Flannel Shirt

Paul Ryan joins with science denier to fight women

Here.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), erstwhile vice presidential candidate in the failed presidential run of former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA), has signed on as cosponsor in a draconian new bill aimed at curtailing women’s reproductive freedoms.  According to Huffington Post, in spite of the defeat of so-called “fetal personhood” laws in 2012, Ryan and his colleagues are forging ahead with a new measure that classifies all embryonic tissue as a human life from the moment of fertilization.

Ryan and Georgia Congressman Rep. Paul Broun — who gained notoriety in 2011 when video surfaced of him calling scientific facts “lies from the pit of Hell” — cosponsored the bill, which is called the Sanctity of Human Life Act.  Broun first introduced the measure in 2011, but Ryan re-introduced it on the Hill last week.

The measure specifies that a “one-cell human embryo,” even before it has implanted itself in the uterine wall and resulted in a pregnancy, should be granted “all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood.”

According to the ACLU, voters have rejected fetal personhood legislation in droves.  A measure trying to establish the citizenship rights of fertilized eggs was voted down by a margin of 16 points in Mississippi, one of the most conservative states in the nation.  Petitions to get fetal personhood measures on the ballot in Oklahoma, Ohio, Oregon, Montana, Nevada, Arkansas, Florida and California all failed to receive enough signatures to qualify.

Voters and civil libertarians are concerned that the laws are so strict and unreasonable that they would make some forms of birth control and in vitro fertilization illegal, as well as all forms of abortion, including cases of rape and incest and instances where the health of the mother is threatened.

An Oklahoma court struck down that state’s “personhood” law on the grounds that it was plainly unconstitutional and imposed unreasonable restrictions on women’s ability to make their own reproductive choices.

Broun, for his part, disregards these concerns.

“As a physician, I know that human life begins with fertilization, and I remain committed to ending abortion in all stages of pregnancy,” he said in a statement.  I will continue to fight this atrocity on behalf of the unborn, and I hope my colleagues will support me in doing so.”

The bill has a total of 17 cosponsors.  Ryan, who is rumored to have presidential ambitions for 2016, de-emphasized his extreme anti-abortion views for the sake of the 2012 campaign.  He cosponsored 2011′s House Resolution 3, one of the first bills out of the tea party-heavy Republican Congress.

When do Republicans get embarrassed by these guys?

On the positive side...

...if they're shooting up newspaper offices they won't be doing mass shootings at the local grammar school. I think there must be something in the Second Amendment about threatening to kill reporters too.

Mr. Doig pointed out that the recent publication of gun information by other papers has made access to this public information more difficult because legislators started blocking the data immediately. “The backlash, very typically from this, is for legislators to try to close up the access to this type of data.”

Mr. Worley said he had received mainly taunting phone calls sprinkled in with callers who said “you should die.” He found broken glass outside of his home and would not say how much time he was spending there right now. But he said he had largely been supported by the newsroom.

The Journal News’s features editor, Mary Dolan, said that while she was not involved with the publication of the article, her home address and phone numbers were published online in retaliation. She has had to disconnect her phone and has “taken my social media presence and just put it on the shelf for a while.” She has also received angry phone calls from former neighbors in Westchester whose gun information was published.

She said she was especially concerned about the part-time staff members who write up wedding anniversary and church potluck announcements who have been harassed. But she supports the paper for its decision.

“It sparked a conversation that needed to occur in this country, and it revealed tactics that will be employed when gun owners feel their rights are threatened,” she said.

Putnam County has refused to release similar data, but Ms. Hasson said she would continue to press for it. She would not say whether the paper had lost any of its advertisers. According to the Alliance for Audited Media, The Journal News, like many newspapers nationwide, has had sharp declines in circulation. Its total circulation from Monday through Friday fell from 111,536 in September 2007 to 68,850 in September 2012.

At the same time, Ms. Hasson has been trying to calm the nerves of her family after photographs of the home she is renting and references to her adult children were put online.

“They are concerned about my safety,” she said about her children. “But they are very supportive.”

 

States can opt out, but...

...they probably won't.

Republican governors and local representatives complain about “government run healthcare,” but if they don’t get with the program, they may have no healthcare.

According to new findings by the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems (NAPH), by 2019, safety net hospitals’ uncompensated care costs will be $53 billion higher than originally estimated if states don’t opt into the voluntary expansion of the Medicaid program under Obamacare.

Safety net hospitals serve areas where, on average, 14.9 percent of the population is uninsured and 32.5 percent of the population relies on government-provided health coverage such as Medicaid. Current Medicaid reimbursements often fall short of the full cost of care, so programs such as federal DSH funding help make up the difference. Obamacare cuts DSH funding in half by 2019 in an effort to reduce national hospital payments — but only because the cuts to safety net hospitals were intended be offset by the vastly expanded pool of newly insured low-income Americans.

In hindsight making the expansion of Medicaid voluntary may not have been ideal, but making it mandatory also may have lead to the entire law being struck down. Because even in its current iteration, the Affordable Care Act survived by a razor-thin margin and ultimately relied on Chief Justice John Roberts having a last-minute change of heart.

With that said, I expect much of the opposition to the expansion of Medicaid will fade away after election season is over, and will almost entirely disappear in 2014 when the remainder of the law comes into effect.

This study, conducted by the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems, suggests they simply won’t be able to afford not to. And perhaps more importantly, refusing to expand Medicaid will be very bad for business.

Some things should never be

Portland is infamous for its many microbreweries and Voodoo Donuts, especially their bacon maple bars. Putting it in a Pepto Bismol-colored bottle just adds to the vomitaciousness. There are some things I'll do, but I won't do that.

Rules on moving in together

Here's some helpful hints on moving in together. 

Not that I had them handy when I moved in here with Joan, but a lot of the tips are just common sense. You don't tell someone that their lovely photo of their great-grandparents is crap and you want to set up your homage to Joe Montana in its place. Sensitivity, my friends. Of course, moving in would be simpler if I didn't have so much crap. Since most of Joan's stuff, think kitchen-ish stuff, is better than mine, I've made a lot of less fortunate people happy by donating my toaster/convention oven, my microwave and other stuff to the Community Warehouse here. 

I'm technically moved in, and my music operation is pretty much set up, maybe 90%, but up in that room and down in the basement are all these boxes. Some are half-full and need to be combined, some are empty and need to be broken down and store or discarded. And some just need to be shoved on shelves. Luckily, I come with shelves. I've got to spend enormous gobs of time getting all that stuff into some order. 

And then I've got to clean up my old apartment. That's the task I dread. 

Unions

And this is bad?

Legalization would drive down the price of marijuana.

Praise for "The Wire"

If you go here and listen to the April 11th podcast, you will begin to understand why I love "The Wire". Jason Whitlock, a sports reporter out of the middle of the country, talks for almost an hour about his love and reverence for the show and pretty much puts into words my feelings about it.

I have long maintained that my two favorite TV shows, #1 and #1A in no particular order, are "The Sopranos" and "The Wire". My love for "The Sopranos" in part is nostalgic in that I grew up in New Jersey and went to college in the Northern New Jersey area where Tony Soprano rules, and occasionally I see different familiar landmarks or references to things from my past. But "The Sopranos", which starts out with the main character going to a psychiatrist to try to figure out why he suffers panic attacks, is actually a psychological case study. In a way it also gives insight into how sociopaths survive and flourish in society. Along the way it tells interesting stories about the various characters who appear to be exaggerations of the flotsam and jetsam of humanity that we all come to know over the course of a life.

"The Wire" strikes me as more of a Shakespearean tragedy. I am reminded of the line from a character in "Julius Caesar", "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings." At one level there are individuals who seem destined to their tragedies, and yet these characters fight it out, struggle against their destiny. Like real life, few completely overcome their surroundings and frailties, so maybe it is the stars. And just as Shakepeare allows the most despicable characters to open themselves to the audience, to reveal their inner selves and torments, so does The Wire's creator David Chase allow everyone in his cast a glimmer of humanity.

I spent some of my tax refund this year on the box set of "The Wire". One of the great things I've discovered is that Joan gets it. She'd never seen it before, but she gets it. That's great. And when I listened to Jason Whitlock's podcast I thought, Yes, he gets it too. At one point he mentions that someone recently interviewed President Obama, who said that his favorite show is "The Wire". Apparently, Attorney General Eric Holder's favorite show is also "The Wire". The interviewer asked Obama who his favorite character was. And Whitlock offers amazement that the series is reduced to "Who's your favorite character?" In fact, the question should have been, "If you've seen and liked the show, how can you continue the drug war? Or didn't you get what the show was about?"

As I've said, what is really wonderful in this go-round with "The Wire" (I'd seen it through Netflix before) is that Joan gets it completely, and while she may have to turn her head from some of the most violent scenes, she understands and appreciates it. To paraphrase Whitlock, it's about America committing suicide. Undoubtedly, the show overall is probably way too dark for most people. People would rather you not point out that a society is committing suicide. 

We just finished the first season yesterday, and even as the good cops triumph, they lose. Such is life. Powerful stuff.

Snore rooms

According to the LA Times the newest trend in housing, at least for the baby boomer set, are "snore rooms". That is, a place to go or send noisy spouses.

I have been told by women who have slept next to me that I snore. Of course, I've never heard myself snore. I've always been asleep.

Increasingly adaptable bedroom designs may be just the ticket for trend-driving Baby Boomers whose marriages are plagued by snorts, sniffles and wheezing.

Enter the so-called snore room option at Del Webb’s Sun City Shadow Hills in Indio. The secondary bedroom that shares the master bathroom was designed for 55 and older couples who may start out in the same bed but end up apart because of snoring, insomnia or late-night TV viewing habits. About a quarter of couples in this age group sleep apart to get a good night’s rest, according to data studied by PulteGroup.

Of course, bigger kitchens are wanted too. But you can't sleep in kitchens.

How to deal with a Christmas slacker

Here.