Erick at Red State wins it:
I’ve been on record saying I’m backing Romney, for now, but with Hillary’s official announcement this weekend, I am forced to wonder if a Romney nomination dilutes too much the accusation that Hillary Clinton is a political opportunist when, by all indications, he is too.
Not, “I can’t support this guy because he is an opportunist hack,” but rather the more nuanced “I can’t support this guy because he is such a hack it makes it hard to attack Hillary.”
Precious. I recommend Sam Brownback. He has an unblemishd record when it comes to being crazy on social issues.
Edward Moore
I, for one, an waiting for the Romney/Clinton
debate on who has the better universal health care
plan.
TenguPhule
I look forward to the bloodbath of the Republican Primary.
ThymeZone
I agree with TP. I think the GOP could nominate Jesus (in this case, not Jesus My Yardman, the other Jesus) and he’d get his ass kicked in the general election.
I think the GOP has damaged itself while it was trying to destroy the country, and that if they think they can put a smiley face on it in 18 months and just get the keys to the car again, they are even stupider than I thought. A level of stupidiness I wouldn’t have thought possible.
ConservativelyLiberal
Right now, the repub candidates/possibles are so dismal even the Redstaters are miserable. It must be like selecting what flavor of dog crap you have to eat…lol!
Brownback makes radical islamists look liberal…
McCain twists in the wind like a feather…
Giuliani makes Kennedy look conservative…
Vilsack is an absolute zero…
Romney has more baggage than a 777 can carry…
I nominate former Senator George “Felix” Macaca. Why not try and replace the chimp with a chump? It just might work!
That could even be his campaign motto:
“You’ve had the Chimp, now go with the Chump!”
Thank God the Republican party is in the mess it is now. After the mess they have caused, we need the breather, as does the rest of the world.
I vote both Democrat and Republican too (since I am registered as a no party independent), but I sure will make sure that I do not cast a vote that could help the Repugs regain control. At least until I am sure that they have learned their lesson.
That is going to take some time, that is for sure.
matt
Can someone speak to what happened to Red State without being snarky about it?
The general consensus (which I’m a part of) says the Red State began as kind of a counter to Daily Kos..a fiercely partisan, yet still grounded in reality, website. But then at some point it went completely off the rails and turned into just another LGF, FR, ect. But I’m wondering if this is accurate, and if it is, when exactly did things begin to change? Was there a change in leadership, was it a specific incident or issue, ect?
I feel absurdly sad about what happened to RS, because I really (naively?) felt that a righty version of Kos would be great for all involved.
Salty Party Snax
I have been disappointed in the past by a perceived lack of authenticity in politicians.
But then I turned 7 and learned to deal with it.
Zifnab
I just want to find out all the politicians who have illegitimate black children.
It gets harder and harder to stay fiercely partisan when your political party swings harder and harder into crazy country. You’ve either got to follow them out to pastier like Red State did or break and make for the path of sane moderation like Cole and Sullivan.
Red State was drive off to the funny farm on the same bus the rest of the neo-cons were driving.
Faux News
It has turned into an echo chamber filled with a bunch of Darrells.
Mr Furious
Back in the day, BMW used to say, “Form Follows Function.” These days it is perfectly clear that the GOP says “Policy Follows Politics.” Whether talking about the actual politicians or their supporters/enablers.
pharniel
sadly AoS is headed that way, along with alot of other formerly readable rightwing sights.
At least AoS Still brings the Funny and Pr0nz – regular and violence.
redstate doesn’t have that redeaming quality that i can see.
Jake
Fixed.
matt
Zifnab, do you think “Red State used to be a Daily Kos for the right” is correct? I..think it is, but I’m wondering if that’s something that people (me) just say now that it’s entirely gone off the rails. Like revisionist history or something.
dreggas
To quote Field Of Dreams “If you build it they will come”.
The past 6 years has exposed the ugly darkside of the conservative movement. The one that they used to sweep under the rug and say “pay no attention to the lump”. Such is the way of the polar blogs (on either left or right). They may start out as relatively level headed but inevitably it becomes a struggle for the overall direction of the blogs/parties/whatever.
For example you have a lot of really radical lefties on lefty blogs, they are loud and definitely are noticed but on balance the less radical are still heard in the fray and things balance out.
On the right though it has been commonplace for all dissent to be shouted down and people banned from dissenting from what the moderators of said site state as site policy/position.
This has been encouraged by the current administration and their enablers in the fear and smear campaigns as well as labelling anyone who opposes them as some part of a nebulous “enemy”. As a result those on the right have achieved ideological purity in the same manner as the current administration.
However if they took science seriously and could grasp even the smallest part of biology and the results of a lack of diversity they would see the results of such experiments lead to retards and mutants. Then again that is what they seem to strive for, of course that just weakens them but does provide endless hours of entertainment.
Zifnab
That’s the way they came across to me. I used to post on both Kos and RedState and enjoyed bouncing back and forth between the two to hear tit-for-tat arguements. Kos was definitely liberal. RS was definitely conservative. But they did kinda a point-counterpoint thing, and even collaborated once or twice on debates and elections.
My stay at RS ended when one of the more conservative posters decided I’d offended her delicate sensibilities regarding religion. I honestly don’t remember exactly what they banned me for, but the gist was, “You offended another person’s religious beliefs, so you’re out.” That was in one of RS’s first mass bannings over the Terri Shavio thing and that’s actually how I ended up over here.
It was all down hill after that.
SeesThroughIt
Plus, they can use Brownback’s (sincere, I think) anti-pork stance as a smokescreen. “Hey, I supported him because of his fiscal policies…the fact that he wants to ship gays, Mexicans, and gay Mexicans to a desolate island and hunt them for sport…well, that’s just a happy coincidence.”
Did RS fly off the rails because of 9/11? Supposedly that’s what happened with LGF–it started off as a bicycling blog, then 9/11 turned it into a bona fide hate site. At least that’s the rumor.
matt
btw, is Red State “accidentally” confusing RU-486 with the morning after pill? I’m not in the mood to follow links at the moment.
keatssycamore
Vilsack is an absolute zero…
But he’s a Democrat zero.
dreggas
RU-486 = Morning After Pill
matt
dreggas, are you joking? I need to know so I can adjust my blood pressure accordingly, heh.
dreggas
No it is the morning after pill, just google it.
Andrew
No.
This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.
chopper
uh…no?
ArchPundit
No, RU-486 is an abortificient. The morning after pill is a larger than normal dose of the birth control pill that has the same biological effects as the birth control pill. IOW, it doesn’t abort anything, it stops the egg from being fertilized. While it is possible for it to act as an abortoficient, it is highly unlikely.
RU-486 wouldn’t even be prescribed until 2 weeks or more into a pregnancy.
Googling it will get you a bunch of right wing sites that don’t understand biology and conflate the two on purpose.
matt
RU-486 might be referred to as the morning after pill in countries where RU-486 is legal, but in the US, Plan B (or the morning after pill) is something entirely different.
srv
I don’t remember who posted this earlier, but chapter 2 of The Authoritarians has been posted:
The Authoritarians
Worth your time.
It demonstrates why there will never be a lasting large group blog on the right. You can never get more than a handful of “conservatives” together before they start gouging each others eyes out. It’s just their nature.
matt
Heh. I guess I asked because it’s in my mind that they weren’t always batshit insane, but I couldn’t come up with any actual examples. I began to wonder if it was a “good old days” type of situation.
SeesThroughIt
I think that if taken pre-implantation, RU-486 works like Plan B. But unlike Plan B, RU-486 can also have a post-implantation effect (abortifacient). At least I think that’s the distinction. Though I’m willing to be corrected as needed.
Of course, none of this matters to the right wing. If it’s something you take postcoitally, then no matter what you call it or what it does or if it works pre- or post-implantation, it is ABORTION IN A BOTTLE and makes the li’l baby Jebus cry.
dreggas
*shrugs* Never said I couldn’t be wrong. Plan B is different and that is the morning after pill here in the U.S., my mistake since I get the two confused and believe both should be available period.
Zifnab
If it’s something you take pre-coitally it still makes you a fat whore cause all you care about is where to get your dirty desires satisfied with a big fat satan stick.
ArchPundit
===SeesThroughIt
Thanks for correcting me–that is true–lower does of mifepristone can be utilized before fertilization–but is seldom used in the US for that as far as I know.
dreggas, it’s a key distinction. Many abortion foes use the confusion to stop the availability of emergency contraception by claiming it is an abortifacient (yeah, I spelled that wrong above). This was a key part of the battle in making emergency contraception available over the counter. The pro-life movement fought it as an over-the-counter abortion method which is simply not true and why a bunch of people stepped in to correct you. One could be 100% against abortion, and 100% okay with the morning after pill.
SeesThroughIt
Ha! This reminds me of a great quip that Mom throws out in Futurama: “Now I’m off to a benefit for knocked-up teenage sluts.”
RSA
And here I was thinking RU-486 was just an outdated Intel chip. So that’s what all the fuss was about. . .
matt
Ironically (depressingly?) there should be no bigger champions for the morning after pill than those who are against abortion.
demimondian
No, that’s the WMD’s the never were.
matt
Of course, like Zifnab pointed out, if this were actually about abortion, and not about girls being all dirty and having sex and stuff.
ArchPundit
===Ironically (depressingly?) there should be no bigger champions for the morning after pill than those who are against abortion.
I’m not so much disagreeing with you, but there are a fairly big chunk of people against contraception–like observant Catholics–of whom there aren’t many according to the surveys, but you know what I mean.
That said, exactly. However, those who are feel life begins at conception, should not have a problem with the morning after pill anymore than having a woman doing heavy lifting after sex.
SeesThroughIt
Exactly. Because if this actually were about abortion, then not only would they support the morning-after pill, they would support contraception, yet the same people who howl about abortion howl even louder about teenagers learning about condoms and the pill and such. Because if you tell teenagers not to do something, they will absolutely, positively not do it, so all we need is more abstinence-only education! w00t!
Tsulagi
I think those will be Dobson’s words too when it comes time for him to anoint the next Republican Spongebob slayer.
matt
Oh my god, So I decided to actually follow the link, and surprise fucking surprise, they are misrepresenting the morning after pill. What a fucking joke. And I guess this goes to answering my original question in this thread about what happened to Red State. Science or Party? Party, baby!
What a complete joke.
Krista
Would Jesus your yard guy consider running as an independent? The campaign practically writes itself.
Krista
I’m very much pro-choice, but I can at least sympathize with people who feel that abortion is a horrible thing. However, no words are strong enough to describe my utter loathing and contempt for those who seek to reduce (or eliminate) a woman’s access to birth control.
You will take my Triquilar when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.
dreggas
A former roommate of mine had an abortion while living with us. It was a typical case, the condom leaked and she found herself pregnant. Now she had just uprooted herself from another state and at our invite moved in with us (she had been a friend for a while). She was still working on getting everything situated including getting on her feet and getting a “fresh start”. She was clinically depressed and not even close to being able to carry a child mentally when she found out she was actually pregnant.
She decided to abort. She was an emotional wreck before and for a brief period of time after but she knew it was the right thing for her. She could not bring a child into this world that she could not support and was not mentally with it enough to even carry the fetus to term.
To sum up just watching her go through all that I can see where the choice to have an abortion is a horrible one to make and not one made easily and at the same time I saw even more reason why it should be legal.
SeesThroughIt
I concur. Of course, the right wing has already pre-empted your rationality with a wingnut rhetorical device: You see, only ardent anti-choicers can legitimately claim to feel that abortion is traumatic. If you support a woman’s right to choose, than that means you are pro-abortion–you fucking looooove abortion, in fact, and not only do you not think it’s traumatic, you think it’s a totally neat-o thing! Murderer!
SeesThroughIt
Damn, you must’ve been typing at the same time I was, dreggas. As for this:
I completely agree based on my own similar experiences.
One friend even pointed out, well after the fact, that as soon as she got pregnant, she was bound to be demonized by the right wing for something. If she had an abortion, that would make her a baby-murderer. However, she was pretty damn broke at the time. Barely able to keep herself financially afloat, and certainly in no shape to take care of a baby, financially or otherwise. So if she had a baby, she would’ve needed government assistance–food stamps, welfare, etc.–just to make ends meet. Which would’ve made her that favorite right-wing charicature: the welfare queen! Damned if she did, damned if she didn’t.
dreggas
Yep same for our friend/roommate. She was completely screwed either way and as it was the meds she took for depression increased chances of the baby having issues.
She had the abortion and is now doing well in her own place, has managed to start her life over, and is getting herself squared away.
Officious Pedant
matt,
Take any group, across the spectrum of lifestyles and ideologies, and lock them in a room together for a couple of days. That’s a PAC, a blog, a political party, anything. When you open the door, you will find the carcasses of those who could not accept New Order.
There is no timetable, there may be no particular reason, just a steady drift to batshit crazy land. The World Socialist Website is just as far out into La La Land as the Free Republic. Well, except for the death threats, and the war porn.
Side Note: I got banned from Red State after I clicked through from Swords Crossed, and decided to post a couple of comments. Their content? If our Generals are telling us that serious, permanent damage is being done to our military by the constant grind of combat on two fronts, redeployment didn’t seem all that controversial. Get them some breathing room, give the Iraqis time to do what they were gonna do, and take another look at/change the plan. BANNED!! How dare I impugn the troops, or denigrate their service to their country, minimize their sacrifice, etc. As if wishing them to be immune to overuse was sufficient, and any questioning of the realism of that philosophy must be purged.
RSA
Sorry, your friend was doomed as soon as she
had sex, I mean,got intimate with someone, no, found herself with a man and no chaperone in some non-public location with horizontal surfaces.Steve
I don’t see anywhere that RS is “confusing” RU-486 with emergency contraception. In fact, I don’t see a mention of the morning-after pill anywhere.
The post seems to be entirely about RU-486, which Romney said he supported during his 1994 Senate campaign.
Krista
And that’s the bugger of it. Those who are pro-choice feel like they don’t dare acknowledge that the very idea of abortion is pretty horrible, and that it’s NOT an easy choice. They don’t dare acknowledge that because the anti-choice movement would use it as additional ammunition in their war against reproductive rights. They’d completely ignore the hard fact that abortion is an ugly thing, but it still HAS to be safe, legal and available.
Steve
Didn’t Hillary Clinton say that every abortion is a tragedy?
I think the reason that more pro-choice people don’t acknowledge this point is simply that no one likes to be on the defensive, and just because extremists on the other side have created this fiction that “pro-choice” means “pro-abortion” or “abortion on demand” or whatever, most of us don’t feel obligated to go around constantly distancing ourselves from that caricature.
dreggas
I don’t thinnk it’s a case of us not feeling obligated to correct that caricature or distance ourselves from it, it’s more a case of being exasperated over doing so time and again to have people not get it.
Since the beginning of the Clinton admin the mantra has been “safe, legal and rare” and it’s been made clear time and again that no one on the pro-choice side is pro-abortion. If we were we’d call ourselves pro-abortion. However in the minds of the mouth breathers who refuse to listen we are pro-abortion and always will be pro-abortion.
Writ large it’s the same as being anti Iraq War. If you are anti Iraq war then you are somehow pro-terrorist. It’s a ridiculous state we find ourselves in but you can only explain things a certain number of times before you give up. They say doing the same thing over and over again all the while expecting different results is the definition of insanity. I for one am tired of being “insane” by that rate and explaining the position time and again only to have people not get it.
Richard 23
“Abortion on demand?” How about “abortion upon request?”
I can’t form the mental picture of all these fallen women rushing up to a counter somewhere demanding an abortion.
Ted
It’s the underlying black/white, good/evil thinking of those types that fascinates me. The inability to see nuance and degrees of something must be an…interesting way to perceive reality.
dreggas
It’s not hard really it’s the whole frankenstein “Fire Bad!” mentality. It’s going to the lowest common denominator of a subject and narrowing it down to two possibilities, one good, one bad.
Forget how you got there, forget all the reasoning involved, it’s a processed message meant to fit a quick soundbyte without the hassle of all the logic used to reach that conclusion.
Think of it like looking at a proof in geometry using, say, pythagorean theorum, to prove 2 triangles are equal (just an example).
You have two triangles, option 1 and option 2. Now a reasoning person, one who looks at things with any semblance of analytical thinking, would go through using the logic to prove the answer. Those without it care less how the logic works or what science or thinking is behind it things are what they are because they are that way.
No thinking required and simple minds can grasp it. Elitist? Perhaps it is but I like the fact I have the ability to think critically, it’s what seperates me from the frankenstein, “FIRE BAD” crowd.
Rusty Shackleford
“Abortion on Demand” sounds like a new Liberal pay-per-view cable channel.
RSA
Not to pass judgment on this view in particular, but. . .I have a close relative who went through chemotherapy for leukemia. It was traumatic, painful, horrible, and all the rest. I have another close relative who’s had a hip replacement. I’ve seen those kinds of operations on TV, and they are also horrible (not to mention bloody, painful, etc.–in fact, I’d guess that the worst abortion posters could easily be matched by photos of an average surgery on a gunshot victim, perhaps in, say, a battlefield operating room.) Unfortunately, lots of medical procedures are that way. Judgments about the morality of the procedure shouldn’t depend on visceral distaste. We don’t see young people marching against hip replacement surgery, wearing red duct tape around their waists, brandishing posters of blood and bones–for good reason.
SeesThroughIt
Hahahaha! Awesome. The Onion did a joke last week about the new House rules Pelosi will be implementing. One of them was “casual-abortion Fridays,” which totally cracked me up.
Steve
Tell that to the people (liberals, all) who keep trying to make me watch circumcision videos.
cd6
Seriously though, how disappointed must Brownback be? The dude has been nothing but full on crazy for years. He brought crayon drawings of embryos to the house floor when he voted against the stem cell funding bill. I assume he expected an orgasm of joy from sites like RS when he announced.
Instead, they spent the weekend with a giant Hillary photo up on their homepage and like 9 stories on it, one of which was ironically subtited “Hillary Announces, I don’t care”
RSA
Whoa, I didn’t realize there was anything worse than home videos of cruise vacations. On the other hand, come to think of it, there are probably millions of VCR cassettes gathering dust that show lovely children being born. On second thought, I don’t want to think of it.
stickler
Oh, man. Imagine the armies of now-16-year-olds, rummaging through the VCR cabinet with their friends, and coming across a few old tapes.
“Dude, you will NOT believe how dorky my parents looked when they were younger! No, really! Here, let’s put on some old family tapes, I’ll prove it.”
“Cool. Hey, man, that’s a hospital. Dude! Is that your mom? Augh! What the hell!”
RSA
And parents generally think that videos will embarrass their children. Hmm. I see a reversal of fortunes. . .
ConservativelyLiberal
Who is limited by the availability of a horizontal surface?
Not me… ;)
Seriously though, years ago, my wife had blood problems, and she had to take huge doses of iron and some medication to get it right. Well, the medication interfered with the pill, and she became pregnant.
Her doctor told her that it was very likely that our child would be born with defects related to the medication, and that the high iron doses were detrimental to early pregnancy. She came home and told me what he had told her, and she went and got another opinion, which concurred with her doc.
While I am pro choice, I myself never thought that I would be in a position that this action would have to be considered. In the end, I told her that it was her decision to make. While I am one half of the formula, her bond with the baby (and baby to be) was more intimate, and whatever she decided I would support her.
Two weeks later she had the abortion. She really agonized over it, as did I. In the end, I am glad that she did what she felt was right, and I supported her all of the way. Seven years later, we had our next (and last) child, and he is more than enough of a handful to make up for the loss.
This decision is something that most sane people take because of what is going on in their lives. I do not think that every single abortion is done for the convenience of it. I am sure that there are some that may use it as a convenience, but in the end that is a decision that is theirs to make, under the laws that govern our nation.
It is not my business, as my business is not theirs. If people could just keep their noses out of others lives, life would get so much better for everyone, IMO.
Mike
New tag line for RS:
“My positions don’t have be consistent, logical, reasonable, or even based in Reality. I am a Republican.”
ThymeZone
We’re going to form an exploratory committee …..
cleek
It has turned into an echo chamber filled with a bunch of Darrells.
note that because they utterly Do Not Tolerate dissent, the echo is by-design.
CaseyL
I’ve never understood what that means, actually: abortion as a convenience.
Convenient because being pregnant would be inconvenient?
“Inconvenient” is when you leave your cordless in the other roo, and have to get up from your comfy chair to go get it. “Inconvenient” is when you’re carrying a souble armful of groceries and have to fish the keys out of your purse to open the door. “Inconvenient” is having to park more than 6 blocks away from the movie theater.
An unwanted pregnancy is not an “inconvenience.” It’s a nauseating, terrifying black hole into which you see your future vanish.
It’s having to tell people you’re pregnant, having to tell your partner you’re pregnant, having to tell your parents. It’s having to wonder what’s going to happen at home and at school (will you get kicked out? What will you do if they kick you out?), what’s going to happen at work (will you get fired? What will you do if you’re fired, just when you most need a stable income?), what will happen to the relationships that sustain you.
It’s having to wonder what’s going to happen to your body. Morning sickness that lasts all day and makes you feel like a chemo patient; emotional and mood swings that make you feel like a stranger in your own body; the possibility of gestational diabetes and nerve pinches and not being able to bend over or move quickly or even breathe easily.
It’s having to worry about eclampsia and embolisms, uncontrollable bleeding and heart failure, and all the things that can kill you or damage you permanently. It’s being terrified of a deformed baby, a severely disabled baby – esp. if you have no partner, no supportive family, no job, and not much education. It’s fearing post-partum depression – my god, you didn’t even want the kid, what if you kill it?
It’s wondering if you can be a good mother, if you want to take second place in your own life for the rest of your life, if you can house and feed and clothe and educate a child you never wanted in the first place. If you can avoid resenting the child for doing all of that to you.
Those are not “inconveniences.”
Having a baby when you want it, when you’re walking on air about it, when you’re loved and secure and healthy – even then, having a baby is a huge and fearful experience.
When you don’t?
It’s not “inconvenient.” It’s Hell.
demimondian
I’ve never actually met a woman who “used abortion as a means of backup birth control”, but I know a lot of FOAF (friend of a friend) stories about them. Usually, that pattern indicates that the stories are false “urban legends” that serve some social need. I suspect that they serve to reinforce the “lazy slut” model of aborting women, although I don’t know for certain.
What i do know for certain is that the one person I know who had an abortion was married and financially secure, but was going to bear a child who would live a few days of Hell and then die in agony. That’s hardly a convenience.
merlallen
I thought Red State would be a sane site that would allow discussions of politics. I was banned after my first mild, polite, reasonable comment that disagreed with the author’s point. So, I was wrong. They don’t want discussions, they want everyone to march in lock step.
Raincitygirl
I think that if taken pre-implantation, RU-486 works like Plan B. But unlike Plan B, RU-486 can also have a post-implantation effect (abortifacient). At least I think that’s the distinction. Though I’m willing to be corrected as needed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RU_486
The medication is the same, but the dosage is radically different. When Mifepristone is used as an emergency contraceptive (post-coital), it’s prescribed at a 10 mg dosage. When it’s used as an abortificient (after pregnancy has been confirmed by a doctor), it’s prescribed at a 600 mg dosage, and in combination with another drug. That’s sixty times more than you’d need for emergency contraception.
And if you’ve had a birth control failure and are already past the window of opportunity for emergency contraception, no doctor will prescribe it until after pregnancy has been confirmed. In the in-between time, it’s pretty much useless. If the woman’s pregnant, it’s too late to prevent it, but too early to know either way whether she’s pregnant or not (the hormones that make pregnancy detectable through a blood test or urine test don’t start getting produced until around the time the woman’s period is due). And no doctor will prescribe a high dosage of a controlled drug just on the off-chance that the woman might be pregnant.
The earliest you can take RU-486 as an abortificient (as opposed to for any other reason. The drug has various potential uses, including as emergency contraception and in cancer treatments) is 2 weeks post conception (thus you’d be considered 4 weeks pregnant, as pregnancy is dated from the first day of the woman’s last period, and most women ovulate approximately halfway in between periods). A surgical abortion can’t be performed until the woman is 7 weeks along, for medical reasons. And RU-486 is not advised for women who are already near the end of their first trimester when they decide to abort.
RU-486 (when used as an abortificient) is actually two medications. As you’ll notice from the link, the Mifepristone (RU-486) is administered to end the pregnancy (by changing the lining of the uterus such that the implanted embryo dies), and two days later, another drug is administered to induce contractions so the fetal tissue will be expelled without surgical intervention.
Basically, it looks like a miscarriage without medical complications. That’s part of why anti-choicers are so frightened of it. A woman could go to her regular doctor’s office, be prescribed the drugs, put them in her purse, abort at home, and return a few days later for a post-abortion check-up. No need to run the gauntlet of screaming protesters at a clinic and be publicly vilified.
A surgical abortion (officially called Dilation & Extraction) can be used as a method of abortion, and it is routinely used after a miscarriage in which the fetal tissue has not passed naturally. It’s the exact same surgical procedure, except for the circumstances.
Where the confusion comes about is because of the drug having different uses at different dosages. It *can* be used as emergency contraception at low dosages, although it’s not commonly used for that reason. “Plan B” is the brand name of a different type of emergency contraception, which works on a different medical principle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_contraception
The Other Steve
I believe they’re too insane for even Darrell.
You never see Darrell post over there, do you?
Mike
How could you tell it was him? They are all so fucking wacko that he would just blend into the background. Which I guess would probably be the main reason he wouldn’t post there since he obviously gets a kick out of being noticed here.
Sherard
LOL. It’s just a new form of stupidity here every day! A little introspection from a member of the despised, evil GOP and is that a positive ? No, he didn’t phrase it properly.
Good to know.
For the record, Romney is full of shit. A worse flipper than Kerry. That guy should not be trusted as far as you could throw him.
Jonathan
I’m interested in debating righties, do you know of any righty sites where dissenting posters are not banned?
Right Wing Nuthouse appeared to be one such, but despite scrupulously following the rules I was eventually banned. Apparently for being a little too well informed, logical and rhetorically powerful.
I don’t even care if I get insulted or called names, I never get angry at words on a screen. I wouldn’t mind playing a lefty Darrell on a righty Balloon Juice.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been booted off Democratic Underground for disagreeing with their regulars a bit too forcefully. Multiple times, I might add, since at the time I was still on dialup and had a different IP address each time. I would reregister and go back and have it happen all over again.
cleek
I’m interested in debating righties, do you know of any righty sites where dissenting posters are not banned?
you can go for a long time on ProteinWisdom. but there’s not much debating there; since as soon as you open your mouth, various people threaten to stuff their genitals into it.
Dan Rheil lets people beat him up. that’s kindof un-sporting, though.
poppinfresh
My big concern about the coming election is that Democrats will f**k it up in one of two ways:
1) Be retarded and lose the election. This one is self explanatory: see 2004. Thankfully Hillary as the bland default candidate of the Democratic establishment to fall back on will cover the party from any potential Dean-like candidates. God bless him, he makes a great party chair and all, but he would have been a disaster as a presidential candidate in a country that can’t admit to losing a war, ever (NO OF COURSE HE WOULDN’T BE WORSE THAN BUSH, THAT’S NOT THE POINT). If it comes down to that, people will support Hillary, who will triangulate and realize that campaigning on a promise to yank out of Iraq come hell or high water will NOT fly in American politics, period. It still worries me, though.
2) Go on a binge of self-righteous back-patting on the radical anti-war side about how right they were to oppose Iraq, and either:
-Dukakis the party (see point #1, and remember that never in American history has an anti-war candidate won an election- most polls in the mid 1970s showed a majority or substantial minority of Americans believed Vietnam was being lost due to insufficient comittment to victory).
or
-By some miracle elect said weenie, who will promptly compromise the legitimate portions of America’s counter-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan et. al. while rolling up the legitimate horrors like Gitmo and secret Polish torture dungeons.
I really, really hope that their time in the wilderness has taught Democrats to get their shit together as a party. The silliness of a two-party system requires that when you finally vote in the opposition, they’re competent enough to not immediately exhibit the excesses of the losing faction, only on the other side of the political spectrum. I envision a national ban on hamburgers and the like….
You know, it’s really f**cking sad that I sat here for a good five minutes trying to come up with a second potential Democratic boogeyman that would actually piss me off, and failed. All the things that would rile the general American public- gay marriage, etc.- don’t really bother me, even if I knew they’d likely doom the party. Thankfully, being Democrats, they will doubtlessly find a way to nail down just what irritates moderate Americans, and immediately implement it.
poppinfresh
Not sure how those strike-throughs happened, but they sure add gravitas!
Andrew
1) Why would anyone want to debate a right winger? First of all, debate is simply not possible. Secondly, it’s far more productive to simply agitate them into a foaming rage of incoherent racism and misogyny that we can show to the world.
2) You are WAY over-thinking this, Mike:
More like: “Clinton’s fault. Liberals are terrists. I hate me some negroes.”
3) Speaking of abortion, how totally fucked up was it that a baby was just born from an embryo saved during hurricane Katrina, because Gov. Landrieu tasked rescue personnel away from saving post-natal humans to go pick up some god damn fucking embryos from cold storage?
The “embryo as person” absurdity is easily demolished by the old thought experiment: 50 embryos in test tubes are in one room, and a 6 month old baby is in another. The building is on fire. You have time to go to one room. Which do you save?
I fucking hate the embryos are people people.
Tsulagi
Damn, finally got something right. You should mark the day with a gold sticker on your forehead. Put it right next to your Purple Heart bandaid.
demimondian
Being compared to Jhn Kerry as a flipper would be great praise, snookums. “As big a liar as a neocon” or “As faithful to his true masters as the CPUSA”, now, those would being damning, and quite accurate.
Perry Como
RedState 101.
Steve
I feel like some facts are missing here, and not just because you got the Governor’s name wrong. Maybe a link or two would help.
Andrew
Whoops, meant Blanco. I was thinking about Landrieu because she is sucking extra hard these days.
The ridiculous story.
I really hated the uncritical reporting about this. It was all unthinking cheerleading.
To top it off: “The Markhams were too busy during Katrina to think about the fate of the stored embryos, and they did not find out about the rescue until afterward.”
To preempt more particulars, the rescue was in fact after the storm, but during the flooding.
ConservativelyLiberal
I forgot the quotes, thanks for pointing that out. The quotes were to be there for sarcastic reference to the pro-birth (they sure as hell are not pro-life!) flighty righties out there.
I have never met anyone who used abortion for a convenience, but you sure hear the right talk about it all of the time. Maybe we could get them to provide some proof? Oh, right, proof is not their forte. Their righteous word is all that is necessary, after all GOD is behind them. That proves that they are RIGHT.
Sorry about the lack of clarification…!
Fixed.
You know, I think that one of the biggest problems for the religious and extreme right is that they care only for those that they approve of, and of what they think their GOD approves of (in their own little cliques), or what he has personally told them in confidence.
They could care less about anyone else in the world. All that matters is themselves and their GOD. They really don’t give a shit about their fellow man, only that they can benefit off of them in some way. Kind of like cattle they use to feed and enrichen themselves.
To be used and slaughtered without any further thought.
Zifnab
Is the baby poor, black and/or the child of Democrats?
Steve
Yeah, I don’t really get what your problem is with this. This was TWO WEEKS after the storm. It’s highly unlikely that any actual people died while these boats were off rescuing the frozen embryos.
We’re not just talking about a bunch of anonymous embryos from some fertility clinic that are due to be thrown out in a week. This couple is going to have a baby because one of their own frozen embryos was saved. It’s the gift of life to them. This wasn’t some stunt.
You don’t have to believe that embryos are the same as babies, or anything like that, to believe that they have value. Let’s say the building is on fire, and you have the choice to save 50 frozen embryos, or the plasma TV…
Zifnab
It is a very basic, very serious misallocation of resources. With homes flooded and violence rampant and refugees aimlessly fleeing the disaster, the Governor decided that frozen embryos would make a nice photo-op. This is the same mentality that had us guarding oil ministries rather than street corners in a self-destructing Bagdad. The same mentality that had us spending tax dollars to compose and debate one-woman legislation for Terri Shavio while millions across the country were going without any medical benefits at all.
It’s mismanagement, pure and simple. The money to save the embryos could have been better spent saving people.
chopper
the ‘plasma’ in plasma TVs is blood plasma from fetuses, you know.
Andrew
I was told it was from Christian babies. Then again, it was Passover when I bought my TV. What a ripoff!
Jake
A baby created from regular iced embryo is a “snow flake baby.” (If one must use such terms.)
Does this make the youngest Markham an ice floe baby?
Steve
Can you point me to some actual photos of the “nice photo-op”?
The story says someone from the clinic called their state legislator, who called the Governor’s office and got approval. I seriously doubt Gov. Blanco was thinking “hey, maybe in two years when someone has a baby from one of these embryos, there’s going to be an awesome national news story.”
Two weeks after the storm, you’re suggesting lives could have been saved if a couple of boats hadn’t been tied up for a few hours on this mission. That strikes me as highly improbable.
jaime
Well, he does until you remind him that his obsession with missing, dead, and mutilated white girls is effing creepy. Then he will ban you.
Andrew
He is surprisingly cool about people pointing out how he was more upset by some dead animals than the fact that he let his gay brother die alone.