Why health of the mother is not just another excuse for pro-choicers

I just recently had a baby girl. She's beautiful, and funny, and makes a lot of weird squeaky noises. I also have a wonderful little boy. I love having kids, and if I had more financial resources, I would probably be lobbying my husband to adopt more children.

The night after I gave birth to my daughter, I had postpartum hemorrhaging. This is a relatively rare complication where basically the mother has excessive bleeding. Thankfully, I was in the hospital and able to summon assistance. There were 5 nurses in my room, administering various treatments to me as a stop-gap until the doctor came. More treatments from the doctor followed. In an attempt to find a balance between providing too-much-info and being frank, let me say this:

1. The treatments to stop the hemorrhaging hurt way worse than labor itself.
2. If I hadn't woke up because my daughter started crying, I don't know how much longer I would have been lying in bed, bleeding. Nor do I know just how long I could have been lying there bleeding and still had the same (relatively good) outcome.
   
3. While I am obviously alive and relatively well, I am now seriously anemic. This means months of prescription-strength iron supplements (and their nasty side effects), fatigue, stress on organs of my body, heart palpitations, etc.

I went home from the hospital on the afternoon of October 15th. That evening, my husband and I watched the 3rd presidential debate between Obama and McCain. During the discussion on abortion, Obama indicated his support for a ban on late term abortions as long as there are health and life exceptions for the mother. In response, McCain said:

Just again, the example of the eloquence of Senator Obama. He's [for the] health for the mother. You know, that's been stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything. That's the extreme pro-abortion position, quote, "health."

I was so angry when I heard this, I wanted to cry.

I don't regret having my daughter. I carried through with this pregnancy, fully knowing that, although rare, there are pregnancy complications that exist that could damage my health or end my life. I made a CHOICE, a personal choice, to accept those risks and continue a pregnancy to its conclusion.

Who exactly does John McCain think he is? What makes him think that he has the right to discount my health? What gives him the right to say which risks to my health are serious enough to allow me to make decisions about my body, and which are not?

Liberal media bias my......um....foot

Being a Minnesotan, I visit the Star Tribune website pretty frequently. Conservative commenters on the site often refer to the paper as the "Red Star," saying that the paper is heavily biased toward Democrats (and inferring that we Dems are all crazy-commies, as per usual).

Looking at the editorials, the Star Tribune has endorsed

• Barack Obama (D) for president,
  
• Norm Coleman (R) for Senate,
  
• Tim Walz (D) for the 1st Congressional District (CD),
• John Kline (R) for the 2nd CD,
• No endorsement in the heated 3-way 3rd CD race,
• El Tinklenberg (D) in the 6th CD race (largely because of Michelle Bachman's much publicized ranting about her suspicions of "anti-American views" in Congress.)

Notice something odd for a newspaper with a supposed liberal bias?

The endorsements are pretty much split down the middle. Quite frankly, if you can endorse Kline or Coleman....you don't have a liberal bias.

I haven't read any endorsements from the Star Tribune in the 4th, 5th, 7th, or 8th District races. In these races, the Democratic incumbents (Betty McCollum, Keith Ellison, Collin Peterson, and Jim Oberstar) are very likely to win re-election. Those races are not very competitive; therefore, endorsing a candidate is pretty meaningless.

Claims of ACORN vote fraud are ridiculous

Donna Brazile has an excellent commentary on this issue on CNN.com.

An excerpt:

Let's look at the facts. ACORN labeled as "suspicious" the fraudulent registration forms a few of its paid volunteers submitted. Moreover, ACORN delivered them to election authorities under that heading. ACORN offered to help election officials pursue prosecutions against those who filled out the fraudulent forms.

The so-called ACORN scandal is no more than a few canvassers trying to meet their quota and make easy money by cheating the system.

Ask yourself how likely is it that someone would go through the effort and risk of submitting multiple false registration forms, find an accomplished forger capable of producing IDs of sufficient quality to trick election officials, and then spend Election Day racking up a couple extra votes at the potential cost of spending a decade in jail?

A simple cost-benefit analysis tells us this is not a reasonable or significant threat. The real threat here is the Republican Party using attacks on ACORN as a calculated strategy to justify massive challenges to the votes cast in Democratic-leaning voting precincts on Election Day. And this is what is truly outrageous, but where is John McCain's concern when it comes to people being harassed at the voting booth?

Yet another assassination plot

CNN has a story about yet another assassination plot against Obama. The men also planned to kill 100+ additional African-Americans in the same spree. Thankfully, the would-be perpetrators were completely inept and they've been caught.

Still, this sort of thing makes me very sad. Obviously, we've come a long way since the Civil Rights era. We have not come far enough.

How to tell you're a real Democrat

Last week, Rachel Maddow explained how to tell if you're a true Democrat. This is not the exact quote - more of a paraphrasing....

If you look at all the polling, and see how far Obama is ahead, and see that the electoral map looks more and more like a landslide in Obama's favor, and yet, still, you're afraid that something will happen and Obama will not win....you're a true Democrat.

Yep. That's just how I feel.

Michelle Bachman - 4 feet in her mouth

Michelle Bachman appeared on Hardball on Friday, and managed to not only stuff both of her own feet into her mouth, but also both of Joe McCarthy's feet.



She basically thinks that there are anti-American members of Congress, including Barack Obama, and the media needs to do an investigation and show the results in an expose.

Yes, she's a nut.

The silver lining to her paranoid rant is that her comments have provoked a firestorm. Her opponent, El Tinklenberg, raised $1 million dollars within the first 4 days following Bachman's rant. The RCCC pulled all monetary support from her campaign as a result of her anger-filled bungling. The DCCC is now going to support Tinklenberg in his battle for her seat.

Thank you to Chris Matthews for pressing Bachman on her snide, divisive, hate-filled comments.

Actual vote fraud - GOP style

Unlike the baseless accusations of voter fraud made by the GOP, there are true instances of vote fraud taking place in West Virginia today.

Those pesky touch-screen machines....with no paper trail....ARE SWITCHING VOTES FROM THE SELECTED DEMOCRAT TO THEIR REPUBLICAN CHALLENGER.

Where is the uproar and outrage about this? This is actual disenfranchisement.

The "ACORN is destroying democracy" whining is stupid, baseless bullshit. ACORN is required to turn in every voter registration card it receives, even ones it suspects are false. ACORN pointed out suspicious voter registration cards to state election officials as it turned them in. ACORN was scammed by dishonest employees. Mickey Mouse just might get registered to vote, but since he won't show up at the polls, there's really no harm done to anyone but ACORN.

Actually changing someone's vote is not a mistake, and it is actual vote fraud.