Thank the Buddhas! It’s Friday!

Good Morning!

This has been one damn long week!  It’s coming to an end with the Republicans who are out to kill women again.  A clump of cells is just so much more important because it might be a man in about 9 months, doncha know?  A horrible bill that would cause publicly sanctioned death by forced pregnancy crept on to the house floor yesterday.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi blasted an abortion bill the House will vote on later Thursday — claiming that the legislation could ultimately make women “die on the floor and health care providers do not have to intervene.”

The bill, called the Protect Life Act, would ban the federal funding for abortions and bar women from using tax subsidies from the health care law to buy insurance that cover abortion – except in cases of rape, incest or the health of the mother. It would also ensure that health-care providers are protected if they believe that performing abortion procedures clashes with their personal beliefs.

“Under this bill, when the Republicans vote for this bill today, they will be voting to say that women can die on the floor, and health care providers do not have to intervene if this bill is passed. It’s just appalling,” Pelosi told reporters on Thursday. “I can’t even describe to you the logic of what it is that they are doing.”

Pelosi and other Democrats dismissed the bill as a “waste of time” and criticized House GOP leadership for bringing up a bill that isn’t directly related to jobs and the economy – particularly since the abortion legislation has a dim chance in the Democratically-controlled Senate.

“This bill substantively puts women’s health at risk,” said House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).

Just imagine if there were these kinds of conscientious clauses were attached to all forms of government spending?  How many extremist religious views do we have to suffer through in this country? What if every one of us got to walk away from our job responsibilities because we consider something objectionable?  This is just more evidence that our society has fallen into the hateful agenda of religious extremists! Their rights to be objectionable should not be given precedent over the rest of society and medical and scientific evidence.  Thank goodness this bill will go no further and shame on Boehner for letting the Let Women Die bill come up to a vote.

The House approved an anti-abortion bill Thursday that takes aim at the health insurance subsidies in President Barack Obama’s health care law — and gives both parties another chance to rally their bases over yet another abortion fight.

The “Protect Life Act” would ban women from using the health reform law’s tax subsidies to purchase health plans that cover abortions and would allow hospital and health care providers to refuse to provide abortions if they have objections on grounds of conscience.

The vote was 251-172, with 15 Democrats voting for the bill and two Republicans opposing it.

Republican supporters of the bill, introduced by Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Pitts, say it would merely ensure that no taxpayer money is used to subsidize abortions.

“The left has moved so far that they object to this simple, common-sense measure that would protect taxpayers from having their money go to a procedure they find abhorrent,” said Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.). “Simply put, we must end what Obamacare did. We must stop subsidizing abortions with federal taxpayer dollars.”

Isn’t it shameful that Pompeo should be allowed to so thoroughly lie on the floor of congress?  There is absolutely no substance or reality to a word in his quote.

Crazy ol’ Ron Paul had a wardrobe mishap during the debate the other night.  It seems he wore falsie eye brows and one went rogue.

X marks the spot where the falsie got away from the brow.

For those of you not yet riveted by the Republican race, Mr. Paul, the dark-horse libertarian with equally dusky brows, was a victim of hot lights, faulty adhesive or merely a devilish optical illusion when his right eyebrow seemed to dip toward the stage at Dartmouth College.

Seen on television, Mr. Paul appeared to have a second, thinner brow under the one headed south, creating a delicate X over his right eye.

Since we’re already on the subject of dinosaurs and other ancient animals that should go extinct, here’s something on the T. Rex.

Tyrannosaurus rex grew faster and weighed more than previously thought, suggesting the fearsome predator would have been a ravenous teen-ager, researchers said Wednesday.

Using three-dimensional laser scans and computer modeling, British and U.S. scientists “weighed” five T. rex specimens, including the Chicago Field Museum’s “Sue,” the largest and most complete T. rex skeleton known.

They concluded that Sue, who roamed the Great Plains of North America 67 million years ago, would have tipped the scales at more than 9 tons, or some 30 percent more than expected.

Intriguingly, the smallest and youngest specimen weighed less than thought, shedding new light on the animals’ biology and indicating that T. rex grew more than twice as fast between 10 and 15 years of age as suggested in a study five years ago.

“At their fastest, in their teenage years, they were putting on 11 pounds or 5 kilograms a day,” John Hutchinson of the Royal Veterinary College in London told Reuters.

Here’s an interesting take on Occupy Wall Street from former NY AG and Governor Elliot Spitzer.

Occupy Wall Street has already won, perhaps not the victory most of its participants want, but a momentous victory nonetheless. It has already altered our political debate, changed the agenda, shifted the discussion in newspapers, on cable TV, and even around the water cooler. And that is wonderful.

Suddenly, the issues of equity, fairness, justice, income distribution, and accountability for the economic cataclysm–issues all but ignored for a generation—are front and center. We have moved beyond the one-dimensional conversation about how much and where to cut the deficit. Questions more central to the social fabric of our nation have returned to the heart of the political debate. By forcing this new discussion, OWS has made most of the other participants in our politics—who either didn’t want to have this conversation or weren’t able to make it happen—look pretty small.

Surely, you might say, other factors have contributed: A convergence of horrifying economic data has crystallized the public’s underlying anxiety. Data show that median family income declined by 6.7 percent over the past two years, the unemployment rate is stuck at 9.1 percent in the October report (16.5 percent if you look at the more meaningful U6 number), and 46.2 million Americans are living in poverty—the most in more than 50 years. Certainly, those data help make Occupy Wall Street’s case.

But until these protests, no political figure or movement had made Americans pay attention to these facts in a meaningful way. Indeed, over the long hot summer, as poverty rose and unemployment stagnated, the entire discussion was about cutting our deficit.

This is certainly an interesting perspective at the Uk Guardian on Obama’s fall from grace!  Just read the headline and grabber subtitle: ” How Barack Obama went from cool to cold.  Barack Obama’s measured approach won him the White House. So why do supporters think he lacks the ‘fierce urgency of now’? “

There are two particular areas where most commentators and the public feel that Obama has fallen short. The first is the economy. Poverty and repossessions are at a record high, the Dow keeps tanking, the deficit keeps growing and unemployment remains stuck at around 9%. Yet the man who recalled Martin Luther King’s evocation of “the fierce urgency of now” on the campaign trail has struck few as being either fierce or urgent as the nation teeters on the brink of another recession.

“You get the sense that this president, while intellectually engaged, is not emotionally engaged with what the American people are going through,” says Michael Fletcher, the Washington Post’s economics correspondent. “People want to feel there’s someone out there fighting their corner even if that person doesn’t win.”

Charlie Cook, one of Washington’s premier political analysts, believes there’s only so much Obama can do at this stage. “I think the problems are more objective,” he says. “Yes, he tends to lecture and tends to be professorial. I think that’s a problem, but I don’t think it’s the problem. I think eloquence only gets you so far. I think the emphasis was on going on television and trying to explain his agenda, to the point now where I think if the American people haven’t hit the mute button their finger is very close to that button where they just don’t listen any more. If things get better, we’ll re-evaluate, but right now – we’re not listening.”

Drew Westen, academic and author of The Political Brain, thinks they would listen if Obama changed the pitch. “What Americans really needed to hear from Barack Obama was not only I feel your pain, but also I feel your anger. And he’s a person who just doesn’t do anger. And if you can’t be angry when Wall Street speculators just gambled away the livelihoods of eight million of your fellow citizens then there’s something wrong with you.”

Here’s some spicy Cajun chit chat from James Carville who thinks that the Republican field for 2012 is pathetic! This downtown NOLA girl couldn’t agree more with that uptown NOLA boy!  It’s actually a fun comparison of republican presidential wannabes past and present.  I’ll just go for the lowest blow here.

Moving on to Michele Bachmann vs. Howard Baker (I’m sorry I couldn’t help myself.) Baker served in the U.S. Navy, was elected to the U.S. Senate, was asked to serve on the Supreme Court by Nixon, and served two terms as Senate minority leader. He later received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and inspired the formation of the Howard H. Baker, Jr. Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee. Could you see Michele Bachmann being nominated for a Presidential Medal in the near future?! Of course, some people might say, to be fair to Bachmann, Baker has never claimed to cure anyone of homosexuality.

Go read them all.  It’s a hoot!

So, I’ve got two articles to send off for publication by Sunday and I need to prepare for my paper presentation in Denver a week from today.  I think this should get us started on some interesting morning reads!  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?