Month: March 2012

Sick, macabre ghouls

by digby

You know, I’ve seen some disgusting conservative misogyny in my day, but this is a new low:

A speech from a Georgia Republican state representative surfaced last week in which he compared women seeking abortions of stillborn fetuses to cows and pigs.

State Rep. Terry England was speaking in favor of HB 954, which makes it illegal to obtain an abortion after 20 weeks even if the woman is known to be carrying a stillborn fetus or the baby is otherwise not expected to live to term.
He then recalled his time working on a farm:

“Life gives us many experiences…I’ve had the experience of delivering calves, dead and alive. Delivering pigs, dead or alive. It breaks our hearts to see those animals not make it.”

Here’s the thing. Yes, it’s disgusting that this cretinous throwback compared women to pigs and cows. Butwhat’s shocking me down to the soles of my feet about this one is that a political body is actually trying to pass legislation forcing women to carry a dead fetus to term. What can possibly be the excuse for something that grotesque? It’s sick.

This provision was associated with one of those “fetal pain” bills. Now, I may not be a medical doctor or a GOP expert in livestock, but I’m fairly sure that dead fetuses don’t feel any pain. These people’s desire to force women to endure childbirth is so extreme that they even want to force them to go though labor to deliver dead babies.

Here’s a post from Mark Hoofnagle, an MD and PhD in physiology from the University of Virginia on the risks to women from this gruesome bill:

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommend dilation and extraction or induction of labor once the diagnosis of stillbirth has been made. The risks of carrying a non-viable fetus are the higher complication rate of delivery versus dilation and extraction, as well as a very high risk to the mother of complications like disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) if the amniotic sac is ruptured and she is exposed to the dying tissue. For stillbirth or nonviable pregnancies, dilation and extraction is far safer and more effective with 24% of patients undergoing labor experiencing complications compared to 3% for D&E.

Oh, well. What’s a 24% risk of complications? The almost-human livestock knew what they were getting into when they failed to put an aspirin between their legs didn’t they?

These macabre freaks (and I’m looking at you Santorum) have developed a new religion of fetus worship and it’s verging on psychotic. Invading the relationship between a doctor and a family who are informed that their fetus will not live outside the womb and insisting they carry it to term is immoral. Forcing a woman who is carrying a dead body inside of her to go through childbirth, despite all the physical and emotional risks that entails, should be criminal.

I have a strong feeling that these people would like to bring back the day when maternal; death was common. (Of course babies died too, so perhaps they’ll make an exception for medical intervention in that case.)

This whole discussion makes it clearer and clearer that not much has changed since St Augustine:

“I don’t see what sort of help woman was created to provide man with, if one excludes the purpose of procreation. If woman was not given to man for help in bearing children, for what help could she be?”

.

Murdoch editor Rebekah Brooks arrested

by David Atkins

Well, this took long enough:

Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, the British newspaper division of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, was arrested early Tuesday on suspicion of obstruction of justice, according to a person with knowledge of the arrest. Her husband, Charlie, a friend of Prime Minister David Cameron from their days at Eton three decades ago, was also arrested, the person said. The police said in a statement that six people in and outside of London had been arrested on Tuesday as part of Operation Weeting, the criminal investigation into phone hacking and other illegal activities at The News of the World and other newspapers. None have yet been formally charged with crimes; in the British system, charges can be filed months after an arrest, and sometimes not at all.

Following standard procedure, the police statement did not identify those arrested. But a person with knowledge of the arrests said that besides Ms. Brooks and her husband, they included Mark Hanna, the head of security for News International.

The police statement said the six had been arrested between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. and were being interrogated at different police stations on suspicion of “conspiracy to pervert the course of justice,” the British equivalent of obstruction of justice. This could relate to activities like destroying e-mails, computers and other evidence, people with knowledge of the investigation said.

Two former editorial staff members at News International said they had heard from inside the company that the questioning was related to e-mails that were deleted before the police widened their phone hacking investigation last year.

It’s amazing how slow the British press was to fully latch onto this story, and how slow the American press has been as well. No one wants to cross the great Murdoch machine. Best as I can figure, they worry they might all be working for him one day.

So cheers to the brave people at the Guardian for exposing the scandal in the first place, and for forcing the wheels of justice to turn, even if they do so ever so slowly.

.

Very Serious Zombies

by digby

So the Very Serious Michael O’Hanlon is, once again, advising the United States to “stay the quagmire,” this time in Afghanistan. Unsurprising. He’s never met a war he thought was worth ending. I’ll let you read the piece for yourself, but I’ll just reprise my favorite O’Hanlon comment so that you can assess his credibility for yourself.

This was on Sarah Palin’s interview with Charlie Gibson, where several people were asked “how’d she do?”

I thought she handled the discussion of the “Bush doctrine” fine. In fact, if you use those two words together among foreign policy analysts, some will also ask for clarification because the Bush doctrine can also mean “if you’re not with us you’re against us” going back to his 9/20/2001 speech and it can also be broadly interpreted to mean a more muscular, unilateralist America in general. So asking for clarification was totally within her rights, to be sure that Gibson was talking about preemption doctrine. And once she got that part right, her answer was reasonable.

Also her speech yesterday about going over to defend us against those who committed the attacks of 9/11, to troops headed for Iraq, is also correct because in fact al Qaeda is in Iraq now, even if it wasn’t then.

As a final point in her defense, her convoluted answer about whether we should use force against Pakistan—which apparently frustrated Gibson—was the right way to answer the question because you don’t want to be more blunt than you have to be on this matter, given how American political leaders’ comments play in Pakistan (and often make the situation worse).

Where I had concerns about her interview is where I have concerns about all four of the candidates—their support for admitting Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, apparently fairly soon. That is the right long-term goal but we need to let this thing cool. It is not a classic case of an irredentist or imperialistic state poising to gobble up the next neighbor; it is rather a dynamic of competitive great power behavior (more like that leading up to World War I, though not as serious) in which mutually provoking each other makes the situation worse rather than better. So count me as a contrarian against both tickets on this one, at least in terms of their apparent readiness to admit those two states to NATO in fairly short order.

If you don’t remember it, this is how she actually answered the Bush Doctrine question:

Asked by ABC News’ Charlie Gibson whether she supported the Bush Doctrine, Palin stared blankly for a moment before turning the question back on Gibson. “In what respect?”

The ABC anchor responded, “Well, what do you interpret it to be?” clearly testing her knowledge of the policy that has been in place since September 2002, before the Iraq war.

Palin couldn’t say, offering an answer that didn’t even mention preemption. “I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell-bent in destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made, and with new leadership, and that’s the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better”

Palin had “substantial deficiencies,” the authors report, and her “grasp of rudimentary facts and concepts was minimal.” Those deficiencies became apparent on Sept. 10, when she was getting ready to fly back to Alaska to see her son, Track, depart for Iraq, the authors report. She was also preparing for her interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson.

“Asked who attacked America on 9/11, she suggested several times that it was Saddam Hussein. Asked to identify the enemy that her son would be fighting in Iraq, she drew a blank. (Palin’s horrified advisers provided her with scripted replies, which she memorized.) Later, on the plane, Palin said to her team, ‘I wish I’d paid more attention to this stuff.”

Seriously, O’Hanlon has never been right about anything, not even whether Sarah Palin had a clue what she was talking about in foreign policy. (She didn’t.) It’s just amazing that he’s still out there getting paid to pontificate.

.

Our moral arbiters

by digby

I think I’m finally understanding what some of these fine folks mean by “religious liberty.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue is sick and tired of coddling rape victims. That’s why he supports efforts by lawyers for two Missouri priests accused of sexual abuse to cripple an organization that advocates on behalf of the victims of pedophile priests – Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).

SNAP is not involved in the Missouri litigation, but the priests’ lawyers are seeking “more than two decades of e-mails that could include correspondence with victims, lawyers, whistle-blowers, witnesses, the police, prosecutors and journalists.” Donohue thinks this effort, which seeks to bankrupt and embarrass the organization, is justified because “SNAP is a menace to the Catholic Church.”

Donohue went further, telling the New York Times’ Laurie Goodstein that the Catholic Church “has been too quick to write a check” and could save money “in the long run if we fought them one by one” – them being rape victims.

Yeah, we really should be accommodating of his conscience. If he had one.

Update: Bill Donohue, moral leader:

“Just imagine if a white guy is performing oral sex on a statue of Martin Luther King with an erection. Do you need to see it to know it’s ugly?” and “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It’s not a secret, okay? And I’m not afraid to say it. … Hollywood likes anal sex.”

.

Blue America chat: Dr Lee Rogers (CA-25)

by digby

Howie sez:

In the last few weeks Dr. Lee Rogers has been talking a lot with us about ending the occupation of Afghanistan, ending the use of bodyscanners by the TSA and about ending the occupation of American politics by the 1%. But what first drew our attention to his race was his approach, as a renowned surgeon and author, to health care reform.

The incumbent in this newly redrawn Los Angeles district, CA-25 (Santa Clarita, Porter Ranch, Simi Valley and the Antelope Valley), is Buck McKeon. McKeon, notorious as one of the Mormon financiers of the hateful, homophobic Prop 8 jihad, is now drowning in several scandals and under investigation by the House Ethics Committee. A devout and dedicated warmonger and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, McKeon may be one of the worst Members of Congress– and one of the most strategic targets to defeat in November. But it wasn’t McKeon that has caused Blue America to endorse Dr. Rogers. It was Dr. Rogers; let’s call him Lee from now on.

When Digby, John and I first met him in person we were intrigued by his opposition to healthcare bill. He was one of the Democrats– and a doctor no less– who felt it should be better, much better. “The current version of health reform,” he told us at our first meeting, “while an improvement in some areas, leaves much to be desired in the way of affordability and accessibility. We need caps on insurance rate hikes. We need protections for women’s health. We need aggressive comprehensive coverage of preventative medicine for expensive avoidable diseases.”

Lee talks eloquently and realistically about [single payer]:

There are many fears of a single-payer system, from insurers, doctors, some patients, and certainly many Republicans. A single-payer system will drastically reduce the amount of profit going to big insurers, who are big campaign donors. But the single-payer system will increase the number of covered patients seeking care from doctors and hospitals which will be reimbursed. It will reduce the numerous insurance middlemen who impede the productivity of health providers and syphon off large profits that should be going into actual care. Patients will have seamless coverage. Employers will eliminate their second largest expense, health insurance. No system is perfect, but when one truly evaluates all the benefits of a single-payer healthcare, it is a desirable system where most come out winning.

That’s not a polemic; that’s a motivation for Lee getting into the race against an incumbent with more money from war contractors and armaments manufacturers than anyone else in the House. Lee knows it’s a tough race but he’s an energetic and idealistic young father– he and his wife, Susan, just had his second daughter last week– who is determined to try to make this country and this world a better place. He’ll be joining us today at Crooks and Liars (11AM, PT) for a live blogging session. We sure hope you can come over and meet him. And if you’d like to help his grassroots campaign, please consider a contribution here at the Blue America ActBlue page.

Please join us for this chat today if you have time. Lee Rogers is a wonderful candidate and he has a good chance to win this seat. Buck McKeon is imploding with scandal and the Republicans in the district are in a circular firing squad. This is a chance for a pick-up, not just for the Democrats, but for the progressive movement.

.

e coli in the word salad

by digby

So there’s another controversy about edited tapes. This time it’s Sarah Palin griping that the Obama campaign has selectively edited her comments on Hannity for a campaign ad. Hilariously, Breitbart.com is complaining about the editing too.(You can see the ad here.)

It’s always hard to figure out exactly what she was trying to say, but it looks to me as if she was saying that Barack Obama believes that white people are inferior. Either that or she’s saying that he believes black people are inferior (like they did before the civil war) and I think that’s a long shot, don’t you?

This is probably one Sarah and the Breitbart gang should probably leave alone. It’s not going to work in her favor.

.

Southern Belles

by David Atkins

The polls in the Deep South primaries show a neck-and-neck between Gingrich and Romney, with Santorum in a distant second. But more interesting than the overall numbers is the continued gender gap. Take, for instance, the ARG poll in Mississippi:

Gingrich leads among men with 38%, followed by Romney with 26%, Santorum with 20%, and Paul with 14%. Romney leads Santorum 43% to 25% among women, followed by Gingrich with 24% and Paul with 2%.

While this is merely a continuation of a solid trend in this Republican contest, two things jump out here.

First, remember that this is a poll of Republican women in the Deep South. As women go, this is as conservative a population as you’ll find in the United States outside of maybe Utah and Idaho. And even they can’t stand Gingrich or Santorum.

If Republican men had their way, Romney would be toast. It’s Republican women who are keeping him afloat, and it’s an enormous gender gap. Given that Southern men make up the cultural heart and soul of modern Republicanism, the fact that the GOP is about to nominate a candidate despised by Southern men should be a gigantic flashing red sign that something is out of kilter for them.

But the second and perhaps more interesting point is that even Santorum does better among Mississippi Republican women than Gingrich does, despite Gingrich’s (adopted) native appeal. That’s a little disturbing, if not altogether surprising. Apparently, philandering husbands are more scorned than theocratic nutcases who try to take away their birth control.

Put in those terms, I suppose the Clinton years really do make sense after all.

.

Progressive persuasion

by digby

Ezra Klein has written a much commented upon piece for the New Yorker in which he gathers data and lays out the case that presidential speeches are rarely effective at persuading the public of that which they don’t already believe. This has been an ongoing debate among political chatterers for some time, with those who have been unhappy with the president generally arguing that he should take his case to the people vs those who say that it’s pointless and that a president’s success depends upon his or her ability to manipulate the institutions of power within their partisan constraints. (I’m being very simplistic. You should read the article for the whole thesis.)

As one of those who has always thought the president should take the progressive case to the people, I found the data persuasive .. and disappointing. Until near the end, where he wrote this:

“Barack Obama is only the latest in a long line of presidents who have not been able to transform the political landscape through their efforts at persuasion. When he succeeded in achieving major change, it was by mobilizing those predisposed to support him and driving legislation through Congress on a party-line vote.”

There you go. Of course presidents can’t really “persuade” people of the opposing party in a polarized environment, for all the reasons Ezra lays out in his piece. But I feel as if this whole argument is about doing something that nobody but President Obama, op-ed writers and some of his more fervent followers ever thought was possible in the first place. They’re the only ones who believed that the Republicans were going to fall at his feet and work together in bipartisan harmony — or that his magical powers of persuasion would create a groundswell of support among Independents and rank and file Republicans.

When progressives called for President Obama to make speeches it wasn’t with the goal that he lift his poll numbers or get Mitch McConnell to sign on. Indeed, that’s the opposite of what they wanted — the “Grand Bargains” required to get such a deal are worse than nothing at all from their perspective. The reason they wanted him to make speeches was to mobilize his followers to help “persuade” their representatives to pass progressive legislation — or even just reaffirm his commitment to shared goals and educate the public about what those goals are.

The administration abandoned any notions of doing this shortly after the election, when they spun off the grassroots organization they’d built in the campaign so I suppose that was a bit of whistling in the dark as well. But Ezra’s piece reaffirms that this is the way major change happens in this environment, so you can’t really blame the progressives for pushing it. That’s what they wanted — major change. And in a bit of an ironic surprise, Ezra demonstrated that in this case, the progressives were the pragmatic sorts calling for “what works” — not the president.

.

Millionaire Whine ‘O the Day

“We can’t make an emotional decision. This country made an emotional decision in 2008. I’ve never known anybody that’s so divisive as this president! It’s the have-nots versus the haves. No, no, no! It’s all of us! I’ve been a have-not and a have! I’m still Jeff. I still drive my same crappy truck.

Mitt’s an interesting man. When he took over the business, he gave all his money away. He gave away his inheritance, and started up — he’s a self-made man. If I’ve got somebody running my business, I want him to be successful. It’s amazing to me — in the last four years it’s become a badge of shame for someone to be successful! Obama’s just divided people, into the 1% and the 99%. But it’s these people, the successful people, who’ve given other people a great life. And if you’ve ever been around Romney, you know he’s not entitled. He carries his own suitcase.”

According to this website, Jeff Foxworthy’s net worth is $114 million dollars.

(Think about that. Jeff Foxworthy is worth $114 million dollars.)

Bonus quote:

Romney took a moment to comment on the tightly-packed crowd.

“Look at us in here,” he said. “We are all nice together, all nice and wet, you know, like a can of sardines.”

A little glitch in the program, I assume.

Running against “Obamacare”

by David Atkins

Newt Gingrich tweets:

We ran against Obamacare in 2010 and won. We can’t run against Obamacare if we have to defend Romneycare.

Like so much else that emanates from the pile of Newt, this isn’t technically accurate. In 2010 Republicans scared a bunch of seniors into believing the lie that the Affordable Care Act would take money away from Medicare to pay for healthcare for the “undeserving.” They didn’t really run against what the Affordable Care Act actually does.

As it turns out, Romneycare is pretty popular in Massachusetts. It’s not single-payer by a long shot, but it’s a lot better than the system it replaced.

What Newt really means is that rather than getting away with lies about what the Affordable Care Act really does, Obama would eventually force Romney into conceding, in spite of himself and his current rhetoric, that universal healthcare really isn’t so bad after all.

And it speaks volumes about the state of the modern Republican Party that the one good thing Mitt Romney did for the public is his Achilles’ heel in the GOP primary.

.