G.O.P.'s New Plan: Only The Rich May Run

If you want to see an animation of the 21 named hurricanes in the 2005 season, from Arlene to Wilma, go here, click on the arrow and wait for it to load.

I don't know why it should astound me that the media - virtually all right-wing owned at this point - has now created a spin about the hurricanes in which they, cleverly, mention Global Warming, but only do so to say that that this spate in hurricanes is "just part of a cycle" due to warming seas.

Hmmm. Warming seas.

Excuse me, but why are the seas so much warmer as we proceed through this la-de-da-no-problem-folks-ignore-that-man-behind-the-curtain cycle?

Could it be because Global Warming has caused the warming of those seas? Does the fact that 50% of Arctic ice has melted in the last 50 years tell them that this isn't an ordinary 25-year cycle, but part of a much bigger picture?

Nah, more people might actually wake up from their ignorance and demand changes if media admitted that the heat and smog we're created - that our industries have created - have turned us into Planet Greenhouse.

We are going to continue to get wacked until people wake up. Mother Nature is fighting back and in an all-out war, guess what? We're going to lose any way you cut it.

Speaking of getting wacked, today the New York Times finally printed a story that, after five years of watching the insanity unfold under Bush, should be anti-climactic, old news.

The headline reads: Former Powell Aide Says Bush Policy Is Run By Cabal

It has been so clear since the days before we entered Iraq that our foreign policy, most notably represented by the debacle in Iraq, is the deformed brain child of a handful of wing-nuts, the main players of which are Rumsfeld and Cheney.

Yet, here we are two-and-a-half years later still getting wacked by Bush et al and still in denial about it.

Thanks to the great job by reich-wing media, Republican lockstep and the masters of spin and deception surrounding Bush et al - including Rove - the fact that this administration is completely dysfunctional is not only "news" but, hilariously - although in a dark way - "controversial."

Come on. For anyone paying attention for the last five years, it's not controversial at all, but the truth.

Wake up, people.

One quote says it all:

"Mr. Wilkerson suggested that the dysfunction within the administration was so grave that 'if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence.'"

Oh we see it, those of us who've been looking for five years, have seen it and it makes our stomachs turn.

The tip of that iceberg in terms of the incredible incompetence and heartlessness - the disconnect from the reality of how their policies affect real people - is revealed today in the testimony of FEMA employee Marty J. Bahamonde.

His desperate e-mails to FEMA officials regarding the dire situation affecting people in New Orleans and the levee breaches were ignored, so he sent one directly to Michale Brown stating: "I know you know, the situation is past critical. Hotels are kicking people out, thousands gathering in the streets with no food or water."'

An aide to Mr. Brown responded hours later that Director Michael Brown would need a restaurant in Baton Rouge that night. "It is very important that time is allowed for Mr. Brown to eat dinner," the message said.

Like Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned, Brown ate while New Orleans drowned.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Everything's either been gutted or is on the table (such as the new move to privatize our national parks), part of the ongoing agenda to kill this country and all she had come to stand for: equality, opportunity, fairness, intelligence, preservation (of her land, water, air) and real liberty other than the choice to buy product a or b.

Fortunately, Wilkerson's got the credentials to say that Bush's adminstration is dysfunctional. Besides being Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff at the State Department from 2001 to early 2005, Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired Army colonel and former director of the Marine Corps War College.

It's so tragic, so wounding when you love your country and know what she could have been after Clinton. With our debt paid down and the love of the world after 9/11, we could have completely reshaped our energy priorities and created an entirely new philosophical paradigm promoting peace and sustainability.

Nope, we chose the $300 tax cut - who cares that billionaires get enough to fund some cities for a year as a result - and the "we're not changing, we'll just drop bombs and take Iraq's oil, and, now that that's done, how about we go out for Chinese tonight and stop at the mall afterwards?" mentality.

Now the coals are heaping upon our heads. This country's sin of not paying attention and electing such a selfish, stupid person as this President and his cabel of arrogant and self-serving fascists is coming home to each of us, up close and personal.

But it is said a people gets the leaders it deserves. If you, as a voter, insist upon remaining inept at understanding science, politics and the nature of the world and our place in it - while arrogantly proclaiming the U.S. can do whatever it likes - then you get someone like Bush.

If you understand, but you're too busy or "angry at the system" to get involved, refusing to study the issues, vote or support a good candiate for local, state and federal offices, you get someone like Bush anyway.

And those in perpetual denial who dared to label us "unpatriotic" in order to silence us from speaking about the lies, spite, corruption, ineptitude and callousness creating disasters for us?

Or those who have been justifiers or apologists for Bush, his henchmen and his policies while slandering Democrats?

I don't even want to go there. There would be a special place in hell reserved for them, if there were any hell other than the one we are seeing unfold right here, on earth.

As Dr. Phil says, there are no victims, only volunteers. And everyone who remained ignorant about who Mr. Bush was prior to both elections, who he surrounded himself with and what his agenda was going to be, is just as much to blame as those who love his agenda and would bring back poor houses and torture.

Democracy can be exhausting. It can require turning off American Idol and watching Senate debates instead. It can require actually learning that the earth goes around the sun and not vice-versa. (I'm talking to the 1 in 5 adult Americans who are confused on that issue.) It requires voting and being engaged and caring what the hell happens to the rest of your countrymen.

Oh, and it requires learning about history and science and getting over the acute insecurity that makes small-minded people reject facts because it's easier to deny them.

Our nation's people - especially those voting Republican - have been intellectually and morally lazy. Instead of studying, they like to label those interested in knowledge, language, science and the arts as "elitists." They think money - not the quality of our collective soul - is the measure of our lives.

Meanwhile the real elitists - the ones with private jets, five homes and no tie to reality who are controlling us all - have gotten to turn their pitchforks on those parts of government that actually helped people live, like schools, FEMA, Head Start, fire departments, Medicaid and those agencies that worked to give us air to breath, forests to visit and levees that could hold back water.

But whatever you name, there is nothing in this country that this adminstration and this Republican controlled Congress hasn't poisoned and diminished and overcharged us for.

Yet, Democrats helped them get elected through laziness and arrogance. They betrayed their roots, becoming "Republican Light" while still distancing themselves from all talk about God. Portrayed as godless, the DNC leadership failed this country and allowed the anti-Christ to do a cake-walk into power.

There's been a multitude of sins to which we've all, in one way or another, contributed. As more and more of us pay the price it will all become very real, up close and personal.

I predict few of us will remain unscathed. Before we're back on track I predict there will be no one in any economic class who has not suffered, be it from the war, hurricanes or some pandemic, as payment for our own ineptitude in allowing such ignorant and callous hooligans to take the reins of our government and declare government's task is NOT to look out for the welfare of it's citizens.

Yet now Republicans - in political danger due to their incredible list of follies and corruption - want to make their coup complete by getting rid of the $3 contributions we make to fund presidential campaigns for candidates poorer than George Bush.

If you want more George Bushes, Dick Cheneys, Don Rumsfelds, Karl Roves, et al in government from now on, then stop reading.

If you don't, then read the following editorial and send a letter or an e-mail to your Representatives and Senators today telling them you won't stand for it.

It takes time, but time will be all we have, eventually, as we look around at our nation of ruin.

October 21, 2005
New York Times Editorial

Hiding Behind Katrina

It takes gall to use Hurricane Katrina as cover to undermine the democratic process, but that's what conservative ideologues are attempting in the House. Among their budget-cutting proposals - being sold as "tough choices" for America to pay for the Gulf Coast recovery - is a startling plan to kill public financing in the presidential election system.

That program, financed by $3 checkoffs volunteered by taxpayers on their returns, has been a bulwark of presidential elections. It was enacted about 30 years ago, after the Watergate scandal exposed the big-money bagmen corrupting the heart of the political process. It makes politics more competitive for underdogs, more involving for the public and less reliant on floods of special-interest campaign money.

Congress should indeed turn its attention to the program - not to end it, but to repair its outdated limits. The primary calendar has become so front-loaded that the candidates with the strongest sources of private donations are now choosing to skip the limitations of public financing so they can spend early and furiously, leaving other challengers at a disadvantage.

The primary subsidy formula needs to be made more realistic to level the field, and the checkoff amount should be increased. Candidates should not be allowed to have it both ways by feeding on private money in the primaries, then switching to public money in the general election, as President Bush and Senator John Kerry did last year.

Under the current system, participating candidates in the primaries receive matching funds for the first $250 of each private contribution. This one-to-one formula should be increased to two-to-one matching or more as a way to invite more of the small donations that began showing up impressively last year from Internet users.

Sponsors of the House proposal must know they are wrong because they are trying to tuck the change into a budget bill without a public hearing and debate. If they want budget cuts, they should focus on government waste, not open elections.

Time For America To Wake Up

Republican Senator John McCain is sending Americans e-mails alerting them to his findings during a recent trip to the Arctic: that it's melting with alarming speed.

Yet we've had thirty years of warnings. We didn't heed them because poorer nations have always felt the effects of our folly before we do. Indeed, as with the tsunami, it seems we have thought the effects of our assault on the earth would never touch us.

The spate in hurricanes - and the assurance more are coming - has begun to clue us in. But, as usual, Africa is first in line to suffer the effects as the effects of Global Warming begin to manifest in exponential proportion.

According to the article below, South African leaders now understand that they must change or die. Now the question is, when will we?

---

We must adapt to climate change - or die

By Caroline Hooper-Box

As Earth hurtles towards potentially disastrous changes in temperature, top scientists from Africa and the rest of the world will meet South African government officials on Monday in Midrand to discuss the threat of climate change in South Africa and the sub-continent.

In South Africa, the effects of global warming are predicted to include the spread of diseases such as tick-bite fever, cholera and malaria; the extinction of plants and animals; and ruined crops.

Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is to deliver the opening address at the National Climate Change Conference, where delegates will thrash out options for responding to the crisis.

Globally, nine of the past 10 years have been the warmest since records began in 1861. Research confirms that climate change is "a real and significant threat to biodiversity in South Africa", according to Guy Midgley of the South African National Biodiversity Institute.

South Africa's botanical treasures - the succulent Karoo and fynbos biomes, recognised as specialised ecosystems of rich plant biodiversity - are under grave threat. Once temperatures rise 2,4°C higher than they are now, the Karoo's 2 800 endemic plant species will become extinct. Above 3¼C, the Kruger National Park is projected to lose two-thirds of its animals.

Some species in the Kruger Park are already disappearing, Norman Owen-Smith, a Wits university scientist, said. "Half the species in the park may want to be somewhere else in 20 to 30 years' time."

Sable and roan antelope in particular will want to move west of the Kruger, where rainfall is higher, he said, but are unable to move beyond the park fences.

South Africa's biodiversity provides livelihoods for a significant number of rural South Africans who are victims of poverty, Midgley said.

Maize is particularly susceptible to drought
This was confirmed by a report on the impact of climate change to be presented at the conference this week by Council for Scientific and Industrial Research scientists Graham von Maltitz and Carmel Mbizvo. They predict that in most instances, climate change will add stress to already fragile livelihoods.

Because 70 percent of Africa's population relies on agriculture for its livelihood, and because the continent includes some of the world's poorest nations, it is particularly susceptible to climate change.

Southern Africa's staple food, maize, is particularly susceptible to drought.

The southwestern tip of Africa will see less rain as the planet heats up, Von Maltitz and Mbizvo say, "and it is this area where some of the most severe livelihood consequences may result".

The United Nations Environment Programme predicts that an increase in temperature is likely to reduce soil moisture and soil quality, both of which are vital for agriculture, as well as to generate a proliferation of pests.

The UN has warned that by 2050 as many as 150 million "environmental refugees" may have fled coastlines vulnerable to rising sea levels, storms or floods, or agricultural land that has become too arid to cultivate.

In South Africa, a broad reduction of rainfall in the range of 5 to 10 percent for the summer rainfall region is predicted. This is likely to be accompanied by an increased incidence of drought and floods, with prolonged dry spells being followed by intense storms.

The department of environmental affairs and tourism says the increased temperatures and changes in rainfall can be expected to affect health, including an increase in the occurrence of strokes, skin rashes, dehydration and skin cancers.

South Africa's east coast is expected to become wetter, with an accompanying increase in the incidence of diseases such as cholera, malaria and sleeping sickness.

In a warmer world, mosquitoes and ticks could also expand their range to higher altitudes.

Peter Luckey, the chief director of the department of environmental affairs, told reporters this week that climate change science predicted more frequent and intense extreme weather conditions, and said that "in most cases, they will be changes that affect our everyday lives".

Bruce Hewitson of the climate systems analysis group at the University of Cape Town said what was needed most in this period of climate change was "following up on adaptation and responding to impact".

It was too late to mitigate the effects of climate change, Hewitson said. "There is nothing we can do to prevent climate change for this generation."



This article was originally published on page 3 of The Sunday Independent on October 16, 2005


Published on the Web by IOL on 2005-10-16 09:33:00



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© Independent Online 2005. All rights reserved.

Harriet Mier: Bush's One Right Thing?

The storm over Harriet Miers seems to be subsiding. Her biggest threat, it turns out, has been from loudmouth, self-satisfied powerbrokers like Bill Kristol who cannot relate to her, because, from all indicators, she doesn't play by their rules.

Ms. Miers is neither loud nor self-aggrandizing. She doesn't insult others or dismiss people with contempt. She, apparently, operates with that quality which is seldom seen among "real" people, and seems to have been surgically removed from those who seek power: humility. Focused on the details of her job, she is described as having an integrity we haven't seen from the "stars" of the Bush White House.

At least this is what Matthew Scully writes today in a New York Times Op-Ed piece entitled The Harriet Miers I know.

My personal opinion is that, given the staggering list of things President Bush has done wrong during his administration, it was just a matter of time before he had to get something right. And, just maybe, that something will be the choice of Harriet Miers for Supreme Court Justice.

He certainly has chosen incompetent people for important jobs. But worse than that, he has chosen arrogant people.

Some have been very good at doing their jobs because of that arrogance, when those jobs have been to pull the wool over the eyes of the electorate.

But others - like Donald Rumsfeld telling the Pentagon to ignore the 1200 page State Department report compiled by experts on how to avoid the debacle we now have in Iraq - have gone on, through arrogance, to compound mistakes tenfold through their combination of arrogance and ignorance.

Time will tell if Ms. Miers will prove to be a blessing for these United States. But, in the meantime, from Mr. Scully's description, I like her.

I don't think she'll obnoxiously and ingenuously argue there's no separation between Church and State in our Constitution because the signers wrote "in the year of our Lord" at the end, as another lawyer and political spokeswoman for the off-base insists.

We could have gotten that mentality, God help us.

Besides her humility and attention to facts, we could use a little civility. We could use a role model that argues using ideas, not insults, that relies on facts, not conjecture. I might even be inspired to clean up my own act a little bit, as much as I believe Rove, Rumsfeld, DeLay, et al have earned bonus cat calls.

One thing we need in politics and in the judiciary are people with integrity and grace. If Harriet Mier, indeed, has these qualities, she has my blessing.

And for a taste of Mr. Scully's opinions, read on. But careful, he might convince you that the top people in our administration are not really Republicans at all, but some sinister mutant variation - Neo-Conensis - because this guy is someone you really might find yourself liking.

---

Excerpt from The Harriet Mier I Know by Matthew Scully

My friend David Frum expresses the general complaint when he asks, in his blog, when did Harriet Miers "ever take a risk on behalf of conservative principle? Can you see any indication of intellectual excellence? Did she ever do anything brave, anything that took backbone?" To translate: When all the big-thinkers were persevering year after year at policy institutes and conferences at the Mayflower Hotel, or risking all for principle in stirring op-ed essays and $20,000 lectures, where was Little Miss Southern Methodist University?

If four years observing the woman is any guide, the answer is she was probably doing something useful. But whatever she was up to, it's not good enough. Harriet Miers, says Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard, is undoubtedly a well-meaning person, but he was expecting "brilliance," and her selection signaled "weakness" and "capitulation." Mr. Kristol also suggested how the Miers nomination could be withdrawn. In the tone of Michael Corleone laying out some general instructions, he said that with Ms. Miers out of the way, "the president's aides would explain that he miscalculated out of loyalty and admiration for her personal qualities," adding, "and he could quickly nominate a serious, conservative and well-qualified candidate for the court vacancy."

When it was Mr. Kristol's charming friend John Bolton whose fate was in question, that was family business, and for the president no price was too high for loyalty. But Harriet Miers, who is only the president's friend, is now to be led away like Carlo in "The Godfather" with his "ticket to Vegas." Quickly replace her with some credentialed luminary, and in a week no one will even ask where the woman is.

Overlooked in all this caviling is the actual ability and character of the person in question. Indeed, about the best quality to recommend Harriet Miers just now is that she is not at all the sort of person who goes about readily and confidently dismissing other people as third-raters, hacks and mediocrities. She has too much class for that.

It is true that Harriet Miers, in everything she does, gives high attention to detail. And the trait came in handy with drafts of presidential speeches, in which she routinely exposed weak arguments, bogus statistics and claims inconsistent with previous remarks long forgotten by the rest of us. If one speech declared X "our most urgent domestic priority," and another speech seven months earlier had said it was Y, it would be Harriet Miers alone who noted the contradiction.

The accounts of the nominee's work habits are also true. But even better, when the lights went on at 5:30 a.m. or so in office of the staff secretary or the legal counsel, she was not starting the day with a scan of the newspapers in search of her own name. And all of us who leave our White House jobs and go on to write and trade on our service to the president could stand to learn more from Harriet Miers about service to a president. Whenever she was in the room, calmly listening and observing, you knew that on any matter, great or small, at least one person involved had in mind only the interests of the president, the office and the nation.

Surely the most pertinent conclusion to be drawn from Harriet Miers's low profile is that this is not a person susceptible to the charms of news media flattery. Already we have read suggestions that, should the next justice find a comfortable place in the liberal wing, the "O'Connor court" could well become the "Miers court." But I can assure the editorialists, too, that all such offerings to vanity will go untaken. They can save their catnip for the next nominee.

It may be, in fact, that a details person is just what the Supreme Court needs right now. If anyone can be counted on to pause in deliberations over abortion cases, for example, and politely draw attention to small details like the authority of Congress and of state legislatures, or the interests of the child waiting to be born, it will be the court's newest member. As a justice, however, she will command the kind of respect that has nothing to do with being conservative, or liberal, or anything else but a person of wisdom and rectitude.

Although it is conceivable that President Bush has had his fill of advice from overreaching pundits, that is not why he chose Harriet Miers. Maybe he didn't want somebody who had been planning for 20 years for a place on the Supreme Court. Maybe he has looked around every so often and noticed that the least assuming person in the room was also the most capable and discerning. Or maybe he remembered how the hardest-working person in the White House found time to prepare the will of a terminally ill 27-year-old colleague, and to spend nights and mornings staying with her and praying with her.

Whatever his reasons, what America got is a nominee of enormous legal ability and ferocious integrity, and in the bargain a gracious Christian woman only more qualified for her new role because she would never have sought it for herself. And in a few years, when the same critics we hear now are extolling the clarity, consistency and perhaps even the "brilliance" of judicial opinions, that's when you'll know it's the Miers court.

Matthew Scully, the author of "Dominion," was special assistant to the president and deputy director of speechwriting for President Bush from 2001 to 2004.

Language: Key Mechanism of Control

The Center For Media and Democracy reports that The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is now headed by Republican fundraisers Cheryl Halpern and Gay Hart Gaines.

I bring this to your attention because CPB vice chair Gaines was a charter member of GOPAC, a group associated with Newt Gingrich's 1994 House takeover. It's a cinch he's now poised to reshape PBS and NPR so they are "Republican friendly."

How will they do it? Myriad ways, including influencing the language on PBS.

The Nation's David Corn recently reviewed a 1990 GOPAC memo titled "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control" that lists words to use to talk up GOP vision as ebodying ''caring," "freedom" and "prosperity" while trashing Democrats as "corrupt," "intolerant" and "traitors."

My first observation is quite simple: aren't Republicans confused? They got the lists mixed up. It is they who now own the words "corrupt" and "intolerant."

Likewise they've proved themselves to be traitors to both the American Dream and regular Americans who don't have seven figure incomes or Lear jets.

So now we can expect to see objective PBS slowly turned into a reich-wing marketing tool. Great, just what we needed on top of all the other debacles the Repos have brought us.

I think we ough to take every opportunity to turn the tables on them. Ignore their Orwellian language. Let's co-opt everything good for Progressives, since we actually are the caring people, in favor of freedom and prosperity for all, not just for Bush's brazillionaires.

Yes - shamelessly I'm referring to that joke you've seen go around in which Bush is so concerned when Rummy tells him "3 Brazilians have been killed," asking, "How much is a brazillion?

But I digress.

From the man now in charge of PBS, your key to using language to deceive and control:

Language: A Key Mechanism of Control

As you know, one of the key points in the GOPAC tapes is that "language matters." In the video "We are a Majority," Language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party, along with Agenda, Rules, Attitude and Learning. As the tapes have been used in training sessions across the country and mailed to candidates we have heard a plaintive plea: "I wish I could speak like Newt."

That takes years of practice. But, we believe that you could have a significant impact on your campaign and the way you communicate if we help a little. That is why we have created this list of words and phrases.

This list is prepared so that you might have a directory of words to use in writing literature and mail, in preparing speeches, and in producing electronic media. The words and phrases are powerful. Read them. Memorize as many as possible. And remember that like any tool, these words will not help if they are not used.

While the list could be the size of the latest "College Edition" dictionary, we have attempted to keep it small enough to be readily useful yet large enough to be broadly functional. The list is divided into two sections: Optimistic Positive Governing words and phrases to help describe your vision for the future of your community (your message) and Contrasting words to help you clearly define the policies and record of your opponent and the Democratic party.

Please let us know if you have any other suggestions or additions. We would also like to know how you use the list. Call us at GOPAC or write with your suggestions and comments. We may include them in the next tape mailing so that others can benefit from your knowledge and experience.

Optimistic Positive Governing Words

Use the list below to help define your campaign and your vision of public service. These words can help give extra power to your message. In addition, these words help develop the positive side of the contrast you should create with your opponent, giving your community something to vote for!

active(ly)
activist
building
candid(ly)
care(ing)
challenge
change
children
choice/choose [choice a Republican word? I don't think so.]
citizen
commitment
common sense [If they had any, we wouldn't be 8 Trillion in debt]
compete
confident
conflict [Oh, now this is one they're good at, creating conflict]
control [This fits, as in Republicans intend to control you]
courage [Not much. They send other people's children to fight their wars.]
crusade [Yes, but always for the wrong things.]
debate
dream
duty
eliminate good-time in prison [I'm for that when these neo-cons all land there]
empower(ment)
fair
family
freedom
hard work [Give me a break. They all live off investments and interest.]
help
humane
incentive
initiative
lead
learn
legacy
liberty
light
listen
mobilize
moral
movement
opportunity
passionate
peace [HA! They dare try and use this one? Have they no shame?]
pioneer
precious [Yeah, like what? Our natural resources they're destroying?]
premise
preserve [What? Certainly not our air or water. Or the lives of our troops. Or New Orleans. Must refer to their bank accounts.]
principle(d) [Not even possible in the same breath re: Bush et al]
pristine
pro- (issue): flag, children, environment, reform [Repos are pro-flag, anti-child]
prosperity [For the Brazillionaires, no doubt]
protect [the truth from being known, that's what this is about]
proud/pride [Oh, dare we hope they pair this one with gay?]
provide
reform [Yes, I agree the Republican party is stunningly corrupt, in need of reform]
rights
share [? I didn't know this word was in their vocabulary. Oh, wait, that's STOCK SHARE
strength
success
tough
truth
unique
vision
we/us/our


Contrasting Words
Often we search hard for words to define our opponents. Sometimes we are hesitant to use contrast. Remember that creating a difference helps you. These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.

abuse of power
anti- (issue): flag, family, child, jobs
betray
bizarre
bosses
bureaucracy
cheat
coercion
"compassion" is not enough
collapse(ing)
consequences
corrupt
corruption
criminal rights
crisis
cynicism
decay
deeper
destroy
destructive
devour
disgrace
endanger
excuses
failure (fail)
greed
hypocrisy
ideological
impose
incompetent
insecure
insensitive
intolerant
liberal
lie
limit(s)
machine
mandate(s)
obsolete
pathetic
patronage
permissive attitude
pessimistic
punish (poor ...)
radical
red tape
self-serving
selfish
sensationalists
shallow
shame
sick
spend(ing)
stagnation
status quo
steal
taxes
they/them
threaten
traitors
unionized
urgent (cy)
waste
welfare

---

While making fun is fun, we seriously need to use their own techniques against them. There is no way we can let them get away with calling themselves caring, look where they put "compassion" as a negative trait! That says it all.

Abortion: Is It Time To End The Rift?

Normally I don't get into the abortion question.

But while I support a woman's right to control her body and make her own decisions about whether to have children, i.e. can she afford it economically and emotionally, I think we have allowed Republicans to exploit this issue long enough.

The really poor in this country can't even afford the trip to an abortion clinic at this point.

So it's time to stop fighting - and losing elections - over the abortion issue.

Abortion is not a good thing, it's a last resort. It's a sad necessity that, at times, keeps a woman sane and her other children fed.

We need to stop campaigning for it like it's a religion or something as important as, say, higher wages. That attitude just plays to the Reich in using it to their own ends.

Let's face it, Republicans want every baby to be born, only so it can be sent off to die in one of their powermongering wars. They're absolute hypocrites in that regard.

To prevent those unnecessary wars, to get money for schools to educate the children we have, to raise the standard of living for the poor and to provide some kind of real moral leadership for this country, we must focus on other issues and get progressives elected based on real, American values.

What are those values? They are caring about one another, working together, providing equal opportunities, looking at how we can create a better nation and a better world together, as a people.

While we are all in this together, Republicans have torn us apart in a very selfish power-accruing agenda emphasizing an "us vs. them" mentality at every turn.

The result is that many good, well-meaning people have been alienated over the abortion issue, on both sides.

Christians, for the most part, should feel more resonance with Progressives since progressives urge turning the other cheek, giving to the poor, etc.

But it's that abortion issue that keeps them away, for the most part.

So here's a wake up call to progressives: we have allowed a wedge issue, that most of us defend without much conviction, to allow the most corrupt group of politicians in our history to gut our country.

The irony is that the abortion issue has changed. We're not looking at women being butchered in back alleys any more. If a woman really cannot afford a child psychologically or economically, she can turn to pharmaceuticals.

See this from the New York Times:

October 2, 2005

Abortion Might Outgrow Its Need for Roe v. Wade

By JOHN LELAND

WITH the confirmation last week of John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice of the United States, eyes turned to President Bush's next judicial nominee, who, on a closely divided court, may determine the fate of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that recognized a woman's right to an abortion.

But such speculation overlooks a paradox in the abortion wars: while combatants focus on the law, technology is already changing the future of abortion, with or without the Supreme Court.

Even if the court restricts or eliminates the right to an abortion, the often-raised specter of a return to back-alley abortions is not likely to be realized, said Dr. Beverly Winikoff, president of Gynuity Health Services, a nonprofit group that supports access to abortion.

"The conditions that existed before 1973 were much different than what they are in 2005," she said.

But no change is bigger than the advent of an inexpensive drug called misoprostol, which the federal Food and Drug Administration approved for treatment of ulcers in 1988, but which has been used in millions of self-administered abortions worldwide.

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, freeing states to ban abortion, this common prescription drug, often known by the brand name Cytotec, could emerge as a cheap, relatively safe alternative to the practices that proliferated before Roe.

"We won't go back to the days of coat hangers and knitting needles," said Dr. Jerry Edwards, an abortion provider in Little Rock, Ark. "Rich women will fly to California; poor women will use Cytotec."

Because it was never intended for use in abortions, it has not been widely tested for safety and effectiveness.

In 2000, researchers at three obstetrics and gynecology clinics in New York noted that low-income immigrant women were already using misoprostol as an alternative to going to an abortion clinic, because it was easier and less expensive.

They got the pills from doctors, pharmacies, relatives and from contacts in other countries.

The drug causes the uterus to contract and, if the contractions are strong enough, to expel the embryo or fetus.

In the United States, misoprostol is typically used off label with the abortion drug RU-486 in non-surgical abortions and in some surgical abortions.

A spokeswoman for Pfizer, which sells misoprostol under the name Cytotec, said the company does not comment on off-label use.

Last year, Americans filled 365,000 prescriptions of misoprostol for ulcers, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical consulting firm.

A dose sufficient to cause an abortion costs less than $2, said Dr. John K. Jain, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Southern California, who has performed limited clinical trials of abortions using misoprostol alone.

He said he found that it was effective 80 to 90 percent of the time, if administered by a doctor. This is slightly lower than its effectiveness in combination with RU-486.

Misoprostol is usually used in the first trimester, but under clinical conditions, Dr. Jain and other researchers say it has been used safely and effectively in the second trimester.

Women taking it on their own risk greater rates of failure and higher side effects, including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and fever and chills.

Carrie Gordon Earll, a senior analyst of bioethics at Focus on the Family, which supports a reversal of Roe v. Wade, said the existence of new technologies like misoprostol should have no bearing on the law.

"The law operates as a teacher in a moral sense," regardless of people's opportunity to break it, she said. "Even if you have some people who get a drug off the black market and sell it to women, that doesn't mean we don't have a policy to discourage abortion."

In Brazil, where abortion is banned except in rare circumstances, misoprostol is the method of choice for up to 90 percent of all abortions, said Alessandra Chacham, a professor of sociology at the University of the State of Minas Gerais, who studies reproductive health in Brazil.

In the late 1980's and early 1990's, she said, pregnant women started to spread the word, because the drug's label warned that it could cause miscarriages.

Compared with illegal abortions using other methods, the rate of infection with misoprostol was 12 times lower, researchers have found. But researchers at the University of Rio de Janeiro reported that they also found that among babies born with certain birth defects, a high percentage of the mothers used misoprostol. When the government in response restricted access to misoprostol, drug smugglers created an illegal black market, Ms. Chacham said.

But American women may not be as receptive, said Norma McCorvey, who in 1973 was known as Jane Roe, the woman who brought the case that legalized abortion, but who has since argued for the reversal of the court's decision.

"When women start using these self-induced drugs, and start seeing body parts in their potty, they're going to go bananas," Miss McCorvey said. "And it's going to be horrible."

[Is it any more horrible than having to live in a crack infested neighborhood because you can't afford higher rent or see your kid - that you couldn't afford - go to bed hungry and be shaped for a life of failure? Or have to live with someone who winds up getting ticked off at the baby and shakes it to death? Please. These are the choices desperate women face. - my comment]

Dr. Jain said researchers still need to learn more about what happens when the drug doesn't work. Currently, if women fail to terminate a pregnancy using RU-486 and misoprostol, they still have a surgical abortion. But if abortion were illegal, many of these women might carry to term. "Data suggest it causes birth defects, including facial paralysis and limb defects," Dr. Jain said. "It's hard to quantify, but yes, there probably is a risk."

And widespread use of misoprostol could have another unintended consequence, said Mitchell Creinin, director of family planning at the University of Pittsburgh, who has run clinical trials on the drug. In Brazil, if women have problems with the drug, they go to the hospital to be treated for miscarriage. If women in the United States start using misoprostol for abortions, Dr. Creinin said, "someone going through a miscarriage is going to be looked at suspiciously, like, 'Did you do something?'"

Dr. Creinin added that "compared to when abortion was illegal before Roe, misoprostol is still safer." But as with any illegal drug, there is a period of elevated risk before users discover the proper dosages and protocols. If abortion became illegal, he said, "If I were a woman, I'd rather go to Brazil than Mississippi, because at least there they've learned how to do it."

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The lesson here is: where there's a will, there's a way. And as long as people try to dictate the conditions of our lives without giving us tenable options, they will be subverted.

Once in power, Progressives can work to give people options so abortion is less necessary.

For those who don't know, the abortion rate has skyrocketed thanks to Bush's economic policies which continually beat down the poor and the working person.

It's time to admit: we don't like abortion either. It's been a necessary evil that women resort to because we're not taking care of the business of taking care of ALL our people.

No one has a "God given right" to have abortion. But each person should have a right - IN THIS COUNTRY, AND ASSURED BY ALL OF US - to fair wages, decent housing, good schools and affordable medical care.

Lets get our priorities straight.