The Republic of T.

There’s one Michael Jackson video I forgot to add to the previous post. I thought of it because I found myself humming it yesteday.

I guess the lyrics spoke to me.

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The debate over health care reform has taken a particularly worrisome turn. Suddenly we’re in a place where passing something kind of like reform may be more important than getting to reform itself. In the name of "compromise" and in interest of getting something passed, we could get a health reform bill that helps fewer people than originally intended, and preserve more of the status quo than almost anyone wants.

For minorities low income families and individuals, that means more of the kind of disparities — in access to care, quality of care, and health outcomes — that are all too common in our present health care system. The 2008 National Health Care Qualities & Disparities report spells out some of these disparities, including: higher rates of disease, access to care, and lack of routine care and prevention.

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Yikes. At least the story about hiking the Appalachian Trail (on Naked Hiking Day) was kinda interesting. But what the fuck was Mark Sanford doing in Argentina?

Sanford’s whereabouts had been unknown since Thursday, and the mystery surrounding his absence fueled speculation about where he had been and who’s in charge in his absence. His emergence Wednesday ended the mystery.

Sanford, in a brief interview with The State in the nation’s busiest airport, said he decided at the last minute to go to the South American country to recharge after a difficult legislative session in which he battled with lawmakers over how to spend federal stimulus money.

Sanford said he had considered hiking on the Appalachian Trail, an activity he said he has enjoyed since he was a high school student.

"But I said ‘no’ I wanted to do something exotic," Sanford said "… It’s a great city."

We know now.

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[Source.]

I take the DC Metro almost every day — once in the morning and once in the evening. But not yesterday.

Investigators are trying to determine why a Washington commuter train rear-ended another train stopped on the tracks Monday, sending one train on top of the other, killing seven people and injuring at least 70.

On Tuesday, District of Columbia officials lowered the number of fatalities in Monday’s fatal accident from nine to seven. D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty said during a Tuesday morning press conference that officials are “going to let the investigation run its course” and added that hopefully the number will not exceed seven by the end of the day.

Fenty has called the crash the deadliest accident in the history of the Washington transit system, which connects the city with its suburbs in Maryland and Virginia.

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When Dr. George Tiller was murdered, it immediately occurred to me to write the series I’ve been publishing all this week. That’s because my first thoughts were of the women who faced heartbreaking choices after getting devastating news late into what were often very much wanted pregnancies. What choices would they have now that there was one less doctor who offered the procedure they need? What options does the other side offer?

The point I tried to make in the series was that opponents of legal abortion have not offered these women any alternative, except one. The other point I wanted to make was one that I remembered from a previous post that actually inspired the series posted this week.

Talk is cheap, and easy. So is telling people where they should be than meeting them where they are. So is taking away the choices of some families, rather than looking at the realities of all families and changing in order to help all families, whatever their circumstances. It’s easier, and simpler, to see that help as “rewarding” them for “immoral” choices, rather than choosing to help all families in order to help - and heal - our whole society. It’s easier not to see helping “them” as helping us, because it doesn’t require us to change.

That’s the intentional choice we’re making. Still.

Anyway, after writing the series, I wanted repost the piece that inspired it. So here it is.

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In the previous post, I wrote that neither posthumous abortion rights icon Gerri Santoro or the anonymous nine-year-old raped and impregnated by her father are representative of the women who sought Dr. Tiller’s services, or who seek late-term abortion in general. It’ safe to presume that neither of them wanted to be pregnant, each for her own reasons. Opponents of legalized abortion in all case would have both of them give birth.

There’s no way I know of to come up with exact numbers, but many of the women who sought Dr. Tiller’s services, and who seek late-term abortion in general, seem to be women who very much want to be pregnant, but found out well into their pregnancies that there were severe complications, as Dr. Tiller himself pointed out in a 1991 interview.

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I meant to add these two videos to the previous post, but time (as usual) was not on my side.

I have the last post in the series I wanted to write two weeks ago but only started at the end of last week — because the other post I wanted to write had already been written several times over and there was nothing much more to say.

I’ll try to get it posted this afternoon.  (Does anyone read blogs on Friday afternoon?)

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In the course of researching another post, I came across some events that weren’t on the the abortion-related violence timeline I posted earlier. So, I’ve updated the timeline and shared it below.

Further updates will follow as I find events to add to the timeline.

Aw, man. First K-Fed and now this?

Levi Johnston is now officially an aspiring actor and model. And according to his new manager Tank Jones, he is getting closer to a clinching a deal that will help him support the baby son he fathered with his former girlfriend, Bristol Palin.

“There’s offers on the table for a little bit of everything – sitcom appearances, a reality show, some modeling,” Jones tells PEOPLE. “We haven’t signed anything, but there’s offers.” Jones declined to give specific details.

Johnston’s interest in a show business represents one of the few viable careers open to him, Jones adds. A high-school dropout passionate about hunting and hockey, Johnston, 19, “is going to go and take the test and finish school and enroll in some college courses,” his manager says. “[But] it’s not like he can go and get a normal job now. Because of all the publicity. The whole interviewing thing, and red carpet and paparazzi – he still hasn’t gotten comfortable with it, but what else does he have? Can he go work at McDonald’s? … He wants to take care of his son financially.”

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This is something I’ve been wanting to say something about for a while, because it comes up so often, but never think to bring it up. So, I have to thank Pat Robertson for giving me the opportunity this time.

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Finally, somebody said it. It’s been on my mind to say for a while now, but I never got around to it. Finally now, somebody else has said it. So all I have to do is say, “Amen.”

After months of hearing everything from national service programs, to the stimulus, and even health care reform to slavery, somebody finally said it. That somebody being brooklynbadboy at DailyKos.

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(WARNING: IMAGES BELOW FOLD NSFW, DISTURBING, POTENTIAL TRIGGER.)

In the previous post, I wrote:

What is the saying? “When God closes a door, he opens a window”? How many windows are there?

…The Doctors Tiller — father and son — like Hearn and others, are in the business of keeping a window open, up against people who are dedicated to eliminating windows.

What the politics of the right means is a life without windows for many of us. Just as they drive people like Dr. Hearn away from windows, their politics drives them to board up the windows that might otherwise be available when life closes other doors, for those of us whose lives don’t fit into the narrow opening they leave — the narrow window they leave open, after boarding up all the others.

It’s worth noting that Tiller’s murder took place just a week shy of the 45th anniversary of the death of a woman for whom all windows and doors out of her desperate situation were firmly closed.

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