If you live in Washington, DC, come join me and others for a candlelight vigil mourning the murder of Dr. George Tiller today, killed (likely) for his unwavering stance in upholding the law of the land - choice for women to make their decision about their reproductive rights.

As Chris said:

The anti-choice movement is not a movement of peace or of love.  It is a movement that uses language and tactics aimed at terrorizing abortion providers and women.  It is utterly irresponsible to equate abortion with murder (even “genocide” in the language of the anti-choice Genocide Awareness project) when there are killers who have proved willing to take this rhetoric to its logical consequences.

Stand up to lawlessness. 9 pm in Dupont Circle for 15 minutes. Bring a candle. We’ll see you there.

“Operation Rescue has worked tirelessly on peaceful non-violent measures to bring [murdered abortion provider Dr. George Tiller] to justice through the legal system, the legislative system,” Mr. [Troy] Newman [president of Operation Rescue] said. “I’m a tireless advocate and spokesperson for the pre-born children who are dying in clinics everyday.  Mr. Tiller was an abortionist.  But this wasn’t personal…”

“At its core, abortion is a fundamental assault on the sanctity of innocent human life.”  2008 Republican party platform.

Dr. George Tiller, a physician who provided legal abortions to pregnant women whose life or health was at stake, was murdered in a Wichita church today.  Dr. Tiller’s wife was in the church when he was shot and killed.  The couple have four children and 10 grandchildren.

For decades, the grotesquely mis-named “pro-life” movement has insisted that abortion is murder.  It has become unremarkable for supposedly mainstream elected officials to repeat this charge.  The Republican party platform, quoted above, euphemistically calls abortion a “fundamental assault on the sanctity of innocent human life”–fancy words for saying that abortion is a form of killing.

Only a small minority of Americans take the extreme position that abortion should be prohibited in all circumstances—even when a pregnant woman’s life is at stake, even when a woman becomes pregnant as a result of rape or incest.  Somehow that extreme position has been able to masquerade as a mainstream one.  The Republican party has been indispensable to this mainstreaming of radicalism: with one of two major national parties endorsing the fanatic view that abortion is killing, the milquetoast national media is unable to call the anti-choice movement what it is: a group of fanatics whose rhetoric logically justifies the killing of abortion providers.

Take a look at what Troy Newman of Operation Rescue said (quoted above).  In the same breath that Newman spoke of non-violence, he baldly described abortion as the death of children, and suggested that Dr. Tiller, as an “abortionist” was responsible for those deaths.

Troy Newman didn’t shoot Dr. Tiller.  Neither did any of the many irresponsible Republican leaders who embrace anti-choice rhetoric.  But the logic is obvious. If you believe that abortion is the murder of children, then killing an “abortionist” is entirely justified.

The anti-choice movement is not a movement of peace or of love.  It is a movement that uses language and tactics aimed at terrorizing abortion providers and women.  It is utterly irresponsible to equate abortion with murder (even “genocide” in the language of the anti-choice Genocide Awareness project) when there are killers who have proved willing to take this rhetoric to its logical consequences.

Dr. Tiller, who leaves four children and ten grandchildren, is not the first abortion provider to be murdered.  If those who claim to be “pro-life” are serious about this being the last such murder, they ought to reject their incendiary rhetoric.  I am an ardent supporter of free speech, and I do not suggest punishing anyone for mere speech.  But those who claim abortion is murder can see what is happened, and they can decide whether they want to keep making this perverse claim after yet another living, breathing human being has apparently been killed in the name of life.

The kind of discussion you get when you try to convince a die-hard believer is now typical of news releases from the representatives of what used to be the Republican party. I recall as a teenager pointing out to some one who insisted that Jonah (in the Bible) was swallowed by a whale, that the bible says ‘big fish’, not whale. The response was that it was, indeed, a whale, and nothing would change her mind. That sort of dug in adamant rejection of reason is becoming the standard in rightwinger claims.

It may be that ‘becoming’ is a false concept. It probably has always been the standard. As Frank Rich points out today at the NYT, Cheney’s recent speech about torture - that wasn’t torture - keeping us safe was easily torn apart, and while most media treated the lies as facts, McClatchy reporters did the job.

With selective quotations, Cheney falsified the views of the director of national intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, on the supposed intelligence value of waterboarding. Equally bogus was Cheney’s boast that his administration had “moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and their sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks.” In truth, the Bush administration had lost Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, not least because it started diverting huge assets to Iraq before accomplishing the mission of vanquishing Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. That decision makes us less safe to this very minute. (Emphasis added.)

As the misnomer ‘the media’ increasingly refers to a masquerade, right wing talking points paraded as the news, some of those who have taken responsible positions and still crusade for actual security for this nation are forced to speak out.

Richard Clarke, who served in the Clinton administration and in the recently ended maladministration of war criminals, spoke out today in a WaPo op-ed.

Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice may have been surprised by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — but it was because they had not listened. And their surprise led them to adopt extreme counterterrorism techniques — but it was because they rejected, without analysis, the tactics the Clinton administration had used. The measures they uncritically adopted, which they simply assumed were the best available, were in fact unnecessary and counterproductive.

“I’ll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities,” Cheney said in his recent speech. But this defense does not stand up. The Bush administration’s response actually undermined the principles and values America has always stood for in the world, values that should have survived this traumatic event. The White House thought that 9/11 changed everything. It may have changed many things, but it did not change the Constitution, which the vice president, the national security adviser and all of us who were in the White House that tragic day had pledged to protect and preserve.

The facts should be headlined, and presented as the major news, but I have heard more about Britain’s Got Talent than about truths on the wrongheaded war on Iraq. The lies were treated as real news.

Irresponsible lies are the basis for the deaths of our troops, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. We will be supporting mind-numbing numbers of severely injured soldiers for the next generation. Those are some of the costs of allowing lies to stand, and form our policies.

This disaster wasn’t caused just by reality-challenged criminals in our executive branch. It was caused just as much by our media, that kept its sources by ignoring the truth that contradicted them.

I repeat myself, but it’s time to stop giving hits to the media pretenders who front for rightwing lies. Avedon named several of them, and we see them constantly featured on news commentaries, repeating those same lies.

When we stop playing their numbers game by adding traffic to their sites, we are battling for the truth to be news, instead of a footnote. If you haven’t thanked them yet, please join me in commenting at the sites linked above, with a thank you.

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/ )

From time to time, events unfold that are so large in scope, so all-encompassing in their implications that one’s initial response is muted by an inability to categorize it all within the realm of experience. Previous reference points prove of little service. One’s image of oneself and one’s place in the world is under siege, perhaps even in danger of being torn away. One stare’s into the abyss, until the abyss removes its dark shades and makes direct eye contact. The mind buzzes; one’s thoughts scuttle in circles like stunned insects.

On a collective basis, we as a nation are living through such a time. At present, we are witnessing the descending spiral of Icarusian Capitalism; our sacred delusion of the perpetual ascendancy of a god-like market place lies broken in the dust. Malls and McMansions stand abandoned, desolate as the edifices of forgotten gods, as the come-ons of the salesmen of deregulated capitalism are churned to spittle amid a cacophony of collapsing market platitudes.

And not an uptick in public optimism, nor a surge of euphoria on Wall Street, nor the “invisible hand of the marketplace” sprinkling pixie dust will bring back the Olympian days of 2005, when the wise men of Washington and Wall Street knew the force of gravity was just a myth believed in by those embittered prophets of doom whose only joy in life is fantasizing the fall of their wealthy betters. It does not matter a damn how many dollars our present day believers of neoliberal tall tales, President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner, pour into the hole in the ground where the crash occurred, a beanstalk twining skyward towards a golden, debt-negating goose will not flower forth.

Fortunately, when false convictions fall, it is possible for a leveling of sanity to prevail. But there can be no more hubristic flights borne on waxen wings. No more multibillion dollar confidence scams from Wall Street. No more smash and grab imperial wars. No more tea parties for the dim and deranged. There is the banality of evil, and then there is the evil of banality. The present era has produced both in abundance. From about the late nineteen-seventies to the present, The United States all but ceased manufacturing products and went into the business of manufacturing marketplace hype, baseless fears, and illusionary enemies. Due to this economic and cultural derangement, a dark tower of self-imprisoning delusions has circumscribed our nation’s fate. Is it any wonder the quintessential dark lord of the darkest tower, Dick Cheney, will not exit the scene?

And what will foster real change? Not pleasing sound bites and rousing oratory from President Obama, then a continuance of many of the pernicious policies of his criminal predecessors. Conversely, the iron gates of Hell must crash closed behind us. The absence of light must grow so unbearable to us that we’re willing to ask how is it we arrived in this place and become willing to challenge our most cherished concepts about ourselves and our place in the scheme of things. That is the sort of “indefinite detention” the nation could use. What is needed is the audacity of hopelessness.

It’s good to see the word getting out about this guy. Print media has provided good coverage so far, but television is lagging behind. We need more segments like this:

This morning I was listening to WaPo reporter Chris Cilizza on CSpan tell High School kids about his career in journalism. When he got to the point of insisting that although he constantly gets comments from readers telling him what an idiot he is, but the next day those same commenters are back telling him what an idiot he is, I realized that it is, indeed, the credo at that paper that reportage is not their purpose.

A few years ago, editor Hiatt claimed high popularity because of the number who comment on his editorials. Since that time, I have been very aware that the purposes of his editorial ventures was much different from what they claim.

Controversy is created by differences of opinion. What better way to produce controversy than to write what you know readers will disagree with? Since most of the readers of the WaPo region, and demographic, are educated and knowledgeable, how better produce disagreement than by making statements that are wrong, or at least ignorant?

Today, I went to WaPo to see a comment Avedon made on David Broder’s op-ed there, that she accessed through Digby. The comment was highly worthwhile, though the op-ed itself was rightwing talking points.

Avedon wrote:
I don’t understand this column. On most issues, this judge has proven to be remarkably conservative - not surprising since she was placed on the court by a conservative president.

Your definitiion of “liberal” seems to be “not vociferously opposed to Roe v. Wade.” But that’s not a liberal position, it’s mainstream - most Americans do not oppose Roe v. Wade.

Why is overturning Roe of such import to you, and why do you think it is the defining issue for not being a raving crazy loony lefty?
5/30/2009 8:12:36 AM

As Digby pointed out yesterday, Broder represents the Villager hopes that Roe v. Wade will be overthrown. Having women and their medical options restricted by laws espoused by rightwing thought, rather than science, is promoted by the fading Villagers.

As Avedon points out, most of this country disagrees with that viewpoint. Still, the media continues to give the major voice to that minority view. The impetus of creating controversy, by disagreement with rational though,t has overwhelmed the media, mostly it seems because they produce high numbers of responses by rejecting true and rational thought.

Facts have that liberal bias that Colbert realized years ago. Rational thinkers get enraged and make the furor that the Villagers want, because we can’t stand it that print and broadcast gets it wrong.

I think it’s time to remove the rational community’s support. We’re promoting irrational viewpoints. As no matter how often we point out that they are wrong and ignorant, that only convinces them further of the drawing power of rightwing views. I believe it is time to reject the Villagers outright.

I’ve stopped reading WaPo editorials, and commenting in response to Fred Hiatt’s editorialisms, even though reading the comments often is quite enlightening. It’s my choice to remove the impetus of enlarged audience.

We as liberals know better than to believe, and want to enlighten the weak-minded. It’s that impulse the Village idiots are using to convince advertisers that they are selling papers. It’s our best qualities that are being used against us.

If it promotes support for idiocy, I’m not going there. Support for denying women medically sound advice and procedures is wrong. WaPo by publishing the Villagers encourages that. It makes profits for them. Personally, I am removing myself from that equation.

No more reading the Villagers.

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/ )

If you haven’t already, read Atul Gawande’s piece on health reform in the New Yorker, largely centered around McAllen, Texas, the community in America with the highest health care costs. It’s hard to quote the heart of the article, because it’s so good, so I’ll just quote the conclusion:

Something even more worrisome is going on as well. In the war over the culture of medicine—the war over whether our country’s anchor model will be Mayo or McAllen—the Mayo model is losing. In the sharpest economic downturn that our health system has faced in half a century, many people in medicine don’t see why they should do the hard work of organizing themselves in ways that reduce waste and improve quality if it means sacrificing revenue.

In El Paso, the for-profit health-care executive told me, a few leading physicians recently followed McAllen’s lead and opened their own centers for surgery and imaging. When I was in Tulsa a few months ago, a fellow-surgeon explained how he had made up for lost revenue by shifting his operations for well-insured patients to a specialty hospital that he partially owned while keeping his poor and uninsured patients at a nonprofit hospital in town. Even in Grand Junction, Michael Pramenko told me, “some of the doctors are beginning to complain about ‘leaving money on the table.’ ”

As America struggles to extend health-care coverage while curbing health-care costs, we face a decision that is more important than whether we have a public-insurance option, more important than whether we will have a single-payer system in the long run or a mixture of public and private insurance, as we do now. The decision is whether we are going to reward the leaders who are trying to build a new generation of Mayos and Grand Junctions. If we don’t, McAllen won’t be an outlier. It will be our future.

And he’s right. If we don’t get health care costs down, health reform will not work. People will still go bankrupt, we will still ration care based on ability to pay, and we will still have a health care crisis. And when you get down to it, health care costs are about how much and what medicine your doctor orders for you.

Conservatives will accuse those in favor of health reform of taking the easiest way out, in a sense. Health care costs are up? Ok, let’s ration care and drive those costs down. But that’s not what we’re proposing. And, as Gawande so eloquently points out, driving down health care costs and increasing the quality of that care actually can be one and the same. So that’s some pretty good news.

One thing about this article leaves me puzzled, though. Gawande seems to set up a conflict between advocacy for a public health insurance option and what he apparently considers “real” health care reform, which is setting up incentives for doctors to provide better care, not just more care. Maybe he’s just reacting to the media coverage around health care reform, which has been largely centered around a public health insurance option. And maybe I’m biased, seeing as I’ve been working to shape that media battle. But I really don’t think it’s either/or. Actually, I think Gawande’s point makes the public health insurance option more critical.

I agree with Gawande that we could end up with a public health insurance option that doesn’t foster the right incentives to control costs, and that wouldn’t be a big victory. But while Gawande is proposing some kind of outside board to control these incentives, I wonder if the public health insurance option isn’t the place where these reforms are put into action.

Think about it: One advantage to a public health insurance option is that it is transparent. Private insurance doesn’t tell you what they pay for services, how often these services are used, and whether these services have improved patient outcomes. A public health insurance option could make that data available and work with it to improve care and control costs. This data would put the public health insurance option in the perfect position to figure out why some places in America cost so much more and why their outcomes aren’t any better, and how to fix that.

We must get costs down, that much is clear. We need the tools to do it. I’m pretty convinced the public health insurance option can be at least a crucial part of that toolset.

(also posted at the NOW! blog)

Watch this video from Think Progress:

ThinkProgress Video Report Exposes Profits-Driven Ideology And Scandal-Plagued History Of Leading Right-Wing Health Reform Opponent Rick Scott

Via Politico:

Progressive health care reform groups demanded on Thursday that Washington’s NBC television affiliate refuse to air a 30-minute infomercial funded by a conservative group opposed to creating a public insurance.

The Service Employees International Union sent a letter to NBC4, arguing that the station has a responsibility to pull the documentary-style commercial paid for by Conservatives for Patients’ Rights. The ad, set to run Sunday after “Meet the Press,” “will be false, deceitful, and a distortion,” the union’s attorney wrote in the letter.

…

If the ad is aired and does contain falsehoods, CPR could face a fine from the Federal Communications Commission, said Levana Layendecker, the online campaigns director for Health Care for America Now, a coalition pushing to create a public insurance plan.

The coalition, Democracy for America and the SEIU e-mailed their supporters, asking them to sign on to another letter that urges NBC and “Meet the Press” to refuse to air the infomercial. The groups plan to send another e-mail Friday to Washington-area supporters, rallying them to call the station with the same message.

Sign on to the letter and pressure NBC and Meet the Press to get Rick Scott’s lies off the air.

And, while you’re at it, call the NBC Washington station directly and let them know they’ll be liable for FCC fines if they air these lies: (202) 885-4000.

(also posted at the NOW! blog)

When the trial of the Holy Land Foundation was held in Dallas Federal Court, I had the opportunity to attend. It was something I wanted to do since what I had seen reported - that prosecution included witnesses who were unidentified, a practice contrary to our Constitution - had made me uncomfortable with what our Justice Department was doing.

The several times I did attend the trial showed that I had only had a dim idea of the extent to which the trial violated our laws. As I have written here previously, procedures were allowed that had jurors supposed to come to judgment on the charges by such illegal practices as hearing witnesses that had been encouraged to give their views on what people of Palestine thought and felt, and claims by a witness, an Israeli agent, that he could “smell” terrorism. A major witness admitted that his testimony would be factored into his own sentencing on unrelated charges. In his closing remarks, the prosecuting attorney from the U.S. Department of Justice claimed that Freedom of Speech did not obtain in this trial, for these defendants.

Today’s editorial in the Dallas Morning News bases much of its finding that heavy sentences the defendants received were justified because most of the defense was about causes for support of the charities - charities that in Palestine are associated sometimes with groups whose members are sometimes terrorists. The defense showed abuse of the people of Palestine, something that the editorial was uncomfortable about, so condemned.

Regardless of the rationale behind the Richardson-based group’s actions, anyone who helps fund groups that make bombs to blow people up deserves stiff punishment…
His (Shukri Abu Baker of Garland) statement was an appalling attempt to distract the public from the true effect of his crime: to collect money that helped Hamas kill, maim and fulfill its goal of wiping Israel off the face of the earth.

Have Israelis done their own share of killing and maiming? Absolutely. It is painfully obvious to the entire world that this cycle of retaliatory bloodshed must stop. To reach a peaceful solution, each side must acknowledge publicly and without equivocation that its militants have committed wrongs. Contrition seems absent from their vocabulary.

It’s appalling enough that our constitution should be thrown out in the conduct of a trial, but being incensed by expressing an appeal to common humanity is as twisted as it gets. Being made to feel guilty is justifiable; the judgment was against acknowledged charitable activities. The connection with terrorism was made only by distant association.

Being mad about feeling guilty is a character flaw. That the News insists the defendants ought to be apologizing is a projection by those whose consciences would be assuaged if they could get some reassurance that this judgment is not deeply flawed.

That assurance would be admission of guilt, and the defendants do not admit that supporting charities is the same as terrorism. The admission the editors want is like the ex-Veep seeking to extract information contrary to fact, from detainees, by torture. The connection used to drag this country into war, that al Qaeda was associated with Saddam Hussein, was one that was not true.

Would the News want to suggest to their jailers that it would be much appreciated, that their consciences will be easier, if they get confessions, please, and waterboarding is known to produce this kind of result? Wanting the facts to conform - when they don’t - is not a desire for justice, but for justification.

This case will be appealed, and hopefully the violations of law that occurred will be enough to show it was not conducted under our constitutional system.

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/ )