TW3 — and WTF???

July 16th, 2008

That Was The Week That Was … discouraging; last weeks had some humor. The only humor here is the baby bat, and that’s looking in … looking out, if I was that kid I’d be in need of serious emotional repair.

As bonus, THE most absurd and insulting b.s. I’ve seen in awhile, and that’s saying something. I not only want all Republican’s out of office in a few months — I want them all rounded up and sterilized!

[Too much? Well, alternatively I could think of something with bats.]

Pffffft!

Jude

HARPER’S WEEKLY REVIEW
July 15, 2008

The U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision seized the IndyMac
Bank of California, worth an estimated 32 billion dollars,
after the bank’s closure in the wake of mortgage industry
collapse, and the Bush Administration proposed a rescue
package for ailing mortgage companies Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac that would allow the Treasury to buy billions
of dollars of their stock and lend them billions more to
meet their short-term funding needs. The two companies’
total debt is estimated at $1.54 trillion. Abu Dhabi
bought New York City’s Chrysler building for $800 million,
and the Belgian brewer InBev planned to buy Anheuser-Busch
for nearly $50 billion. The Environmental Protection
Agency announced that the value of an American’s
“statistical life” was $6.9 million, $1 million less than
5 years ago. Republican strategist Karl Rove ignored a
subpoena to testify before the House Judiciary Committee,
citing “executive privilege,” and the Green Party selected
Cynthia McKinney, the first African-American woman elected
to Congress from Georgia, as its 2008 presidential
nominee. President George W. Bush met with other world
leaders at the G8 summit to discuss climate
change. “Goodbye,” he said as he left, grinning and
punching the air, “from the world’s biggest polluter.”

Former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow died of
cancer, and Iran released photos of a missile test that
had been doctored to make it look as if four missiles were
being launched instead of three. Mak Erot, an Indonesian
woman who used herbs, Islamic prayer, and supernatural
powers to enlarge penises, died at 130. A new report
revealed that the global population of zooplankton has
drastically shrunk in the last forty years, and world
space officials announced the launch of a 2018 mission to
procure samples of Martian rock and soil. The British
retailer Marks & Spencer defended a policy of charging
extra for bras that are bigger than size DD, saying the
charge represented “a small premium for [necessary]
specialist work,” while the protest group Busts 4 Justice
derided the price increase as an unfair tax. A British
teenager who assumed that tremors in her bosom were caused
by her vibrating mobile phone found a baby bat nestling in
the padding of her 34FF bra. The World Health Organization
warned people not to go into Ugandan bat caves after a
Dutch tourist died from the Marburg virus, a hemorrhagic
fever similar to Ebola. Scientists discovered a new form
of mad cow disease in the United States.

The European Parliament censured Italy for preemptively
fingerprinting gypsies in a measure designed to reduce
crime. Texas police were searching for a burglar who
kicked a two-month-old puppy, and police in Germany were
searching for the Rabbit Ripper, who kidnaps rabbits from
their hutches, decapitates them, siphons their blood into
bottles, and leaves their headless bodies on
playgrounds. Osama Bin Laden’s teenage son Hamza wrote and
posted online a poem asking God for help against Western
“gangs of infidels,” and Senator Barack Obama alienated
many supporters by voting to authorize the new Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act, which expands the
government’s power to spy on Americans without a search
warrant and provides retroactive immunity for
telecommunications firms that had cooperated with the
government’s previously illegal wiretaps. Earlier in the
campaign, Obama had promised to filibuster any bill that
provided such immunity. The Reverend Jesse Jackson
apologized for saying of Obama that that he wanted to “cut
his nuts out.” Obama admitted that he disliked ice cream,
lightning struck a New Hampshire woman and exited through
her nose ring, leaving her unscathed, and Danish
scientists found that infants born from once-frozen
embryos had a higher birth weight and fewer twin siblings,
and were less likely to suffer from abnormalities. “Only
the very top quality embryos,” explained Dr. Anja Pinborg,
“survive the freezing and thawing process.”

– Gemma Sieff
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/07/WeeklyReview2008-07-15

bonus

Bush Bureaucrats at Dept. of Health and Human Services Redefine Contraception as Abortion
Meg White, BuzzFlash
Wed, 07/16/2008

We’re all familiar with the popular chant among conservatives that “life begins at conception.” But does that mean our government can say that life ends at contraception?

Apparently, yes, if a proposal from the Department of Health and Human Services that carefully redefines contraception as abortion is adopted.

The religious fervor is carefully hidden in the minutia. The leaked proposal initially reads as a defense of healthcare providers who fear being discriminated against for refusing to provide services that are contrary to their religious beliefs. Basically, just because a clinic or insurance plan receives federal funding “does not authorize any court or any public official or other public authority to require” the entity to provide or pay for services such as sterilization or abortion.

Which seems somewhat harmless, until you change the meaning of abortion to include contraceptive medicines that 40 percent of women in the U.S. use regularly.

Some conservatives argue that contraceptives could cause a woman to unwittingly release a fertilized egg during menstruation. But most doctors do not consider pregnancy to have begun at such a point.

While U.S. law is often informed by the American Medical Association (AMA), which defines pregnancy as occurring after implantation of a fertilized egg in the lining of the uterus, the proposal rejects the medical group’s advice.

Instead of using this well-established idea of the beginning of pregnancy, the proposal cites popular opinion from seven years ago to bolster its claim of conception as the beginning of life:

“A 2001 Zogby International American Values poll revealed that 49% of Americans believe that human life begins at conception. Presumably many who hold this belief think that any action that destroys human life after conception is the termination of a pregnancy, and so would be included in their definition of the term ‘abortion.’”

The proposal does cite a few dictionary definitions to bolster its case, but when defining medical and scientific terms, it becomes necessary to use “operational definitions” of things that can actually be measured. The main reason most medical groups use implantation as a marker is that there is no way to prove conception has occurred before that point.

Although there’s no proof that contraception causes abortion, many anti-abortion activists insist that it does. At a 2001 AMA meeting, voted against informing women that using contraception could cause a fertilized (but not implanted) egg to be expelled from the body. The reason for the vote was explained in an article at the time by Dr. John C. Nelson, described as a conservative member of the group’s executive committee:

“Many people from the American Society of Reproductive Medicine … decided that they would testify, and their testimony was that there is not sufficient scientific evidence to suggest” that birth control substances can induce abortions. “One of the foremost infertility doctors in the country [said] that’s not the way it works … I have no reason to doubt him.”

Even doctors opposed to abortion shy away from establishing contraception as abortion. Cristina Page, in her article for The Huffington Post on this matter noted the following:

In 1999, the physicians — who, like the movement at large, define pregnancy as beginning at fertilization — released an open letter to community stating:

“Recently, some special interest groups have claimed, without providing any scientific rationale, that some methods of contraception may have an abortifacient effect … The ‘hormonal contraception is abortifacient’ theory is not established fact. It is speculation, and the discussion presented here suggests it is error … if a family, weighing all the factors affecting their own circumstances, decides to use this modality, we are confident that they are not using an abortifacient.”

Another worrying element is the individual protections provided by the proposal. It would protect staff members from being forced to do anything contrary to their religious beliefs, which would ostensibly allow a pharmacy tech to refuse to hand over a prescription issued by a doctor without any fear of losing their job. Also, no applicant could be turned down employment based on their refusal to engage in certain activities, opening up healthcare providers to possible hiring discrimination lawsuits. The provision extends to internship programs and even research, with more implications that can be considered here.

The effects could be far-reaching. According to NARAL Pro-Choice America, a rape-victim who goes to a health clinic for treatment could be denied emergency contraceptives, women who rely on Title X-funded programs could be denied prescribed contraceptives, and some could even be denied a referral to a clinic which supports reproductive care.

The legal basis for the proposal, the Church and Weldon Amendments, are described as “religiously influenced interference in medicine” by Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health.

A respect for life is one thing all established religions have in common, but drawing scientific and political conclusions based on one religious philosophy over all others runs counter to the idea of separation of church and state.

The War On Fucking
tristero, Hullabaloo
7/16/08

There’s something wrong with these people

The Bush administration wants to require all recipients of aid under federal health programs to certify that they will not refuse to hire nurses and other providers who object to abortion and even certain types of birth control…

In the proposal, obtained by The New York Times, the administration says it could cut off federal aid to individuals or entities that discriminate [sic] against people who object to abortion on the basis of “religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

The proposal defines abortion as follows:

“any of the various procedures — including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action — that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.”

Mary Jane Gallagher, president of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, which represents providers, said, “The proposed definition of abortion is so broad that it would cover many types of birth control, including oral contraceptives and emergency contraception.”

That’s right, people. Common methods of birth control are abortion, according to the rightwing nutjobs trying to get their hands on your private parts. Anyone surprised by this rhetorical stunt hasn’t been paying attention. Still, it sparks revulsion and disgust at the sheer priggish stupidity of it all.

And the kicker, a point I’ve driven home in nearly every single post I’ve done on reproductive rights:

“We worry that under the proposal, contraceptive services would become less available to low-income and uninsured women,” Ms. Gallagher said.

Indeed, among other things the proposal expresses concern about state laws that require hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape victims who request it.

The war on fucking is not merely a war for government control of sexuality, especially women’s. It is also a class war in which poor American women are being singled out by the wealthy to receive substandard healthcare.

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

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