April, 2011 archive

What else explains their attack on womens’ health. From the San Jose Mercury-News:

The Republican Party’s vendetta against Planned Parenthood is not about abortion. It is an attack on poor women.

(snip)

Planned Parenthood Mar Monte runs 32 health care centers in California, including eight in Santa Clara County and several others around the Bay Area, plus two in northern Nevada. It saw 243,531 patients in 2010, 89 percent of whom qualified for Medi-Cal. That means their income was less than $22,350 for a family of four.

Shaun Mullen addressed this belief in ickiness of women very nicely in a post last week. A nugget:

How else to account for the latest GOP-perpetrated outrage: A Democratic-led effort in Indiana to add a rider exempting women who are raped or victims of incest from a bill that would make most abortions illegal after 20 weeks got this response from Republicans: The exemption is “a giant loophole” because, as one self righteous male legislator declared, women “could simply say they’ve been raped.”

Let that concept sink in for a moment: These haters actually believe that a woman will falsely say that she was raped in a dark alley or knocked up by an uncle in order to get a free abortion. The perversity of this notion is . . . well, pornographic.

Today’s Chicago Tribune recalls that paper’s editorial upon the assault on Fort Sumpter. The tone of the editorial recalls the jingoistic bombast common in the 19th century (and the descendants of which are still with us: remember “freedom fries”?).

But the Trib was quite correct as to the reason for war.

The South seceded to protect chattel slavery and its belief that black persons were born to be enslaved.

Any other reason advanced by defenders of secession is simply Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes for the truth.

The people know the cause of the fratricidal strife. The party, which, in the interests of a barbarous institution, has governed the country for the last 40 years, was beaten in the November election. The verdict of the people which does not touch a single one of the rights of any man, guarantied by the fundamental law, forbids the extension of that barbarous institution into national territory as yet uncursed by its blighting presence. This is the cause of the rebellion which months of effort has ripened into the bloody strife this day commenced! This and nothing else — this determination of a meagre minority to rule a powerful majority — this deification of Human Slavery as the guiding principle and polar star of a free people — are the dragon’s teeth which, sown in a pestilent soil, have produced armed men.

. . . about his own party. This is truly a gem.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

I fear that Andy Borowitz is closer to truth than to satire in this:

The U.S. policy of exporting democracy abroad has meant that there is very little of it left at home.

That is the grim assessment of a new study commissioned by the University of Minnesota, which predicts that if the U.S. continues to export democracy at its current pace it may completely run out of it at home by the year 2015.

Read the whole thing, then consider this.

A senior United Nations representative on torture, Juan Mendez, issued a rare reprimand to the US government on Monday for failing to allow him to meet in private Bradley Manning, the American soldier held in a military prison accused of being the WikiLeaks source. It is the kind of censure that the UN normally reserves for authoritarian regimes around the world.

Mendez, the UN special rapporteur on torture, said: “I am deeply disappointed and frustrated by the prevarication of the US government with regard to my attempts to visit Mr Manning.”

The U. S. government’s reaction to Wikileaks has emphasized how much governments fear that truth will embarrass them.