Politics
Palin’ in comparison
If one wonders how Alaskans feel about the VP choice of the American fundamentalist movement, one might feel that everyone thinks she is wonderful. A saviour of the right. Odd considering that any other woman in her situation would be tarred and feathered for not choosing to stay home and raise the children. Isn’t that what they say is best? Isn’t that why they don’t support daycare initiatives?
Interesting blog post here detailing the background to an anti Palin rally and how the media chose only to highlight the pro Palin crowd.
It is necessary that the media falsely spin this to look like she has the support of the majority of women. The reality is the majority of women do not want anyone else telling them what to do with their bodies. Someone who appears not to believe in the concept of rape at all, even going to the extreme of expecting women to pay for their own rape kits. Most women are perfectly happy to support a pregnant teenage daughter, provide her with an actual choice, support her in WHATEVER that choice is and not parade her around like a walking billboard of their ideology.
Palin says she recognizes that not everyone agrees with her beliefs. Yet she and McCain would choose to foist their culture of tyranny on them nevertheless. This is a common thread with ultra – conservative – fundamentalists, their complete inability to recognize that choice doesn’t change their lives. If some women have abortions or some same sex partners get married it affects their day to day life not at all. Certainly laws which forbid discrimination and blatant hate mongering do. However, a careful reading of the bible also dismisses such behaviour as sinful [the story of the good Samaritan, turning the other cheek and many more examples]and any etiquette book will tell you it is just plain bad manners.
Both the Canadian and American media have much to answer for presenting Harper, McCain, Palin and others like them as though they were just another politician another choice. This is not politics as usual. First they came for the feminists…….
Play the Race Card…Play it!!!
check out more great cartoons and commentary from Mikhaela here.
Rights, the Right doesn’t believe in them
In April of last year I blogged about the Court Challenges Program and this quote;
Rainer Knopff, a political scientist at the University of Calgary, said the program was “a biased boondoggle that had gone well past its `best before’ date.”
The program only funded groups on “one side” of the political spectrum while “socially conservative groups never got any money. Not a penny, as far as I know,” said Knopff.
He also echoed then-Treasury Board president John Baird’s suggestion, made in defending the decision to kill the program, that it made no sense for Ottawa to spend public money helping groups challenge its own legislation.
“I don’t want to pay for surrogate litigants,” said Knopff, arguing public interest groups should raise their own money for Charter cases. “If they can’t raise the money – tough.”
Today CTV has a story about the further erosion of rights in Canada;
OTTAWA — A Montreal court may be about to make Canadian legal history in a case that could see offenders considered guilty until proved innocent.
A bail hearing at the court this week is believed to be the first involving so-called “reverse onus,” in which a defendant must prove why they deserve less time behind bars and why they should be released on bail pending trial.
This ‘test case’ involves gangs. Naturally one chooses the circumstance least likely to garner public sympathy to launch such an attack. It goes without saying that any argument to democracy and rights will be met with an allegation of supporting gangs and violence. It being the case, unfortunately that some cannot hold more than one thought in their mind at a time. This law may start out as being about gangs and gun crime but it will not end there.
Dave Schroder of Edmonton’s Guardian Angels network thinks the reverse onus rule is “long overdue.”
“When somebody has demonstrated their lack of respect for Canadian law, we do have the right to expect them to be put away,” he said.
We certainly do have a right to expect criminals to be “put away”, right after they have been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of their peers.
I say this as someone whose life has been touched by violent crime. The criminals never even charged. While I still am affected by these crimes, I don’t believe the Canadian criminal system should be built upon whatever revenge fantasies I may hold.
Our rights and freedoms are being stripped away by those who value sound bite over substance, authoritarianism over democracy and big brother over individual freedom. It is time for us, all of us, to speak up before our right to speak is taken too.
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- Controversial ‘reverse onus’ law faces first test
I don’t fill prescriptions at your church, don’t preach in my pharmacy!
The Bush administration in it’s continuing efforts to appease the crazies appeal to it’s base is drafting legislation which would
- consider contraceptives abortifacts
- require family planning clinics to hire staff opposed to family planning
- allow any health care provider to refuse care based on their religious beliefs
- consider fertilized eggs not implanted fetuses to be a pregnancy (even though there is no way to test for this )
Under the draft proposal, federally funded hospitals and clinics that provide family planning services would be required to promise in writing that they will turn a blind eye to health care providers’ views on abortion and certain kinds of birth control, such as emergency contraception.
The proposed rule defines abortion as “any of the various procedures–including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action–that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.”
Organizations that do not comply would forfeit financial aid distributed by the Department of Health and Human Services.
While it goes without saying that women have the right to choose to reproduce or not. I wonder if they have considered that many women are on the pill for reasons other than reproductive control. Other medically indicated reasons include;
- acne control
- Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS)
- irregular or absent menstrual periods
- severe cramps
- endometriosis
- hormone replacement therapy
- estrogen replacement due to such causes as anorexia nervosa, damage to the ovaries from radiation or chemotherapy
- anemia from heavy periods
from the draft pdf available here
Ambulance Firm Faces Bias Suit; Worker Fired After Refusing to go to Abortion Clinic, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, May 9, 2004 at C3 (“An ambulance worker who was fired after she refused to transport a woman to an abortion clinic filed a religious-discrimination lawsuit against her employer Friday…‘I just felt really strongly it was something that I couldn’t do,’ said Adamson, a devout Christian who is adamantly anti-abortion. ‘It would be against everything that I believe in and everything that I support.’”);
This is used an example of bias against people’s religious values. Now what if a gay man requires transport to the hospital is it ok for him to have to wait until an ambulance with a human being non religious person arrives? What about a JW refusing to do a life saving blood transfusion? How about as an atheist or non christian your caregiver declines to contact your priest for last rites because it doesn’t jive with their beliefs? Yes this is a can of worms for choice but also for religious war. And if churches are deciding laws and politics is it not time that their tax exempt status was revoked?
An IRC Section 501(c)(3) organization may not engage in carrying on propaganda, or otherwise attempting, to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities. Whether an organization has attempted to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities is determined based upon all relevant facts and circumstances. However, most IRC Section 501(c)(3) organizations may use Form 5768, Election/Revocation of Election by an Eligible Section 501(c)(3) Organization to Make Expenditures to Influence Legislation, to make an election under IRC Section 501(h) to be subject to an objectively measured expenditure test with respect to lobbying activities rather than the less precise “substantial activity” test. Electing organizations are subject to tax on lobbying activities that exceed a specified percentage of their exempt function expenditures. For further information regarding lobbying activities by charities, download Lobbying Issues.
For purposes of IRC Section 501(c)(3), legislative activities and political activities are two different things, and are subject to two different sets of rules. The latter is an absolute bar. An IRC Section 501(c)(3) organization may not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office. Whether an organization is engaging in prohibited political campaign activity depends upon all the facts and circumstances in each case. For example, organizations may sponsor debates or forums to educate voters. But if the forum or debate shows a preference for or against a certain candidate, it becomes a prohibited activity. The motivation of an organization is not relevant in determining whether the political campaign prohibition has been violated. Activities that encourage people to vote for or against a particular candidate, even on the basis of non-partisan criteria, violate the political campaign prohibition of IRC Section 501(c)(3).
SOURCE
It is said that there is no such thing as being a little bit pregnant, it is obvious that there can be no such thing as being a little bit pro-choice. American women need to come out in droves and support pro-choice candidates. Not just for themselves but for their daughters and granddaughters and sisters. There is a war on American soil. It is the war of religion against reason, lies against science, and a war for control of your body. Don’t let the Bush administration, as did the Nazi’s, as did the Ceausescu regime, make your body property of the state.
And to Canadian readers, this is why we cannot as Ms. May insists have ‘dialogue’ with the anti-choicers. It only emboldens them. Bills C-484, C-537 and Bill C-338 are all bills designed with the purpose of creating a climate where women’s choices are defined for them by others beliefs.
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- Contraception = Abortion? Bush Plan Enrages
Rebranding the NDP
Caught this over at Red Tory
It’s time for the NDP to take on more maturity, he says, and drop the “New.” He wants it to be called simply the Democratic Party, which would link it to the U.S. Democrats. “It’s something that I’m personally proposing and will pursue,” says Mr. Byers. “I’ve been talking to people. It resonates.”
G&M
Well isn’t that awesome! What just in time for SPP? Oh wait isn’t the NDP supposed to be against that?
“In many ways, Barack Obama’s platform is close to Jack Layton’s platform.”
Interesting, since we all know that there is huge disconnect between American and Canadian leftist politics. Could be why I feel such a huge disconnect from the party.
This quote seals the fact that this is not the party I knew.
Getting rid of the “New” would have the paradoxical impact of modernizing the party. As an added blessing, it would expunge from the lexicon the dreary and weary NDP acronym, one that conjures up refugees and communists.
This would seem a perfect new logo
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