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saturday, march 19, 2005
Rationing Health Care
Michael Schiavo's lawyer, George Felos, told reporters there once was a
trust fund containing almost $800,000 (won in a malpractice case) to support Terry Schiavo's abundant medical expenses. That
has been whittled down to near extinction. Felos says Schiavo's costs during the past few years have been borne by a confusing
and twisted agglomeration of Social Security disability benefits, Medicaid and a corporate hospice fund for indigent
patients. Meanwhile, her parents' legal bills have been subsidized by church groups passing the collection plate.
Whatever
Schiavo's medical costs are and however much may have been sustained by private funds, there's still the inevitability we
find in many religiously driven fights for life: Taxpayers and other individuals not similarly motivated are still drawn in,
willing or not, to help subsidize someone else's "moral" choice. Praise the Lord and pass the, er, hat. [Bonnie Erbe, Scripps Howard News Service, March 16, 2005]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some health-care
services that Medicaid patients have come to expect would not be automatically covered under Gov. Jeb Bush's plans, officials
said Wednesday.
According to legislation unveiled for the first time Wednesday, services such as pharmaceutical benefits
and dental and vision care would be considered "optional benefits" that managed-care groups can independently decide whether
they want to offer. Poor
and disabled residents from South Florida and the Jacksonville area would be the first state residents to see changes.
[Mark Hollis, "Some Medicaid Care May Fall by Wayside," Sun-Sentinel, March 17, 2005]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Recently, Bush administration officials declared their intention to seek changes that will cut the cost of Medicaid
by $60 billion over the next 10 years.
U.S. House and Senate budget committees have drafted bills that will cut Medicaid, the
joint federal-state health insurance program for the poor, by $15 billion to $20 billion in the next five years.
Meanwhile, several state governments are considering Medicaid cuts of their own. Options
include dropping thousands from the rolls, reducing the scope of covered services and slashing payments to doctors, hospitals
and nursing homes.
Judging from the lack of public outcry, most Americans view these developments with indifference.
Perhaps they believe that the cutbacks won't affect them. If so, they are in for a shock.
The cuts are so large, and their consequences so sweeping, that they will affect us all.
Medicaid matters because health care for the insured and the uninsured is closely intertwined. [Arthur Kellerman, "Medicaid Cuts Catastrophic," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 16, 2005]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Last week the Senate rejected a Bush proposal to cut $14 billion from the Medicaid program.
The Senate voted 52-48 to reject a plan to cut $14 billion from the Medicaid
health program over five years. Seven Republicans joined the chamber's 44 Democrats and one independent in favor. The Senate
later approved, 51-49, a $2.6 trillion budget blueprint for 2006 that included the Medicaid funding.
I'd like to see a list of Republicans
who voted to cut Medicaid and compare it to a list of Republicans trying to make political hay, so to speak, out
of Terri Schiavo's vegetative body. Bill Frist comes to mind. And where does Tom DeLay stand on cutting Medicaid? And of course George Bush is flapping about how we are supposed to respect life while he's cutting
access to health care. This is the same guy who told people that if they voted for John Kerry they'd end up with rationed
health care. And wouldn't it be nice if someone in the "news media" would confront these bozos about what we might call their
inconsistencies?
A Tree in the Forest
You've heard the question -- if a tree falls in the forest but no
one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Most people say yes, of course there would be a sound. But if you
understand that sound is something experienced, then the answer isn't so clear. If the tree falls and creates compression
waves, but there is no organism nearby with an auditory system and a brain capable of interpeting the compression waves
as sound, is there a sound?
Put another way, if there is a tree in the forest but no eyes to look at it,
is there a sight? If there are no hands to feel the bark, is there feeling? If there is a cookie but no one eats it, is there
taste? If a rose blooms but there are no noses around to intercept molecules, is there smell?
Most people have a hard time wrapping their heads around this question. I'm in the
no camp--without sense, there can be no sensation. But I believe I'm in a minority.
Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was removed yesterday. My understanding is that she will be dead of starvation in a few days. Some are calling this an act
of barbarity, even torture. I would agree with this if Ms. Schiavo has enough brain function left to experience pain or hunger. People with
the medical knowledge to understand these things say she does not. If that's the case then, logically, there is no pain, and no torture.
It's hard to imagine not feeling hunger, or pain. But I remember reading about a
very rare birth defect that causes an individual not to feel pain. This would seem to be an advantage, except that children
born with this condition tend to injure themselves severely and repeatedly because they don't know when to not do things like
put their hands in a fire. The point is that pain is a brain function. Therefore, it is logical that damage to the
brain could result in the loss of pain sensation. It is possible that Terri Schiavo is not capable of suffering.
A lot of good bloggers already have discussed the medical issues. See, for example,
commentaries at Alas, a Blog and Majikthise. These bloggers and others note that people who argue against removal of the feeding tube stubbornly refuse to address
the issue of Schiavo's missing cerebral cortex. It is imagined that her condition is something like a coma, from which she
might wake up. Or, people remember Grandma with Alzheimer's or Counsin Flo's Down's Syndrome baby and imagine Terri
Schiavo's condition is comparable. Some participants on this Free Republic thread seem to think Schiavo is awake and aware, just a little confused.
But if the cerebral cortex is gone, as CAT scans indicate, these assumptions are
nonsense. In fact, some might argue that, since the organism that is Terri Schiavo no longer has memories, thoughts, a
personality, or consiousness, then the person Schiavo was no longer exists. (Making this argument requires
exploration of the nature of self-ness, but I don't have the time for a proper exploration right now. Maybe later.)
Peggy Noonan, among others, argues that the question hinges simply on brain death. Since Schiavo is not brain dead, then she is alive,
then she must be kept alive. But to me it isn't that simple. Usually we think of death as a person losing the condition of
being alive. Here, IMO, we have a situation in which the condition of being alive still exists, but the person is gone.
Some argue that since Schiavo's parents want to keep her, why not let them keep her?
Why would the husband care? Let him go on with his life. But what is it that the parents want to keep? If it's the case that
the person is gone from the body, keeping the body alive to play with like some kind of flesh doll does seem a bit ghoulish.
I can imagine that someone who cares might not want to let that happen. I don't know the husband or the parents and can't
say what their motives are. I'm just saying I can empathize with the husband's position.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
People on both sides of this issue express outrage about government interference.
The pro-feeding tube faction is furious that a judge ordered the tube removed. Some Freepers accuse the judge of believing he is caesar, or god. Some want U.S. marshalls to remove Schiavo from wherever she is and taken
to a safe place.
On the other side, there is concern about lawmakers injecting themselves into decisions
that should be reserved for families. Yesterday the House passed a measure that would give federal courts jurisdiction to
review decisions to withhold food, fluids, or medical treatment from an incapacitated person.
Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., opposed the bill and called it "a dangerously reckless way to deal with some serious issues. ... It does not deal just
with feeding tubes. It would allow intervention in any decision affecting any kind of medical care. Read
the bill."
Most of us, at some time in our lives, will be faced with the decision to sign or not sign a "do not resuscitate" order
for a loved one. Families do this every day. Will such things be decided by magistrates from now on, because of the hysteria
over Terri Schiavo? And is this not a step toward tyranny?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There is one other issue I haven't seen addressed. Who is paying to keep
Schiavo alive? I honestly don't know. If interested persons are voluntarily paying her medical bills that's one thing,
but if the taxpayers of the state of Florida are paying, that's something else entirely.
I understand (although I can't find a link) that Govenor Jeb Bush and the Florida
legislature have removed some poor children from health care programs to save costs. Are taxpayer resources keeping
Schiavo alive at the expense of other lives? I don't know, but I wish someone would find out.
friday, march 18, 2005
Why Bushies Are Losers
In the weeks after a popular uprising toppled a corrupt government in Ukraine,
President Bush hailed the so-called Orange Revolution as proof that democracy was on the march and promised $60 million to
help secure it in Kiev. But Republican congressional allies balked and slashed it this week to $33.7 million.
The shrinking financial commitment to Ukrainian democracy highlights
a broader gap between rhetoric and resources among budget writers in the Bush administration and on Capitol Hill as the president
vows to devote his second term to "ending tyranny in our world," according to budget documents, congressional critics and
democracy advocates.
The administration has pumped substantial new funds into promoting democracy
in Muslim countries but virtually nowhere else in the world. The administration has cut budgets for groups struggling to build
civil society and democratic institutions in Russia, Eastern Europe and Asia, even as Moscow has pulled back from democracy
and governments in China, Burma, Uzbekistan and elsewhere remain among the most repressive in the world. [Peter Baker, "Funding Scare for Export of Democracy," The Washington Post, March 18, 2005]
A wave of crime in this southern Afghan city -- including Mohammed's killing
two months ago and a bombing Thursday that killed at least five people -- has evoked a growing local nostalgia for the Taliban
era of 1996 to 2001, when the extremist Islamic militia imposed law and order by draconian means.
Residents reached their boiling point last week, after a second kidnapped
boy was killed. Hundreds of men poured into the streets, demanding that President Hamid Karzai fire the provincial governor
and police chief. Some threw rocks at military vehicles and chanted, "Down with the warlords!" Witnesses recalled some adding,
"Bring back the Taliban!" [N.C. Aizenman, "Afghan Crime Wave Breeds Nostaliga for Taliban," The Washington Post, March18, 2005]
If you owe a balance on your federal income tax this year, why
don't you just mail the money to the Middle East with directions to dump it down the nearest rat hole? This would save the
federal government from having to do it for you.
Update: With all the critical thinking skills sand
fleas are famous for, Dr. Rusty Shackleford of the rightie blog Jawa Report misrepresents the second story quoted above as the Washington Post's cheering for the good old days of the Taliban. I infer
that Dr. Shackleford thinks the Washington Post should not be reporting such things (whether they are true or not
is irrelevant), because ... um, it makes the Bush Administration look bad? That must be it. We loyal Americans should
not be subjected to news that makes the Bush Administration look bad. And when a news outlet reports on something that
makes the Bush Administration look bad, even if the report is true, this is (organ glissando, F minor) liberal
bias.
I mean why else would the Washington Post think it important to inform
its readers there are problems in Afghanistan, other than to foster incorrect thoughts? American newspapers should
always be careful not to in any way cast the Bush Administration in a bad light, because casting the Bush Administration
in a bad light is partisan.
Got that?
I am horrified to learn that Dr. Shackleford teaches a mass media in politics
class. (Pause to reflect on the erosion of intellectual standards in higher education.) We're doomed, people.
Also, Rusty, if you read this, be warned that I'm writing another book.
Update update: Unrelated, but this made me laugh.
thursday, march 17, 2005
The Quality of Mercy
I already wrote a post inspired by the quote above, but it came to mind again today when I read this Volokh post. After noting with approval that a serial killer in Iran was executed by flogging followed by throttling, he writes,
I like civilization, but some forms of savagery
deserve to be met not just with cold, bloodless justice but with the deliberate infliction of pain, with cruel vengeance rather
than with supposed humaneness or squeamishness. I think it slights the burning injustice of the murders, and the pain of the
families, to react in any other way.
Then he writes,
I can't prove the soundness of my position
any more than (I think) the other side can prove the soundness of its. In this area, we quickly come down to moral intuitions
and visceral reactions. And, who knows, perhaps mine are wrong. But mere appeals to my humanity just don't do much for me.
Vengeance, retribution, "getting even," etc., were explicitly discouraged
by both the Buddha and Jesus (although many Christians like to pretend otherwise). Buddhism, which is more of a habit of mind
than an orthodoxy, discourages any thought that separates the world into self-and-other, as Brooks does in the quote. In Buddhism,
the illusion of self-and-other is the root of all suffering, and central to the practice of Buddhism is seeing past this illusion.
And there are no exceptions; see, for example, "Call Me By My True Names" by the Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh.
Put simply: Whenever someone decides that his cruelty is justified,
there is the gate of hell. Whenever someone chooses to meet cruelty with compassion, there is the gate of heaven.
I realize this sounds like nonsense to most people, but I submit that when
two heavy hitters like Jesus and the Buddha agree on something, attention must be paid.
Last time I crabbed about Brooks's quote, I wrote,
Fools (i.e., David Brooks) think of evil as an object that
can be clearly deliniated, like a chair or a cheesecake. He speaks of it as graspable. But Zennies say that evil is no-thing,
meaning it is not a thing you can put in a basket and show off to your friends. The action that is evil
affects all beings. However -- especially in Buddhism -- no thing or being is evil.
This is an important distinction, because the history of evil reveals
that people who create evil hardly ever see themselves or their intentions as evil. Osama bin Laden and his 9/11 flunkies
believed their terrorist attack was righteous and justified, as did Tim McVeigh when he blew up the federal building. Even
the all-time great evildoers like Hitler and Stalin and Mao no doubt rationalized their actions as serving a greater
good.
This takes us back to the temptations of the Devil model. For many
centuries saints and philosophers both East and West have noted how easily human pride (what today we call ego) leads
us astray. We think, I am a good person. Therefore, my beliefs are good beliefs, and my intentions
are good intentions, and actions I choose to take are justified and righteous. People who cause suffering to me
are evil, but if I cause suffering to them they deserved it.
This is how evil originates and continues. Jesus understood this,
teaching his followers to turn the other cheek, love their enemies, and leave vengeance to God. This is a hard teaching, because
vengeance feels good. It is self-indulgent. It is tempting. We want to do it, so it is
all too easy to submit to that feeling. For 2000 years Christians have thrown up all kinds of resistance to what Jesus taught. But, in fact, Jesus taught his followers to resist the temptation of vengeance. The Gospels
are a little short on detail, but I infer that he considered vengeance to be an impediment to entering the Kingdom of Heaven.
Non-religious people may feel they can ignore all this with impunity, but
the fact remains that "evildoers" seem always to rationalize and justify the evil that they do. They feel entitled to do it.
Their reasoning may seem screwy to others, but they believe it. And it is difficult for people in the grip of hate or anger
to think objectively. For this reason, IMO, secular morality demands that we always refrain from cruelty.
This is not to say (in anticipation of the smart-alecs) that dangerous people
should not be restrained or that lawbreakers should not be punished. It is just to say that there is no moral justification
for cruelty.
Update: Matthew Yglesias says pretty much the same thing I said, although from a more secular perspective.
Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Daoibh
A disease attacked the potato crop and half of the crop was destroyed. People
harvested the few potatoes they had and prayed that the next years crop would be an abundant one. But the crop of 1846 suffered
even more than the previous year. To add to the misery, that winter was the "severest in living memory". When the 1847 crop
failed also, the Irish population of the whole nation was faced with starvation. This is when the first wave of immigrants
escaped their starving homeland. The majority of this first group went to Canada because prices were very low--ships bringing
lumber to England were glad to receive paying passengers instead of returning to Canada empty. Unfortunately, many of these
people carried typhoid and many other diseases with them on to Canada.
Ironically, during these tragic years it was only the potato crop that failed
in Ireland. Wheat, oats, beef, mutton, pork, and poultry were all in excellent supply but the Irish-English landlords shipped
these to the European continent to soften the starving there and receive a very good profit in return. When people today wonder
about the hatred between the Irish and the English, they don't recognize the fact that Irish peoples memory is a long one
and that stories are still being told about those ships leaving Irish ports loaded with food at the same time that their ancestors
were eating grass to live.
All throughout the years of the horrific famine, which continued past 1847,
the English government was unwilling to give any money to Ireland to help with the famine because, as they said, "the
Irish will use it only to buy guns to revolt against them." They were also reluctant to provide material aid such as soup
kitchens because, "they will get used to the free food and never become of be self-sufficient."
... It is estimated one and a half million people died of starvation and disease in The Great Famine.
[Ireland: The Great Famine]
~~~~~~~~~~
Regardless of what politicians and some civil
rights leaders tell us, the way out of poverty is not more government programs. These programs only breed dependency and despair.
The only way out is through a strong work ethic and the ability to take responsibility for your own actions. No government
program can instill these qualities in individuals. ... [Many Aid Programs Bad Ideas]
~~~~~~~~~~~`
Observers reported seeing children crying with pain and
looking "like skeletons, their features sharpened with hunger and their limbs wasted, so that there was little left but bones."
Masses of bodies were buried without coffins, a few inches below the soil.
Over the next ten years, more than 750,000 Irish died and another 2 million
left their homeland for Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. Within five years, the Irish population was reduced
by a quarter. ...
The inadequacy of relief efforts by the British Government worsened the horrors
of the potato famine. Initially, England believed that the free market would end the famine. In 1846, in
a victory for advocates of free trade, Britain repealed the Corn Laws, which protected domestic grain producers from foreign
competition. The repeal of the Corn Laws failed to end the crisis since the Irish lacked sufficient money to purchase foreign
grain. ... [Digital History: The Irish Potato Famine]
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The free market actually enables everyone to get what they want.
[Capitalism, the Free Market, etc.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.
[Benjamin Franklin]
Invasion of the She-Bloggers
Bonnet tip to Tild -- another blogging broad with 'tude -- for the graphic at right. Too funny.
After posting the last post I found more virtual flapping over women bloggers
and opinion columnists and the lack thereof. And here's a good point from Deborah Tannen in yesterday's Los Angeles Times (referencing the Mo Dowd column I wrote about here):
Dowd put her finger on one reason fewer women than men
are comfortable writing slash-and-burn columns. But she didn't take her argument to the next level and question the fundamental
assumption that attack-dog journalism is the only kind worth writing.
That is the blind spot that explains why women
are missing from many of the arenas of public discourse, including science (as noted by Larry Summers of Harvard) and opinion
writing. (The Los Angeles Times was recently criticized for not running more women on its opinion pages.)
No one bothers
to question the underlying notion that there is only one way to do science, to write columns — the way it's always been done,
the men's way.
IMO this is especially true of the political blogosphere, a large part of which seems
to be engaged in some verbal sort of "king of the hill" game -- We will seize the argument and crush our opponents with
ad hominem; we will dominate all other life forms with the force of our mighty vitriol.
And I believe it's getting worse, especially on the Right.* For example, a couple
of years ago I thought the Rottweiller's writing could be genuinely funny, even if I hardly ever agreed with him. But now the nice doggie is just relentlessly
hateful. And I've come across several bloggers commenting that before September 11 Glenn Reynolds seemed fairly moderate and
thoughtful, but the attacks caused him to come unglued.
Dahlia Lithwick at Slate seconds Tanner, and notes that "as an editor, the number of pitches I receive from men outnumbers
the pitches I see from women by several orders of magnitude."
Are too many of us self-selecting ourselves out of political discourse because it's
all so nasty? I happen to love a good argument -- maybe I'm unusual -- but the pottymouths don't impress me. I prefer logic
and reason. Facts are also a plus.
* Righties hate it when I say they are nastier than Lefties, but I'm spending a lot
of time cruising both sides of the 'sphere these days, and I say that on the whole Righties are nastier than Lefties.
I run into many Rightie blogs that consist of nothing but ad hominem smears and gratuitous insults aimed
at the Left, whereas Lefties tend to base criticism of the Right on facts and evidence. There are always
exceptions, of course.
9:44 am | link
Take a Clue. Any Clue.
The previous post exposed the cluelessness of certain persons. In that same vein ...
Take Howie Kurtz. Please. Howie weighs in on the ongoing why-aren't-there-more-women-political-bloggers issue:
I've been surfing a number of blogs by women and (attention: this is
not a generalization) and have found a fair number in diary form that deal with families, literature, cooking and other
personal reflections--engaging stuff, to be sure, but sometimes out of the echo-chamber warfare over media and politics that
gets the most attention.
Howie commented on this Newsweek article by Steven Levy. Levy noted that the participants at a recent Harvard conference on blogging and the media were overwhelmingly
white men. This is a sore point with me, because I am continually finding out about blogger conferences after they happen.
This makes me wonder how people who organize blogger conferences publicize them, or if they don't publicize them but simply
invite the bloggers they've heard of, which doesn't seem to include me.
Anyway, I wrote to Steven Levy about this, and he replied, "Seems that
a bottom-up awareness of this, and some individual decisions to be more proactively inclusive, might help things out." In
other words, it's up to me to sniff out the blogger conferences and crash them.
Sigh. I guess I'll have to wait and hope that someday Kevin Drum's invitation
gets sent to me by mistake. In the meantime, see Steve Gilliard's comments on the Steven Levy article.
Speaking of women bloggers -- bonnet tip to Avedon for this link (to a blog written by the well-clued Jim Henley). Sounds like Alan Dershowitz is a man who needs
a clue.
But the absolute gob-stopper, as I think they say on his side of
the pond, is this quote from Alan Dershowitz:
When you torture somebody to death … everybody would acknowledge
that’s torture. But placing a sterilized needle under somebody’s fingernails for fifteen minutes, causing excruciating pain
but no permanent physical damage - is that torture?
Let me respond as clearly and calmly as I can to this one. Let me,
as it were, be the kind of blogger my dog thinks I am.
OF COURSE IT’S TORTURE YOU STUPID SON OF A BITCH!
Like Delany wrote in the prologue to Stars in my Pocket Like Grains
of Sand: Ignorance is a condition. Stupidity is a strategy.
And speaking of torture, Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe (who can
usually be counted on for knee-jerk support of all things Wingnut) has written a column on the Bush Administration and torture that sounds, well, liberal.
Jacoby writes that people really are being tortured and killed by the U.S.
government and its agents. And, he says, it's nuts to pretend that prisoners rendered to places like Syria and Saudi
Arabia aren't tortured.
The Bush administration and the military insist that any abuse of detainees
is a violation of policy and that abusers are being punished. If so, why does it refuse to allow a genuinely independent commission
to investigate without fear or favor? Why do Republican leaders on Capitol Hill refuse to launch a proper congressional investigation?
And why do my fellow conservatives -- those who support the war for all the right reasons -- continue to keep silent about
a scandal that should have them up in arms?
I don't want to belittle Mr. Jacoby, because it really is a good column. But
one part of this column that bothered me is the headline, which Jacoby possibly did not write himself: "Where's the Outrage
on Torture?"
Jeff: On the Left, dear. And although it's an excellent column, leftie bloggers
and some leftie columnists have been writing this same stuff for months. If you haven't heard our outrage, that's because
nobody listens to us. Including the allegedly leftie "mainstream media."
While we're handing out clues, let's send an "it's time to retire" clue to
Alan Greenspan.
There are probably not enough clues in the world to enlighten Terri
Schiavo groupies. The judge who ordered her feeding tube to be removed has received so many death threats from the pro-lifers (I'll pause and let that one sink in) that he has to have bodyguards at all times. And he's worried for the safety of his
wife and children.
Taxpayers are footing the bill for fake news disguised as the real
deal. So where's the outrage?
Calling all conservatives. Yo, libertarians. Also, wing-nuts, believers
in black-helicopter conspiracies and mouth-foaming denouncers of government and all its works. Yoo-hoo. Where are these people
when you need them?
THEY are making us pay to have ourselves brainwashed. All good conspiracy
theories begin with "they" -- and in this case, it's the usual suspect of the right wing: the ever-evil federal government.
Rush Limbaugh, get on this case. Stealth propaganda now goes by the beguiling moniker "pre-packaged news." And our government,
the one supposedly run by us, is using our money to secretly brainwash us. Is this gross, or what?
The U.S. government is in the covert propaganda business, and it's
not aiming this stuff at potential terrorists, but right square at your forehead.
Hello, America? Step right up and get your clues ...
wednesday, march 16, 2005
Getting It
Now, there's a knee-slapper, huh? I didn't read it. I figured Kristof
plus Hillary equals arrested development squared. Ellen Nagler's reaction ("It's a satire ... isn't it?") pretty much sums it up. See also Avedon and Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog. From their reactions I gather the column is even dumber than I imagine it is.
I don't usually comment on things I haven't read, but puh-leeze ...
For months we lefty bloggers have spoken out against the whole Joe Lieberman/ DLC
/ National Review ideal of moderation for the sake of bipartisanship for the sake of winning elections, or whatever game it
is they are playing. One of these days these people will turn around and notice ain't nobody followin'.
Proof that Kristof's column is almost too stupid to blog about, not many lefty bloggers
are bothering with it. Ah, but ...
Just say the name Hillary and the righties go into knee-jerk mode.
Captain Ed has a lovely time waxing snotty about how clueless Democrats are. Apparently one of Kristof's points is that Hillary is brilliantly
attempting to be pro-choice and anti-abortion at the same time, which is actually where most of us have been for quite a while,
although the Right remains too thick to grasp this.
More to the point, Kristof wants Democrats to change their rhetoric while
keeping to the same core values that marginalized them in the first place. In other words, he wants Democrats to lie; does
anyone expect Hillary to press for abortion limitations? Has she voted against NARAL positions since being elected to the
Senate? Not according to her NARAL rating -- 100%.
One would think that after all the flip-flopping their presidential candidate
did in the last election and the result he got at the ballot box, Kristof and the DNC would learn that "re-branding" won't
fly. It allows the opposition to rip Democrats apart on the stump and "brand" them as untrustworthy and dishonest. Telling
Democrats to lie about their political beliefs in order to get elected isn't a strategy -- it's a recipe for eternal minority
status.
Note that on the Left Blogosphere Hillary's recent speech about finding
common ground with anti-choice forces met with a huge yawn. Since Roe v. Wade about once every decade someone trots
out this same brilliant idea -- let's work together to limit abortions -- and it always falls apart because, ultimately, the
Right is less interested in limiting abortion than in controling and punishing women.
The Right frames the abortion issue as if it's between people who want abortion banned
and people who want abortion to remain legal until birth. The truth is that most of us who are pro-choice would be willing
to restrict third trimester abortions as long as exceptions are made for physical health of the mother, and probably
also for situations in which the fetus is too compromised to survive outside the womb. I've actually been in favor of
this for a long time, and I'm pro-choice, but according to the Right I don't exist. Or something like that.
So the real fight isn't between pro-abortion and anti-abortion forces; it's between
people who want (or at least could accept) moderate legal restrictions and those who want to ban abortion altogether
so that women have to go underground and risk death to get abortions. And, frankly, most Americans are in the first group.
Note that a very recent CBS/NY Times poll found that people agree with Democrats over Republicans on the abortion issue, 45% to 35%.
But we on the Left have had it with being squishy and/or allowing the Right
to frame the terms of the abortion and other debates. That's what Nick and Hillary don't get. And Captain Ed doesn't get it,
either.
And there's also Orrin Judd, who is rapidly turning into one of my favorite rightie
bloggers. He's unusually brilliant today. His reasoning is that since Hillary says she is religious and is willing to recognize that abortion is sad and tragic, that
means she is no longer pro-death and anti-religion, and this means the "secularists" in the Democratic Party will have to
fnd another party, because apparently a political party cannot represent both religious and non-religious people
at the same time.
The third of Americans who are pro-death are going to have a political party
though. If it's not the Democrats it will be the Greens or some other third party.
I kid you not. The boy really thinks like this. And we think Kristof is clueless.
Michelle Malkin: Democracy Is for Moonbats
With freedom on the move across the Middle East and beyond, aggrieved anti-war
protesters here in the United States have nothing better to do this weekend than what they have always done: stand in the
way.
The most unhinged of left-wing activists, from breast-exposing pacifists to
the conspiracy-mongers of MoveOn.org, will descend on New York, Washington and other major media markets to "mark the two-year
anniversary of the U.S. bombing and invasion of Iraq." They will do so by clogging the streets, tying up police resources
and leaving behind a trail of anti-Bush propaganda litter.
Let's see if we can get this straight -- when Lebanese protest
against occupation by Syria, that means freedom is on the march. (Although when Lebanese protest in favor of occupation by
Syria, it's fake.) And when Americans protest American occupation of Iraq, we're Moonbats.
Does this mean protesting is only "democratic" when Malkin agrees
with the message?
I don't think so, Michelle.
Hesiod points out on American Street:
You do have to be impressed with the size of the Lebanese independence protest.
They are almost as large as the anti-Bush protest in New York city prior to
the Republican convention last year that the media largely portrayed as three hippies and a granola cruncher.
Hesiod also reminds us that in 2003 (quoting the BBC):
Between six and 10 million people are thought to have marched in
up to 60 countries over the weekend - the largest demonstrations of their kind since the Vietnam War.
Some of the largest turnouts were seen in countries whose governments
have offered the staunchest support for US President George W Bush's tough stance against Iraq, threatening military action
to force it to comply with UN disarmament rules.
Malkin exemplifies the Right's concept of democracy -- it's only
for those who agree with right-wing orthodoxy. The rest of us are expected to report to re-education camp.
And as far as standing "in the way" goes -- is Malkin really so
thick that she can't see that we are to Iraq what Syria is to Lebanon?
Well, yes, I guess she is.
Hesiod wrote last week,
Putting aside the highly tendentious claim that what is happening in Lebanon (the anti-Syrian part, anyway) is because
of Bush’s Middle-East policy, it isn’t even accurate to describe the anti-Syrian demonstrations as a “Democracy” movement.
The reason for this is simple, Lebanon is already a Democracy! It’s not a perfect one, to be sure. But, it has been having contested elections for both a parliamentary body and for President for a few years now. Critics
of Syria maintain that the Lebanese elections were heavily rigged in Syria’s favor. But, quite frankly, a lot of their criticism of the Lebanese elections [such
as bribery, and gerrymandered districts] can also be directed at the recent Iraqi elections that Bush and his supporters touted
as a victory for democracy.
Ironically, Syria has actually been loosening its grip on the electoral process
in Lebanon recently, and currently exerts an influence on the outcome similar to how we influenced the Iraqi elections. Scott
Ritter, for example, claimed recently that the pro-US Allawi Gvt. — with our backing — fudged the electoral totals
for the winning Shi’ite religious party to deprive them of an outright majority in the new Iraqi parliament. An assertion
that gains some credence when you remember that the iraqi vote totals were delayed due to “irregularities.”
A few days ago I wrote something similar.
The righties want to believe the developments in Syria are all about the
simple peasants learning about democracy from Iraq and wanting to try it themselves. In fact, Lebanon is a nation with complex
sectarian conflicts that, I believe, is already as much of a democracy as Iraq is allegedly becoming. Lebanon has a national
assembly that is, I understand, chosen by popular vote. Iraq's recent election was in hopes of forming some sort of national
assembly, although so far no one has been able to do it.
Lebanon's struggle is not about changing their form of government
from a dictatorship to a republic. It already is a republic. What they are struggling over is independence from
foreign influence.
Ahem.
Anyway -- Regarding the protests for this weekend, I had not
personally planned to join in because I'm terribly busy and can't take a day off from something else I'm working on. And,
like others on the Left Blogosphere, I wonder if such protests have any real impact.
But I remember at this time in March 2003 I took part in
the very large march from Times Square to Washington Square to protest the war. And at one point the marchers were chanting,
"This is what democracy looks like."
Clearly, Michelle Malkin thinks democracy is for Moonbats.
At Least He'd Be Out of the Pentagon
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