I heard that on NPR this morning and I woke up completely enraged.  Can’t say I’m surprised, really, but I’m completely pissed off. 

I’ve already called my Senators, but I don’t imagine it will do much good.  Voinovich is retiring and doesn’t seem to care anymore and Brown is generally pretty good about these sorts of things and seems to already be on board.

We should never stop pointing out that the US Catholic Church has a financial incentive to push these things.  With the way our system is right now, patients are stuck with a Catholic hospital if that’s where their doctor has privileges or if it’s the only one in town (which, sadly, is not uncommon).  If we did move to a system where patients had more freedom of choice, it would cut into those hospitals’ income in a big way.  So of course the Council of Bishops is desperate to prevent any health care provider from having abortion and contraception coverage.

They can whine about the baybeez all they want, but it’s more than a little suspicious that forced birthers have started spouting a meme about the highly profitable abortion industry given how hard they project their desires onto their opponents.  Running a full hospital is a hundred times more profitable than running an abortion clinic.

And on the other topic, while Amanda Knox’s trial was a travesty, I just can’t get on the bandwagon that she’s a totally innocent victim.  There was way too much weirdness going on (like Knox saying that she actually witnessed her former boss committing the murder even though he was innocent—the guy was only set free because he had a solid alibi).  But 26 years is way too much for being an accessory after the fact, which is probably what she is actually guilty of.

*lays head down on desk and cries*

“Since when is our government being run by a bunch of celibate men dedicated to a misogynist dogma about women who have sex?”

...the train to Gilead left the station a long time ago.  But the political value of stringing the religious nuts along — hopeful as they are that abortion will be banned and that the “traditional family” will enforced by law — is too great for the “progress” in that direction to be very fast.

“Having the Catholic Bishops review legislature about bodies that don’t belong to them, so they can sit around sniffing their hatred for women, is both creepy and contrary to the spirit of the First Amendment…”

Hey, even the ones who don’t believe in a celibate priesthood are creepy and contrary to the spirits of America in general.

”...especially since it seems that this entire review process will be done without a single female eyeball falling on the amendment.”

Well, you know women are too emotional and driven by their hormones to be neutral on issues like this.  Much better to let men who’ve extracted themselves from real life to make these important decisions…

Yeah, right…

...or the Spirit of America, that is…

*lays head down on desk and cries*

Although it’s probably wrong to, sometimes I get nostalgic for a time before I realized that thinking of my body as mine would be so emotionally exhausting.

Since when is our government being run by a bunch of celibate men dedicated to a misogynist dogma about women who have sex?

We should never stop pointing out that the US Catholic Church has a financial incentive to push these things.

I also get nostalgic for the day before I handed in a tuition check to my Catholic university, when I had a chance to spit on it or burn it instead.  I wonder if there is a more problematic notion of charity anywhere.

The idea that clergy of any type are reviewing legislation to see if it meets their approval makes me blind with rage. Obviously this country doesn’t have enough zombie-worshiping pedophiles writing its laws, so Ben Nelson thought he’d remedy the situation and consult some Catholic bishops. Good plan, dipshit. Religious people think they’re so important that they get to piss all over everything this country stands for in their quest to make the rest of us conform to their idiot belief systems.

I hope the lesson in all this sticks, especially with liberals who continue to see reproductive rights as a second tier issue.

I think it’s way past time to stop letting such people get away with defining themselves as liberals at all.

We need to push to get rid of Hyde entirely.

Legislators don’t think that there’s anything wrong with restricting abortion as long as they leave “rape and health of the mother” restrictions in.  they don’t see any reprecussions.

Health of the mother means that the mother’s life is in imminent danger.  As in she is hemorrhaging or raging with sepsis.  Simply carrying a dead fetus is not a danger to the health of the mother.  It CAN be, and the safest thing to do is remove the decaying fetus as soon as possible, but until sepsis actually sets in, harming themother’s health and future fertility, the mother is NOT in any health risk, at least not as far as either insurance companies that cover Federal employees or Catholic hospitals are concerned.

Medical procedures should be between a patient and his/her doctor.  Carving them out to satisfy religious objections should be unConstitutional.  of course, with all the Catholics on the SCOTUS, we can’t be sure of any Constitutional protections.  Scalia can’t even understand that Jewish cemeteries don’t have crosses and that a cross does NOT bestow grace or blessings to people who aren’t Christian.

The Catholic Church needs to be forced out of hospitals entirely.  Part of the reason we don’t have doctors who know the proper procedures to help women with failed pregnancies is that too many med schools are partnered with Catholic hospitals and do not teach D & C procedures.

B/c it’s not just slut shaming.  If you can’t produce a health fetus and carry it to term, you deserve shame as well.  Dying, too, since you’ve failed at your only real life’s work.

  I hope the lesson in all this sticks, especially with liberals who continue to see reproductive rights as a second tier issue.

I think it’s way past time to stop letting such people get away with defining themselves as liberals at all.

Agreed. My relatively liberal roommate acts like I’m crazy when I talk about opposition to abortion being fundamentally sexist. He’s completely ignorant of the anti-choice narrative and tactics, but just assumes that they’re sincere in their Godly concern for fetuses, and even thinks that they kind of have a point, because “how do you really know that a fetus can’t feel anything?”

So not the most enlightened guy.

They can whine about the baybeez all they want, but it’s more than a little suspicious that forced birthers have started spouting a meme about the highly profitable abortion industry given how hard they project their desires onto their opponents.  Running a full hospital is a hundred times more profitable than running an abortion clinic.

Not just hospitals.

Those “pregnancy alternative” places aren’t only motivated by the pleasure of bullying women at their most vulnerable. A plain first-trimester abortion—supposedly “a highly profitable industry”—costs maybe a few hundred bucks. Arranging for the adoption of a healthy white newborn can easily run a hundred times that, for the agency, their contractors, social workers, attorneys, etc. Per capita, it’s a much bigger business than abortion could ever be. I’m sure these “alternative” places get kickbacks.

The Repubilcans deserve plenty of blame for their misogyny and intransigent opposition to universal healthcare. But they could not—and cannot—deny us universal healthcare without a lot of help from Democrats.

It’s one of the flaws in the two-party system.  Namely, that the system doesn’t really encompass the political realities of the regions where people get elected.  You’ve got PACs and party funds that will funnel money to whomever claims the party banner.  Republicans have decided to all climb aboard the purity train, but Democrats are still more than happy to funnel money to a conservative Democrat with an embarrassingly Republican voting record, so long as the Dems can be assured of a few procedural votes in their favor.

At the end of the day, the Democratic Party has compromised away backbone issues to the point that they no longer really have an ideology.

And while this may get us nominal majorities in the House and Senate, we also end up with a bunch of “Democratic” Congresscritters in red states that are a) difficult to defend (because they can never been conservative enough, so long as they’ve got (D)s in front of their names), b) entrenched by incumbency - making them even more difficult to primary out, and c) indebted to local corporate interests rather than grass roots supporters (in part because of a and b) for GOTV and funding.

Conservative Democrats are a serious problem in the party.  They’re basically just independents caucusing with Dems for the money and the party name recognition.  Mercenary would be a good word to describe them.  And they bend whatever what they are pushed.  Being in red states, they’re often pushed hard by the right wing media and the local church groups.

Who is holding the lease on the Blue Dogs?  That’s what needs to be addressed more than anything right now.  They can’t stand on their own in conservative districts.  But the only people giving them support either don’t care how they vote outside of procedural motions or push them hard to the right.  How do you address this?

Nelson said that the amendment’s language was not finished, and that groups opposed to abortion — notably the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops — needed more time to review it.

Oh, can’t we just send them a big box of panties to sniff and call it even?

The only way out of this is, as many have pointed out, complete campaign finance reform. Strict limits, donations from individuals, not corporations, to political parties only (not to individual campaigns), eliminate the soft money loopholes, control who can buy electoral advertising, and the entire campaign is publicly financed. Once you get private money / influence largely out of the system, and ensure that congresscritters are not beholden to anyone, then you can get legislation where the people’s opinion counts.

I rather wish you hadn’t brought the Amanda Knox case into this, however. It’s not so simple as a case of American-student-overseas slut-shaming and far too many outlets are taking the she’s-American-therefore-automatically-blameless tack. There’s circumstantial evidence (which doesn’t mean *no* evidence, it means no eyewitness testimony) that she was present, which makes her at least an accessory. If the case / evidence chain was as bodged as some make out, she has a chance in the appeals process, but she doesn’t appear to have been entirely truthful about what exactly happened, either.

Since when is our government being run by a bunch of celibate men dedicated to a misogynist dogma about women who have sex?

Much too late to think any progressive/liberal with push back. I got flack for pointing out Obama was behaving like Bush for meeting secretly with health insurance and pharma companies. Slut-shaming is no big deal.

Once you get private money / influence largely out of the system, and ensure that congresscritters are not beholden to anyone, then you can get legislation where the people’s opinion counts.

You cannot possibly be this naive. Right, all the vested interests and powers will just go away. They won’t find new ways to control the state. And the state itself, like all big powerful organizations everywhere, will immediately re-order itself so that it serves the interests of the people. It will be utopia!

Come on. Brain up.

Alkaloid, I didn’t say it would be utopia, but it’s already happened— Here in Canada, and I believe in most EEC countries as well. This isn’t to say big money / industries don’t affect politics (heck, look at how Alberta’s oil biz distorts the nation), but it means MPs aren’t, generally speaking, in the pocket of Big Pharma or Big Insurance or the Banksters, even as the Harper government has tried to emulate the corporate-worshiping Bush years. We built the system with firewalls to prevent this from happening - a strong central bank, tighter controls generally.

The Italian justice system makes the American one look surprisingly… just.

And the fundamental problem vis-à-vis abortion rights and healthcare is that the leaders of the Democratic party have simply never been held accountable for their actions. If, the next time Mr. Nelson is up for reëlection, someone gets up in the primary and opposes him from the left, and all the Dem women in Nebraska vote for the challenger, well then, Mr. Nelson is held accountable. It’s the only way to put the fear of “god” into these people.

The Catholic church has no business influencing legislation.  I propose we make a deal with them.  Whenever they start letting Congress be involved in their development of church laws, only then can they be allowed to influence our government.  I don’t think they’d like that very much.  Whenever any religious organization whines that they haven’t had enough time to review legislation, the only correct response is, “Who cares?  You don’t get to have a say in anyway.”

This is just another example of the shit progressives get themselves into when they pre-compromise.  Oh, we won’t try for single-payer, just this public option.  And suddenly the public option is the left wing of the debate, and when we actually get to the negotiating table we end up having to compromise on that.  And we won’t try for full reproductive health care, we’ll just use the Hyde amendment.  So all of a sudden Hyde is the left wing position, and the regressives insist on compromising starting with that abomination.  But no surprise, since mainstream (male) Dems have long since capitulated on abortion - calling for ‘safe, legal, and rare’ abortions, for example.  Climate change is the same way.  Instead of aggressive measures to switch energy sources and cut emission, we start with a pre-compromise of ‘market-based’ legislation.  And predictably enough, we get the right-wing painting cap and trade as some sort of evil eco-communist plot to destroy America.

It’s so infuriating to watch, over and over again, as the supposedly left party in this country compromises away core beliefs before they even begin negotiating with the other side.

I think one effective way to combat Nelson & co would be to go on a propaganda attack (and by propaganda I mean use the facts in evidence but present them in a sensationalized way). Something like saturate all media with ads asking why representatives of a foreign potentate who excommunicates Ob/Gyns for performing therapeutic abortions on 9 yo get to draft good, and pure, and noble American legislation. Throw in a mention of the fact that these people who don’t have to pay taxes get to legislate mandates for the rest of us, that they’re in the business of running hospitals, and something about the sexual abuse scandals and how Scientologists, CAIR, and the Taliban should also get to review drafts of the legislation and, voila, you’ve shone a light on them and put them on the defensive.

<blokquote>ruman was unable to get universal healthcare through a Democratically controlled House and Senate. LBJ, with much larger majorities, didn’t even bother trying. </blokquote>

Those Democratic majorities were full of Dixiecrats back then, though, it’s a little misleading to compare it to today’s majority.

The Italian justice system makes the American one look surprisingly… just.

Really? It’s THAT bad, huh?

Well, since prosecutors are allowed to use the media to poison potential juries in ways unheard of in the U.S., I’d say yes.

“Those Democratic majorities were full of Dixiecrats back then, though, it’s a little misleading to compare it to today’s majority.”

True, and those conservative Democrats became conservative Republicans over the last 50-years, still obstructing healthcare reform whenever it came up. 

However, it seems we have a whole new crop of conservative/obstructionist Democrats to cope with, even as the Republican Party goes off the rails and over the cliff.

With friends like that, who needs an opposition party?...

You can hone bank against Stupak this weekend, find an event, or start your own:

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/12/07/one-voice-for-choicestupak-can-you-hear-us-now/#comments

It’s time for the filibuster to die.  If it was used to delay legislation for not more than a couple of months or weeks that would be one thing.  It used to be that you actually had to get up and talk non-stop and sooner or later you’d run out of steam.  Now, it’s permanent minority control and that’s just wrong.

However, it seems we have a whole new crop of conservative/obstructionist Democrats to cope with, even as the Republican Party goes off the rails and over the cliff.

The Blue Dogs are not as bad as the Dixiecrats were. Sorry, but I’ll take Nelson any day over Strom Thurmond or Harry F. Byrd.

What we have now, as someone on here said before and thought was very insightful, is an Insane Party (Republicans) and the Not-Insane Party (Democrats). That, more than ideology separates the parties right now. Nelson, even though he is conservative (in the traditional, 1950s Republican sense), can’t be a Republican because he’s not crazy enough. Neither can Bart Stupak, or Blanche Lincoln. Why? They don’t think the President was born in Kenya, they don’t want to bring about the apocalypse in the Middle East to fulfill biblical prophecies,  they don’t want to completely dismantle the federal government, they aren’t out-and-out racists, they don’t want to rape the environment, and so on.

Magis,I agree with that, though it’s probably more realistic and doable for Reid to simply change the Senate rules and lower the threshold from 60 to 55.

Having the Catholic Bishops review legislature about bodies that don’t belong to them, so they can sit around sniffing their hatred for women, is both creepy and contrary to the spirit of the First Amendment, especially since it seems that this entire review process will be done without a single female eyeball falling on the amendment.

I remember reading that one of the objections to JFK’s candidacy was that, as a Catholic, he would be bound to abide by the dictates of the Pope and that didn’t sit well with Southern <strike>bigots</strike> Protestants, who feared a Catholic-dominated Presidency would restrict their Protestant freedoms.  Here we are 50 years later and now we apparently have no problem with Catholic clergy having a de facto veto over health legislation.  How things change…

Mix religion and politics and you get holy wars.  I guess we haven’t learned that lesson yet.

“Here we are 50 years later and now we apparently have no problem with Catholic clergy having a de facto veto over health legislation.”

Being against legal abortion and virulent opposition to gay rights are just about the only areas where the American (Protestant) Religious Right agree with Catholics. 

Otherwise, it’s not clear who would get lined up against the wall first — Mormons and other non-Baptist Protestants or Catholics — should the fundnuts get their theocracy…

Funny thing is before the late ‘70s it was almost exclusively Catholics that had issues with abortion rights and birth control, while the Protestants (even the Baptists at the time!) were fairly liberal on both. Of course this was the time when Jimmy Carter was considered a typical evangelical.

Trip at #10

but just assumes that they’re sincere in their Godly concern for fetuses

Just show him the full online only Daily Show interview of Huckabee on abortion. The man flat out states that what this (his anti-choice stance) is really about is that someday, in the future, possibly, maybe, indirectly, at least in his own head, that abortion rights could lead to Huckabee’s children not treating him the way he feels entitled to be treated. Essentially, he’s so concerned that his privileged status may be compromised, that he’s willing to protect it by attacking rights that don’t even effect his status.

That’ll show your roommate that anti-choicers are full of shit when they try to throw down the"we’re just trying to protect life” card. It’s all about their privileged status.

Now, it’s permanent minority control and that’s just wrong.

Not permanent.  When Democrats lose the majority, you’ll quickly find the filibuster has been dismissed from the lexicon.  It’s not permanent minority control, it’s permanent Republican control.

Mix religion and politics and you get holy wars.  I guess we haven’t learned that lesson yet.

Given that we’re fighting two of them (three if you count the war on (some) drugs, which has clear religious overtones), I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that we haven’t.

While Amanda might be absolutely correct in her analysis that those who are anti-abortion are motivated by a deep, barely hidden misogyny, the problem is it doesn’t attack anti-abortion politics at what it believes is its greatest strength—that abortion is murder. We need to decisively counterattack that argument, and thereby unmask whatever deep-seated misogyny underlies it as well..

So let me give you a religious, proabortion argument. Imagine this debate—

Antiabortionist (screams) “Abortion is murder! It says so in the Bible!”
Revrick replies, “Oh really? So what penalty should we give women who get abortions… 20 to life, life without parole or the death penalty?”
Antiabortionist (gurgles) “But, but, that’s not what I mean.”
Revrick continues, “And wouldn’t that also mean any time there was a miscarriage, we’d have to open a criminal investigation?”
Anitabortionist stumbles, “But, but the penalty should be applied to the one doing the abortions, not the woman!”
Revrick replies, “How do you figure that? If abortion is murder then the woman is the one most guilty. She is the one who decided to have the abortion. To say the one providing the abortion is guilty would be like convicting the gun and letting the murderer off. She is the one who should pay. So what penalty would you give her: 20 to life, life without parole or the death penalty?”
Antiabortionist (protesting) “But she’s not guilty; she’s the victim!”
Revrick snarling, “Again, how do you figure that? It was her intent that led to the abortion. Pregnant women aren’t being randomly grabbed off the street and forced to have one. She’s the one guilty, if abortion is murder.”
Anitabortionist (feebly) “But, but she’s a victim.”
Revrick (gritting teeth) “Oh, bullshit. What you’re saying is that women are stupid children who cannot be trusted to make moral decisions. That they are so incompetent as human beings that you want the state to intervene and force them to do what you want them to do. That sounds like slavery to me.”
Antiabortionist sneers, “Oh I suppose your perfectly okay with women killing unborn babies.”
Revrick replies, “You don’t believe abortion is murder since you refuse to apply the legal sanctions that swhould apply in all cases. So I’m not buying your claim of bad faith on my part. The only one making bad faith arguments here is you, my friend. But to be perfectly frank, your argument presupposes that there is only one moral problem around the question of abortion. There is another you have left out—and that is the matter of a woman’s sovereign moral agency. Because if you deny the right of women to make moral choices, and especially on such a deep matter of conscience, you have made all women into chattel. If you make it a law that we can override a woman’s moral choice, then you are denying that she is a fully functioning and capable human being. And frankly, I find that claim is evil. You want to make all of us your co-conspirators in the psychological and moral enslavement of women. I refuse to abide in that belief. I choose freedom, not slavery. That is my moral value, for without it we cease to be human beings. Period.”

BTW, there is another method of breaking a filibuster that doesn’t entail invoking cloture and that is by attrition. You let them filibuster and they each are allowed two speeches in opposition. But once they’ve hit the two speech limit, voting takes place and cannot be stopped. So let them yammer on for 80 days, if need be, and then force the votes through. Cloture is meant is a shortcut, but if you need to take the long way, sobeit.

Without misogyny, it’s arguable that we would have had universal health care a long time ago.

I’d say it’s inarguable.  If men got pregnant, both abortion and health care would be a sacrament.

the basic problem with sen. nelson and his like-minded cronies, is that they truly represent their constituents. if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have been elected to begin with, nor would they continue being re-elected.

their constituents (who, statistically, must include a fair % of women) are at least as mysogynistic as they are, if not more so. until you break through that wall, the ben nelson’s will continue to make everyone’s lives miserable.

Health of the mother means that the mother’s life is in imminent danger.  As in she is hemorrhaging or raging with sepsis.

Let’s quit calling them mothers: incubators is more in line to what the Reich Wing wants.