Republicans Support Imprisonment of Doctors, Pharmacists, Etc.

7:02 pm EST February 28th, 2006 | Politics | 87 Comments

South Dakota’s new anti-choice law says:

No person may knowingly administer to, prescribe for, or procure for, or sell to any pregnant woman any medicine, drug, or other substance with the specific intent of causing or abetting the termination of the life of an unborn human being. No person may knowingly use or employ any instrument or procedure upon a pregnant woman with the specific intent of causing or abetting the termination of the life of an unborn human being.

Any violation of this section is a Class 5 felony.

A Class 5 felony in South Dakota is “five years imprisonment in the state penitentiary”.

George Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney all agree with this provision.

They all believe that a medical professional should be put in prison for up to five years for in any way dispensing health care to a woman if it relates to an abortion.

Let’s ask America what they think about that.

Polling shows that the vast majority of Americans, while they support certain restrictions on abortion (as I personally do), believe the procedure should be available and that we don’t throw doctors in jail for providing health care.

 

Cultists Continue To Come Home

6:02 pm EST February 28th, 2006 | Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Like lemmings over the cliff, the conservative media continues to return to their previous strategy of marching in lockstep with the Bush team. (the current argument is that if terrorists have access to only 3% of our ports, its no big deal)

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The Need To Whitewash

6:02 pm EST February 28th, 2006 | Politics | 34 Comments

Conservative cultists like to set up a fake frame for reporting on the Iraq war. The media is only supposed to report on positive developments, even when the negative far outweighs the positive. To do otherwise is to demonstrate “bias”. The media is also supposed to take the administration’s interpretation of reality as gospel, throwing out any other viewpoints or independent observable facts that betray the Republican version of “the truth”. In many ways modern conservatism has come to resemble the moral ambiguity they claimed for so many years to be the prevailing mindset of the left.

The mindset is clearly on display here in Rich Lowry’s “assesment” of Iraq at the moment:

The civil war that has been averted would be a catastrophe on all levels. It would be a political catastrophe for the Bush administration. If it happened before November, Republicans would lose Congress, and Bush’s presidency would be effectively over. It would be a humanitarian catastrophe.

Leave aside for a moment the fact that the current wave violence is not over (and in fact, the fighting has never been over, it’s just that the intensity of the non-stop violence has increased in the last week), but look at the prioritization Lowry places on the mess in Iraq.

1) OMG THIS COULD BE BAD FOR REPUBLICANS AND THE PRESIDENT IN THE FALL ELECTIONS

2) Oh, and some Iraqis might get killed too.

This is what happens when conservatives believe their own nonsense, and exhibit a moral decay that puts the lives of people secondary to political pursuits, because the facts refuse to play along with the story line that has been written. It’s not a good look.

 

Oh My God

1:02 am EST February 28th, 2006 | News | 60 Comments

I’m not sure when you cross the threshold, but this sure sounds like a war of some sort – civil or otherwise

Grisly attacks and other sectarian violence unleashed by last week’s bombing of a Shiite shrine have killed more than 1,300 Iraqis, making the past few days the deadliest of the war outside of major U.S. offensives, according to Baghdad’s main morgue. The toll was more than three times higher than the figure previously reported by the U.S. military and the news media.

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It’s Duck Time

7:02 pm EST February 27th, 2006 | Politics | 43 Comments

Bush Ratings At All-Time Low

The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush’s approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the Iraq war has risen to a new high.

Americans are also overwhelmingly opposed to the Bush-backed deal giving a Dubai-owned company operational control over six major U.S. ports. Seven in 10 Americans, including 58 percent of Republicans, say they’re opposed to the agreement.

Coast Guard Has Port Co. Intel Gaps

Citing broad gaps in U.S. intelligence, the Coast Guard cautioned the Bush administration weeks ago that it could not determine whether a United Arab Emirates-based company seeking a stake in some U.S. port operations might support terrorist operations.

Menendez, Clinton Introduce Bill to Ban Foreign Government Control of U.S. Ports

United States Senators Robert Menendez and Hillary Rodham Clinton, joined by Senators Frank R. Lautenberg, Barbara Boxer and Bill Nelson, today introduced legislation to ban companies owned by foreign governments from controlling operations at U.S. ports. The bill would block the pending sale of U.S. port operations to Dubai Ports World, a company owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates.

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 Lawmakers from all parts of the country and of every political stripe called on President Bush to reverse course on this deal to outsource control of our ports to a foreign government, Menendez said.  Instead he chose stall tactics that only mask his administration s plan to move full speed ahead with this sale. Since the president won t act to keep our ports safe, we will.

Time to get an up or down vote on securing America.

 

Art Snobs

3:02 pm EST February 27th, 2006 | Uncategorized | 7 Comments

I’m glad I’m not alone in my feelings about the love piled on comic artist Chris Ware. Then again, I think J. Scott Campbell, Jim Lee, and John Byrne are among the best illustrators of all time.

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Ehrlich Out Of Touch

3:02 pm EST February 27th, 2006 | Uncategorized | 10 Comments

Our Republican governor Bob Ehrlich must have gotten a call from the mothershipt today

Speaking with reporters today, the Republican governor not only reiterated that he was coming around to Bush’s view on the sale of port operations in Baltimore and elsewhere to a Dubai firm, but he offered his unequivocal support for the president’s domestic eavesdropping program.

“I wholeheatedly support the President as regard to domestic surveillance,” he said. “I want to know what the bad guys are saying in wartime.”

Asked if he believes the President was on firm legal ground to approve the eavesdropping without first going to court, Ehrlich, a lawyer, said: “Absolutely. I do.”

Like his Lt. Governor, Bob Ehrlich is out of touch with average Marylanders. He’s too far to the right for Maryland, and that’s why he should lose in November.

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Jamaican Election

2:02 pm EST February 27th, 2006 | Uncategorized | 8 Comments

My mother, who is very active in Jamaican politics, was quite excited this weekend as Jamaica now has its first female prime minister…

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NBC Plays Pravda

1:02 am EST February 27th, 2006 | News | 36 Comments

Well, I’m glad someone had the stomach to watch this week’s edition of Meet the Press, because it was frankly beyond ludicrous for a major public affairs program like MTP to blatantly exclude any sort of Democrat from their show (by God, even Joe Lieberman would have been an improvement over the Elephantfest). Even the old Soviet Union would have pretended a little better than that. Who knew GE would make Stalin seem like such a champion of media balance.

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We Need Stem Cell Research

11:02 pm EST February 26th, 2006 | Politics | 2 Comments

Dr. Hans Keirstead is working on stem cell research that could save people’s lives and possibly aid those with massive damage to their systems. It is a blight on our society that his type of research is being stymied. 60 Minutes did a story on the issue Sunday, and here Dr. Keirstead takes head-on the conservative perversion of ethics that is hurting people:

And here is one of the best graphical depictions of what stem cells could hold for mankind:

>> Embryonic Stem Cells And The Wounded Warrior
>> Stem Cell Research Budget Approved In Maryland
>> Stem-cell stance divides GOP

 

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