Official Rant. I cannot take this anymore! Fuck Dean and his

"big tent" and these backstabbing Dems. I am having a really difficult time understanding why an intelligent women should remain in this country. This is presenting us only with a choice to back those who demean us a persons. I am so upset this week that I cannot even think! All the Dems who are backing Roberts combined with this is too much. I can't face the fact that I have been working so hard for a party that apparently wants to use my rights as negotiable! Thank God for Kerry, but he can't fight this alone. I am very depressed and saddened. It seems pointless to even think about 2008. Many are saying it is over. It is the consequence of losing. Frankly, if Roe is overturned , I could care less who becomes president, or who is elected to Congress or the Senate. If these appointments go through, it won't matter for years to come.And I probably won't be here to see it if it ever turns around . This is exactly like the advice they gave Kerry to not take any stand. This is why we lose. They are making us stand for nothing.




Dean: Democrats need 'big tent'

WASHINGTON -- Young Democrats need to embrace Americans with different ideas and create a more civil tone in politics, the party's chairman said yesterday.

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told the group of about 700 students at the annual convention of the College Democrats of America in Washington that "it's a moral value to respect those who disagree with you."

He defended the party's support of pro-life Democrat Bob Casey Jr., saying that the party needs "a big tent." Mr. Casey is challenging Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican, in the 2006 election.

Mr. Dean said Mr. Casey is a good Democrat because "he cares about the child after it's born as well as before."

<</SNIP>>

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tolerant and civil.It is exactly the same as a white person being tolerant of the slavery that didn't concern them, especially if they didn't practice it. I will never tolerate those views that devalue my person hood and diminish my authority over my own body.Why aren't we negotiating male reproductive rights then? Maybe men should have to go to court to have a vasectomy? Or any medical procedure? BTW, this isn't just about reproductive rights, it was argued on the basis of the inherent right of privacy which will affect us all and is another right I will not negotiate. Period.

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life is less valuable than that of a fetus or a petri dish. I also find it unacceptable that my life would be equal to a fetus or a petri dish. I only gave the example of a slavery apologist because depriving women of the right to control their body is sentencing them to biological slavery!And we shouldn't be tolerant of that point of view. I also don't think we should be tolerant of torture! I just don't think we should be complacent about these things. If this was a threat to men, the uproar would be tremendous. We are about to take an enormous step backward and everything my grandmothers and my mother fought for are about to be thrown away. Pardon me if I view the disposal of my person hood as not an option. I am horrified that so many are willing to let this happen.

He also says that we have to hold to our principles on these issues and the principle is CHOICE.

This AP article is the typical AP BS, where they need to distort what a Dem says, and Dean has never said we need to abandon our principles.

"reach out" to those that demean us. I will never believe that Democrats should "reach out" to pro lifers. We sound as if we can't take a position.They would respect us more if we did.We can't be all things to all people. I shouldn't have to hunt through a speech to find anything pro choice! We should worry more about the voting machines and less about the people who aren't going to vote for us anyway!

This is an AP release. What do you expect?

They are doing their best to distort what the Dems are saying. If we fall thru the trap and begin believe the RW media, we have already lost.

I do not like the idea that Casey is the candidate, but between him and Santorum, even Casey is a better option.

If we can get " pro-life people" to vote Democrats despite their opposition to anti-choice without changing our principles, all the better.

I agree that I am tired with this " reaching out to pro-life (or pro-guns, or religious people, for the matter: look at the least of Dems who sponsor the bill to shield gun-companies from responsibility, you may be surprised). We should reach to them by what we stand for , not by adopting their language.

I have to say I am more worried by the number of so-called " liberal intellectuals" promoting dumping Roe vs Wade as a political tactic that would make the Republican Party implode. Having seen that on DU for the last few days, my indignation at what Dean said is becoming reduced.

Reid is "pro-life", but doesn't he still vote with Democrats on the really critical stuff?

Casey will be a big improvement over Santorum. For just one example, he is pro-contraception. He believes in preventing unwanted pregnancies, not just making abortion illegal.

He isn't perfect, but he's *far* better than Santorum. And if we had 51 Senators instead of 44, Democrats would control the agenda, and a lot of the shit you're worried about would never make it to the floor.

with Dems on choice and Reid also voted for the bankruptsy Bill. I see no evidence he votes with us on the "critical stuff". I really wich I could vbelieve you are right, but I need to see some evidence! Thank you for the good wishes though. I hope I can hang in there too, but I need a little support from our Senate and Congress Dems.

Politicians on both sides know that the polls say that two-thirds of us are pro-choice. Two-thirds. It would be political suicide for any of them on either side to overturn Roe v. Wade. You don't see even the Republicans making any moves in that direction. They promise and promise but do nothing--because they know that the majority is against it.

Dean is just trying to make room for pro-life Dems. And a pro-life Dem is not necessarily going to want to take away choice. What they might do, instead is advocate more educational programs or other ideas that would reduce unwanted pregnancies. Pro-life doesn't have to mean anti-choice.

Wouldn't we all rather see unwanted pregnancies prevented rather than having more abortions? It's better for everyone concerned.

We will have to wait and see where Dean is really going with this, but this is my first reaction.

I actually don't know Reid's voting history that well; my comment was based on seeing a lot of kudos for him lately as Minority Leader mounting a fairly strong opposition to the Rethugs.

What it comes down to - is it better that Harry Reid have a (D) after his name, or an (R)? Or doesn't it make any difference, in your opinion?

It makes a huge difference. If Democrats take back the Senate, the whole agenda is changed, and we can at least block the worst of *'s evil. Every seat matters.

We will have a choice between Casey and Santorum in Nov. 2006. We will be much, much better off if Casey wins. Since there's a bunch of abortion-is-bad voters in Western PA who could be convinced to vote for Casey as long as he is "acceptable" on his abortion stance, I'm perfectly happy with what it is:

* favors government funding for contraception
* will support a bill with exceptions for rape, incest, or life of the mother; although it seems he prefers only the life of the mother exemption.

He also opposes school vouchers and supports allowing gay couples to adopt. These two positions certainly differentiate him from Santorum.

We need people like Casey to win. Casey is our only real chance in PA to get a (D) seat in the Senate. With the PA population being 50% Catholic, and it seems Catholicism is trending conservative, I really believe this is the best PA can do. (BTW, I want to apologize for the state of my state. We're trying.) So, I will forgive any high-profile Dem who walks a fine line to avoid pissing off the anti-abortion voters. Like TayTay says below, I don't really think Roe v Wade is going to be overturned anytime soon. And in any case - and you might get mad at me about this - I think finding a way to stop the terrible death and destruction due to *'s policies outweighs any concern about whether women here have easy access to abortion. If you have some difficulty with that, go look at this picture:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/middle_east_shooting_in_tal_afar/html/3.stm

and read the story:
What the Rest of the World Watched on Inauguration Day



And stopping this evil ain't going to happen anytime soon while Rethugs control both houses of Congress.

Yeah, we want BOTH. We want to stop this evil, and we want to maintain the right of women to choose. But what if we can't have both? Which one takes priority?

Some links for further research about Casey:
http://www.archdiocese-phl.org/opaweb/Survey/audittreasurer.htm

http://press.arrivenet.com/pol/article.php/648002.html

to protest when I was still a child. I was with one of the first groups to protest Iraq and hell yes, I believe Roe is more important. We should never have been involved in either of those wars but we should be involved in protecting the rights of "our" citizens! Roe goes to the very heart of our country.Without the respect of privacy for our people we have no democracy and no real ability to help anyone else.We have an obligation to fix the wrong of Iraq but the obligation to fix the wrongs of our country takes precedence as it deals with who we are and defines our identity.If you are sick yourself you can't do a credible job of taking care of anyone else.

And on another topic, I realize we could set the agenda if we have the majority, but what good would it do if we have Dems that won't support it? How can anyone justify a Majority Leader of the Democratic Party voting for the Bankruptcy Bill?If we have enough Pro-Lifers who support a Repug anti abortion agenda, I don't see how having an D after their name helps us in the least.

I am all for changing the way we talk about abortion, but I never intended it to mean conceding anything as to it being a fundamental right. I was looking for Pro-Choice Republicans to try to find somebody concerned about Roberts, no luck so far. Party before all, I guess, even for the "My Party Too" people. What I did find, though, was a slogan; Pro-Choice, Pro-Child. I can go with that.

Case after case gives women the right to make her own medical decisions. We're sort of like the mentally retarded that way, who can't have abortions or sterilizations forced on them. Of course, with the way things are going with hospitals ending life support, maybe they'll decide third party health institutions know best.

There's nothing to debate on Roe, it's decided law. I don't see where anti-abortion Democrats fit into the picture either.

Roe is not going away. The Supreme Court reads the polls as much as any politician in Congress or hack in the White House. They just saw the recent poll that said that 65% of the American people support Roe and the right of women to have safe and legal abortions. Roe is not going to be overturned per se.

The argument over Roe is the argument over nibbling at the corners of Roe. (Which is also important.) These are much grayer areas that involve actions of Congress and the various state legislatures passing laws that regulate the practice of abortion. These include the idea of banning 'Partial Birth Abortion' which is a non-argument. The banning of this precedure and the law that was written to outlaw it didn't pass muster and has been overturned. This case fails because it does NOT include a provision that allows the procedure to 'save the life of the mother.' (BTW, this is the particular item that drives the wingnuts crazy. They specifically do not want a provision that saves the life of the mother as they find it too permissive. They will always lose on this.) At my Dem Con in May we had a doctor speak about this. He said that the proposed law that was written to outlaw partial birth abortion (a wingnut term, btw) was so specific that it only disallowed this practice. Any physician faced with this legal barrier would be able to switch to another procedure to accomplish the same thing.

Do you understand how difficult it is to outlaw any particular provision on the outskirts of Roe, nevermind Roe itself? Every provision (or nearly every provision) that has been written to outlaw Row has failed or been modified so that it doesn't do what the wingnuts intended. Take Parental Consent. The wingnuts wanted a straight up ban on underage abortions without direct parental consent. (This is a gray area of law anyway.) Each of these laws have failed unless the provision includes the right to bypass parental consent by appearing before a judge or in the 'life and health of the mother' provision.

Roe is not going anywhere any time soon. However, the real success of the anti-choice movement has been in the area of scaring clinics into going out of business. There are vast stretches of America where women cannot obtain abortions, effectively outlawing the procedure for millions of women. This is the scariest part of the anti-choice agenda and it doesn't need a Supreme Court Justice to accomplish it's goal. That's why some of the other questions that will be asked by Dems in the nomination hearings will have more impact on Roe than direct questions about the abortion question. The RICO laws and their application apply to Roe and protection of wmoen who go to these clinics. Putting some teeth into laws that allow for protection zones around clinics affects Roe. And so forth.

He would have signed a partial-birth abortion ban into law, but the repubs would not include a clause about saving the life of the mother, so he wouldn't. Shows how hypocritical they are--they could have saved fetuses by going along, but they chose not to!

Again, they love to talk about this and use it as a wedge issue a lot more than they really want to change anything.

Thee are only a tiny number of abortions performed under these conditions each year. The vast majority of abortions happen in the first 12 weeks. The number falls off dramatically after that. The reason for abortion after this tme frame is usally health related or the fact that there is something seriously wrong with the fetus.

Thomas Frank made a huge deal out of this in his What's the Matter with Kansas book. The Rethugs won't ever actually outlaw abortion. (They use it themselves, after all.) That would deprive them of an issue that has been amazingly useful in their drive to convince the nation that Democrats have no moral values.

We have to change the wording. We do NOT have to change the belief. I can see Dean making an argument that this issue is not just about abortion. It's about empowering women to make their own health care choices. It's about keeping the power of the state from interfering with private decisions that should be between a woman and her doctor. If we want to actually protect Roe and keep it the law of the land than we have to change tactics. The present tactics and strategy are hurting the very cause that is precious to us.

Ssracat: This is not equivocating. I am old enough to just barely remember pre-Roe America. We cannot ever go back to that. Ever. However, sometimes you have to evaluate the fight, figure out what works and what doesn't and change tactics. Otherwise the other side will win.

Now, in light of how unpopular the intervention of the Rethug Congress was in the case of Terry Schiavo, can you construct a better tactic that uses that knowledge to build a better case for non governmental intrusion into the private medical decisions of women. 82% of the American people, without prodding of any kind (indeed the people were bombarded with pro-intervention propaganda) decided that the Congress was WRONG to intervene in the Schiavo case. 82%. That is un-friggin-believable. Can that knowledge be used to fight to save Roe?

I think that's Saracat's problem. We're conceding that there is something amoral about having an abortion. If that's the case, sooner or late the logical conclusion has to be that it needs to be outlawed. Having pro-life Dems indicates that abortion is still open for debate. That is the exact wrong message to send, because as you said, in case after case, abortion is decided law. No debate. We ought to start from there, to win the word war. We keep going backward and sooner or later we're going to fall right off the cliff.

Is there a lesson in there for how to strongly argue in favor of Roe?

it's about changing the way this is talked about. We are dealing with this as a single-issue item and it's not. It's about allowing human beings to make their own medical decisions without undue influence from the State. It's about women controlling their own bodies and being deemed competent by the State to do so.

I remember last Dec when John Kerry brought this up at the NARAL meeting. (Well, the guy does have guts to bring this up at NARAL.) He has a 100% rating from NARAL on this issue. (Unless I miss my guess, you can't get any better than 100%) So when he said that we have to change the way we talk about this, I sat up and listened. And I think he has a very good point. The way we have been arguing this is not working and is giving the Wingnuts a wedge issue that they continue to beat us over the head with. We have to move the discussion to grounds that are more favorable to us. That is also Politics 101 - control the discussion or be controlled by it.

Privacy, liberty, and no third party making decisions for the individual. It absolutely does go beyond Roe, I agree completely. That's how we need to talk about it. Reducing unwanted pregnancies is a whole other issue, important, but separate.

You know what gets me, the abortions they're outlawing are actually the ones people support the most. Late term are almost always, if not always, the life or health of the mother, or severe illness in the fetus. The huge abortion statistics come from the first trimester and those are the abortions of choice, if you want to call it that. The whole debate has gotten flung upside down and people have been bamboozled into supporting an end to "partial birth". But if you asked them if they support abortion under the circumstances that leads to "partial birth", they'd almost always say yes. See what I mean?

and the social movement to ban this does nothing. Absoltely nothing. The docs can simply switch to a different procedure that accomplishes the same thing. Not one abortion has been prevented. Not one. It's a political sleight of hand.

Do you think that the people in both rural and urban areas know that the Democrats are traditionally that party that supports Choice?

The other procedure, from what I understand, is the one where they chop the fetus up. So I don't understand how that's less gruesome anyway. A D&X means a medical tragedy, we used to have sympathy for that. We never should have used choice and the slippery slope argument, we should have fought for the right to have that abortion and framed it correctly. Whoever made the PBA strategy decisions, grrr. That's what we really need, a study to find out who made these damned dumb decisions and then get rid of them forever.

Oh yes, people everywhere know Democrats are "baby killers". :eyes:

is for Democrats to start clearly enunciating their positions and stick to them. We are pro choice . Period We are pro environment and pro worker. End of story. We obfuscate and confuse in an attempt to "explain" and satisfy everyone. It can't be done. We have to stand for something.People are begging for a choice and we ,ala Lieberman and Fienstein, as well as others, are refusing to give the voters one.
I was at a Democratic meeting last week with an incredible speaker.He was a journalist and a Republican. He stunned the audience.He believed in everything the Democrats allege to hold true. We asked why he wasn't a Dem.He didn't really answer, but he stressed the fact that the Dems have to offer a platform. It isn't even so much what you believe, but that you believe in something.He said many Repugs would vote Dem ,but they don't know what we stand for.This abortion issue is a perfect example.We should fight Roberts because we must send a message that we care.Even if we can't win, we must garner respect by standing up for what we believe.

Civil Rights issue for you. You believe that being pro-choice also means that you believe women have the mental capacity to decide their own medical care.

Is it changing the subject or weakening the argument to state this as you wrote it? Does using these words make you less of a strong proponent of the right for women to have an abortion?

Can we strengthen the argument?

There are pro-environment and pro-choice Repubicans. The only reason nobody is saying the Republican Party doesn't have a platform and doesn't stand for anything is because Dems haven't made it a talking point. There's a difference in views between rural and city, it goes beyond party lines. That's the problem, not the Democrats.

tent! We have got to simply state what we believe. And leave it at that. The repukes don't "explain". We to NOT stick to any songle platform. We have diverse opinions and that doesn't work.The repukes walk in lock step and people understand them. We need to apply a little bit of that ourselves.We need to practice KISS. We need to say we are pro-choice , and move along. Nothing to argue.We don't need to establish and invite different definitions of democrat like "pro-life dems. This only confuses people.
The republicans experience the same rural vs.city divisions and they manage to be clear.They may have pro-enviornment and pro-choice repugs but they do NOT define the party.Our party needs that same definition.

I can't tell you how many times I've posted this, how many blogs I've sent it to, including Buzzflash. Peek picked up the gay marriage in Canada blog, one of the judge blogs was picked up, Buzzflash picks up stuff all the time.

But this? Nada. Sunk like a rock. Because if people can't piss on either the Dems, Bush, or the thread itself, they aren't interested.



Leading Democrats called for an Independent Commission to investigate US policies and practices towards detainees along with alleged abuse. The Levin Amendment will create the Commission and will be introduced as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. Sens. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., John Rockefeller, D-W.V., and Jack Reed, D-R.I., joined Senator Levin who stated, “We are calling for an Independent Commission on the Treatment of Detainees because the Defense Department has shown that it is not capable of investigating itself,” said Levin. “The most serious scandal in recent military history needs an objective investigation.”

The release of pictures and videos to the US District Court in Manhattan was delayed as the government argued that it would violate the Geneva Conventions by subjecting the detainees to humiliation and embarrassment. These are among the pictures that Saxby Chambliss said showed troops "forcing Iraqis to commit sexual acts, and seeming to enjoy what they were doing.” That were apparently so bad that, according to Chambliss, “My stomach gave out.”

The Commission will cover laws and policies relating to detention or interrogation of detainees, including rendition to foreign countries; the role of military and civilian leaders, Armed Forces special operations, intelligence agencies and government and private contract employees; ascertain interrogation techniques, polices and practices; as well as how policies were formulated and implemented. Click for Full Text of the Amendment.

http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/?view=plink&id=1281

and doesn't want to cover this story, what does that prove? I know the Dems have been active on Abu Garib. but The Dems have been noncommital on many issues and we have been hammered for it.We need to be clearer and concise and take positions that are understandable to average people.
Even this article able the Commission should probably be narrowed down to a quick soundbite so people get it and remember!

It isn't entirely the media. The attitude Democrats have is important too. Currently, we're a party that is either complaining about the Administration or complaining about each other. It's not going to attract anybody.

There is a Democratic platform. Mostly, people would rather nitpick then find the things they agree with and stand up for them.

letting Republicans and pundits frame what our party is. So many are suckered into their rhetoric. The ones nitpicking are the ones destroying the unity we shared , we need to stand up together instead of dragging this party through the mud, for simple selfishness. I am a lifelong Democrat, and I am tired of other so-called Democrats trying to reframe the party, it is fine the way it is. We are not Republicans, or Independents or Greens we are Democrats.

Just my 2 cents.

about our positions!

Buzz is always manufactered and we haven't had anyone good at creating it since the Clinton team! That was something they were good at!

You just don't happen to like the buzz they're creating! (Either do I)