Cogitamus

Bloody Brilliant

All too often Sadly, No! is so full of in-jokes and outright gibberish that I can't understand what it is they're talking about. 

But this is, as the title suggests, bloody brilliant.  I won't presume to reproduce it here, so definitely click through.

Friday Frank: Watermelon in Easter Hay; Barcelona, 1988

I know, I've posted this beautiful instrumental before (it was a while ago, though). Call me selfish, but I feel a strong need for some inspiring artistry today, and since it's Friday, this FZ piece makes sense. If I recall, it was one of Frank's favorites. As one YouTube commenter notes: One of my very favorite pieces of FZ music. Beautifully melodic, yet it still contains Frank's trademark, quirky phrasing. A brilliant piece of guitarwork for those not as familiar with Frank's own style as they are with those of some of his famous hired guns. Bon Weekend, everyone!

A Response To Stephen's "Terrorism"

Stephen, while I'm often on the same page with you regarding your analysis of current events, there's a hole in your Terrorism post big enough to drive an armored division through. Your assertions that the men being drawn to right wing terrorism "have no legitimate grievance" and are "obviously not oppressed in any way whatsoever" are truly bizarre.

To be sure, they may not have the grievances that they think they have, and they may not be oppressed by the people they think are oppressing them, but they are not members of the wealthy elite who exert a vastly disproportionate amount of power in this country. They are, for the most part, working class*, and working class people — particularly male workers — are getting hammered by current events. While I certainly agree that our civil liberties are absolutely vital, and that everyone should be protected equally under the law, I have to wonder if this country's progressive movement has become so preoccupied with (oft-misleading) concepts of identity that we can neglect the crucial role of 'meat and potatoes' things like full employment in blunting violent expressions of group affinity.

Terrorism

Few words are more abused and over-exposed than "terrorism."  It's an interesting quirk of this society that, unlike with most words suffering this fate, terrorism has actually narrowed in meaning, instead of expanding to the point of uselessness.  For far too many Americans - something approaching 100% of those infecting our TV and print media, with the percentage of politicians of either party not far behind - terrorism means something done by a Muslim, preferably brown-skinned, or at least heavily bearded.

Oh, they'll admit to terrorism in Ireland, etc., but as a functional definition the above serves quite well.  That is, at least, until the last few weeks, when American right-wing extremists Scott Roeder and James von Brunn (allegedly) murdered fellow American citizens in service of their political views.

No doubt this blog's readers can all agree that the foregoing is terrorism, properly so-called.  Most of us probably also agree that American right-wing terrorism is only going to get worse due to several factors:  minorities will continue to gain high office, immigration will continue, people will continue to abandon the Christian faith, and perhaps most importantly, the entire apparatus of the GOP, from its politicians to its highly visible, multimillionaire pundits, will continue to fan the flames of hatred and violence.

The question before us, then, is how we should respond.  And to answer that question, we need to consider the different motivations for the acts that are considered to be "terrorism."

Boycott Anti-American Psychotalkers! Sing it, Ed.

Via Firedoglake.

What's Causing The Deficit?

Well, here's a thing.  When Bill Clinton left office, the CBO projected $800 billion surpluses for 2009-2012.  Now that same office is predicting - with rather more certainty, one would think - $1.2 trillion deficits for the same years.

The above-linked article attempts to figure out why.  Here's the key points:

• The biggest chunk of the projected deficit is from what the article calls "the business cycle."  Certainly there was a recession earlier in the decade, and we're now in the Great Recession or whatever it's being called.  This accounts for 37%.
• Coming in at a close second is George W. Bush's signature domestic policies, like his tax cuts and Medicare Part D.  These account for 33% of the projected deficit.  Let's remember this.
• 20% of the projected deficit is due to Obama continuing various Bush programs and policies.  The Iraq War continues to be a huge drain on our nation's finances.  The tax cut for people making under $250,000 and the Wall Street bailout are in this category.
• The stimulus bill accounts for 7% of the projected deficit. 
• Obama's proposed plans for health care, education and energy reform account for 3% of the projected deficit.  According to the article, "If the analysis is extended further into the future, well beyond 2012, the Obama agenda accounts for only a slightly higher share of the projected deficits"

Unfortunately, the second half of the article completely ignores the first half, serving up the normal mish-mash of GOP operatives regurgitating GOP talking points about deficits and spending cuts. 

What really matters is that George Bush's key domestic policies are shown to account for 53% of projected deficits.  It can also be legitimately argued that what the article euphemizes as "the business cycle" is at least partially Bush's - and the GOP-controlled Congress that rubber-stamped everything he wanted - responsibility.  Certainly dismantling the regulatory regime in the financial sector hasn't helped us very much.

Along with making sure that George Bush and the GOP Congress don't escape their huge reponsibility for our deficits, we need to all understand just how little of the deficit is because of Obama's proposed social programs.  Health care reform will not bankrupt the country.  Period.  The proposed reforms - hell, progressives' most fevered dreams of sinlge payer, socialist utopia - will not cost as much as Iraq.  They won't cost as much as Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy.  They won't even cost as much as the ongoing Wall Street bailout.

Even assuming that we manage to not start any wars of conquest and that giving crooks on Wall Street blank checks isn't going to become a yearly habit, healthcare reform will take many years to cost as much as these boondoggles, and unlike either Iraq or Wall Street, healthcare reform has a lot of ways to pay for itself. 

The 3% of projected deficits made up by healthcare reform and other social programs is getting so much attention and causing so much distress - and getting the blame for the entire deficit, usually - because the real divide in this country is not left and right, or religious vs. secular.  The real divide is between rich and poor, between the ultra-wealthy and everyone else.  Wars are fine, bailing out Wall Street is just a given, but if any money goes toward helping union members at a car company or to provide health care to the working poor, then the moneyed interests - and their lackeys in Congress and the press - gear up for all-out war.

Spread these facts around.  I don't care if you link to this post or not, I really don't.  But people need to know and be reminded about what is actually causing these deficits and what steps we can take that would actually reduce them.  Killing healthcare reform won't do anything to solve our deficit problem, but ending the Iraq War, restoring some sanity to our tax code and telling Wall Street that they're now welcome to start doing business the way they say they want to, will help.

Creigh Deeds Wins Dirt Cheap

I am very pleased to see that Creigh Deeds won a resounding victory in the Democratic primary for the governorship of Virginia today.  As I had expressed back in January, I was very concerned about the prospect of Terry McAuliffe buying the Democratic nomination -- to me McAuliffe epitomized the mercenary carpet bagger with overweening ambition, a deadly combination in a state like Virginia.  Deeds won despite being vastly outspent by McAuliffe.

Deeds will be involved in a rematch with genial right wing Republican Bob McDonnell, who defeated him for the Attorney General slot in 2005 by 323 votes out of the 1.9 million votes cast.

Deeds is a pretty moderate guy, and follows nicely in the ideological shoes of the two recent successful Virginia gubernatorial candidates, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine.  It would be nice to see Virginia continue to trend blue.  The off year elections for governor in Virginia and New Jersey are always slightly strange contests.  The Democrats could conceivably lose both of these races, which will no doubt be spun as some kind of repudiation of Obama.  Deeds as the nominee is the best prospect for retaining this seat, thereby avoiding the hideous prospect of Republican crowing in November.    

Adam And Eve*

Litbrit, the poor thing, has for some reason taken it upon herself to read Ross Douthat's latest column.  At least we're supposed to understand that what appeared in the NYT yesterday was his most recent column; there's so little variation between them it's hard to tell if he has written more than one column or if a computer program is just rearranging words from his first effort.

When litbrit sent her email, she passed along one particularly trenchant comment:

A man telling a woman what to do with her body. Let me guess - he's probably a Catholic, a conservative, a Republican. And he probably believes philosophy ended in 1274 (hint: the year Thomas Aquinas died).

In the absence of a materially definitive and therefore legally dispositive determination of when life begins, we should trust a woman and her doctor to decide if and when to have an abortion. Is this too hard for the party of serial divorces (Newt, Giulliani, McCain, etc) pedophilia (the Catholic Church), and homophobia (the Mormorns) to understand? Leave women alone. Haven't you blamed her enough since Eden?

The only thing wrong with it is how he left out Evangelicalism's problem with domestic violence.

Douthat's column is insipid garbage, more evidence that affirmative action for conservatives is alive and well.  It's sad to see supposedly reputable - even "liberal" - organizations like the New York Times practice wingnut welfare in failed attempt after failed attempt to placate their right-wing critics. 

But chronicling Douthat's deficiencies is too easy, and frankly a little boring.  What I'd like to do instead is have a little Bible study.

Wait!  Keep reading, because I think you'll find it interesting.  But to protect those who can't stand this type of thing - really, it's ok - I'll put the rest after the jump.

From the Brave, the Bold, the Battered Heart of Chevrolet

I continually underestimate the sheer mean-spirited lunatic nihilism that characterizes the right wing in America in its decadent decline phase.  Today the dynamic duo of men with boobs, Rush Limbaugh and Hugh Hewitt, called for right wingers to boycott General Motors in the hopes of bringing down the company in order to spite Obama.

In other words, Limbaugh and Hewitt so hate Obama, and so despise the United Auto Workers Union that they favor an outcome that will likely result in hundreds of thousands of Americans losing their jobs, their health insurance, and their future prospects, not to mention having the American taxpayer take a bath while the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation absorbs still more staggering losses.  What kind of people would root for such a thing to pass? 

I am not a big fan of Wal-mart -- I find their practices pretty abhorrent.  Nevertheless, I can't really imagine wanting their hundreds of thousands of employees to lose their jobs.  I'd merely like to see the company unionized and employee wages and benefits substantially increased.

I hope all of the GM employees and those employed in dealerships, part manufacturers and related businesses all take note of this wish for their mass immiseration by these alleged patriots.  

The GOP -- the party of vicious abstraction triumphant.  What fucking worms.

(And yes, I have only bought GM products in my life.)     

  

A depressing morning after in Europe

Politically speaking, in any case.

Over the last four days, elections were held across the EU for the European Parliament, and the results were mostly published last night.

Now normally, European elections tend to be fairly weak tea and relatively inconsequential. The Parliament has limited powers, unfortunately, with traditionally little power to resist or challenge the European Commission. Members of European Parliament (MEPs) are no more than an afterthought when the European Council, comprising the national heads of states, decides to negotiate some major new deal.

Moreover, the Parliament is a slow-moving beast with over 700 members, and any political uprooting taking place in one or the other country tends to be absorbed without much of a shock by the results in the other twenty-something member states. In the end the political make-up of the assembly is roughly the same every time: the christian-democrats and social-democrats dominant, with liberals and greens often allying with each other in an occasionally successful challenge to the status quo.

In this lumbering landscape, the far right and far left are usually irrelevant. In fact, it's just a year and a half ago that the political group of the far right in the Parliament ("Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty") collapsed, after Romanian and Italian extremists got into each other's hair over Romanian emigrants.

This weekend's results, however, are deeply depressing. The European Parliament is weak enough without an influx of national populists, extremists and protest candidates adding to its incoherence. And above all, these elections represent a dispiriting snapshot of where public opinion stands. Or at least where the opinion stands of those who could be bothered to go out and vote: turnout was down to 43% across the EU, the lowest ever, with desolate outliers in Slovakia (20%), Lithuania (21%) and the Czech Republic (25%). When turnout drops that low, the democratic legitimacy of the body being elected is clearly in question.

Far right and national-populist protest parties in the European elections: scores over 7% in yellow, over 14% in orange, over 21% in red.

Across much of the continent, the news was pretty much all bad. A "blue wave" is crashing onto the European Parliament, writes Le Monde - with rightwing parties coming out on top in two-thirds of the member states.

The right scored important victories in the largest states - the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy - as well as in a string of Central European countries, which as Le Monde described it "oscillated between moroseness and populism". It won in each of the remaining three West-European EU countries governed by the left (Britain, Spain and Portugal). As the Telegraph summarizes, "Traditional Social Democrats and Socialists did badly across the European Union as centre-right governments in Germany, France, Italy and Poland weathered the storm to consolidate votes". In countries like Britain and Germany, the social-democrats suffered the worst election results of the postwar era. All in all, the socialist/social-democratic group in the European Parliament lost about a quarter of its seats.

It's ironic, really, writes Le Monde: the right appears to have benefited from the same economic crisis that has laid bare the weaknesses of neoliberalism and the market economy. How can it be the erstwhile proponents of deregulation, privatisation and laisser-faire who reap the electoral rewards of people's insecurity?

Obama, the Left, and the 75/25 Presidency

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who shares the distinction of being a policy-oriented activist rather than a member of the political club of the Village, that is to say someone here who is cause driven and takes political outcomes seriously, rather than viewing them as some sort of game.  The kind of person who denounces a tepid fellow activist overly concerned with the sensibilities of the various Blue Dogs and "moderates" in town as a "triangulatin' motherfucker".

People of our stripe have to stick together here, where our passion for doing the right thing is often denounced as crazy, naive, impractical -- you name it.  It's odd, by the way, to be on the cusp of fifty, having made a living in a difficult field and endured a quarter century of ideological warfare against the things one holds dearly and be deemed naive.  Even more so to be lucid, articulate, and possessed with some degree of policy and real world expertise, and able to lay out points logically and persuasively and still be termed crazy -- particularly in a world in which Newt Gingrich is regularly featured on television and in no way considered outside of the mainstream of Village discourse.

Anyway, this friend, reacting to a recent disappointment by Obama in her area of concern, described him to me as the 75/25 President.  In other words, we will agree with him 75% of the time, but that 25% when he sells us short is going to be a bit of a bitter pill.  I thought it a rather good description of where many of us find ourselves ideologically and emotionally and it's an interesting place to be.

Propagandize this: Health care for all. Now.

The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.

-- the late Australian social scientist Alex Carey

This article was published last year, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (then a candidate for the presidency) was proposing a system of allowing the private, for-profit health insurance companies to work together to cover everyone (?) rather than scrap it all and build us, from the ground up, a powerful, comprehensive, nationalized system like the ones they have in other developed (and even some undeveloped) countries. Jake at Whiskeyfire writes:

The truth is that large government run programs such as social security are models of efficiency. We have the data and proof. At any rate they couldn't be less efficient than the private health insurance industry. Many estimates of the waste inherent in the private healthcare industry run in excess of 1 trillion dollars annually. There is the answer to that question about where we might find a trillion dollars a year to finance this venture.

We should not forget as we wind our way through this debate about dollars, medical records, reimbursement rates, economies of scale and the like that real people are suffering every day at the hands of people who are willing to sacrifice the health of their fellow men and women for a bit more money. Let me just say that this is what evil looks like and if there is a hell this would consign one to the lower levels in my estimation. If your work causes people to suffer that is evil and your soul is corroding as quickly as your wallet is growing.

Under President Obama, the current reform plan under review is, let's face it, a diluted, hybridized, private-public version; it's far from the socialized medicine model many of us lefties believe is the fairest, most efficient, most cost-effective, and most humane way to care for the health and well-being of our citizens. Even so, the currently-discussed "plan" has obviously got Big Insurance, along with its PR firms and personal handmaids supporters in Congress--Ben Nelson, cough cough--in a tizzy. Big Insurance doesn't want us to have any public option at all. Because then, they will have to compete with an entity that actually provides access to health care. (What, you thought health care insurers were in it for the rewarding, patriotic, humanitarian aspects of providing access to health care for Americans?)

And for some reason, what Big Insurance wants is getting plenty of traction, when in fact there are, what, a couple of hundred million of us and a relatively small number of them?

Democracy? Now?

The statistics laid out herein, alone, demonstrate that the bullshit we're already being bombarded with courtesy of Big Insurance--Oh, but Americans will lose their ability to make choices! Americans don't want to have health care rationed! Americans don't want to be on waiting lists!--is exactly that: bullshit.

Restriction of choices. Rationing. Waiting lists. Those of us who've sat through even a single semester of PR or advertising will immediately recognize these as negative transfer words, sledgehammers in any propaganda-writer's arsenal. They're words (oftentimes they're images) with widely-recognized positive--or, as in this case, negative--associations. And you plaster them all over the thing onto which you want to transfer the previously-established positive or negative reaction. Hence, if you want to make a politician look good, you place lots of flags, smiling children, and green rolling hills in his television spot, since people already react positively to flags, smiling children, and green rolling hills--in pretty much any context.

Correspondingly, if you want to make a policy proposal look bad, you recycle the same negative associations with worst-case-scenario tales from abroad--disingenuous, out-of-context, and even outright false though they may be--that were instrumental in deep-sixing said policy the last time around. Restriction of choices. Rationing. Waiting lists.

I'm just amazed they haven't resurrected Harry and Louise. (Or dug them up, since I don't remember them ever getting the coverage or the health care they talked about needing, so perhaps their stories ended as tragically as have the stories of so many Americans.)

Make no mistake: the companies fling that bullshit at us because they do not want Americans to think about the long wait-times and restriction of choices they already endure, even with top-drawer PPO health coverage: three or four weeks for a simple appointment at the pediatrician's; six months to see a psychologist or gastroenterologist (and if you don't have private insurance, forget about seeing those specialists altogether, because the first question the receptionist will ask, when you call, is not "What's wrong?" or "How may we help you?" but rather, "Who is your insurer?"); the "choice" of paying for vital but non-formulary (and thus exorbitantly expensive) prescription medicine instead of taking care of car-repairs or, heaven forbid, buying something to eat other than lentils and rice that month. They do not want Americans to consider the fact that "elective" surgery--i.e. having cataracts removed so that one can, you know, see properly, which is considered elective or optional surgery by many policies including Medicare--can cost an American tens of thousands of dollars out-of-pocket.

Or just bankrupt him completely: as reported everywhere this week, there are serious financial meltdowns going on within families around the country when someone falls ill or has a serious accident, which are things that can and do happen to us all, every single day. More than 60% of bankruptcies in the United States are caused by a health care crisis. Not frivolous spending or mismanagement of income or living above one's means. A health care crisis.

In other words, whereas some citizens of the world have free*, fully-accessible medical care, well-care, prescription medicine, and emergency care--plus the security of being able to live their lives, do their work, and engage in sports and exercise without the crushing worry that an illness or accident will strip them and their families of everything they own and have worked for--AND whereas those citizens might sometimes have to wait for non-emergent surgery like cataract removal (although that, too, will still be paid for by the state when it comes time for the surgery)--something not unlike the wait period that even the best-insured American, save perhaps the odd sports celebrity or movie star, endures to have any sort of non-emergent treatment, depending on the number of specialists in any given field and geographic location, and the demand for their services...

...whereas some citizens of the world get to have all that, America gets to have meaningless, semantically-dependent non-benefits like "choice" and "no wait times".

A Little Night Music

"Quiet Little Voices" - We Were Promised Jetpacks

Love the band name -- We Were Promised Jetpacks.  Tuneful scotsmen.

I am celebrating not being in the Emergency Room this Saturday.  But then again, no morphine and no helicopter ride.  Possible band name there -- No Morphine and No Helicopter Ride.

Enjoy, my friends.

On the Mend

As you can see from Deborah's post I had a little health scare last weekend, which has kept me off the intertubes for several days.  Fortunately it turned out not to be a huge deal and I should be returning to work on Monday.  I did get quite a tour of high tech medicine in the process, which was of some interest to me.

I have been going rather hard at work for some time as my union pension plan clients grapple with what the market debacle has done to their funding.  I had 15 hours of meeting on Thursday, followed by a lengthy one on Friday that began at 7:00 AM.  So naturally on Saturday I decided to go to the gym for an hour and a half in the morning and then play tennis (first time in a couple of years) for two hours in the late afternoon.  Without bringing water, because, I am a moron.

When I got home my chest began to hurt and my heart beat seemed a bit rapid.  So I did what any man would do (and I do use "man" specifically) and decided to move a carpet out of a room where we were going to keep a new dog, then walked up the street for Chinese take out, bought a book, drank a beer -- all of the text book things they tell you to do when you're  49, a bit overweight, and suffering from chest pains.  

Finally, about 10:30 I tried to go to sleep and the pain intensified to the point of rather substantial discomfort (the kind of bloodless phrase my wife complains keeps me from getting prompt medical attention anywhere).  I woke my wife and said now seems like a good time to go to the ER.  We debated the merits of Georgetown University Hospital -- a more genteel ER on a Saturday night -- versus Washington Hospital Center, the proper place for cardiac care here in our nation's capital, but set in a much more gritty place, with an ER to match.  Convinced that this couldn't really be anything serious I voted for Georgetown in the hope that the sweet, sweet painkillers I needed would be administered that much quicker

Friday Frank: Ravel's Bolero; Barcelona, 1988; with bonus Jeff Beck playing Bolero

I never tire of hearing Frank Zappa's version of Bolero. And while hunting for this clip, I came across the brilliant Jeff Beck's version, performed live at the Fuji Speedway in 2006, and thought I'd share it with readers, too.

Bon Weekend, everyone!

Get well soon, Sir Charles!

Sir C will be pissed at me for this, I'm sure, but oh well--he's the one who had a rather nasty health scare this week; I'm  just an innocent little fellow Cogblogger who's letting readers and contributors know so they can direct some prayers, positive vibes, and healing thoughts toward the nation's capital (which could use as many prayers, positive vibes, and healing thoughts as we can muster on any given day).

When Sir C emerges hereabouts, which I hope will be soon, be sure to ask him about Nurse Bushwhacker.  Rest up and get well soon, my friend.

[Go ahead and be pissed at me, C, ha! We love you and miss you, and we look forward to your return. XXX D.]

Photographs for the Prosecution

A few years ago, I typed a few keywords into Google and came upon a site with photographs purporting to show American soldiers raping Iraqi women.  They were so disturbing I wish now I hadn't seen them.  I wish I didn't have those images in my head.  Much later, I sent the link to a few friends.  Because I got no response, I could only assume these people found the images equally disturbing.

Later still, I debated whether to post the link on this blog.  Though I have no difficulty believing the photographs were true -- how could anyone? soldiers have been raping women in every war, in every country, throughout history -- the photos couldn't be verified, and the rest of the website contained a lot of anti-Semitic crap and outright incoherence, thus calling into question the whole thing.  How could I expect people to take seriously the gruesome photographs when so much of the accompanying text was garbage?  The site would've been stronger, in fact, without the photographs but with a credible narrative.

See, I Can Praise Obama

Two items about Obama's decision-making and political acumen. .

• It was overshadowed by both the Notre Dame faux-outrage and the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, but President Obama has nominated Miguel Diaz as Ambassador to the Vatican.  Dr. Diaz is a theologian at St. John's School of Theology-Seminary, a major Roman Catholic seminary.  Obama had been having trouble with this appointment; there were rumors that the Vatican refused to accept Caroline Kennedy, who was never formally nominated.  I completely agree with Mark Silk - which should be no surprise - that this was an astute move.  Diaz is not only obviously Hispanic, but as a respected theologian at a respected seminary, it's hard for the shrieking ninnies of Roman Catholicism - here's looking at you, Bill Donohue - to have their ginned-up outrage gain any traction.  The Ambassador to the Holy See is not the most important of positions, but it resonates within the Catholic community, and they are an important part of the Democratic coalition.  Anything that helps keep them within the coalition without making concessions to far-right extremists is a good move.

• The other is a report which suggests that Obama's decision not to release the latest batch of Abu Ghraib photos - or at least to delay the release - came more from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki.  When informed of the photos imminent released, al Maliki reportedly said, "Baghdad will burn."  As Auguste at Pandagon says,

on first glance I’d say that when the prime minister of Iraq warns that “Baghdad will burn”, and you’re sitting thousands of miles from Baghdad and he’s not, maybe you believe him.

I know that a lot of the discussion following the reversal centered around whether we give Obama the benefit of the doubt too easily, and I found myself beginning to lean towards the “yes, we do” side of things. I’d hate to make the mistake of jumping back in with both feet, but “Baghdad will burn” is more compelling than yowling noise about supporting the troops.

Perhaps al Maliki is being disingenuous.  But if his reaction formed the basis for Obama's decision, then I feel a lot better about that decision.  The photos need to come out.  But we do need to consider the welfare of a people who have already suffered enough at our hands.

In Which An Army Of Scott Roeders Is The Only Possible Outcome

Someone in my area has set up a billboard in the bed of their pickup truck with large photos that supposedly depict the remains of aborted fetuses.  A manual for "covert operatives" on how to attack abortion providers and patients includes photos like these at the bottom of most of the pages.  "The Nuremberg Files," a website which includes a listing of "Aborted and Nearly Aborted Abortionists," has multiple links exhorting the reader to view graphic photos that apparently depict these remains.

Amanda Marcotte has written about the training manual for the group Justice For All, which is, unfortunately, valuable information for each of us to know.  She discusses their tactics, which include "a two story tall 3D display of fetus pictures next to pictures of Holocaust victims."

Anti-choice activists have made gore their stock-in-trade.  But they don't reserve their library of grisly images only for the public, hoping to shock-convert people to their cause.  They use these photos in their internal materials, things not really intended to be viewed by the larger public.

Just as The Passion of the Christ was rightly called "crucifixion porn," anti-choice activists are consuming massive amounts of abortion porn.  It's not that people are actually receiving sexual gratification from displaying and viewing these images.  Rather, they're using these images to provoke strong and ultimately false emotions from those who view them.  Crucifixion porn, as it were, is a huge problem in American Evangelicalism and has been for some time.  Youth events in particular feature excessively - and falsely - detailed accounts of Jesus's death - or the persecutions suffered by missionaries, etc. - as a way to manipulate adolescents' already-volatile emotions, to get them to come to the front of the auditorium and "make a decision for Jesus."

I don't need to see pictures of torture* in order to know that I oppose it.  I don't need to see child pornography for its existence to sicken and enrage me, and anti-child pornography activists who displayed such images would be rightly shunned by society and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. 

Simply put, there is something very wrong with a movement that uses images like these to shock society at large.  Not even the sickos at 4chan go as far as the anti-choice movement.  It's no wonder that anti-choicers are producing so many vicious and violent criminals; they're warped and infected by their own most common tactics.

*I do, however, think the Abu Ghraib photos should be made a matter of public record in order to force accountability on those who ordered and performed such abuse.

Pawlenty freeing his hands to block Al Franken?

Yesterday, the Minnesota Supreme Court heard arguments from the lawyers of Al Franken and Norm Coleman about the latter's challenge to a previous, unanimous court ruling determining that Franken had won last November's Senate election. As the Star Tribune reports,

the justices [..] leveled their toughest questions at a lawyer for Coleman [..]. "You're offering little more than ... Coleman's theory of the case but no concrete evidence to back it up," said Associate Justice Christopher Dietzen.

If the Court rules that Franken did in fact win, Governor Pawlenty will have to decide whether to certify Franken the winner or not. If he doesn't, he will piss off Minnesotans; if he does, he will piss off national Republicans.

Well, today, right on cue, Pawlenty announced that he will not run for reelection in 2010. And as Jonathan Chait notes, "Siding with Coleman could endanger Pawlenty's popularity in Minnesota, but now that he's not running in 2010, he's free to carry water for the national party."

Hence the rather alarmed reaction from Donald McFarland of Americans United for Change:

“Gov. Pawlenty, the Iowa caucuses can wait — the people of Minnesota need you now. ... We implore the governor to sign the election certificate should the Minnesota Supreme Court rule in Al Franken’s favor.”

You'd sure hope so, but it doesn't look good, does it?

If Pawlenty puts his party's interests over those of his state, as he is now freer to do, the issue gets passed on to the Senate. Richard L. Hasen, a professor specializing in election law at Loyola Law School, lays out in the LA Times why the U.S. Senate should not wait for the outcome of a new federal lawsuit before seating Franken provisionally in that case.

Brits Do It Better

Yet no matter who they're talking about, or what the circumstance, from my perspective the answer always seems so glaringly basic it could be scratched on the back of a button. This one wants a shag. That one wants a biscuit. Every time: the butler did it.

-Charlie Brooker
 The Guardian

Charlie has a plan.  But I still don't think he's ever going to get them to give up the remote.

Keith Olbermann: O'Reilly and FOX created the climate for Dr. Tiller's Murder

Keith Olbermann says it so well: O'Reilly in particular, and FOX in general, were instrumental in whipping up the frenzy--with oft-repeated buzzwords and catchphrases that rhyme with the murdered doctor's name, for example--that grew and swelled, the way frenzies tend to do, and inevitably led to an act of extremism. In this case, a deadly, criminal, and irreversible act of extremism.

Constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley appeared on Rachel Maddow's program and stated that First Amendment rights, particularly freedom of speech, meant it would be very difficult to successfully prosecute O'Reilly or any other talking head for incitement. Indeed, he said protected speech was a very broad category that even included what he referred to as "hate speech".

And he's right. O'Reilly can always just state that he is entitled to his opinion, and that's really all he was doing here: expressing his opinion, based on the facts, and the facts do include the number of abortions that Dr. Tiller performed and where he performed them.

Never mind that O'Reilly's protected speech, in its typically polarizing way, conveniently left out the compelling and heartbreaking stories behind those late-term abortions themselves: women whose pregnancies had gone terribly, tragically wrong and who had to choose between a third-trimester termination and leaving their other children motherless; child rape victims; babies without vital organs; conjoined twins whose brief, pain-wracked lives--in the unlikely event they survived birth--would be spent hooked up to wires, tubes, and ventilators.

Never mind that O'Reilly's protected speech was presented in the form of glib, soundbite-ish rhyming slogans and repeated over and over. Never mind that his campaign against OB/GYN Dr. Tiller--and ultimately, against a woman's right to bodily autonomy, period--was a classic case of propaganda that employed standard techniques: ad nauseam reinforcement, black-and-white fallacy, demonizing the enemy, half-truths, name-calling, oversimplification, repetition, scapegoating, and of course, the use of slogans and virtue words.

Never mind that O'Reilly's protected speech enjoyed a multiplier factor, unimaginable to the Constitution's framers, in that it was electronically broadcast to millions of American ears and eyes, simultaneously. And then, repetitively.

I say this as a dyed-in-the-wool First Amendment supporter: Words have consequences, and so do viruses, often to a deadly degree. In protecting the former--as we surely must--let us not enable the proliferation of the latter.

Also at litbrit.

It Didn't Work

Women's Healthcare Services will close for one week to mourn the murder of Dr. Tiller.  After that, they will reopen, "back to 100 percent."  Considering how few choices there are for women who need the services this clinic provides, it's especially heartening to see them persevere in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger. . .through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.

Those words are from the sixth chapter of 1 Corinthians in the Christian Bible.  Paul also understood what it was like to be persecuted by the so-called people of God for doing the work of God.

Waterboard Operation Rescue

The unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.

-- the FBI's definition of terrorism, per the Federal Code of Regulations (28 C.F.R. Section 0.85)

From McClatchy, emphasis mine:

The suspect in custody for the slaying of Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller was a member of an anti-government group in the 1990s and a staunch opponent of abortion.

Scott P. Roeder, 51, of Merriam, Kan., a Kansas City suburb, was arrested on Interstate 35 near Gardner in suburban Johnson County, Kan., about three hours after the shooting. Tiller was shot to death around 10 a.m. inside Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita. [...]

Roeder also was a subscriber to Prayer and Action News, a magazine that advocated the justifiable homicide position, said publisher Dave Leach, an anti-abortion activist from Des Moines, Iowa.[...]

Roeder, who in the 1990s was a manufacturing assemblyman, also was involved in the "Freemen" movement.

"Freemen" was a term adopted by those who claimed sovereignty from government jurisdiction and operated under their own legal system, which they called common-law courts. Adherents declared themselves exempt from laws, regulations and taxes and often filed liens against judges, prosecutors and others, claiming that money was owed to them as compensation.

In April 1996, Roeder was arrested in Topeka after Shawnee County sheriff's deputies stopped him for not having a proper license plate. In his car, officers said they found ammunition, a blasting cap, a fuse cord, a one-pound can of gunpowder and two 9-volt batteries, with one connected to a switch that could have been used to trigger a bomb.

Jim Jimerson, supervisor of the Kansas City ATF's bomb and arson unit, worked on the case.

"There wasn't enough there to blow up a building,'' Jimerson said at the time, "but it could make several powerful pipe bombs...There was definitely enough there to kill somebody.'' [...]

In recent years, someone using the name Scott Roeder has posted anti-Tiller comments on various Internet sites. One post, dated Sept. 3, 2007 and placed on a site sponsored by Operation Rescue called chargetiller.com, said that Tiller needed to be "stopped."

"It seems as though what is happening in Kansas could be compared to the 'lawlessness' which is spoken of in the Bible," it said. "Tiller is the concentration camp 'Mengele' of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgment upon our nation."

On May 19, 2007, a Scott Roeder commented on an invitation by Operation Rescue to join an event being held May 17-20 in Wichita, "the 'Nation's Abortion Capital,' to pray for an end to George R. Tiller's late-term abortion business and for all pre-born babies everywhere to once again come under the protection of law."

Let us review: an armed and dangerous man kills a doctor in broad daylight as he sat with his wife in church.  Said armed and dangerous man has a record of committing acts designed to intimidate via fear: trespassing as well as verbal threats to doctors that he had "seen you now".  Said armed and dangerous man is a known member of an anti-government group.  Said armed and dangerous man has a police record that includes convictions for the criminal use of explosives.  Someone posting under the name of said armed and dangerous man has repeatedly, on sites owned and/or sponsored by Operation Rescue, called for Dr. Tiller to be "stopped".

Like Andrew Sullivan, who posts the ghastly piece of Operation Rescue "Tiller the Killer" agitprop here (warning: it's as awful as you'd expect) in order to spotlight the deranged violence-inciting lengths to which OR goes, I abhor torture and do not support it.

But...as I understand it, I live in a country where enhanced interrogation techniques are believed to be extremely useful when it comes to finding out what terrorists are plotting next.  Whom are they targeting?  What are their plans?  Here we have an actual, real-live terrorist in captivity--not just an alleged enemy combatant or whatever it is they're calling teenagers who got swept up in the Great Guantánamo Grabs these days.  No, this guy wasn't on his way to a family wedding in rural Afghanistan--he'd already been caught, tried, and convicted on explosives charges, and now, in front of witnesses,  he's shot dead a law-abiding American citizen while he was in church.

So.  What does he know?  Whom else are OR targeting?  What are their plans?  Ticking time bomb, ladies and gentlemen.  Domestic terrorism is with us today, operating and "rescuing" right here on our own soil.  Consistency, consistency, consistency.

I agree with Lisa: let's Waterboard Operation Rescue.

[Updated to include the FBI definition of terrorism at the top.]

Bloody Hands, And They Glory In It

I've been struggling this last 24 hours over what to say about George Tiller's murder.  He was killed less than 200 miles away from me, (allegedly) by a man who was caught less than 20 miles from me and who lived less than 5 miles from me.  It's one of those times when violence is brought uncomfortably close to where one lives.

George Tiller was a hero, a real hero.  He and his equally heroic staff saved women's lives and preseved their ability to bear children - yes, that's right.  George Tiller was in the business of helping women not only live but also have families.  After being shot in both arms, under constant threat of violence toward his clinic and his person, the near-constant victim of malicious prosecution, he and his colleagues went into work everyday and did a difficult job.  We can only hope and pray that the work of his clinic will continue somehow without him.

What I don't want to do, however, is let Dr. Tiller's extraordinary work have anything to do with the condemnation due not only to his murderer, but to the so-called "pro-life" movement at large.  They are terrorists.  Most of them use tactics that are legal - barely - such as screaming vile insults at women seeking health care, driving around cities in pickup trucks with billboards supposedly depicting the remains of aborted fetuses.  A slightly smaller group will block access to clinic and trap women in their cars, which is illegal but not, for some reason, a terror tactic which is viewed too seriously by this society.

And then there are those who take the hateful, violent rhetoric of the movement's leaders and turn it into action, just like every other terrorist movement on the planet.  They take action based on words like this:

We are at war. Harsh as this may sound it is true--but it is not new. This war to which I refer did not begin in just the last several months, although new battles are underway--and they bring an intensity and urgency to our efforts that may rival any time in the past. But it is correct to acknowledge that you and I are warriors - members of the Church on earth - often called the Church Militant.

Those words are from Timothy Finn, Bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.  And as far as rhetoric from this eminently mainstream movement goes, it's pretty tame.  Mark Silk has more.  Scott Roeder apparently has a criminal record and will be vigorously painted by the anti-choice movement as not really one of them.  They'll try to portray him as primarily a criminal, one who happened by random chance to glom onto the fringes of their movement.  They'll attempt to marginalize him and his views, and wash their hands of any responsibility for his actions.

But they are responsible for Dr. Tiller's murder.  This was exactly the outcome people like Timothy Finn and Randall Terry want to see.  They want, simply put, to terrorize, and they don't care what form it takes so long as terror is the result.