Robert Tracinski over at The Federalist gives the quintessential Glibertarian Douchebag argument on the edited videos attacking Planned Parenthood: If we frame everything using my “facts” then I win.
Of course, it’s easy to use “context” as an excuse to explain anything away. But it’s also easy to view the Planned Parenthood videos through the perspective of your pre-existing animus and seize on the worst possible interpretation of their words, or focus on the one sentence that justifies your hatred while ignoring those that might undermine your justification.
I have (somewhat ironically) a very Christian attitude about this: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. God forbid anyone should pore through any of my own conversations and read them the way people are reading the Planned Parenthood transcripts. So if someone were to ask me what I’m writing today, and I were to respond, “I don’t know, the Koch Brothers haven’t told me yet” (and I’m not saying this exchange has never occurred), I would hope people would understand it as a joke. But someone who wishes me ill would inevitably come along and seize on this as final proof that I’m in the pocket of Big Oil.
If we want to keep the moral high ground when the left pulls this sort of trick on us—and they will—then we need to make sure we’re being scrupulously fair, even to people we hate.
“Let’s have a fair and reasonable debate over subject X using the criteria of fair and reasonable that I get to define in advance” really is one of the oldest tricks in the book. In fact, it’s the entire shtick of The Federalist in general.
Tracinski says the abortion debate in general and Planned Parenthood debate in particular is getting reduced to “memes” by a cartoonish and juvenile smear attempt by the right, then equates that to Dubya’s “Mission Accomplished” speech on Iraq as somehow an equivalent move by the left.
What I’m afraid of is that this whole Planned Parenthood controversy is becoming memified, i.e., turned into a self-reinforcing meme.
I’m thinking of the way the “Mission Accomplished” banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln was used against George W. Bush.
In context, it wasn’t President Bush’s expression of triumphalism; it was for the sailors and aviators on the aircraft carrier, who had in fact accomplished their mission. But it became a stand-in for a narrative about all the reasons lefties didn’t like Bush. Its original meaning disappeared, and the accuracy of that meaning no longer mattered. It became, not a real idea, but a meme, not an argument but a symbol for a collection of biases.
It’s a ridiculous comparison on its face and yet that’s the plan: define what “fair and reasonable” is through Both Sides Do It legerdemain, and then present your carefully defined argument as the only possible and acceptable course forward for any future discussions. He’s literally setting up an argument he can’t lose because he’s made the rules.
If that’s not Glibertarian Douchebaggery 101, I don’t know what is.
Knowbody
You do realize your post proves his point about “memefication” right?
I mean this entire blog is one unfunny inside joke, plus cat and dog pictures.
japa21
Well, at least he acknowledges, sort of, that the PP video is a piece of crap.
feebog
So Shrub wasn’t saying that major military operations were over in Iraq, he was just welcoming home some sailors in San Diego. Got it.
gbear
@Knowbody: …and trolls.
Jeffro
I like “Glibertarian Douchebaggery” but its shorter version (“lying”) is so much more satisfying and accessible to the general public. No memes required.
Chris
No. No it wasn’t. Complete, utter fucking bullshit. The Bush administration scrapped years of planning for the aftermath of Iraq, Rumsfeld specifically instructed his underlings not to plan for the aftermath because we wouldn’t be there that long, and all complaints based on “what then?” were brushed aside as irrelevant. The stupid frat boy actually and genuinely thought that the entire mission had either been accomplished or was so close to it that it might as well be. Period.
dedc79
Some classic revisionism there about “Mission Accomplished.” The Bush White House knew exactly what it was doing when it set the President up with that banner in the background. And the event was staged for Bush to announce and celebrate that major combat operations were over. And the whole thing was one giant stunt, with Bush landing wearing a flight suit. WTF is this guy talking about?
piratedan
I gotta love how they use Bush’s “own goal” on the Mission Accomplished thing as a tactic of the left… ummm, no. Your guy stood on an aircraft carrier and stated that the “war” was over about ten years prematurely. No one held a gun to his head and forced him to make that astounding leap of hubris, the Shrub did that on his own.
Cripes, these fucking people.
You know, you hate abortion, I’m not exactly happy about the procedure, but when you deny people quality health care, cheap and effective birth control and stop continuing pushing for a Christian theological artifice to supplant our government, then maybe, I’ll reconsider. Also too, it would help if you made adoption possible for folks to find unwanted American kids instead of forcing them to adopt kids from other countries because the hurdles to adopt a kid are apparently as ugly as it is for someone to seek citizenship from abroad.
John Revolta
The rewriting of history continues apace. They seem to be stepping it up lately, perhaps with the elections in mind.
Archon
@piratedan:
Yeah there is a universe where a completely different Republican party has the moral high ground on the abortion issue.
The party of aggressive war and social Darwinism sure doesn’t though.
Gravenstone
@Knowbody: Way past time for someone to slap your stalking ass with the ban hammer, again.
jl
@feebog:
” So Shrub wasn’t saying that major military operations were over in Iraq, he was just welcoming home some sailors in San Diego. Got it. ”
If the sign was for the crew of that specific ship’s mission, then it was just an unfortunate coincidence that Bush and his team worked into the pics and clips and his triumphalist speech. And we are being very unfair to Bush and Cheney for noting that very unfortunate coincidence? Got it.
This Federalist or whatever guy’s post was silly.
Mandalay
@dedc79:
They may have thought they knew what they were doing, and it may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but with hindsight it was a cringe-inducing disaster.
As was this one. Thanks Kleenex!
As Voltaire said, “Make my enemies look ridiculous”.
piratedan
@Archon: agreed, it’s simply a means to an end for slut shaming. If they actually gave a shit about women and the children that could be carrying, there would be health care supplements and child care proposals and education provisions. They really could give a fuck, although that may be what some of them need, desperately.
dedc79
@Mandalay:
Agreed, of course. It backfired spectacularly. I was just addressing the crazy claim that this was all somehow unintentional on their part, when it was so clearly staged.
brent
The real problem with this argument is that Tracinski is comparing two very different kinds of claims. The left’s criticism of “Mission Accomplished” was about the general attitude of triumphalism that pervaded the Bush White House on Iraq and for which there is plenty of evidence aside from the banner. That is, it is a statement of opinion on what the White House was trying to project that can be strongly supported with actual facts.
The Planned Parenthood attack from the right is positing FACTUAL claims that do not stand up to even the most cursory scrutiny.
In other words, if Tracinski wants to argue that the Mission Accomplished banner meant something other than what it seemed to, I happen to think he is on pretty shaky ground but at least he has some facts to work with and really the whole argument exists more in the plain of perception.
The Planned Parenthood nonsense has no such underlying factual basis. Its just a brazen lie and the people telling it know they can get away with telling it, so they do.
redshirt
How much money does Planned Parenthood get from the government?
Gimlet
Bwahaha
Blogger Anthony Rebello was the organizer behind the Heterosexual Parade at Seattle’s Capitol Hill on Saturday. Over 2,000 people were invited on Facebook to attend the event created “in the name of equality [and] equal rights … to celebrate our right to be heterosexual, and to encourage younger heterosexuals that they should be proud of their heterosexuality.”
While 169 responded “yes” to the event, just one person showed up, according to Seattle Gay Scene: Rebello. Photos of him marching with balloons and a cardboard sign reading “Straight Pride” were posted on Facebook over the weekend.
Trentrunner
The Left should treat abortion the way The Right treats gun rights:
Never, ever give a fucking inch. Stay on offense, have a comprehensive attack plan, don’t be afraid to use fear, slogans, and catchphrases, and get all your people on message always.
And we can begin with women coming out about their abortions.
KG
@redshirt: I actually looked that up the other day, posted this over at LGF:
according to this annual report from 2013 (pdf), between national and affiliates, PP has $1.6b in total assets and less than $300m in liabilities. They got 45% of their revenue from “Government Health Services Grants and Reimbursements”, which, if I’m reading right was around $540m all to affiliates and that includes Medicaid payments.
Mandalay
From the bio of the author of the article linked in the OP: he has “been featured on many radio and television shows, from Rush Limbaugh to “The O’Reilly Factor””.
So he really runs the gamut.
Trentrunner
A hypothetical example of how The Left could be in-your-face on abortion:
Reporter: Mr. Trump, have any of your wives or your daughter ever had an abortion?
Trump (raging): That’s a private matter, and none of your damn business.
Reporter: Indeed.
celticdragonchick
Here is some more dudebro douchebaggery from John McWhorter over the Daily Beast.
I will leave it to the rest of you to see this mass of vomitous for yourselves.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/27/antiracism-our-flawed-new-religion.html
Mike in NC
The original lie about the Mission Accomplished banner was that the crew made the thing. Maybe in their copious free time when not working or standing watches underway.
Judge Crater
How do you know when someone is lying? He begins his statement with, “First of all, I’m a libertarian…”
These phonies are mostly hot-house flowers who imagine themselves to be Redwood trees. They’re worse than your average wing-nut because their delusions of grandeur are so laughable and convoluted. What’s the old saying? “He was born at the front of the buffet line so he thought he cooked the dinner.”
Alex s
Yeah, it was a weird point to use that as the “out of context thing” that shows why the planned parenthood videos are being taken out of context. Maybe it was to be “both sides” enough to give an ok to people that are taking the planned parenthood videos out of context. They did it first so whatevers. He tried etc.
catclub
@dedc79:
We know this cause he was clobbered by Kerry in 2004.
Frankensteinbeck
@piratedan:
It’s also racism. By now, they hate everybody, but abortion was a Catholic issue, not a fundie issue, until desegregation. Oh, they didn’t like abortion, but they didn’t care, either. Now it occupies a perfect bigoted asshole sweet spot. It lets them hurt women. It lets them divide the world into white Christianists and everyone else. It lets them bludgeon the rest of the world with what power their group has left, soothing their growing fear of obsolescence, which has been particularly stoked by the rise of minorities. It helps them organize politically. Best of all, it gives them the awesome rush of self-righteousness assholes need when they accuse everyone but themselves of killing babies. As has been noted many times, they don’t actually give a flying fuck about babies, but boy do they love that feeling of holding the moral high ground against us evil liberals.
All together, you can see why they really put the kind of frothing zeal into the issue that only guns get otherwise.
dedc79
@Trentrunner: I agree to an extent. The angry opposition thinks it’s murder so they will never be content to compromise.
But I think there are honestly a ton of people out there who are conflicted on the subject. I would guess that the hope with not resorting to a gun-rights level of advocacy on the pro choice side is that it might alienate people who lean pro-choice. Whether this is wise strategy, I don’t claim to know for certain. It sure doesn’t appear to have been effective of late though.
Archon
@Trentrunner:
It’s tough because a lot of people on the left are genuinely conflicted on the abortion issue but they also know that “20 week bans”, “vaginal ultrasounds”, and other incremental pro-life policies are really precursors to the pro-lifers end goal of absolutely no abortions with no exceptions.
Personally I do think we should make abortions rare and there should be some restrictions against having one but I also know that the other side doesn’t truly believe in compromise (on this or any other issue) so my instinct is that, yes we shouldn’t give an inch.
Kay
I just don’t think they stop at banning abortion, because if one believes that life begins at conception and fertilized egg or fetus= child then why wouldn’t any fetus have the same legal protections as a child does?
They really have to regulate pregnancy start to finish to be consistent and then something has to give, and I am 100% convinced the rights of the woman will come second. We’ve already seen it in the most extreme anti-abortion cases in Ireland and in US Catholic hospitals. The women are put at grave risk for the sometimes remote chance the fetus might survive. That’s a choice. They’re choosing.
Iowa Old Lady
These folks are against both birth control and abortion. That is not a coherent position.
redshirt
I’m anti-abortion but pro-choice. Is that a fairly common position?
I’d like to see a lot more emphasis on birth control to prevent pregnancies. Abortion makes me sad because it is ending a life, but again, that’s the woman’s choice. Better, however, to avoid the unwanted pregnancy in the first place.
I’d respect Republican’s opposition a lot more if they emphasized birth control and sex ed, but of course they don’t, because they’re horrible monsters.
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yeah, as strange as it sounds, I’ve always thought this was one of the big reasons abortion has become such a thing – they feel that it gives them the moral high ground.
Conservatives can generally be relied upon to support the strong against the weak – in fact, I have a hard time thinking of a better predictor of where they’ll wind up when it comes to an issue. Abortion, if you accept their framing, is the one time where that’s not true – they’re defending a poor, weak, innocent, helpless baby against the “already born” liberals and feminists who want to genocide said babies. It helps them sleep at night, especially after a hard day of defending bosses against workers, wingnut governments against people on welfare rolls, cops against the black people they’re shooting at, etc. “But, I’m not the bad guy. I defend poor helpless babies. How could I be the bad guy?”
gelfling545
@Mandalay: Yep. He’s got in covered from A to B.
Mike J
@Frankensteinbeck:
It’s not true that they didn’t care. The Southern Baptist Convention put out a statement praising the Roe v Wade decision. They were in favor of abortion rights until it became a tribal identifier for Republicans. At that point they abandoned religion and took up the cross of the Republican party.
cokane
Why is a self-styled libertarian against abortion in the first place? FREEDOM!!1! (except for wimminz)?
Kay
@Chris:
Why didn’t he ever do it again, then? Plenty of individuals accomplished their mission in Iraq. Weird that he became less grateful for their service as the war got more bloody and became a fucking quagmire. One would think that’s when they’d really need a mission accomplished banner for each and every mission.
boatboy_srq
@Jeffro: Tracinski does want this to be “scrupulously fair”, so there’s good reason to use the shorter term. “Glibertarian douchebaggery” does, after all, hint that there might be some defense to be found in Rand: “lying” doesn’t leave that wiggle room.
jl
@Chris:
“But, I’m not the bad guy. I defend poor helpless babies. How could I be the bad guy?”
Well, they defend the poor helpless eggs, sperm, zygotes and fetuses until birth, then they are babies, and not worth much defense. Then their whole rigged cost benefit and moral calculus is completely reversed.
p.a.
@dedc79: Remember the 1st ‘Mission Accomplished’ lie: that the sign wasn’t a White House production, but the Navy’s? Then someone found the same flag background at a previous WH conference (with a different caption).
Liars all the way down.
cmorenc
Up through the first three quotes from Mr. Tracinski, I’m down with him on what he quite fairly says up through that point – but OTOH his further quotes about GWB and “Mission Accomplished” show it was too good to last, when he tries to use that as an equivalent example of misleading context. He conveniently omits that the “Mission Accomplished” speech was immediately preceded with a carefully staged stunt of Bush arriving at the aircraft carrier in full naval aviation flight suit aboard a two-seater fighter jet, broadcast to the entire nation, and the entire thing was a chest-thumping P.R. stunt put on for the benefit of the entire nation and electorate over every mass media outlet, and not just for the benefit of the service personnel aboard the aircraft carrier. NOTHING by the left was misrepresented out of context by the left – that “Mission Accomplished” banner would not have been so prominently and photogenically placed directly behind Bush, had his p.r. people not quite deliberately wanted to spread that impression.
Jeffro
@Archon:
I never really understood about the ‘restrictions’ thing, as a practical matter. Back when it was illegal…the ultimate ‘restriction’…women still had them in large numbers. You have to wonder if the religious right wasn’t so bananas about this, if most Americans couldn’t calmly walk through the following series of steps…
1) Comprehensive, factual sex ed should be taught in all the nation’s schools
2) Birth control should be widely accessible, cheap or free, and not stigmatized
3) Adoption/placement services should also be widely accessible and supported (I’m not sure what the research says would help more foster kids, orphans, and other kids be placed into good homes but I’m all for it)
4) Abortion must remain legal
THEN, having likely addressed over 90% of all abortions (according to the Guttmacher Institute, 88 percent of abortions occur within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, with only 1.5 percent occurring after 21 weeks’ gestation)…we can talk about what to do to help bring down that remaining 10%
gelfling545
@redshirt: I’d say it’s a very common position. Most women I know would rather abortion were unnecessary but, given the social structure we live in, the possibility of violent, unwanted sex and random occurrences in fetal development, find it better for the choice to be there.
Mark B.
@redshirt: Not nearly as much as your average megachurch that benefits indirectly by tax exemption and directly from ‘faith based charities.’
Judge Crater
I was just reading this guy’s bio and a scribbling of his on the greatness of Ayn Rand. Douchebag is too polite a description of his persona. It’s not ad hominem enough.
His bio doesn’t mention ever doing anything approximating hard work. I would use the term “fop” as a more accurate term than douchebag.
Jeffro
@cokane: I guess he’s for the freedom of that clump of cells over the mother’s freedom. Which is interesting, because in most any other instance, having the government advance one person’s “claim” over another (see also, taxes, guns, etc) is TYRANNY! and SLAVERY!
They are nuts.
Jeffro
@Judge Crater: “Lying fop” is also accurate.
muddy
@p.a.: I also remember that they changed the position of the ship for the photos, because if you could see San Diego in the background then it would seem silly that he flew out in a fighter jet.
Make it look like he’s right there in the action! Make it look like, make it look like… their answer to everything. Those photo ops at the ranch, where they walk along side of one another like gunslingers coming to town or something etc.
jl
@cmorenc:
Turns out that there is a wiki article on the ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech. With the Bush Cheney crew, it is hard to pierce the veil of lies, The fact that the crew might have wanted some recognition for that specific mission seems irrelevant to the way the Bush II administration exploited and co-opted the symbolism. The idea that all the fanfare and ceremony of the speech and propaganda ploy just happened to be in front of a banner that would have been there anyway is absurd.
Edit: in fact, if the crew did want some recognition for the mission, and they did request a banner, seems the way Bush Ii administration used it as a pretext for a splashy PR stunt was pretty ruthless, and destroys this guy’s point. To amplify, by co-opting a memorial for that specific mission, the Bush II administration rendered it forever ridiculous, and the crew deserved better than that. They DID accomplish their mission, Bush and his bunch certainly did not accomplish theirs.
Mission Accomplished speech
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Accomplished_speech
Mike J
@jl:
Since the White House printed the banner (Navy ships, even carriers, don’t carry print shops large enough for a banner like that) the banner wouldn’t have been there. I believe Ari’s last statement on the banner was that the sailors wanted the banner but couldn’t make it themselves so the White House was glad to help them out.
Mandalay
@p.a.:
Indeed…
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/topstories/2008-04-30-4177712796_x.htm
The Bush Administration weren’t just a bunch of shameless liars. They were inept liars as well.
A Ghost To Most
@Judge Crater:
Is it ad hominen if they don’t exhibit human qualities?
Kay
@Archon:
When I was in law school is was kind of fashionable for liberals to say they didn’t like Roe. The problem is it’s a really, really difficult thing to legislate because it’s unique. Roe used a very lawyerly approach with 3 gradations of rights of the women and rights of state because someone had to put some rules in place and I have yet to find anyone who can give me a better idea.
We struggle hugely with the state/parent/child balancing act and that is when the child is independent of the mother. It’s hard as hell. We consult experts and do home studies and interviews and at the end of the day a lot of the time it’s a freaking crap shoot. Mistakes are made even by well-intentioned people without an ideological ax to grind and it is rare that anyone involved is at all satisified with either the process or the result. It never gets “solved” and there are no announcements that The Truth has now been determined forever. We have these “factors” and that’s comforting for everyone but really it’s just plain hard because there are three sometimes competing interests in play and you can’t get around that.
dedc79
@p.a.: Yeah. And Bush flat out lied about it:
mai naem mobile
I’m guessing this idiot is going to read this thread and is going to be thrilled that.somebody wrote a thread about his.piece. I have no idea who he is. Sounds like another RW welfare circuit writer.
jl
@Jeffro: I agree with commenters above about the ‘don’t give an inch’ approach. I go further and with reproductive rights people would be more aggressive. When asked why not protect ‘unborn life’ the best response is to say that we do already, we have rules for abortion decisions that balance rights of mother and the fetus in proportion to the costs and benefits of making different decisions in specific situations that account for stage of fetal development, chances of fetus’ survival outside womb, mother’s health, etc.
I think Biden explained this pretty well in an interview a few years, which I have referred to several times. I guess I should go look for it.
mai naem mobile
@dedc79: if Obama did.something like that Trey Gowdy would spend millions investigating and then impeach the president.
Belafon
When Republicans are willing to pay for health care the way the Israeli’s do, pay for child care the way the Israeli’s do, and pay for education the way the Israeli’s do, then we’ll talk about restricting abortion the way the Israeli’s do.
boatboy_srq
@redshirt: The only group that seems to be unconditionally pro-abortion as well as pro-choice is the pro-choice lobby that lives exclusively in the anti-choicers’ heads. It’s part of the binary worldview they seem unable to wrest themselves out of. In this case, since they’re “pro-life”, which of course means the life of the fetus, their opposition must be the opposite – in other words, consciously and deliberately aborting each and every pregnancy because they’re “pro-death”. The idea that abortions are better avoided than performed, and better performed than allow intolerable condition X to be inflicted on child and/or parent, is not something they can comprehend; likewise, the idea that a “pro-choice” woman would elect to have the baby and raise it is similarly inconceivable, because their definition of “pro-choice” doesn’t allow for any birth ever. There’s nothing better a woman can do to completely disorient an anti-choicer than to say she’s pro-choice and she’s going to give birth.
jl
@jl: One reason to be more aggressive on the point I mentioned is that it smokes out the forced birther movement’s actual extreme beliefs and goals. First it smoked out their desire to impose their view that life begins immediately at conception, and that therefore most forms of contraception is also murder, which most people won’t agree with.
It also smokes out their opposition to any form of birth control, which means that they really aren’t even honest about their beliefs about when an individual life begins. It is really about power and control over others, by any means necessary, control over both the mother, and actual born babies.
Kay
O/T but I have to gloat:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2179399-cnn-orc-poll-2016-election-9-a-m-july-26-2015.html …
I don’t care if it means anything- I loathe Walker and he’s been running for something since he was 19 years old so I know he follows polls and this one has to make him crazy. Sanders is presenting a pretty stark contrast to Walker here in “center-Right nation” and Sanders is ahead.
catclub
@Mike J:
I bet that would be the first requirement for a NASA tugboat.
Ruckus
@Kay:
Well the sailors and captains know that the ship will sail again and if there is a war on they will most likely proceed into harms way again. They know that the mission is never really done. You see welcome home banners but mission accomplished? That’s something that had to come from far higher up. Sure they may have been ordered to make the banner and there are idiots at every level of the military but something this stupid?
Mandalay
If there is any silver lining to the disastrous Iraq War, and all that ensued, it is that cynicism and disbelief of public officials went mainstream with the American public.
Of course we retrospectively realized that we had been blatantly lied to over Tonkin, and My Lai and Iran-Contra, but Bush’s antics changed things. It is now perfectly normal to assume that our government may be lying when issuing denials or self-serving statements, and that assumption is a very good thing.
The world paid a horrendous price for us to get there, and it was completely unintentional anyway, but thanks dubya!
boatboy_srq
@Belafon: The GOTea has no idea how Soshulist their pet 51st state is.
@Archon: Agreed. If they get 20 week bans nationwide, they’ll work for the 10-week ban. They’re getting the clinics to meet hospital admitting conditions and staffed only by physicians with admitting privileges at the local hospital; before long the procedure itself will require hospitalization (a serious obstacle given the required recordkeeping, the costs and copays and the comparatively high-profile arrival and departure); on, and on, until there’s five minutes after intercourse to call your OBGYN and get admitted for the mandatory invasive transvaginal ultrasound (complete with graphic images) and mandatory ten-day waiting period – just to be told your opportunity passed nine days 23 hours and 55 minutes ago. And no, I’m really not sure I’m exaggerating.
satby
@Mike J: There is absolutely a racist element though. Back in the 70s they were more honest about it: that the women most likely to get abortions were white and educated while the women most likely to keep their pregnancies were poorer and minorities; and that would change the demographic balance of the country.
Yes, they openly stated that. They don’t openly state it any more, but notice the places they picket, PPs serving white and urban areas. A PP on the far south side of Chicago has operated unmolested for years, because the elderly white picketers don’t willingly go into a black neighborhood.
redshirt
@Mandalay: The real nadir for me was the video Bush filmed for some media event where he was comically searching for WMD’s in the White House. Just atrocious, and I hope it opened a few previously closed eyes.
cmorenc
For a supposed constitutional “originalist” like Scalia, one HUGE problem for him with respect to the abortion issue is that at the time the federal constitution was adopted, the prevailing English common law on the subject (and that of the states at the time of adoption of the Constitution in 1789) was governed by the “born alive” principle by which fetuses had no rights (at least apart from the mother) unless and until they were “born alive”. Nor had this common-law status changed in the majority of states at the time of the adoption of the 14th Amendment.
But when did honest or scrupulous fealty to his own alleged principles stop Scalia from spinning sophistry to reach his desired ideological result in a case?
Another Holocene Human
@piratedan:
You know, it’d be great if the abortion debate were just about this, but it’s not. Pregnancy is messy and dangerous; fetal development has myriad ways to go wrong. These motherfuckers want to deny abortions in the case of life-threatening conditions, for the mother or the infant. And they have absolutely no respect for the decision some families wish to make with regards to quality of life.
Whether it’s an acephalic fetus, an ectopic pregnancy, or a dangerous miscarriage, these fucking people would rather watch someone’s mama, wife, daughter, aunt, sister DIE to prove their ridiculous point.
Fuck those people.
catclub
OT Philip Bump in WaPo:
I would hazard a guess that Obama-Romney was something like 65-35 in favor of Romney among white registered voters,
but Obama won election walking away.
Useless to not mention that aspect.
ETA: Went back and checked. Romney got 58% of white vote.
gene108
@Trentrunner:
There are very few single issue liberal voters that I am aware of.
There are plenty of conservatives, who base their whole decision to vote fore a candidate because they support expanding access to guns. AND THEY WILL TURN UP TO VOTE EVERY TIME.
There’s plenty of stuff liberals think is a good idea, but how many will pepper a Congressman’s office with phone calls every day?
The Right’s been working at this for over 35 years. To get people focused on a single issue or a handful of issues to the omission of all else and to push politicians to pay attention to them.
They have developed a good top-down authoritarian structure to push the message. Some leading right-wing thinkers push an idea on a bunch of ministers. The ministers push it on the congregation.
I do not see the same sort of organization able to be developed by liberals, who are by nature a bit more anti-authoritarian, which forces efforts to be less easily centralized and coordinated.
Mandalay
@Ruckus:
1. Bush’s Administration lackeys collared some admiral up for retirement and asked “How about we make a bigass ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner?
2. The Admiral gawps, then says whatever.
3. The White House asserts that the navy requested the banner.
Plausible deniability. Easy peasy.
If a statement or claim is not attributed to a specific government official then assume that it is probably a lie. You will be wrong sometimes of course, but not often.
schrodinger's cat
@redshirt: That was during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the same one where Colbert obliterated the MSM stooges.
Another Holocene Human
@Gimlet: The MRA’s new game is to head to “SJW” hangouts and claim that they are oppressed queer people because they are heterosexual aromantic, which is just fancy talk for they want to bang chicks but not date them* because hanging out with girls is, like, gay.
It’s working on some of the dumber young kids who haven’t figured out that it’s all about power (hence that term, kyriarchy), and white, straight dudes with money have loads of it.
*in our day, we called it “college”
Another Holocene Human
@Trentrunner:
Agreed. I think this was done during the birth of 2nd wave feminism. It needs to be done again.
Another Holocene Human
@celticdragonchick: Not. Reading. That.
RSA
Comparatively speaking, I thought it was a good essay. His Mission Accomplished parallel is wrong, but otherwise he says everyone should pay attention to context in the PP videos; that reliance on memes worsens public discourse; that a Golden Rule is a good default in debates like this. Those points sound right to me.
Another Holocene Human
@Frankensteinbeck: Wow, I think you really nailed it. The way you put this, I finally understand why these fundy women adhere to this notion that their abortion is different, theirs is justified, and don’t seem to suffer cognitive dissonance to go right back out there screeching about it.
J R in WV
@KG:
But that money wasn’t a gift or grant – it was payment for health services rendered to patients eligible for government sponsored health care. Just like any other medical provider! And none of that money from government was paid for abortion services, as that isn’t legal IIRC.
Just because it is a legal, safe, and common health care procedure doesn’t mean the government can pay for it, even if it is to protect the life and health of the person seeking the health care services.
This all makes me ill to think about little raped girls being forced to carry a fetus to term, and then die attempting to deliver a fetus while being 10 or 11 years old, as a result of being raped by their stepfather.
Or the woman in Ireland forced to carry a fetus in the process of dying in her womb, and the authorities not allowing an “abortion” until the death process in her womb reached the point of systemic poisoning the “mother” to death herself. Great medical care there, guys!
Compassion, thy name is Catholic!! If there is a god worthy of the name, and he cares about his flock, he will punish these religious fanatics when they get processed into their deserved afterlife. And everyone in the control hierarchy of the Catholic church will be on the spot for all the child abuse and woman hatred over the world.
Wherever I go after I die, I just hope it isn’t anywhere any of the Catholic priests wind up. I don’t want to be anywhere near that bunch of arrogant hateful bastards. As a wise teacher once said, “Heaven for climate, Hell for company!” Hear, hear!
Roger Moore
@Archon:
I used to feel the same way, but I’ve gradually become radicalized. If you can come up with a way of deciding who should be allowed to have an abortion and who shouldn’t that doesn’t involve having judges decide tough cases and doesn’t result in occasional obviously wrong outcomes, I’m all ears. Until then, the most logical solution is to accept that women are capable of making decisions about their own lives and health without the rest of us butting in.
rikyrah
@piratedan:
YEP
YEP
YEP
sigaba
You know someone’s dancing as fast as they can when they completely drop the actual issues — women’s rights, fetal personhood, the Iraq War — and turn the whole argument into a big deconstructing-the-media jerkoff.
It’s not too surprising, libertarianism doesn’t really have a consistent position on abortion, and a lot of libertarians come up with wildly divergent opinions, usually ending up talking about self-ownership and children as either property or chattel, or mothers bound under contract to their fetuses, so much fun to read.
The real issue is libertarians know they’re dead politically if they can’t stay friends with social conservatives, so it makes sense for them to do whatever possible to avoid talking about the actual abortion dispute and just focus on something libertarians and so-cons agree on: our enemy is the infantile sheeple, slaves to their Facebook and Cable News and their Memes. This is something Rick Santorum and Nick Gillespie can agree on.
Chris
@boatboy_srq:
Actually, they do. Some of them, at least. I’ve seen Facebook posts, Twitter posts and even articles from wingnuts who think they’re clever pointing out what a socialist state Israel is, and then going “so why don’t liberals love Israel? Why don’t they care if it gets destroyed?” Etc.
Another Holocene Human
@Jeffro: Adoption law in the US is horrible. The rights of the child are nowhere considered. We are the world’s biggest shithole (hellhole, really) for international adoptions and country after country has banned adoptions to the US. As for US children, there are enough homes but the children are the wrong race … or have too many problems … or are too old. And you have sectarian adoption agencies who perpetuate bad practices like keeping birth certificates from adoptees (as well as refusing to adopt out to gay families).
The point is that shit sucks. It’s a big country, though, and a good friend of mine had a baby as a teen and is very happy with the adoption situation (open adoption, obvs).
We’re never going back to that situation of the past where there were soooo many orphaned babies (most of whom had mothers who were still alive), unless it’s some Republic of Gilead shit. So, there’s that.
Mark B.
@catclub: Yep. The Democratic candidate being anywhere close among white registered voters translates to a big win for the Blue Team. Probably even bigger in the case of Trump, since he’s go good at minority outreach.
J R in WV
@Belafon:
Your remark would be more informative if you went on to add that the Israelis don’t restrict abortion at all, and the government pays for it in most cases.
KG
@J R in WV: part of that 45% is from grants, not just reimbursements (the document didn’t show how much was grant vs reimbursement or state vs federal, at least that I saw). and Congress could rewrite the law so Medicaid/Medicare money can’t be used at PP.
Mandalay
@Frankensteinbeck:
Actually in the early 70s both Baptists and Methodists supported abortion (for different reasons):
The Baptists:
A recent analysis from Baptist Press, the official news service for the Southern Baptist Convention, recalled that their 1971 convention had backed laws permitting abortion in cases such as “rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.” So the Southern Baptists essentially endorsed abortion on demand. A Baptist Press report two years later after Roe enthused that the court decision had “advanced the cause of religious liberty, human equality and justice.”
The Methodists:
United Methodism first officially addressed abortion at its 1970 General Conference, when it backed abortion rights after a 20-minute debate among delegates. “The equality of our lives is increasingly threatened as the exploding population growth places staggering burdens upon societies unable to solve even their present growth problems,” it declared when urging state legislatures to permit abortion “upon request.” An earlier draft, proposed by the church’s Board of Social Concerns, but not approved, had even asserted that the “fetus is not a person, but rather tissue, with the potentiality in most cases for becoming a person, also recognizing that personhood is not possible without physical form.”
All that was less than 50 years ago.
catclub
@Another Holocene Human:
Society of Jesus Weasels? Single Jewish Wankers?
It will comes to me as soon as I post.
Chris
@satby:
Ironically, they now argue that abortion is a liberal conspiracy against black people, that liberals support abortion because they want it to be a eugenics program for minorities to abort themselves into extinction, because they know minority women will be the ones who get the most abortions.
Redshift
@dedc79: “It was the Navy’s idea” wasn’t even the first version of the lie about the banner. If someone tells multiple versions of a story, an honest person will conclude that they’re a list or a BS artist. This douchebag did just what they intended, he picked the version that works best for his purposes, and declared anyone who believes differently to be a liar.
PurpleGirl
@piratedan: The problem with domestic adoptions is two-fold: (1) the paperwork and process is daunting, but then so is foreign adoptions a long process; and (2) domestically we have many more AA and brown children who need homes and loving parents and not enough people to adopt them. Sad to say, most white couples want white babies and not older children and then they will consider foreign children. (I watched the adoption process when the executive director of my non-profit was trying adopt a child. The paperwork for the State Department so they could adopt from China was some 70 pages of forms and instruction. She had it faxed to her one Friday, late in the day. She was mad when I brought the fax into her, but there was no cover sheet saying who the fax was for and when I saw what it was for, I knew it was for her.
The whole system needs to be re-envisioned and reformed.
Mandalay
@Iowa Old Lady:
I find opposition to abortion but support for the death penalty even more incoherent. Anyone in that catergory can hardly issue lectures about the sanctity of human life.
boatboy_srq
@Another Holocene Human: That’s clinically antisocial, skating awfully close to sociopathic. But at least they’re using longer words. It does make them very very queer people – in the sense of “odd,” rather than “gay, out and proud”.
@piratedan: If they went for all those things then they’d have to admit that “pro-life” actually translates, not to healthy families and the lives of the kids, but to pure and simple slut-shaming for having all those babies they can’t keep. I sometimes wonder whether adoption isn’t so difficult, not because of high standards for the adoptive parents, but solely to inflict maximum hardship on the sluts for being such wanton hussies: making them face their mistakes every day, impoverishing them (further) for the mistake (because the wages of sin are
deathpoverty donchano) and hamstringing any and all processes to hand those kids off to somebody else.Redshift
@Chris: That’s actually not new; a friend of mine got snookered by that one 25 years ago and decided she was anti-abortion. Though they actually weren’t subtle enough to talk about eugenics (or thought it would be too hard for Those People to understand); they claimed it was genocide.
I asked my friend what kind of genocide results in the target population going up, but she wasn’t really interested in rational arguments.
Spinoza Is My Co-pilot
@catclub: Of course it’s disingenuous to not mention that, but that’s ok. I want Trump to remain HUUUUGE in the fascist primary for as long as possible, so anything (like a poll that shows him ahead of Hillary, even if only in a subset of voters) that might help convince The Donald to stay in the game is a good thing.
redshirt
@Mandalay:
Same. “I’m pro-life but I say kill ’em all!” doesn’t seem logically consistent, but then logic and Republicans are not exactly kissing cousins.
Roger Moore
@Iowa Old Lady:
Sure it is. They want to repeal the enlightenment.
Redshift
@Iowa Old Lady: It’s not consistent with their stated motivation of “protecting babies.” It’s perfectly consistent if the motivation is controlling women and ensuring that those who dare to take charge of their own sexuality are “punished” with pregnancy.
PurpleGirl
@KG: That money is typically for a specific contract to provide services. It cannot be used to abortions, it pays for things like mammograms, pap smears, cancer exams.
@Trentrunner: The problem is that PP AND NARAL began trying to comprise in the issue decades ago. It makes it even harder to reclaim ground now.
redactor
@Iowa Old Lady: They’re also against sex, and they want to make the consequences of sex as inevitable and severe as possible. Not humane, but from their perspective totally coherent.
karen marie
@Roger Moore: Thank you.
boatboy_srq
@Iowa Old Lady: It’s an entirely coherent position – assuming that the goal of that position is not to protect the children but to shame, control and oppress their mothers.
PurpleGirl
@redshirt:
Better, however, to avoid the unwanted pregnancy in the first place.
That does not solve the very real problem of the wanted pregnancy that hits an obstacle. For example, an ectopic pregnancy is not going to come to a normal term, at some point there is no room for the fetus to grow in the fallopian tube it is caught in. The tube will burst, the woman and fetus will die from the internal bleeding, and yet the woman would be denied the surgery she needs. Or, late in pregnancy, it is found that the fetus is not viable… the crazies would deny a woman an abortion and force to go through to term, even if the fetus dies in utero. The right to choose must be protected as a decision between a woman, her family/spouse and her doctor. And that’s it.
Chris
@redactor:
That’s exactly what it’s about.
(Can’t say that out loud, though).
piratedan
@PurpleGirl: no argument from me, but it’s a very tangled skein to be sure how sexuality is tied in with religion, cultural mores,, income issues and health care covered with a topping of misogyny that permeates these bible thumpers issues with sexual mores, pleasure and their own American Gothic tropes about their own role as a person much less a gender.
Who suffers?
They don’t care about the kids, never have. They could give a shit about the fetus. they are NOT pro life. They have no compunction about protecting the child in the womb with proper health care for the mother. They damn sure don’t want any tax dollars going to feed and educate said child but once they’re 17 or so, then lets give ’em a gun and make abstract heroes out of ’em but deny them health care once they come back maimed and broken.
But Jeebus loves them, or so they tell us all.
Another Holocene Human
@Roger Moore: There’s a principle called “natural economy” that suggests that women have always ever been the best deciders, generally speaking.
jl
@piratedan:
” They damn sure don’t want any tax dollars going to feed and educate said child but once they’re 17 or so ”
Or when they are 1 or so, either, for that matter.
Another Holocene Human
@PurpleGirl: My personal take is that NOW lost a lot of credibility during Patricia Ireland’s tenure due to getting huge earned media for what turned out to be false statements. (It made a huge impression on my generation, I know that much.) They even made factually false statements about abortion, which pro-life groups had a heyday with.
Yeah, it’s stupid, assholes were bombing abortion clinics at the time. How could you lose that argument? Well, making sloppy, biologically incorrect statements and maybe focusing on the wrong stuff?
I totally, totally changed my mind about abortion when I learned some seriously detailed stuff about fetal development and how it can go wrong. I read a (wonderful) book. Definitely wasn’t on the menu at school.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Mandalay: The United Methodist church has stuck to their support of a woman’s right to choose, saying that abortion is a serious matter to be undertaken only after careful, prayerful consideration on her part.
This is not to say that there haven’t been attempts to sway opinion within the United Methodist congregations; there are a couple of conservative movements trying to reform us all into extremely conservative congregations. I think one is called Confessing Methodists, but there are Confessing Lutherans and several other denominations of Confessors who have set out to save all of the mainstream churches.
A note: The Baptist church and the Southern Baptist church are two different groups, and there are divisions within each, but the Southern Baptists decided that not only were they against abortion but that they were also against women preachers, and ordered all of their ordained ministers who were women to submit and resign, and many of them did.
PurpleGirl
Remember Dr. Tiller? A large part of his medical practice was late-term abortions — those very sad cases where something went wrong and the fetus was no longer viable. He was a Lutheran and was shot at his church. A church that supported him because as they saw it, he was gifted and talented to do his work and save a woman’s life. (His Lutheran group was the combine of three smaller liberal synods. I was an active Lutheran in the run-up to the merger of the three liberal synods.)
different-church-lady
It’s really completely the same in the way all the major networks snuck their cameras on to that aircraft carrier and filmed Bush’s speech in secret.
rikyrah
@Kay:
LOL, Kay.
alnitak
From CNN:
Navy and administration sources said that though the banner was the Navy’s idea, the White House actually made it.
Bush offered the explanation after being asked whether his speech declaring an end to major combat in Iraq under the “Mission Accomplished” banner was premature, given that U.S. casualties in Iraq since then have surpassed those before it.