Alabama Passes "Fetal Pain" Anti-Abortion Bill, Rejects Exceptions For Rape and Incest | Truthout
The Alabama GOP marked a successful week in regressive legislation. Gov. Robert Bentley (R) signed the nation’s toughest immigration bill into law yesterday, requiring local police to detain suspected undocumented immigrants and Alabama schools to collect student citizenship information. The GOP-led state Senate then rounded out the day by passing a radical anti-abortion bill that bans anyone from performing abortion after 20 weeks — an act that would punish the doctor with “one to 10 years in prison.”
State Sen. Scott Beason (R), known previously for advising politicians to “empty the clip” to stop undocumented immigrants, ushered the bill through the Senate. Defending the extreme restriction on the basis of “fetal pain,” Beason — who received a degree in geology — definitively declared that “there’s no doubt” a fetus experiences pain at 20 weeks:
”It’s clear that a baby at 20 weeks experiences pain. There’s no doubt about that,” said Sen. Scott Beason, R-Gardendale, who pushed for the bill’s approval in the Senate.
”We’re trying to get it back to the point where once a baby feels pain, there can be no abortions,” Beason said.
Those with an actual medical degree, however, have expressed significant doubt that a fetus’ pain perception functions at 20 weeks. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, “The fetus’s higher pain pathways are not yet fully developed and functional” before the third trimester. Even a fellow Republican lawmaker in Kansas noted assertions like Beason’s are “based on false research” and “untruths.”
The GOP's CIA Playbook: Destabilize Country to Sweep Back Into Power Modern Republicans have a simple approach to politics when they are not in the White House: Make America as ungovernable as possible by using almost any means available. via Alternet.org,June 9, 2011 |
Modern Republicans have a simple approach to politics when they are not in the White House: Make America as ungovernable as possible by using almost any means available, from challenging the legitimacy of opponents to spreading lies and disinformation to sabotaging the economy.
Over the past four decades or so, the Republicans have simply not played by the old give-and-take rules of politics. Indeed, if one were to step back and assess this Republican approach, what you would see is something akin to how the CIA has destabilized target countries, especially those that seek to organize themselves in defiance of capitalist orthodoxy.
To stop this spread of “socialism,” nearly anything goes. Take, for example, Chile in the early 1970s when socialist President Salvador Allende won an election and took steps aimed at improving the conditions of the country’s poor.
Under the direction of President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the CIA was dispatched to engage in psychological warfare against Allende’s government and to make the Chilean economy “scream.”
and from Joshua Holland
Republicans Want to Kick 1.3 Million Vets Off VA Health-Care to Save the Cost of Keeping Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for 13 DAYS by Joshua Holland, Alternet, June 10, 2011
A billion can be a big number to wrap one's head around. If you had a billion dollars in $1000 bills, the stack would weigh 2,200 pounds!
This year, we'll spend $170 billion to keep troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I think that's a handy weigh of expressing big numbers. It works out to $465 million each and very day, or $19.4 million per hour.
Last week, The Hill reported that the Obama administration "might have thrown a wrench into Senate Democratic plans to pass what they see as a jobs bill — by implying the bill spends too much money." (You gotta love The Hill -- they write that Democrats 'see it as a jobs bill,' but the bill in question would increase the budget for the the Public Works and Economic Development Administration, which directly creates jobs.) At issue is a difference of $175 million in funding, which is what it costs to keep troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for 9 hours.
Here's another one:
Republican Paul Ryan and the House of Representatives are looking to end VA healthcare for over 1.3 million veterans who are Priority 7 & 8. These veterans are the least disabled veterans using the system, usually with disability ratings of 0 percent or no service-connected disability. According to the Congressional Budget Office “Option 35,” the cuts would leave 130,000 veterans with no healthcare alternative. This means veterans with conditions not recognized by the VA, like certain diseases from Agent Orange exposure, would have to pay for healthcare out of pocket if they had not other service connected disability.
Currently, the VA spends over $4 billion yearly to treat these vets, despite co-pays intended to offset the expense. Ryan’s cuts are intended to save $6 billion off the VA’s tab and $62 billion over the next 10 years. Instead of merely increasing the co-pay or taxing Wall Street, Congress wants to just cut your benefits out, all together.
So the GOP would cut 1.3 million vets off of VA health-care -- way to support those troops, fellas! -- in order to save the equivalent of what it costs to keep troops in Afghanistan and Iraq for 12.9 days.
As I've said a thousand times before, budgets aren't just sheets of numbers -- they're a reflection of our priorities.
and so it goes,
GORD.
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