Obama and the ever growing ick factor

I hope all those people who said we have to vote for Obama because McCain will decimate Roe vs. Wade will appreciation Obama's abortion rhetoric now that he has come out in favor of a much stricter, narrowed definition of the "health of the mother" standard:

Obama recently gave an interview in which he seemed to back off his broad support of abortion rights, saying, "I think it’s entirely appropriate for states to restrict or even prohibit late-term abortions as long as there is a strict, well-defined exception for the health of the mother. Now, I don’t think that ‘mental distress’ qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy." In "clarifying" his remarks, he said this:

My only point is this — historically I have been a strong believer in a women’s right to choose . . . I have consistently been saying that you have to have a health exception on many significant restrictions or bans on abortions, including late-term abortions . . . It can be defined through physical health. It can be defined by serious clinical mental health diseases. It is not just a matter of feeling blue. I don’t think that’s how pro-choice folks have interpreted it. I don’t think that’s how the courts have interpreted it and I think that’s important to emphasize and understand.

I think it's probably true that there are women in the world who have abortions for what others might think are "bad" reasons -- perhaps even because they're "feeling blue." But the whole point of being pro-choice is not that you think all abortions are a great idea, it's that you don't think government should restrict access to them based on the reasons why a woman wants one.

The way Obama dismisses and minimizes women's mental health as irrelevant is highly offensive to those of us who don't view women as creatures put on this planet by God to be the workhorses of the world*.

According to ABC:

The language Obama used in that response seemed to remove "mental distress" as an allowable exception justifying a post-22 week abortion.

To some observers, that would seem to go against the Supreme Court decision Doe v. Bolton -- handed down the same day as the more famous (or infamous) Roe v Wade decision legalizing abortion, though the Court said the decisions were to be "read together."

Doe holds that the health exception permitting abortion after viability should be based on a "medical judgment...exercised in the light of all factors -- physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age -- relevant to the wellbeing of the patient," as ABC News' Supreme Court reporter Jan Crawford Greenburg noted over the weekend.

So was Obama suggesting to Relevant that he disagrees with Doe?

But of course we need translators to understand what Obama is really saying:

On Saturday, after a reporter noted to Obama that he had said that mental distress shouldn't be a reason for late-term abortion, Obama clarified, "historically I have been a strong believer in a women's right to choose with her doctor, her pastor and her family...I have consistently been saying that you have to have a health exception on many significant restrictions or bans on abortions including late-term abortions. In the past there has been some fear on the part of people who, not only people who are anti-abortion, but people who may be in the middle, that that means that if a woman just doesn't feel good then that is an exception. That's never been the case."

Notice the way Obama throws the words "pastor and family" in, as if he is hinting that in the future a woman will have to get a note from a (presumably Christian) pastor and another from her - husband? baby's father? - before she gets an abortion.

Can this guy seriously be getting the evangelical vote? Are evangelicals really stupid enough to fall for some guy whose "Christianity" comes from Rev. Wright's church?
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*Some of us view women as human beings and entitled to a little more than Milly from Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (for those who don't know their show tunes, Milly was chosen to marry cuz she is "young and strong and has lots of work left in her" - and, yes, she does fight back - even in the highly censored 1950s women didn't like being treated like beasts of burden).

Bush's Third Term

The Wall Street Journal:

We're beginning to understand why Barack Obama keeps protesting so vigorously against the prospect of "George Bush's third term." Maybe he's worried that someone will notice that he's the candidate who's running for it.

Most Presidential candidates adapt their message after they win their party nomination, but Mr. Obama isn't merely "running to the center." He's fleeing from many of his primary positions so markedly and so rapidly that he's embracing a sizable chunk of President Bush's policy. Who would have thought that a Democrat would rehabilitate the much-maligned Bush agenda?

A really excellent essay at The Confluence:

Right now this country is controlled by an elite ruling class. This class consists of life-time and charter members. The life-time members are the wealthy, the rich and shameless. They own or control the corporations and most of the wealth. Some of them aren’t even Americans. The charter members are the politicians and media.

...

You don’t really think the Village hates the Clintons because they are redneck hillbillies, do you? Bill and Hillary are both Ivy League educated lawyers, smart and sophisticated. They are hated because they are loyal to us, not the corporatists. That’s why the Democratic leadership wants to purge them from the party and discredit Bill’s legacy.

And a really excellent essay by Anglachel (whose essays are always excellent):

Not only does the Party leadership and large swaths of the Stevensonian elite firmly believe that the Truman rank-and-file have nowhere else to go in a political sense, they have also abandoned any substantive commitment to socio-economic movement for this class. They no longer care to provide there voters anywhere else to go economically or culturally. The Truman wing is seen as an electoral dead end, and no more effort should be expended on their behalf.

Now that Hillary and her "you are not invisible to me" is out of the race, we are now officially invisible again.

It isn't even just outsourcing, job loss, or stagnant wages. The privatization of risk - as described in books such as The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and The Decline Of The American Dream by Jacob S. Hacker - is what really scares me.

This issue is IMO the biggest reason the working class went for Hillary. It isn't just that things aren't getting any better. They're finding ways to take back the things we already won, like the idea that if things go really, really wrong, the government will provide a basic safety net.

Or like basic job protections. Right now, to get a job at many places, you have to waive your rights under the law. One common waiver is waiving your right to take legal action against a workplace that violates safety laws. Or laws protecting against discrimination, or overtime and fair pay laws, etc. Typically, you have to agree to arbitration. They don't have to arbitrate - they can still prosecute you - but you can't prosecute them, no matter what they do. The worst part is that they reserve the power to choose (and they pay) the mediators.

If it keeps going this way, we'll all end up serfs.

Who carries the risk - individuals or the government - is what the New Deal is and was all about. Remember that the New Deal came into being during the Great Depression. It is the idea that government should not let people fall into the hole and die. It is the idea that government can and should create an environment where nobody starves - and where nobody dies when they could live for want of a doctor.

And, thanks to the New Deal, life in America was good in the 1950s and 1960s. People growing up then remember them as The Wonder Years for a reason - prosperity was not only present but spread out so that far more people enjoyed the benefits of the affluence.

Now the Democratic party wants to give it all back. And they're the ones we thought were on our side.

Remember that the sweatshop is what capitalism looked like before social action.