Nitecap and Conflucians Say

I don’t know about you guys but I’ve had a harrowing day.  It’s been very busy at work lately.  It’s like they expect me to find the cure for cancer or something.  And this week is when the onerous parent teacher conferences start.  Let’s just say that as much as I admire teachers’ organizational skills and willingness to spend their lives trapped in a classroom with 20+ tyrants, we differ on matters of pedagogy.  My Brook is definitely a rhombus to a round hole.  Her sister was sooooo much easier…

So, I am unwinding tonight at Joe’s.  He’s the one with the long bar, lovingly polished every night until it gleams.  There are dark little niches where you can collect your friends around round tables.  The entertainment tonight is eclectic.  It’s a little French, a little jazz, a soupçon of classical.   The singer’s range isn’t extraordinary but the tune is light and refreshing.  I don’t want to go to work.  I don’t want to eat.  I just want to sit in a dark little corner and melt into my chair.

Don’t forget Conflucians Say at 10PM EST where you can let your hair down and relax with friends.  Only on PUMA United Radio, PURrrrr.

Thursday: Potpourri

Potpourri

There’s so much going on today, I couldn’t pick just one topic. So, here’s what’s banging around in my brain:

Feminism: Dead? And if so, what next for women?

The incredible Dr. Violet Socks has a very interesting discussion going on about feminism and where it goes from here. I personally would like to adopt the framing “Pro-Woman” to replace the restrictive language of “pro-life” and “pro-choice.” There are plenty of people who do not want abortions, but who have no interest in preventing other women from getting them. They do not fit either category, and I have been reading many of their comments online about how they have felt excluded from the feminist movement. This is unfair and unnecessary, and should we adopt the words “pro-woman” to describe ourselves in the future, perhaps a more inclusive version of feminism could be promulgated.

Daschle as HHS Secretary?

This selection makes me nervous. Daschle’s record on reproductive issues is poor. He only received a 50% rating from NARAL, and even anti-contraception jackoffs like Joe “Short Ride” Lieberman have scored consistently higher than that – sometimes receiving a rating of 100%, as in 2007.

Why is this so important? Because of the actions of the current HHS Secretary, in service of Teh Deciderer. Not Your Sweetie has the details:

A last-minute Bush administration plan to grant sweeping new protections to health care providers who oppose abortion and other procedures on religious or moral grounds has provoked a torrent of objections, including a strenuous protest from the government agency that enforces job-discrimination laws.

It would also prevent hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices and drugstores from requiring employees with religious or moral objections to “assist in the performance of any part of a health service program or research activity” financed by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Now just think about this for a second. You are a health professional. It is your job to dispense birth control, work on stem cell research, perform abortions. Yet you decide your “conscience” prevents you from doing your job. Does your boss have the right to fire you? Why, no. And what about the woman who wants the abortion or birth control? Shit out of luck.

This is the type of hypocritical bullshit that pisses me off in the extreme. If you don’t want to do your job, YOU’RE FIRED. Someone else who has a modicum of integrity and decency can be hired in your place. You can feel free to have your religious beliefs, but you do NOT have the right to destroy peoples’ lives because of them. The fact that I would even have to make this case in the 21st Fucking Century is simply appalling.

No, the sole purpose of this 13th-century HHS Rule is to further remove womens’ rights to control their own reproductive organs and health. And so help me Gawd, the second Mr. Daschle takes office, we should do a coordinated action to ask him to overturn this rule IMMEDIATELY. (Before you trolls jump all over me (whoops! too late!), Barack Obama has signed a letter, written by Hillary Clinton and Patty Murray, opposing this rule. Ostensibly, he is against it. But will his actions mirror his words?)

This is the point of no return for me. If Daschle does not overturn that rule, then it will be clear that he was put into that seat in order to further the Bush jihad against womens’ rights. I dearly hope that will not turn out to be the case.

A nation of laws?

Detainees at Gitmo

From SCOTUSBLOG:

U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon, in the first ruling to carry out the Supreme Court’s June decision on detainees’ rights, ordered the federal government to release five Guantanamo Bay detainees “forthwith.” The judge found, however, that the government had justified the continued imprisonment of a sixth detainee, Belkacem ben Sayah.

The judge, in an unusual added comment, suggested to senior government leaders that they forgo an appeal of his ruling on freeing the five prisoners, suggesting that “seven years is enough” in captivity. He argued that the government could pursue whatever legal issues it wished to while defending on appeal his ruling in the case of ben Sayah.

As you might expect, this story has some rightwingers’ panties all twisted:

Getting judges involved in national security matters, what could go wrong?

Back to SCOTUSBLOG:

The six prisoners were captured in Bosnia, where they had been living, although they are all natives of Algeria.

In ruling against the government as to the five detainees, Judge Leon said that the Justice Department and intelligence agencies had relied solely on a classified document, which he found was not persuasive on the government’s claim that the five had planned to travel to Afghanistan to join in hostile actions against the United States and allied forces.

I find it extremely disturbing that the United States government asserts that it has the authority to arrest and imprison Algerian nationals arrested in Bosnia for the alleged crime of planning to travel to Afghanistan to fight our troops.  Even more disturbing is the fact that our government wants to do so without providing the defendants with due process of law.

These men have been imprisoned for seven years based on a single classified document.  German and Japanese prisoners of war were released shortly after hostilities ceased in WWII (except for those accused of war crimes) but these men have been imprisoned far longer than any POW we ever held, and were probably subjected to “enhanced interrogation.”  IIRC, the “detainees” at Gitmo were all supposed to be “the worst of the worst.”

No wonder the Bush adminstration has tried so hard to deprive these people of due process.  Everytime these “dangerous terrorists” manage to get a fair tribunal to look at their cases the evidence against them turns out to be vitually non-existent.  Under these facts, I don’t see how we could assert legal authority over these men in the first place, even if the charges were true.

From Wikipedia:

Since October 7, 2001, when the current war in Afghanistan began, 775 detainees have been brought to Guantánamo. Of these, approximately 420 have been released without charge, with only one prisoner, David Hicks, being convicted of a crime.

Thursday: SOS

SOS.  Does it mean ‘Secretary of State’ or is it the international distress symbol?

Last night, on Lions Share, Sheri asked us to predict what is going on with Obama’s offer to Clinton of Secretary of State.  I think we can all assume now that a genuine offer was made.  I don’t know what’s going on with the media types immediately indulging in a feast of Clinton bashing but I think they should know by now that it only works with the stupid Obots.  The regular folks out there know the media has some kind of irrational hatred of the Clintons and they trust Bill and Hill much more than they trust the New York Times editorial page columnists.

So what is going on with the SOS position?  I can’t really say except that it is really a waste of time for the rag of record to be going on and on about Bill’s divestiture of his foreign contacts.  He would have done that if Hillary was elected as well.  I suspect that if Hillary is considering this seriously, she’s holding out for some measure of autonomy.  And if Obama is trying to make her say no by burdening her with too many conditions, I think it will backfire.  The longer it takes for him to settle it, the more time she is in the news and the more people are going to wonder why she’s getting the shaft in the Senate while Tom Daschle gets all of the credit as Secretary of HHS for writing a book last February on the healthcare crisis.  I’m searching my memory banks for evidence of his expertise from his Senate days and I am seriously drawing a blank.  More and more it looks to me that there is a concerted effort to keep Hillary as far away from healthcare as possible.  Yes, it is that obvious.

So, what’s in it for Hillary?  Well. the country’s reputation has suffered a significant blow under the Bushie administration.  I can imagine that a person of Clinton’s stature would be very welcome.  She would be America’s foreign president while Obama can stay at home and tackle domestic issues he knows nothing about.  I suspect that the post would make her stature rise and she would outshine him once more.  Even the hateful media would be forced to cover her and people would once again see right through the rotten, nasty, crap coverage she is bound to get.  Hey, she was still winning primaries up until the very last day even after the media told her it was over.  What does that tell us?

As for international distress symbols, we learn today that companies are asking to not have to contribute to our pension funds until the economic crisis is over.  Niiiiice!  Those pension funds have only lost $250 billion lately.  Couple that with the loss of 401k funds and I am really looking forward to spending my golden years with Brook.

I can remember telling my mother not to vote for Bush- both times,  I knew he was going to rob us blind but did she listen?  Did the entire country listen?  I share the Europeans shock that we re-elected him, knowing what kind of person he was.  It seems increidble that the country could be hoodwinked into voting for a person so obviously a kleptocrat and hostile to government.  I didn’t think we could ever make a mistake of that magnitude again.  But with “the New New Deal is off the table” Obama, we may have met Bush’s equal.

Wednesday-Thursday Zombie Shift Open Thread

What’s your favorite zombie flick?