Pro-choice Dream Veep, indeed!

I have to agree with Steve at CBR, Robert Novak just did Kathleen Sebelius a huge favor with this tirade against her for being pro-choice.

[Archbishop Joseph F.] Naumann also took Sebelius to task for her veto April 21 of a bill, passed by 2 to 1 margins in both houses of the Kansas Legislature, that would strengthen the state's ban on late-term abortions by authorizing private lawsuits against providers.

Holy shit, thank God that batshit crazy anti-choice bill got partial-birth aborted! Can you believe the nuts actually want to make it legal for your parents or your boyfriend to sue your abortion provider for giving you an abortion? If that doesn't convince you that the Pro-Involuntary Gestation movement sees women more as property than people, I don't know what will.

Last year, she vetoed a bill requiring explicit medical reasons for a late abortion, and she vetoed other abortion legislation in 2006, 2005 and 2003.

Huzzah!

Those positions are necessary for Democratic politicians to pass their party's pro-choice litmus test, but Sebelius's connection with abortion is more intimate. She is allied with the aggressive Kansas branch of Planned Parenthood in a bitter struggle with antiabortion activist District Attorney Phill Kline.

I love how Bob isn't even ashamed to admit that Phill Kline is an "antiabortion activist District Attorney" who is (ab)using his office to harass legal abortion providers. Anyone willing to stand up to that witch-huntin' lunatic has earned my vote!

Yes indeedy, this all sounds very good for Governer Kathleen Sebelius.

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What part of "choice" don't you understand?

Rock Star Courtney Love Resisted Coerced Abortion, screams the headline at LifeSiteNews.com. So someone tried to force Courtney Love to have an abortion?! Um, not exactly:

The staff arranged a meeting with a physician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center's chemical dependency program.

The doctor "tried to give clinical advice, suggesting to Courtney that it was not a great idea to have a baby while dealing with addiction," Goldberg wrote.

He says the idea for the abortion outraged Love, who takes a pro-abortion stance.

"'You're not telling me to have a [bleep]-ing abortion, are you?'" Love asked, according to the book. She reportedly responded: "I mean I'm pro-choice, but that doesn't mean that anyone has the right to tell me to have a [bleep]ing abortion."

Goldberg recalls, "[He] suggested that it might not be safe for the baby, and Courtney, who was only six weeks pregnant, went into a confrontational mode."

"'Is that a medical fact, or is that just your opinion? I want to see it in a medical book,'" she added, according to Goldberg.

"She was interested in medical facts, not a sermon. [He] sheepishly acknowledged that at this early stage of pregnancy a woman could discontinue heroin use with no physical or psychological damage to the fetus. Courtney looked triumphant as she towered over the doctor seated at his desk," he explained.

Love eventually stopped using heroin and Frances was born in August 1992.

It sounds to me like they sent her to rehab, not an abortion clinic, and the rehab doctor told her what she needed to hear. She didn't want to have an abortion, so she quit using and had a healthy baby. Where's the coercion?

I don't understand why this is supposed to be news to pro-lifers. Pro-choice women have babies all the time. I did it; my mom did it four times; millions of pro-choice women do it every year.

And how in God's name can they call this a "pro-abortion stance?" Refusing to have an abortion is pro-abortion? We're called pro-choice for a reason.

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How To Never Get Married Again

Oh internets, you sure know how to bring the crazy. And it's not even hard to find. Most of the time, it finds you. You'll just be minding your own business, doing Google News searches for articles with the word "feminist" in them, and before you know it you're knee-deep in the craziest anti-feminist horse shit the internet has to offer.

Take, for example, this incredibly tl;dr article intended to help woman-hating jerk-offs find "a good wife." And when I say tl;dr, I mean it: the checklist alone is more than 2,000 words long, and considering the content, I think a better title would have been...

How To Never Get Married Again

Step 1: Assume that all women are liars:

If she is divorced, does she always talks badly about her ex? If she does, get to know him. If he’s not a jerk, run!

Step 2: If you are dating a woman who has kids, attempt to assert "equal parental authority" over them even though you are not their parent, ensuring that they will hate you right off the bat:

If she has children, does she insist on handling all discipline, and undercut you when you need to act? Is she willing to let you play a serious role as a parent, or is she just looking for a babysitter with no authority? (Note: you do not have to pretend to be the “real” parent. Both parents in a marriage must have equal parental authority, and both parents must uphold the other parent’s authority, otherwise children will “triangle” the parents off each other and manipulate them to get what they want, causing serious friction between the parents.)

Step 3: Insist that her anger and hurt feelings are her problem, not yours:

Does she take responsibility for her emotions, or hold everyone else responsible for them?

Step 4: Tell her that you believe women are inherently inferior to men, and insist that she respect you anyway:

Does she respect you for not subscribing to feminism?

Step 5: Ignore her pleas for decent and kind treatment:

Does she ever say “If you loved me, you would _____, to manipulate you into doing what she wants?

Step 6: If she happens to have a timid or shy pet, blame it on her:

Is her dog or cat friendly and well-balanced? If the animal spends a lot of time hiding and avoids her — pay attention to what the animal knows.

Step 7: If she's divorced, blame it on her and require her to explain how she "killed her last marriage:"

If she was previously married, is she openly able to admit her mistakes that killed the last marriage? Is she repeating them on you?

Step 8: Insult her trashy female taste in TV, books, etc.:

When she has free time, does she prefer watching Oprah, Jerry Springer, feminist entertainment, or other trash TV? Are there trashy love novels laying around her house?

Step 9: If she's neat, criticize her for it. If she's not neat, criticize her for that, too:

Is her house a messy disaster area, or does she keep it insanely clean?

Step 10: Insist that she has no right to her own private thoughts:

Does she spend a lot of time writing in a diary that nobody is allowed to see?

Step 11: Demand unconditional love:

Is her heart constant, or does she practice “conditional love”.
Does she expect a conditional relationship: “If I do this, then you must do that”, or “if you don’t do this, then I will ____ ?

Step 12: Demand complete devotion, but don't feel obligated to give the same:

Does she freely give to the relationship, while graciously appreciating your willing contributions?

Step 13: Refuse to apologize:

Does she demand apologies when you have done nothing wrong?

Step 14: If she feels ignored, tell her she just needs to accept you the way you are:

Does she demand that you love her “her way”, or does she let you love her as you are naturally capable and demonstrably appreciate it?

Step 15: If she wants children some day, RUN!

Does she appear pre-focused with having children – and you simply being a means to accomplish that end?

Step 16: Assume that sex is a given that women have no reason to ever refuse:

Does she withhold sex to get what she wants?

Step 17: Never take advice from a woman:

Does she accept you for who you are today, or is she always saying things like “you should ______”.

Step 18: If she is an atheist, require her to believe in religion:

If she is atheist, does she believe in a power higher than herself, and trust in that higher power to help her through difficult times?

Step 19: And above all, if she seems to be well-informed about the law, domestic violence or her own rights, RUN!!!

Does she work for a women’s abuse center or similar volunteer service?
Is she an attorney or work for one as a paralegal?

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Why does the US Treasury hate blind people?

I can not believe the Treasury Department has been fighting this in court for SIX YEARS!

The U.S. discriminates against blind people by printing paper money that makes it impossible for them to distinguish among the bills' varying values, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The ruling upholds a decision by a lower court in 2006. It could force the Treasury Department to redesign its money. Suggested changes have ranged from making bills different sizes to printing them with raised markings.

The American Council for the Blind sued for such changes but the Treasury Department has been fighting the case for about six years.

"I don't think we should have to rely on people to tell us what our money is," said Mitch Pomerantz, the council's president.

The U.S. acknowledges the design hinders blind people but it argued that blind people have adapted. Some relied on store clerks to help them, some used credit cards and others folded certain corners to help distinguish between bills.

The court ruled 2-1 that such adaptations were insufficient. The government might as well argue that, since handicapped people can crawl on all fours or ask for help from strangers, there's no need to make buildings wheelchair accessible, the court said.

Look, this is just common sense. Blind people can't tell which bills are which, and it needs to be fixed. They shouldn't have to rely on the kindness of strangers to count their money; that leaves them vulnerable to theft. Fixing this problem is just the right thing to do, and it's appalling that the government has been fighting this for SIX YEARS now! How many changes have they made to our money in six years?? And they couldn't add a few raised lines or holes or something? I don't believe it.

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Iceland: Happiest Place on Earth

Highest birth rate in Europe + highest divorce rate + highest percentage of women working outside the home = the best country in the world in which to live. There has to be something wrong with this equation. Put those three factors together - loads of children, broken homes, absent mothers - and what you have, surely, is a recipe for misery and social chaos. But no. Iceland, the block of sub-Arctic lava to which these statistics apply, tops the latest table of the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Index rankings, meaning that as a society and as an economy - in terms of wealth, health and education - they are champions of the world. To which one might respond: Yes, but - what with the dark winters and the far from tropical summers - are Icelanders happy? Actually, in so far as one can reliably measure such things, they are. According to a seemingly serious academic study reported in the Guardian in 2006, Icelanders are the happiest people on earth. (The study was lent some credibility by the finding that the Russians were the most unhappy.)

Oddny Sturludottir, a 31-year-old mother of two, told me she had a good friend who was 25 and had three children by a man who had just left her. 'But she has no sense of crisis at all,' Oddny said. 'She's preparing to get on with her life and her career in a perfectly optimistic frame of mind.' The answer to why the friend perceives no crisis in what any woman in a similar predicament anywhere else in the western world might consider a full-blown catastrophe goes a long way towards explaining why Iceland's 313,000 inhabitants are such a sane, cheerful, successful lot.

There are plenty of other, more obvious factors. Statistics abound. It is the country with the sixth highest GDP per capita in the world; where people buy the most books; where life expectancy for men is the highest in the world, and not far behind for women; it's the only country in Nato with no armed forces (they were banned 700 years ago); the highest ratio of mobile telephones to population; the fastest-expanding banking system in the world; rocketing export business; crystal-pure air; hot water delivered to all Icelandic households straight from the earth's volcanic bowels; and so on and so forth.

But none of this happiness would be possible without the hardy self-confidence that defines individual Icelanders, which in turn derives from a society that is culturally geared - as its overwhelming priority - to bring up happy, healthy children, by however many fathers and mothers. A lot of it comes from their Viking ancestors, whose males were rampant looters and rapists, but had the moral consistency at least not to be jealous of the dalliances of their wives - tough women who kept their families fed in the semi-tundra harshness of this north Atlantic island while their husbands forayed, for years at a time, far and wide. As a grandmother I met on my first visit to Iceland, two years ago, explained it: 'The Vikings went abroad and the women ran the show, and they had children with their slaves, and when the Vikings returned they accepted it, in the spirit of the more the merrier.'

Read the rest of it. It goes on to explain that divorce is accepted, "patchwork families" are tradition, and young motherhood is typical, thanks to paid maternity and paternity leave. (Via.)

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