Yesterday there was an article in the WaPo about health workers who can’t reconcile their job duties with their religious beliefs. Profiled are an ambulance driver who was fired after refusing to transport a patient for an abortion, an anesthesiologist who refuses to participate in sterilizations, an ultrasound technician who was fired for praying with a patient “to try to persuade her not to get an abortion,” a pharmacist who refused to fill a rape victim's prescription for emergency contraception, a fertility specialist who will only treat married couples using their own sperm and eggs, and a neurologist who will not work with stem cells and refuses to withhold brain-dead patients' food and fluids. The aforementioned ambulance driver has sued her employer, charging religious discrimination.
The title of the article is For Some, There Is No Choice.
This does not refer to the patients left without treatment by healthcare providers, but to the healthcare providers themselves, who “describe what amounts to a sense of siege, with the secular world increasingly demanding they capitulate to doing procedures, prescribing pills or performing tasks that they find morally reprehensible.”
Only in an environment where “freedom of religion” is deliberately misconstrued to mean “the right of a particular strand of conservative Christianity to not have to follow the rules everyone else does” could an expectation to provide legal healthcare services constitute religious discrimination. Only in this atmosphere could not being able to pick and choose which patients you want to serve, thusly redefining your entire profession on your own terms, be considered tantamount to having no choice at all.
Here’s your choice: Do what you were hired to do or get another fucking job.
This culture of victimhood among conservative Christians is ridiculous in the extreme. It is—yet again—predicated on the flawed assertions that their version of Christianity is the only version, and that it is the exclusive source from which morality can be derived. The morality of all the other Christians, all the people of other religions, and all the non-religious people who don’t have these personal issues on the job don’t figure a whit. Of course they don’t—because if they did, the barking lunatics who equate oppression with a requirement of compliance with one’s basic job description might have to face the reality that there’s not some insidious siege upon religious freedom, but instead just a minority group whose religious beliefs make them intrinsically unfit to hold positions as healthcare providers.
They want to have their cake (opposition to certain healthcare procedures) and eat it, too (be healthcare providers free to decline patients of their choosing). It just doesn’t work that way. A regional salesman for Budweiser who’s 12-stepped his way to a belief that selling alcohol is “morally reprehensible” doesn’t get paid to sit in his office doing nothing. A marketing exec for Phillip Morris who’s lost her mum to lung cancer and has a eureka moment that hawking smokes is “morally reprehensible” doesn’t get paid to sit in her office doing nothing. If you sign up to be a science teacher, you teach evolution. If you sign up to be McDonald’s manager, you sell hamburgers and fries; you don’t use your counter pulpit to recommend going home and making a salad. And if you sign up to be a healthcare provider, you bloody well provide healthcare. When your morality is inconsistent with your employer’s expectations, so long as those expectations are legal, it’s your problem and no one else’s—and it’s no one else’s responsibility to indulge your conscience.
Asking for on-the-job exemptions from primary duties based on religious beliefs is nothing less than the “special rights” conservatives are incessantly accusing the LGBT community, women, and minorities of seeking. Those groups just want baseline equality. Christians who want to use their interpretation of the Bible to rewrite their job descriptions want an inequality that caters to their personal whims. Particularly in the field of medicine, where lives depend on people who don’t hesitate, who put patients’ needs before their own desires, such a willful dereliction of duty is contemptible.
No Choice? No Chance.
Charming
Oh how I wish this was a joke. Conservative blogger Iowahawk is holding an online beauty contest using mugshots of female inmates in Des Moines' Polk County Jail.I find the pictures of the women in tears particularly sexy.When I first started posting the comely mugshots of selected arrestees from Des Moines' Polk County Jail (h/t State 29), I had no idea so many readers shared my fascination with caged pulchritude. To commemorate the anniversary of this popular feature, I think it's finally time to select the official Hawkeye Hoosegow Honey of the Year.So classy it hurts.
Quote of the Day
“Instead of building a wall at the border, why don't we just put up a big sign that says, Now entering Stupidland.” — John Howard, who also suggests that instead of breaking his five year no-veto rule over the stem cell issue, Bush instead just has “his cabinet declare Congress 'quaint' then attach a signing statement to the bill that says people with diseases can fuck off and die.”
Pfft
White House insiders say President Bush and first lady Laura Bush are engaged in a good-natured bid to push their faves for the 2008 presidential nomination. "There are two wild cards in the race," says our tipster. "The first lady likes Condi" Rice, the secretary of state. "She has a great story to tell," says the insider of Rice. But Bush likes his bro, Jeb Bush, the Florida governor. "He thinks Jeb'd be the best." One problem: Neither wants the job.My Hopeful Solution: Most Americans won’t want either of those bozos to have the job, too.
At Least 86 Dead in Indonesian Tsunami
A powerful earthquake sent a 6-foot-high tsunami crashing into beach resorts on Indonesia's Java island Monday, killing at least 86 people, leaving scores missing and sending thousands fleeing to higher ground, officials and witnesses said.Forgive my admittedly crass decision to make a political statement in the wake of a tragedy, but this is yet another issue that underscores how fallacious were the claims in 2000 that there was no substantive difference between Bush and Gore. I refrained from making the point about the Global Disaster Information Network the first time around. I simply can’t hold my tongue this time, because I’m angry that more lives have been lost.
Regional bulletins that the 7.7-magnitude undersea earthquake was strong enough to send a killer wave steaming toward the country worst hit by the 2004 Asian tsunami did not reach the victims, because the nation's main island has no warning system.
Is the US Rapture-Ready?
Lo these many months, I have directed your attention toward many excellent petitions, but none have come close to warranting your prompt and undivided attention as this one, passed on by Shaker Pope Bandar bin Turtle—the petition to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services demanding Citizenship for Jesus Christ.
To: US Citizenship and Immigration ServicesPerusing the signatures, I see that Jesus Christ has himself signed the petition (#8, #21, etc.), as well as such luminaries as Satan (#18, #91, etc.), George W. Bush (#11, #29), Benito Mussolini (#41), Fidel Castro (#53), Vlad the Impaler (#118), the Reverend Jerry Falwell (#143), Charlton Heston (#120), Luke Skywalker (#33), Mickey Mouse (#82, #136), Batman (#123), and the Flying Spaghetti Monster (#162).
We, the Christians of Americans, demand that you grant the US Citizenship to Jesus Christ, the son of God.
We, the good Christians of America know that our Lord and Savior will return to earth and we want to make sure he has a legal status in the USA.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned
Petition brought to you by Great Patriot Shelley the Republican, who I’m sure would be extremely pleased to see some more important signatories lining up to urge the DHS to grant Jesus citizenship. There are 166 signers already, so get your name added quickly before it’s lost in the calamitous rush of people who want our nation to get Rapture-Ready pronto, buster.
I Like It
It's a common problem in the nightclub industry: the burly bouncer meets the intoxicated patron, male egos flare and someone gets hurt. Solution? Less testosterone. At least that's the thinking of a growing number of club owners now employing females for security jobs, arguing that women are better at settling disputes verbally and are less vulnerable to harassment charges when attending to female guests. "The age of big thugs is gone," says Robert Smith, a San Diego-based nightclub-security consultant.Most women work as part of a staff that employs several men as well, should they have a need to call in back-up to forcibly remove a determinedly physical patron.
When Stacey Brown, who runs security at San Diego's Olé Madrid, sought a security job six years ago, she says she was "straight-out laughed at." Now some 10 percent of the officers at XL Staffing & Security of San Diego, which supplies guards for 27 clubs in southern California, are female.
Though I’ve been to two clubs with great male bouncers who could diffuse a situation that surely would have gotten ugly had a classically gruff male bouncer tried to solve with sheer muscle, they were definitely a minority. (In more ways than one; they were both also gay.) More like them is a great idea. Bring on the Door Diplomats.
(Thanks to Mr. Shakes for passing that one along.)
Anything you don’t do, I can do better…
…I can do anything and blame it on you.
David Neiwert revisits one of his (and my) favorite topics with The Projection Strategy, which examines once again conservatives’ proclivity toward projection upon their ideological opponents their own traits and behaviors with the express purpose of providing themselves “epistemological cover.” In other words, mendaciously accusing liberals, for instance, of constantly spewing vile rhetoric as justification for doing precisely that themselves.
I direct you to Neiwert’s associated piece on projection by way of introduction to this stunning profile (h/t C&L) of Dr. James Dobson, leader of Focus on the Family and Christian Supremacist powerhouse. The conservative kingpin is also a best-selling author of books on marriage and child-rearing, like Dare to Discipline, which includes helpful explanations of Narcotic Slang, recommends A Moment for Mom, delineates how to Teach Respect and Responsibility to Children, and cautions against the dangers of pot, among its endorsements of spanking and strict authoritarianism. One of Dobson’s unique gifts is to mask the advocacy of extremist family structures, including child abuse and male dominion, in vaguely reasonable-sounding advice. His cited motivation is, natch, the decay of society instigated by godless, deviant liberals, who don’t know how to control themselves.
But a tour through Dobson’s past reveals a man whose actions would certainly seem unfamiliar (to be generous) to most people—and a person patently incapable of learning from his own mistakes.Once, as Dobson writes in The New Strong-Willed Child, [he] provoked a fight between a pug bulldog and a “sweet, passive Scottie named Baby” by throwing a tennis ball toward Baby: “The bulldog went straight for Baby’s throat and hung on. It was an awful scene. Neighbors came running from everywhere as the Scottie screamed in terror. It took ten minutes and a garden hose for the adults to pry loose the bulldog’s grip. By then Baby was almost dead. He spent two weeks in the animal hospital, and I spent two weeks in the doghouse. I was hated by the entire town.”
He might have learned some sort of lesson from that despicable affair, but evidently didn’t, as this tale from his adulthood suggests:After a hard day at the office, he didn’t like the kids crawling all over him when he walked through the door, so the family instituted a rule, giving Dad 30 minutes to unwind, read the paper, or watch the news before the fun could begin. Ryan was a handful. He couldn’t seem to concentrate, did poorly in school, and was diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder. A fifth member of the household, a stubborn little dachshund named Sigmund Freud, added to the chaos. When “Siggie” refused to go to bed one night, Dobson got out a belt and whacked him. The dog bared its teeth and Dobson gave it a second whack. “What developed next is impossible to describe,” writes Dobson in The New Strong-Willed Child. “That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other, with both of us scratching and clawing and growling. I am still embarrassed by the memory of the entire scene.”
Embarrassed by it. If I found myself engaging in a battle of wills and strength of this magnitude with a small dog, I’d check myself into the nearest asylum for intensive therapy.
But Dobson—whose experience being thrashed by a “sissy” boy he tried to bully and current habit of traveling with bodyguards, including a retired Delta Force commando, because he “feels embattled” in spite of the battle being “largely one that Dobson’s initiated,” are also among the slices of life shared in the article—has something special that I and anyone else who might take lucid stock of such aberrant behavior don’t have: A belief that he does not sin.Gil Alexander-Moegerle, a former Focus executive and once one of Dobson’s most trusted advisors, writes in his 1997 book James Dobson’s War on America that this “Holiness” principle is key to understanding Dobson’s worldview: “James Dobson believes that he has been entirely sanctified, morally perfected, that he does not and cannot sin. Now you know why he and moralists like him make a life of condemning what he believes to be the sins of others. He is perfect.”
See how that works? Dobson is perfection on earth, which is a blasphemous sentiment if ever I’ve heard one, and projects the evil so apparent—at least to everyone else—within himself on everyone else. Not just run-of-the-mill flaws, but a seriously dark and dangerous streak that informs his bullying of gays, women, children, and helpless animals. And he leads a religious and political empire so powerful that the likes of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell stand in admiration.
As Zack said, “We live in a world where bullies grow to positions of power without ever having learned anything so simple as basic human decency. … You don’t ignore bullies. You face them down, and you tell them that they are an abomination and you will no longer tolerate their actions.” Dr. James Dobson has turned bullying into a $140 million a year enterprise and perfected The Projection Strategy—and has been rewarded with a direct line to the White House for it. On our list of bullies worth facing down, Dobson’s got to be at the top of the list.
Hoosier Showdown
Indiana’s greatest political mind, former Vice President Dan Quayle, took time out of his busy schedule of golfing on Friday to attend a concert of fellow Hoosier John Mellencamp, only to get his panties in a big ol’ twist:
Before launching into [his rendition of “Walk Tall”], Mellencamp told the Harveys casino crowd, in effect, that it was dedicated to everyone hurt by policies of the current Bush administration.Wah wah wah.
Quayle, who served as vice president for President Bush's father in 1989-93 walked out of the venue before Mellencamp finished the song. Quayle said through a publicist: “Well, I think Mellencamp's performance was not very good to begin with, and the comment put it over the top.''
Mellencamp couldn't be reached for comment.
Oh, but ain't that America, for you and me
Ain't that America, we're somethin' to see, baby
Ain't that America, the home of the free
Little pink houses for you and me…
(Via Memeorandum.)
War Update
Israeli ground troops entered Lebanon, but have returned to Israel after brief scuffles with Hezbollah on the border.
Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets into Israel, killing at least two civilians and injuring more. Israel responded with increased air strikes, including “a single strike on a convoy of families fleeing the fighting in a village near Tyre in the south of the country.”According to witnesses and photographs from the scene of the worst incident, an Israeli missile incinerated a car and a small truck full of families leaving their Lebanese border village of Marwaheen near Tyre after the Israeli army used loudhailers to tell residents they had just hours to go. Pictures showed charred bodies of children strewn across the road.
Meanwhile, the international response remains inconsistent. Syria and Iran have applauded Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers, yet Bush has demanded that Syria intervene (“I call on Syria to exert influence over Hezbollah”) while condemning only Hezbollah (“The best way to stop the violence is for Hezbollah to lay down its arms and to stop attacking”).
UN peacekeepers recovered the bodies. Half the passengers were children or teenagers, according to medical sources. It was the deadliest single strike since Israel started an air campaign against Lebanon after two of its soldiers were captured by Hizbollah on Wednesday.
The EU is considering the deployment of a peacekeeping force and has asked Israel to show restraint. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have called for the deployment of international forces.The European Union has asked Israel to show restraint and Britain was yesterday trying desperately tried to straddle the divide between America and other world leaders at the G8 summit…
Lots of calls for restraint. They don’t appear to be working.
The EU, France and Russia have all condemned the Israeli air strikes as 'disproportionate' but Tony Blair's spokesman, speaking on the way to the G8 summit, refused to condemn the Israeli actions. Instead he said it was essential for the captured Israeli soldiers to be released 'and for all sides to act with constraint'.
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
One of Tart’s biggest pet peeves in the world is men who order women to smile on demand. It is just so, so irritating. (The movie Love, Ludlow has a great scene, as an aside, in which a guy offers up “I heard it takes more muscles to frown than to smile” to the female protagonist, who replies, with a frown, “It’s how I work out.”) For most people, of either gender, attempts to cajole one out of a foul temper is just annoying beyond description—and usually counterproductive.
But, of course, it does us good to smile, when we’re given a genuinely evocative reason. Even forcing oneself to smile can have the rather miraculous effect of lifting a grim mood. Mr. Shakes and I had the occasion to discuss this random factoid of the human condition this weekend as we had discovered a similar mind-altering effect—watching bullshit on YouTube that evokes memories of one’s childhood eases anxiety. There’s something about hearing a theme song you haven’t heard in years, or seeing the opening credits to a show you loved loved loved as a kid, that just pulls you back into a space very distant from the tension of adulthood—and, like an unexpected smile can penetrate gloom, fond nostalgia seems to have the unique capacity to ease worries.
So, I’ve decided to start each morning with a blast from the past in pursuit of such wistful Zen. Not every one will mean something to everyone, but I’ve got a broad selection lined up, so fear not—the day will surely come when you sit back with a grin and a sigh of recognition. Off we go…
You Can't Handle the Truth!
When asked by George Stephanopoulos to respond to the assertion of administration critics "who say that the administration's actions have unleashed, have helped unleash the very hostilities you hoped to contain," what was Condi's response?
A. "This is an indeed an embarrassing but undeniable consequence of our foreign policy."
B. "Between you and me, Georgie, that was the plan all along. Mwah ha ha ha!"
C. "The notion that policies that finally confront extremism are actually causing extremism, I find grotesque."
D. "The Condibot is programmed to disregard reality, therefore its answer may appear to the traitorous reality-based community to be utter bullshit, but Clenis-loving midgets will not question the Condibot or they will be slayed."
If you answered C, you are correct. (Our judges would have also accepted D.)
Thank you for playing. If you're a winner, please report to the nearest Halliburton Detention Center where you will be awarded your prize.
(Crossposted at Ezra's place.)
"United We Stand, Divided We Fall"
The above title is a nice saying, isn't it? Catchy. In 1942 the commonwealth of Kentucky took it on as its state motto (incidentally, in 2002 the commonwealth decided to adopt an "Offical Latin Motto"--Deo gratiam habeamus ["Let us be grateful to God"]). So anyway, the commonwealth is all about being a uniter, not a divider. Maybe someone should tell that to one of its senators:
This week, Roeding [Dick, R-Lakeside] mixed himself up in the University of Louisville's decision to offer health benefits to domestic partners, and in so doing the senator came across as a bigot unfit for further public service.
"I find this very repulsive,'' Roeding said of U of L's plans, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal. And he continued: "I don't want to entice any of those people into our state. Those are the wrong kind of people.''
"Those people"; "The wrong kind of people".
Roeding wasn't misquoted:
In case you're thinking Roeding was misquoted, or that those statements don't reflect his genuine sentiments, consider what he said when a Kentucky Post reporter called to get his reaction to criticism of his remarks from the Republican Log Cabin organization. "Who are they?'' Reading asked our reporter. Told they were a gay rights organization within the GOP, Roeding said, "Oh, a bunch of queers.''
Wow. Quite the winner there, eh?. Roeding is very serious about just how much he doesn't want "those people" to be a part of the commonwealth. From the original Courier-Journal article:
He warned of legislative retribution, since U of L receives a substantial level of support from Frankfort [the capital].
Yes, that's right. The University decided to offer health insurance to domestic partners and this retrofuck jackhole (to use Shakes' phrase) is threatening to bring "legislative retribution" against them. What utter horseshit.
The Cincinnati Post notes:
Kentucky - like any other state - needs all the intellectual capital, all the talent, that it can get. Whether anyone likes it or not, some percentage of the population is gay. What Roeding and others like him are really doing is marginalizing an entire segment of the population. That's not just wrong, it's stupid.
When the Cincinnati Post is talking sense and calling you stupid (even if they are equating all people to working chattel), you know you've reached the shite-covered bottom of the stupid barrel.
(hat tip to S&C, one of those people at Preemptive Karma)
Sigh
The international embarrassment continues:
Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected a suggestion from U.S. President George W. Bush that his country should emulate democracy in Iraq.Yo, Georgie-boy: A lot of people in our country are hoping that America will get some of that “free press” and “free religion” you’re always talking about, too.
During a joint news conference Saturday in St. Petersburg, Bush said he raised concerns about democracy in Russia during a frank discussion with the Russian leader.
"I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world, like Iraq where there's a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia would do the same," Bush said.
To that, Putin replied, "We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy that they have in Iraq, quite honestly."
Another Perspective
Laura Rozen speaks with Mark Perry, “co-director of the Conflicts Forum, a Beirut-based nongovernmental organization that has, over the past three years, put former senior American and British policy-makers and intelligence officials in talks with Hezbollah and other militant political Islamic groups in Lebanon.” Perry has a unique perspective on the situation that’s definitely worth a read. (Via Ezra.)
The Virtual Bar Is Open
It's been a long week. I don't know about anybody else, but I need a drink.
I'll be in and out all night. What's on your mind, Shakers?
(Actual McEwan's ad from 1972.)
Stabbed in the Back!
I tried to find something to excerpt, but couldn’t. The whole point is that it’s one long continuous story. Just read the whole thing.
