Rally for Citizens of Gaza 27Sep2024

 

The Fridays at Fettermans crowd assembles again, as they have for about the past year.

Next rally at Senator Fetterman's office (200 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia 12:15 PM to 1:30 PM) will feature speeches by Medea Benjamin of Code Pink, Aly Halpert, Singer-Songwriter; George Lakey, Quaker Activist & Author; Shane Claiborne, Red Letter Christians; Lisa Sharon Harper, Freedom Road; Lewis Webb, Jr., American Friends Service Committee; Rachel Betesh, Poet. This will mark the one-year anniversay of the war in Gaza. 

 

Terry Rumsey, organizer of the rallies that have continued non-stop for the past year.

It's been a bit tough to keep writing about Gaza as it's just been more and more bad news for its residents. It's been clear for quite a while that Israeli Prome Minister Netanyahu simply doesn't have a "day-after" plan to administer Gaza after Hamas is defeated.

In the absence of a post-war plan, [US Secretary of State Antony] Blinken added, “Hamas will be left in charge, which is unacceptable. Or if not, we’ll have chaos, lawlessness and a vacuum that eventually will be filled again by Hamas or maybe something — if it’s possible to imagine — even worse.”

"Total defeat" of Hamas is a great idea in theory, but unworkable in practice. Hamas must be replaced with an effective government that can govern to provide what people there need. The piece here was written in May and is still true.

Not that Hezbollah's any better. During Israel's invasion of Lebanon both sides are violating the laws of war. 

 

 

Ukraine/Russia? There have been a few changes, but Russia continues to utilize its greater resources, both in military goods produced by Russia and its allies North Korea, Iran and to some extent from China and in manpower, mostly from the provinces as opposed to the Moscow-St. Petersburg region. Ukraine's invasion of Russia in the Kursk area should count as one of Putin's "red lines" that requires a nuclear response from Russia. As President Biden has provided Ukraine with more long-range missiles, along with a continued hesitancy to allow Ukraine to actually use those weapons, we have an interesting situation there.

Early on, when not many people had arrived yet.

As I pointed out to a person in an online conversation, an innocent person would seek a speedy trial so that he could go to thhe public as a cleared person. As Trump is clearly not innocent, he and his allies in the Judicial Branch have sought to delay his trials. The Supreme Court tossed a monkey wrench into these trials by declaring that Trump can't be prosecuted for official acts or for official communications. Naturally, they didn't go into detail as to what these were, but they went much further in defining official acts than was previously understood. Judge Chutkan and Special Counsel Smith appear to be ready to to define just what Trump can be charged with. They're trying to still not cross any boundaries that the Supreme Court has appeared to suggest. Of course, as Trump and his allies desire, any conclusion to his trial must take place after November's election.

 

Robin Rumsey

In their weekend round-up of political news for the week, TPM covers a Russian online version of the Washington Post (Russia has generally ramped up election interference efforts), how routine maintenance of voter rolls gives rise to comspiracy theories and how Melania Trump's description of Donald as a "family man" provoked a number of rebuttals from online progressives.

Haitian migrants in Springfield OH have been the target of toxic rhetoric by Senator Vance, Donald Trump and assorted wannabe Nazis.

As I've said, Trump is a wannabe fascist dictator.

“One rough hour. And I mean real rough, the word will get out and it will end immediately. End immediately. You know, it will end immediately,” — Donald Trump on the phony epidemic of crime by immigrants in 2024

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a historian and commentator on authoritarianism and propaganda.  She comments here on how authoritarians like Trump really, really hate it when people make fun of them! Authoritarians "don’t mind being called evil, but being ridiculed is a different matter."

Facing towards the speaker.

Unfortunately, living in a "pro-life" state means living in a maternity care desert. "in 1,104 US counties, there is not a single birthing facility or obstetric clinician." That's out of 3,143 counties total.

RLGardner.net

Thoughts on Supreme Court decision on abortion

 Recently had a lengthy discussion on Twitter about pregnancy choice. The initial entry was all about how much a pregnancy costs. Nothing went particularly wrong with the pregnancy, the baby s fine and the mother is happy. A fellow who claimed to be a neutral centrist but who kept making clearly anti-choice comments, asked a question. I responded. During the course of the conversation, we focused on a particular page taken from Supreme Court Justice Alito's anti-Roe decision. Here are what I regard as the two most critical sentences:

These legitimate interests include respect for and preservation of prenatal life at all stages of development. … The protection of maternal health and safety.

To me, these describe the priorities of the Supreme Court majority in this opinion.

As to the 10-year old girl in Ohio who was raped and found herself very close to the mark of when Ohio did not permit abortions, there's no question that Ohio was seeing to it that they were showing “respect for and preservation of prenatal life”. Would her giving birth have proven fatal or very unhealthy? Doubtful.

The "bodily harm" doesnt even apply because a 10 year old can give birth safely to a child. So the answer to my original question is no there is not an exception that would allow this abortion to take place in Ohio.

So this was not a case of unintended consequences or of things going sideways into unforeseen circumstances. Alito and the rest of the Supreme Court majority had only seen ft to account for the girl's “health and safety.” Once that was satisfied, they had no problem with seeing to it that she would be required to give birth. In fact, the National Right to Life organization made it quite clear that:

“She would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child,” Bopp said in a phone interview on Thursday.

Is Alito himself troubled at all by the obvious problems with the decision as it's currently formulated? Not so you'd know it. He appeared for a speech and didn't appear to be even slightly troubled by problems with the decision.

So when anti-choicers ask you “Why do people hate us?” Well, there's a good reason for that.

Update: The Biden Administration has put out an instruction that women who are suffering complications and might die without an abortion, must receive abortions, regardless of what local and state laws may say. Texas Republicans object to this. They argue that saving the life of a woman via an abortion might put her at risk of being found guilty under Texas law. 

Political quotes that really shouldn’t be made public

 

Political quotes that really shouldn’t be made public

awful @MeetThePress premise this morning: we're "divided" over Covid and masks! we're not: 70% have a shot. 70% support masks.

Eric Boehlert

The problem with the crush of COVID-19 patients using up most of the available ICU beds* and crowding out emergency facilities is that it’s all so unnecessary.

*Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Florida and Arkansas are nearly out of ICU beds as Covid-19 cases surge across the US — particularly among unvaccinated Americans.

CNN

Here are the ICU beds that are occupied just by Covid patients in each of 14 states. Now, if you’re vaccinated and catch even the dreaded Delta Variant of the coronavirus, it might still result in some unpleasantness, but you’re unlikely even to have to go to the hospital.

To say that Americans are “divided” is to suggest that both sides have good reason to feel the way they do. That, for instance, taking Ivermectin, a cow de-wormer that yes, people can safely take under some very specific circumstances, but that the FDA says please don’t use it for Covid, is a reasonable and rational choice. It isn’t. It’ completely insane to think that the vaccines that the US went to great length to produce and to safety-test and to test for efficacy is less safe or effective than a quack cure pushed by Fox News and other conservative commenters.

There’s also a problem with a claim that anti-choicers/forced birthers make, that the new Texas “snitch” law “...bans abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which is usually after about six weeks of pregnancy, before many women are even aware they are pregnant."

As the C&L piece points out, a six week-old embryo (It won’t become a fetus for another month) doesn’t actually have a heart!

The rhythmic sound that can be heard is "a group of cells with electrical activity. That's what the heartbeat is at that stage of gestation … We are in no way talking about any kind of cardiovascular system." That's all from Jennifer Kerns, an ob-gyn at University of California, San Francisco and director of research in obstetrics and gynecology

There’s absolutely no question that the people who came up with the term did so consciously and deliberately, with malice and forethought. But why mainstream news reporters keep mindlessly repeating that “fetuses” have a heartbeat after six weeks is a real puzzle. This is a claim that fails a very simple true/false test.

Another recent problem is that the Texas “snitch” law didn’t just suddenly pop up out of the blue. The law was passed back in May. The course it took to the Supreme Court was publicly documented. Yet, the Supreme Court decision landed like a bombshell because, apparently, the press was so wholly and completely absorbed in the withdrawal from Afghanistan (a legitimate and worthwhile story) that it just didn’t have any time or attention to spare for the gutting of a Supreme Court ruling that’s been in effect since 1973. The press played catch-up with a number of pieces after the ruling was made, but there was absolutely no need for it to have been such a surprise.

Why does this happen? Why does the press constantly use right-wing talking points that are completely bonkers or ignore a clearly important issue that will obviously have a great impact? My own personal theory is that media people like to run stories through people they feel are outside experts, who are always free to chat and who provide authoritative-sounding quotes. In other words, reporters have right-wing “friends” who have cultivated close relationships with them and who assure them that a fetal heartbeat at six weeks is a real thing and who discourage putting out pieces on something like the Texas “snitch” law that will make right-wingers look bad (Fox News apparently realized how unpopular the new law was as they didn’t mention it for quite awhile). Reporters don’t need to stop talking with right-wing “friends.” What reporters need to do is to get friends on the “other side of the aisle” who can provide corrections and equally authoritative-sounding quotes.

Response to "10 Best of Trump"

 This was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer today, though the Inky like to not post Thiessen's work online as that would open it up to too much blowback, so it's online here. Here are my responses: 

10. Yes, Trump inherited a good economy.

9. Yes, Trump improved on his own performance from 2016. But the younger George Bush did better with non-white voters than Trump did.

8. Yep, he joined the anti-choicers in person. Other Republican presidents kept their distance. This is really cool if you're an anti-choicer. 

7. True, the "Blue Wave" focused on Trump and didn't do any damage to down-ballot races.

6. "He shut down travel from China" - Contrary to the off-going President's telling, this was completely non-controversial at the time and remains so today. 

"held Beijing responsible for the pandemic" & "Trump correctly blamed the Chinese regime for unleashing the virus" - It may be satisfying to some to blame China for the coronavirus. China is indeed responsible for hiding and evading some responsibility for a natural disaster that started within their borders, but evidence is that the coronavirus spread across the world well before China was even aware of it.  

"and cracked down on China’s intellectual property theft." Again, this is a completely non-controversial policy objective. 

5. "[Trump] took out Iran’s terrorist Quds force leader Qasem Soleimani." This was an extremely stupid move that resulted in completely unnecessary hostilities. There was no evidence that Soleimani was up to anything in particular and his aerial assassination gave Iran a martyr that gives them a legitimate reason to attack American interests. Was deterrence "restored"? Hardly. The US flew B-52s above the Persian Gulf within the past week precisely because they feared that Iran would try to avenge Soleimani's death.

4. "He put Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court." Which is cool if you're a right-winger. That also meant Republicans made complete hash of their justifications for not seating Merrick Garland four years earlier. We can't blame Trump for that, that was the doing of Republican senators.

3. "[Trump] transformed the Middle East with the Abraham Accords." These accords did nothing significant to affect relations between Israel and Arab countries. These were arms-selling accords with countries that wee not hostile to Israel in the first place. As the columnist suggests, the Palestinians were simply ignored.

2. Yes, the CARES Act was passed on Trump's watch. As with the getting of a new Supreme Court Justice seated, the off-going President was pretty much just a bystander to the CARES Act. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had vastly more to do with that than he did. 

1. "[Trump] launched Operation Warp Speed." True. The operation gave laboratory groups money to pursue a vaccine, which they did. But when it came to the operation actually doing something on its own, y'know, to do more than just hand out money to other organizations, when OWS was called upon to get vaccines into the arms of Americans, it proved to be like every other Trump activity, a pathetic and dismal failure. Among other things, no one in OWS remembered to account for the Anti-Vaxxer Movement. There is no national public relations strategy to counter the Anti-Vaxxers.

Jon Voight and the President's record

The actor Jon Voight has a very high opinion of President Trump: "our country is stronger [&] safer... because our president has made his every move correct."

Stronger? Since 1976, views on pregnancy/abortion haven't changed much. The pro-choicers have consistently outnumbered anti-choicers by about 2 to 1, yet anti-choicers have been strengthened by this President (and by Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader who saw to it that the Supreme Court was not turned liberal by preventing the seating of Judge Merrick Garland) to the point where there are "soaring incidents of trespassing, disruption, and intimidation at abortion clinics." The President has gone all-in on supporting anti-choicers. How is this sort of divisive political action making us stronger?

Safer? Looking at a public opinion poll that examined international attitudes towards the US, there are only three countries that view the US in a more favorable light than they did at the end of the Obama Presidency, Israel, Kenya and Russia. The rest of the world, including long-time allies, view us less favorably.
Also, the US has an intelligence-sharing program with four other countries, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, that is now endangered by the President giving Attorney General William Barr complete authority to investigate how the Mueller Report originated.
How on Earth does any of this count as making us any safer?!?!?!

Are federally-funded pregnancy health centers the answer?

Of course, it's entirely possible for anti-choicers to construct centers that provide medical services for women. Obviously, if Planned Parenthood was serving a wealthy population with cash to spare, Planned Parenthood might never have come into being. Any pregnancy health centers needs to be funded either by voluntary contributions with no expectation of financial returns or they'd need government funding.  But with a little over a million abortions in 2011, is it at all likely that voluntary contributions will be forthcoming on the necessary scale? A major point that anti-choicers made was that they don't need to as there are  federal community health centers.

But Abby Johnson, a Catholic and former Planned Parenthood facility director, told the Register that the nation’s approximately 10,000 federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) could absorb clients from any Planned Parenthood closures. However, she said these health centers are “not the whole package” women need, because they have material, physical and emotional needs that only pro-life medical centers can provide comprehensively. 

Also,

House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan succinctly and calmly laid out the case for redirecting taxpayer dollars from abortion goliath Planned Parenthood to federal community health centers at a CNN townhall Thursday night.  

So hey, not a problem, right? Instead of having women depending on that icky Planned Parenthood for needed pregnancy-related medical health services, just refer them to the federal community health centers. Simple, right? Well, those same centers, while serving around 27 million people at 10,000 centers, are under serious financial pressure and are having to impose hiring freezes and a little over half of them may have to lay off staff.

Planned Parenthood depends on Medicaid reimbursements, but they're not the government and therefore aren't quite as vulnerable to political pressure as the federally-funded health centers are. So no, the anti-choice movement really doesn't have an adequate answer to the pregnancy-related health care services that Planned Parenthood provides.

Democrats vs Republicans, any real difference?

Okay, so I was challenged to come up with a list of differences between the two major parties so as to prove they’re not just one party with two names. Here’s the opposing list of where there’s not much difference between the parties:

War

Brutal sanctions preceded the Iraq War, but Democrats left the actual military invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan up to Bush. Yes, Obama reinforced the Iraq War and then carried out the Bush plan to pull out by the end of 2011. In contrast to Republican charges that came out after Daesh (ISIS) appeared, the Obama Administration tried very hard to remain in Iraq longer, but neither the Iraqi nor the American public wanted any such thing to take place. 

the Democrats' support for NAFTA, TPP
Formally and officially, Hillary Clinton opposes TPP, but a major criticism of NAFTA was that labor and environmental groups were heard from as an after-thought. If Clinton had truly learned from NAFTA criticism, those groups would have been in on the ground floor for TPP.
 
bank deregulation

True, but Dodd-Frank has had a modest effect on restraining “too big to fail” financial institutions. Not a major effect and not right away, but “what is clear is that Dodd-Frank sent notice to banks and other financial institutions that they couldn’t continue with as little scrutiny and oversight as they had in the past.”

welfare "reform"

Yes, a very bad move on Bill Clinton’s part.

social security "reform"

Bill Clinton was planning on major “reform” but thanks to Monica Lewinsky, he wasn’t able to. The Simpson-Bowles “Cat Food Commission” certainly tried to “reform” SS, but Rep. Paul Ryan thought it wasn’t destructive enough and Rep. Jan Schakowsky thought it went too far, so there was no consensus report, just the recommendations of Simpson and Bowles to gut SS. So not really sure what’s meant by that.

NSA spying

Yep, definitely a bipartisan thing.

corporate welfare for the insurance industry - aka Obamacare (originally a right wing thinktank policy first implemented in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney)
Actually, many people have interpreted that as a clever move by Obama. By going as far to the right as was possible and still having a workable system, that left the Republicans with nothing to recommend in its place. The new Governor of Kentucky ran on dismantling the ACA/Obamacare, but found that he had no way to do so without throwing 300,000 citizens off of their health plans and thereby directly causing 300,000 people to become loyal, committed Democrats, so he backed off on that.
Also, the Democrats did have a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate, but they had to keep right-wingers like Senator Joe Lieberman and others aboard, so the set-up had to be kept modest. We can’t blame the right-wing Democrats entirely. there’s evidence Obama wanted to blame Lieberman for his dropping the public option and that Lieberman agreed to be the scapegoat, but that Obama was really the one that wanted to drop it. 

bailing out the banks in 2009 but not Main Street

Yeah, Obama wasn’t in office yet, but he signed off on that.

refusal to fight for serious campaign finance reform
Another bipartisan thing.

refusal to tax the rich
Obama raised taxes on the wealthy a bit, but yeah, we could return to the Kennedy-era 70% rate without damaging the economy at all.
 
or cut the military budget
I’m personally disappointed Star Wars/SDI/Missile Defense is still being researched. Complete boondoggle. The A-10 “Warthog” attack plane simply doesn’t need replacing. Nor does the B-52, for that matter. Both planes are extremely well-designed for their function. The F-35 is another complete boondoggle that’s good for putting money into defense contractor pockets  and not much else. From 2011 to 2014, that is, from the pull-out from Iraq to the appearance of Daesh, US military spending went down a few hundred billion (it went back up again), but yes, way too much being spent.
 
refusal to prosecute makers of illegal wars and torture
Again, yup. Obama made a deliberate decision not to prosecute.

So what can we list as being real differences between the two parties?

Legislation. Enacted laws went from 460 during the last term under G.W. Bush, to 385 under a period of Democratic control of both the House and Senate, but also when Republicans got more and more filibuster-happy. Was at 284 and 296, then crashed to 165 (so far as of June 2016) when the GOP took over the Senate. Speaker Paul Ryan, formerly the Republican Budget Director, can’t seem to pass a Budget Resolution that’s, by the way, required by law. There’s no filibuster in the House and Republicans have a solid majority, so Democrats get zero blame for that. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell regards a Trade Promotion Authority bill (One of those bipartisan things listed above) and a bill concerning the Obama Administration deal with Iran as his two biggest accomplishments of the current Senate. Not really sure what the latter bill did as it would have canceled the deal with enough votes, but they didn’t get those votes and it’s not at all clear that the critics of the deal got anything else out of the bill. 

Republicans just don’t seem to like passing legislation as much as Democrats do.

Zika. After sitting around for two months and essentially twiddling their thumbs, the House finally decided to take money out of the response to Ebola and put it into Zika. Problem is, the fight against Ebola isn’t over. Neither Congress nor the Senate has voted on a bill that gives the Administration the full amount it’s requesting. And Congress left town in late May without doing anything to fix the problem. “Dozens of Democrats staged a media event on the steps of Capitol to decry the Republicans who control the House and Senate for leaving for the week-long break with what Democrats argued was so much unfinished business.”  How serious is Zika? Very!

Republicans just don’t seem to like fixing problems.

Abortion. One of the effects of Zika is that it affects babies in the womb, causing them to be born with microcephaly. That is, their brain is much smaller than normal because it hasn’t developed properly. One would think that, being allegedly very, very deeply concerned about babies in the womb, that anti-choicers would be all over this issue. They aren’t. Problem is, Zika and the called-for response contradicts the anti-choicer crusade against Planned Parenthood that was kicked off by a series of highly edited, misleading videotapes released by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP). Studying fetal tissue could help combat the effects of Zika, but the issue of women who have abortions and then donating fetal tissue is what’s at the heart of the CMP videos. A fourth federal committee was established (a dozen states had already investigated Planned Parenthood and exonerated them in every case) to further investigate Planned Parenthood to “find the truth.” As of June 2016, the committee has turned up zip. 

Conducting ideological crusades appears to take priority over solving real-world problems.

Holding up nominations. The Supreme Court nominee blockade, the blocking of any person nominated by the current president to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the passing of Justice Antonin Scalia is utterly and absolutely unprecedented in American history. Just as an example of the grossly excessive blocking of legitimate nominations, Senator “Tehran” Tom Cotton put a block on “Obama's ambassadorial nominations in order to pressure him to do something about the leaks coming out of the Secret Service. Eventually, that issue was resolved, and Cotton lifted all of the holds except [Cassandra] Butts'. When she met with him to ask why the hold remained on her nomination, Cotton told her "that he knew that she was a close friend of Obama’s — the two first encountered each other on a line for financial-aid forms at Harvard Law School, where they were classmates — and that blocking her was a way to inflict special pain on the president."

Shorter Senator Cotton: “I’m holding up a legitimate appointee because, fuck you, that’s why!”

Priorities.  Senate Majority Leader McConnell was asked about Donald Trump’s racist attack on a judge and responded “I think the Party of Lincoln wants to win the White House.” In other words, yeah, yeah, attacking a judge strictly for his ethnicity is, y’know, maybe not so great, but hey, winning is all that matters!

Winning is more important than maintaining basic decency.


No, I’m sorry, the two parties are not as different as I’d like them to be, but they are indeed different. It does make a difference whether you vote or whether you blow off the voting booth. It does make a difference whether you vote for the Democrats or for a third party.

Two reactions to a Kathleen Parker piece

Kathleen Parker has a piece up about abortion fights taking place. In the first, she claims that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure charity has the right to stop giving Planned Parenthood $680,000 a year. That's absolutely correct. Komen is a private organization and does indeed have that right. Yes, "given the rabid response from abortion-rights supporters, you’d think that Brinker and her organization were running puppy mills for soup vendors." That's true, because Komen executive made their decision for blatantly political reasons and then tried lying and dissembling and fudging about it. Komen decided to dive into the pool of a heated and divisive political issue and then acted surprised when the people on the other side of that issue started yelling about it.

Parker suggests: "Don’t like it? Don’t run in Komen’s fundraising races. Don’t buy a pink blender. Give directly to Planned Parenthood." What's Parkers' problem? That's precisely what lefty critics have done. No one has threatened to launch any sort of legal action, no one has threatened to burn down their buildings and no one has been beating up or assassinating Komen personnel. Critics have indeed loudly protested Komen's decision, but that's just as much our right as it is Komens' right to decide how to allocate their cash. Parker's complaints about "Coercion and intimidation" are just so much hyperbole. I'm not at all clear on where critics have gone overboard in their reaction to Komen's very bad decision and what Parker thinks the correct response should have been.

BTW, I think it's absolutely hilarious that the Bush Administration spokesperson, Ari Fleischer, is connected to the Komen story. "Fleischer personally interviewed candidates for the position of 'Senior Vice President for Communications and External Relations' at Komen last December." Very tellingly, "Fleischer drilled prospective candidates during their interviews on how they would handle the controversy about Komen’s relationship with Planned Parenthood," meaning that, no, the decision to cut off Planned Parenthood was made several months ago and they thought up the whole BS "if you're involved in an investigation" story as a very deliberate way to single out PP for getting cut off. The hilarious part is that "Whu-u-uh?!?! A former Bush Administration official made a clumsy and stupid PR move?!?! Na-a-a-ahh!"I mean, gee, those guys were so nimble and light on their feet when it came to PR [/snark].

The second part is that Parker is upset that Roman Catholic hospitals are being told to "provide health insurance that covers contraception, including in some cases abortifacient drugs." She and the Roman Catholic hierarchy feel that this constitutes an infringement on Catholic religious liberty and she and they also fear that "these requirements are the edge of the wedge." Sorry, I have absolutely zero sympathy for her arguments.

Back when I was in the Navy, Muslims who wanted to get military ID cards for their wives wanted to get them with their wives' faces veiled. We said no. We were willing to have the ID photo taken by a female, with no males nearby to see the wifes' unveiled face, but we were not willing to take a photo of a veiled face for an ID card. The military needed to be absolutely certain that the person holding an ID card was indeed the person they said they were. The religious desires of devout Muslims were incompatible with our military needs, so their religous desires took second place. Some devout Native Americans want to smoke peyote as part of their religious rites. As they were doing so long before white, Anglo-Saxon settlers occupied their land, the usual classification of peyote as a "controlled substance in Schedule I" is lifted, but it's lifted specifically for Native Americans so that they can continue their religious practices uninterrupted.

In both cases, the law and what the Federal Government needs, trumps the law of religious freedom and liberty. If Catholics don't like providing women with the means to control their wombs, then they can sell off their hospitals to private entrepreneurs who are willing to abide by the national law. If Catholics who practice medicine within those hospitals don't like it, they can go to another country or they can find another occupation. Under no circumstances does religious liberty take precedence over a woman's Constitutional rights.

Update: What Digby said.

Round-up piece on the news

Excellent piece on the assassination of abortion provider George Tiller

This person apologizes for her lack of eloquence in describing the kind of doctor that George Tiller was, but I think she did a great job

Kansas TV station 12 has the latest on the hunt for the killer


Speaking of ranting, raving hatemongers, George Miller, the highest-ranking Republican officeholder (Senate Minority Leader), refuses to condemn Rush Limbaugh, et al, who are making wild, hysterical claims about Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court nominee

Obviously, Miller is absolutely terrified to get on Rush's bad side.

People are suggesting that Sotomayor, as a member of the National Council of La Raza, is thereby a member of a hate group, akin to the Nazis and the KKK. Here's their side of the story

Rachel Maddow takes that talking point apart

Ed Rendell does not wish to see Joe Sestak run for Arlen Specter's seat

Oh, and I did a piece on different computer operating systems and how they interface with each other. Short answer - you can work with documents that are created on other operating systems, but you can't move programs that are designed for one operating system to another. You can work with a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet on Linux Ubuntu (add to it, delete from it, print it and save it), but you can't move the MS Excel program to Ubuntu.

Camille Paglia and the new face of the Republican Party

Camille Paglia produces an amazingly incoherent essay, with "facts" she appears to have pulled straight out of her butt:

But John McCain ...was... a candidate of personal honor ...

Uh, really? I thought his campaign was the absolute pits and about as "honorable" as a road race from the 1979 movie "Mad Max."

In the closing weeks of the election, however, I became increasingly disturbed by the mainstream media's avoidance of forthright dealing with several controversies that had been dogging Obama -- even as every flimsy rumor about Sarah Palin was being trumpeted as if it were engraved in stone on Mount Sinai. For example, I had thought for many months that the flap over Obama's birth certificate was a tempest in a teapot. But simple questions about the certificate were never resolved to my satisfaction. Thanks to their own blathering, fanatical overkill, of course, the right-wing challenges to the birth certificate never gained traction.

Obama's birth certificate was produced and a scan of it was featured on Daily Kos. There simply are no serious outstanding questions to be asked about it. Every possible objection has been voiced and answered. That's why "right-wing challenges...never gained traction." Paglia then extends her charge to cover the Ayers controversy.

As Media Matters points out:

The lack of media attention to the [G. Gordon] Liddy-McCain relationship is one of the clearest double standards in recent political history. McCain and the news media have devoted an extraordinary amount of attention to Barack Obama's ties to Bill Ayers, yet until last night, McCain hadn't been asked a single question* about his ties to Liddy, a convicted felon who has instructed his listeners on how best to shoot law-enforcement agents. [emphasis added]

How Paglia can claim that the traditional media "avoided" the Ayers question is a mystery to me.

How dare [Alaska Governor Sarah] Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate civilized ideal of modern culture?

Who in the heck does?!?!? Abortion is an unfortunate necessity because unintended events happen and because abortion/carrying the child to term and giving birth to it is a yes/no, up/down choice. As the decision has to be made promptly, one specific person has to have the clear, unequivocal authority to make the final decision. There are those who would give that decision to someone other than the mother-to-be. Pro-choicers don't agree with those people. It's not a matter of a wonderful versus a horrible decision, it's a matter of who gets to make the call.

How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada!

Who in the heck ever complained about that? This sounds like those complaints that "liberals didn't like (the younger) George Bush because he spoke with a Texas accent." Excuse me, but Molly Ivins came from the same region and we loved her. Jim Hightower is also from Texas and he's reasonably popular as well. In no case did I ever see any examples of any liberals uttering any sort of quote that even vaguely attacked Bush for being from Texas. I'm not saying that no liberals have ever attacked either Bush or Palin for their regional accents, but I'd need to see some attributed quotes before I'm prepared to take anyone's word for it that any such prejudice has ever existed.

Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover.

Again, this just causes me to go "Whu-u-u-uh?!?!?" Remember that Republicans have been equally rough on Palin, partly because her failure to answer simple questions embarrasses them and because they're (quite rightly) terrified that she'll be seen as representing the Republican Party.

Paglia claims that Palin is a naturally smart person. Sure, I'll agree with that, but the problem is not that she isn't smart. What she revealed in September was not that she wasn't smart enough to understand what the "Bush Doctrine" was, but that she just never cared enough about foreign policy issues to keep current on the disputes that were then taking place. Anyone even minimally paying attention (It was pointed out that both her running mate McCain and his opposite number Obama were able to answer the "Bush Doctrine" question immediately & correctly) should have been able to name a doctrine that's a foundation of Bush's foreign policy. By claiming that John Edwards was equally unprepared to be a Vice-Presidential running mate, Paglia shows that she's completely ignoring the question of how much Palin actually knows and cares about policy details.

Is Palin a "popular phenomenon"? Well, with the hard-core right wing she is, and that's why we on the left love the idea that Palin represents and is seen as the face of the Republican Party! Believe me, our support for her is entirely malicious.

Pro-life beliefs

Tom Englehardt examines the massacre at Azizabad, Afghanistan. Afghan President Hamid Karzai cites the work of

Ahmad Nader Nadery, commissioner of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, similarly reported that one of the group's researchers had "found that 88 people had been killed, including 20 women." The U.N. mission in Afghanistan then dispatched its own investigative team from Herat to interview survivors. Its investigation "found convincing evidence, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses, and others, that some 90 civilians were killed, including 60 children, 15 women and 15 men." (The 60 children were reportedly "3 months old to 16 years old, all killed as they slept.")

The American military strongly disagreed, at first citing a casualty count of

...exactly 30 Taliban "militants"... ("Insurgents engaged the soldiers from multiple points within the compound using small-arms and RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] fire. The joint forces responded with small-arms fire and an air strike killing 30 militants.")

Later, the American military was pushed into agreeing that yes, indeed, some civilians did indeed perish. The story contains a very chilling description of the way that American forces view real-time information and air power:

That night, a combined party of U.S. Special Forces and Afghan army troops attacked the village. They claimed they were "ambushed" and came under "intense fire." What we know is that they called in repeated air strikes.

Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. James Conway explained:

"You know, air power is the premiere asymmetric advantage that we hold over both the Taliban and, for that matter, the al Qaeda in Iraq… And when we find that you're up against hardened people in a hardened type of compound, before we throw our Marines or soldiers against that, we're going to take advantage of our asymmetric advantage… You don't always know what's in that compound, unfortunately. And sometimes we think there's been overt efforts on the part of the Taliban, in particular, to surround themselves with civilians so as to, at a minimum, reap an IO [information operations] advantage if civilians are killed."

It's just very difficult to believe that the Special Forces really had on-the-ground, real-time, close-up human observers to inform the aircraft that their target was a memorial service. Tactical, close-in air support is of course, vitally important and needed if US troops are to win engagements. But it's really not clear that there was any "hardened compound" involved or that there even was any return fire. The NY Times piece cited in the story refers to "eight bomb-damaged houses," but the only mention of any "compound" is:

In the compound next to his, he said, four entire families, including those of his two brothers, were killed.

In other words, not a "hardened" compound at all, certainly nothing resembling a military bunker. There's no talk in the piece about captured weapons. And as to the "fire" reportedly received from the village:

The villagers and the relatives of some of the people killed in the raid insisted that none of them were Taliban and that there were no Taliban present in the village.

and

The villagers say they oppose the Taliban and would not let them in the village.

The real question is then, were the Special Forces anywhere near the village to begin with? Were they observing from a distance, through scopes, or were they even that close? Did they simply hear or did their devices detect a large gathering? This is an inherent problem with airpower and guerrilla wars. Airpower is necessarily a very blunt and clumsy instrument to use against an enemy that slips around barely detectable, mostly unobserved and in the shadows. As stated earlier, close-up air support is vitally important while conducting tactical operations, but planes flying around and bombing targets without any human observers on the ground to confirm that the planes are indeed striking legitimate military targets do counterinsurgency forces far more harm than good.

Problem is, how on Earth can we reconcile military tactics that President Bush has approved with his allegedly "pro-life" stance? In his desire to be seen as a defender of the sanctity of life, he insisted back in 2001 that stem cells could used for medical research, but only under very strict conditions. He also made it clear during the 2000 campaign that he really didn't like abortions and wanted to reduce their incidence. He also favored, in July 2008, a sort-of conscience clause for hospitals that would allow employees to refuse to provide contraceptive services.

Can a human being really be that "Ahh, who gives a $%#@!" when it comes to casualties from an air strike, yet tenderly concerned and solicitous when it comes to decisions involving the unborn? It's not like the Afghan villagers of Azizabad were guilty of anything. Killing them was like killing the drivers and passengers in other cars when one is driving drunk. They were simply slaughtered at a distance. Their "guilt" was not an issue at all as there is no apparent evidence they were even in the vicinity of a legitimate military target.

As Christy Hardin Smith of FDL makes clear, women must have control over their bodies and their reproductive functions if they're to be full human beings and citizens.

Why tell you something so personal? Especially when it is no one's business but ours?

Because it is no one's business but ours how we made the decision, what medical issues were at stake, and what choices we made together. Which is the point of choice. No one but the people involved in the individual circumstances can truly know why the decision is made -- to terminate, to keep, to risk. [emphasis in original]

As Bush himself says about the Bristol Palin pregnancy:

President Bush "believes that this is a private family matter," says White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. The talking points circulated at the GOP convention in St. Paul, Minn., are in remarkable concurrence: "This is a very personal matter for the family," a suggested script distributed to delegates and leaked to the press says.

Well...exactly! That's precisely what pro-choicers have been saying all these many years! How a woman, how a family, deals with a problem pregnancy or with an unwanted pregnancy is their business and should be their choice.

Anti-abortion activists promote a policy of official meddling — yes, by government bureaucrats — into the private lives of millions of American women, and the lives of their husbands and boyfriends.

"Pro-lifers" are nothing of the kind. They're people who want to deny choice and to force people to do things that people really don't want to do.

Number of Sarah Palin items

"...a local Wasilla woman's view of Palin the politician"

•"Hockey mom": true for a few years
•"PTA mom": true years ago when her first-born was in elementary school, not since
•"NRA supporter": absolutely true
•social conservative: mixed. Opposes gay marriage, BUT vetoed a bill that would have denied benefits to employees in same-sex relationships (said she did this because it was unconsitutional).
•pro-creationism: mixed. Supports it, BUT did nothing as Governor to promote it.
•"Pro-life": mixed. Knowingly gave birth to a Down's syndrome baby BUT declined to call a special legislative session on some pro-life legislation
•"Experienced": Some high schools have more students than Wasilla has residents. Many cities have more residents than the state of Alaska. No legislative experience other than City Council. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; needed help of a city administrator to run town of about 5,000.
•political maverick: not at all
•gutsy: absolutely!
•open & transparent: ??? Good at keeping secrets. Not good at explaining actions.
•has a developed philosophy of public policy: no
•"a Greenie": no. Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots. Is pro-drilling off-shore and in ANWR.
•fiscal conservative: not by my definition!
•pro-infrastructure: No. Promoted a sports complex and park in a city without a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system. Built streets to early 20th century standards.
•pro-tax relief: Lowered taxes for businesses, increased tax burden on residents
•pro-small government: No. Oversaw greatest expansion of city government in Wasilla's history.
•pro-labor/pro-union. No. Just because her husband works union doesn't make her pro-labor. I have seen nothing to support any claim that she is pro-labor/pro-union.

Membership in an heretical church.

Palin's dedication to the Wasilla church is indicated by a Saturday, September 7, 2008, McClatchy news service story detailing possibly improper use of state travel funds by Palin for a trip she made to Wasilla, Alaska to attend, on June 8, 2008, both a Wasilla Assembly of God "Masters Commission" graduation ceremony and also a multi-church Wasilla area event known as "One Lord Sunday."
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The Wasilla Assembly of God church is deeply involved with both Third Wave activities and theology.
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The Third Wave is a revival of the theology of the Latter Rain tent revivals of the 1950s and 1960s led by William Branham and others. It is based on the idea that in the end times there will be an outpouring of supernatural powers on a group of Christians that will take authority over the existing church and the world. The believing Christians of the world will be reorganized under the Fivefold Ministry and the church restructured under the authority of Prophets and Apostles and others anointed by God. The young generation will form "Joel's Army" to rise up and battle evil and retake the earth for God. While segments of this belief system have been a part of Pentecostalism and charismatic beliefs for decades, the excesses of this movement were declared a heresy in 1949 by the General Council of the Assemblies of God, and again condemned through Resolution 16 in 2000.

A close look at Palin's pregnant daughter Bristol and what exactly the liberal objections to her pregnancy are.

Of course, there is no shame attached to choosing to have a baby when you're young. Nor is there any shame for choosing not to.

McCain, like Bush, wants to eliminate our opportunity to have that choice. But that's not all. Despite all evidence that it doesn't work, McCain, in lockstep with Bush and Palin, wants to continue the ludicrous notion of funding sex education that doesn't educate, but only preaches [i.e., "abstinence only"]. [emphasis in original]

Obama gets in a good one:

Keith Olbermann: “He fights pork barrel spending,” said this new McCain/Palin ad, “she stopped the ‘Bridge to Nowhere.’” ...

Barack Obama: They’re not telling the truth. You know, I mean, it’s — I think we’ve all gotten accustomed to being able to spin things in politics. But when you’ve got somebody who was for a project being presented as being against it, then that, you know, stretches the bounds of spin into new areas.

And do we REALLY want someone of McCain's temperament to be our Commander-in-Chief, with his finger next to "The Red Button"? Sounds like an awfully dangerous proposition! But even given McCain's explosive personality, do we REALLY want the 2008 presidential election to be about personalities? Does that truly serve the interests of the American people?