serve the people and not themselves. Sound familiar?
I hope they can bring about the change
they desire and that their lives will be better for it. I hope we
Americans will be able to take a page or two out of their playbook
and affect some change of our own. Brazil’s problems sound
amazingly like our problems and goodness knows we could use to shake
things up here.
Of course, when
thinking of what is happening in Brazil one can't help but think
about all the other protests and civil unrest taking place around the
globe. Is this a symptom of the global economic depression and the
systematic greed and corruption of our governments? Has the world
reached the breaking point? And what does this mean for not only our
future but the future of our world?
