Still Alive

I'm still alive; just been in the process of a job change that has taken up the bulk of my time over the past week. Spent yesterday at a Concentra medical center giving my obligatory cup o'piss for a 10 panel pre-employment drug screen. My default position is to not work for any company that insists on mandatory drug screens, but practicality deems that position futile in today's environment. What fun.

Anyway, sorry for the light posting, it might continue for a bit as I complete this transition. (Whether it be to the new job or to a cardboard box somewhere on the streets of Baltimore after I fail my drug screen)

As for now; back to the blogging!

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Pro-Life Politician: I had no idea that the $300 dollars and ride that I gave to the woman I was fucking was for an abortion. No, really he said that. Seattle Times:

A woman who dated congressional candidate Mike Erickson seven years ago said she asked him directly whether he wanted to have a baby. He shook his head no, she said, and paid for her abortion.[...]

Erickson agrees that he gave Tawnya $300 for medical help, and a ride to a doctor's office, but said he didn't know she was pregnant or planned to get an abortion.

Erickson, a Lake Oswego businessman, is the Republican candidate in Oregon's 5th Congressional District and is running on an anti-abortion platform. The charge that he provided money to Tawnya nearly derailed his campaign for the May 20 primary and could hobble his chances in the Nov. 4 general election against state Sen. Kurt Schrader, D-Canby.

I believe him. This one time I was in Mexico and paid a hooker $50 and pulled down my pants -- but I had no idea she was going to blow me. Or that she had a penis. OK, I knew she had a penis. But really, the blow job was completely unexpected. Good, but unexpected.

So if it wasn't "I didn't know she had a penis", what was Erickson's excuse?

Erickson gives a far different account of events.

He said he thinks that a week or two before the appointment, Tawnya called asking for help with money to see a doctor. A day or two before the appointment, he said, she called to say she had car troubles and needed a ride.

He said he didn't ask her why she needed to see a doctor, saying he didn't want to pry. "I knew her pretty well but not like — it wasn't my girlfriend — but it was somebody that I had a relationship with," Erickson said.

Erickson didn't wait around. "She said her friend was picking her up and they were going to do something at the mall, or something like that."

Not even an ounce of creativity in his excuse...I'd be disappointed in this douche bag if I was a Washington Oregon voter, not because he's a fucking hypocrite, rather because he's a lazy, fucking hypocrite. Come one man, accuse the chick of being a whore, demean her character, lie about where you were on the day the abortion happen. But for God's sakes, don't say that you gave her $300, then dropped her off at a doctors office, but had no idea that she was having an abortion -- you just thought she was going to the mall...or something. What a dope. An even bigger dope than your average politician.

Winning the War on Terror, One Fetus at a Time

Senate's vote revives overseas abortion issue

As with all foreign aid, I'm sure this is a wise expenditure....

Stuff from Today's Abortion Ruling

Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog has a good rundown on today's Supreme Court abortion decision. He opens by calling the decision in Gonzalez v. Carhart, which upheld the feds' partial-birth abortion ban, "surely... on a par, historically, with Roe v. Wade". More here.

NOW and Planned Parenthood are apoplectic. Conservatives and Christian fundy groups are unimpressed -- or at least playing their cards as if they were.

Buy a Carhartt toddler logo t-shirt here.

Fundamentalists Ponder the Morals of Aborting Gay Fetuses

A leading Southern Baptist reverend has caused a stir by a writing a blog post with the title: "Is Your Baby Gay? What if You Could Know? What if You Could Do Something About It?" While the prospect of homosexuality going the way of Down's Syndrome is horrifying, there are good aspects of this fundamentalist navel gazing.

First, fundamentalists hate gays so much that they might drop their obsessive crusade to ban abortion so that they could abort their gay fetuses.

Second, by contemplating that homosexuality is genetically predetermined and not a lifestyle choice, Reverend Mohler essentially makes a case for gay rights.

The fundies are up in arms over these two points. One commented,

"this is such a delicate and risky conversation to have for a number or reasons . . . We're going to have to be extremely prayerful and careful about making any decision to tinker with a child's genetic or biochemical construction. We may be awfully close to violating the sanctity of that child's life and their integrity as a person."

Another warned,

"What he said lends credence to the fact that it's God's creation. His brothers in faith would be more surprised than liberals with his comments."

To view Mohler's blog, which also has a great post decrying the fact that America now has a Congressman who is "an admitted atheist," go here.

What's So Wrong With Aborting Gay Babies?

Papundit at a pro-Santorum blog (the Senator, not the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter, although he may be pro-that too) takes issue with my recent post suggesting that Senator Rick Santorum would make an exception to his pro-life views to abort gay babies (gabies). He even names me "Wacko of the Week". Awesome. I'll take my attention where I can get it. Although for future reference, I prefer the term Wacko-American.

In a much longer - and far more interesting - follow-up post Papundit takes schadenfreude in the predicament that lefties will be in if scientists ever discover a "gay" gene. Parents would be tempted to abort babies believed to be "at risk" of being born gay, pitting the pro-abortion movement against the gay rights movement. He is right to suggest that this would create chaos on the left, which has no consistent philosophy to guide it. But, for people who are really pro-choice - not just on abortion, but on everything (i.e. libertarians) - there is no predicament.

Women either have a right to abort their babies or they don't. If they do (and I say they do, even though abortion is "gross"), then they have a right to abort babies for any reason, including because the babies might be gay. If this makes pro-abortion folks uncomfortable - because it sounds a little like genocide - then maybe they should question their support for abortion in general. After all, legalized abortion has resulted in millions of babies not being born that otherwise would have been. Is that genocide?

For what it's worth, I would abort a "straight" baby before I aborted a "gay" baby. A gay baby has a higher lifetime income potential. Plus, after I taught him how to tie his shoes, he could help me pick out good clothes to wear.

You Can be Anti-Abortion or Anti-Gay, But Not Both

New research shows that the more male babies a woman has the greater the likelihood she will give birth to a gay baby (gaby for short). This puts conservatives in a tough spot. The only way to reduce the number of future gay men is to start aborting male babies when a woman has too many of them. What are people like Rick Santorum to do? I suspect they would gladly support a woman's right to choose if they thought it would lead to less gabies.

As described this week in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it is the number of boys a boy's mom has already had -- not the number of boys he grows up with -- that best predicts whether that boy will be gay.

The mechanism behind this apparent maternal alchemy remains a mystery. But many scientists suspect that women mount a subtle immune system response against male fetuses that becomes stronger with each male pregnancy, ultimately affecting fetal brains in ways that influence sexual orientation.

Quotes of the Week (so far)

On abortion:

[The Right to Life Movement] is, really, just another species of Political Correctness, just another manifestation of the intellectual pathology, the hypertrophied and academical egalitarianism, the victimological scab-picking, the gaseous entimentality. [sic] that has afflicted our civilization this past forty years.

On drugs:

State Senator Dale Volker says legalizing some drugs will only make things worse. Volker says crime rates where drugs have been legalized are on the rise. He adds there wasn't as much crime in Europe to begin with because there's not as much wealth as there is in America.

On wife-beating:

Women in some cultures are not averse to beatings. They consider it as an expression of masculinity, and as a kind of control, which she herself desires.

On OJ Simpson:

Celebrity sex tape distrubutor David Hans Schmidt released an OJ sex tape on Saturday and it features such lovely scenes as OJ snorting cocaine in the bathroom with one of the women while the other goes through his pants and takes money from his wallet.... First his prank DVD and now this. I guess murdering people wasn't a strong enough legacy for the Juice as he seems intent on destroying any respect you could've ever had for him. This time next year we'll read about him starting up a Hitler fan club and an organization devoted to kicking puppies. And I don't ever want to meet the person that pays money for an OJ Simpson sex tape.