Friday, March 10, 2006

Sometimes things just get so weird ...

... I don't know what to say:

South Dakota has outlawed abortion except to protect the mother's life, and I bet they argue about that. They aren't the only state that's doing it, either; Ohio, Indiana, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky are right behind. This is the start of the drive back to back-alley abortions with coat hangers. I'm old enough to remember them days. I don't care what the "right to life" guys say: I'm convinced that opposition to abortion is based on a gut-level feeling that women who control their own bodies are evil at a low level, and need to be controlled and punished.

I've read the arguments about protecting life; I'd be more impressed by them if there were any indication that the people spouting them had any interest in that child's well being after it was born. Or in making it easier not to get pregnant in the first place. Somehow it's always the same people who: argue that abortion is murder; insist that contraception is wrong and the only good "sex education" teaches abstinence; and, refuse to subsidize child care for poor women because they should be staying home with the kids. Barefoot and pregnant, that's where they want women.

And then there's Iraq. Our Mr. Rumsfeld said today that "much of the reporting in the U.S. and abroad has exaggerated the situation" in Iraq. It's not really a civil war, the leftist liberal media are just making that up. Actually, I don't think it is a civil war; that implies more organization on both sides than I think exists. It's a total breakdown of civic order; it's anarchy, plus a society-wide vendetta. It's not even new: we saw the same thing when Tito died and Yugoslavia broke up.

There's an old play on Rudyard Kipling that goes, "If you can keep your head when those about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you / ... you haven't grasped the situation yet." That would be Rummy, in fact, that's our whole administration.

Finally, there are the Democrats, our only hope (and what a hope!) of getting these yahoos out of office. What a bunch of Keystone Kops they are. With the biggest political corruption scandal in history staring at them from the Republicans' laps, they can't even focus. The only reason I'm still a registered Democrat is because, in the state of California, registered independents can't vote in the primaries: only party members can vote the party slates. Molly Ivins wrote a wonderful column in the March Progressive on what's wrong with the Dems. She's dead right about them and about the situation, and I want to be the first to say it: Molly Ivins for President!

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:12 PM

    Why isn't some reporter who's had it up to here and ready for a few years as a style and auto-mechanics columnist in Two Dot, Montana (anything, but the Neverland of Pentagon doublespeak) call Rumsfelt on these absurdities he keeps blathering about? And what happened to the soldier who asked him about armoring their trucks and Humvees from the scrap yard because Rumsfelt wasn't seeing to getting armor plating to Iraq with appropriate speed? I wonder where he's stationed now? Thule, Greenland probably.

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  2. No, cooper, you miss the point: wouldn't you rather be stationed in Thule, Greenland than in Baghdad? In Thule, the worst that happens is that you freeze quietly to death on a glacier that hasn't quite melted yet. There are no IEDs in Greenland.

    Also, Rummy isn't the only one in the administration completely out of touch with reality - after all, you're the one who posted the link to the Foreign Affairs article over at FA. Anybody in the Bush administration who displays any grasp of actual facts is summarily fired.

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  3. Anonymous6:43 PM

    hedera, my point is that reporters these days seem to feel happy just to be able to ask questions at a press conference. The fact that the question is skirted and never answered doesn't seem to matter to them. I sometimes read the transcripts from the White House briefings and Scott McClellan does an amazingly inept song and dance, but somehow gets away with it. He may occasionally get roughed up by the press, but it is the exception.

    And you're right, Thule would be preferable to Baghdad, even with black fly season coming on.

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  4. You're right, cooper, the only press briefing I ever heard where they really laid into him was the one after Dick Cheney shot the lawyer, and I think on that one they were mainly angry because they were scooped.

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