So The New York Timesjust wrote an article about some newly-released audio from former President Richard Nixon. Like always, he's a jerk. But this time, he's being a really, really racist jerk. Really racist.
Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster "permissiveness," and said that "it breaks the family." But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases, such as interracial pregnancies.
"There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white," he told an aide, before adding: "Or a rape."
I wouldn't put it past Nixon to think that he associated interracial love with the old, hateful notion that black men were always after white women.
Oh, Tricky Dick. When will history ever vindicate you?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Over the past two days, I'm pretty sure the world exploded. Or at least Iran did. If you've been following (at least as best as reporters can in a counry that went to hell in a day), then you've seen that the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the current president, was most likely a sham. So that's when crowds supporting the opposition candidate Mousavi started burning everything.
Ahmadinejad didn't exactly make it hidden that he planned to disrupt democracy. Mousavi's text messaging networks were jammed hours before the election. He even had to migrate his website to a Google Sites address to avoid censorship in Iran.
Israel's government's reaction to this hasn't been stellar, to say the least. Via The Australian:
However, in the run-up to the Iranian polls, Mr Ahmadinejad's re-election has come to be seen as a strategic advantage. "There is no one who has served Israel's information program better than him," wrote columnist Ben Caspi in the daily Ma'ariv yesterday.
Israeli security officials note that decisions regarding major issues such as the nuclear program are made in Iran not by the president, regardless of who he is, but by Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and a small group of senior clerics.
They have a good point in that last sentence. Khamenei is the man behind the curtain for every political move in Iran, which is a theocratic republic (emphasis on theocratic). The only way to overcome such an oppressive state of affairs is for an internal people's revolution, which is why regardless of who wins the elections, the Iranian people need to take a stand against the Supreme Leader. Easier said than done, but it has to be done if they want progress.
Biden "doubts" the election. Hopefully the U.S. will do more diplomatically to see that this thing resolve itself peacefully. But hopefully we take a hard stand against theocracy. That most likely will not happen though.
On a different topic, a far-right terrorist shot and killed George Tiller, the late-term abortion doctor who saved countless women's lives. Everyone immediately, and rightly so, pointed their fingers at Bill O'Reilly, the man who helped provoke the violent acts by going on long and often nonsensical diatribes about Tiller, who he calls "The Baby Killer."
Joan Walsh went on The O'Reilly Factor to debate this, and I think it's safe to say that Bill O'Reilly almost collapsed near the end under his own denseness.
It's important to note that no matter how often O'Reilly says that Tiller has "blood on his hands," it is really O'Reilly that is an accomplice to murder. Walsh points that out numerous times throughout the debate.
More right wing violence happened at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., which is a tragedy, plain and simple. But the shooting can be linked to right wing media pundits showing their anger and coaxing their viewers into dangerous and insane actions. Shephard Smith, of all people, points this out:
The left needs a Michael Moore film right about now. Wait, there's one coming out soon! Yay!
Running for president in last year's Democratic primaries, Barack Obama promised to restore a federal ban on certain semiautomatic assault guns—a position that's still on the White House Web site. The ban was originally passed by the Democratic-controlled Congress in 1994 and lapsed five years ago. In recent years the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has also lifted virtually all restrictions on imports of foreign-made assault weapons, permitting a flood of cheap Romanian, Bulgarian and other Eastern European AK-47s to enter the country, according to gun-control groups. "There's been an absolute deluge of these weapons," says Kristen Rand of the Violence Policy Center.
But Obama and top White House aides have all but abandoned the issue. Emanuel helped orchestrate passage of the original assault-weapons ban when he worked in the Clinton White House. Now he and other White House strategists have decided they can't afford to tangle with the National Rifle Association at a time when they're pushing other priorities, like economic renewal and health-care reform, say congressional officials who have raised the matter. (According to his office, Emanuel couldn't be reached for comment because he was observing the Passover holiday.) A White House official, who asked not to be identified discussing internal strategy, says, "There isn't support in Congress for such a ban at this time." Ben LaBolt, a White House spokesman, says, "The president supports the Second Amendment, respects the tradition of gun ownership in this country, and he believes we can take common-sense steps to keep our streets safe," pointing to $2 billion in new funding for state and local law enforcement in the stimulus package.
