Thursday, February 17, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Why We All Need Planned Parenthood
"Planned Parenthood http://www.plannedparenthood.org/ serves more than three million women, men and teens nationwide every year and right now its ongoing existence is again in jeopardy. From XXFactor's 'Going After Planned Parenthood,' http://www.doublex.com/blog/xxfactor/target-planned-parenthood published yesterday:
There are 154 co-sponsors in the House for a bill denying government funding to any organization that provides abortion services. Congress already prohibits any government money being directed toward abortions except in the case of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother, and has since 1976. The $300 million-plus in government funding and contracts Planned Parenthood currently receives goes toward providing family planning and medical assistance to 1.85 million low-income women. As Gail Collins points out in "The Siege of Planned Parenthood," http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/opinion/05collins.html?_r=2&src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB there's no comparable organization in this country offering those services. If Planned Parenthood closes its doors (the clear hope of Indiana Rep. Mike Pence and the 154 colleagues who've jumped on his bandwagon), then those women will go without-when for every dollar in public funding spend on family planning services http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/09_HPU19.3Frost.pdf, Medicaid saves $4.02 the next year.
Right-wing pro-life action groups have been attempting to discredit PP's benefits for years, and they've lately been resorting to one of their favorite tactics - sending fake pimps and prostitutes to clinics http://jezebel.com/#!5754808/a-new-planned-parenthood-video-and-more-misunderstandings with cameras in some kind of To Catch An Abortion Provider style propaganda campaign.
http://jezebel.com/#!5758256/why-we-all-need-planned-parenthood
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Toffler
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.
Alvin Toffler
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she|
wth silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Emma Lazarus 1883
http://www.libertystatepark.com/emma.htm
Private Prison Industry & Arizona Immigration Law
http://slatest.slate.com/id/2272725/entry/1/
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/straight-out-right-wing-playbook
The Reagan Ruins
The Reagan Ruins
February 1, 2011 - 1:46pm ET
POPULAR THIS WEEK
Revisiting the Reagan Nightmare
February 04, 2011
The Forgotten 99ers -- Abandoned By Their Country
February 04, 2011
ALSO WORTH READING
The celebration of Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday doesn't come until early March, but the devotions have been going on for years. For conservatives, Reagan is the lodestar, the genial demigod to whom all must avow fealty. In a Time cover story, Michael Scherer and Michael Duffy suggest that Obama considers Reagan "The Role Model." Richard Norton Smith, writing about the "Reagan Revelation," attributes Obama's uptick in the polls because he's been "acting positively Reaganesque," reaching out to the business community, scoring bipartisan victories on tax cuts, delivering a sermon in Tucson that Smith calls "worthy of the Great Communicator at his most consoling."
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011020501/reagan-ruins
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Low-wage conservatism
MINIMUM WAGE FOLLIES....I promised myself I wasn't going to read George Will's column today about abolishing the minimum wage, but unfortunately a reader sent me the link and I clicked on it before I knew what it was. Weak man that I am, I then went ahead and plowed through it.
It's mostly just a data dump of half facts and cherry picked numbers, and the only assertion of any importance comes at the end:
The minimum wage should be the same everywhere: $0. Labor is a commodity; governments make messes when they decree commodities' prices.This, in a nutshell, is the core problem with conservative economics: it views workers as commodities. Naturally it follows from this that we should be free to treat workers like commodities, rather than as human beings.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_01/010514.php
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