Planned Parenthood and the Magician's Other Hand - and stuff

[Maddy]

While everyone is focusing on Wisconsin:

Planned Parenthood loses funding in House vote

The House voted on Friday in favor of a proposal to ban all federal funding for Planned Parenthood and to eliminate a program known as Title X, which provides aid for family planning and reproductive health.

The amendment, which was put forth by Indiana Republican Mike Pence, passed with a vote of 240 to 185, with eleven Democrats voting for the amendment and seven Republicans voting against it. One Congress member voted "present." The amendment will now proceed to Senate as a part of the Continuing Resolution to fund the federal government through September.

Planned Parenthood Assault is a Disgrace

The Republican vote in the House of Representatives last week to cut all federal support for Planned Parenthood is a mean-spirited and reckless assault on women in this country. For millions of them, particularly poor women and those who have recently lost their jobs and therefore have no medical insurance, Planned Parenthood represents their only access to medical care.

Clearly members of Congress understand that, and yet the House of Representatives voted 240 to 185 last week for an amendment to a federal spending bill that would deny all federal support to any organization that provides abortions. Planned Parenthood was the principal target of that amendment authored by Indiana Rep. Mike Pence. Three local Republicans voted for the amendment, Reps. Dan Lungren, Wally Herger and Tom McClintock. Shame on them all. Should the Senate concur – and thankfully, that is unlikely – women will die needlessly.

Side effects of the GOP's war on family planning

House Republicans voted to increase the number of abortions, raise federal health-care costs and swell the welfare rolls.

That wasn't their intent, of course, and certainly not their stated policy. But it is the predictable and inevitable impact of their twin moves to eliminate funding for the federal family planning program and strip Planned Parenthood of all federal money.

If anything, this assessment is understated. The sharper, and still accurate version, would be that Republicans voted to let more women die from breast cancer, cervical cancer and AIDS. How's that? The family planning programs also provide cancer screening and HIV counseling to millions of low-income and uninsured people.

Let's be clear about one thing. Almost none of this money went for abortions. The only federal funding for abortion involves the thankfully low number of situations in which poor women seek abortions for pregnancy due to rape or incest, or when their own lives are in jeopardy. In 2006, the last year for which figures are available, the federal government paid for 191 such abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

[Nordic]

Yup, that's life under a Democratic President!

Get used to it!

No Unions, or abortions, for you!

[justdrew]

oh come on, don't blame a democratic president for the actions of the republican party.

Who were only elected because so many "oh it doesn't make any difference" people sat on their hands and didn't vote for the better (not perfect) candidates.

[Nordic]

oh come on, don't blame a democratic president for the actions of the republican party.

Who were only elected because so many "oh it doesn't make any difference" people sat on their hands and didn't vote for the better (not perfect) candidates.

And why did they sit on their hands? Because Obama BETRAYED THEM.

[Belligerent Savant]

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oh come on, don't blame a democratic president for the actions of the republican party.

Who were only elected because so many "oh it doesn't make any difference" people sat on their hands and didn't vote for the better (not perfect) candidates.

Are we still arguing that one option was "better" than another? Hasn't it become quite clear at this point that BOTH options are crap? Or perhaps, more precisely, both "options" are ultimately little more than the SAME option, just presented differently to each targeted demographic?

Voting. What a quaint premise.. a VOTE. The PEOPLE's CHOICE! LET YOUR VOICES BE HEARD!! If you don't vote, your voice will NOT be heard. Can't complain if you didn't vote.
--- there are those in here that still subscribe to this fallacy? Like, even a little bit??

tsk, tsk

[seemslikeadream]

Whether the bill will be rejected by the Senate and not make it to the President’s desk is “not a slam dunk,” said Brooks.

I'd love to see Obama sweat this one........ true colors shinning through

[Laodicean]

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oh come on, don't blame a democratic president for the actions of the republican party.

Who were only elected because so many "oh it doesn't make any difference" people sat on their hands and didn't vote for the better (not perfect) candidates.

Are we still arguing that one option was "better" than another? Hasn't it become quite clear at this point that BOTH options are crap? Or perhaps, more precisely, both "options" are ultimately little more than the SAME option, just presented differently to each targeted demographic?

Voting. What a quaint premise.. a VOTE. The PEOPLE's CHOICE! LET YOUR VOICES BE HEARD!! If you don't vote, your voice will NOT be heard. Can't complain if you didn't vote.
--- there are those in here that still subscribe to this fallacy? Like, even a little bit??

tsk, tsk

Word.

[seemslikeadream]

A bit from the "anointed ones"


The abortion-related provisions will next be considered in the U.S. Senate — where 33 seats, 23 of them currently held by Democrats or independents who caucus with the Democrats, will be on next year’s general election ballot.

“Now senators, too, will go on record on whether to push the snout of this bloated abortion mega-marketer, Planned Parenthood, out of the U.S. Treasury feeding trough,” said NRLC’s Johnson.

[justdrew]

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oh come on, don't blame a democratic president for the actions of the republican party.

Who were only elected because so many "oh it doesn't make any difference" people sat on their hands and didn't vote for the better (not perfect) candidates.

Are we still arguing that one option was "better" than another? Hasn't it become quite clear at this point that BOTH options are crap? Or perhaps, more precisely, both "options" are ultimately little more than the SAME option, just presented differently to each targeted demographic?

Voting. What a quaint premise.. a VOTE. The PEOPLE's CHOICE! LET YOUR VOICES BE HEARD!! If you don't vote, your voice will NOT be heard. Can't complain if you didn't vote.
--- there are those in here that still subscribe to this fallacy? Like, even a little bit??

tsk, tsk

oh for phucks sweet sake. both options are NOT clearly and demonstrably NOT the gawd damn SAME.

look at the constituencies. Look at the voters look at who makes up the rank and file. That alone tells you all you need to know.

both options exist within a wider cultural situation. and it is that wider culture that is what is first and foremost fucked. I guarantee you democrats would not be trying to destroy collective bargaining rights. Believe me they take it away from those state workers, then you can kiss the existence of unions in American good bye. and the whole list of disgusting travesty, perpetrated by who REPUBLICANS. KNOW YOUR ENEMY.

yes, shitty corporate whore "so-called liberals" suck, but that is the cultural context we live in that REQUIRES such compromises. The republican party is CLEAR as day, a pro-corporate pro-fascist, pro-new-0fuedalism party from one end to the other. and constitutes a FAR greater threat.

We are not, repeat not now, and never going to get people on board with a "third party" it won't work. FIX the democrats and destroy the republicans. we don't even need parties. It's about picking the better candidate. Not the perfect, the better.

vote and you can get decent people elected. Sit at home and cry about how terrible everything is, and only the teapartiers will go to vote. and guess who wins then? I really can not begin to comprehend how you think not voting makes things better. that seems to me an utterly foolish and blind point of view. lazy in fact. pre-defeated.

[Belligerent Savant]

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Dear fellow board member justdrew:

Take a few steps back -- perhaps a few miles back -- envision observing this theatre from an outside perspective, many miles up and away from the circus we are immersed in. You would see that both parties are ultimately serving a collaborative agenda that cares not of the People, but of their handlers.

Oligarchy. If you have loads of cash and influence, this is the place to be. Otherwise, "enjoy the show".

[justdrew]

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Dear fellow board member justdrew:

Take a few steps back -- perhaps a few miles back -- envision observing this theatre from an outside perspective, many miles up and away from the circus we are immersed in. You would see that both parties are ultimately serving a collaborative agenda that cares not of the People, but of their handlers.

Oligarchy. If you have loads of cash and influence, this is the place to be. Otherwise, "enjoy the show".

but we ARE NOT a few miles back. we are right here in the middle of it. I know there's some truth in what you say, but it's only ABLE TO EXIST THAT WAY because people don't get involved. damn it how hard is it to understand, it's an open democratic system. go take over your local democratic party. it's not that hard at the moment since so few people can be bothered to vote. Develop candidates. get them name recognition, then they can get elected and DO DIFFERENT THINGS. Sure, if they try to go too far off the rails the corporate whore media will try to destroy them. THAT IS THE BATTLE. that is the heart of the matter.

Is it just in the US that democracy is a sham theater not worth participating in?

What do you think to replace it with?

So defeating the BNP in Barking in England was just a joke to you?

Do you think it's any kind of a politically meaningful or valid position to advise concerned informed and educated persons that should should NOT PARTICIPATE in THEIR OWN democracy?

[JackRiddler]

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If you will allow a metaphor, the one who betrays the victim and watches the murder is an important part of the crime, but the central act of the crime remains the axe-wielding maniac swinging at your torso. In this case more than in almost any other, the axe-murderer is very obviously the Republicans. (Robbing women of authority over their own bodies is not a DLC or corporatist-capitalist concern, it is the obsession of the fundamentalist Christianist footsoldiers brainwashed into voting Republican. And some of whom murder doctors on the street.)

To respond to the central outrage by shifting the blame around is suspect. In this case, the Democrats don't secretly want to defund Planned Parenthood (as one might argue with the Republican attack on the public-sector trade unions, i.e. that Democrats, especially those in the executive branch, want it to succeed).

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(Because this thread should be about the attack on women's rights and not be derailed by the insistence of some to turn every thread about Republican-led outrages into an attack on Democratic voters in general, I just cut out a much longer answer to BS, and will now look to see where it should go...)

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Hey, Maddy, I think you should retitle this thread to reflect its content, because "Meanwhile" alone is only going to get so much action. (I clicked on faith because it was you, isn't that sweet?)

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[JackRiddler]

I'm sorry Maddy, seeing the responses that came in while I was writing, I'm afraid your thread has been derailed for the moment, so here's my answer to BS after all:

Or perhaps, more precisely, both "options" are ultimately little more than the SAME option, just presented differently to each targeted demographic?

Certainly not on the "social issues," especially this one. Your claim is (mostly) true of issues of economics, empire and class war. I say mostly because the Democrats harbor clienteles who do not share in the two-party consensus in support of corporatism, empire and class war.

Your mistake is to think the differing presentations do not matter. If everyone voted for the Republicans, this would be an explicit popular endorsement of their presented program, and a disaster for all. In that case we wouldn't get the "SAME" option but an incomparably worse extreme.

If no one voted for the Republicans (I'll just put this as a negative that may find agreement), we might get the "SAME" option, but the vote would have been universally understood as a rejection of that option. It would become impossible to legitimately impose that option. If that option was imposed anyway, we would all know we were stuck involuntarily under a Mubarak (metaphor, hello), rather than live in the delusion that a majority or a powerful segment of our compatriots support Mubarak so there's nothing we can do against it. We would rise up to demand what we had actually and clearly chosen. This is why, if the Republicans had only lost by large margins in all elections since 1980, we would today have a social democracy in the US, without an empire or violent occupations of distant countries.

It's the Republicans who provide the fire and the passion and the extremism and the fear and the confusionism, without which Americans would not have been scared away from choosing the social democracy that the vast majority of them desire.

It's the Republicans who move things radically whenever in power, and the Democrats who on coming to power pull the bait and switch and consolidate the Republican gains. Except for the social reactionary stuff (like abortion), the Republicans actually have delivered on their promises. Now they're even trying to deliver on abortion. In the pendulum motion between the two parties, the pay-off for the sponsors comes when the Republicans get back in power despite how badly they fucked everything up and how unpopular they made themselves the last time they were in power. The payoff is that not even the Bush regime with all its acknowledged disasters was able to destroy Republican support.

It should be instructive to you that it's the Democrats who gain votes by correctly characterizing the Republicans as right-wing corporatist extremists and then arguing (falsely) that they, the Democrats, are not like that; whereas the Republicans gain votes by falsely characterizing the Democrats as leftists, liberals, foreigners, anti-business, secret supporters of the terrorists, etc.. So my argument is, if the Republican party dies for lack of votes but the Democrats remain, a world of good possibilities opens up, discourse is no longer under the stranglehold of right-wing delusions and the corporatist consensus. If the Democratic party dies for lack of votes but the Republicans remain, say hello to the Christianist Ayatollahs, work camps and, sooner or later, nuclear attacks on designated enemy countries (since conventional invasions of such countries can no longer be won).

It's true to say that Obama came in to rescue the Bush agenda, which Americans thought they rejected by voting for Obama, and especially to secure the continuation of empire and occupations, the national security state, and the bankster rescue that began under Bush (or "interim president Paulson," as I like to say). So yeah, Fuck Obama.

McCain, however, would have signified a popular endorsement of the Bush agenda, and you have no idea what would have happened after that. It would have been as though the whole country was daring them to see how much further they could go. McCain was signaling war on Iran and confrontation with the Russians. The two main wars and the tyrannical policies continue under Obama, and are subject to gradualist expansion; but under the Republicans, what do you think might have happened during the Iranian electoral crisis of 2009, or the Egyptian revolution? On the latter I submit there would have been a full endorsement of Mubarak as the only option and support for a massacre of the protesters, who would have been presented as Islamists no matter what they claimed. Instead of a pretend-condemnation of the Honduran coup (with covert support), you would have had an open endorsement. Instead of the continuing sanctions and campaigns against Venezuela, you would have almost certainly had a renewed coup attempt.

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[psynapz]

Do you think it's any kind of a politically meaningful or valid position to advise concerned informed and educated persons that should should NOT PARTICIPATE in THEIR own democracy?

GP, particularly after having watched hundreds of thousands demonstrating for those rights where they really truly don't have them, braving possible retribution up to and including being blown up into a fine red mist by an RPG to the stomach.

And so it seems we're either unwittingly controlled by the Hegelian Dialectic, or fully-wittingly controlled by the fact of the Hegelian Dialectic. It's almost embarassing to not have ever voted, however conscientiously at the time, considering recent mass human movements towards the right to do so.

Then again, I've never seen a race with a horse I'd actually bet on.

[Nordic]

it's an open democratic system. go take over your local democratic party. it's not that hard at the moment since so few people can be bothered to vote. Develop candidates. get them name recognition, then they can get elected and DO DIFFERENT THINGS. Sure, if they try to go too far off the rails the corporate whore media will try to destroy them. THAT IS THE BATTLE. that is the heart of the matter.

No, that's the myth. The system doesn't actually work that way.