Quickies

Yesterday's post about Naomi Wolf should have mentioned that Naomi was riffing on an earlier idea, posited by Dr Lawrence Britt, on the unifying concepts behind various fascist states. Unlike Ms. Wolf's commentary, Dr. Britt's work is not focused on the current status of the U.S., but rather on the historical nature of fascism. His work also offers a few more traits of classic fascism than does Wolf's.

While the U.S. Supreme Court is curtailing choice, Mexico City is expanding choice. Why? In part because so many women were dying or maimed by illegal abortions.

An estimated 200,000 women have illegal abortions each year in Mexico, based on the number who show up at hospitals later seeking treatment for complications, said Martha Micher, director of the Mexico City government's Women's Institute.

Botched abortions using herbal remedies, black-market medications and quasi-medical procedures kill about 1,500 women each year and are the third-leading cause of death for pregnant women in the capital, Micher said.

What abortion foes fail to acknowledge, let alone concede, is that abortions occur whether they are legal or not. They always have and they always will. Women have, whether you believe it to be moral or not, always exercised choice. The question is really whether or not women should have access to a safe location/conditions in which to enact that choice or if we, as a society, are willing to continue to let them take their chances and die or be scarred for life. If anti-safe abortion proponents think that some women are scarred by safe abortions, how scarred do they think those same women will be when they seek an unsafe abortion? And don't let that bullshit about providing better services for prenatal and post birth care fool you. The majority of these folks don't want to fund those services either. For example, take Mississippi which has some of the most severe restrictions on safe abortions in the U.S., but also has the highest infant mortality rate in the country. And what other states have high infant mortality rates? Well, goodness me, it's the whole fucking bible belt.

Republicans are trying to send the White House a message in today's Washington Post. Bush doesn't read. Is Cheney listening? Do they care? Money quote:

This White House is isolated and ineffective; the country has stopped listening to President Bush, just as it once tuned out the hapless Jimmy Carter; the president's misplaced sense of personal loyalty is hurting his party and the nation.

"This is the most incompetent White House I've seen since I came to Washington," said one GOP senator. "The White House legislative liaison team is incompetent, pitiful, embarrassing. My colleagues can't even tell you who the White House Senate liaison is. There is rank incompetence throughout the government. It's the weakest Cabinet I've seen." And remember, this is a Republican talking.

The NY Times is facing a new threat. Usually it wards off attacks from both the left and the right. This new challenger comes from within - it's stockholders.

Spinal Tap is having a reunion for the Live Earth concerts. Life is good.