Bart Stupak called out by ABC News, his abortion claims are flase

This is why Obama is going grey: not only does he have to deal with liars in the GOP, his own party is to dumb to read. if you're going to vote 'no' on the bill that's fine. But at least have valid reasons.

Huff Post

ABC News found that one of Rep. Bart Stupak's (D-Mich.) biggest contentions in his fight against health care reform legislation -- that federal money will go to "directly subsidize abortions" -- is not true in all cases.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has repeatedly asserted that there is "no federally funded abortion" in the bill.

According to ABC's Jonathan Karl: "Pelosi is right in that the bill makes it clear, there can be no federal money for abortion, except in cases of rape, incest, or to protect the life of the mother."

Stupak argued that "when you read the legislation, $1 per month for all enrollees must go into a fund for reproductive care which includes abortion coverage."

Karl's research of the wording of the bill finds this statement to be false. "That's actually wrong," Karl reports. "In fact, you only pay the $1 abortion fee if you choose a plan that covers abortion. To anti-abortion advocates like Stupak, the only acceptable solution is a complete ban on abortion coverage by any insurance policy that accepts any federal money at all."

Sorry....

Sorry about the 3 week absence. It's been a hell of a 3 weeks. Here's a recap:

The Republicans took Teddy Kennedy's seat with a former nude model who pledged to vote against the same health care bill that he supported when it passed in Massachusetts. Republicans rejoiced. Scott Brown then said he supported abortion rights. They've been kinda quiet about the whole thing ever since.

Obama was said to have lost his mojo. 8 days later, he found it again when he went after Republicans in the State of the Union address. And then he accepted an invitation to appear before the GOP House caucus - on camera - and went up and down the court on them for 90 minutes. This caused Fox to break away for the sake of the narrative.

The Supreme Court turned our political campaigns over to corporate America, paving the way for "Palin 2012, brought to you by Monstanto".

The Republicans are using the filibuster, of the threat thereof, as a blunt weapon.



Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) is holding as many as 70 of Obama's appointments hostage until he gets his pork projects (earmarks) passed in the Senate. To break his hold, the Senate needs - you guessed it - 60 votes. It's time to bring on the nuclear option and change the filibuster to a more reasonable procedure - one that doesn't cripple the business of the nation.

As Steve Pearlstein opines:

After all, if the only things the party in power can accomplish are those that the minority power can agree with, then what is the point of having an election? No matter which side won a majority, "common ground" -- the things they all agree on -- would still be the same.

And it appears that "Don't ask, don't tell" is going away, paving the way for gays to openly serve their country. For years, the GOP said they'd leave it up to the military high command. I guess they figured that generals and stuff would never let fags serve. Well, last week they did. Adm. Mike Mullen told Congress that gays should be allowed to serve openly in uniform, arguing that it is "the right thing to do." And many, many Republicans lost their shit. John McCain backtracked on his comments of 3 years ago and Ollie North told Sean Hannity that if we let gays serve, the next steps was NAMBLA members. That's the North American Man-Boy Love Association, the group that advocates legal sodomy with minors.

Right.

Why do we not account for right-wing domestic terrorism?

With all the talk about "keeping us safe", we seem to be missing the bigger threat to "us".

When we speak of "us", I assume we mean domestic terrorism. So let's look at this graph from Bob Cesca. The real threat to us appears to be right-wing domestic terror.

Now clearly, in terms of the numbers of deaths, Islamic terror has claimed more victims, on the basis of 9/11 alone - as these graphs illustrate. But seeing as how UndieBomber has us ready to let our government see us naked to "keep us safe", we need to be aware of the greater risk of incident that comes from our own home-grown domestic terrorists in the anti-abortion movement.

Oh irony, you magnificent bastard!

By BCAB Chief Ironies Delighter-Inner Elvis Hussein Dingeldein.

I’m no kind of religious person. I think The Bible® is HIGH-larious family fun, if you live in the Third Century and list “punching women in the uterus” and “the stonings” as favorite hobbies. And I loathe nothing more than Teabagging Christian Wingnuts trying to force their bullshit Hobbit stories on us Nones, the ones who like our Democracy Jesus™-free the way The Founders explicitly set us up by Oh-So-Purposefully nixing the words “God” and “Jesus” from the Constitution.

Having said that, I’ll get down on my knees and start praying to any Angry Magical Cloud-Lord who will listen if this actually pans out when McDonald v City of Chicago hits a Supreme Court near you:

A finding that the Second Amendment protects individuals’ right to own a gun could therefore have the unexpected outcome of also providing more solid ground for recognition of the right to abortion, to sexual privacy, to gay marriage, and to a wide variety of other rights that conservative justices on the court and “originalist” constitutional scholars have long opposed.

Oh, please Flying Spaghetti Monster! Oh, I beseech thee, Freakishly Disneyesque Indian Elephant God! Let me rub thy fat, fat belly with oils, Buddha You Fat Bastard! I shall tithe what little I have left after paying for healthcare and two bullshit wars, O Mangar-kunjer-kunja, whatever the fuck you were! Just let this be so!

Honestly, I will have an ironygasm and take a month off from work to do nothing but drive around Republican neighborhoods pointing and laughing and possibly waving my genitals at AARP members if this happens. Finally a SCOTUS case we can all believe in, as long as it swings our way. With our Activist Judges and whatnot.

Update: Redmond and I are discussing the social consequences of this conundrum, and he points out that while we get our Gay Marryings and Abortitudes, the Right gets more unfettered gun-totage. So we should expect more gay couples being shot at during their wedding festivities and abortion doctors might want to invest in Kevlar underpants.

Update II: The Sequel : Abortion doctors may just want to go ahead and invest in that Kevlar underpants now, really.

Shit: O'Reilly loses his big time; Hannity fails to give one

(Huff Post)
Wow. Joan Walsh went on the O'Reilly Factor tonight having publicly vowed to be well-prepared to defend the reproductive rights of women and the legality of Dr. George Tiller's clinical practice, and truly doled out some major ownage without raising her voice or raising the temperature at all. It was an artful performance of talking headery, and what can I say? By the end of their two segments, O'Reilly is reduced to a gibbering, shout-faced wreck. If you need to know how far Walsh pummeled O'Reilly into pure insipidity, wait for the moment where he says to her: "My constitutional rights say I can say what I say, you can say what you say, as vile as you say it, you can say it, and I would never condemn you for saying it. You are misguided, you have blood on your hands because you portrayed this man as a hero."

Right. Bill O'Reilly would never condemn you for speaking your mind, if you don't count the whole YOU ARE VILE and YOU HAVE BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS condemnation part!

(UPDATE: Joan Walsh has a very amusing post up: "Why I Went On 'The O'Reilly Factor.'" Best riff: "It was a kaleidoscopic nightmare, a TV acid trip, and I don't do acid. It almost seems like O'Reilly does, but I don't think so. The man is driven by demons. God bless him and save him.")

The whole exchange called to mind a passage of Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, IV.iii:

BRUTUS: You have done that you should be sorry for. There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats, For I am arm'd so strong in honesty That they pass by me as the idle wind, Which I respect not.

Joan Walsh: spoken like a Stoic!

MEANWHILE:
(Huff Post) - click through for video

Fix News host Sean Hannity only devoted one sentence to discussing the shooting at the Holocaust Museum on his program this week, Media Matters reports. This comes after Hannity had criticized other networks for not giving significant coverage to the recent shooting at an Army recruiting center in Arkansas. Instead of discussing the shooting at the Holocaust museum, Hannity did, according to Media Matters, dedicate significant time on his show this week to "David Letterman's jokes about Sarah Palin, the firing of Miss California Carrie Prejean, and actor Craig T. Nelson's take on the proper role of government."

When do we start caring about the 4th trimester ex-fetuses?

With the assassination of abortion provider George Tiller in church in Kansas on Sunday, and the subsequent backpedaling of those who wished violence on him, coupled with the renewed emphasis on Roe v. Wade and the lack of interest in bringing it up in the Sotomayor hearings - I got to thinkin'....

The right wing is so interested in making sure babies are born, and yet once they're here, we give them the old "son, you're on your own".

Here's a partial list of countries that have a lower infant mortality rate than the U.S.. When are we going to become as concerned with the ones that are born?

1) Iceland (Bjork's country cannot beat us. We had Grand Funk Railroad.)
2) Singapore (a microstate... at #2. Really? Is that like micropenis?)
8) Czech Republic (used to be run by a poet, fer Chris'sakes)
12) Belgium (no one who drinks white beer should rate this high)
13) France (must be a misprint. Honey, put on your Freedom-cut Panties and get out the Freedom Tickler.)
17) Austria (the hills ARE alive, I hear they have eyes too)
19) Luxembourg (a landlocked Grand Duchy. Hang your head America)
22) Slovenia (formerly part of Socialist Yugoslavia. Don't let Hannity's head bounce off the ground.)
24) Canada (what's that about socialized medicine again?)
27) Portugal (the last time they were ahead of us, it involved Prince Henry the Navigator)
29) Cuba (freaking CUBA! They drive '50 Buicks. And float them too.)
30) Channel Islands (huh? That's a real place?)
32) Cyprus (most famous for the Bond movie Octopussy... and THEY beat us?)
33) New Caledonia (A French holding in the Coral Sea. France. Again. Damn.)
34) United States (why does infant mortality hate America?)

O'Reilly's jihad against murdered doctor

While many Americans may never have heard of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller, who was killed Sunday, his name — and nickname, "Tiller the Baby-Killer" — should be familiar to viewers of Fox News' "O'Reilly Factor." Salon's Gabriel Winant reports that Bill O'Reilly has mentioned Tiller on 29 episodes since 2005, most recently in April of this year.

"There's no other person who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller as a savage on the loose, killing babies willy-nilly thanks to the collusion of would-be sophisticated cultural elites, a bought-and-paid-for governor and scofflaw secular journalists" than O'Reilly, Winant writes.

Some of the things O'Reilly has said of Tiller, according to Salon:

He "destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000."
He's guilty of "Nazi stuff," a moral equivalent to NAMBLA and al-Qaida
"This is the kind of stuff that happened in Mao's China, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union"
"operating a death mill"
"has blood on his hands"
"executing babies about to be born"

Does O'Reilly have blood on his hands?  No, I don't think so.  But he does bear responsibility for his words and the climate he creates.  At what point do we get back to discussing politics and not playing the Demonization Game?

Full Winant article here