A small victory but no reason to celebrate just yet…

Yesterday a federal judge agreed to temporarily block the horrendous new law that was aimed at further restricting abortions through the regulation of clinics where the procedure is performed.

U.S. District Judge Ortrie Smith granted the request from Planned Parenthood of Kansas & Mid-Missouri and stayed the law from taking effect, and he will hold a hearing on September 10 to determine whether to make the injunction permanent or allow the law to take effect.

The new law, which Matty B. signed into law in the sanctuary of a Baptist Church, is an end run around access, pure and simple. When the courts had given the anti-choice zealots all the legal restrictions they were going to get, they set their sights on restricting access via facilities regulations. To this end, they drafted a smarmy little law that set the bar for facilities higher than most of the clinics can meet. As a result, they either have to suspend providing the service, or they have to spend a shitload of money they don’t have on a bunch of pointless facilities upgrades that aren’t needed and serve no purpose.

Facilities that provide abortions in Missouri are already licensed and regulated, but here is where it gets dicey…not all facilities that perform abortions have been defined as abortion clinics. State law has defined an abortion clinic as a facility that derives at least one-half of it’s revenue from abortion services. Under that definition, only one facility, a Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Louis meets that definition.

The new law would alter the definition of an abortion clinic in the state code and pull other facilities under the definition, even the KC clinic that only dispenses abortifacients, and does not perform surgical abortions.

In his order, Smith warned both sides from reading too much into his ruling, saying "the state has a legitimate interest in regulating facilities that perform surgery, even if the facility in question performs surgical abortions."

"The court also believes the state may differentiate between facilities that do not primarily perform surgery based on the types of surgery they provide," he wrote.

But he said it was confusing how the state would apply the law to the Kansas City clinic, which performs only medication-induced abortions, not surgical ones.

Defense attorneys said the facility should be outfitted for surgery in case something goes wrong with the medication. Smith was not convinced.

"Of all the establishments that dispense medication (e.g. doctor’s offices, pharmacies), why is it only those that dispense medication for the purpose of inducing an abortion that must be prepared to perform surgery?" Smith asked.

He said the law should probably apply to the Columbia clinic and noted that Planned Parenthood and the department were willing to cooperate. But he said there was still disagreement over what level of regulations the clinic would have to follow.

In the mean time, we need to get organized and get loud. The rights of women to control our own bodies has been beaten, battered, and thrown under the bus under the Blunt administration.

In Missouri, reproductive freedom is under full frontal assault. Over a year ago legislation was passed that prohibited not just the distribution of contraceptives, but the dissemination of information. The legislation tied state funding to a gag order. County health departments were not only prohibited from providing birth control, they were prohibited from referring to programs that could provide those services.

Over a year ago the non-profit Guttmacher Institute released a study that showed poor women, those living below the poverty line, have a four-fold rate of unintended pregnancy over more affluent women. The study also showed that the trend coincides chronologically with actions taken at both the state and federal levels that have severely limited or entirely eliminated contraceptive programs that serve low-income women. Pregnancy prevention programs have consistently shifted the focus of their efforts from contraception to abstinence, even in marriage.

Social conservatives, meantime, continue to dismissively argue in the face of fact that all contraceptive methods have limitations to their effectiveness, so the only way to be sure an unintended pregnancy is avoided is through abstinence, so really, denying contraception doesn’t matter – God’s will is God’s will. Yes, no contraception is foolproof – but if I were a woman living below the poverty line, I would sure rather have access to the pill and it’s 98% effectiveness rate than nothing at all. Their argument is specious at best, and actually smacks of blatant intellectual dishonesty.

But let’s tote the board, shall we? The social conservatives have managed to curtail availability of contraception for poor women. They have managed to get laws passed at the state level that restrict access to abortion – actions that unfairly deny access to poor women while more affluent women are able to exercise their constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy by taking a trip across state lines. And the final cruel twist of fate: once those unintended pregnancies come to fruition, and a baby is born, that child is on his or her own because Medicaid has been cut to the bone.

Reagan was wrong – people are not “poor by choice.” They are poor by circumstance, and not everyone has the skills; social, cognitive, or otherwise, to escape those circumstances. A smaller percentage still has the ability to acquire the skills necessary to escape the circumstances of their life. The Dickensian social measures being enacted at a phenomenal clip will most surely turn on us in the near future, and we will face a snarling monster with very large teeth.

I am not willing to sit on my hands and wait for the social fallout. I have a head full of knowledge and an ability to organize. And Sisters, I am doing just that. Family planning is power in the hands of women, and I can see no reason that the power of self-determination should be limited only to women of means. I have friends who are effective hellraisers and I have enough bitchitude to foist myself on social service agencies and public health clinics and make them listen to me for 20 minutes. I have enough moxie to take information sessions to the coffee shops and the student unions…and to the shelters, too.

See, HB 1055, that apostasy of a bill – again, signed in the sanctuary of a Baptist church – did not just use the building codes to restrict a woman’s right to choose. Oh, no, Darling. It is a really nasty little piece of misogynistic work. The bill encourages abstinence-only sex education in public schools, and it bans trained sex educators from Missouri classrooms.

Ladies, we need to wake the hell up, and we need to band together. These assaults against half the population can not be allowed to stand. In the meantime, we need to raise our collective voice as one and make our displeasure known.

Sisters, get registered to vote, get informed, get organized and get loud. If you are in the St. Louis side of the state, contact Angry Black Bitch, and in KC and the northwest section of the state, contact me. We sure could use an interlocutor in the Ozarks, if anyone down that way wants to be a Feminist Warrior wielding a Sword of Knowledge.

Petraeus and the Summer of Kabuki™

The natural born cynic in me has a lot to work with these days, and the material is an embarrassment of riches – in addition to just being embarrassing.

Next Tuesday the Government Accountability Office is scheduled to present to the Congress a 70-page report on the prospects for political reconciliation in Iraq. Insiders who have seen the report say it paints a very grim picture. It seems to confirm the “scorecard” of the status of Iraqi security forces that was released yesterday that concludes the Iraqis are years away from assuming responsibility for the security of their own country.

Congress is wasting no time. Indeed, they are starting hearings on the reports in the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees in advance of the Petraeus - Crocker Happy-talk Express that is supposed to be delivered the following week.

For the cynic in all of us, they have invoked clichés that would be edited out of a dime novel – Petraeus is scheduled to appear before Congress on September 11.

The atmosphere is sure to be charged, and enough congresscritters have Petraeus' number to make his appearance contentious. Especially in light of the fact that Petraeus tampered with the integrity of last weeks NIE.

The NIE, requested by the White House Iraq coordinator, Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, in preparation for the testimony, met with resistance from U.S. military officials in Baghdad, according to a senior U.S. military intelligence officer there. Presented with a draft of the conclusions, Petraeus succeeded in having the security judgments softened to reflect improvements in recent months, the official said. (emphasis added)

For his part, the Resident continued to spin yesterday. He was rhetorically high-fiving Iraqi politicians for reaching some minor agreement on Sunday, but so what? The Cabinet still does not have a quorum so it doesn’t matter. Without a quorum, it’s just so much rowing with one oar.

Politicians traipsed to Iraq all summer long in an endless parade of self-important potentate puffery, as if a few hours of being shown what you are meant to see and nothing more is an honest assessment medium!

This Summer of Kabuki™ has provided Petraeus with the opportunity to do what he does so well…stage productions. It has been like summer stock theater over there, and let's give credit where credit is due! His production values have been spectacular!

Some of the Dog-and-Pony-Shows have even been somewhat effective, as in the case of Brian Baird, Representative of Washington. He came back after a one-day fact finding fact free trip to the war zone, where, by golly, he saw enough to convince him of the necessity to give Petraeus another Friedman Unit! This did not go over well with his constituents, and at a town-hall meeting, he got a face full of claws and faced a rhetorical lashing at the hands of an angry electorate that apparently stopped just short of burning him in effigy. One constituent pulled no punches and reminded him just who the hell he works for. "We don't care what your convictions are," said Jan Lustig of Vancouver. "You are here to represent us."

Petraeus will be appearing before a congress that has been provided details about what they have done that pissed us off, and that has been told in explicit terms just what the hell is expected of them, so he is not in for a Sunday stroll to the ice cream parlor, or even an open-air market in Indiana. He has been hinting around at a decade of combat involvement in Iraq – will he mention that in his testimony before a hinky congress?

And will Congress listen to those of us who control whether they keep their jobs or not? Or will they furrow their brows and scratch their chins in a most studious manner, and then do what ever the little idiot wants, while the killing continues apace?

[Crossposted from WTWC]

Another Caption Contest!

I'll get this one started....

Q. What has two thumbs, a double standard and no conscience?

A. This guy!


Okay - your turn. Bring on the snark.

Pale Rider Roasts Another Wingnut

In the current Newsweek, Mark Hosenball and Jeffrey Bartholet interview retired Vice Admiral John Scott Redd, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center. He cranks up the propaganda, and Pale rider takes it, makes a club out of it, and batters him severly about the head and shoulders.

The excerpts are in red, and Pale Rider's assault and battery appears as blue italics.

Enjoy!

Last thing: Are we winning or losing the war on terrorism?
This is a long war. People say, "What is this like?" I say it's like the cold war in only two respects. Number one, there is a strong ideological content to it. Number two, it is going to be a long war. I'll be dead before this one is over. We will probably lose a battle or two along the way. We have to prepare for that. Statistically, you can't bat 1.000 forever, but we haven't been hit for six years, [which is] no accident.

[We've never come close to losing a single battle nor will we lose a single battle. Did we lose the battle of the Pentagon? Of New York City? Or were they cowardly acts of terrorism by suicide bombers? How is that a battle? We prefer to lose the hearts and minds than do that. But since the good Admiral thinks there are "battles" in an irregular war against terror, the only "battles" we will lose are the ones we refuse to fight.]

I will tell you this: We are better prepared today for the war on terror than at any time in our history.

[no-our borders are not secured, our ports are not secured, airport security is a joke, the cargo industry thumbs its nose at the idea of inspections and vehicles come into this country every day full of drugs and illegal aliens. Drug traffickers are using submarines to infiltrate this country. There are not enough first responders and there is no concentrated blood supply that can handle a major disaster. There is no viable American Red Cross anymore. There is no department of homeland security--there IS a major vacuum that sucks up dollars and distributes them via largesse and nobid contract. The Republicans fight tooth and nail to stop the implementation of the 9/11 committee and then claim to be defending America? Katrina showed how they defend America.]

We have done an incredible amount of things since 9/11, across the board. Intelligence is better. They are sharing it better.

[RIGHT now, FBI agents are still isolated and independent of all communities, and they do not share. They send lackeys and clowns to "integrated" facilities, just like all of the other intel agencies. THere are still turf wars. Good people who want to have careers don't "integrate" with other agencies. The greatest threat to safety in this country is having an FBI agent with a national security letter decide that he doesn't like the way your kid does better than his kid in school. You damned sure better hope no one with subpoena power in this Republican administration loses out to you in the race for Best Sports Dad because these sons of bitches can use the full weight of the Justice Department to destroy you if they so much as think you have more hair and a better looking wife than they do. And how many Arabic linguists are they hiring? How many do they have in the entire FBI?]

We are taking the terrorists down. We are working with the allies very carefully.

[The ones abandoning Basra turned out to be great allies, huh? And when your allies won't even send troops to secure safe regions, your allies aren't working with you at all.]

We are doing the strategic operational planning, going after every element in the terrorist life cycle. So we have come a long way. But these guys are smart. They are determined. They are patient. So over time we are going to lose a battle or two. We are going to get hit again, you know, but you've got to have the stick-to-itiveness or persistence to outlast it.

[In other words, we don't know what the fuck we're doing, we know they have the wherewithal to hit us again, so when it does, I want to have plausible deniability and take an early retirement so that I won't be held accountable for anything. When we were standing against the Soviets, we had a *bit* more certainty and confidence. How is it that a few thousand rag wearing intellectuals who can't even light gasoline on fire have this mighty nation scared to death?

Oh--that's right. We have Republicans in charge of defending us. Republicans--who no doubt know how to defend America from paying too much for a gay blow job and a greasy reacharound but have demonstrated that they can't protect an American city from standing water. Great!]