The Difference Between Infantaside and Abortion

You are probably seeing this article in your Google search because you misspelled "infanticide."

This posting is only slightly related to the title. On Friday Obama signed an executive order reinstating funding for groups that perform or provide information regarding abortion overseas. Reversing the "Mexico City Policy" of George Bush and the right wing religious extremists that supported him. Editorials across the nation declare that this has inflamed the national furor over abortion again, but this was the anniversary of Roe v. Wade and those people had their undies in a twist for this day in advance.



It is really upsetting to me that the national abortion debate never rises above our worst and most base instincts. People on both sides straw man each others position's and are disrespectful of their opponents ideology to the point of deliberately lying to their own supporters. What is most interesting to me is that the Supreme Court has heard some well thought out policy arguments in its handling of the issue and it is unfortunate that some of these thoughts don't trickle down into the national debate. For instance the supreme court ruled a law criminalizing use of contraception out of respect for the dignity of family and marriage and the privacy of marital intimacy. Kind of throws a clog in the pro-family rhetoric the right wing slings about.

When it comes to women in the workplace and abortion I feel stupid for never putting two and two together until I read the opinion of The Court in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey.

The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.

505 U.S. 833, 833 (1992) Hurrr I'm a durrr. Given the nature of the glass ceiling and the thinly veiled questions women get in job interviews regarding whether they are "planning to have a family", and the correlation between attitudes regarding abortion and attitudes regarding women in the workplace, I can't believe it took the Supreme Court to point out this conclusion to me.

Life Lessons and Vice Presidential Candidates

As a child, I learned two lessons about the adult world almost as soon as I was able to tell right from wrong. That the authority granted to adults and supposed authority figures most often is not granted because they are moral or even responsible people and is usually a coincidence arising from their career, rather than given to them through any legitimate means. Second, I learned that most people are not deserving of respect (beyond that due every human) until they prove otherwise. Since I learned those lessons at Catholic school, it took me a while to separate my problem with authority from my perception of all Christians as hypocrites. If you have read some of my other posts on this blog you will notice that I still have that perception of Christians.

Christian hypocrisy is a good transition into discussing the issues surrounding the pregnancy of Sarah Palins unwed teenage daughter. Anti-abortion types will see this as not being hypocritical since Bristol, Palins daughter, will be keeping the child. This is itself a red herring and the hypocrisy I wish to discuss because it ignores the anti-contraception and anti-sexed positions that are associated with an anti-abortion and which Gov. Palin has herself expressed. A friend of mine observed today that you can't treat teen sex like the Easter bunny and decide not to believe in it because it does happen and has profound consequences. Many of those consequences will not be felt by Bristol and her child(eren) because of the financial status of her family. Sadly this is not the case for most unwed teenage mothers. Teen pregnancy is almost a guarantee that the mother and new child will live out their lives in poverty according to the CDC. It is easy to be anti-abortion when you have a safety net. Yet the Bush administration, right wing Christians, and other people with nothing personally at stake continue to push for abstinance only sex education, which has been shown to do nothing to reduce premarital sex or teen pregnancy. At the same time, Jamie Lynn Spears is on a publicity romp, glorifying teen pregnancy. To get back to the accusations of hypocrisy, Sarah Palin has advocated abstinence only sex ed while claiming to be anti-abortion, which is consistent until you notice her unwed teenage daughters pregnancy and have to question Palins parenting.

So while she is telling the rest of the nations women what is right for them she is either not practicing what she preaches or she is ironically suffering the consequences of the polices she supports, but not really suffering from them the same way every one else will. At the same time the Republicans are decrying all the public attention this is getting because its prying into a personal family matter and shouldn't be public, which is hypocritical because of the way in which the very same Republicans dug into the personal sexual lives of the Clintons during the Monica Lewinski scandal.

I applaud Sarah Palin for supporting her daughters choice to become pregnant and to keep her child. (Remember there is always adoption.) I just hope it can be a learning experience for her about the failings of abstinence only sex education even though it will not open her eyes to the deep personal consequences it has for far too many American girls and the resulting social costs to U.S. taxpayers.

St. Tibbs Birthday

February 29 (St. Tib's Day): St. Tib's Day (POEE)/Leaping Birth Day (D&D of the ECG). Tell everyone today is your birthday. Figure out how old you would be if you only had a birthday once every leap year. Act your age. Determine if you're of legal age to drive, raise children, buy a gun, gamble, leave school, get a job, drink, get married, get drafted, sign a contract, vote, run for parliament or congress, have sexual congress, have sexual congress for money, retire, or walk across the street by yourself. Realize how silly having a legal age for everything really is, and how arbitrary it is, and how it doesn't recognize the individual as an individual, and how it's all culturally-biased ageism anyway. Forget about age limits, and do whatever you want. If you're lucky, maybe you can convince them you're too young to get arrested for doing any of the above (but don't count on it).

from Ek-sen-trik-kuh Discordia: The Tales of Shamlicht, Holydays: Season of Chaos

Today* is St. Tibbs Day, in this, the YOLD 3174. St. Tibb's Day falls between the days of Prickle-Prickle and Setting Orange, between the Seasons of Chaos and Discord, every 4 years.You should celebrate St. Tibb's Day by only existing for one day. Mayflies are beloved of St. Tibbs.Most pundits identify Tibbs as St. Tibba, the niece and/or daughter (folks had looser morals back then) of King Pendra of Mercia, and the sister of the legendarily more buxom Saint Kyneburga. She was supposedly from Rhal, Rutland (mmm... Rutland), and was a Benedictine nun at Dormancaster abbey, Northamptonshire, during the 7th Century. She is widely assumed to not have existed, but possibly only existed one day every 4 years.St. Tibb's Eve is said in tradition to be the night before Judgment Day, which would make it the evening of either August 28th 1997, July 24th 2004, or April 20th 2011. A Glossary of the Folklore of Maritime Canada sums up the variousness involved, thus:
Tit's DayTit or Tibb's Day was a pagan feast and recuperation day following Tit's Eve (which see). At one time it was the first day of the month and celebration termed Yule. In revised Christianized form Tit's Day was described as the day following the final Resurrection and Judgment Eve, a day after time when accounts were beyond settlement. To have a Maritimer promise that he would repay money on Tit's Day meant that the loan-agent could not expect to recoup money in this or any other world.This feast day clearly belonged to the pagan deities Thor and Frey. C.L. Apperson has guessed that this was "a day neither before nor after Christmas" and that "tibb" is synonymous with "never". Desultry attempts were perhaps made to give the day a Christian veneer by referring to it as Saint Tit's Day, but the connotations of the word made this unsuccessful. Certainly The Old English Chronicle does list a Saint Tibba, circa 963, but Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1870) insists there was never a legitimate saint who bore this peculiar name. Tit's Eve Also known as Saint Tit's Eve, Tibb's Eve, Tip's Eve, or Tipsy Eve. The evening of the twenty-third day of December.This holiday was known in some parts as the Mother Night and followed the shortest day of the year . In former times, the overindulgence on this night marked the beginning of Yule... So now you know, and you can safely forget it all for another 4 years.(hehe hehehehe... they said "tits"...)

All stolen from http://www.23ae.com/
and as the comment says, also stolen from http://drjon.livejournal.com/1092702.html

Unintelligible Intelligence

Somewhere, deep in the labyrinthine catacombs that are the U.S. Intelligence Community, someone doing some red force thinking had a sudden, horrible revelation: women who appear pregnant have the perfect cargo carrying capacity that is seemingly above search. Who really wants to grope a pregnant woman to see if she really is with child? Combined with the fact that organizations have used women in the past to serve as suicide bombers, and the threat, perhaps borne of someone's dissatisfaction with their childhood, was solidified, at least in someone's mind. Thus, the word was spread all across the land, pregnant women are a threat and should be treated as hostile. As with most of the warnings since 9/11, this, too, springs forth from the fearmongering tendencies of the mainstream media. The way to be sure of this is the final paragraph of the aforelinked article, italics added for emphasis:

Authorities say there is "no specific, credible intelligence" that says terrorists are planning to use women and suicide bombers to attack, but the warning was sent to agencies across the country in the wake of recent attacks overseas.

There is no factual substance to this claim, and thus should not be regarded as credible. But, before I go into some of the threats as seen by the U.S. intelligence community, here is an article from Fox News' Mike Baker, who tries to crawl into Osama bin Laden's head and do some red force thinking of his own, and ultimately revealing his own prejudices. I can only hope that those who get paid to do this type of analysis work aren't as simplistic and biased. I like the line where he tries to take credit for being the first to use the complexity of snowflakes in a metaphor for unconventional threats.

This same intelligence community has also recently thought, or perhaps hoped, that bin Laden is dead, judging from a lack of temporal context from his last two videos. Also, the organization whose Director for Analysis went before the House Armed Services Committee and, making a political statement, said that Iran still possesses the technological and industrial infrastructure necessary to acquire a nuclear weapon. A community which exports its fearmongering to those who are notionally our allies, in order to adjust foreign policies, the most recent example of this being India. Mike McConnell, who as the National Director of Intelligence serves as the leader for the community, for instance, frames the threat posed by a newly re-invigorated Russia in terms of control over sources of energy. For an example of how the community is acting beyond the boundaries of the United States, one need only remember the extraordinary rendition program, or for a more timely example, the apparent assassination by car bomb of Hezbollah leader Imad Mughnieh in Damascus. Considering his position on the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted List, it is not hard to imagine the U.S. Intelligence Community having taken an active interest in Mr. Mughnieh's health.


In conclusion, it would appear that the public product is half cocked fear mongering. Thus, Bush admonishing House lawmakers to approve expanded surveillance powers for this intelligence community is fundamentally flawed. Considering that they can't use the tools they already have to produce anything of any value, any expansion of said powers should be laughed out of the Congress. Also, considering the role of intelligence in the run up to the War in Iraq, the new intelligence offered to the IAEA and the international community.

For some additional flavor, mix in a look at how Defense Secretary Robert Gates' long involvement with the U.S. intelligence community and how it is influencing his strategy in the War on Terror and satellite sleuths seeking secrets.