Backward thinking might kill healthcare bill

Goddamn: So the “abortion ban” (aka, puritanical nonsense having no base in science) is threatening to kill the most significant pieces of  healthcare legislation — reform! — to hit Congress in a long time.

Why the ban was ever folded into the bill in the first place is a sign of how pathetically afraid we are of progress in the U.S.  They have to call it an “abortion ban” rather than the “placing even more limits on your reproductive choices and freedoms” ban or the “sorry, we’re forcing you to either make a baby you’re not ready to make or struggle to find a way to pay for an abortion despite the fact that you’re paying up the whatnot for health insurance alread”y ban.

Better yet, the “women, you’re still second-class citizens” ban.

So they included the damn provision in, and now they want it out. Good luck with that.

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Furious liberals threatened Monday to derail the health care overhaul bill to protest a last-minute deal over insurance coverage of abortions that had secured passage of the legislation in the House.

At least 40 House members pledged not to vote for a final health care bill if the abortion provision survives — endangering the exceptionally fragile Democratic coalition that has kept the bill afloat.

At issue are the insurance policies offered in an “exchange,” or insurance marketplace, that the legislation would create to help consumers purchase health plans, many using newly created federal subsidies.

The House measure says the federal subsidies cannot be used to buy health policies that cover elective abortion. But abortion rights supporters say that would affect a broad set of consumers, because insurers would likely abandon abortion coverage in all policies offered in the exchange.

The provision “represents an unprecedented and unacceptable restriction on women’s ability to access the full range of reproductive health services to which they are lawfully entitled,” the House members wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

It was a tougher line than they had adopted less than 48 hours earlier when they had, almost to a member, voted to pass the health legislation.

Oh boy. It gets better:

The House amendment would allow people buying insurance in the exchange to purchase separate “riders” that would cover abortions. Abortion-rights advocates say few would do so, because few women anticipate an unplanned pregnancy and few insurers are likely to offer such a separate service.

 

It’s pathetic that progress can be classified as “allowing” (or, erm, forcing) women to buy additional insurance in order to cover the cost of a potential abortion.  And yes, it will be women who will pay for it. We always do, in more than one way.

Besides, this idea that women will essentially take out a special “abortion insurance” is ridiculous. If it made sense, then men would be part of the conversation, as in, men would be talking about getting abortion insurance in case they knock someone up and for whatever reason, the pregnancy can’t go to term.

Oh, anti-choice people don’t want the government to pay for any part of an abortion? Great. Who wanst their tax dollars to pay for supporting all the children those ant–birth control nuts have? That wouldn’t wash, would it?

Why not?

Because paying for how other people live their lives is part of living in a society. A civilized one. Childless people pay for the schooling of other people’s children. People pay for roads and parks in other people’s neighborhoods. For that matter, we all pay lawmakers to consider issues that may never affect us individually (licensure of businesses, hunting permits, etc., etc.) . We even pay for enforcing that stuff.

And yes, when a woman chooses to take control over her life and body and end a pregnancy, then yes, we must help pay for that too.

Antiquated thinking should have never crept into healthcare reform to start with. Congress needs to nip it in its rusty bud and pass legislation suitable for the 21st century.

 

Science gets in the way of politics

Having once worked with an editor who seldom let the facts get in the way of a good story (seriously, almost every word I carefully wrote for him made me want to force him to sup on the rocks he clearly carried around in his head) I have an idea of what it’s like to work with someone who is motivated by something other than doing the best possible job. Rocks-For-Brains was motivated by splashy headlines and the appearance of owning a story, even though what he owned was actually rarely a story at all.

To wit, politicians firing scientist, as is the case with a Brit scientist over drugs flap, is bad. But  it’s tiny compared to how the US track record, specifically the Bush administration.

Indeed, there’s a huge stink in the air in the UK right now over the sacking of a scientist by because…well, here’s a tidy summary from the Financial Times:

The government’s former top drugs adviser on Wednesday called for scientists to have a free hand in determining the risks of illegal substances, as he denounced past political interference in the work of the advisory committee he headed.

Prof David Nutt, the former chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, who was fired last week by Alan Johnson, the home secretary, demanded an overhaul of the current system of classifying dangerous drugs, which he said should in future be run independently like the Bank of England’s committee of experts who set monetary policy.

In other words, the British government doesn’t care about the scientific reasoning behind how certain drugs, in this case, pot, should be classified. They are clearly politically motivated and are willing to fire scientists who agree with them This is a battle that Nutt has been fighting for a time. Here’s Nutt explaining it in his own words (from one his lectures, excerpted in the Guardian):

The ranking also suggests that a tripartite classification system might make sense, with drugs ranking as more harmful than alcohol being class A and those ranking lower than tobacco as class C. The exercise also highlighted how dangerous alcohol is. I believe that dealing with the harms of alcohol is probably the biggest challenge that we have in relation to drug harms today.

One problem is that sometimes you get into what I think of as an illegality–logic loop. This is an example of a conversation I’ve had many times with many people, some of them politicians:

MP “You can’t compare harms from a legal activity with an illegal one.”

Professor Nutt “Why not?”

MP “Because one’s illegal.”

Professor Nutt “Why is it illegal?”

MP “Because it’s harmful.”

Professor Nutt “Don’t we need to compare harms to determine if it should be illegal?”

MP “You can’t compare harms from a legal activity with an illegal one.”

I have been surprised how difficult this concept is to get across to some people, whether they are politicians, fellow scientists or members of the general public.

While this is outrageous and wrong, it’s hardly surprising. American politicians have been making a career out of ignoring science and making flawed health/public policy decisions to appease certain constituents and the deep pockets that accompany them.

Examples? Well, we have the same issue with marijuana. In fact, Americans have had to deal with the additional strangeness of having their state government (if they live say, in Washington or California) accept medicinal use of the drug, only to have federal agents raid their homes and arrest them. Things are changing, but slowwwwly.

Then there’s climate change (poor James Hansen), stem cell research and much, much more.

Who could forget what the Bush administration did to former Surgeon General Richard Carmona? An editorial at my former paper (probably written by my esteemed colleague Joe Copeland) says it all:

Dr. Richard Carmona said that as surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, he was censored on stem cells, sex ed, emergency contraception, prison health care, mental illness and global health. He said conversations with predecessors revealed that political pressure was common, but never to the degree he experienced.

We have seen the administration’s arrogant disdain for independent science on environmental matters. But it is embarrassing to have a surgeon general so thoroughly squelched in a country where one of them, Luther Terry, had used the truth to help set billions of people worldwide free from tobacco addiction and another, C. Everett Koop, sounded the alarm about AIDS.

Bush has nominated as Carmona’s permanent successor Dr. James Holsinger Jr., who wrote in 1991 that homosexual sex is unnatural and unhealthy. The choice is absurd. We’d be better off without a surgeon general than with one willing to rubber stamp ideology as science.

One has to wonder why they employ scientists and researchers at all if they have so little interest in listening to them in the first place?

Remember people fighting for their rights in Iran? It’s still happening.

Most of the news coming out of Iran in recent weeks has had to do with the nuclear issue. And sure, that’s big news. But so is the fact that people are still protesting and still getting arrested in the streets.

Al Jazeera reports:

Security forces have clashed with opposition protesters as thousands of Iranians gathered on the streets of the capital, Tehran to mark the 30th anniversary of the 1979 takeover of the US embassy.

Police used batons and tear gas to disperse several hundred activists who had gathered at Haft-e-Tir square on Wednesday to demonstrate against the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president, witnesses said.

Heavy security had been deployed to prevent opposition activists from using the annual event to voice their anger at the government.

Gooyanews.com reports that the clash got violent, as protesters with faces covered with blood ran to hide in side streets and homes around Haft-e-Tir and Kareem Khan bridge.  So their struggle continues.

If we want to properly understand the news related to the nuclear issues in Iran, we must understand how Iranians themselves see the issues. And right now, a lot of that has to do with how they’re interacting with their government, trust v. loyalty, repression v. freedom, etc.

US kowtows to Israel on settlements, dooms peace talks

Say you’re trying to broker a peace deal between two opposing parties, with land being a major between the two.

One side claims to have the right to build settlements that the rest of the world considers illegal and has for years. The supposedly neutral party brokering the deal initially says that the construction of the settlements should be frozen until at least some sort of deal is brokered or talks have taken place.

The settlement builder says “no” and the broker says, “Uh, okay. No worries. Keep building.”

So, how is that going to look to the other side, the one claiming — with massive international support — that the settlements are illegal? How can this party enter into peace talks under such circumstances? Where is the bona fide attempt on behalf of the settlement builders and the peace broker?

This, sadly, is exactly how the Obama administration is dealing with the issue. The Guardian reports:

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, sought to deflect the anger and disappointment of pro-western Arab states today after backing Israel’s position that it did not need to freeze settlement activity as a prelude to resuming peace talks with the Palestinians.

Clinton was due to meet foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other key Arab states at a G8 conference in Morocco after brief talks in Jerusalem and Ramallah at the weekend. In what appeared to be a significant policy shift she publicly supported the position taken by Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Likud prime minister, and even praised him for making “unprecedented” concessions. (…)

Earlier today Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, said: “I am telling you that all of us, including Saudi Arabia, including Egypt, are deeply disappointed … with the results, with the fact that Israel can get away with anything without any firm stand that this cannot be done.”

Whither backbone, America?

Hamid Karzai only candidate in election — kind of like the first time around.

I’m not going to say that Abdullah Abdullah could have won. I’m saying he never stood a chance in the first place — nor would any other candidate. Which might be why he dropped out of the elections, as the Associated Press reports:

Karzai is far from the strong and capable partner that Washington had hoped would emerge from the electoral process that it and Western allies had pushed for in Afghanistan. They hoped the elections would stabilize the country and bleed support from the Taliban.

But the process effectively ended in turmoil Sunday, even as the war with the Taliban intensifies. Karzai’s challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, bowed out only six days before a scheduled runoff, charging that no fair election was possible.

What a flippin’ abortion of a democracy! First, a fraudulent election. Then, the U.N.’s bumbling response to it. And now, this.

Ah yes. So he might be a crooked man in Afghanistan, but at least he’s Our Man in Afghanistan.

Bonnie Greer: Yeah, what she said.

I watched Nick Griffin on BBC1 last night, and I have to say, it was a satisfyingly piss-poor performance on his behalf. All those protesters who worried about the BBC giving Griffin cred worried for nothing. He really wasn’t up to the task. And this afternoon, the Evening Standard brought us an exclusive with Bonnie Greer, who faced Griffin down last night. Here’s a taste:

“I was the last to emerge and when he saw me, he turned and smiled his greasy smile and clumsily half extended a hand. I ignored it and thought to myself: what are you about? Are you forgetting I’m black? Are you forgetting you called me a black history fabricator? Are you trying to show me you aren’t racist?” (…)

“I spent the entire night with my back turned to him. At one point, I had to restrain myself from slapping him. But it was worth it,” she insists, “because he was totally trounced. I had thought we’d face a formidable orator, somebody who knew his facts and had his ducks in a row but the guy was a mess!

“From the moment the audience began shooting questions, it was a case of the Emperor’s new clothes. He was completely exposed as an evasive liar who couldn’t even stand up his own quotes and looked like a buffoon.”

There were times when the guy seriously looked like a deer in the headlights.

Meanwhile Griffin is said to be readying a complaint against the BBC, because, get this, he was hoping that the audience members and panelists would want to hear his opinions on topical issues. Here’s a quote from Sky News:

“People wanted to see me and hear me talking about things such as the postal strike. One or two questions about what a wicked man I am, fair enough, but the whole programme – it was absurd.”

Well, sure. I guess they could have said, “Sir, as a racist, what do you think of the postal strike?” Instead of focusing on why he’s such a….racist. It’s like he has no idea why his positions on race, religion (okay, maybe just Islam?) and immigration make people not really care what he hast to say about a labor dispute, such as the one going on at Royal Mail right now.

Anyway. Here, watch — and judge — for yourself:

Brits don’t like hearing nasty things on TV

…no, I’m not talking about cussing — which they do lots of and do well. And I’m not talking about Cheryl Cole “singing” (good God, Britain, really?!?!).

I’m talking about hearing Nick Griffin, the head of the British National Party be interviewed on BBC1 (as he will be tonight, in just under 4 hours). There’s been a storm of protests over the Beeb’s plans to have the guy on “Question Time” — oh, his views are too vile, they say, and having him on the air gives people with views like his credibility, etc.

Very true, all. But, here’s the thing: That’s not enough of a reason to boot him off the show. That’s not how a democracy, one that values free thought and free speech, works. Those freedoms, by the way, are enjoyed by the very people protesting Griffin’s upcoming appearance. In fact, protesters stormed the BBC’s grounds earlier this evening in an attempt to express their anger.

Now, granted, Griffin is an unsavory guy with less than evolved views. And that’s really putting it nicely.

From his profile, on the BBC site:

A smartly-dressed, Cambridge-educated family man, he has written of the need to “normalise” a party which has its roots in the fascist National Front and, when he took over as leader in 1999, was chiefly associated in the public mind with skinheads and swastikas. (…)

But he has a controversial past, which includes a 1998 conviction for incitement to racial hatred relating to material denying the Holocaust.

And to his opponents, his decontamination of the party is only skin deep.

In April 2006, he told the Mail on Sunday: “‘Yes, Adolf went a bit too far. His legacy is the biggest problem that the British nationalist movement has to deal with. It just creates a bad image’.”

Wait, wait. There’s more. Here’s something from the Times:

Mr Griffin, who once called for a defence of white rights with “well-directed boots and fists”, began changing course in 1998. He told the BNP: “We must at all times present [the public] with an image of reasonableness.”

He added: “Of course, we must teach the truth to the hardcore, for, like you, I do not intend this movement to lose its way.” Asked if the past decade had merely been an exercise in rebranding, he says: “I had already decided that things the BNP were saying were futile, a menace and wrong.

“I changed my mind about some things. We used to look at problems with immigration in just a simplistic way.” That was unfair, he says, because the bigger issue was Islam.

Sure.  Oh, hang on, just one more graf:

How does he feel about President Obama? “He is an Afrocentric racist bigot.” He thinks American blacks should have been resettled in Africa “because the two peoples living side by side would cause problems forever”.

Yeah, a man after Glenn Beck’s own empty heart. Still, the man is the head of a political party, he holds a seat in the European Parliament. Fearing what he has to say gives his views even more power. So let the man speak, however vile and ill-conceived his words may be. Besides, there are others like him out there and it’s always good to know what sort of rhetoric they’re holding on to.

And because I’m a terrible human being, here’s Cheryl Cole’s unforgivably bad song & video…

U.N. to fire more than 200 officials linked to Afghan (s)election fraud

How embarrassing … how does a body like the U.N. recover from something like this (from the Telegraph):

More than 200 election workers implicated in vote rigging during the Afghan presidential elections are to be fired by the United Nations before the run-off in two weeks.

Afghanistan Electoral officials are scrambling to arrange a new poll after Hamid Karzai agreed to face Abdullah Abdullah in a second round after reluctantly accepting he had not won outright.

Organisers desperately hope to avoid a repeat of what Dr Abdullah called “massive state-engineered” fraud when the run off is held.

Yikes. Kind of gives what Peter Galbraith was saying even more credibility. You know him, right? He’s the U.S. diplomat who got fired from his U.N. job because he refused to stay silent about the blatant fraud that was about to keep Hamid Karzai in power.

Anyway.  After reading and listening to hours of reportage and commentary on the matter, I heard a guy on the radio give voice, and shape, to what worries me about the upcoming elections. It was Marvin Weinbaum of the Middle East Institute on the BBC in the wee hours, and he basically said what he told NPR on Sunday, only better. I can’t find the quote, but he said that he feared there will still be fraud in this second round, but that those perpetrating the fraud will be too smart to leave their fingerprints all over the place.

So what does this mean? It means that this election is seen as legit (as the U.N. hopes it will), then Karzai (let’s face it, he’ll win again) will have that much more credibility.

How bad of a joke is this? Check out the punchline: We’re fighting a war to spread freedom and democracy (hey, not my words) in a country where our own diplomats are told to STFU about the fraud and corruption they witness; where we know the guy in charge is as crooked as barrel of snakes and; yeah, we’re supporting him, because if we turn our back on Afghanistan now, it’s lost forever (if it isn’t already).

Roman Polanski hospitalized with “undisclosed medical condition.” Hmmm. Is “chickenshit” a medical condition?

Alright, I know he’s old, but I guess I figure if he was well enough to travel to Switzerland to get an award, then Roman Polanski is well enough to sit in a Swiss prison until his rapist, pedophile self is sent back to the U.S. to face the charges he’s been dodging for over 30 years.

But People reports that he’s been transferred from prison to hospital:

Director Roman Polanski was transferred from prison to a Zurich hospital for medical examinations Friday. The hospitalization, which is expected to last several days, involves an undisclosed medical condition. The famed filmmaker was arrested in September on decades-old rape charges from the U.S., and is awaiting a possible extradition to California. (…)

Polanski’s lawyer, Herve Temime, has continued to express concern over Polanski’s mental and physical health. After visiting with Polanski in prison last week, Temime told journalists that his client was depressed and tired. France’s consul general in Zurich, who has also visited Polanski in prison, expressed similar concerns.

Oh, boo freakin’ hoo. If he’d only faced the music decades ago, he’d probably be out of prison by now and hey, he could get all the treatment he needs for whatever is wrong with him. Wonder what’s eating away at him? Guilt? Perhaps he’s remembering what he did to a child all those years ago, when he drugged her up and raped her? Nah, he’s probably over it, just like the rest of Hollywood and the victim herself.

Maziar Bahari out on $300,000 bail

Newsweek journalist Maziar Bahari who has been locked up since his June 21 arrest, has finally be released on bail.

Reuters reports that,

Bahari was put on trial along with dozens of detained reformists on June 30. After the trial, Bahari spoke to journalists saying foreign media had a role in fomenting a ”velvet revolution” to topple the clerical establishment.

Iranian moderates have denounced the mass trials as a “sham”, saying confessions under pressure had “no value”. Bahari had urged Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s most powerful figure, to forgive him.

Canada had said the spying charge against Bahari was baseless and had demanded his immediate release. Tehran does not recognise dual nationality and told Canada not to interfere.

Anyone who saw photos of Bahari at his “trial” could tell that the man didn’t mean a word he said. He just looked beaten down, which was heartbreaking to see. I haven’t seen any interviews or anything with Bahari on Iranian news sites, so he’s obviously keeping a very low profile. I can’t see the guy making a run for it, but I wonder how much longer he’ll be stuck there, no doubt unable to work.