The first account was by some blogger in Chico, California. I wrote about it here.
Now, we have another account. British-American conservative thinker extraordinare John Derbyshire suggests that we would be a better country if women didn't vote. Apparently, he's devoted a whole chapter to the topic in his new book. But from an interview he gave on Alan Colmes' radio show, it seems to boil down to his idea that women "lean hard to the left."
So, Derbyshire thinks women shouldn't be granted the vote because they don't vote the way he wants them to. What a shining beacon of democracy this guy is. I wonder what he thinks of women in office. More importantly, I wonder if Michelle Malkin and Laura Ingram both voted for hard-left candidate Ralph Nader in 2000. Maybe it's their fault we got President Bush.
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Cross-posted at Dagblog.
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What I want to learn today is why climate change is bad. Apparently, that can't be learned through Google or the library. It also can't be taught with access to the most current scientific studies or personal consultation with experts in the field. It appears to require about a hundred grand, access to airplanes, and true bi-partisanship.
Bi-partisanship is supposed to be what it's all about, right? So when ten members of Congress (and their spouses) took an eleven-day trip to Australia and the South Pole to see for themselves what climate change is doing to the planet, it ought to warm our hearts that four of them were Republicans and six were Democrats.
And warm my heart it does. I'm so happy that they put aside their partisan bickering for the good of the country. They snorkeled together. They played with penguins together. That's just awesome. I'm so glad that both parties can talk--without irony--about cost control and deficit management when they are spending $100,000 plus (not including air transportation on military planes) on a "fact-finding" trip. I'm interested to hear about the samples that they collected and what conclusions they reached when they brought the samples back to their labs for analysis.
I'm also interested to hear about what another bi-partisan delegation, of Senators this time, learned after spending $121,000 (not including airfare) to attend the Paris Air Show. For that price, it's got to be good.
Congressional overseas travel cost the taxpayers $13 million last year, almost 10 times the amount spent in 1995. The spouses have to pay for their own food, but not the airfare or hotel. To hear one representative tell it, if spouses didn't get to go along, either nobody would travel or marriages would end. Probably Governor Sanford didn't get that memo.
I'm not suggesting that overseas travel isn't necessary. Visiting our military installations, for example, is important. But if bi-partisan Congressional delegations are dropping more than twice what the average American makes in a year in what amounts to a vacation so that they can "learn" what I'm guessing I can find out in twenty minutes on the Internet, they should probably think twice the next time they try to convince us that universal healthcare is too expensive.
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Cross posted at Dagblog, as usual.
The American character itself and the principles of free market democracy which protect and preserve it may be lost beyond recovery if Congress chooses the wrong path to health care reform
Ryan's core argument is that even though healthcare falls into the inalienable right category, government shouldn't provide healthcare no more than it should build homes for its citizens.
Before I explain why reading Congressman Ryan's argument makes me very, very angry, I'd like to unpack it just a bit.
]]> Conservatives are all over the map, claiming that government shouldn't run healthcare. But so far as I can tell, the legislation working its way through Congress doesn't suggest anything of the sort. As I understand it, there is a proposal to modernize office technology so that different doctors treating the same patient have instant access to that patient's records so that duplicate tests and treatments are eliminated, saving time and money. Also, there is a proposal for prohibitions to keep companies from refusing policyholders on the basis of pre-existing conditions and from dumping previously health, premium-paying people after they get sick. So far, so good, right? That's not the government providing healthcare. That's the government making requirements of the healthcare industry. Going back to Ryan's house-building argument, the government regulates who builds my house and how they build it. I assume the Congressman is okay with that.But now we're going to get into a couple areas where I think the Congressman has the biggest objection to the reform.
First, the wealthy are being asked to pay extra to provide insurance coverage for people who cannot pay premiums for themselves. The conservative wealthy, and those who are their bitches, always freak out when they hear their taxes are going to increase. But if they stopped to think, and to breathe for just a second, maybe they would understand that if poor people have health care insurance, they will be more likely to go to the doctor when they are sick. This is not only better for public health in general, but it will keep insurance premiums down, since all of us who are paying for insurance premiums aren't also paying to cover emergency room visits for those who cannot pay. Also, if workers go to the doctor when they're sick, they get better faster, and back to work faster.
Let's review. People will get care when they need it, which will lead to people being healthier, which means they'll be more productive at work, which means business owners will make more money. In addition, premiums for everyone will be lower, because we're all sharing the risk, which means middle class families will have more money to spend at those same businesses, which means business owners make more money. So, maybe we can file the "Don't Raise My Taxes" argument under cutting off your nose to spite your face.
The second area that I think really gets Congressman Ryan's American Character going is a public health insurance plan. This is where conservatives start screaming about Canada and Europe and socialism and fire and brimstone. Or whatever. This is the government running your healthcare! Be very afraid!
Now, I know that the Republican party isn't getting too many Mensa invitations these days so I'm going to take a minute to explain the concept of insurance for their benefit. See, there are certain unpredictable risks inherent in living. You might have a car accident. Your house might catch fire. You might accidentally call someone a big, fat liar and they might sue you. Or, you might get sick. These are things we don't have any control over that have the potential to ruin us financially. So, we pay a small premium to an insurance company, which in turn agrees to cover our losses if and when one of these risks becomes a reality. While we hear about these sorts of things happening all the time, as a percentage of our population, they are really quite rare. That's why the insurance industry is generally rolling in cash.
The property, casualty, and life insurance industries are rolling in cash despite the fact that they are heavily regulated and cannot, for example, decide to cancel your policy just after you've had a car accident but before they've had to cover your loss. Not so for the medical insurance industry. If you get sick, they can drop you. They have to get really creative to do it, but they can. Also, they can raise your premiums and raise your deductibles and deny you coverage for certain drugs or certain treatments.
Why? Because they all do it and if we want insurance, we have to go along. Our only other option is to stop paying the premiums and hope we never get sick.
If there was a public health insurance plan, the goal of the administrators of that plan would not be to make money. Sure, the underwriters and claims folks would still have to make sure that they were collecting enough premium to cover their losses. But they wouldn't have to be collecting enough premium to pay for the CEO's kids' private schools or his fancy house in the Hamptons. If enough people decide they'd rather have public insurance, the private companies are going to have to lower their premiums and provide better coverage. Or they can go out of business. I don't really care either way, but the market will figure it out. If the government plan sucks, people will stay with private insurers. That's the funny thing about the free market. People are free to make their own choices.
Okay, so here's a test. Can you spot the sentence in the paragraph above that explains how the government will be running your healthcare?
Yeah, me neither. The government will be competing to collect premium with the private insurance companies. We're all still going to be treated by doctors. Joe Biden is not going to be sticking a tongue depressor down your throat and asking you to say "Ahhh."
Paul Ryan, in all his wisdom, says
Government has a duty to secure [healthcare] rights, but this obligation is normally met most effectively by establishing the legal and economic conditions for free markets that expand the opportunity and prosperity of all. When markets apparently fail to meet these needs properly -- today's health care delivery is an example -- government should begin not by filling the need itself but by looking to and correcting its own interventions and making competitive free markets more effective.
Yeah, Congressman? Consider the public health insurance plan a way to make the competitive free market more effective. The government-run healthcare system is a boogey man.
Okay, so here's the part that gets me really, really angry.
Free citizens must avoid seeing themselves as passive victims of a government over which they have no control. Persons who assume the burden of responsibility for their actions, successes, and failures develop traits such as courage, fairness, initiative, charity, self-restraint, industriousness, enterprise, and above all prudence, the wisdom which directs each toward the right means needed to flourish as a mature person.
A very short description of the American character would be: this ensemble of moral qualities that make it possible for persons to live under self-restraint, without dependency, in personal relationships with others in community under God.
I've written before about my mother and her struggle with Alzheimer's, but until recently, I never really got into details about the story of my mother's life. Last week, I wrote about her healthcare story at Dagblog.
In that story, I spent a little time talking about how my mom and dad pretty much did everything right. The came from working class homes. They started out with nothing. They worked and saved and worked and saved. My mom went to school. My dad started his own business. They worked and saved and worked and saved some more.
Then, my mom got sick. She lost her job. She lost her insurance. My dad had to take care of her full time. For about eight years, they spent their savings on treatments and prescriptions and on getting by. After that, they were out of money. Once the disease started, there was no way back for my mom. But instead of spending the remaining years of her life happy and safe, first both my parents were desperately worried about how to survive. Then, my mom's brain was gone and my dad had to worry about it all on his own.
My mother lived on this earth and in this country for sixty-five years. She busted her ass to save enough money to make a comfortable middle class life for her family. She was courageous and fair. She had initiative. She showed charity and self-restraint and industriousness. She was enterprising. Above all, she was prudent and wise.
My mother had more American character in one hair on her head than Paul Ryan will ever have. So, fuck him. Fuck all of them. I don't want pity, concern, sympathy, or empathy. I want them to do their fucking jobs.
Healthcare reform needs to pass and it needs to pass now.
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Cross posted at www.dagblog.com.
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In the video, Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) suggests that the mothers of both the President of the United States of American and a sitting Supreme Court Justice may have chosen abortion if only they had been able to access public funding for the procedure.
I've heard a lot of intellectually dishonest arguments in my life. Until today, my favorite was conveniently forgetting the marginal tax rate when calculating tax burden on our beleagured wealthy citizens. Tiahrt has reached a staggering new level of crass and insulting by suggesting that if public funding for abortion had been available decades ago, we'd be deprived of two of our current leaders.
But if the Congressman wants to play the What If game, I've got a couple scenarios for him to consider:
*If Congress had stopped sitting on their collective thumbs in fear of losing elections, and stopped George Bush from launching an agressive war, we wouldn't have been deprived of all of the soldiers killed in Iraq. What if one of them would have been our president some day?
*What if, in 1995 when Tiahrt first went to Congress, instead of using stem cell research as a political football, they would have gotten serious about providing funding for research into cures for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and a whole bunch of other diseases? How many people have been lost to illness that could have been stopped or slowed since then?
Why doesn't he talk about those hypotheticals on the floor of the House, instead of whose mother would have chosen abortion if only she'd had the money 50 years ago?
This is a man who is running for Senate in 2010. The mind reels.
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This one is not cross posted at Dagblog, but there is a health care cost savings discussion just itchin' to get started.
]]>Berman said, "It is not for us to decide who should run Iran, much less determine the real winner of the June 12 election...but we must reaffirm our strong belief that the Iranian people have a fundamental right to express their views about the future of their country freely, and without intimidation."
When I read this statement, my immediate thought was, "Why?"
Why must we reaffirm our belief in freedom of expression and democracy? It's not exactly a big secret that the United States holds these beliefs. And, current decade notwithstanding, we can be pretty good at working with longstanding and emerging democracies around the world.
Where we fail, again and again, is trying to overlay not only our ideals but how we put those ideals into practice onto countries whose cultures and traditions are different from ours. Our leaders have not, over the long term, shown much imagination when it comes to understanding that other socieities might have their own path to achieving such important ends as freedom and democracy.
Smart, experienced foreign policy experts of all political persuasions have suggested that President Obama has taken exactly the right approach to the situation in Iran, and that any strong response by the United States could be used by the Iranian government against the protesters. Yet, conservative members of the House and Senate, as well as conservative talk show hosts, have been insisting over and over that the President is not going far enough; that he needs to decry the election results and make demands.
In my opinion, these people don't know anything about Iran, don't care about Iran or the Iranian people, and couldn't care less what position they're advocating for as long as it's the opposite of what the President is doing. That's become the Right's MO on all issues since Obama took office. Whatever Obama says is wrong--reason, public opinion, and even public safety be damned.
And here we go again. Iran is reaching a tipping point. After the Ayatollah's speech today, protests are now increasingly dangerous. What will happen on Saturday, when protesters return to the streets? I don't know, but I fear the worst. I fear that the government will put down the protests, brutally and violently.
Pence, Berman, and the like are behaving as if they are blind to this potential outcome. They see an opportunity to score political points, and if it results in the deaths of tens or hundreds or thousands of citizens in a country so far away, who cares? The goal is to undermine the President for the benefit of the Repbulican party.
Such naked narcissism takes my breath away.
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Cross posted at Dagblog.
]]>WHO HAS ABORTIONS?
*Fifty percent of U.S. women obtaining abortions are younger than 25: Women aged 20-24 obtain 33% of all abortions, and teenagers obtain 17%.
*Thirty-seven percent of abortions occur to black women, 34% to non-Hispanic white women, 22% to Hispanic women and 8% to women of other races.
*Women who have never married obtain two-thirds of all abortions.
*About 60% of abortions are obtained by women who have one or more children.
The abortion rate among women living below the federal poverty level ($9,570 for a single woman with no children) is more than four times that of women above 300% of the poverty level (44 vs. 10 abortions per 1,000 women). This is partly because the rate of unintended pregnancies among poor women (below 100% of poverty) is nearly four times that of women above 200% of poverty (112 vs. 29 per 1,000 women).
*The reasons women give for having an abortion underscore their understanding of the responsibilities of parenthood and family life. Three-fourths of women cite concern for or responsibility to other individuals; three-fourths say they cannot afford a child; three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents; and half say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner.
*Fifty-four percent of women who have abortions had used a contraceptive method (usually the condom or the pill) during the month they became pregnant. Among those women, 76% of pill users and 49% of condom users report having used their method inconsistently, while 13% of pill users and 14% of condom users report correct use.
*Forty-six percent of women who have abortions had not used a contraceptive method during the month they became pregnant. Of these women, 33% had perceived themselves to be at low risk for pregnancy, 32% had had concerns about contraceptive methods, 26% had had unexpected sex and 1% had been forced to have sex.
*Eight percent of women who have abortions have never used a method of birth control; non-use is greatest among those who are young, poor, black, Hispanic or less educated.
*About half of unintended pregnancies occur among the 11% of women who are at risk for unintended pregnancy but are not using contraceptives. Most of these women have practiced contraception in the past.
PROVIDERS AND SERVICES
*The number of U.S. abortion providers declined by 2% between 2000 and 2005 (from 1,819 to 1,787). Eighty-seven percent of all U.S. counties lacked an abortion provider in 2005; 35% of women live in those counties.
*Forty percent of providers offer very early abortions (even before the first missed period) and 96% offer abortion at eight weeks from the last menstrual period. Sixty-seven percent of providers offer at least some second-trimester abortion services (13 weeks or later), and 20% offer abortion after 20 weeks. Only 8% of all abortion providers offer abortions at 24 weeks.
*The proportion of providers offering abortion at four or fewer weeks' gestation increased from 7% in 1993 to 40% in 2005.
*In 2005, the cost of a non-hospital abortion with local anesthesia at 10 weeks' gestation ranged from $90 to $1,800; the average amount paid was $413.
*Eighty-nine percent of abortions occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, 2004.
*In September 2000, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the abortion drug Mifepristone to be marketed in the United States as an alternative to surgical abortion.
*In 2005, 57% of abortion providers, or 1,026 facilities, provided one or more medication abortions, a 70% increase from the first half of 2001. At least 10% of nonhospital abortion providers offer only medication abortion services.
*Medication abortion accounted for 13% of all abortions, and 22% of abortions before nine weeks' gestation, in 2005.
Something I am less ashamed to admit is that I don't always follow some of the terms bandied about on the blogs. One of those terms is "strawman." I'm from the Midwest. Out here, strawmen live in fields and they don't generally talk, which makes it difficult for them to participate in arguments.
But, I'm proud to admit that today, for possibly the first time, I feel I have an absolute grasp of what "creating a strawman" means. Thanks, Republicans!
See if you can follow the trail of metaphorical straw. (Side Note: Real strawmen leave a straw trail too, only it's not metaphorical and it makes me sneeze.) From what I'm hearing coming out of conservative mouths this week, here's what I've got so far:
Wheeeeeeee. Because it's not like we have maximum security prisons or anything. Those prisoners are coming to your neighborhood and Republicans want you to be hiding-under-your-bed-wetting-your-pants scared.
Honestly. It's not like we should expect anything remotely honest from the people who want you to believe that dinosaurs weren't extinct until a few thousand years ago, at which point we were calling them dragons. But just how stupid do they think we are?
Don't answer that. I can only handle one strawman per day.
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Cross posted, as usual, at Dagblog.com
]]>And also, somehow, proud of Rachel Maddow and Ana Marie Cox. Tonight on Rachel's show, the found the Holy Grail of double entendre. I wonder if Glenn Beck gets it.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
What many still consider the greatest step forward in equality for the sexes, was more then just a glancing blow however. It was in fact a deadly strike that entered the very heart of the ship and has been smoldering since. The damage caused by the 19th amendment was slow in its destruction, but after almost 100 years we can now see how complete the destruction really was.
From the beginning of time women have been the emotional nurturers of society while men have been the logical protectors and managers. It was the men who had to do the dirty deeds that required more logic then emotion. Men have always debated and discussed what it is they thought was best for their communities. There has always been strong women have stood behind their men and supported them in the tough decisions they had to make. Behind the scenes these strong women would prod and nudge because they thought the men moved to slow at times.
However it was that slow and methodical thought process that allowed for an orderly progression that worked for thousands of years. And please do not bring up all the wars men have gotten us into. The biggest war in history was WWII, and it happened with men elected after women around the world won the right to vote.
Unfortunately men eventually abdicated their God given responsibility and allowed their emotional partner an equal footing in deciding the country's fate. From that day forward, men have been vying for the emotional vote of the women and worrying about their reactions after they got in office. Thus they have become more emotional in their legislating then logical.
