RIP, Dr. George Tiller

I am so frakking pissed off right now that I can barely see straight. This morning, Dr. George Tiller was murdered, shot to death in the vestibule of the Lutheran church in Kansas where he was an usher. Tiller was one of the only doctors in the country who performed late-term abortions, which made him a frequent target of anti-choice protestors. In fact, he survived a shooting 16 years ago.

This is terrorism, no two ways about it. That's what we call it when someone commits an act of violence designed intimidate those with different political, religious or social views. If the suspect arrested for Tiller's murder had been a 20-year-old Muslim man rather than a 50-something white guy, there wouldn't be any question. The FBI already would've raided whatever mosque the guy attended and confiscated the computer of everyone who'd ever sent him an e-mail. But now instead we're going to get a lot of tsk-tsking from people who, at least on some level, think that Tiller got what he deserved. Maybe you think that. But know that, on Sept. 12, plenty of people in the world thought the same thing about you. Doesn't feel very good, does it?

Anyone who knows me knows my views: every woman who terminates a pregnancy does so for a different reason, and it's impossible for any government to draft a law that covers all those circumstances fairly. I do believe that humans are human from the moment of conception, but I also believe that laws are comically incapable of managing life. Abortion is a last resort, which is why I support the dozens of interventions that could prevent unplanned pregnancies, or unprepared pregnancies, in the first place - comprehensive, honest sex ed; access to birth control and EC; adequate support for mothers, including paid leave, etc. Lastly, I profoundly believe that, when the potential life inside a womb conflicts somehow with the living, breathing woman carrying that child, that only that woman has a right to decide what to do. Many woman would - and do - sacrifice their lives for the health of their babies. Many don't. I'm not going to presume to pass judgment on anyone placed in that gut-wrenching situation.

Of course I respect the people who think differently. I don't demonize people who oppose abortion - I don't really get where they're coming from, but that's exactly why we need to be talking to one another. Tiller's shooter wasn't engaging in dialogue any more than Mohammed Atta and the 18 other motherfuckers who hijacked the planes on 9/11. "Pro-life" my ass.

Dr. Tiller was a hero for performing the work he did. If I had any aptitude for medicine at all, I'd be doing exactly what he was doing. I'd also be fighting for the right of women to give birth at home, to have vaginal births after C-section and every other reproductive health issue. But since I don't have that aptitude, instead I'm going to call my local Planned Parenthood tomorrow and ask if they need any volunteers. I'm going to send a donation to Medical Students for Choice and any other group I can think of.

Dr. Tiller's murderer and the people who support him may think they're scaring pro-choice activists into hiding, but they've only done the opposite. Tonight, I'm more commited than ever to protecting the reproductive freedom of women, and I'm far from the only one.

BREAKING NEWS: Michael Steele gets it right for a change

It's interesting to contrast the reactions by various Republicans to President Obama's nomination of Justice Sonia Sotomayor to fill retiring Justice David Souter's spot on the Supreme Court. Republicans who actually have some accountability to voters basically say she appears to be qualified, but they definitely want to look at her closer (which is why God invented confirmation hearings).

On the other hand, those conservatives who currently hold no elected positions - and therefore no actual responsibility for anything - have called Sotomayor a racist, compared to her to a former KKK Grand Dragon or just insulted her name (or forgotten it).

Which is why it's refreshing to see Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele - the guy whose job it is for the party to stay relevant - caution against "slammin' and rammin'" Sotomayor. As the leader of a party facing some serious demographic challenges in the near future, Steele's absolutely right to remind the GOP that reflexively opposing Sotomayor before we really know anything about her could backfire. It could look like Republicans still have some racism/sexism problems, which is not what they need right now.

My unsolicited advice to Republicans: listen to your chairman. It's totally appropriate to question Sotomayor on her worldview and positions, and to parse exactly what role she played in decisions handed down by a panel of judges. On the other hand, it's BS to hold her to a different standard than other Supreme Court nominees have been.

The best news I've heard today

This makes me insanely happy. Seriously, I will run from another room to mute the TV when one of these commericals comes on...

Just for fun, check out this related quiz at MentalFloss.

Reconsidering McCain and health care

Former Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich makes a case for what he calls "John McCain's best idea" - taxing the health insurance benefits that many of us get from our employers. Reich argues that, while McCain's version was "regressive," the concept was on the right track.

Reich is very persuasive in pointing out how employer-provided health care still disproportionally benefits the well-off (what doesn't?) while skewing other aspects of the job market (like people afraid to leave jobs because they don't want to lose their health insurance). But I'm one of those people who heard McCain suggest this back during the campaign and just felt my chest tighten. I mean, my health insurance would probably be considered at least a few thousand dollars of extra income, which would really hurt me at tax time. But... along with the new tax would come the option of a public health care system that I could choose instead, right?

Or we could just go with Reich's final suggestion - exempt employees who make under $100,000 a year. That works.

Did a transman fight in the Civil War?

I’m re-reading Tony Horwitz’s brilliant Confederates in the Attic, and I came across this interesting passage about Civil War monuments in Vicksburg, Miss.:

One monument stood out. Modeled on the Pantheon in Rome, it was inscribed with the names of 36,000 Illinois soldiers, including an extraordinary private named Albert D.J. Cashire.

“In handling a musket in battle,” a comrade recalled, “he was the equal of any in the company.” Cashire also “seemed specially adept at those tasks so despised by the infantryman,” such as sewing and washing clothes. Cashire fought in 40 skirmishes and battles and became active in veterans’ affairs, marching in parades for decades after the war.

Then, in 1911, while working as a handyman in Illinois, Cashire was hit by an automobile and taken to the hospital with a leg broken close to the hip. The doctor who examined Cashire discovered what the Illinois veteran had so long concealed; Cashire was a woman, an Irish immigrant nee Jennie Hodgers. Hodgers was eventually sent to an insane asylum and forced to wear women’s clothing until her death in 1915.

“I left Cashier [sic], the fearless boy of 22 at the end of the Vicksburg campaign,” one former comrade wrote after visiting her at the asylum. “I found a frail woman of 70, broken, because on discovery she was compelled to put on skirts. They told me she was as awkward as could be in them. One day she tripped and fell, hurting her hip. She never recovered.”

I don’t know if Cashire would have identified as trans. But his example makes it clear that this right-wing idea that everybody was perfectly fine with binary gender designations until the evil feminists/gays/transpeople came along is BS.

Makes you wonder how they wrote it with a straight face...

You know, reporters don't have the most glamorous job. They have to write stories about city council meetings, profiles of people no one cares about and the really swell stories about entire families getting wiped out in house fires. I like to think that when something like this comes across the crime feed, it makes it all worthwhile:

Note to self: If you plan to shoplift, don't write a note planning out your day of theft and carry it with you.

That's what a man arrested last week for shoplifting at a Wal-Mart store appears to have done, according to a Winston-Salem police report.

Wal-Mart employees told police that they found the "to-do" note outside the store, stashed with clothing they had seen the shoplifter wearing. It was filed with arrest papers and lays out these steps in bullet points:
□ Catch the 6:00 bus to Wal-Mart & walk home
□ Cut hair off
□ Take a bath
□ Brush teeth & hair, get clothes on all black, or black design and black shirt & black shoes
□ Grab my bag
□ Go back to Wal-Mart & steal me an outfit.

The note then lists items, including a suit, CDs, a CD player and "crazy ass glasses."

Encountering Malcolm X

So Malcolm X would’ve turned 85 this week, had he not been murdered in 1965. It’s curious – though maybe not really – that no one in the media acknowledged this opportunity to reflect on his legacy, as it would for Martin Luther King Jr. or JFK. Mainstream America has never really known what to do with Malcolm X, and I’m including myself in that.

I first read The Autobiography of Malcolm X in my junior year of high school, so I would’ve been about 16 at the time. And, as anyone who knew me then will tell you, I considered myself to be pretty enlightened compared to most teenaged white girls in Mayberry. It was purely an act of rebellion against the small-town conservatism surrounding me. My attitude when I started reading the book (co-authored with Alex Haley and released after Malcolm’s death) was a recognizable mix of white liberal guilt and condescension – look at me, I’m soooooooo down, I’m reading about Malcolm X where people can see me! And let me tell you, the man formerly known as Malcolm Little humbled me like I’d never been humbled before, and maybe since.

You see, I had this very simplistic Big Rock Candy Mountain outlook on the world, and earnestly believed that we were all the same and should just get along. But we’re not. Our society doesn’t treat everyone the same, based on arbitrary categories like our skin color, our gender identity and where we grew up or how much money and education we have. We’re not going to find solutions to our common problems if we just pretend that privilege doesn’t exist. And only by examining the experiences that inform another person’s worldview are we ever going to figure out how to talk to one another.

Not long after I read the autobiography, Malcolm X’s widow Betty Shabazz was critically wounded in a house fire. My family and I were visiting New York when I read that a group in Harlem had organized a blood drive to try and save Shabazz’s life. Of course I got all excited – OMG, we should totally go up there and donate blood, it would be the best experience ever, and aren’t I such an enlightened little white girl?

But it didn’t feel right. I don’t know what kind of reception I would’ve gotten, and I certainly don’t think I would’ve been in any danger. I couldn’t articulate this at the time, but on some level I understood that it would have been deeply wrong to insert my need to assuage my racial guilt into a sacred space – literally and figuratively – for the area’s black community. It’s not about racial separation (something Malcolm X did NOT push, despite the myth to the contrary); it was about respect for someone else’s needs. If I’d gone to that blood drive, it wouldn’t have been about Betty Shabazz; it would’ve been about me. And to this day I’m glad I didn’t barge into Harlem like some little Caucasian Mighty Mouse to save the day.

I got more schooling this week, when Samhita at Feministing did a post about Malcolm X’s birthday. The comments got pretty heated at times as some posters crashed head-on into their assumptions. I learned a lot. For one thing, I have a greater understanding of the challenges that feminist women of color still face in “mainstream” (aka white) communities. A non-white feminist doesn’t like being told to be “polite” in her critiques any more than I like being told to be nice and smile while resisting patriarchal BS.

I still have a tendency to want a pat on the back when it comes to dealing with people of other races. But I shouldn’t get a cookie just for treating other people as if their personhood is just as valid as my own.

Mary Easley can kiss my a$$

So, back in April, Governor Purdue announced that all state employees - including public school teachers - would have to take unpaid 10-hour furloughs, which would save the state some $65 million. Okay, sure, we all know times are tight and the state's hurting for money, right?

But apparently somebody's budget somewhere has money to burn, because Mary Easley still has a job. N.C. State pays her $170,000 a year to "run a speakers series and a public-safety center." That's the same N.C. State that laid off my sister's roommate from her frakking work-study position because of budget cuts... but there's money to pay the ex-governor's wife to do whatever it is that she does?

"That's not okay," said my sister, who graduated from State not quite two weeks ago. "[Easley] should know better than that. Of all people, she should be the one to make a sacrifice in this economy."

Yup.

Virginia Foxx is deeply concerned with your creditors' ability to make ends meet

I think it was in October or November of last year when my monthly Belk credit card statement informed me that my credit limit was being slashed to about $10 over my current balance. This is a problem mainly because your amount of available credit is one of the things that goes into determining your credit score - I guess banks figure that you could owe $20,000, but you only owe $2,000, so you're a good credit risk. Now suddenly I went from having a giant amount of available credit on this account to have none - and I hadn't done anything differently.

Belk said that it was my fault for not paying enough of the balance each month (I usually paid at least twice the minimum). I felt horribly ashamed for a few days until I started hearing that the same thing was happening to almost everyone I knew. In the wake of the worsening financial crisis, banks were flipping out and shutting down credit.

Of course, credit card companies didn't need a financial crisis to do things like jack up promised introductory rates because a payment was a week late, or change other account terms without any notice, or dole out credit cards to anyone with a pulse. But the fact that they seized up at precisely the worst possible moment for millions of Americans who needed a little extra help buying groceries or gas is just shady.

A bill passed in the House today would protect consumers from some of the credit card companies' more predatory and unfair practices.

The credit card bill, which overwhelmingly cleared the Senate on Tuesday, will establish new restrictions for credit card companies, including one that would require 45 days notice before a change in interest rates. It would also prohibit companies from raising interest rates on existing balances unless a card holder falls 60 days behind on minimum payments and makes it much harder to issue cards to students. Democrats said the rules were needed because the companies were engaging in abusive practices at a time when Americans were more reliant on their cards because of the recession.

And Virginia Foxx voted no.

Texts From Last Night

Favorite new time-suck: textsfromlastnight.com. Though I should not read it at work, because I"m in a cubicle and I laugh really loud.

How Ronald Reagan turned me into a Democrat

I made a reference to this on Facebook the other day, so, by way of explaining, here’s the story of how President Reagan bears at least part of the responsibility for making me a Democrat:

When I was seven years old, we were on a visit to see family in Atlanta, and at some point we drove past a (presumably) homeless man passed out in the grass next to a church. I can still remember that he wore a trench coat, and that the church had a rock wall that I still associate with cathedrals, and that it was cloudy outside. As you can tell, it made an impression. Apparently I was pretty upset by the idea that this man lived on the streets, and I wanted to Do Something ™. Being the Great Society Liberal that she is (“You know what this calls for? Federal government intervention!”), my mother suggested that I write the president and tell him how I felt.

Looking back, I’m not sure what Mom was thinking. After all, at that point we were seven years into the presidency of the man the shock of whose election she still blames for a wreck she was in back in November ’81. For a while there I honestly thought his first name was “Thatsonuvabitch”. But I was still at that idealistic age where the president is The President, and I had absolute faith in the power of citizens – especially precocious little girls – to effect change. So I wrote my letter, and was amazed that Mom knew the president’s address.

In my letter, I wrote that I didn’t understand why the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the history of the world allowed people to suffer in poverty. I probably said something rudimentary about how people who have bear a moral obligation to help those who have not. And after a full page of this, at the very end of the letter – I’m talking one or two sentences at the end – I wrote that the mistreatment of animals bothered me, too. (This is important – that part was maybe 5% of the whole thing.)

A few weeks later, I got my response. First of all, I have to give Reagan credit – he remains the only politician I’ve ever written whose response acknowledged not only that an actual human being had read my letter, but that he was not personally responding. It began (paraphrasing here), “President Reagan is very busy; this is his secretary.” I respect that. But it went downhill from there.

The response letter was basically the inverse of my original letter. It focused almost entirely on the president’s love of animals – he and Mrs. Reagan even had a ranch out West with lots of horses! And then, at the very end, and oh-by-the-way: President Reagan agrees with you that it’s tragic how some people don’t have a place to live, but he feels like they should take personal responsibility and not rely on the government to fix their problems.

Again, I respect the consistency of Reagan’s conservative philosophy. But I don’t really think that a letter to an earnest seven-year-old child who can’t sleep because she’s guilty that she has a roof and blankets and some people don’t is really the appropriate venue for going into that philosophy. A bit of context: I still believed that my stuffed animals had souls. You’re going to get all Adam Smith on me?

My response was basically “WTF?” (though that wouldn’t be in my vocabulary for another decade or so). A little child with pigtails who thinks her Ewok is a real person tells you she’s worried about homeless people and you say, “Yeah, well, it’s their own fault”?

What about the war veterans screwed over by their government, or the families living in one hotel after another even though they’re working three part-time jobs? The only reason a person would be homeless in the United States is because they’re lazy? Really? No other factors that MAYBE the government could do something about? And that even when people DO f*ck up, our society doesn’t have any obligation but to throw up our hands and go spend another few billion dollars on a dumbass missile shield? Really???

Not that I could articulate any of that at age seven. What I did understand, though, for the first time, was that not everybody sees the world the same way. And that however President Reagan saw the world, I didn’t want any part of it.

The next year, I begged Mom to take us to see Michael Dukakis at a rally following the presidential debate at Wake Forest (I brought a purse full of Nilla Wafers – never unprepared). He lost, but four years later there I was in Pilot Mountain Middle School telling the other seventh graders why Bill Clinton should win. In later years, asking the person calling from the DNC if I could use my parents’ checks to make a gift (I was 14), getting my own subscription to Newsweek and arguing with my social studies teachers about supply-side economics.

All because of Reagan. Now, given my family’s leanings, I probably would’ve ended up as a Democrat anyway. But I doubt I would’ve had quite the level of passion, especially so early on. I owe Ronnie one, I guess. I never thought I’d say this, but… Thank you, President Reagan. You’ve done a beautiful thing.

"We are all fishermen"

President Obama didn't ignore the controversy surrounding his invitation to speak at Notre Dame's commencement this afternoon. Instead, his remarks turned the minor uproar into an opportunity to talk about finding common ground with your opponents. The speech is classic Obama - read the full text here.

NASCAR realized it hadn't done anything stupid and/or counterproductive lately...

Okay, so last week when NASCAR busted Jeremy Mayfield after he tested positive for a banned substance, my reaction was, "Huh." I mean, suspending Jeremy Mayfield isn't exactly shaking things up. It looked like yet another case of NASCAR making an example of a little fish (Mayfield's 45th in the points standings) to keep the big fish in line without hurting NASCAR's own bottom line.

But this is pretty disturbing: apparently NASCAR doesn't have a list of banned substances, at least not one that it will share with its drivers. Huh? I mean, it's only indefinite suspension we're talking about here. No reason to actually tell the drivers what's off limits.

Yes, I understand the headache of keeping ahead of the "Well you didn't say I couldn't!" people. NASCAR deals with those people in every aspect of the sport, though, and that doesn't keep them from setting standards. We're talking about an organization that has templates for how many quarters of a turn a spring can be wound, what angle a spoiler can sit and even what words a driver can and can't say on the radio. You're telling me they can't come up with a list of substances drivers shouldn't use?

"The substance is irrelevant. What's important is that a drug, under a positive test ... has been misused or abused," a NASCAR spokesperson told the AP. Okay, genius - WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? Are you talking about heroin, or pot? Cold medicine? Female hormones? Hell, there's caffeine in this Diet. Dr. Pepper I'm sucking down; that's a drug.

Frustrated NASCAR fans complain that the sport's been ruined by too many rules. The problem isn't too many rules - it's too many poorly reasoned, slapped-together rules that are inconsistently enforced. And this drug testing "policy" is a joke.

BREAKING NEWS: Mike Easley did something!

No way! The FBI's investigating Mike Easley? For what, speeding? You know what, actually I knew it - there's no way someone could be that bland, that unmemorable or that uninspiring. Easley's mannequin-like demeanor has to have been a front for all kinds of diabolical conspiracies, like Denzel in "American Gangster" or something. And now the Feds are going to dig it all out.

Oh, wait, they think he did what? Flew on a private plane without reporting the expenses as campaign contributions?

Sigh. It figures.

Lane Kiffin is thisclose to attaining Permanent Douchebag status

There are two issues I want to cover here, one simpler than the other. The University of Tennessee Volunteers have granted a full athletic scholarship to defensive end/tight end Daniel Hood, who aside from being an athletic and academic standout at his private high school, helped an older friend rape his cousin when he was 13 years old. You can read a lot about this, but I liked Dennis Dodd's take at CBS.com, and his follow-up to the Hood apologists who criticized his first piece.

My two issues are intertwined, because how can I parse what an a-hole Lane Kiffin is turning out to be without determining to what extent Hood deserves a second chance*, and I really don't want this post to turn into that debate. I want to talk about how Kiffin is on his very last straw with me. One more ethically dubious move, and he's going over the edge into the Permanent Douchebag category (a slightly lesser ring of hell than Irredeemable Waste of Oxygen, where Michael Vick and Rush Limbaugh live). Because of this:

The former Tennessee staff had been recruiting [Hood]. But last May, one of Phillip Fulmer's assistants called Hood's dad and told him that they were no longer pursuing his son at that point. "I took it as they were dropping me," said Hood, who had planned to commit to the Vols that next week. When Kiffin came aboard, he contacted Hood a little more than two weeks after taking the job and arranged a meeting.

When I consider Kiffin, I feel like the only kid in the parade who can tell that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. A few years ago he was named the youngest head coach in the NFL - but the problem was that he was coaching the Oakland Raiders. Now, let's think about this... Kiffin's handsome, charismatic, has good coaching genes, and miraculously escaped blame for his 5-15 tenure at Oakland because everybody in football knows that Raiders owner Al Davis is a crackpot. So now, instead of getting busted back down to assistant like most people would after that kind of record, Kiffin gets to be the highest-paid college football coach in the country. Am I the only one who's a little...... meh?

Then he started out his gig as Tennessee's head coach by first poaching his dad from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, after which the Bucs lost their four remaining games and missed the playoffs. Then he poached recruits from Florida while accusing Florida's Coach Urban Meyer of some kind of wacky reverse-poaching, for which the NCAA slapped Kiffin's wrist. And now he's signed a convicted rapist that 27 other colleges - including, initially, Tennessee - also looked at and decided to turn down. So, yeah, the Kiffin Era is not inspiring me as a high-character program so far.

Thank heaven for Pat Summitt. Otherwise I'd never be able to walk into my grandmother's house ever again.

*Oh, what the hell, for the record: Hood has paid what a court decided was his debt to society, and under our system he should be allowed to return to that society. I'm a big believer in rehabilition for criminals. Going to college is a second chance. Going to college free of charge simply because you have athletic talent with few or no questions asked, on the other hand, is not.

Trust Women!

You simply must read Dr. Radha Lewis' post on Feministing about her work as one of the few doctors who provide second-trimester abortions - which are perfectly legal, but a little too difficult medically (and politically) for many doctors.

Most second-trimester abortions are performed for what Senator and former presidential candidate John McCain called (in scare quotes, no less) the health of the mother. Dr. Lewis shares a case where the woman's physical health was at issue, and another her mental health (a suicidal 18-year old whose family literally imprisoned her throughout her early pregnancy). This post is enlightening, reminding us that every woman who seeks an abortion does so for a different reason.

Which is why the comments to the post are interesting... Being Feministing, most are supportive of the pro-choice position. But a guy from a pro-life Catholic group shows up and - while he's respectful - it's clear that he's coming from a radically different point-of-view. He does nothing to convice me that "pro-lifers" are actually pro-women's lives, being as how he seems to argue that the morality of terminating a pregnancy should be up for public debate, rather than a private decision. (Because women are public property, of course...)

When anti-choicers raise the spectre of a woman carrying a baby for several months and then casually deciding that, meh, she's just not into it, they're more than disingenuous. They're sexist. They're coming from a place of deep distrust of women's ability to make decisions. I've got news for you: any pregnant woman who simply doesn't want to have a child will schedule that abortion ASAP. If a woman's getting an abortion at 21 weeks, or 24 weeks, there are almost always other issues at play - tragic, heart-wrenching circumatances that are not remotely the business of the president, my Congressman, the guy from the pro-life Catholic group or anyone else.

Just for sh*ts and giggles, let's consider health care

Joe Conason has a piece up on Salon.com about how right-wing opponents of health care reform are brainstorming how to market their position.

Maximizing fear is the true message…Groping for that fear button, Luntz asked his polling sample, "Which two concepts or phrases would FRIGHTEN you the most?" The first was healthcare rationing, an idea that isn't being contemplated by either the Obama administration or congressional Democrats (although healthcare is rationed by price under the current system). The second was "one-size-fits-all healthcare," a phrase that is devoid of any content but that conjures images of federal regimentation. Third came "healthcare by lobbyist," the plan that has been implemented by the insurance and pharmaceutical industry, with eager collaboration by the Republican leadership, for decades.

"Socialized medicine" came in a feeble fourth, barely ahead of "politicized healthcare," and scaring only about a quarter of the respondents, which demonstrates once again that the S-word has lost most of its terrorizing mojo. ("Hillary-care," presumably included for old times' sake, scares only about 10 percent of voters.)

It would be really nice if we could have an honest debate about health care reform in this country. And by “honest” I mean free of influence by people whose fear of losing their jobs or political clout. I would just be in heaven if the conversation about health care centered on what was best for the health and prosperity of our citizens, and not some lobbyist’s or HMO’s bottom line.

I’m still trying to educate myself on this, but this is what I understand so far: in a “single-payer” system, the single payer is a government agency, which negotiates directly with the health care provider. In other words, instead of your doctor’s office billing Blue Cross, they’d bill Agency X. Everyone would bill Agency X. Presumably, your doctor’s office would then charge less for services because running everything through Agency X is a hell of a lot cheaper than dealing with 47 dozen different insurance companies. From what I understand, your actual medical care at Fill-in-the-Blank Family Practice shouldn’t change at all.

We already have single-payer programs in this country in the form of Medicare and the VA. Results vary. But no more than they do at my local public hospital, or with my private allergy doctor.

There’s also the related issue of medical records. In Taiwan, every member of the single payer system has an electronic card containing his or her information. Taiwan.

I have the same issues with government-administrated health care as I would for government-administrated anything. Namely, public systems usually don’t move very quickly – there are just too many layers for them to go through. Before I could really get behind any form of public health care, I would need to have confidence that the parameters of that health care wouldn’t swing back and forth with every election: now abortion is covered (for instance), and now it isn’t.

That’s all the pragmatic stuff. There are larger philosophical issues as well… And maybe the theory doesn’t have a place here, but it’s something I’d like to consider anyway. The people who oppose public health care talk about “moral hazard,” kind of the flip side of the “problem of the common” that we liberals are always going on about. Both deal with the alleged tendency of people to take advantage of the public pool, using more than their share. In practice, many conservatives warn that any form of public health care will be a blank check for patients or doctors to run up unnecessary procedures, clogging the system so that actual sick people can’t get the care they need.

If you dig deeper into their argument, you find the real worry: that people who don’t contribute to the system will benefit from the system, which in their zero-sum mentality would mean that the people who do do what they should don’t get their fair share. In my first year at college, in a debate on this very subject, one of my opponents argued as much – why don’t I pay for mine and you pay for yours, and we just leave it at that?

My answer? There’s more than one kind of moral hazard. For some, the prospect that someone somewhere might be getting something he/she may or may not “deserve” (based on someone else’s judgment) is unconscionable. And then some of us think that a working family having to declare bankruptcy because of their medical bills is even worse. I guess it just depends on your point of view.

(That’s why you never hear conservatives complain about the VA. Military service people and their families have earned medical care in their view, and the poor and elderly on Medicare haven’t.)

There’s also the quite valid argument that public health care changes the way citizens relate to their government. It goes from being a tool to stabilize society by allowing individuals to pool resources to being a monolithic entity that truly governs from the top down.

As I said, I think this is a fundamentally important conversation that our country needs to have, free of ideology and influence-peddling. Not that I foresee that happening any time soon, but it would be nice.

On ta-tas

Hoo-boy.

It turns out that Carrie Prejean's 15 minutes aren't quite up yet, courtesy of the MSM's fascination with her boobies. Or, more accurately, how the alleged existence of her breast implants and "nude" (read: less revealing than a swim-suit) photos intersects with her professed "Biblicly correct" views on same-sex marriage.

There's an entire doctoral thesis' worth of material here exploring when it's permissable for women to have opinions (not when implants are involved, apparently), and why it's okay for a pageant organization to cut up a woman's body but then threaten to strip her of her title when she says or does something that butts up against their skewed standards.

It's easy to defend people that you approve of. It's not easy for me to defend Carrie Prejean. I think her views on same-sex civil rights are elementary and based on a faulty interpretation of both scripture and law. I think she's letting herself be used by bigots who wouldn't give her the time of day if she weighed 300 pounds and had bushy eyebrows. But I also think that, as poor as her reasoning is, she has every right to her opinion. I also think that the nudie-picture/implant shaming of her is as sexist as when Laura Ingraham tried to shut down Meghan McCain by calling her "plus-sized." As Feministing wrote today, it's not okay to fight homophobia with misogyny.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of men and non-beauty queen women who've said the same thing as Prejean, but no one's fixating on them. Why? Because in this country in 2009 it's still perfectly acceptable to look at a woman first, and - once you approve of what you've seen - listen to her second. And though Prejean may not want to claim us, that's why the work that feminists are doing should matter to her.

When we're finished with the whales... Save the GOP!

Some years ago I was talking with a member of the College Republicans chapter at my alma mater, and she mentioned that when the chapter went to national conventions they were often the only woman-led chapter present. She even joked about how it took a chapter from a women's college to have any female representation at College Republican events at all. Listening to her, I wondered two things: 1) would an advantageous male-female ratio be worth subjugating my most deeply held beliefs?, and 2) how could an intelligent young woman make the observation that Republicans are not friendly to female leadership and yet still willingly be part of their organization?

I thought about that today reading Jack Cafferty's blog post on CNN.com about how the GOP can attract women. The comments back to his question all seem to boil down to the perception that Republicans intrinsically don't respect the agency of women, reflected in their party's views on everything from reproductive rights (chicks can't handle 'em) to equal pay (bad for business). It's a portion of the larger problem that the GOP has no empathy for people who for whatever reason lack privilege.

Several prominent Republicans have attempted to start the process of refocusing what the party should be about. I hope the National Council for a New America involves more soul-searching than mere re-branding - the difference between actually coming up with new and productive ideas and just coming up with new ways to sell the same old talking points. I hope they take a sincere look at why so many people think they're bigots, and if that means apologizing for calling the NAACP "commies" and getting out of the way of same-sex marriage rights, then so be it.

Because - deep breath - America needs the Republican party. Or rather, we need multiple parties, at least one of which should be more conservative than the others. Competition produces better ideas (you'd think the free market guys would get that), and our entire system of government was built on that concept. But somewhere along the line (about 1964) the GOP became more concerned with winning than with governing.

That's why you've got Mike Pence going on "Hardball" hemming and hawing when Chris Matthews asked him of he believed in evolution. (Evolution, really? What is this, 1850?) This is the party that fought for African American civil rights at great political cost, even loss of life, barely a century ago. It's truly sad to see the descendents of that legacy sink to race-baiting an war-mongering. It took the Democrats a long time to leave that kind of thing behind; our country would only be better off if the GOP did the same.

Rachel Maddow had a great interview with Rep. Ron Paul last night. Now, I don't think I would ever vote for Paul because his ideas are so radically divergent from mine - but at least he HAS ideas. Ideas based on something other than idealogy and saying no. Paul isn't just against positions, he's FOR things.

Every political party has high tides and ebb tides, and the ones that survive do so because they adapt to a changing world. If the GOP wants to stay relevant - and I honestly, non-snarkily hope that it does - its members need to listen to the Ron Pauls and the Colin Powells more, and listen to the unelected, unaccountable fringe elements like this guy less.

Fun with right-wing fundie logic

So, when Perez Hilton called Miss California a "bitch" because she said she opposes gay marriage, that was awful, Prejean was being persecuted for her honestly held beliefs, etc. But when another female celebrity makes comments that seem to support gay civil rights (or at the very least, to not crap on them), it's perfectly okay to say that she's "not the positive role model she was once thought to be" and that "Clearly she is confused and does not understand the Bible."

Got the distinction? Yeah, me neither.