Blog posts by category: Movement conservatism
Category: Movement conservatism
Posted by Libby Spencer on Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 5:19 PMThe Consequences of the Stupak Amendment
Let me state at the outset, I am anti-abortion. I wish no woman wanted or needed one. I'm long past the age where unintended pregnancy is an issue. There's no one in my life who's likely to need one. I don't have a dog in this fight but nonetheless, I am strongly pro-choice.
I support choice because I remember what it was like before Roe v. Wade. I recall the stories in the Sunday New York newspapers where news of death or near-death of a victim of an illegal abortion was nearly a weekly event. The death toll was effectively doubled. Both the embryo and the mother died or was rendered infertile from botched procedures.
It wasn't always that way. Abortion was legal and routinely performed in the US until the mid-1800s when Massachusetts made the procedure illegal. Other states followed their lead and by 1930 there were 2,700 reported deaths from illegal procedures. The population of the US then was about 123 million. By the 50s, reported deaths had declined to about 300, likely because of the introduction of antibotics to treat sepsis infections that often accompany illegal abortions. But women were still being admitted to hospitals by the thousands for life threatening complications from illegal procedures right up until Roe passed. Of course, these are just the reported cases. There isn't any way to tell how many unreported cases there were.
Both sides will argue about the stats, but the point is abortion has always been an aspect of women's reproductive health. For whatever reason, legally or illegally, abortions will be performed. And the fact is the abortion rate right now is at its lowest level since 1974. The total number of abortions performed has declined while our current population has risen to almost 309 million.
That's no thanks to anti-choice zealots who also fight against anything but abstinence-based education for young people who are the most likely to seek abortions. Additionally, there has been a rise in illegal abortions already among low income women and teenagers who need parental consent. They are showing up at clinics with mangled bodies because of the fear of being stigmatized by anti-choicers and a decline in availability of abortion clinics because so many doctors fear the fate of Dr. Tiller or are too young to recall the dark days before Roe.
Which brings me to Stupak's amendment. What this will effectively do is condemn lower income women to impossible choices that will endanger their lives and their future fertility. Take the example of this woman. She was carrying a dead fetus. Abortion was the most medically safe alternative and fortunately she was able to afford the out of pocket expense. Should this amendment become law she may well not have had that option. Poorer women will have no options at all and once again we'll return to the dark days of pre-Roe.
The lawmakers who passed this amendment are largely rich white men, who will never get pregnant and who have the money to quietly dispose of embarrassing unwanted pregnancies among their womenfolk. But the majority of women won't have that choice and once again we'll read the stories of the maimed and the dead in our Sunday papers. I don't see how anyone can call that being pro-life.
Category: Movement conservatism
Posted by Libby Spencer on Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 2:37 PMThe Congressional Contests
The media seems intent on spinning yesterday's elections as some kind of dire warning to the Democrats and progressive liberals. Maybe they just haven't noticed that Democrats won 5 out of 5 of the last special Congressional elections. And in the remarkably under-reported contest in California, the Democratic candidate who won in a landslide came out strongly in favor of health care reform. Again the lesson for Dems is they were given a mandate in 08 to enact progressive policies and the surest path to failure is to ignore the voters' obvious will and continue to cater to their corporate benefactors under the pretense of some mythical public desire for bipartisanship.
As for the resounding defeat of the Tea Party conservatives' candidate in upstate NY, I think that speaks pretty much for itself. The GOP had a decent candidate that hewed to 90% of the conservative agenda but was purged from the race for failing to meet their 100% ideological purity test. Despite high profile endorsements from Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty and other Tea Party favorites, and I've heard around $3 million in outside funding by conservative groups, the voters of NY23 wisely chose to seat a candidate who actually lived in the district and has knowledge of the local issues.
I'm seeing that the Tea Party people are still spinning this as a win because they forced out the GOP's handpicked candidate and intend to keep going with this strategy. If they want to keep "winning" by losing, that's okay with me. Let the purges surge.
Category: Movement conservatism
Posted by Libby Spencer on Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 6:44 PMAnti-choice amendment is not the answer
I'm late in posting on this story that DetNews blog alum Kevin McKague sent to me a couple of weeks ago. I'm stunned to see Michigan state Rep. Jim Slezak proposed amending the state constitution to effectively outlaw abortion. Even more stunning is he has 22 co-signers in Lansing who are willing to subvert a perfectly legal choice for women.
Slezak and one of his co-sponsors Rep. Paul Scott are freshman lawmakers from Genesee County, who were endorsed by Right to Life groups. Scott says, "A lot of people campaign on Right to Life, but when they get to the Legislature don't do anything to further that cause. Jim and I felt it was the right time."
The amendment is being hailed by anti-choice groups including Personhood USA and Michigan Citizens for Life. It would say "every person has a right to life, and would define 'person' as a human being whose life begins at conception."
I'd respectfully suggest that if these folks truly care about saving lives, their energy would be better spent on promoting universal health care for all Americans. Maybe if women weren't being crushed by oppressive health care costs, they wouldn't be so inclined to terminate pregnancies they can't afford. And universal health care would save the lives of the tens of thousands of already born Americans who die every year because they don't have access to it.
Category: Movement conservatism
Posted by Libby Spencer on Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 5:24 PMCrocodile Tears - Updated
Glenn Beck is famous for turning on the waterworks on his TV program while he issues his "heartfelt" rants against the government. Of course, as he says himself, he's just a rodeo clown and well, this is show biz. Just in case you ever need to cry on cue, here's his trick.
Meanwhile, Beck is publicly crowing about how sweet it is that Chicago failed in its bid for the Olympics. Anybody remember him, or any of the fine "America First" self-professed patriots among the anti-Obama ranters saying that it was so awful for Chicago to get the games when George Bush first approached the Committee asking them to consider Chicago as the venue?
Yeah I don't either. But the "much respected" far right Weekly Standard published a celebratory Chicago Loses! post on their blog immediately after the news came out, noting that "Cheers erupt at WEEKLY STANDARD world headquarters." They have since quietly edited the post to remove the cheers, with no explanation to their readers, but a screen capture lasts forever.
These are supposed to the intellectual conservatives. Pretty sad statement on the state of conservatism when their leading lights indulge in adolescent nyah nyahs, cheering a loss to the USA, simply out of a juvenile inability to get over their own loss at the ballot box.
Update: More right wing reaction and video at this link of the fine patriots at a gathering of conservatives at the Americans For Prosperity conference in Virginia, erupting in applause. Remember when folks like this used to shout USA! USA! for wars?
Category: Movement conservatism
Posted by Libby Spencer on Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 1:30 PMAll fun and games until somebody gets hurt
Building on Mako's post, of course, the inevitable consequence of these anti-reform mobs showing up to disrupt town meetings is that supporters would eventually show up to counter them and fights were bound to break out. If you look at the video that the anti-reform crowd has been pushing as "proof" that it's "teh left" that are the violent ones, as Mako points out, clearly there was a SEIU guy on the ground before the anti-reform guy got shoved and fell.
The usual suspects in the far rightwing outrage brigade are reporting that anti-reform guy was "severely beaten" and had to be hospitalized. He doesn't look too seriously injured to me. He jumps up in a few seconds and gets right back into the argument. From what I've read, he didn't go to the hospital until after he got a lawyer. And it certainly doesn't look like the guy was spontaneously attacked for no reason. Looks to me like this little scene was a result of hot tempers, too much testerone and not enough common sense on all sides. Which is not to condone the violence on either side. But let's not carried away with painting the anti-reformers as peace loving protesters. TPM grabs a screenshot from one of them off Twitter, which you can see at the link. The tweets say:
If ACORN/SEIU attends these meetings for disruptive purposes and you have a license to carry... carry.
If ACORN/SEIU attends these townhalls for disruption, stop being peaceful and hurt them. Badly. #iamthemob
It appears due to the attention, ScottEO, deleted those two tweets but looking at his feed, there's plenty more like that. Here's a sample. And note that I reversed the order of the longer ones for readability since Twitter feeds from the bottom up. Links go to the tweets.
I'd actually support healthcare reform more if it DID include euthanasia, just in time for the babyboomers to become eligible! Woohoo!
No dissenters have gotten violent at these townhall meetings. Now, if they get locked out, then they should get violent.
If ACORN or Union thugs start flooding the townhall meetings, don't confront them immediately. Have someone slash their tires first.
I think I'm going to carry a hammer and sickle flag into the local #hcr townhall meeting, just to be a smartass.
Nancy Pelosi is a pernicious bitch that needs a catalytic converter strapped to her waste emitting face. Reason doesn't work anymore.
OK, so fed up republicans, libertarians and bluedog democrats are a mob. OK. Stop insulting us&shutup. Or watch your back and start worrying
And when I say 2nd amendment, I don't mean pull out a gun. I mean to defend oneself via means of force if needed. #tcot
and force means an intimidation larger than kicking them out of the Congress and onto K Street. #tlot #tcot
I'm with you on the guerrilla warfare prep....but I think we're getting into.....(con't) #tlot #tcot
getting into the later chapters of Paine's "Common Sense" in a big hurry. #tlot #tcot
Keeping the peace assumes logic and reason can stop this from continuing. I don't think it can. #tcot #tlot
I believe unless these protests get dangerous, they will just find a way to do this quietly..covertly #tlot #tcot
(resend) I'm done peacefully protesting. I don't believe it does enough. #tlot #tcot... yup, #flag me
I would advocate retaliation for intimidation, be it verbal or physical.
Recommendation to the left: Be careful of what you hallucinate. It might become real.
These are all from the last couple of days. So please don't tell me that the intent is to peaceably exercise their F.A. right to dissent. And no, it's not just one guy. I deleted the usernames he was responding to, who are obviously advocating the same sort of violence. And the hashtags at the end of the tweets are to pages organized to consolidate posts from all users. They stand for Top Conservatives on Twitter and the other is to Top Libertarians. I'm not saying every single protester is like this, but clearly there is a disturbingly large subset whose only purpose in these demonstrations is to express their hate for Democrats and liberals. And they're clearly looking for trouble, not solutions to fixing our health care system.
Category: Movement conservatism
Posted by Libby Spencer on Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 10:54 AMMore astro-thuggery
Following up on yesterday's post, here's another video of the Operation Astro-Thuggery shock troops in action.
Their defenders are trying to draw some kind of fake equivalency between this thuggery and the protests of the left, for instance when Bush tried to privatize Social Security. But there is a big difference. The lefty protests were held outside the venues and those protesters who tried to get in, were there to ask actual questions in an effort to pin down the position of the legislators. Of course, under Bush, dissenters weren't even allowed inside. In fact, they were arrested just on suspicion of wanting to protest.
But the big difference is these anti-reform, anti-Obama astro-mobs aren't there to engage in a discussion. They have nothing to add to the debate. Their main goal is to shut down the town meetings and prevent all the other people who showed up wanting to hear what their representatives have to say, from hearing any facts that might contradict their paranoid fantasies. In other words, they aren't there to exercise their free speech. They're there to shut down the free speech of others.
Meanwhile, the GOP leaders continue to support the disruption tactics. In fact Boehner's lastest statement sounds almost like a blackmail threat to me.
Category: Movement conservatism
Posted by Libby Spencer on Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 3:52 PMBusting the Birther myths
I don't really want to spend a lot of time on this nonsense when we have so many more serious issues to deal with, but here's a general response to the comments made on my last post. The latest Kenyan birth certificate is obviously a fake. The far from fringe right, but very much right of center Below the Beltway has some more pertinent information debunking that fantasy. As for the notion that this was started by Democrats during the primaries, McClatchy has a very good timeline on how this ridiculous rumor spread. Short version is it started as a paranoid viral email campaign that was co-opted by the GOP for their own ends.
Further, if the Obama administration has indeed spent hundreds of thousands defending against the erroneous allegations, and I've only seen that contention on far right blogs, it's not his fault the money is being wasted. In our legal system if someone files a complaint against you, you are required by law to answer it. So it's the crackpots like Orly Taitz and Phil Berg that are wasting your tax dollars by filing frivilous lawsuits. The bottom line is the birth certificate Obama has already made public is a legal document that satisfies the burden of proof in any court of law and he has no other obligation to satisfy the ravings of conspiracy theorists.
There comes a point when those who refuse to give up this silly obsession have to ask themselves whether their objection is really about documentation or just a case of sour grapes because they didn't like the outcome of the election.
Category: Movement conservatism
Posted by Libby Spencer on Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 3:21 PMAstro-thuggery
I told you this weekend about the big money, right wing astroturf organizations and their plot to kill health insurance reform by disrupting informational meetings held by Democratic politicians during the August recess. But a video is worth a thousand words. So let's see how this looks in practice.
And it's not clear what this candidate was going to talk about but clearly the heckler got the memo on disruption tactics.
More on other disruptions and intimidation at this link and I remind you that in some cases these protesters are being bussed in from other places, so they're not even necessarily constituents. So does this look like principled objection to you? Is it adding anything positive to the discussion? I report. You decide for yourself.
Category: Movement conservatism
Posted by Libby Spencer on Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 9:09 PMThe Smoking Gun
I probably should have titled this, What Have They Been Smoking? The Birthers have been all excited today about an article in the World Net Daily, or as we on "the left" like to call it, the World Nut Daily, that claims they have a birth certificate for Obama from Kenya.
It's a "very serious article" with screen shots of the certificate and assurances that their crack research team has investigated this fully and obtained other Kenyan birth certificates that are formated identically. They can't find a reason to doubt its authenticity.
But their researchers seemed to have missed one "slightly" salient fact. Kenya didn't gain its independence from Great Britain until December 12, 1963 and only declared itself as a Republic on December 12, 1964. Thus, it seems highly unlikely they would be issuing any official documents under the Republic seal in Feb. 1964 for a birth in 1961. Wonder if crackpot lawyer Orly Taitz knows the penalty for submitting false documents to the court?
Category: Movement conservatism
Posted by Libby Spencer on Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 10:02 PMBirthers of a Nation
The Obama birth certificate deniers, or they have come to be known, The Birthers, burst into the national media this week when Lou Dobbs decided to encourage the silliness by repeatedly saying on air there is no proof of Obama's citizenship. This was picked up by Hardball's Chris Matthews who then did a segment about the foolishness of that contention. Jon Stewart followed with his usual skewering wit, in a takedown of Dobbs. It snowballed from there until it's become a media obsession second only to the, now thankfully over, beer bash on the White House lawn today.
Now all this would be just be good fun in a slow summer news cycle except this irrational conspiracy theory has grown to the point where certain GOPers are exploiting it to win political points. We now have Florida Rep. Bill Posey tying up the House's time with a "Birther Bill" to require presidential candidates to present their birth certificates. He also previously said he wouldn't "swear on a stack of Bibles" that Obama is a natural-born American citizen. Unfortunately, he's not the only elected legislator encouraging this ridiculous rumor for political ends.
Even the editor of the ultraconservative American Spectator refuses to support this nonsense and for good reason. To believe in it, one must believe that a woman would choose to travel half way across the globe to give birth in a third world country rather than in a American hospital. That two separate newspapers in Hawaii would agree to put in a fake birth announcement, which would also require the hospital to create a fake one, all in preparation for a presidential scam almost 50 years before Obama was elected. Or in the alternate that the Hawaiian health department is lying about the already released birth certificate being valid and created a historical record after the fact.
Birthers, and their enablers like Lou Dobbs, are asking why Obama doesn't release the original to "end the rumors?" But release it to who? Send a Fox News team in with a spectrograph to prove it's the real thing? Post it on the White House door for public inspection? It's crazy. If that makes sense then let's demand Sarah Palin release her medical records to end the rumors about Trig's parentage. And while we're at it, let's get George Bush to release his National Guard records to prove he really fulfilled his service. The rumors that he didn't still persist and no one has ever come forward in all these years to say they saw him during the time in question.
Caving into crazy demands by conspiracy theorists only encourages more crazy conspiracies and as these things go, the Birthers makes 9/11 Truthers look reasonable. As I recall, they want some records released too. Where does it end?
