Al is the anti-Bush. See also Bob Herbert.
Monthly Archives: October 2007
Rand Rant
Thank you, Morbo.
Believe It, or Not
Here’s a video demonstration of the phrase “dumb as a bag of hammers.”
Some Things Can’t Be Legislated Away
This isn’t actually news — I’ve been ranting about it for years (such as here and here) — but it’s in the news. Elisabeth Rosenthal writes in yesterday’s New York Times —
A comprehensive global study of abortion has concluded that abortion rates are similar in countries where it is legal and those where it is not, suggesting that outlawing the procedure does little to deter women seeking it.
Moreover, the researchers found that abortion was safe in countries where it was legal, but dangerous in countries where it was outlawed and performed clandestinely. Globally, abortion accounts for 13 percent of women’s deaths during pregnancy and childbirth, and there are 31 abortions for every 100 live births, the study said.
The results of the study, a collaboration between scientists from the World Health Organization in Geneva and the Guttmacher Institute in New York, a reproductive rights group, are being published Friday in the journal Lancet.
Other points made in the study:
The most effective way to reduce the rate of abortion is not to make abortion illegal, but to make contraception widely available.
In Eastern Europe, where contraceptive choices have broadened since the fall of Communism, the study found that abortion rates have decreased by 50 percent, although they are still relatively high compared with those in Western Europe. “In the past we didn’t have this kind of data to draw on,†Ms. Camp said. “Contraception is often the missing element†where abortion rates are high, she said. …
… In Uganda, where abortion is illegal and sex education programs focus only on abstinence, the estimated abortion rate was 54 per 1,000 women in 2003, more than twice the rate in the United States, 21 per 1,000 in that year. The lowest rate, 12 per 1,000, was in Western Europe, with legal abortion and widely available contraception.
Where abortion is illegal, it is unsafe.
The study indicated that about 20 million abortions that would be considered unsafe are performed each year and that 67,000 women die as a result of complications from those abortions, most in countries where abortion is illegal. …
… Some countries, like South Africa, have undergone substantial transitions in abortion laws in that time. The procedure was made legal in South Africa in 1996, leading to a 90 percent decrease in mortality among women who had abortions, some studies have found.
Abortion is illegal in most of Africa, though. It is the second-leading cause of death among women admitted to hospitals in Ethiopia, its Health Ministry has said. It is the cause of 13 percent of maternal deaths at hospitals in Nigeria, recent studies have found.
Anti-abortion activists are full of crap:
[Randall K. O’Bannon, director of education and research at the National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund in Washington] said that the major reason women die in the developing world is that hospitals and health systems lack good doctors and medicines. “They have equated the word ‘safe’ with ‘legal’ and ‘unsafe’ with ‘illegal,’ which gives you the illusion that to deal with serious medical system problems you just make abortion legal,†he said.
Let’s repeat one example from above: “The procedure was made legal in South Africa in 1996, leading to a 90 percent decrease in mortality among women who had abortions, some studies have found.”
Guttmacher has been tracking the correlation between illegal abortion and high rates of death and medical complication from abortion for many years. And one would think even an idiot would understand that where women are trying to abort by flushing themselves with corrosive chemicals or sticking sharp and unsterilized objects into themselves, it is likely to be dangerous. But one cannot underestimate the abject brainlessness of Fetus People.
The researchers used national data for 2003 from countries where abortion was legal and therefore tallied. W.H.O. scientists estimated abortion rates from countries where it was outlawed, using data on hospital admissions for abortion complications, interviews with local family planning experts and surveys of women in those countries.
In other words, if women are showing up in hospitals because they are septic or mutilated from a back-alley abortion, it’s not too much of a stretch to conclude that women are getting back-alley abortions. Unless you are one of the Fetus People; in that case, you will likely conclude something utterly off the wall and unrelated.
However, outlawing abortion can have the effect of driving it so far underground that many people (unless they work in hospital emergency rooms) can pretend it isn’t happening, even though it is. And pretending is better than reality for righties. Of course, there is also the daughter effect — having a daughter of reproductive age tends to have a liberalizing effect on a man’s views on reproductive rights. (See also “Oh, the Humanity” — the anti-abortion rights position is based on an assumption that women aren’t real people — especially women who get abortions.)
If the goal of abortion [law] is to protect fetal life, criminalization is at best an ineffective and grossly inequitable means of achieving this goal, and the bundle of policies favoring reproductive freedom (including legal abortion) generally produces lower abortion rates than the illegal abortion-no rational sex ed-limited access to contraception-threadbare welfare state usually favored by the American forced pregnancy lobby. If, on the other hand, you’re in it more for the injuring women than for the protection of fetal life, then criminalizing abortion makes good sense.
Finally, from the New York Times article,
The Bush administration’s multibillion-dollar campaign against H.I.V./AIDS in Africa has directed money to programs that promote abstinence before marriage, and to condoms only as a last resort. It has prohibited the use of American money to support overseas family planning groups that provide abortions or promote abortion as a method of family planning.
Which means we might as well be flushing those multibillion dollars down a toilet.
Challenge
Good SCHIP
OK, folks, here’s the House target list. If any of the congress critters on this list below is yours, please be sure to nag him or her mercilessly (but politely) to override the S-CHIP veto next week.
GOPers who voted NO
AL Robert Aderholt
AR John Boozman
CA Brian Bilbray
CA John Doolittle
CO Marilyn Musgrave
FL Gus Bilirakis
FL Ginny Brown-Waite
FL Tom Feeney
FL Rick Keller
IA Tom Latham
ID Bill Sali
IL Judy Biggert
IL Tim Johnson
IL Peter Roskam
IL Jerry Weller
LA Rodney Alexander
MD Roscoe Bartlett
MI Joseph Knollenberg
MI Thaddeus McCotter
MI Tim Walberg
MN Michelle Bachmann
MO Sam Graves
MO Kenny Hulshoff
NC Robin Hayes
NJ Rodney Frelinghuysen
NJ Scott Garrett
NJ Jim Saxton
NV Dean Heller
NY Thomas Reynolds
NY Randy Kuhl
OH Steve Chabot
OR Greg Walden
PA John Peterson
TX Kay Granger
VA Thelma Drake
VA Randy Forbes
GOPers who didn’t vote last time
CA Wally Herger
WY Barbara Cubin
Dems who voted NO
MS Gene Taylor
NC Bob Etheridge
NC Mike McIntrye
The Right Blogosphere is still in denial mode. This guy actually claims “Democrats are being attacked, not the Frost family.”
Um, I believe I heard Keith Olbermann say the Frosts had gotten death threats.
Malkin isn’t giving up. Today she is telling us the Frosts own three cars. She illustrates this by showing photographs of recent, showroom models of the cars. We don’t know how old the Frost cars are, or if they are all working.
This is a variation on the old “Cadillac Queen” myth, of the black welfare recipient who drives to the store in a Cadillac to buy groceries with food stamps. Of course, the Cadillac might be fifteen years old and in dire need of a muffler. FYI: half the hillbillies in the Ozarks own more than one car, although rarely are they all in working condition. The time-honored practice is to keep one going by stripping parts off the others. In my old neighborhood back in the day, every third home was graced by some rusted vehicle on cinder blocks in the yard. People who cared about appearances kept the heap in the back yard, of course.
But the claim on the Right is that the Dems used Graeme Frost to avoid talking about the real issues of S-CHIP. But in fact,
1. It’s the Republicans, not the Democrats, who whipped up a phony outrage campaign to avoid talking about the real issues of S-CHIP. If the Frosts are a red herring, it’s the Right that made them so.
2. The circumstances of the Frost family perfectly exemplify the real issues surrounding S-CHIP. In a sane world, they would have provided an ideal starting point for the real-world discussion the Right claims it wants but avoids by any means handy.
The right is unapologetic. “The Democrats chose to outsource their airtime to a Seventh Grader,” wrote National Review’s Mark Steyn. “If a political party is desperate enough to send a boy to do a man’s job, then the boy is fair game.” …
… rather than just condemn the right-wingers as meanies, let’s take their claims seriously. Doing so makes clear that they are engaged in a perverse and incoherent form of class warfare.
The left is accused of all manner of sins related to covetousness and envy whenever it raises questions about who benefits from Bush’s tax cuts and mentions the yachts such folks might buy or the mansions they might own. But here is a family with modest possessions doing everything conservatives tell people they should do, and the right trashes them for getting help to buy health insurance for their children.
Most conservatives favor government-supported vouchers that would help Graeme attend his private school, but here they turn around and criticize him for . . . attending a private school. Federal money for private schools but not for health insurance? What’s the logic here?
Conservatives endlessly praise risk-taking by entrepreneurs and would give big tax cuts to those who are most successful. But if a small-business person is struggling, he shouldn’t even think about applying for SCHIP.
Conservatives who want to repeal the estate tax on large fortunes have cited stories — most of them don’t check out — about farmers having to sell their farms to pay inheritance taxes. But the implication of these attacks on the Frosts is that they are expected to sell their investment property to pay for health care. Why?
Oh, yes, and conservatives tell us how much they love homeownership, and then assail the Frosts for having the nerve to own a home. I suppose they should have to sell that, too.
Right you are, E.J. The Frosts have assets. They live in their biggest asset, and can’t very well take cash out of that asset without borrowing money on it or selling it and moving into a shelter, but never mind that. Their assets should have made them ineligible for assistance, the Right says.
But S-CHIP is a program for families with some means, not the truly destitute. The truly destitute qualify for Medicaid. S-CHIP is a safety net, meaning the program exists not only to provide health care for children but to prevent families from completely going under financially because of health care costs. The objections of the Right show us clearly that the Right doesn’t get it. They want a program that requires a family to hit bottom, to lose everything, to be shoved so low that getting up again is nearly impossible, before they get one red cent of taxpayer money.
The Frosts and their four children are exactly the kind of people S-chip was intended to help: working Americans who can’t afford private health insurance.
The parents have a combined income of about $45,000, and don’t receive health insurance from employers. When they looked into buying insurance on their own before the accident, they found that it would cost $1,200 a month — a prohibitive sum given their income. After the accident, when their children needed expensive care, they couldn’t get insurance at any price.
Fortunately, they received help from Maryland’s S-chip program. The state has relatively restrictive rules for eligibility: children must come from a family with an income under 200 percent of the poverty line. For families with four children that’s $55,220, so the Frosts clearly qualified.
Graeme Frost, then, is exactly the kind of child the program is intended to help. But that didn’t stop the right from mounting an all-out smear campaign against him and his family. …
… All in all, the Graeme Frost case is a perfect illustration of the modern right-wing political machine at work, and in particular its routine reliance on character assassination in place of honest debate. If service members oppose a Republican war, they’re “phony soldiersâ€; if Michael J. Fox opposes Bush policy on stem cells, he’s faking his Parkinson’s symptoms; if an injured 12-year-old child makes the case for a government health insurance program, he’s a fraud.
Awhile back David Brock of Media Matters wrote a book called The Republican Noise Machine. From a review by Bradford Plumer in Mother Jones (September 1, 2004):
Brock documents how right-wing groups pressure the media and spread misinformation to the public. It’s easy to see how this is done. Fringe conspiracies and stories will be kept alive by outlets like Rush Limbaugh, the Washington Times, and the Drudge Report, until they finally break into the mainstream media. Well-funded think tanks like the Heritage Foundation overwhelm news reporters with distorted statistics and conservative spin. Mainstream cable news channels employ staunchly rightwing pundits — like Pat Buchanan and Sean Hannity — to twist facts and echo Republican talking points, all under the rubric of “balance.” Meanwhile, media groups like Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center have spent 30 years convincing the public that the media is, in fact, liberal. As Brock says, it’s all a sham: “I have seen, and I know firsthand, indeed from my own pen, how the organized Right has sabotaged not only journalism but also democracy and truth.”
Most of the time, they still get away with this. But just this once their bluff was called, and the world pushed back. And they can’t stand it.
Today Mark Hemingway at NRO is sniffling that Graeme Frost suffers from Manipulated Child Syndrome and compares Dem treatment of Graeme with that of “stage mothers” pushing their kids into show business. Except there’s absolutely no evidence anyone was unkind to Graeme except the mouth-breathing Right.
And do we want to talk about Noah McCullough? From the New York Times, February 26, 2005:
The battle over Social Security has been joined by an unusual lobbyist, a 9-year-old from Texas who has agreed to travel supporting President Bush’s proposal.
The boy, Noah McCullough, made a splash with his encyclopedic command of presidential history, earning five appearances on the “Tonight” show and some unusual experiences in the presidential campaign last year. He beat Howard Dean in a trivia contest at the Democratic National Convention and wrote for his local newspaper about his trip to see the inauguration.
“He’s very patriotic and very Republican,” said Noah’s mother, Donna McCullough, a former teacher and self-described Democrat. “It’s the way he was born.”
In a sign of how far groups go to carry their message on Social Security, Progress for America has signed up Noah, a fourth grader, as a volunteer spokesman. He starts on spring break from James Williams Elementary School in Katy, Tex.
Progress for America, which spent almost $45 million backing Mr. Bush last year, plans to lay out $20 million on Social Security this year. It has spent $1 million on television commercials and is working to send experts around the country. Among them are Thomas Saving, a trustee of the Social Security Trust Fund; Rosario Marin, a former United States treasurer; and one really, really young Republican. Noah will not be eligible to collect Social Security for nearly 60 years.
Noah will travel to a handful of states ahead of visits by the president and will go on radio programs, answer trivia questions and say a few words about Social Security. Though he is obviously not an expert (and not really a lobbyist, either), officials say the effort is a lighthearted way to underline Mr. Bush’s message.
Somehow, it was OK to trot 9-year-old Noah all over the country, but having 12-year-old Graeme read one message into a radio microphone was child abuse. Jon Henke of Q and O fame points out that some leftie bloggers made snarky comments about Noah at the time (Atrios called him “Cousin Oliver”! Oh, the horror!). Let’s talk about what the Left did not do.
The Left did not invade the McCullough’s privacy, publish misinformation about their assets, publish their home address to encourage people to harass them, drive by their home to describe it to a national audience and speculate how much it was worth, call them to ask personal questions, criticize them for where they send their kids to school, or publish insinuations about them in major newspapers. (Malkin, in the New York Post — “Reid’s staff says Gemma and Graeme get tuition breaks. But it’s not clear when those scholarships were instituted and/or whether the other two receive tuition aid. …”)
The Malkin Monster will never quit. But that would make an override of the S-CHIP veto all the sweeter.
We Loves Us Some Al Gore
I knew our Al would win the Nobel Prize. Just think — he’s won an Oscar, an Emmy, an a Nobel Prize in the same year. How cool is that?
Of course, as the Talking Dog says,
Notwithstanding that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences liked him enough to award him an Oscar, and now, the Norwegian committee charged with the prize has awarded former Vice-President Al Gore the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in publicizing the dangers of climate change, the American press corps will still tell us that Gore is stiff, wooden and boring, sighs too much, and of course (wait for it…) he’s fat. Let’s face it… notwithstanding that he is a happily married man (and a decent man) who would never dream of such a thing, with an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize in his pocket… is there any doubt that this man could get laid anywhere he wants, anywhere in the world? Well, almost anywhere, I suppose, as the Washington press corps would still tell us of his made-up inadequacies (inadequacies they made up, of course, because (1) they don’t like him, (2) their corporate masters don’t like him and (3) Mr. Scaife doesn’t like him.)
And while he could be getting laid anywhere, is there anyone (who isn’t mentally defective, such as a huge portion of the American electorate) who wouldn’t rather have a beer with this guy than, say, the current idiot who infests our White House (who purportedly doesn’t even drink!!! Hah, press corps? You’d “rather have a beer with” a MAN WHO DOESN’T DRINK? WTF kind of fun is THAT??? Hah, press corps?)
Today all the rightie bloggers are flopping around in high derision mode. Bleep ’em.
I will say that the Right has done a good job planting disinformation in the press about climate change. As Mark Lynas writes,
Where does science end and politics begin? On climate change this is a particularly thorny question. For over a decade now we have seen a heated and increasingly bitter debate between environmentalists and sceptics about to what extent the globe is warming, who is responsible, and what (if anything) we ought to do about it.
Seemingly presented with two sets of “experts” and with no idea which side is telling the truth, the lay public is left confused, as opinion polls show. The real truth – that all the major scientific questions about global warming have long been settled, and largely support the long-standing environmentalist position – remains obscured by continuing political trench warfare and media debate. This failure to reflect the political debate on global warming, despite its largely accurate portrayal of climate science, is why Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, was dismissed as “one-sided” by the high court.
That is not to say that Gore got everything 100% right. … All of these points, however, are trivial details in the context of the main argument of the film, which is unambiguously correct in its portrayal of mainstream scientific understanding of climate change.
And there is speculation whether the Nobel Prize will inspire Al to get into the presidential race. I don’t think he will, for the same reasons Eric Pooley gives at Time —
He put himself in position to win the Nobel by committing to an issue bigger than himself — the fight to save the planet. If he runs for president now, he’ll be hauling himself back up onto that dusty old pedestal, signaling that he is, after all, the most important thing in his world. Sure, he’d say he was doing it because he feels a moral obligation to intervene in a time of unparalleled crisis. But running for president is by definition an act of hubris, and Gore has spent the past couple of years defying his ego and sublimating himself to a larger goal. Running for president would mean returning to a role he’d already transcended. He’d turn into — again — just another politician, when a lot of people thought he might be something better than that.
But oh, I wish he would run. If he declared I think he’d be the front-runner overnight. I’d endorse him, anyway.
Donate to a good cause!
Mahadaughter Erin here. I’m volunteering on New York Cares Day for the second year in a row, and my team and I will be going to a middle school in Queens to make the school a better place for the students. Last year, we went to an elementary school on Staten Island and painted, cleaned, sorted library books, and made the recess area more fun.
I mention this because, as part of volunteering, I’m also raising some funds for New York Cares, which is a really great organization that, in addition to helping out the schools, also cleans up parks, reads to students, helps the homeless, and supplies coats for people who can’t afford them, among other things.
So, if you’ve got a few extra bucks laying around, I’d seriously appreciate you sending them my way to benefit New York Cares. To donate, you can go to my personal donation page. And also check out my totally awesome team, Team Truthiness, a really great group of volunteers just out to make New York a little better. (If you live in New York and are interested in volunteering, tomorrow’s the last day to join the team.)
Thanks for letting me interrupt. Now back to your regularly scheduled blogging.
Busted
“E-mail Reveals That McConnell Staffer Propagated Smear Campaign Against Graeme Frost.”
Update: More from this flaming twit — I’m not responsible for behaving like a flesh-eating bacteria. The Democrats made me do it.
Political Prisoners
You must read this story by Adam Cohen in today’s New York Times:
Paul Minor is the son of Bill Minor, a legendary Mississippi journalist and chronicler of the civil rights movement. He is also a wealthy trial lawyer and a mainstay of Mississippi’s embattled Democratic Party. Mr. Minor has contributed $500,000 to Democrats over the years, including more than $100,000 to John Edwards, a fellow trial lawyer. He fought hard to stop the Mississippi Supreme Court from being taken over by pro-business Republicans.
Mr. Minor’s political activity may have cost him dearly. He is serving an 11-year sentence, convicted of a crime that does not look much like a crime at all. The case is one of several new ones coming to light that suggest that the department’s use of criminal prosecutions to help Republicans win elections may go farther than anyone realizes. …
…Mr. Minor, whose firm made more than $70 million in fees in his state’s tobacco settlement, suspects it was his role in the 2000 Mississippi Supreme Court elections that put a target on his back. The United States Chamber of Commerce spent heavily to secure a Republican, pro-business majority, while Mr. Minor contributed heavily to the other side.
The Chamber of Commerce was particularly eager to replace Justice Oliver Diaz Jr. on the state Supreme Court. After Justice Diaz was re-elected, the Bush Justice Department hit him with a number of fraud, bribery, and tax evasion charges, none of which stood up in court. Justice Diaz, acquitted, is still serving on the bench.
But Paul Minor was not so fortunate. Although he was acquitted of a number of similar charges brought against him, the feds finally found a jury that would convict Minor on vague allegations of trying to get an “unfair advantage” from a judge.
Mr. Minor’s prosecution, like the others in this scandal, gave a big boost to the Republican Party. The case intimidated trial lawyers into stopping their political activity. “The disappearance of the trial-lawyer money all but wiped out the Democratic Party in Mississippi,†Stephanie Mencimer reports in her book, “Blocking the Courthouse Door.†…
…And there is the matter of timing. The prosecution of Mr. Minor and Justice Diaz came just as Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, a Democrat, was running for re-election against Republican Haley Barbour. The Republicans spent heavily to tie Mr. Musgrove to Mr. Minor, and Mr. Musgrove was defeated.
And then there’s Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, serving more than seven years in prison on dubious charges, and Georgia Thompson, a Wisconsin civil servant who was freed after serving four months on baseless corruption charges.
In Wisconsin, Ms. Thompson’s trial coincided perfectly with Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle’s re-election campaign, and Republicans tried to link Doyle to Thompson. Mr. Siegelman’s prosecution looks like it was timed to prevent him from becoming governor again. It may be that all three of these cases were simply attempts to use the Justice Department to get Republican governors elected.
Ms. Thompson was fortunate to get a good federal appeals court panel, which ordered her released. Mr. Minor and Mr. Siegelman may not be so lucky. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and many other key players in the United States attorneys scandal are gone, but Congress has a lot more work to do in uncovering the damage they have done to the justice system.
Yesterday, Adam Zagorin reported for Time magazine that Karl Rove himself may be linked to the Siegelman case.
A Republican lawyer claims she was told that Karl Rove — while serving as President Bush’s top political adviser — had intervened in the Justice Department’s prosecution of Alabama’s most prominent Democrat. Longtime Alabama G.O.P. activist Dana Jill Simpson first made the allegation in June, but has now provided new details in a lengthy sworn statement to the House Judiciary Committee. …
…Simpson said in June that she heard a close associate of Rove say that the White House political adviser “had spoken with the Department of Justice” about “pursuing” Don Siegelman, a former Democratic governor of Alabama, with help from two of Alabama’s U.S. attorneys. Siegelman was later indicted on 32 counts of corruption, convicted on seven of them, and is currently serving an 88-month sentence in Federal prison.
TIME has obtained a copy of Simpson’s 143-page sworn statement to the Judiciary Committee. She recalls conversations in early 2005 with Rob Riley, Jr., son of Alabama’s current Republican governor, over his father’s coming gubernatorial race, in which Siegelman appeared to be the top Democratic challenger. The younger Riley, she says, told her that his father and Bill Canary, the state’s top Republican political operative and a longtime friend of Rove, contacted Rove in late 2004, after which he intervened with the Justice Department’s Public Integrity section to push for criminal prosecution of Siegelman. Months later, in May 2005, Siegelman was indicted, setting off a chain of events that led to his imprisonment and the end of his political career.
When Georgia Thompson’s case was reviewed by an appeals court last spring, one of the judges actually said:
“I have to say it strikes me that your evidence is beyond thin,” federal Appeals Judge Diane Wood told prosecutors. “I’m not sure what your actual theory in this case is.”