Finding Common Ground on Abortion Rights?

After weeks of controversy, President Obama gave the commencement speech at Notre Dame today. Anti-abortion activists and many Catholics have objected vociferously to Notre Dame inviting Obama to give this speech and to the university’s decision to award Obama an honorary law degree. So what did our fearless leader have to say about a woman’s right to an abortion? If you guessed, “absolutely nothing,” you are correct.

Here is the relevant passage from today’s speech:

“Maybe we won’t agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions.

So let’s work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term. Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women.”

At least he didn’t spout his usual nonsense about women getting permission from their husbands, doctors, and religious advisors. We don’t yet know what he will do with Bush’s “conscience rules” that allow health care providers and pharmacists to refuse to treat people seeking abortions or birth control, but it appears that the rules will not simply be overturned, as was originally announced. Obama clearly implied that in the Notre Dame speech, and Kathleen Sibelius also indicated as much in her confirmation hearing testimony.

But as Politco noted,

In the speech, Obama…never substantively addressed why he believes a woman has the right to abortion.

Instead, Obama’s speech largely focused on the rhetoric from both sides. Obama made the call for “common ground” three times and said that only comes “when we open our hearts and our minds to those who may not think precisely like we do or believe precisely what we believe.”

You know, words. Just words.

No sh*t, Sherlock?

Over at the wingnut blog “The Other McCain” is this piece of obviousness:

Then Smith comes up with a post titled, “President Obama Gets More Like George Bush Daily.” This is the real seed of dissent, the kind of thought that can lead somebody to re-examine their political commitments. When you vote for Change and instead get More Of The Same, you start asking yourself, “Who do these guys really represent? Because they sure as heck ain’t representing me.”

The recognition that you have been played — promised the moon, the stars and the sun by clever political hustlers who were only in it for their own power — is the kind of lightbulb-over-the-head moment that produces ex-Democrats. A lot of women Democrats felt similarly when the party shoved Hillary aside in favor of Obama, but their hatred of Republicans was enough for them to get over it in November.

If continued, that kind of disappointment, that sense of betrayal caused by political deception can lead a thinking man to ask, “Why am I voting for these people? Why did I ever believe their nonsense?” (emphasis added)

What took him so long? We figured that out 11 months and 2 weeks ago.

And just for Mr. McCain’s information, it wasn’t just women Democrats and some of us will never get over it.

Your Breakfast Read, Served By The Confluence

S-U-C-K-E-R-S

As President, Obama Is Unafraid to Disappoint His Allies

Through much of last year’s campaign, Barack Obama enjoyed the acclaim of a politician who seemed adept at making himself all things to almost all people. Liberals, moderates, even some conservatives, Democrats, independents and even some Republicans all found in Obama change they could believe in.

Obama Nominates Superfund Polluter Lawyer To Run DOJ Environment Division

President Barack Obama has nominated a lawyer for the nation’s largest toxic polluters to run the enforcement of the nation’s environmental laws.

Obama Can’t Turn the Page on Bush

Obama’s Bush league week

Obama, this week, found some of his closest allies — those who viewed his election as the answer to their prayers — feeling betrayed and making that unfathomable comparison: Obama is like Bush.

Even with Obama in charge, anti-war Democrats powerless

[T]he anti-war crowd remains as impotent as it was during the Bush years amid widespread support for President Barack Obama and a public that’s preoccupied with economic issues and largely unperturbed by the escalating war in Afghanistan.

All this gives me the opportunity to revisit one of the greatest pieces ever written in all the “internets” combined. That was early in July 2008.
So Long Suckers

The Obama campaign slogan ought to be “Never give a sucker an even break.” It isn’t clear which sight is more painful to watch, the progressives who fell for the hype and are now heart broken or the cynics who knew the game all along and now applaud the campaign’s increasingly rightward shift.

Useless Dems

Dems: Don’t push health care too far left

Two powerful groups of moderate Democratic lawmakers have met with their House leaders to warn against pushing health care reform proposals too far to the left.
The New Democrat Coalition and the Blue Dogs met separately Thursday with Democratic leaders to push for legislation they could embrace.

Analysis: Democrats’ security feud may cost them

Democrats just can’t seem to get on the same page on national security — and it could cost them dearly on an issue Republicans have dominated for decades.

Environmentalists Attack House Global Warming Deal

GOP still looking for a “strategery”

Conservatives Map Strategies on Court Fight

If President Obama nominates Judge Diane P. Wood to the Supreme Court, conservatives plan to attack her as an “outspoken” supporter of “abortion, including partial-birth abortion.”
If he nominates Judge Sonia Sotomayor, they plan to accuse her of being “willing to expand constitutional rights beyond the text of the Constitution.”
And if he nominates Kathleen M. Sullivan, a law professor at Stanford, they plan to denounce her as a “prominent supporter of homosexual marriage.”

RNC chief: Gay marriage will burden small business
Doofus!

Republicans can reach a broader base by recasting gay marriage as an issue that could dent pocketbooks as small businesses spend more on health care and other benefits, GOP Chairman Michael Steele said Saturday.

Battle of the blondes to revive US right

THE new torchbearers for the Republican party are two blondes with famous surnames – Cheney and McCain – and competing visions about how to revive American conservatism in the age of Barack Obama.

Republicans’ pin-up girl

America’s right-wing Republicans tend to steer clear of scantily clad young women who expose their breasts in public, but they are making an exception for Carrie Prejean. (…) Prejean failed to win the recent Miss USA beauty pageant, but her outspoken views on gay marriage have turned her into a conservative icon.

Middle East Moves

World Watches for U.S. Shift on Mideast

Obama makes his bid for Middle East peace

Netanyahu may endorse Palestinian state on US trip

The deadly treatment of Sergeant John M Russell

Just six weeks before the end of his third Iraq tour, the veteran of Bosnia and Serbia shot dead five of his comrades. Why?

Army fights stigma of mental care in Iraq

Up to one-fifth of the more than 1.7 million military members who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan are believed to have symptoms of anxiety, depression and other emotional problems. Some studies show that about half of those who need help do not seek it.

The Other Crisis

Pakistan to attack Taliban in Bin Laden’s lair

PAKISTAN is to extend its war on the Taliban beyond Swat into the fiercely independent tribal areas bordering Afghanistan where Osama Bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda leadership are believed to be hiding.

Obama: Early to mull more troops in Afghanistan

Fighting Goes On in Sri Lanka as President Claims Victory

Fears of mass suicide as Tamil Tigers face final defeat

Economic Woes

Ouch!
Don’t Count On Your 401(k)

“Our nation’s system of retirement security is imperiled, headed for a serious train wreck. That wreck is not merely waiting to happen; we are running on a dangerous track that is leading directly to a serious crash that will disable major parts of our retirement system.”

Oh, impotent Washington

[W]ith the release of the US Treasury’s “stress tests” of major US financial institutions, it seems that it is Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner who has dropped his gloves and left the ring, affirming “no mas” to any more attempts to save the banks through some sort of active disposition of the toxic mortgage-backed securities and derivatives on their portfolios.

My Personal Credit Crisis

Slow Progress

Kuwait votes for first female MPs

What Smell Tells Us

Armpit Psychology: The Science of Body Odor Perception

Men’s body odors tend to be more pungent than women’s, and this peculiarly strong punch can communicate a lot of information about the individual’s genetic quality. Women, in turn, have an almost preternatural olfactory sense, one that appears designed for unconsciously sniffing out the mate value of prospective reproductive partners.
[…]
[W]omen tend to find the smell of high-testosterone males more attractive when they’re in the most fertile phase of their menstrual cycles. Also, in controlled tests where female judges have no idea what the man looks like, women rate the body odors of attractive men as being “sexier” than those of men who aren’t as fortunate in the looks department.

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