Thursday Reads

Posted: January 27, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, fetus fetishists, Medicare, morning reads, Reproductive Rights, Social Security, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 42 Comments

Good Morning!!

The east coast is getting hit by another big snowstorm. It was snowing in New Jersey all day yesterday, according to Joanelle; and the storm had moved up to Connecticut by early evening, according to Zaladonis. It started outside my house around 8:30PM and it’s supposed to keep coming down until mid-morning. Thank goodness I don’t have to go anywhere till tomorrow.

So what’s happening in the news this morning?

The ACLU didn’t care for the joke President Obama made about TSA patdowns in his SOTU speech.

“Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail, which could allow you go places in half the time it takes to travel by car,” Obama said. “For some trips, it will be faster than flying – without the pat-down.”

Awkward laughter and a scattered applause followed as Obama smiled and chuckled.

Moments after the president made the remark, the American Civil Liberties Union fired out a Tweet that read: “President Obama makes funny about TSA pat-downs, but the violations of the Constitution are NO JOKE!”

It was accompanied by a link to a scathing report on the ACLU’s Web site, which noted complaints “from men, women and children who reported feeling humiliated and traumatized by these searches, and, in some cases, comparing their psychological impact to sexual assaults.”

I love the ACLU.

There may have been poison in the bomb that was planted along an MLK birthday parade route in Spokane, WA last week.

A bomb maker mixed chemicals with shrapnel in what law enforcement officials say was a weapon designed to inflict maximum injuries during last week’s Martin Luther King Jr. march in downtown Spokane.

Tests are being conducted to determine the type of chemical and whether it made the bomb potentially more deadly, Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich said Tuesday.

“I know the bomb had some kind of chemical material inside, but we are still trying to figure out what kind. All we know there is a substance,” Knezovich said. “If there was an added dimension, it added to the lethality of it.”

Knezovich said early talks indicated the chemical could have been a compound used in common rat poison. Rat poison has been added to bombs in the Middle East for the stated purpose of acting as an anti-coagulant – which inhibits the ability of bleeding wounds to clot.

A new Gallup poll shows that most Americans don’t want cuts in Social Security, Medicare, education, anti-poverty programs, or defense, but they still want Congress to deal with the deficit before raising the debt limit.

Hmmm….what do they want to cut then? When Gallup looked at the results based on political persuasion, they found that Democrats were more willing to cut defense while Republicans wanted cuts in funding for the arts. Figures….

Glenn Greenwald has a nice post on the bipartisan lack of empathy for whistleblower Bradley Manning. It’s a quiz based on this discussion from the Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC.

Go take the quiz. It seems Glenn has the flu. I feel for him, since I had a really bad case recently. Feel better soon, Glenn.

Remember the scam that was used to smear ACORN awhile back? From Alternet, Planned Parenthood may have been targeted with the similar smear campaign.

In what is perhaps one of the most craven actions of a deeply craven movement, anti-choice scam artists apparently affiliated with Live Action Films and Lila Rose of undercover “gotcha film-fame” appear to have attempted an “ACORN-like” hoax on Planned Parenthood Federation of America by sending people into Planned Parenthood health centers in six states posing as sex traffickers seeking health care for young girls who were “part” of their supposed sex trafficking rings.

In response, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder describing the visits and asking for an investigation.

In a statement, PPFA said:

Last week, Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) alerted federal authorities to a potential multistate sex trafficking ring. Over a five day period, visitors to Planned Parenthood health centers in six states said they were seeking information from Planned Parenthood about health services Planned Parenthood could provide to underage girls who were part of a sex trafficking ring. Subsequent to alerting U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Planned Parenthood learned the identify of one of those involved and believes these visits are likely a hoax by opponents of legal abortion seeking to discredit Planned Parenthood, which delivers preventive health care and abortion services to three million women each year.

PPFA reports that men, sometimes accompanied by a woman, “visited at least 11 Planned Parenthood health centers in six states within a one-week time frame.” The visits were made between January 11th and January 15th to health centers in Virginia, Indiana, New York, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and Arizona. “Among them was a clinic in Tucson, Ariz., which Planned Parenthood said was visited on the 15th, a week after [emphasis added] the shooting rampage in that city that critically injured Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Unbelievable!

Soooooo…. What are you reading this morning?

Ross Douthat is a Religionist Poet Quoting Hack

Posted: January 3, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Reproductive Rights, The Media SUCKS, Violence against women, Women's Rights | Tags: , | 26 Comments

If ever there was a need for some genetically manipulated critter requiring maudlin, self-serving millennial look-at-me-effete-snob-and-intellectual-dilettante-that-I am qualities and the actual sense of an eggplant, Ross Douthat could provide the DNA.  I had to hold down a little bit of throw-up in the back of my throat while reading THIS spurious drivel. From under WHICH nasty critter-filled rock does the NYT find its op ed writers?

This is the paradox of America’s unborn. No life is so desperately sought after, so hungrily desired, so carefully nurtured. And yet no life is so legally unprotected, and so frequently destroyed.

How many stupid diatribes do we have to endure from people that confuse scrambled eggs with fried chicken in the name of a mythological angry sky god before we move on to the living breathing BABIES that are treated abominably in this country?

Prior to his own personal religionist conclusion, he dribbles this:

Some of this shift reflects the growing acceptance of single parenting. But some of it reflects the impact of Roe v. Wade. Since 1973, countless lives that might have been welcomed into families like Thernstrom’s — which looked into adoption, and gave it up as hopeless — have been cut short in utero instead.

And lives are what they are. On the MTV special, the people around Durham swaddle abortion in euphemism. The being inside her is just “pregnancy tissue.” After the abortion, she recalls being warned not to humanize it: “If you think of it like [a person], you’re going to make yourself depressed.” Instead, “think of it as what it is: nothing but a little ball of cells.”

He needs to look at the anti-abortion ‘swaddling’ in his own pathetic euphemisms before he gets all 3rd century on any one that actually CAN get pregnant.  Let me just clear this one up for him.

THIS is a fertilized egg e.g. clump of cells e.g. pregnancy tissue

This is a new born baby needing food, shelter, clothing, education and healthy mother

It takes around nine months of gestation to get from picture on the left to the picture on the right. Picture on the right shows  a living, breathing human being.  At some point during the third trimester, the protohuman might become something that can be sustained on its own. It may live. It may eventually breathe. There’s a lot of stuff before that picture, however.  A few fluttering heartbeats do not make a sentient human being.   A few little buds that may become arms or hands do not make up a fully sentient, breathing human being.  It is not up to you to figure out when it becomes a sentient being for every one, Ross.  Science–at this point–can’t even do it.  Science is the germane thing here for law; not your personal mythology.

But, more importantly, let’s keep this in mind:

One in four children are on food stamps in this country.

There is limited access to prenatal care in this country. Our rates for infant mortality are comparable to third world countries because access to prenatal care is restricted.

While extraordinary progress has been made in the last half century in infant survival and health, the decline in infant mortality rates in the United States has not kept up with progress in other industrialized countries. According to the most recent data from UNICEF, the U.S. infant mortality rate ranked 27th among 30 industrialized countries.  In fact, in 2002 our nation’s infant mortality rate rose for the first time in more than 40 years; after declines in 2003 and 2004, the rate rose again in 2005, then declined again in 2006.

There are lots of uninsured children and babies who are at risk every day of dying from very simple, curable diseases in this country.

There are more than 8 million uninsured children in the United States. Millions more are underinsured. As a result, millions of children lack timely access to comprehensive health and mental health services, and must delay or forgo preventive care and treatment due to cost or other barriers.

  • Uninsured children are 10 times more likely than insured children to have unmet medical needs, such as untreated asthma, diabetes or obesity, and are 5 times as likely as an insured child to go more than 2 years without seeing a doctor. Regular health screenings help doctors identify and treat problems preventively and are crucial to a child’s healthy development.An estimated two-thirds of children and youth with mental health needs are not getting the help they need. In fact, unmet need is as high today as it was 20 years ago.
  • Uninsured children are more than 4 times as likely as an insured child to have an unmet dental health need. In 2000, children missed more than 51 million hours of school because of dental-related illness.
  • Uninsured children are more likely than insured children to perform poorly in school; in contrast, enrolling children in health coverage has been associated with greatly improved school performance.
  • Uninsurance disproportionately affects minority children. While 1 in 14 White children is uninsured, the statistic jumps to nearly 1 in 9 for Black children and 1 in 5 for Latino children.

Hell, we can’t even vaccinate our living, breathing, children.

Despite these improvements, one out of four Black two year olds—and one out of five Latino two year olds—have not been fully immunized.

Now, can we talk about access to Birth Control, sex education and Family planning that very might well prevent the little MTV “mishaps’ about which your sanctimonious white male ass is in such a bunchy about?

•Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia explicitly allow all minors to consent to contraceptive services without a parent’s involvement (as of January 2010). Two states (Texas and Utah) require parental consent for contraceptive services in state-funded family planning programs.[5]

•Ninety percent of publicly funded family planning clinics counsel clients younger than 18 about abstinence and the importance of communicating with parents about sex.[6]

•Sixty percent of teens younger than 18 who use a clinic for sexual health services say their parents know they are there.[7]

•Among those whose parents do not know, 70% would not use the clinic to obtain prescription contraceptives if the law required that their parents be notified.[7]

•One in five teens whose parents do not know they obtain contraceptive services would continue to have sex but would either rely on withdrawal or not use any contraceptives if the law required that their parents be notified of their visit.[7]

•Only 1% of all minor adolescents who use sexual health services indicate that their only reaction to a law requiring their parents’ involvement in obtaining prescription contraceptives would be to stop having sex.[7]

•Teens are waiting longer to have sex than they did in the past. Some 13% of never-married females and 15% of never-married males aged 15–19 in 2002 had had sex before age 15, compared with 19% and 21%, respectively, in 1995.[1]

•The majority (59%) of sexually experienced teen females had a first sexual partner who was 1–3 years their senior. Only 8% had first partners who were six or more years older.[1]

•More than three-quarters of teen females report that their first sexual experience was with a steady boyfriend, a fiancé, a husband or a cohabiting partner.[1]

I would now like to suggest that Ross Douthart is an irrelevant voice on the topic and he should STFU.

(Recent unplanned-pregnancy movies like “Juno” and “Knocked Up” made abortion seem not only unnecessary but repellent.)

Here’s hoping his angry sky god forces him to a hell realm where he’s perpetually dealing with his own pregnancy under all the worst conditions imaginable.  I would gladly offer up the few I had as an example trying to bring youngest daughter to term.  Yes.  Abortion can be THE moral choice.  Also, it’s none of Douthart’s damned business under ANY circumstances.  Maybe that’s his issue and that’s why he thinks it’s a paradox of all things.

Religionists on Supreme Court Damage Rights of Women

Posted: December 28, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Reproductive Rights, SCOTUS, We are so F'd, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , | 78 Comments

It’s  obvious the real legacy of Dubya Bush will be his assault on the fundamental secular nature of the United States through court appointments.  Republicans–and their appointees–appease people with such extreme religious views that we will need to remain vigilant for some time.  These people  murder doctors in their churches and harass women at health clinics day-in-and-day-out. They’ve done these things obsessively and zealously for over 45 years.

I think I’ve told you that I was stalked, slandered, and made generally miserable by the omnipresent fascist elements of the anti-choice movement just under 20 years ago as a young mother and economist running for state legislature.  The only group to not only oppose me–but go out of their way to ensure nothing truthful about me or my positions was put out there–were religionists.

It doesn’t surprise me that the continuing hotbed of theocratic insanity in the entire area continues to be Nebraska. This is a state whose hallmark of fame right now is its continual brain drain and DINO Senator Ben Nelson who blackmailed the entire country for his vote on health care. Another big mistake made by the state was to put term limits on all its unicameral members ensuring they have a perpetual revolving door of hit and run policies.  No wonder people leave that state in droves. Your entire life is in the hands of religious fanatics and the amateurs they bring to office.

The right’s continual obsession with letting women die or suffer to bring nonviable pregnancies to term is nothing but torture-based public policy laced with the sanctimonious mythology of “Eve made us all deserve to die in childbirth” .  Here’s the latest craziness from Nebraska that will undoubtedly be given attention by even crazier people like Justices Thomas, Alito, and Scalia;  the Republican  version of  the Spanish Inquisition. No science or medical facts here folks, just religious dogma from the dark ages please! 

Gonzales v. Carhart was the 2007 court decision that values religious dogma over science, medicine, reason, and facts.  It’s set the perpetual Nebraska industry of manufacturing laws to test Roe v. Wade in action.  Millions of tax dollars will now go into defending a distinctly warped view of medicine.  This one is based in the absolute lie of  ‘fetal pain’ in early term pregnancies set up by Justice Kennedy.  Kennedy also basically wrote that women were too stupid to realize they might come out of an abortion traumatized.  He’s just one more adherent of that 3rd century mythology that needs to go away.

A long line of Supreme Court precedents seemed to stand in his way. But Flood believes that a 2007 decision offers hope for him and other state legislators looking for ways to restrict abortion.

Using that decision as a road map, this spring Flood wrote and won passage of legislation that bans abortions after 20 weeks. Introducing into law the concept of “fetal pain,” it marked the first time that a state has outlawed the procedure so early in a pregnancy without an exception for the health of the woman.

The law shut down LeRoy Carhart, the provider who had planned to expand his practice outside Omaha and provide late-term abortions to women across the Midwest.

The importance of Flood’s bill is likely to be felt far beyond Nebraska. Abortion opponents call it model legislation for other states and say it could provide a direct challenge to Supreme Court precedents that restrict government’s ability to prohibit abortion before a fetus can survive outside the womb. (It also prompted Carhart to shift his practice east, and he has since opened a late-term practice in Germantown, outside Washington.)

Critics of abortion hail the law as the most prominent and promising outcome of the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision, in which, coincidentally, Carhart was the lead plaintiff.

The 5 to 4 decision in Gonzales v. Carhart turned away Carhart’s challenge to the federal ban on “partial birth” abortion and appeared to mark a significant change in the high court’s balancing of a woman’s right with the government’s interest.

The ruling was a key moment in the emerging identity of the court headed by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who marked his fifth anniversary on the court this fall.

‘Fetal Pain” has no more basis in reality than virgin births and immaculate conception, yet here it is, threatening the ability of a woman to self determination, privacy, and life.  There is also no such thing as ‘partial birth’ abortion.  The entire thing is a public relations sham with no basis in anything but the desire of  a bunch of crazed religionists to inflict their personal religious dictum on every one else.  Since they can’t convert us all, they’ll force the law to recognize their extreme views through reckless Republican court appointments.

Kennedy’s ruling in the case–and his very words–are a warning to people who don’t like the government involved in their most personal and private decisions.  It  inspired Ruth Bader Ginsberg–a life long champion of women’s rights–to write a response and dismantle Kennedy’s attempt to logically explain a ruling based not on law, precedent, or logic.  Kennedy’s rambling diatribe was both intellectually and legally weak.  Its main tenets were clearly based in his own rooted need to defend his own narrow patriarchal misogynistic religious view instead of examine evidence and prior rulings.

He noted that the Casey decision affirmed the right to abortion before viability. But he said it also established that “government has a legitimate and substantial interest in preserving and promoting fetal life.”

Kennedy’s ruling was shot through with references to government’s interest in protecting the unborn and in making sure women knew the consequences of their actions.

He drew the ire of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and others when he discussed the regret a woman might feel about the decision to end her pregnancy.

“It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound” when she learns the details of the intact-dilation-and-extraction process, Kennedy wrote.

In a dissent, Ginsburg struck back at the insinuation that a woman has not fully thought through her decision, or should be protected from making such a choice. “This way of thinking reflects ancient notions of women’s place in the family and under the Constitution,” said Ginsburg, which “have long since been discredited.”

Ginsburg noted that, besides being the first court decision not to require a health exception, it as the first to uphold the ban on a specific procedure.

Leave it to Nebraska–a state with lots of land, buffalo and tumbleweed, and very few people that exists on federal funding and taxing people for gas as they drive through the state–to once again bring up an expensive test of our audacity to stand up to theocracy.  This has been a tactic of theirs for decades.  Nebraska no more represents the country than a penguin in ANWAR could.   Nebraska is whiter than than the rest of the country and older than the rest of the country.   It has only 22 people per square mile when the entire rest of the country averages 79.  It represents a gone bye era in many ways but  it still creates trouble despite its basic irrelevance to the country as anything more than a series of interstate stops.  The state  endlessly manufactures laws that impose a religious view on medical procedures  that always require tax payer funding to fight it  through courts.  What I’m saying is Nebraska’s main export is test laws for Roe v. Wade.  What a shameful legacy!

From little, irrelevant states like Nebraska,we get laws like those that force ‘biased consent’.  That would be laws that force physicians to give state lectures rather than advice on medical procedures.  But, this isn’t because of the state’s overwhelming concern for the health of pregnant women or fetuses or babies.  Witness this little law that now plagues my ob/gyn doctor daughter doing residency in that hell realm right now. Many of her patients typically come in obese.  She was telling me over the weekend  that a BMI of 40 was not atypical.  This puts a lot of her young patients into the automatic high risk/C-Sec category.  Does any of this bother Nebraska?  Hell, no!

Charities, hospitals and other nonprofit groups are scrambling to fill the void left by the state’s decision to end state Medicaid funding for prenatal services for low-income women, including many illegal immigrants.

In nearly two dozen interviews, Nebraska providers said that while they may be able to absorb the costs for women now pregnant, the long-term outlook for providing an estimated $10 million a year in health care services without reimbursement is bleak.

Hospitals are bracing to provide more “charity care” and expecting an increase in emergency-room visits from women who experience pregnancy complications due to the lack of prenatal care.

A couple of emergency fundraising events have been scheduled, and private donors and the United Way are being asked to dig deeper.

Clinics that focus on the poor and uninsured are shifting resources away from other areas, such as mental health and diabetes care, to cover the loss of funds for services that can head off expensive birth defects and premature births.

“We only have so many resources. If we start pouring more money into uninsured pregnant women, that will take away from what health care we can offer in other areas,” said Dr. Kristine McVea, medical director at the OneWorld Community Health Center in south Omaha.

The issue of whether hospitals, health clinics that focus on the uninsured and private physicians can shoulder the load for such low-income women without government help is now front-and-center in the controversy.

The debate intensified last week after a Schuyler, Neb., doctor said one of his patients opted to have an abortion because she couldn’t afford the cost of prenatal care on her own. At least seven other women in Omaha and Schuyler have told clinicians they plan to seek abortions.

Gov. Dave Heineman, who opposes government aid for illegal immigrants, has said he expects charities, church groups and others to pick up what the government cut off.

See that.   They already caused at least ONE needless abortion.  Of course, that law primarily impacts babies that infertile white couples don’t want to buy from the baby market, so the religionists are less concerned about that.

It’s about state control of women and children.  It’s about the state making decisions that belong to individuals and doing so based on religious views alone.  It’s about the improper role of religious belief in our country as written in The Constitution.  Young women in this country better get a grip on what’s happening and pretty quickly.  That’s because these same folks are after all forms of birth control and if they continue on with the same tenacity of lunacy, the pill will also be banned or hard to get.  This is especially important because President Barrack Obama has left open many vacancies on courts and if he is a one term president, or a two term president with a senate that goes Republican, we can only look forward to more.

Friday Reads

Posted: December 24, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Catfood Commission, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, morning reads, Reproductive Rights, U.S. Economy | Tags: , , , , , | 58 Comments

Get Ready for a LONG weekend!!

Good Morning!!

I’m going to start off with some economics news for a change.  This one is from The Economist. It’s a thread that lists the answers to a question asked of a group of economists: What do you expect to be the most significant economic  developments in 2011?

I liked Mark Thoma’s contribution so here’s a bite.

I EXPECT one of the most significant developments of 2011 to be one I’d rather not see: deficit reduction.

Recovery from recessions brought about by financial panics is notoriously slow, and I don’t expect this recovery to be an exception to that general rule, though I’d be happy to be wrong about this.

Thus, rather than cutting the deficit, we need to take steps to increase the speed of the recovery or, at the very least, avoid doing things that will slow it down.

If Congress had credibility, there would be no need to worry about the trade-off between helping the economy escape the recession and reducing the deficit. Congress could do what is needed to help the economy now, and promise—credibly with specific plans—to reduce the deficit once the economy has recovered. That would give us the best of both worlds.

But, unfortunately, that’s not the Congress we have, credibility is not its strong suit, and legislators seem determined to demonstrate their intent with actions now rather than a commitment to take this up when the economy is stronger. This will place additional drag on an already slow recovery, and perhaps even send the economy back into recession.

So let’s hope we can at least realise the promise of gridlock and maintain the status quo until the economy is on better footing.

Yup, but that’s not what I expect given there’s hints that the State of the Union address will contain a presidential embrace of the cat food commission report and social security reductions.  Let’s hope that’s just a bad rumor.

There’s an interesting analysis about Mitch McConnell up on Politico that I’m not sure about.  It seems to imply that his ability to keep his Senate cronies in line may be fading. Will the NO Coalition fall apart?  The analysis provides some examples  from the lame duck session and then hints to one or two newcomers that could be  thorns in McConnell’s side.  One is Rand Paul who rides in on a tea party nag with some really wacky libertarian saddle baggage.

But the two lame-duck votes suggest that the GOP’s six-seat pick-up in November may, paradoxically, complicate matters for the man who had come to embody Republican resistance in the age of the Obama. And while nobody in the White House thinks McConnell has lost his grip, they see an opportunity to increase their leverage as McConnell finds himself squeezed between an incoming class of emboldened conservatives with a tea party tinge – and the eight to twelve Republicans who showed their independence on “don’t ask, don’t tell” and START.

After two years of nonstop Democratic infighting, the White House is clearly enjoying the possibility of a GOP family feud — and are closely watching how the old-school McConnell meshes with new-breed Republicans like Utah’s Mike Lee, a strict constitutionalist who won’t vote for anything James Madison would have rejected, and tea party idol Rand Paul, a fellow Kentuckian whose election McConnell initially opposed.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on Wednesday suggested that McConnell “miscalculated” in the lame-duck by failing to “put aside partisan political interests” on START.

I admit to finding the Republican outrage on Ronald Reagan’s START Treaty a bit staged.  Plus, the entire nightmare of having a group of Senators grandstand against dying 9-11 responders was unbelievable.  Shep Smith of Fox even protested deep into the Republican belly so there had to be some indigestion there. Guess we’ll see when the Senate newbies hit town.

Another issue floating around the senate dream machine is finding some way to deal with  filibuster reform.  WaPo’s The Plum Line added this bit to the conversation.

There’s ongoing news for filibuster reform.  Harry Reid is in active discussions with his caucus about moving forward with reform in the new year, and is currently devising a plan to do just that, a senior Senate Democratic leadership aide tells me.

At a caucus meeting this week attended only by Senators and no staff, Reid and fellow Dems devoted a significant chunk of time to a discussion about specific ideas on how to proceed, the aide says.

Word of Reid’s machinations comes after the National Journal reported yesterday that all the returning Democratic Senators have indicated support for efforts at reform, and are urging Reid to press forward at the start of the new year.

Though Reid has said in the past that he’s generally supportive of reform, it has been unclear whether he would support active measures to make it happen. But the senior Dem leadership aide says Reid is already working on specific steps forward.

Evidently there is a staff shuffle coming up at the White House shortly. This isn’t a surprise since there have been some recent departures–Summers, Rahm, Romer–and already announced departures like Axelrod.

A reshaping of the economic team, beginning by naming a new director of the National Economic Council, is among the most urgent priorities of the new year. Gene Sperling, a counselor to the Treasury secretary who held the position in the Clinton administration, is among the final contenders to succeed Lawrence H. Summers in the job, along with Roger C. Altman, a Wall Street investment banker who also served in the Clinton administration.

When Republicans assume control of the House on Jan. 5, ending four years of a full Democratic majority in Congress, the president’s approach to policy and politics is poised to change on several fronts.

The White House is hiring more lawyers to handle oversight investigations from the new Congress, even as the president sets up a re-election headquarters in Chicago and considers ways to streamline operations inside the West Wing.

“You’re not going to see wholesale changes, but there will be significant changes. I think that’s desirable,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser who is leaving the White House next month. “This is a bubble. It’s been an intense couple of years, and there’s an advantage to bringing in folks who have a fresh set of senses — smell, touch and feel — about what’s going on out there.”

Investment bankers, old Clinton people … doesn’t sound like much of a change to me.

I had linked down thread the other day to a hospital in Arizona that has been punished for saving a woman’s life by giving her an abortion.  The Bishop in question also excommunicated the Nun in charge.  Nicholas Kristoff wrote an impassioned op-ed at the time.

Sister Margaret was a senior administrator of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix. A 27-year-old mother of four arrived late last year, in her third month of pregnancy. According to local news reports and accounts from the hospital and some of its staff members, the mother suffered from a serious complication called pulmonary hypertension. That created a high probability that the strain of continuing pregnancy would kill her.

“In this tragic case, the treatment necessary to save the mother’s life required the termination of an 11-week pregnancy,” the hospital said in a statement. “This decision was made after consultation with the patient, her family, her physicians, and in consultation with the Ethics Committee.”

Sister Margaret was a member of that committee. She declined to discuss the episode with me, but the bishop of Phoenix, Thomas Olmsted, ruled that Sister Margaret was “automatically excommunicated” because she assented to an abortion.

“The mother’s life cannot be preferred over the child’s,” the bishop’s communication office elaborated in a statement.

The abortion procedure occurred awhile ago but the incident has led to a recent ACLU request to the Federal Government for help. The Hospital was just stripped of its Catholic status.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday asked federal health officials to ensure that Catholic hospitals provide emergency reproductive care to pregnant women, saying the refusal by religiously affiliated hospitals to provide abortion and other services was becoming an increasing problem.

In a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the ACLU cited the case of St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, which was stripped of its Catholic status Tuesday because doctors performed an abortion on a woman who had developed a life-threatening complication.

“We continue to applaud St. Joseph’s for doing what is right by standing up for women’s health and complying with federal law,” five ACLU attorneys wrote in a letter to Donald Berwick, the CMS administrator, and his deputy, Marilyn Tavenner.

“But this confrontation never should have happened in the first place, because no hospital – religious or otherwise – should be prohibited from saving women’s lives and from following federal law.”

I can only tell you that my last pregnancy was very high risk and there was no chance I was going to go to term.  There was also no chance I would be able to delivery vaginally.  I actually had a friend who had lost a baby under the same circumstances not too long before that.  They could not rush her from North Platte to Omaha fast enough to save her pregnancy.  I developed complication after complication at the onset.  I can tell you that my insurance company at the time–Mutual of Omaha–basically wanted to force me to a Catholic hospital.  I sent my husband to the people in charge of those decisions to flash his AVP ID and tell them to let me go to the Methodist one with its neonic and neonate on board and delivery rooms up the hall from the entrance to Children’s Hospital.  Fortunately, we got the job done, we got the exception from Mutual of Omaha, and I carried youngest daughter far enough to term so that she was born very alive and healthy.  I continued to have health problems; including the discovery of inoperable cancer throughout my reproductive organs.

Under no circumstances would I ever recommend to any woman with a functional uterus that they consider themselves safe at some religious hospitals unless the Federal Government steps in and enforces the law.  St Joseph’s has basically disassociated from the church and continues its history of excellent care, but I wonder how many small town hospitals could afford to do the same.  This situation bears watching and we may have to make some calls and write some letters as it develops.

Stay tuned.

As we enter the final week of 2010, I just want to say how much I appreciate the community of intelligent and insightful people that frequent Sky Dancing every day.  Two months ago, I would’ve never envisioned this place being any thing more than my file cabinet.  Today, we are a thriving community with a  wonderful group of up and down page writers and sages. It has been a very rough year for me and having a place like this to relax with kindred spirits means so much to me.  I look forward to reading what every one says every day.  We’re growing leaps and bounds and are part of a bigger conversation as well.  We’re trying to tackle and discuss tough issues in a place where strong opinions are  cherished and met with civil discussion.  I think you’ll be excited by some of the topics that are on deck and will be published soon. Grayslady will have her first official post up shortly. She’s been here behind the scenes for a bit but we get to read her on the front page and not just at her own wonderful blog. She and Sima have partnered on a topic that is  an extremely important issue and  I can’t want to get my eyes  the results!  I know it’s important and fortunately they’re experts who can explain the why to me!  Of course, Bostonboomer and Wonk are busy with things and Zaladonis and mablue2 are here to delight us with their special blends of humor and opinions.   (I frankly think Zaladonis has a book in him.) Oh, and did you know that we owe the morning news format to mablue2?  Minx is busily working on something big too. She just told me about a file she downloaded to study and it’s huge!   You’ll want to make a visit to check it out!

It’s always been about the community to me.  Thank you for that greatest gifts any one could ever ask for!!!   That would be your friendship, your time, and your tales!  You’re my father and mother Christmases!!  Whatever you celebrate–if you celebrate–this season, please have a good and safe one!!!

As we say around my household, FELIZ NAUGHTY DOGS!!!  Merry Cat Mess!!!!!  (It’s a long story and I’ve approached mablue2’s word count wall.)

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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