I have a total backlog of links on health care, foreign policy, and Sotomayor’s nomination, but honestly, I feel right now that I have to put much of my time to this domestic terrorism issue, so that Dr. Tiller’s assassination doesn’t just disappear in a mountain of news items, leaving people to forget about the ongoing threat that puts more health care workers and their patients in danger. With that in mind, I have to address the ass-covering that’s going on with conservatives, Republicans, and their apologists on this issue, starting with James Kirchick of WSJ. He’s pulling the “anti-abortion groups condemned the attack” bullshit, but this, while technically true, is a misleading statement. They offered mealy-mouthed reminders that murder is a sin and, more importantly, a crime, and then they said that Dr. Tiller had it coming. This was, over and over again, the line. Bill O’Reilly’s excuse-making is a perfect example---he basically said the exact same things that “marginal” figure Randall Terry did. I won’t put that horrible video up, but here’s Keith Olbermann discussing it:
These are not condemnations. Condemnations involve actually condemning what happened, not saying, “Glad he’s dead, too bad it had to be an illegal action that becomes a pain in our ass.”
But the excuse-making for domestic terrorists isn’t limited to claiming that half-hearted reminders that murder is illegal is enough to erase all the targeting of specific individuals for harassment and violence. The other trick is to try to put distance between the extremists, who we’re told are few in number, and the rest of the conservative movement. Kirchick:
The comparison between the religious right and Islamic extremists is invariably partisan so as to smear the GOP as being held hostage to forces as dangerous as Hamas or Hezbollah. “Even as the Bush administration denounces and battles Islamic religious zealotry abroad, fundamental Christian zealotry is taking hold here at home,” wrote Stephen Pizzo on the liberal Alternet Web site in 2004. On his popular HBO program, comedian Bill Maher frequently compares murderous Islamists to censorious Christians.
The notion that the GOP isn’t beholden to extremists and terrorist supporters is a laughable assertion. They are scared to death to denounce anti-choice terrorism, and that fear goes straight up to the top. Remember?
If anti-choice activists, even the most extreme, really do denounce terrorism in their name, then there’s absolutely zero reason for Republicans running for national office to fear calling terrorism what it is. But if Republicans feel that their base is largely supportive of terrorists---even if they won’t say so in public, then you get reactions like the one you see above. Let’s not be childish and pretend that conservatives don’t have the in-group and out-group face. That was one of the most important points of my post about the Justice For All handbook. Let’s not pretend, for instance, that Eric Rudolph was so hard to catch because he had so much support in the areas he hid in that he was able to hide in people’s homes.
Today, major anti-choice blogger Jill Stanek has helpfully put up information about two other abortion providers who specialize in 3rd trimester abortions. She targeted Dr. Leroy Carhart, who has been an anti-choice nut favorite since he was the one who sued to revoke the misnamed Partial Birth Abortion Act, posting pictures of his offices ominously, along with information about his electrical systems and links to prior attempts to harass Dr. Carhart by finding excuses to sic the law on him for minor permit violations. She also writes about Dr. Warren Hern, making special note of his security detail that would presumably make it much harder to attack him.
It’s all within the letter of the law, with no direct threats or even addresses (outside of the city) posted, though the names of the clinics and the photographs should make that easy enough to get. But while I’m sure she’ll swear innocence up and down, there’s no way around it---Jill Stanek is egging her readers on to harass individuals that she directly links to a man who was murdered by a “pro-lifer” 3 days ago. This is the “non-violent” anti-choice movement.
I’m sure the excuse is to claim that Stanek is a marginal, irrelevant figure, despite her magazine cover interview with the American Life League, and the fact that hers is probably the most popular anti-choice blog run by an individual. But Stanek played a major role in the 2008 election. See, when Barack Obama was a state senator, Stanek was the driving force behind attempts to get the Born Alive Infant Protection Act passed, and she testified under questioning from then-senator Obama that she had seen hospitals kill already-born babies as a sort of post-birth elective abortion. (I can’t find the transcripts, but I’ve seen them before, and they’re darkly funny, because she’s clearly full of shit and he’s clearly onto her, and she clearly hates it.) Obama then played a major force in getting the bill killed, because he correctly perceived that it was an attempt to ban abortions performed to save the life or the health of the mother. (Stanek, through her myriad of delusions that make her an incredibly unreliable witness to anything, was most likely talking about an abortion technique called labor induction, which does not produce living infants, no matter what Stanek wants to believe, and is, no matter what Stanek claims, used in the 3rd trimester for strictly therapeutic reasons.) Which means that Obama crossed a crazy wingnut, and we all know that they’re so great at letting grudges go, right?
Naturally, Stanek was a busy bee in pushing the “Obama kills already born babies” line in 2008. Remember that smear? That was Jill Stanek’s smear. That’s her life’s work, really, that smear. Well, not the smear, but trying to get laws banning late term abortions passed under false pretenses. I’m sure you remember it, just a little, because it came up in a major presidential debate. That’s right---this “marginal” anti-choice activist community was able to get a question about their legend about born babies being killed into a major presidential debate. Which, if you’ll recall, ended up fucking McCain over royally.
Stanek isn’t that marginal if she can escalate bullshit that started with her up to a major presidential debate.
Now, as the past few days have shown, the belief that women are lying about their health complications in order to obtain those oh-so-pleasurable 3rd trimester abortions is complete and utter bullshit. This belief is one that’s perpetuated by those “marginal” extremist right wing groups that occasionally cough up doctor shooters. This belief is also held by major presidential candidate John McCain, who also sat by meekly while his VP candidate refused to call domestic terrorists what they are, because they’re so afraid of pissing off their base, who apparently likes clinic bombers too much to call them “terrorists”.
So, I ask you: How marginal are the extremist anti-choicers? They have presidential candidates echoing their most outrageous lies. They have presidential candidates living in fear of pissing them off. They have so much power that they can get a question about their fantasy of doctors killing born babies asked in a major presidential debate.
Liberals wish we could be that “marginal”.
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I still can’t get over that all of these so-called “Christians” have no problem whatsoever with the fact that Roeder shot Tiller on a Sunday morning inside a church just before services began.
If non-fundamentalists were under any illusion that the Christianists think of them as fellow Christians, I think it’s impossible to believe it now that a murderer has breached what he should have considered the sanctity of a church to kill someone in the name of his god.
I think there’s a good reason to think that the church was specifically targeted in an effort to claim that the only legit Christianity is the fetus-worshiping kind.
Actually, I don’t just see them targeting it to prove that it’s an illegitimate Christianity; I think that these people would consider it blasphemous for him to call himself a Christian, which, at least to me, takes it a step beyond that.
I see someone who actually practiced what Jesus taught being killed by someone who has a very strict, legalistic interpretation of their holy text - sounds terribly familiar.
There’s no reason I can find to deny the fact that this is only just beginning. Obama has Nazified GM, New Hampshire just legalized gay marriage, and the new targets have been picked already. I want to find some consoling thoughts, but none seem reasonable at all.
Kirchik was an ass at 17, a bigger ass at 20 and appears to have grown into an even larger ass now that he’s 25. He’s a wingnut because it gets him attention and he’s a tool because some people are just born that way.
I think Dr. Tiller was targeted at church simply because his routine there was known and he wouldn’t be on guard and protected there. It was the chink in his armor.
It’s definitely true that these so-called Christians don’t actually have any respect for the church they claim to revere. The way they’ve twisted its theology to make abortion the OMG worst possible sin despite the bible having pretty much nothing at all to say about it demonstrates that.
Religion is simply their most potent tool, besides terrorism, in their quest to return us to the good ol’ days when women were chattel.
Every single one of these pro-life fanatics, and the Republican establishment that defends their “murdering people is wrong, but...” rationalisations for their radicalism, owes Ward Churchill a huge, public apology.
There’s no reason I can find to deny the fact that this is only just beginning. Obama has Nazified GM, New Hampshire just legalized gay marriage, and the new targets have been picked already. I want to find some consoling thoughts, but none seem reasonable at all.
I fear the same. Quite honestly, I’ll be shocked if we get through Obama’s first term without a repeat of something similar to Oklahoma City happening again. Not to mention, I’ve never been more afraid for the safety of any president in my entire lifetime.
These are scary times we’re living in. And the leadership of the RNC has utterly failed in any effort to purge their party of the crazies - even worse, those are the very people they are embracing the most, as they see the continued defection of anybody even somewhat moderate on a daily basis.
Hell, even the crazies aren’t crazy enough for the goons in the base - they’re calling Mitch McConnell “limp-wristed” and demanding his resignation if he doesn’t stop that “evil librul spic woman” from getting on the Supreme Court. Mitch fucking McConnell is in danger of getting purged for not being sufficiently wingnutty for their tastes. Fuck me.
I spoke to a wingnut relative about Obama’s recent appointment of two moderate GOP congressmen - one from New York and one from Iowa - to positions in the administration. His response? “Good. We need to rid our party of all these pussies who don’t know what it means to be a real conservative”.
I think there’s a good reason to think that the church was specifically targeted in an effort to claim that the only legit Christianity is the fetus-worshiping kind.
The attack in Tennessee was on a Unitarian Universalist church, which fundies also don’t consider to be a “real” church. So, yes, I agree that part of the message is to demonstrate contempt for “weak” Christians who would allow a man like Dr. Tiller to attend their church. If it was just opportunistic, he could have shot him outside on the church steps or at his car.
Now we get to have our very own Thirty Years’ War even though the First Amendment was designed to avoid religious wars. Sigh.
The attack in Tennessee was on a Unitarian Universalist church, which fundies also don’t consider to be a “real” church. So, yes, I agree that part of the message is to demonstrate contempt for “weak” Christians who would allow a man like Dr. Tiller to attend their church. If it was just opportunistic, he could have shot him outside on the church steps or at his car.
I could see that. The whole ideological purification thing has been playing out quite a bit in the GOP this year - case in point, “moderate” Republican Arlen Specter fleeing his own party for not being sufficiently wingnutty enough.
As I understand it, Dr. Tiller was excommunicated from his former congregation, which was part of the diehard socially conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (based right here in St. Louis, yippee), and joined a more inclusive church that is part of the more liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (which ordains female pastors).
It’s definitely true that these so-called Christians don’t actually have any respect for the church they claim to revere. The way they’ve twisted its theology to make abortion the OMG worst possible sin despite the bible having pretty much nothing at all to say about it demonstrates that.
It gets better than that. The Bible actually doesn’t go very far in condemning the generic act of murder. God slaughters whole cities on a whim in the Old Testament. The apostles and future standard bearers of the faith regularly discuss the necessity of state executions and wars. Hell, the Christian faith didn’t really hit the main stage until Emperor Constantine claimed God lead him to victory in a military campaign against the German barbarians.
Christians have never had any trouble accepting “justifiable homicide”. So the idea that abortion is the “worst possible sin” in a religion that debated the merits of everything from stoning pregnant women to burning witches seems kinda… I don’t know… weak sauce?
Of course, the Bible also has a lot to say about women and their place in the social hierarchy. That life of the unborn baby (blond haired blue eyed boy) is held above the life of the (slutty sinful worthless whore) woman, shouldn’t surprise anyone.
not to derail, but what does “Nazified GM” mean? Is buying out a car company the same as murdering millions of Jews and other minorities? I’m really confused.
not to derail, but what does “Nazified GM” mean? Is buying out a car company the same as murdering millions of Jews and other minorities? I’m really confused.
Oh, sorry. Jonah Goldberg was talking with Glenn Beck about how he didn’t want to mention Hitler or Nazis, but it’s similar how Hitler nationalized Volkswagen to create a car for the people and fatherland, blah blah blah, and liberals are the real fascists.
GOLDBERG: ...I’m not calling Barack Obama a Hitler and I’m not calling him Nazis and all the rest. But, you know, in fascism, we saw the people’s car. We call it the Volkswagen, where the state said what we’re going to do is we’re going to take over the auto industry, government and business and unions are going to get together and we’re going to create cars to fill a political need rather than a market need and give people these cars.
but it’s similar how Hitler nationalized Volkswagen to create a car for the people and fatherland, blah blah blah, and liberals are the real fascists.
Which would totally be true if Obama actually created GM as an entity himself by executive order in collusion with the legendary George Soros, to fulfill the joint purposes of getting cars to the people and making his friend a shitton of money, and then exercised executive control by issuing statements regarding corporate policy and commercial direction.
You’d think when the history channel talks about nothing BUT the Third Reich and how EEVIL they were, there’d be no excuse for making such patently false analogies.
It’s hardly the first time assassinations have been carried out in church… Giuliano de’Medici, and all.
Honestly, though, speaking of terrorism, it almost seems like they are trying to model themselves after the IRA. As much as it gives me a jarringly dissonant sensation to say it, the rightwing pols have an almost Sinn Fein-like quality to their pronouncements.
GOLDBERG: ...I’m not calling Barack Obama a Hitler and I’m not calling him Nazis and all the rest. But, you know, in fascism, we saw the people’s car. We call it the Volkswagen, where the state said what we’re going to do is we’re going to take over the auto industry, government and business and unions are going to get together and we’re going to create cars to fill a political need rather than a market need and give people these cars.
If Goldberg had taken the time to look, he’d know that trade unions were banned under the Nazi regime, as they supported the NSDAP’s principal opponents (the SPD and the KPD) and thus represented a significant political threat to him. Unions had no hand in the founding of Volkswagen.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me… now the drug-addicted loudmouth shitstain is saying that he may be open to Sotomayor’s confirmation to the Supreme Court - with a caveat:
“[If Sotomayor is] a pro-life racist, I may have to change my view.”
To continue the Goldberg threadjack, how much of an idiot do you have to be to go on TV and announce to a national audience that one of the most popular cars ever made didn’t fill a market need? We have less than 20 people in our office, but there are two New Beetles out in our parking lot.
To continue the continuation of the Goldberg threadjack… Volkswagons suck ass. And no, not because they are foreign (I’m generally a fan of Japanese and German cars), but because they have the worst electrical system failures I’ve ever ever heard of.
Four of my friends have owned VWs over the past 10 years, and they were all diehard VW enthusiasts when they bought their cars - a Jetta, a Golf, a Cabrio, and a Passat. And all four of them found themselves pouring thousands of dollars into numerous repairs, and swore they would never own the pieces of shit again after they finally dumped them.
I think they’re neat-looking sleek cars and I used to want one, until everybody I know who owned one bitched about how many problems they had with them.
Anyway, my point being is that the fascist control of industry is underway. There are few options left for true American patriots than to turn violent. So I think this is going to be very bad.
“If Goldberg had taken the time to look, he’d know that trade unions were banned under the Nazi regime...”
...if Goldberg had taken the time to seriously research the asinine idea that Libruls = Nazis, he might not have written a piece of pseudo-intellectual crap like Liberal Fascism. And if his mother had taken the time to slip in her diaphragm a few decades ago…
Of course they won’t call these guys terrorists.They are the base.
And don’t rag n the Vee-Dub. It was one of the few Nazi projects that turned a profit withut punder. Herr Porsche designed cars that were workable even strained economy of late 1930’s Germany. And VWs rock to this day.
There are already many govt interventions in the auto industry. Coolest one is Clean Air Texas. If you live in Harris and adjacent counties, or in Dallas and Tarrant counties, you have to pay more for an inspection sticker and the extra revenue is used to help poor people trade in their old beaters by sending car dealerships up to $3000 every time working poor folks buy a new car from a pre-approved list of smaller cars. Few cried socialism when this was implemented and it’s helped push Houston down to the second or third most polluted city in the US.
But back to Tiller: Expect more attacks. And expect attacks on Obama. Unlike DHS which boasts of its successes and manufactures successes when there aren’t any, the Secret Service does not educate its enemies by publicizing its successes. They’re all like ‘secret” and stuff, just the way an effective counterterrorism organization should be. The Service understands that they are paid to make things not happen and to remain silent about the things that almost happened. I am almost sure there have been some “almost happeneds”, but I’ll never know, and that’s as it should be.
On The Rachel Maddow Show right now is a guest (in sillhouette and using a psuedonym for his own safety) describing how Scott Roeder had glued the doors shut to a Kansas City abortion clinic at least 4 times during the Bush Administration - a federal crime under the FACE Act - and was never once taken into custody by the FBI or prosecuted by the Bush DoJ. They had videotaped evidence of Roeder committing FEDERAL CRIMES, and the Feds did absolutely NOTHING.
In addition to the likes of Randall Terry, Operation Rescue, and Bill O’Reilly being complicit in the assassination of Dr. Tiller, it now appears that the federal government during the Bush Administration now has blood on their hands as well.
I still can’t get over that all of these so-called “Christians” have no problem whatsoever with the fact that Roeder shot Tiller on a Sunday morning inside a church just before services began.
I haven’t heard anyone be horrified that it happened in a church, except those of us who are horrified at the whole thing.
The Christians whom you’d think would be offended at murder in a church are all of the “such a shame, but he deserved it” variety.
Jill Stanek is certifiable. She claims she saw “aborted” babies left to die in closets. It’s a baldfaced lie as absolutely no evidence of infanticide was ever found. She’s pissed off that the hospital that fired her now has a room for the parents to hold their dead or dying babies--because the room is for the PARENTS. Heaven forbid the parents be allowed to hold their wanted but doomed baby--they’re murderers after all.
Comment #32: Caren-Sun-blocking Creator of Animorphic Pancakes on 06/03 at 08:27 PM
They act as if it’s just crazy that women who had late-term abortions might want rites for their children, might want to hold them and grieve over them, because they just cannot conceptualize the reason for these abortions, or that women who had them just might have feelings. It’s unbelievable. They act like it’s the equivalent of having satanic rituals over the bodies of slain babies rather than a way for parents of children who were fatally flawed to grieve over the lost opportunity.
This makes me think of the conservative clowns stockpiling ammunition. I think there is a fairly substantial group within the conservative movement who want to take Glenn Beck’s challenge to show us all that they outnumber us (even though they don’t), and I think there is a real fantasy among these people of “reminding everyone who has the guns”.
I have a 20 gauge in my closet at the moment, and I learned how to shoot a gun at age 7. And I have a vagina! What makes these lunatics think they’re the only ones who can figure out aim and fire? My dad’s family are Catholic Democrats who grew up on a farm, is anyone surprised that I learned how to properly handle a gun? I can also deal with electric fencing safely and learned to drive an ATV at 9 or 10. There are MANY rural-living people who are liberal. Have you seen how conservation easements and trusts have increased so rapidly?! I fricking hate them and their “real Virginia” bullshit.
Also Google ads? “Looking for unplanned pregnancy?” Really? Do you know what “unplanned” means? It means you probably WEREN’T LOOKING FOR IT!
I love the conservatives who stockpile ammo without giving a second thought to spare parts.
Are they homeschooling their kids as machinists and maintaining home shops and supply lines to raw materials so that after contracepting-ZOG-buddies take over, they can actually keep their guns firing for more than a year?
I hate to give them ideas. But come the fuck on. If I, a gun-virgin liberal Jew can think this far ahead, the WARRIURZ should have plans in place.
I suspect they’re not doing machinist training, because their kids would join the machinists’ union and the game would be up.
In addition to the likes of Randall Terry, Operation Rescue, and Bill O’Reilly being complicit in the assassination of Dr. Tiller. there is of course Harry Reid, Keith Olbermann, MSNBC and the NYT being complicit in the killing of Army Pvt. William Long, 23, of Conway, Arkansas by a domestic Muslim fanatic. Fucking disgusting.
According to O’Reilly, Dr. Tiller performed 60,000 abortions in his lifetime, a lot of them late term. He charged $5,000 a pop and was making a million dollars a year doing it. To put 60,000 abortions into some kind of understandable dimension, let’s assume an average length of 12 inches for each fetus. If you laid them all in a straight line one on top of another from their little rubbery feet to the soft spot on their heads, the total length would be 11 miles. Whew, I get tired just thinking about it. That’s quite an accomplishment.
Jim, Tiller was considered a saint by his allies and colleagues for treating all women, regardless of their ability to pay. And, if you know anything about late-term abortions, you know that the poorer a woman is, the more likely she is to be waylaid by cynical anti-choice roadblocks before she gets the abortion she needs. (Until so-called pro-lifers eliminate all obstacles to abortion on demand they forfeit any right to complain about late-terrm abortions.)
So even if Tiller managed to get $5000 per insured patient (which I doubt), he still had to pay for his clinic’s rent, his staff, his clinic security, his private security, and other costs out of that sum. If you’ve got the guts to condemn this man for leading a life of principle, go for it, but don’t snipe from the sidelines about how this was a money-making opportunity for the late Dr. Tilller. It insults everyone’s intelligence and makes you look like an innumerate weenie.
So even if Tiller managed to get $5000 per insured patient (which I doubt), he still had to pay for his clinic’s rent, his staff, his clinic security, his private security, and other costs out of that sum. If you’ve got the guts to condemn this man for leading a life of principle, go for it, but don’t snipe from the sidelines about how this was a money-making opportunity for the late Dr. Tilller. It insults everyone’s intelligence and makes you look like an innumerate weenie.
Nah, it makes him look like a minimum wage dimwit who has no idea how the business that employs him is actually run. A lower grad Joe the Plumber (who, as you recall, had trouble grasping that grossing $250K a year does NOT mean you’re making $250K a year).
Oh, hell, that too, Amanda. The only explanation I can think of is that they think that all of the fathers would have no part of this because their sperm is involved (and they can’t conceptualize a father not wanting his unborn child to suffer, either).
That page is seriously just where it kills me; it pretty much entirely disproves their whole idea of Tiller hacking apart healthy full-term babies to the delighted cackles of the evil mothers. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to be one of those mothers and be faced with that. People should be allowed to fucking grieve in dignity and without anti-choice assholes essentially mocking their grief since they weren’t noble enough to force their child to suffer. I don’t look down on women who carry babies to full term like that, because it’s their child, their body, and their choice about it, but I admire the courage it would take to release your child from suffering without even getting to see them alive. That’s fucking courage, and mocking their grief is inhuman.
jumpinjim, if he was performing the abortions on them that late, they more than likely were so deformed that they wouldn’t have been that long, wouldn’t have had heads you would recognize as such, or something like that. I hope you never, ever experience what these parents went through with a child of yours, and, if you do, I hope you have someone as caring as Dr. Tiller to help you if you make the merciful choice. You need to do some research before making idiot statements like that, because you are talking about shit you apparently cannot even conceptualize.
there is of course Harry Reid, Keith Olbermann, MSNBC and the NYT being complicit in the killing of Army Pvt. William Long, 23, of Conway, Arkansas by a domestic Muslim fanatic. Fucking disgusting.
I’m awaiting the evidence that Reid and Olbermann, etc, advocated the killing of army personnel, made up clever nicknames calling them murders, saying they deserved to die, had icons on their websites with them in crosshairs, posted website information regarding the personnel’s addresses, schedules, license plates, claiming they got what they deserved and all that other stuff. Why, I remember all those liberal groups firebombing the military, gluing Beck’s studio doors shut, stalking him, O’Reilly being required to wear a bullet-proof vest to church....
Just stop it, your pathetic attempts to pretend that your ideals are just as marginalized and oppressed and under constant threat of violence is laughable.
That’s fucking courage, and mocking their grief is inhuman.
As I’ve written elsewhere, they want the mother to bring the “imperfect"child to term, either to die immediately (causing the parents immense emotional pain) or to live a short, stunted life, racked with immense physical pain (not to mention more emotional pain for the parents and probable financial ruin for them if they don’t have perfect health care insurance)(or even if they did, they’d probably have to deal with some faceless private sector bureaucrat questioning the ‘necessity’ of these medical moves).
That’s isn’t being noble or, standing on principals. That’s just sadists, glorifying others’ pain.
Getting back to the Pantload threadjack (band name!), just a reminder that Jonah the Whale isn’t being an idiot when he does his librul fashism shtick, he’s being an evil SOB. He’s knows it isn’t true, but he says it anyway because he’s paid to.
Are they homeschooling their kids as machinists and maintaining home shops and supply lines to raw materials so that after contracepting-ZOG-buddies take over, they can actually keep their guns firing for more than a year?
(scratches head) Weeelll… I’m hardly a gun bunny, though I’ve fired my share of rounds, but I think modern weapons are a little more reliable than that. My father was an avid hunter, as is one of my brothers, and I only can think of a few occasions when he actually had to repair one of his weapons—like replace the magazine spring in one of the shotguns. But still, you probably have a good point in thinking that the serious ZOMG WE RE GONNA REVOLT!! WOLVERINES!!11ONE! types should be stocking up on at least a few parts. Not to mention reloaders and the associated supplies.
For crying out loud, Jim, do you think about numbers at all before you excitedly post them?
He’s charging $5,000 per abortion, and makes $1,000,000 per year. OK, so he’s performing 200 abortions per year. That sounds pretty plausible--it’s about what I’d expect. He’s done 60,000 in his lifetime, so apparently he’s been in practice for 300 years. Now I’m starting to get suspicious.
Let’s think about how many 60,000 is another way. Dr. Tiller took over his father’s practice in 1970. 39 years, 365.25 days per year--he’s been in practice for something like 14,000 days. Are you starting to realize that Bill O’Reilly is simply full of shit? In a way you’d have noticed if you’d spent six seconds thinking about it?
In addition to the likes of Randall Terry, Operation Rescue, and Bill O’Reilly being complicit in the assassination of Dr. Tiller. there is of course Harry Reid, Keith Olbermann, MSNBC and the NYT being complicit in the killing of Army Pvt. William Long, 23, of Conway, Arkansas by a domestic Muslim fanatic. Fucking disgusting.
First off, you shit-eating corpulent bag of pus, why don’t you go fellate a shotgun?
Second, I compel you to give me even ONE instance in which Reid, Olbermann, MSNBC, or the NYT were bloviating that enlisted members of the U.S. military were a bunch of evil monsters destined for hell. Because I can think of at least 25 times or so where that worthless sack of shit Bill O’Reilly characterized Dr. Tiller EXACTLY THAT WAY.
And quite the contrary, it is these groups and individuals who more often than not spoke GLOWINGLY of our service men and women - their criticism has ALWAYS been directed at the old men in Washington who put them into harm’s way by sending them off to die in an unecessary war.
Seriously, fuck off, you chickenhawk piece of shit terrorist loving asshole.
Llelldorin beat me to it: the “60,000” figure makes sense only to people who can’t handle simple arithmetic. Guess Jumpinjim was home-schooled.
Given the the “60,000” was pulled directly out of O’Reilly’s ass, why are we trusting the “$1,000,000 a year” figure again? Oh yeah, because abortion is wildly lucrative. Riiight.
In the 70s (when I had mine) a first-trimester surgical abortion was under $200, including anesthesia and follow-up. It’s now under $500, which means it was then, and is now, just about the cheapest surgical procedure you can get in the States--and RU486 (which isn’t surgery) is much cheaper than that.
They could gouge pregnant women on this.
They don’t.
Meanwhile, have you ever had a look at how much money changes hands in an adoption? Tens of thousands, easily, and before Roe v Wade dried up the stream of healthy white infants, the mothers were the only parties in those transactions that didn’t make out like bandits. You remember homes for unwed mothers? How do you think they were financed? The anti-abortion crowd isn’t against making money off of pregnant women. They’re against the fact that it’s not going to them anymore. (Clearly, an affront to God’s will).
Going back to Dr. Tiller’s practice, a little basic obstetrics for Jim: In pregnancy, there’s a fair chance of things going wrong. Initially, something over 50%--that’s more than half, Mathlete--of all conceptions fall out. Most of those simply don’t embed in the uterus, and surf out on the next menses. By the time a woman knows she’s pregnant, it’s down to 10%--mostly genetic or development anomalies that, as the medical authorities put it, are “incompatible with life.” The body stops wasting its resources and turns the pregnancy off. But again--one in ten. Not 1 in 10 women--1 in 10 pregnancies. That’s a huge sisterhood.
And so on, for three trimesters. Obviously, the closer you get to your due date, the more likely it’ll come off okay, but it’s still a crap-shoot, and not every mother wins. The late-term losers—anomalies that aren’t going to survive (and may be already dead), cancer patients who have to choose between chemo and motherhood, developmentally disabled rape victims--ended up with Dr. Tiller, if they were (relatively) lucky, and no, $5000 is not an unreasonable fee for a tricky NON-ELECTIVE surgery that uniquely exposes the surgeon to danger from people who get their morality from bumper stickers. (How much do you think a bypass or a gall-stone surgery goes for?)
As for women with late-term pregnancies-gone-bad who weren’t (relatively) lucky enough to have Dr. Tiller or someone like him, they add to America’s infant mortality rate--nearly the worst in the developed world. What does it say about the anti-abortion mob that they aren’t on that issue like white on rice?
Oh, I wasn’t trusting the $1x10^6 or the $5x10^3. I just refuse to waste my time chasing down accurate statistics to refute baloney, when it’s just as easy (and much more entertaining) to demonstrate that the provided numbers are internally inconsistent.
On second thought, Jim, fuck you. I’m tired of going along with the pretense that evil scumbags like Roeder aren’t the real face of the anti-abortion crowd. Assholes like you don’t have a problem with what he did--you just care that he was so obvious about what you low-lifes really believe. Eat shit and die.
Just ignore Jim - the right’s been pushing this meme for the past few days to try and drown out the talk of their involvement in Dr. Tiller’s murder, and he’s just a good little slave-boy to them. They want to try and make this old news so nobody will look into their statements and maybe make the connection between hateful far-right violence encouragement and hateful far-right violence.
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You know something that you never see them talking about , because they are so invested in demonizing women, is that in these later term cases, let’s use as an example a fetus that has not formed a brain and it’s discovered in the last trimester. Now, if you were to force that woman to give birth to that fetus, we can all probably have some imagining of the horror of her having to slowly come to terms wtih the fact that her baby really isn’t a baby, the baby isn’t smiling at her, it’s not feeling her love or her warmth, that there is no there there. The absolute horror of her having to hold this baby that she won’t be able to help feeling is a baby, and maybe even imagining that the baby is aware and has smiled at her, but of course the baby isn’t aware and hasn’t smiled and is dying. And then it slowly dies. So that is the horror they want to visit upon this woman, this mother who in these cases wanted this child.
But...there is a father. And the father is human. And the father will suffer all of these things as well. And that is why, when you read these first person accounts of this terrible event, and the trauma of this late term procedure, the father’s story is also told.
Because he suffered too. But they never talk about the father, because that would interrupt their demonization of the mother. That would require an acknowledgment of the inherent tragedy of these situations. That would be human.
You know what’s funny, in a darkly ironic way? The fact that when I clicked over to that ghoulish site making fun of the way parents grieve the untimely death of their wanted babies, they actually have a disclaimer about the pictures on the click through to the funeral are graphic.
These are the same assholes who find the most ghoulish, graphic pictures they can (sometimes not even of actual abortions) and put them on huge posters they carry around while they protest a clinic.
The photographs, quiet time with the deceased baby, and memento box are modern-day standards for parents who’ve lost their child, either to a pregnancy gone terribly wrong (and termination) or parents whose baby was stillborn (or who died as a neonate). These are both heartfelt and well-researched gestures that are overwhelmingly appreciated by grieving mothers, once the initial shock and horror has passed. Sometimes, amid the aftermath, shock, and lingering anesthesia, a mother might not be able to bring herself to see or hold her dead child, but a few days later will feel terrible guilt that she didn’t look at him and now he is abandoned: this is where the photographs and the lock of hair come in. Having those makes all the difference in being able to process what happened, acknowledge the baby--know that here was a little person whom she loved but who could not stay--and say goodbye and know peace.
Please trust me on this. The little ritual, carried out however the mother prefers, means everything in the way of acceptance and healing.
That the anti-choice assholes would mock--and misrepresent, and cast as ghoulish or somehow satanic--a practice that is so heartbreaking and necessary and, in this case, emblematic of level of the patient care and empathy Dr. Tiller’s clinic ....well, it says something about the kind of people we’re dealing with in anti-choice-land: their hearts are stone-cold and their own souls are dead; they’re spiritually bereft; they, themselves, are the evildoers that threaten civilized society.
No wait. Jim’s on to something. It’s repulsive that patients have to pay for major life-saving surgery! Who came up with that system? Health care, like the police and fire department, should be free.
I agree with you, Jim. Not only should abortion be free to patients, so should all health care.
But of course, doctors have to be paid, like police and fire fighters. What to do? What to do?
Hey, Molly, there are a few of us on this thread who homeschool. Personally, for academic reasons as in the public school can’t provide a reasonably challenging education for my gt kid. So kindly knock off the homeschooling as an insult crap.
Really, we need a new term to differenciate the homeschooled (who often score much better on standardized tests and do better in college than many of their counterparts, for a variety of reasons) from the Wingnut Homeschooled who grew up thinking that babies come from storks, that the earth is 6,000 years old (at most!), and that “math study” means “play outside while Mommy takes her valium”. I’m just saying, there’s a vast degree of difference there, and while I know that Molly meant the latter, we really do need a term to differenciate.
Come to think of it, the wingnuttiest folks I knew went to Christian schools, anyway, not home schools.
So let’s put the “poorly educated wingnuts” in a category called Christianist Schooling and lay off the “homeschoolers are teh suck” meme. Eh?
Oh, and don’t apologize for focusing on Tiller over Sonia. This is really important, and it’s not going to get much traction in the MSM, so it’s up to the blogs, I think. Yay, Pandagon!
Busting the unions, imprisoning and killing the union leaders, supplying the company with as many 60-Pfennig-a-day (what’s that in today’s money?) no-benefits workers as they want, get them lucrative military contracts, and promising them millions of yet-to-be-conquered customers?
Does this piss anyone else off at the press? The information about the realities of late term abortions has been out there for 36 years, yet those truths never hit the mainstream media until a doctor was killed. I am sick and tired of dishonest “debate” about abortion which is always dominated by lunatics who believe in the “born alive” act. It is past time for the debate over this issue to be led and completely dominated by women and men who have facts, science and (gasp) empathy on their side. Take to the airwaves! Take to the internet! Shout down the crazies with truth! Common sense must prevail before more lives are lost.
Molly, and then there are those of us who were actually homeschooled themselves, and hated it with the blind white-hot fury of ten thousand suns. Fuck it. Fuck it sideways with a rusty shovel.
Interesting about homeschoolers. Molly is not alone, I am totally guilty of that. I have only know two examples of homeschooling in my whole life, and both were through the internets. I am newer to posting on blogs, but for many years I have been posting on political message boards. The first example I met was a poster named Powerful155. He argued that slaves were happy and it was public school brainwashing that convinced the ignorant otherwise. He read all about it while being homeschooled as a child. He was a radical Libertarian anarchist and bugfuck nuts. The second example is a woman from the same message board who is a homeschooler herself. She has four kids and lives in western Washington state. She is the most vicious right wing person, and her meaness of character is matched only by her pure, not just ignorance, but true stupidity. She dropped out of high school at the age of 16 to have a baby, is a firm advocate of every right wing nut theory to come along including being a global warming denier and a crazed fanatical believe in creationism.
And she’s raising four just like her.
So I really have never given the subject any further thought. This is the first time I’ve even seen someone say that they homeschool who isn’t a right wing religious nut. I guess that’s going to take some getting used to, but I’ll keep it in mind.
Redwards, I think I already pointed out that the problem is that SOME home schools suck and SOME do not. I’m pretty sure I didn’t say it was roses and ponies and rainbows for everyone, evah. Neither did, I believe, Phylosopher.
Caton, there are actually quite a few “good home schoolers” out there, but we just don’t self identify as home schoolers in casual conversation because, uh, why would anyone care? It’s not like most normal people go around saying, “Well, I was public schooled and I was taught...”
So, really, the “obvious” home schoolers you meet are likely to be the really nutty ones.
I’ve actually known tons of people who home schooled for academic reasons - sometimes because the local schools were Teh Suck; sometimes because their kids had special needs that weren’t being met elsewhere.
I was “home schooled” before kindergarten - my mom taught me to read at an early age, and I was deathly bored in school when we were being taught our letters by route repetition and I was already reading well above my age level. I had a kind teacher who let me read by myself in a corner, but of course then the social bullying started. They offered to skip me up a grade, but that would have been worse. After that, it was private schools and then finally home schools to keep me safe (and I begged for home schooling, believe me) and challenged.
Without bragging because I don’t think standardized tests are worth much as a measure of intelligence, I’ve scored in an absurdly high percentile for both the SAT and, later, the GRE and I’ve acquired in 7 years 2 degrees - one in English and one in Electrical Engineering. I’m a pretty well-adjusted member of society, even if I’m sometimes an asshole online. (At least I’m aware of it.)
But if you met me, you wouldn’t suspect I was home schooled. THe last time I told a guy I was (in public!!), he insisted I couldn’t be home schooled because “home schoolers have bad social skills”. I told him we had social skills enough to not say rude shit like that, and he turned beet red. So I tend to stay out of those conversations in Real Life.
But, all that to say, home schooling CAN be a wonderful option, even if many Christianists abuse it. And I plan to home school, when I have children, for various good reasons.
Hey, there’s a funeral home down the street from me. I bet if you laid all those dead bodies end-to-end that the morticians there had to clean, dress, and bury it would stretch a good long ways. And they made money doing so! Hell, the average funeral costs $10,000, which, according to Jim’s math, is FOUR TIMES that of what Dr. Tiller was charging at $5000 per late-term abortion! Where’s the outrage there? Ghoulish, I tells ya. There was absolutely NO REASON for them to have to take money and perform that service, those funeral-home highrollers. If they hadn’t taken that money and performed that service, all those people would still be alive. Jim, will you please join me tomorrow afternoon to picket and protest and block the doors of that DEATH MILL down the street from me?
I think we need to be more willing to call people like jumpinjim on their pro-death views. Tiller saved women’s lives. jumpinjim would prefer that women just fuck off and die rather than have an abortion, even if it means taking the fetus along with her. Tiller provided therapeutic abortions. Some women need to have abortions to save their lives, and people like jumpinjim and Roeder want to take that option away from women. It’s one thing when anti-choice activists “just” want women to go through several months of morning sickness, fatigue, backache, etc., go through about 5 months of shame, risk being beaten up by family or the man who impregnated her, be stuck in abusive relationships, drop out of school, and live in poverty forever. But when anti-choice people want women to actually die, we need to call them on it.
OK, everyone settle down, I have a simple and elegant (if I do say so myself) solution to this.
Hereafter, we shall use the following words when describing people’s educational upbringing:
Public Schooled attended a state-run school.
Private Schooled attended a privately-run school.
Hippie Schooled attended a Montessori school.
Church Schooled attended a private church-run institution, like a catholic school.
Home Schooled received a complete education at home because their learning style and learning needs were incompatible with the public education system.
Home Churched received bare-bones education at home in order to comply with minimum state laws regarding education but mostly learned how the earth is only 5,000 years old, God Hates Fags, and that the biblical definition of Pi is 3.
Really, we need a new term to differenciate the homeschooled (who often score much better on standardized tests and do better in college than many of their counterparts, for a variety of reasons) from the Wingnut Homeschooled who grew up thinking that babies come from storks, that the earth is 6,000 years old (at most!), and that “math study” means “play outside while Mommy takes her valium”. I’m just saying, there’s a vast degree of difference there, and while I know that Molly meant the latter, we really do need a term to differenciate.
Come to think of it, the wingnuttiest folks I knew went to Christian schools, anyway, not home schools.
So let’s put the “poorly educated wingnuts” in a category called Christianist Schooling and lay off the “homeschoolers are teh suck” meme. Eh?
Good point, though I imagine that much of the homeschooling generalizations come from the fact that the most prolific and outspoken homeschooling advocates tend to be of the wingnut variety. I don’t have the hard data, but I believe the vast majority of homeschooling households identify themselves as conservative Christians.
But… I could be wrong, if someone has data indicating otherwise. All I know is the only homeschoolers I hear about in the media and know of in real life come from the conservative Christian ilk.
Warning Continue Thread Jack:
After Bush and the fundies managed to make the public school system worse with “no child left behind” and flat earth crap, the kids were pulled. Ms staydaddy continues the important work of saving the world while I teach two boys. Despite the fact that we never spend more than two hours a day in concentrated study they both are up to 3 years ahead of peers in selected subjects and have appropriate social skills, though I believe the bar has been artificially lowered (ie: their peers are seriously being short changed)
Of course, I’m concerned about personal bias and sustainability, but so far, so good.
I would homeschool if I had the patience to stay home and if we had the money for me to do it, but I don’t, and we don’t. I really like the idea of unschooling, too - even more than homeschooling, for that matter, and there is a difference.
Despite the fact that we never spend more than two hours a day in concentrated study they both are up to 3 years ahead of peers in selected subjects and have appropriate social skills, though I believe the bar has been artificially lowered
An unfortunate truth, wven when I was a kid. I spent half the time studying as a home schooler than I did warming a seat in a public school, yet I rocketed forward. I blame my high percentile scores on the SAT not to my Awesome Intelligence (which does not exist) but because my competitors in public school were receiving a much worse education than I was. Automatic leg up.
NCLB just made a bad situation worse. Even when I was a child, my dad was furious at how much we were being “taught to the test”.
INTPagan, what is un-schooling? Is it no (or few) schoolbooks, but with nature walks and life lessons and car repair and cooking and things you need to know but with a bit of math tossed in? I’ve seen that, though never tried it. Or something else?
Essie, those are illuminating thoughts and experiences, thanks.
Mighty ponygirl - I love that list! I am definitely stealing the home churched one. And you are right, that is a much better description for the kind of homeschooling i am talking about.
I like posting there because the commentators are so knowledgeable, but also open. I was posting a little bit on another feminist blog (i’m not going to say which, and the fact is, it’s a great blog and provides a big service) and it felt as if too many of the commentators were very condescending and tended to swarm on people. They never took anything as a teaching moment, but rather, as an opportunity to make someone else feel like shit. I think there is a really good atmosphere here.
I don’t have the hard data, but I believe the vast majority of homeschooling households identify themselves as conservative Christians.
Wel, possibly, but take the “conservative” out of there and I’d definitely believe it, just because the vast majority of American households *period* identidy as “Christian” on census forms, even when they rarely go to church more than once or twice a year. Consider also that “conservative” has been yoked by the Republican party, and you reach the twisted problem that “Conservative Christian” can mean rich-republican-who-goes-to-church-sometimes (like my dad) and obsessed-with-the-evangelical-church-and-sees-demons-around-every-corner (my mom, circa 1990, sanity is prevailing now).
Also not surprising in that the rich tend toward the Republican/conservative spectrum (I’ve got mine) and it’s pretty tricky to homeschool when poor. All that to say, there’s probably some statisical skewering in there somewhere.
Hereafter, we shall use the following words when describing people’s educational upbringing:
Public Schooled attended a state-run school.
Private Schooled attended a privately-run school.
Hippie Schooled attended a Montessori school.
Church Schooled attended a private church-run institution, like a catholic school.
Home Schooled received a complete education at home because their learning style and learning needs were incompatible with the public education system.
Home Churched received bare-bones education at home in order to comply with minimum state laws regarding education but mostly learned how the earth is only 5,000 years old, God Hates Fags, and that the biblical definition of Pi is 3.
Well… that’s a lot.
Truth be told, most 10 year olds have almost no say in what sort of environment they will recieve their education, so maybe it’s best not to lay into people for something they probably had no control over?
I’m glad some here spoke up in defense of some forms of homeschooling, and I say that because it made me check me own prejudices on the matter - truth be told, I had a very negative connotation of it in my mind, because I most typically associate it with the creationist “Jesus rode a dinosaur” variety of, umm… “education” (if you can call it that). I know some people who were raised with this sort of education and have had to work very hard to unlearn it later in their lives as they became exposed to, uhh… reality?
Myself, I was educated in Catholic schools, and given the alternatives available, it was probably the best option for me. I grew up in St. Louis City - which has one of the worst urban public school systems in the United States (just lost its accreditation a few years ago and has always been a piss-poor system) - and so my choices were to either go to STL City public school - where my chances of advancing beyond high school would have been severely limited - or go to Catholic school, where my options would be pretty wide open.
Of course, there was a major downside, as I had to completely unlearn all of the bullshit Catholic dogma that I had absorbed in my youth, but in the end, it all worked out.
Also… how do we categorize colleges and universities in all of this?
I mean, if we’re using the same standards as listed above, President Clinton was “church schooled” for his law degree - he went to Georgetown (a Catholic Jesuit university).
LOL, and I want to note that my horrible spelling online is not reflective of other Home Schooled people, but rather a combination of a crappy keyboard and an unwillingness to proof read online posts. Heh.
Unschooling is this. It’s a far better explanation than I can give. It’s based off of the idea that kids learn simply by living their lives, playing, and observing the world around them, and that rigid schooling represses their creativity. I prefer the idea because I think different kids have different strengths that need to be developed, rather than everyone being taught to the median common denominator in every subject.
I wish I had been homeschooled, or unschooled, or something, because public schooling was a disaster for me as a pretty badly ADHD kid - my grades, which had been sky-high for elementary school, plummeted in high school. Seven years after getting out of high school (just a few months ago, in fact), with minimal study, I rocked the fuck out of the SATs in order to start college, and I’ve always done well on tests. I’m smart enough in general; I just don’t do well with strictly regimented curricula. The best I ever did was in classes I had to retake after failing; in night school they let you work at your own pace, and I was nicknamed “Speedy” for finishing all three of my classes at the fastest rate the school had seen, and with As. ::shrugs:: I don’t think it’s because I’m exceptionally brilliant; I think it’s because different people work differently, and unschooling takes this to heart.
DTG - yeah, I’ve heard that Catholic schools actually do provide a really quality education, and aren’t too heavy on the dogma these days. If I was in an area with a horrid public school system and I couldn’t afford to or did not have the time to homeschool, that would be my choice (provided I could afford it).
Also… how do we categorize colleges and universities in all of this?
I mean, if we’re using the same standards as listed above, President Clinton was “church schooled” for his law degree - he went to Georgetown (a Catholic Jesuit university).
From what I’ve seen, there’s a huge difference between Catholic Schooled (where you usually get a decent education) and Evangelical Schooled (where you get a huge dose of Teh Crazy). Then again, my first uni was an Evangelical Uni and they alternated between heaping on Teh Crazy as fast as they could, whilst still having a fairly accurate (if somewhat dated) evolutionary / big bang oriented science department (which I’m conflating here under Science-that-Evangelicals-Usually-Hate). Mind you, they didn’t publish that in the alumni letter, and we did get a lot of complaints when the Philosophy teachers tried to teach Nietzsche.
INTPagan: Interesting. My first reaction was “but Home Schoolers DO that too!” because they usually have so much time left over in the day to play, heh. As a quilter, I *can* vouch that quilts will teach you a lot of algebra in a hurry, although unless you go in for applique (which I don’t), you won’t know much of anything about circles. Hm. Sounds like it would be good for some of the ADHD kids I knew, though.
The thing is, unschooling is generally done at home, so pretty much all unschooling can be called homeschooling (although the Reggio Emilia method of childcare sounds similar from what little I know), but most homeschooling cannot be called unschooling, if that makes sense.
I do know some relatively sane people who went to Liberty University and are still evangelicals, but, then, I haven’t exactly discussed science with them.
DTG, I’m not sure what your hangup is. In each list item except the latter, the operative word is “Schooled” to indicate that there was an education going on there, and the descriptive word simply describes the environment in which that education was delivered which may account for particular variations in the educational content but not in the overall knowledge delivery.
If you feel that the “Church Schooled” description somehow denigrates people who have had their education at a religious institution instead of at a secular institution, then that’s really a matter of interpretation and personal bias. But the point of using the term “Schooled” as opposed to, I dunno, “Indoctrinated” was specifically to address the quality of education that the (former word’s) environment delivered.
Also, even an evangelical private school (Church Schooled) is going to require accreditation by the state in order to operate. And while the stripe of fundamentalist indoctrination may be a little wider at an evangelical school than at a Catholic school, I’m not going to assume that just because someone got their diploma at New Life High they didn’t get a solid 3-Rs education. Yeah, they might not have a full compliment of History and Biology knowledge, but hell, I sucked at Chemistry.
“In the 70s (when I had mine) a first-trimester surgical abortion was under $200, including anesthesia and follow-up. It’s now under $500, which means it was then, and is now, just about the cheapest surgical procedure you can get in the States--and RU486 (which isn’t surgery) is much cheaper than that.”
That is a little off.
At Planned Parenthood (usually the cheapest provider) the nationwide range of cost for an abortion is 350-650 dollars in the 4-10 week range and that is including untrasound, bloodwork, access to a 24 hour nurse phone number for 6 weeks after the procedure, the whole package. That is the same whether surgical or medical (ru-486). The abortion pill costs just as much because those patients get the same workup as a surgical patient, they just spend the last 15 minutes of the appointent geting instruction on taking the medication rather than getting the surgery and they have a follow-up appointment with further examsand blood work included in the price. That medication is 97% effective but if further treatment is needed later to complete the abortion, PP does it at no further cost.
That is the official PP info, which I dispense for a living, by the way.
True, Mighty Ponygirl, but they might have pretty weak requirements in regards to simple science, like, say, how old the earth is, or somesuch, depending on the state. I would trust a private evangelical education in some states, but in some parts of the South? Forget that shit.
Then again, I may not be fully aware of the requirements everywhere - I just know that they’ve done a lot of work to dismantle the educational system in my state (Texas).
To flip the conversation back a little bit with an anecdote, my best friend’s mother is a nurse. Between her two daughters she had three miscarriages and was never allowed to see or hold the stillborn children*. So she has been, for the past 20 years, making flannel quilts for mothers of stillborns. The quilts can either be used in the burial or wrapped around the fetus until the funeral, washed and returned to the parents as a memorial item. Having something to hold onto can make all the difference when the child was wanted and the parents don’t want to forget the life that almost was.
*as she works in Canada I would not be suprised if these quilts also go to women in the hospital who have had mid-to-late-term therapeutic abortions as well. In discussions we’ve had she’s made it clear (as a devout Christian) that she sees no difference morally between a still birth, a miscarriage and a therapeutic abortion.
GumbyAnne - Yeah, I was looking at the websites of different places whenever I was trying to find somewhere to volunteer (no one seems to be accepting volunteers for anything where I am), and I was amazed at how cheap it is compared to most other medical treatments I’ve seen. I mean, I’ve been charged a thousand to go to the fucking emergency room and have bloodwork, for gods’ sakes.
From what I’ve seen, there’s a huge difference between Catholic Schooled (where you usually get a decent education) and Evangelical Schooled (where you get a huge dose of Teh Crazy).
Oh, trust me, I got plenty of Teh Crazy in my Catholic education… I think the principal difference between Catholic versus Evangelical schools, however, is that most Catholic schools relegate the indoctrination of Teh Crazy exclusively to the religion courses and mandatory church attendance.
Evangelical schools often interweave their religious dogma into their entire curricula, whereas the Catholic schools (or at least, the ones I attended) tend to let chemistry be chemistry, biology be biology, math be math, history be history (granted history in any American primary or secondary school - public, private, or parochial - tends to be Western-centric, but that’s a whole other bag of beans), English Lit be English Lit, et cetera. The Jesuits in particular place a huge emphasis on the importance of open education (which is why many Jesuit universities are often in conflict with the Vatican), and we read things like 1984, The Jungle and Catcher in the Rye in high school.
Probably the biggest difference between Catholic schools and Evangelical schools is that the Catholic schools actually treat evolution as scientific fact, and creationism isn’t taught or treated as an alternate theory.
DTG, I’m not sure what your hangup is. In each list item except the latter, the operative word is “Schooled” to indicate that there was an education going on there, and the descriptive word simply describes the environment in which that education was delivered which may account for particular variations in the educational content but not in the overall knowledge delivery.
My apologies, MP… I re-read what I wrote after I posted it and I didn’t exactly phrase it the way I meant to say it. Sorry it came off a bit assholish and defensive.
I guess the point I was trying to get to was that I think we should be careful about judging the character of others based on the type of educational upbringing they had. And I realize that isn’t what you were doing, but it was more my own projection of my own negative assumptions that I found myself associating with people who were homeschooled. Anyway, as others chimed in, I became aware that I shouldn’t be so quick to judge, and I sort of threw my own judgmentalism on the matter onto your post, as I didn’t really interpret it right at first glance.
Anywho… just wanted to apologize for that. Still not fully awake yet.
phylosopher and Essie - I apologize, and I won’t do it again.
I do get that there’s a difference between people who take their kids out of public school because the education offered is too narrow, and the ones who do so because the offerings aren’t narrow enough.
* * *
And GumbyAnne, thank you for the update.
That, incidently, is the first time I ever mentioned having an abortion in public, and since this last weekend’s events, I’m not going to dog the subject ever again:
My actual name is Marla Brunker.
I had an abortion.
If anyone wants a piece of me, come and get it.
gwangung: That’s isn’t being noble or, standing on principals. That’s just sadists, glorifying others’ pain.
They know they’re principled by making others suffer for it, and are proud to have conquered their empathy.
It shows in the “you must not lie, not even falsely tell a person bent on murder that you do not know where their intended victim is” scenario. They feel all virtous about getting that hypothetical victim killed, and don’t even consider the entirely truthful alternatives, “That is none of your business”, “I won’t tell you” or “I think it would be better if you dropped that gun and went home”, because those might get them hurt.
To something completely different, Essie, re: homeschooling: I guess if I had got the option to stay home and read all day, I’d have been two years ahead of where I ended up in math, one ahead in biology, two back in chemistry (for lack of a lab), vastly behind in music, and without a single foreign language. Although, going by the half-year in which my mother checked me doing my homework, I might have quit at 16 and moved out to preserve some shreds of my sanity.
DTG, great explanation of a parochial education--it describes mine to a tee. Of course, when wise-asses in religion class would ask why dogma said one thing, and science another, the nuns would say it was a paradox, and move on.
Ah Jesuits, the intellectuals of the Catholic community. Which is why John Paul and now Joey the Rat are placing Opus Dei nutjobs in influential positions once held by Jesuits.
Frankly, I think the church hierarchy is shooting itself in the foot. They are going to soon resemble the ignorant evangelicals.
That, incidently, is the first time I ever mentioned having an abortion in public, and since this last weekend’s events, I’m not going to dog the subject ever again
I haven’t had one, but it’s gotten to the point where if I ever get polled on it, I will lie and say that I have. Just out of solidarity.
Inge, half my comments get eaten - I just copy everything I post and leave it in memory until I see my post. Anyway, definitely home school is not for everyone, and definitely not for all teenagers. Most home schoolers call it quits in the teen years, for many reasons, and figure that they laid the best foundation they could. It tends to work pretty well - the kid has the basics and can still avoid daily teen-struggles-with-parent episodes. And then there’s that whole prom thing.
I think that for the really hardcord evangelical schools that really spend more time indoctrinating the kids than they do teaching them, we could also introduce the term School Churched
That unschooling page really rubbed me the wrong way…
Have you ever described ‘red’ to a person who is color blind? Sometimes, trying to define unschooling is like trying to define red. Ask 30 unschoolers to define the word and you’ll get thirty shades of red.
I just can’t stand it when people trying to introduce others to a concept insist on bloviating about how the idea is so deep and multifaceted and advanced that it defies thought. No, it doesn’t. Get to the damn point already. Ugh.
Bad of me to even mention it, but I guess it just bugs me. (WARNING: TV Tropes link; your afternoon will be forfeit.)
Realityfighter: I feel the same way about the first part of that page, too, even though I posted it, but it proceeded to explain it, which made it worth posting to me.
I will have none of your TVTropes destroying my ability to function as a human being for the next month. Begone!
Jill Stanek just posted the names, addresses, and photos of the two remaining late term abortion providers in the country. The FBI agent I talked to didn’t even know what the FACE act was. It can’t hurt to inform them of this shit. It’s a federal crime. The stakes are up now.
I need to find Eric Holder’s number. Sigh. I’d recommend others do the same.
I despise everything Stanek stands for and I think she is batshit crazy. But I don’t think she has posted the addresses, at least not as far as I can see.
I think focusing on the particular doctors, and posting photos of them and the clinics 3 days after Tiller’s murder is sketchy but we need to get our facts straight. (If the addresses are there, it would be helpful to know where on the site they are.)
I just can’t stand it when people trying to introduce others to a concept insist on bloviating about how the idea is so deep and multifaceted and advanced that it defies thought. No, it doesn’t. Get to the damn point already. Ugh.
Willow: [proudly] Oz is a werewolf.
Buffy: It’s a long story.
Oz: I got bit.
Buffy: Apparently not that long.
Llelldorin on 06/04 at 02:18 AM: He’s done 60,000 in his lifetime, so apparently he’s been in practice for 300 years. Now I’m starting to get suspicious.
You should get suspicious…of your own ability to analyze data.
A million a year was Dr. Tiller’s take. His clinic was grossing far more. You don’t divide the cost per abortion into his take home pay to find out how many abortions he did in a year.
60,000 abortions over 40 years comes out to 1,500 abortions per year. If he works 250 days per year you get 7.5 abortions per day.
Are you starting to realize that Bill O’Reilly is simply full of shit? No, but I’m starting to think you are full of shit.
60,000 abortions over 40 years comes out to 1,500 abortions per year. If he works 250 days per year you get 7.5 abortions per day.
Let’s see, Dr. Tiller was 67 when your hero murdered him, so he would have been 27 forty years ago. Still in the Navy, according to Wikipedia. Spent his hitch doing 7.5 abortions a day, according to you.
Took over his late father’s family practice, spent a few time in a PCP practice that didn’t initially involve abortions--but according to you, did 7.5 abortions a day, and that was before Roe.
And according to you, he made a mill a year (shocking!--everyone knows that ‘wingers are the only ones supposed to make more than six figures p.a.), but still never took more than a 2-week vacation for 40 years, while knocking out 7.5 abortions a day, day in, day out.
It’s the only way Jim’ll ever get fucked, that’s for sure. And therein lies his eagerness to damn Dr. Tiller.Getting a woman pregnant is the visible sign that dipshit fucked a woman once, and that he has PROOF.
According to the state of Kansas, there were 228 late term abortions performed in the state in 2008. If we assume that the number of late term abortions is approximately the same every year because the number of abortions generally is about the same every year, Dr Tiller would be far short of 60,000.
Thanks, Jill. All the stories in the news and blogs about how women needed late tri abortions and got them sickens, we just know they’re lying. Now we have names and photos we can follow for the other baby-killers, we can make sure they meet the same end as Tiller. Good work, Jill. Lock and load!
Posted by: Richard at June 4, 2009 4:38 PM
Yeah, she’s not inciting to riot or terrorism or anything.
I was appalled and incensed to get my daily Air America email, and read Lionel’s editorial, in which he wrote:
“This past week some folks were trying to suggest that Bill O’Reilly and his band of nutso right-wingers were responsible for inspiring the murder of abortion practitioner Dr. George Tiller. That suggestion is almost as insane as the murder of Tiller itself. The world is awash in nutty suggestions that can’t be taken seriously. Ozzy Osbourne’s “Suicide Solution” allegedly inspired a batso kid in 1984 to off himself. “Romeo and Juliet,” I’m sure, has also given wayward teens suicidal ideations. Nothing and no one, neither the Bible nor O’Reilly, can be held responsible for death, murder and carnage. “
I still can’t get over that all of these so-called “Christians” have no problem whatsoever with the fact that Roeder shot Tiller on a Sunday morning inside a church just before services began.
If non-fundamentalists were under any illusion that the Christianists think of them as fellow Christians, I think it’s impossible to believe it now that a murderer has breached what he should have considered the sanctity of a church to kill someone in the name of his god.