To be scrupulously fair, it ain't just the teabaggers behaving very badly.
Above, in a St. Louis incident quickly picked up by Fox News Channel a year ago and capitalized on by tea partiers as an example of Barack Obama's "goon squads," we are shown an incident that put the "thugs" in the term "union thugs."
And, a year later, that Missouri "town hall beatdown" is being dragged out as an example that the mainstream media is playing up the Rand Paul incident while ignoring liberal violence. Guess who's saying "Well . . . they do it, too!"
You get three guesses. The first two don't count.
WHILE I'M at it, here's another video of what seems to be an SEIU organizer attacking a supporter of a rival union at a California hospital last February:
WHY IS IT the more everyone bleats about "tolerance," the more intolerance we get of . . . well, everything.
Somehow, someway Americans will learn to live up to what we like to tell foreigners about the United States, or we are going to make Bosnia in the mid-'90s look like a walk in the park.
"What is going to happen to me, Father?" I ask before he gets away altogether.
"Oh," he says absently, appearing to be thinking of something else, "you're going to end up killing Jews."
"Okay," I say. Somehow 1 knew he was going to say this.
Somehow also he knows that we've finished with each other. He reaches for the trapdoor, turns the rung. "Give my love to Ellen and the kids."
"Sure."
At the very moment of his touching the rung, there is a tapping on the door from below. The door lifts against his hand.
"That's Milton," says Father Smith in his workaday ham-operator voice and lifts the door.
A head of close-cropped iron-gray hair pops up through the opening and a man springs into the room.
To my astonishment the priest pays no attention to the new arrival, even though the three of us are now as close as three men in a small elevator. He takes my arm again.
"Yes, Father?"
"Even if you were a combination of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronltite, and Charles Kuralt rolled into one—no, especially if you were those guys --"
"As a matter of fact, I happen to know Charlie Kuralt, and there is not a sweeter guy, a more tenderhearted person --"
"Right," says the priest ironically, still paying not the slightest attention to the stranger, and then, with his sly expression, asks, "Do you know where tenderness always leads?"
"No, where?" I ask, watching the stranger with curiosity.
"To the gas chamber."
"I see."
"Tenderness is the first disguise of the murderer."
Did you watch the CBS Sunday Morning video from Barry Petersen? Good. At least we have a starting point -- a frame of reference. The ending point is that this story is as monstrous as it is tender.
It is all the more monstrous because I can understand his anguish . . . the thinking . . . the rationalization . . . all wrapped in heartfelt tenderness. This tenderness leads -- if not, alas, to the gas chamber for poor Jan Chorlton -- at least to whitewashing her objectification. Her dehumanization.
This is because -- you will note that she is referred to in the past tense -- everyone seems to see her humanity, all that makes her Jan, as being wrapped up in her mental function. In her memory, which Alzheimer's has stolen from her.
And it all makes sense, doesn't it? We observe that she is slipping away. We don't know her anymore, just as she doesn't know . . . anyone. Scientists can explain this.
Scientists also can explain the angry outbursts Petersen described. There's a name for them -- Sundowners Syndrome, being that the episodes generally happen toward the end of the day. I KNOW a little about this. Alzheimer's killed my mother in law. We watched, my wife and I, as her mom began to act -- for lack of a better term than the indelicate -- stupidly. We watched as she tried to cover for her mental lapses and bizarre behavior.
My wife struggled to make heads or tails of the retired bookkeeper's now-chaotic finances, as Mom fought her every step of the way.
We did the whole take-away-the-car-keys thing.
We watched as her personality changed, as she began to slip into a second adolescence, as she began to mindlessly shoplift from the corner convenience store. As her id began to overtake her superego. Then it was time for assisted living.
It was time for spending down the last of her meager assets on her assisted-living bills. For my wife, her eldest surviving daughter -- the only child still in Omaha -- to get conservatorship, to deal with nursing-home and Medicaid caseworkers.
For trying to find humor in the increasingly bizarre behavior, because if you didn't laugh, you wouldn't stop crying.
For feeling guilty because you felt angry, because you didn't know who the hell this person in front of you was. She sure as hell wasn't Mom.
AND FINALLY, it was time to be so overwhelmed as to feel nothing, because you were just another stranger Mom knew not. Another stranger she barely would acknowledge or look at with eyes that revealed. . . .
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing. Nobody was home, and the lights were fading fast.
It was an ongoing wake, only without the socializing in the funeral-home coffee shop.
Her life ended in a darkened room in the locked "memory wing" of Douglas County Hospital -- the only option left when the assisted-living folks, unable to deal with Mom's increasing aggression, piled her into a taxicab on a snowy day and sent her there.
Without that bit of heaven-sent socialism, God only knows what would have happened to her. The staffers at that charity hospital are saints. They do -- and do cheerfully -- what you and I can't . . . or won't.
WE WATCHED Mom die -- my wife, my brother- and sister-in-law and me -- during the wee hours of a wintery mid-March morning in 2006. She turned gray, with her skin mottled, from the feet up. Her breaths grew shallower and farther between. And then they stopped.
Mom didn't have Alzheimer's anymore. And we could start to remember what she was like . . . before.
And we also could begin to be gripped with fear every time we have a "senior moment." Is this it?Am I next?Is my wife -- Mom's daughter?Oh dear God, how could I bear it?
One way or another, Jan Chorlton and Barry Petersen are living our worst nightmare.
Well, not exactly.
No, myworst nightmare is that I would succumb to what tormented Petersen, then put what I longed for before what my dear wife deserved. What she deserves is for me to fulfill the vows I made to her and to God almost 27 years ago.
What she deserves is for me never to abandon her -- nor for me to offend her dignity by screwing another woman with impunity, with her powerless to object, then making like we're some sort of bittersweet, loving ménage à trois (albeit one where only two of us would be having any fun). Damn it, love is not just an emotion -- it is an occasion of grace and (sometimes) an agonizing, brute act of one's fallen will.
But this story . . . it's all so tender, no? No doubt.
Tenderness that justifies betrayal. Tenderness that makes adultery seem so . . . reasonable . . . civilized . . . compassionate . . . open-minded.
Petersen's is a tenderness that I can get my head -- and my heart -- around. You want to cut the lonely, hurting guy a break. And that scares the hell out of me.
Because it all offends the human dignity of the helpless person we've all just dehumanized here -- Jan Chorlton . . . Petersen. Who is still Barry Petersen's wife. And who we -- tenderly, of course -- regard as figuratively dead, if not technically so.
I mean, it's obvious, isn't it?
AND THAT right there is the g*ddamned lie. And the God-damned one, too.
Because if you can buy that bit of utter dehumanization and objectification in the name of compassion and tenderness, it ain't that far a trip to the gas chamber.
While "right-to-life" groups keep busy demonizing health-care reform and slandering those who support it. . . . And while Nebraska Right to Life is busy endorsing Republicans who make abortion really, really attractive to poor women. . . .
It takes a disposable-diaper maker to get with the program of making a people actually rethink the whole enterprise.
ALL BECAUSE Pampers wants to sell some product, and this iPad app is a hell of a way to do it. Think of it this way: You're taking your standard pro-lifer's plastic fetus combined with all the pamphlets filled with gestational information, and then throw in a 4-D ultrasound for good measure.
You're distributing this around the world, at zero cost after production, and you're distributing it to millions at a time -- not just to abortion-prone women or from an information table at a county fair or somebody's church.
What do you think will do more to make the world safe for unborn children, what Pampers is doing or what the "pro-life" movement is doing now . . . under the covers with politicians whispering sweet nothing in its ear.
My old high school pal (Deleted), for the sake of democracy, really needs to lose his bid for legislature in that upper-Midwest state of his.
There isn't a whack job out there today in the fever swamps of American paranoiac politics to whom he can't pander.
And now, on Facebook, he "likes" the group page for "ReFounders."ReFounders says it's the "unified voice of Constitutional, Conservative Americans. We are a united movement of pro-Constitution, Conservative women and men of various faiths and traditions, race, ethnicity, age and political affiliation."
SOMEHOW, I don't think Jews or African-Americans need apply. Probably not anyone named Garcia or Gonzales, either.
OF COURSE, among the "fan" photos is the tea-party's anti-"ObamaCare" staple, the poster of President Obama as an African witch doctor. That, of course, is not racist, because the tea partiers say it isn't.
Just like the following "fan" photo isn't highly anti-Semitic.
LOOK at Hillary Clinton's earring, as well as Joe Biden's and Rahm Emanuel's lapel pins. Each is the Israeli flag.
Follow the link on the bottom of the "artwork" and you'll find your explanation for that.
In brief, the explanation is that the "artwork" is the product of a stone-cold, conspiracy-theorizing, anti-Semitic Holocaust denier named David Dees. Dees says he's not anti-Semitic -- that he actually is "PRO-Jewish, but extremely ANTI-Zionist."
Because, of course, all "PRO-Jewish" people are Holocaust deniers.
Here's some more of his handiwork:
THE DAVID DEES "artwork" appearing on the ReFounders page did not go unnoticed by the page administrator, whose only possible line of defense would be to claim an extreme lack of attention to the picture's detail, as well as a total lack of curiosity about the "artist."
No, to the admin, Dees' whack-job foray into anti-Semitic paranoia instead "speaks volumes, and serves to inspire us."
Click on screenshot to enlarge.
THIS IS WHAT conservatism has come to -- such blind hatred of a sitting American president that it's oblivious to the sorts of demons with which it has hopped into bed. Then again, that first demon, blind hatred, was the killer.
The kooks and the racists and the anti-Semites and the conspiracy nuts are all just icing on the cake.
Therefore, it's really, really important that folks like my old high-school chum never, ever "take back" this country. To the extent that the United States claims moral high ground over Hitler's Germany, Botha's South Africa and Davis' Confederate States of America, this never was the hatemongers' country to begin with.
I wonder whether all the tea-party "patriots" worried about "ObamaCare" are much worried about this "death panel"? Probably not, because WellPoint's death panel is a respectable capitalist death panel, not one of Barack Obama's communistic ones.
I guess Reuters reported the following story because it's based in Great Britain, and the Limeys are "socialists" just drooling all over themselves in anticipation of turning the United States into the simply-red USSA.
And MSNBC picked it up because, well . . . it's MSNBC, which rhymes with "Red TV." YEAH, THAT'S the ticket:
One after another, shortly after a diagnosis of breast cancer, each of the women learned that her health insurance had been canceled. First there was Yenny Hsu, who lived and worked in Los Angeles. Later, Robin Beaton, a registered nurse from Texas. And then, most recently, there was Patricia Relling, a successful art gallery owner and interior designer from Louisville, Kentucky.
None of the women knew about the others. But besides their similar narratives, they had something else in common: Their health insurance carriers were subsidiaries of WellPoint, which has 33.7 million policyholders — more than any other health insurance company in the United States.
The women all paid their premiums on time. Before they fell ill, none had any problems with their insurance. Initially, they believed their policies had been canceled by mistake.
They had no idea that WellPoint was using a computer algorithm that automatically targeted them and every other policyholder recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The software triggered an immediate fraud investigation, as the company searched for some pretext to drop their policies, according to government regulators and investigators.
Once the women were singled out, they say, the insurer then canceled their policies based on either erroneous or flimsy information. WellPoint declined to comment on the women's specific cases without a signed waiver from them, citing privacy laws.
That tens of thousands of Americans lost their health insurance shortly after being diagnosed with life-threatening, expensive medical conditions has been well documented by law enforcement agencies, state regulators and a congressional committee. Insurance companies have used the practice, known as "rescission," for years. And a congressional committee last year said WellPoint was one of the worst offenders.
But WellPoint also has specifically targeted women with breast cancer for aggressive investigation with the intent to cancel their policies, federal investigators told Reuters. The revelation is especially striking for a company whose CEO and president, Angela Braly, has earned plaudits for how her company improved the medical care and treatment of other policyholders with breast cancer.
The disclosures come to light after a recent investigation by Reuters showed that another health insurance company, Assurant Health, similarly targeted HIV-positive policyholders for rescission. That company was ordered by courts to pay millions of dollars in settlements.
In his push for the health care bill, President Barack Obama said the legislation would end such industry practices. Making the case for reform in a September address to Congress, Obama specifically cited the cancellation of Robin Beaton's health insurance. Aides to the president, who requested they not be identified, told Reuters that no one in the White House knew WellPoint was systematically singling out breast cancer patients like Beaton.
Many critics worry the new law will not lead to an end of these practices. Some state and federal regulators —- as well as investigators, congressional staffers and academic experts — say the health care legislation lacks teeth, at least in terms of enforcement or regulatory powers to either stop or even substantially reduce rescission.
"People have this idea that someone is going to flip a switch and rescission and other bad insurance practices are going to end," says Peter Harbage, a former health care adviser to the Clinton administration. "Insurers will find ways to undermine the protections in the new law, just as they did with the old law. Enforcement is the key."
(snip)
The cancellation of her health insurance in June 2008 forced Robin Beaton to delay cancer surgery by five months. In that time, the tumor in her breast grew from 2 centimeters to 7 centimeters.
Two months before Beaton's policy was dropped, Patricia Relling also was diagnosed with breast cancer. Anthem Blue Cross of Kentucky, a WellPoint subsidiary, paid the bills for a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery.
But the following January, after Relling suffered a life-threatening staph infection requiring two emergency surgeries in three days, Anthem balked and refused to pay more. They soon canceled her insurance entirely.
Unable to afford additional necessary surgeries for nearly 16 months, Relling ended up severely disabled and largely confined to her home. As a result of her crushing medical bills, the once well-to-do businesswoman is now dependent on food stamps.
"It's not like these companies don't like women because they are women," says Jeff Isaacs, the chief assistant Los Angeles City Attorney who runs the office's 300-lawyer criminal division. "But there are two things that really scare them and they are breast cancer and pregnancy. Breast cancer can really be a costly thing for them. Pregnancy is right up there too. Their worst-case scenario is that a child will be born with some disability and they will have to pay for that child's treatment over the course of a lifetime."
I AM SURE these women, in some manner intentionally not reported by the Brit commies -- you have heard that even the Tories on that benighted isle are "Red" Tories, right? -- really had this coming, and that raw, unrestrained capitalism once again has acted in a manner morally superior to any statist policy paradigm.
"Enlightened self-interest," "greed is good" and all that rot, wot?
The "pro-life movement" this week declared itself, in effect, to be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party.
Not that this is a shock to anyone, it's just that before the movement dedicated to a political non-solution of a profound moral crisis held fast, at least, to some small sliver of plausible deniability.
AS REPORTED by the Omaha World-Herald today, Nebraska's largest organization of anti-abortion hypocrites (as opposed to pro-lifers)extracted that sliver from its endorsement rolls:
Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson and Republican Gov. Dave Heineman both drew fire this year from abortion foes for positions each took on key bills.
Nelson supported a compromise on the health care overhaul in Congress, angering Nebraska Right to Life.
Heineman opposed a bill to restore prenatal care services for low-income women, angering Nebraska Right to Life.
The anger felt against both anti-abortion politicians, however, has differed in scale.
Heineman on Wednesday received Nebraska Right to Life's endorsement, while Nelson was given its cold shoulder for life. The group announced that he would never be considered for another endorsement.
Nelson is up for re-election in 2012, while Heineman will be on the ballot this November.
The group considered Nelson's support for the health care compromise a graver offense than Heineman's opposition to the prenatal bill, which would have restored government-funded medical care for pregnant, low-income women, including illegal immigrants. Reports of affected women seeking abortions followed the bill's failure.
“We just don't see that as having the same weight as health care reform,” said Denise Ashby, director of Nebraska Right to Life's political action committee. “It doesn't compare in our eyes.”
Heineman and Nelson have long received the group's support. Nelson has voted 19 out of 21 times in line with the group's positions. He fell out of favor when he accepted abortion language in the health overhaul bill different than what was advocated by abortion opponents.
Nelson has long argued that the compromise language in the health care law will not allow federal dollars to fund abortions. Under the law, individuals can use a federal subsidy to purchase insurance plans that cover abortions, but policyholders must pay for the abortion coverage with their own separate check.
BEN NELSON was forever disowned for voting for a bill in which only Republicans, "right to life" political operatives and the Catholic bishops' conference could find any "expansion" of abortion rights or funding. Academics couldn't, and the abortion lobby certainly couldn't (which left its members madder than wet hens).
Meanwhile, Dave Heineman gets an endorsement after single-handedly scuttling prenatal-care funding, which quite literally has driven women to abort their unborn children.
Makes sense to me. But that's only because I realize that the politicized pro-life pretenders years ago had accepted their 30 pieces of silver. Had drunk the conservative Kool-Aid. Had surrendered to the kind of "politically correct" groupthink that burrows into the dessicated souls of those who think that politics precedes culture, then sells themselves to a political pimp daddy.
UNBORN CHILDREN -- indeed, vulnerable human beings of any stripe -- have met their worst enemy. And ironically, it's the "pro-life movement."
Planned Parenthood will only succumb more and more to ridiculousness born of its sheer zealotry for sexualizing children while simultaneously seeking to rid the world of as many of them as possible. Abortionists, left to their own devices, will only expose themselves more and more as cynical death merchants who prey on desperate women.
This kind of absurdity is term limited by its very absurdity. Polls of young Americans are bearing that out. Of course, it is young Americans who have had their ranks culled by a third.
It is only the ridiculousness of groups like Nebraska Right to Life -- resorting to sophistry to polish a political turd like Heineman -- that can discredit an entire moral and philosophical position.
Only "pro-lifers" can give lie to the sanctity of every human life, born and unborn, by demonstrating to the world that "even they don't believe that s***."
It looks like I picked the wrong day to quit snorting Drāno(TM). Unless, of course, this story really wasn't in Tuesday's New York Times and, in fact, was just the kind of hallucination you get when drain cleaner meets brain cell.
YOU DECIDE, as they say on Everybody's Favorite Cable Network:
When Tom Grimes lost his job as a financial consultant 15 months ago, he called his congressman, a Democrat, for help getting government health care.
Then he found a new full-time occupation: Tea Party activist.
In the last year, he has organized a local group and a statewide coalition, and even started a “bus czar” Web site to marshal protesters to Washington on short notice. This month, he mobilized 200 other Tea Party activists to go to the local office of the same congressman to protest what he sees as the government’s takeover of health care.
Mr. Grimes is one of many Tea Party members jolted into action by economic distress. At rallies, gatherings and training sessions in recent months, activists often tell a similar story in interviews: they had lost their jobs, or perhaps watched their homes plummet in value, and they found common cause in the Tea Party’s fight for lower taxes and smaller government.
The Great Depression, too, mobilized many middle-class people who had fallen on hard times. Though, as Michael Kazin, the author of “The Populist Persuasion,” notes, they tended to push for more government involvement. The Tea Party vehemently wants less — though a number of its members acknowledge that they are relying on government programs for help.
Mr. Grimes, who receives Social Security, has filled the back seat of his Mercury Grand Marquis with the literature of the movement, including Glenn Beck’s “Arguing With Idiots” and Frederic Bastiat’s “The Law,” which denounces public benefits as “false philanthropy.”
“If you quit giving people that stuff, they would figure out how to do it on their own,” Mr. Grimes said.
The fact that many of them joined the Tea Party after losing their jobs raises questions of whether the movement can survive an improvement in the economy, with people trading protest signs for paychecks.
But for now, some are even putting their savings into work that they argue is more important than a job — planning candidate forums and get-out-the-vote operations, researching arguments about the constitutional limits on Congress and using Facebook to attract recruits. (snip)
Jeff McQueen, 50, began organizing Tea Party groups in Michigan and Ohio after losing his job in auto parts sales. “Being unemployed and having some time, I realized I just couldn’t sit on the couch anymore,” he said. “I had the time to get involved.”
He began producing what he calls the flag of the Second American Revolution, and drove 700 miles to campaign for Mr. Brown under its banner. Flag sales, so far, are not making him much. But he sees a bigger cause.
“The founding fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor,” he said. “They believed in it so much that they would sacrifice. That’s the kind of loyalty to this country that we stand for.”
He blames the government for his unemployment. “Government is absolutely responsible, not because of what they did recently with the car companies, but what they’ve done since the 1980s,” he said. “The government has allowed free trade and never set up any rules.”
He and others do not see any contradictions in their arguments for smaller government even as they argue that it should do more to prevent job loss or cuts to Medicare. After a year of angry debate, emotion outweighs fact.
“If you don’t trust the mindset or the value system of the people running the system, you can’t even look at the facts anymore,” Mr. Grimes said.
ME, I THINK this demonstrates what I've thought all along about the tea party movement -- that it's blind rage, abject fear and talking-head-fueled paranoia in search of the Other.
That "Other" might be black folk on welfare, or white folk on Wall Street, or brown folk roofing your house, or black folk in the White House, or pinko commie-lib Democrats in Congress . . . or just some poor jerk in the coffee shop (or on Facebook) who disagrees with you. The tea party "patriots" represent free-floating rage with nowhere to go -- because that kind of rage can't go anywhere constructive.
It only can destroy . . . consume. It can't build.
Creating requires a clear head; it requires transforming anger into something that transcends itself. Building a better future for this country requires knowing what you believe and where you want to go.
UNFORTUNATELY, it's becoming clearer and clearer that America's angry tea partiers don't even know their ass from a hole in the ground. Doubly unfortunately, that hole is where their blind rage and complete confusion threatens to bury us all if we don't watch out.
When you hear various professional pro-lifers . . . or perpetually outraged Catholics . . . or scheming Republican operatives (and sometimes all these reside in the same person) lamenting how the new health-care reform act "is the biggest blow to the pro-life movement since Roe v. Wade," ask yourself one question.
Would any legislation that fundamentally awful from a pro-life perspective piss off Bill Moyers this badly?
HERE'S the television host's commentary from the March 5 edition of Bill Moyers Journal:
If any health care reform emerges from the bonfire of partisanship and dissembling in Washington, one thing seems certain -- it will be incorrigibly biased against a woman's freedom of conscience when it comes to abortion.
She will be ever more subject to the state's control and ever more at the mercy of religious doctrine to which she may or may not subscribe. In this respect, both reform bills in the House and Senate differ only slightly. Each is tough on women.
As you've been reading, Catholic bishops in particular have led the lobbying charge to prohibit any woman who receives insurance subsidies under the legislation from using that money to buy policies that cover abortion. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, for one, says any compromise on this would be, quote, "morally unacceptable." This, from an all-male hierarchy of clergy morally compromised themselves by the church's failure to protect the children in its care from abuse by its own priests, and by ongoing efforts to cover up the full extent of the scandal. Nor have their own sins prevented protestant politicians and preachers from casting stones at those who would to any degree support a woman's freedom of choice being covered by the current reform bills. I would include among that pious flock many who champion family values, abstinence and homophobic bigotry while indulging in or turning a blind eye to sexual harassment, sampling the pleasures of brothels or heading to Argentina for more than language lessons.
IS THE public-television icon really this upset over a pro-abortion legislative riptide destined to sweep unborn babies -- and the movement dedicated to saving them -- out into the deep blue sea?
I don't think so.
And Dr. Favog thinks those whose blood pressure still is dangerously elevated should take a couple of doughnuts, wash them down with a few cans of Duff Beer, then call Homer Simpson in the morning. "Doughnuts: Is there anything they can't do?"
One more thing. For the record, I like Bill Moyers and enjoy his program greatly. I also profoundly disagree with him on abortion rights.
I'm just saying.For whatever that is worth . . . which probably is damned little in today's divided and outraged America.
Life on the Rock is a Thursday-night program on EWTN targeted at Catholic youth and young adults. And when, last Thursday, the topic turned toward what had happened the previous Sunday with final passage of health-care reform, it wouldn't have been unreasonable to wonder whether the program was aimed more at ginning up support for Republican politicians.
That and bashing pro-life Catholic politicians -- OK, one Catholic congressman in particular -- whose political conscience didn't line up with the bishops' entreaties to "kill the bill." AS THEY SAY, out of the mouths of babes. . . .
FR. MARK MARY:And tonight we're joined by Jill Sanders, our producer here on Life on the Rock, she does a great job, works very hard every week -- tries to keep Doug and I on the bean, so to speak. And Jill . . . we have her on up with us because she did something special the last couple of days.
Where were you last night, Jill?
JILL SANDERS:Well, last night I was in Washington, D.C., at the Willard Hotel -- which is a very fancy, beautiful hotel – for the Susan B. Anthony List Campaign for Life Gala.
DOUG BARRY:Is that hotel nicer than a Holiday Inn Express or. . . .
JILL SANDERS:It's a little bit nicer than a Holiday Inn Express. It's a beautiful hotel.
And at this gala, I was the recipient of the Susan B. Anthony Young Leader Award, along with four other pro-life young women.
BARRY, FR. MARY:(Clapping) Woo hoo!
DOUG BARRY:And why is this award given out?
JILL SANDERS:It's for young women who are pro-life leaders in the community, trying to mobilize more young women to get active in conservative politics.
DOUG BARRY:Well, you've done so much on so many levels, but one of the key things I can speak to is all the work that you do to provide Father Mark and me, I mean the guests that have been on the show that you arrange, you set things up – a lot of people don't realize just how much work goes on behind the scenes with the producer unless they're around it or involved in it.
All the information, all the E-mails I get from you throughout the week, getting ready for a show, the research – you're directing me to different places to learn about the guests that are coming up, and I can say you do an outstanding job. Across the board, but especially in the pro-life area, so congratulations. You definitely deserve this.
JILL SANDERS:Oh, thank you. Thank you very much – thank you, I appreciate that.
FR. MARK MARY: This was the Susan B. Anthony List, we had a few of them on the show. . . .
JILL SANDERS: They were on last fall.
FR. MARK MARY:Right.
JILL SANDERS:Umm hmm.
FR. MARK MARY:And they promote women's involvement in the pro-life movement?
JILL SANDERS:Yes.
FR. MARK MARY:And this was a Campaign for Life Gala. Can you tell us about the spirit in the room, just days after this health-care bill passed . . . what was it like there?
JILL SANDERS:Well, this is a tragic time in our country. Federal funding for abortion is the biggest blow to the pro-life movement since Roe v. Wade. In that room last night, there was a spirit of determination and of optimism and of hope.
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann gave one of the speeches, and in it she kept saying "We may have lost this battle but we will not lose this war. We may have lost this battle but we will not lose this war."
And I think what an inspiring thing for us to remember as we go into Holy Week, that as Jesus Christ died on the cross for us, He felt the pain of our sin – He felt the pain of the sin of abortion. You know what? But the story doesn't end there, because on the third day, He rose again, and He conquered death, and He won the victory for us.
And He will win the victory over abortion in our country as well.
FR. MARK MARY:All right. . . . So what would you say for people out there, what could they do for the pro-life cause?
JILL SANDERS:Well, I think what's great about the country that we live in is that we have the ability to change in our country. First of all, if you are a young pro-life woman who has aspirations to go into politics, visit the Susan B. Anthony List website, see how you can get involved. Their website is sba-list.org, so go to their website.
If you're a priest, preach the truth from the pulpit. If you're a father, if you're a mother, teach the dignity of every human life from conception to natural death to your children. Write letters to your congressman. Talk to your friends and family. Vote for pro-life leaders – get behind pro-life leaders, support them.
But most importantly, every day, brothers and sisters, we need to hit our knees and pray for an end to abortion.
DOUG BARRY:You're absolutely right; pray for the leadership. We've got situations like what happened with Congressman Stupak out there, which was a real blow to people, because he was supposed to be honored at this event as well, and Susan B. Anthony List -- very quickly when that turned – made it very clear publicly they were revoking that honor, that award they were going to give him. They felt like a real betrayal.
Was that spirit in the air last night as well?
JILL SANDERS:I think there was great disappointment in him. You know, we kind of depended on him to keep this bill from being passed, and when he turned on us, it was a sense of betrayal, you know? You're one of us, how could you do this? How could you turn your back on us?
FR. MARK MARY:I think there has been a lot of talk about what has happened, and we're not experts here – you know, we can't analyze policy so much, but the bishops have made statements about how this executive order by the president is not sufficient in this new health-care bill to protect life. And they've issued a couple of statem. . . .
DOUG BARRY:I'm sorry, but to jump in real quick for the people who may not be aware of what you mean by the executive order . . . for those who aren't keeping up on this at all, the reason Congressman Stupak turned and said he would vote for this was primarily because of this executive order that President Obama said he would sign to limit federal funding and such and so forth.
And he compared it to something as powerful as Abraham Lincoln's, you know, uh, uh, a couple of other points in the past . . . I'm not going to go into detail on that. But the point here is that the bishops do not see this as being sufficient, even though the congressman has said that it is.
So for people out there wondering why Stupak would turn in and all of a sudden vote for this, because of what President Obama said he would sign as an executive order defending life but, as you're about to say and make very clear, the bishops do not feel, feel this is good enough.
FR. MARK MARY:Right, Fr. Richard Doerflinger from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, you know, he issued a statement in the name of the bishops saying only a change in the law enacted by Congress – not an executive order – can begin to address this very serious problem in the legislation.
My understanding is in the executive order, you know, it can fill in holes in the law but, you know, if it's not in the law, it can't put into law what's not already in the law. And the bishops made a statement . . . they said they applaud the effort for health-care reform – you know, the church herself doesn't canonize a certain economic policy or instruct how government should function or run, but they applaud the effort, you know, that everybody has health care, but it says nevertheless -- the U.S. bishops said “nevertheless, whatever good this law achieves or intends, we as Catholic bishops have opposed its passage because there is compelling evidence that it would expand the role of the federal government in funding and facilitating abortion and plans that cover abortion.
“The statute appropriates billions of dollars in new funding without explicitly prohibiting the use of these funds for abortion, and it provides federal subsidies for health plans covering elective abortions.”
So, they say here that the Catholic bishops have opposed this passage of the bill, you know, as it stands with this funding in it. And the funding will make a huge difference – you're giving money that makes it easily accessible, available for people, the number of abortions to go up . . . you know, human life is. . . .
DOUG BARRY:Well, what it also does is -- you know, Jill, maybe you can comment on this – is this now forces taxpayers to a higher degree to be cooperating against our will, if we don't want to, with our tax dollars, the government can now use this to expand federal funding of abortions out there. I mean, did this come up at all – anything of this nature last night at this event?
JILL SANDERS: Right. Well how unfair that something we are so diabolicallyopposed to can be forced upon us. [Emphasis mine -- R21]
DOUG BARRY: All right. And that's a big part of it. And I noticed that is something the bishops had mentioned before the final vote on Sunday had come down, was they were saying that this does not provide protection of the conscience for those who clearly – even medical professionals, those people who are in the medical field – you know, the concern of them being forced into . . . to having to cooperate with abortion and with procedures that that involve this whole, this whole horrible act.
Um, you know, the threat of shutting down hospitals, of shutting down Catholic medical, uh, you know clinics and facilities due to this kind of government forcing. And you know, ladies and gentlemen, this kind of battle is going to keep going on. So, as Jill mentioned earlier, we've got to be on our knees, we've gotta be praying, we gotta be writing letters – we've gotta be a force to reckon with.
And, uhhhh, as Catholics, we're talkin' over 60 million in this country. Come on! We gotta wake up! Sleeping giant, let's go!
YES, SHE really did say "diabolically opposed."
As in . . . the devil, diabolically opposed to a "culture of life," took it upon himself to prompt the pro-life movement to climb in bed with mere politicians, then place all of their hope and faith in them. Took it upon himself to tempt professional pro-lifers -- and their useful idiots in Christian broadcasting -- to become uncritical touts for some of the wackiest, angriest and most divisive pols in recent history.
Like the Susan B. Anthony List's having Sarah "Tea Party" Palin keynote its Celebration of Life Breakfast in May. Everyone will be eating Froot Loops, no doubt.
THINK ABOUT IT.Would anybody but Satan think it a good idea for the pro-life movement to hitch up Michele Bachmann's nutwagon? Or greet poor Bart Stupak with the same sort of warm fuzzies Josef Stalin radiated toward Leon Trotsky?
Was the Susan B. Anthony List's now-withdrawn "major award" to Stupak, a Democrat, really predicated on his devotion to pro-life values, or was it more incumbent on the damage his pro-life values inflicted on his own political party? Today, "betrayal" is just political "heroism" misdirected toward you, right?
Day by day, in every way, those more than 60 million "sleeping giant" Catholics in this country are left wondering whether the "pro-life movement" is more about "pro-life" or more about being "active in conservative politics."
Long ago, Nebraska advertised itself as "the White Spot of the Nation," meaning the state had neither a sales tax nor an income tax.
Now, thanks to "pro-life" Gov. Dave Heineman, the state just might have to revive that slogan -- just with a somewhat different meaning.
Like, "if you're a white spot on an ultrasound," you, as a fetus, are quite all right. But if you're brown -- as in Mexican -- we don't want your kind sticking around.
That's because in Nebraska, we are so angry about illegal immigration, that ostensibly "pro-life" politicians want to punish undocumented mothers-to-be soooooo badly -- and thus reap the resulting electoral windfall -- they'd rather see brown babies dead . . . aborted . . . than be born American.
Abortions, you see, are easy. Prenatal care for the poor is not.
TRAFFICKING in deadly spite is a big part these days of what it is to be Dave Heineman: Nebraska's "white-to-life" governor. That's the practical reality, the moral reality and the political reality of at least 19 state senators standing behind (or at least not standing up to) the Republican governor's death-dealing foolishness.
Heineman and his toadies can argue motivations, but the practical reality is clear. Somehow, I don't think the political considerations would be quite so acute if Nebraska were facing being "overrun" by a wave of Scandinavian illegals. Which it isn't. This "problem" is colored brown.
Nebraska's political establishment wants little brown babies to pay for the migrational sins of their mothers so badly that it will deny them state-sponsored prenatal care even if private donors are picking up a substantial portion of the bill. That's the upshot of this Associated Pressstorytonight:
Opposition to taxpayer benefits for illegal immigrants appears to have trumped anti-abortion sentiments in Nebraska, likely ending an unusual collision of the two explosive political issues.
After meeting with Gov. Dave Heineman on Wednesday night, a lawmaker said the governor opposed a compromise that would continue providing state-funded prenatal care to illegal immigrants in Nebraska. Supporters of the compromise - which included the use of money from private donors - said they don't have enough votes this year to override a Heineman veto and may not have had the votes even without the governor's outright opposition.
"The chances are very slim right now," said Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha after the meeting with Heineman. Ashford crafted the proposal, which hinged on Omaha donors pitching in about $3 million this year, so women could continue receiving state-funded prenatal care. "We took a stab at it but it's clear options now are very, very limited."
Heineman characterized the meeting as "respectful and straightforward" in a statement Wednesday night.
"I have repeatedly said that I support prenatal care for legal residents," he said. "I do not support providing state-funded benefits for illegal individuals."
Lawmakers had faced a dilemma for weeks: Was it more important to care for pregnant women and their unborn children, or prevent illegal immigrants from getting taxpayer-funded benefits?
Until early this month, Nebraska had the nation's only Medicaid policy that allowed unborn children to qualify. That meant women who weren't eligible for the government-run insurance program on their own - such as illegal immigrants - got Medicaid-covered prenatal care because their unborn children qualified.
After federal officials told Nebraska it was breaking Medicaid rules, the state tried to come up with a substitute. That effort died more than a week ago.
But reports from doctors of several women saying they will have abortions instead because they couldn't afford prenatal care reignited the issue. Until Wednesday night, there appeared to be a chance lawmakers would formally consider a proposal.
(snip)
Heineman, meanwhile, has tried to stay out of the fray. Running for re-election, the Republican quietly announced his opposition to state-funded prenatal care for illegal immigrants last month in a letter to a legislative committee.
State officials say about 870 illegal immigrants and 750 legal residents including citizens lost Medicaid coverage this month when Nebraska dumped its two-decade-old Medicaid policy. More than 4,700 legal residents once considered at risk of losing coverage got to keep it because state officials found they qualified under different provisions of Medicaid.
The reports of more women seeking abortions - which some lawmakers are openly skeptical of - spurred a renewed push to create a separate, non-Medicaid program under which illegal immigrants and some legal residents would get state- and federal-funded prenatal care. Now very unlikely to be formed, it would have been created under the federal Children's Health Insurance Program, which allows unborn children to qualify for federal- and state-funded care.
DESPITE ENACTMENT this week of a landmark health-care reform law, we still live in a country -- and especially a state -- where it's much cheaper to eradicate your fetus than it is to deliver a healthy baby boy or girl. And just enough of Nebraska's "pro-life" politicians, led by the state's "pro-life" governor, are just fine with that.
But if he were to take a nap, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are more than up to the job of filling the teabaggers' hard little hearts to the brim with hatred of their fellow man.
Good on an intrepid bunch of Nebraska senators, who plan to call the "pro-life" bluff of Nebraska's baby-killer¹ governor.
They plan to give new life to a measure restoring prenantal care to poor women -- care scuttled by the arcana of federal Medicaid regulations and the restoration of which was torpedoed by Gov. Dave Heineman.
And here's what's interesting: They're going to attach the measure to the pro-life "priority bill" this legislative session -- meaning if Heineman is well and truly intent on denying medical care to poor women in the name of punishing illegal immigrants, he'll have to ruin his political career to do it.
I DON'T KNOW what was more gratifying, reading this in the Omaha World-Herald or picturing, in my minds eye, Heineman slowly twisting in the political winds:
If successful, the focus of the debate could shift from one hot-button issue to another from illegal immigration to abortion.
State Sens. Brad Ashford, Heath Mello and Jeremy Nordquist, all of Omaha, talked about their strategy to revive prenatal funding after meeting Monday with officials at OneWorld Community Health Center in south Omaha.
The lawmakers requested the gathering to learn more directly how low-income women are dealing with the state's decision to end Medicaid funding for prenatal services for poor women, many of them undocumented.
Dr. Kristine McVea, chief medical officer of OneWorld clinics, reiterated to the senators that six expectant women have told her staff in the past few weeks that they would seek to abort their babies rather than enter the clinic's prenatal program. That compares to about four abortions McVea said she knew of in the past decade.
A doctor in Schuyler, Neb., also said last week that one patient had turned to abortion and that another was considering one.
“That is why this has now taken on a new light,” Mello said. “The unfortunate proof has been brought to life.”
IN THE WAKE of this unmitigated and mean-spirited fiasco, the termination of Dave Heineman's political career is one abortion I could wholeheartedly support.
¹If a GOP representative can call a pro-life Democratic congressman, Bart Stupak, "baby killer" over his health-care vote, what else can you say about a Republican governor whose sabotage of prenatal care for the poor prompts some to opt for abortions? Which, by the way, are much cheaper than decent prenatal care in this state.
Oh, God. Now the Republicans will never shut up. Because, as you know, Republicans never curse in public . . . or when the microphone is hotter than they think.
WELL, SHI . . .shoot. There's only one way past this whole clusterfu . . . uuuuudge.
Mr. President, it's pretty clear what you have to do with your vice-president now.
YOU BEST get to it before this whole thing turns into a real s***storm.
