Firelight Blogging

It has simultaneously felt like a month that they've been here, and a day now that they're leaving. The family left me alone by the backyard fire about ten minutes ago. Tomorrow they head home to Flagstaff and Chicago, and life returns to the normal routine.

I miss them already.

The week was a mixture of familiar (Sweetwater Wetlands, Sabino Canyon) and new (San Pedro Riparian Conservation Area, Pima Canyon Trail) hikes. Birding took most of our attention, but other natural wonders couldn't be ignored.

Cooper's Hawk chowing down, Catalina State Park.

View across the arroyo from Romero Ruin, Catalina State Park.

Beaver attack, San Pedro National Riparian Conservation Area




























Cottonwood by pond, San Pedro NRCRA




























Bullfrog, SPNCRA

Snowy Huachuca Mountains over a pond, SPNRCA

Highlights included a Scott's Oriole on the Pima Canyon Trail, American avocets at the Sweeetwater Wetlands, and a yellow-rumped warbler on the San Pedro. And food, oh my goodness.

When my dad walked out the door tonight I hugged him and said you're the best, which here means I know you try your best and sometimes that doesn't even come close to being enough but I love you anyway. And they all hopped into cars and drove off.

They'll be back in December. I hope I'm rested up.

Post 1,111: Strange Days

Today the little facets of my world were in flux. Enforced left-handedness, a snowstorm in the mountains above Tucson on the first day of April, the realization that we will be able to pay for the boy to go far away for college after all, his sudden decision that the Pacific Northwest is calling.

I am in Bizarro World.

Image > Rotate Canvas > 180, in Photoshop-speak, wreaks havoc with my pathologically right-handed equilibrium, puts knots in my back, pulls at my hamstring. The sun and blue skies visiting relatives came seeking have evaporated into raggedy clouds and cold breezes. The indisputable forward motion of time, stubbornly ignored for day after just one more day, asserts itself in a thick and difficult mixture of pride and excitement and quiet sadness.

Random words fall wrong and land badly. And on we go.

Gone Birdin'

The family is in town, so we are on hiatus for a bit as we chase down elusive birds in various birdwatching hotspots in southern Arizona. Water the plants for me, yes? And if JD Hayworth comes knocking at the door, do NOT let him in.

Rage-Free Friday

Before delving into the bullshit of the day--I know it's out there; I just couldn't bring myself to open the Daily Star yet this morning--I am giving the rage lobe a break and thinking about something else. Namely, sharpening some of my yard tools. This train of thought quickly pulled into Where The Fuck Is My Bench Grinder station, and since there was--naturally--no sign of the grinder and no agent on duty, I settled in for a cup of coffee and decided to scratch a list of stuff I've lent out and never seen again on an unclaimed receipt for nickel slots I found under the bench.

Forthwith, some of my more epic loans, lendees, and terms.

1. Hockey skates, Robin, 10 years. The last time I saw them they were in her shed next to her compound bow, but she's since (a) moved and (b) acquired a husband with (c) five kids between them, so (d) it's probably a good thing I don't play any more.

2. BENCH GRINDER, Jonathan, 8 years. I remember pulling it out of my current shed and putting it in the back of my truck. I forgot about it, Jonathan took another job, I never see him any more, and my yard tools languish in dullness. I have a file but also have tendonosis in my filing elbow. End of story.

3. Orbital sander, coffee grinder, one pair hiking boots, Dave, 7 years. The sander and coffee grinder made the trip with me up to Pinetop to help a somewhat unstable buddy work on his house; the boots stayed for use on future fishing trips; then he got married and kinda melted down, again, the wife took off, and the boots were her size. You do the math.

4. One copy Fun Home (Alison Bechdel), one copy 13 Tales from Urban Bohemia (Dandy Warhols), Gretchen, 3 years. I'm hopeful because I did catch a glimpse of the book on a high shelf the last time I was over there, and three years is merely the blink of an eye in tiempo Gretchense anyway.

On the flip side, I still have a copy of 'Tis (Frank McCourt) John lent me when I was laid up with a wrecked knee, probably ten years ago, and a copy of Primitive Technology: A Book of Earth Skills Jorge was foolish enough to show me at about that same time, and just recently threw out a large Tupperware container Ellen left at my house probably 12 years ago and never asked for back since she had borrowed it from her sister-in-law eons before that and didn't much care about it. Never liked the lid on that thing.

Do I have something of yours? Do let me know.

Rage.

Well well well. I was a tad unclear yesterday on the implications of Arizona Senate Bill 1305 (passed the Senate and a House panel, now awaiting a House vote), which amended the current law prohibiting the use of public monies for abortion to include prohibiting the use of public monies (directly or indirectly) for health insurance that covers abortion. Silly starry-eyed me thought this was designed to be a direct response to the federal healthcare reform bill, reiterating times two the Hyde Amendment at a state level so that any future insurance exchanges run through Arizona would force women to purchase a separate abortion rider. And I completely forgot that state employees would be fucked over in the process.

Public employees will no longer be able to get insurance that covers most abortions under the terms of legislation approved Wednesday by a House panel.

Sen. Linda Gray, R-Glendale, told members of the House Committee on Health and Human Services that state law already prohibits using public dollars to terminate a pregnancy except to save the life of the mother.

But Gray said that intent is thwarted by allowing cities and counties to offer health-insurance policies that cover abortion - policies paid for, at least in part, with taxpayer dollars.

Remember, this is the law that allows the state to assist in financing an abortion only when the woman risks death or "substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function;" rape is no excuse for relief here. And it's bill sponsor Gray's sniffing attitude toward the latter that enrages me like little else, at least this morning.

That does not include coverage for abortions in case of rape and incest. Gray said those situations can be addressed with prescriptions for the "morning-after pill," a high dose of hormones that can prevent ovulation or keep a fertilized egg from implanting.

Her legislation, though, would preclude coverage for that pill, too.

Gray said that ban should not keep any woman from getting the care she needs because she could simply pay the $300 cost of getting the pill out of her own pocket.

Oh, simply fish three hundred dollars out of your pocket! See how simple that was? Don't forget, though, that Sen. Gray also voted for HB 2564 last year, which enshrined into law a pharmacist or emergency room doctor's ability to tell a rape victim to fuck off when she asks for emergency contraception, so good luck with all that, ladies. There's more from a couple of Gray's cronies, whose names will be familiar to you if you read me or Homer very regularly.

The measure is backed by Cathi Herrod, president of the anti-abortion Center for Arizona Policy. She said that while courts have upheld the right of women to an abortion, they also have said there is no right to demand public funding.

Rep. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, defended the move. "The overwhelming number of citizens in our state do not approve paying for abortion," she said.

Well, guess what, Nancy and Cathi. People in this state do all sorts of shit on a regular basis that I don't approve of, but I accept that part of the deal of getting to live in a society that's above the level of band organization means having to chip in for stuff I don't like. Courts have upheld the right of men to smoke cigarettes on private property, so do I get to argue that there's no right to demand public funding for their lung cancer treatment just because I think smoking is nasty? What about women who choose to carry a high-risk pregnancy to term against medical advice and end up with a prolapsed uterus or an infant who needs months in the NICU and 24-hour nursing after that for the rest of its life? Should I have to pay for that? Erectile dysfunction? Should I pay for that?

Short answer, yes. If legal medical procedures are covered even when another person could argue they aren't necessary, preventative, or deserved, then they all have to be. We don't get to decide we won't let publicly subsidized insurance pay for bypasses for people weighing more than 300 pounds because we think they brought heart disease on themselves, or for Cialis because we think when you're done you're done, or for procedures requiring blood transfusions because we think they go against God's design. You don't get to single out one perfectly legal procedure to exclude from coverage because you think it offends the God you've created, and restrict access to the drugs that will reduce the incidence of that procedure you despise, and then haughtily shrug and say that the whores can pay a prohibitive cost out of their own pockets if they want it so badly. You don't get to do that and sniff that you're taking the moral high road. Fuck off with your $300 out of pocket, Linda Gray.

It's really this Let Them Eat Cake attitude that puts me on Team Pie for life, y'all.

Another Day in Southern Jesustan

Not content with the level of havoc they created last week by tossing 38,000 low-income kids off the CHIP rolls, the Arizona Senate yesterday continued to menace minors in the state. This time they decided to bar kids from getting healthcare without parental permission (apparently even if it's on their own dime, which it will now have to be). SB 1309, innocuously named "Parents' Rights," contains among its several provisions a ban on writing any prescription for a minor without written permission from the parent. Reasonable enough on its face, right? Until you remember every condition that might require a prescription, and then you listen to the bill's sponsors, and then you realize what this one's all about.

State senators voted Monday to bar minors from getting birth-control prescriptions or treatment for sexually transmitted diseases without parental permission.

Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake, said the legislation, which now goes to the House, is in the best interests of children. She said her own experience proves that to be the case.

"I had their moral, spiritual, emotional well-being at hand and worked as hard as I could to be a good parent," Allen said. "Government has no business interfering in that bond between a parent and a child."

Requiring a 17-year-old to get Dad's permission for pills to clear up a noxious itch and rash? What could possibly go wrong? But wait; this is Arizona. There's more.

SB 130[9], approved 16-13, also imposes similar restrictions on mental health screening or treatment, and mandates parental consent for sex-education courses.

Of course it does. The mental health subsection is worded like this:

Except as otherwise provided by law or a court order, no person, corporation, association, organization or state-supported institution, or any individual employed by any of these entities, may procure, solicit to perform, arrange for the performance of or perform mental health screening or mental health treatment on a minor without first obtaining the written consent of a parent or a legal custodian of the minor child.

...so it's unclear what the law would do to, say, interactions between a child and a school counselor--you know, that trusted adult kids are told they can go to if they have nowhere else to turn, say because the people who would have to sign the permission slip for a therapy session are the exact people creating the situation the kid needs therapy for.

Ha! What was I thinking? This is Arizona! All our school counselors have been laid off! Problem solved, bitchez!

Interestingly, the newspaper erroneously reported the bill as being SB 1305 rather than 1309, so when I was trying to find the original language of the Parents' Rights bill, I found out what 1305 is. It is an amendment to Section 35-196.02 of the Arizona Revised Statutes, regarding public funds. Take one guess as to where this is headed. Here's the original wording of that statute:

Notwithstanding any provisions of law to the contrary, no public funds nor tax monies of this state or any political subdivision of this state nor any federal funds passing through the state treasury or the treasury of any political subdivision of this state may be expended for payment to any person or entity for the performance of any abortion unless an abortion is necessary to save the life of the woman having the abortion.

And here's the amended language (in this case, an added paragraph):

Notwithstanding any other law, public monies or tax monies of this state or any political subdivision of this state shall not be expended directly or indirectly to pay the costs, premiums or charges associated with a health insurance policy, contract or plan that provides coverage, benefits or services related to the performance of any abortion unless an abortion is necessary to either:
1. save the life of the woman having the abortion.
2. avert substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.

Directly or indirectly. No word on how "indirectly" is being defined here, which means the most important question is exactly how fungible the legislature--and, inevitably, the courts--think public or tax monies are. If Frank "People on Welfare Can't Buy a Beer" Antenori's in charge, expect the thinking and enforcement to lean toward the draconian end of the scale. Oh, and poor women who end up pregnant because they're raped or in abusive relationships, and poor minor girls who are the same? You're fucked. Twice. No life-threatening (or bodily function-impairing, and here I have no choice but to assume they're thinking of the ever-important future-childbearing bodily function above all else) condition? Hope you've saved up for Pampers, you slut!

Wait, we're not finished here. Because it's Arizona, and a day without the legislature bringing the stupid would be a day without fucking sunshine.

The Arizona Senate is scheduled to vote Monday on a bill to strengthen reporting requirements on abortions.

Democratic Sen. Rebecca Rios of Apache Junction tried unsuccessfully to amend the bill to toughen confidentiality protections. Those included not identifying specific counties and hospitals where abortions are performed.

The Senate's bill sponsor, Republican Linda Gray of Glendale, says there's no need to do that because the reports are intended only for statistical purposes.

Sigh. Haven't we been through this before, in Oklahoma? Oh, there are no specific identifiers recorded, the sponsors insist. It says so right in the bill!

A report required by this article shall not contain the name of the woman, common identifiers such as the woman's social security number, driver license number or insurance carrier identification numbers or any other information or identifiers that would make it possible to identify in any manner or under any circumstances an individual who has obtained or seeks to obtain an abortion.

Oh, okay. Whew! So what information that totes won't make it possible to identify a woman in any manner or under any circumstances will be recorded?

1. The name and address of the facility where the abortion was performed.
2. The type of facility where the abortion was performed.
3. The county where the abortion was performed.
4. The woman's age.
5. The woman's educational background by highest grade completed and, if applicable, level of college completed.
6. The county and state in which the woman resides.
7. The woman's race and ethnicity.
8. The woman's marital status.
9. The number of prior pregnancies and prior abortions of the woman.
10. The number of previous spontaneous terminations of pregnancy of the woman.
11. The gestational age of the unborn child at the time of the abortion.
12. The reason for the abortion, including whether the abortion is elective or due to maternal or fetal health considerations.
13. The type of procedure performed or prescribed and the date of the abortion.
14. Any preexisting medical conditions of the woman that would complicate pregnancy and any known medical complication that resulted from the abortion.
15. The basis for any medical judgment that a medical emergency existed that excused the physician from compliance with the requirements of this chapter.
16. The physician's statement if required pursuant to section 36‑2301.01.
17. If applicable, the weight of the aborted fetus for any abortion performed pursuant to section 36‑2301.01.

Man, my grandmother and her friends would fucking be all over this Name That Tune style and have just about any woman in town pegged by number 4, maybe holding out to number 7 if it was turkey-and-gravy day at the senior center and the woman in question had only lived in the town for a couple of months. Jesus. Should I be gratified that the woman's height, weight, and eye color are being excluded for now?

It's sprinkling rain today and the wildflowers are shivering with delight. This godforsaken state should grow nothing but nettles.

This Post Brought to You Courtesy of Relpax

The weekend came cloaked in the fog that boils up out of a migraine and the various combinations of chemicals that are then required to be something resembling functional, so it almost snuck past me. But even in an elitriptan hydrobromide-and-Excedrin haze, I managed to notice healthcare reform, such as it is, passing the House; Obama using women this time as the prop in his kabuki caving to Bart Stupak; and the teabaggers showing their true colors (white, starched, and pointy, natch).

Healthcare, yes. I am still hugely disappointed that the putative party in power relented on the public option, but most of the other provisions in the bill--like, say, covering 36 million people who would otherwise be screwed, and eliminating pre-x denials, and closing the donut hole--are long overdue. So good start, there.

But let's talk about abortion and religion and executive orders, shall we? In a sop to Bart Stupak and his band of unnamed, unnumbered holdouts, Obama signed an executive order that double-dog promises to keep federal funds from paying for abortions for all but the standard, if cognitively dissonant, rape/incest/mother's life exemptions. On the plus side, the order simply reaffirms the odious, now-in-its-third-decade Hyde Amendment. On the downside, it extends the reach of the Hyde Amendment into the to-be-created health insurance exchanges, requiring abortion funds to be completely segregated from all other funds moving through said exchanges, effectively making abortion coverage so complicated and cumbersome to manage that most exchanges and involved companies will decline to offer it. Maybe the additional level of healthcare that will now be available to more women--assuming it encompasses increased contraceptive education, availability, and affordability, along with enhanced prenatal and postpartum care--will result in fewer unplanned or unsustainable pregnancies. That would be good. Obama blithely affirming Hyde, when even Stupak said the votes were probably lined up to pass the bill without him? Not so much. Not so much at all. More in-depth discussion is over at Jezebel, and is required reading.

The classiest endnotes to the healthcare debate came from (1) the House floor, where an as-yet unidentified but presumed Republican screamed "baby killer!" at Bart Stupak when he indicated he'd support the slightly more incremental encroachment on reproductive liberty represented by the XO instead of his own, more intrusive, amendment, and (2) outside the Capitol when protesting teabaggers (a) called Barney Frank a faggot, (b) spat on African-American Representative Emanuel Cleaver, and (c) called Rep. John Lewis a nigger.

Let that last one soak in. They screamed "nigger" at John fucking Lewis.

That's your tea party movement right there in a nutshell. There's a black guy in the White House who wants a slight increase on affluent people's taxes so that everyone in the country gets at least some basic level of healthcare and doesn't have to die from an unfilled cavity, instead of the current system of the uninsured poor waiting until a treatable condition morphs into an acute, catastrophic condition before showing up at the emergency room, resulting in everyone pitching in at a considerably higher rate and everyone's care levels being compromised. The black guy wants everyone taken care of, so they're losing their shit and screaming about the end of the world and, now, letting the pointy white hats slip out a little too much so that anyone who's paying attention can see it, can hear it when they scream nigger at a man who nearly lost his life during the civil rights battles of the 1960s. Because in the end that's all they are, all they have left. Fuck off, teabaggers. You got yours. Now it's time for everyone else to get theirs.

Well, That's a New One

1995 was the pivotal year in my faith journey. Srebenica came hard on the heels of Oklahoma City and--short version--Boltgirl decided the idea of a god that was unable to prevent one or both massacres failed to square with logic, and one that was able but unwilling, if extant, would be a sadistic bastard, and so both of the above could piss off. Permanently.

So it's fascinating to hear retired Marine General John Sheehan's explanation for the former atrocity. It wasn't so much Slobodan Milosevic's fault after all! It was The Ghey!

A retired Marine general told senators on Thursday that the Dutch Army failed to protect the city of Srebrenica during the Bosnian war partly because of the presence of gay soldiers in its armed forces.

[Following the collapse of the Soviet Union] the Dutch allowed troops to join unions and enlisted openly gay soldiers. Dutch forces were poorly led and unable to hold off Serb forces in 1995, leading to the execution of Bosnian Muslims and one of the largest European massacres since World War II, Sheehan said.

Who knew we needed to put "genocide" on our list of general failures, right after "objectively disordered," "intrinsic moral evil," "destroying society," and "making straight men feel squicky unless it's hot straight girls pretending to be lesbians we're talking about?" I sure didn't.

The Saddest Video I Have Ever Seen

Old Yeller and Dumbo--Jesus, seriously, fuck Dumbo--will more reliably make me cry, but this display of an utter lack of humanity, empathy, or compassion saddens me to the very core and makes me feel hollow inside.

As usual with this sort of thing, the comments on Wonkette are the only things keeping me from spiraling into complete heart-and-soul-schmerz. Good job, Teabaggers. Your country thanks you. By which I mean Jesus weeps.

And Remember, Death Is Not an Option

In the Arizona senatorial primary, Walnuts McCain or this guy?

Offered Without Comment.

Safeway checkout lane, Sunday.

Probably the Last Word on Health Care Reform

Do you need a reason to despair on this otherwise bright, sunny Saturday morning? Here, Glenn Greenwald lays it all out for you.

I've argued since August that the evidence was clear that the White House had privately negotiated away the public option and didn't want it, even as the President claimed publicly (and repeatedly) that he did. And while I support the concept of "filibuster reform" in theory, it's long seemed clear that it would actually accomplish little, because the 60-vote rule does not actually impede anything. Rather, it is the excuse Democrats fraudulently invoke, using what I called the Rotating Villain tactic (it's now Durbin's turn), to refuse to pass what they claim they support but are politically afraid to pass, or which they actually oppose (sorry, we'd so love to do this, but gosh darn it, we just can't get 60 votes). If only 50 votes were required, they'd just find ways to ensure they lacked 50. Both of those are merely theories insusceptible to conclusive proof, but if I had the power to create the most compelling evidence for those theories that I could dream up, it would be hard to surpass what Democrats are doing now with regard to the public option. They're actually whipping against the public option. Could this sham be any more transparent?

If an alternative political party would like to start trying to curry favor with me, this would be a great time to start. Who decided that having progressive principles and having a spine must be mutually exclusive? Meanwhile, enjoy your mandated insurance purchase in a competition-free environment.

Arizo-No

Words fail me, so here's the e-mail from State Senator Paula Aboud (D-28, Tucson) in its entirety.

I hate to write this email to you tonight, but the truth is that the Governor's Budget is Going to Pass out of the Senate tomorrow.

I'm so sorry. I fought for 10 hours last night to defeat that budget in the Appropriations Committee, but the majority party prevailed!

I spent time pointing out to them how the Democratic budget proposals suggested closing some of the $10 billion in tax loopholes that could have been closed and helped out the budget deficit. I reminded them that there are $250 million in tax credits that we could suspend and re-direct to help out vulnerable populations. I told them of other budget options, even raising revenue. It all fell on deaf ears.

Tomorrow we go to the floor for the first vote on the Governor's budget.

As you well know, it is a very ugly budget...it really throws people under the bus in favor of the conservative hardcore ideology of cut, cut, cut Government.

Oh, by the way, they eliminate 45,000 kids off of KidsCare health coverage! And they eliminate Adult Education who helps 43,000 adults earn their GED after dropping out of school. Eliminate them! Why, when these programs cost a mere $300 per person and re-direct a person's life down a more useful path rather than ending up in our jail/prison system?

They just don't want government helping people...they want people to help themselves! Of course, that's what we want but you can't cut off your nose to spite your face. We have to look at the state as a whole and stop promoting a belief system that works against our future needs.

Cutting taxes doesn't solve the kinds of problems Arizona is facing!

And, if the 1 cent sales tax doesn't pass on May 18th, they have huge cuts of $800 million planned already to education and universities.

Astounding! They just don't understand that they are eating their seed corn.

I will still continue to fight to stop that budget, but they wouldn't bring it to the floor if they didn't already have their votes lined up.

I'm sorry, but I want you to know what's happening up here.

Tomorrow will be a sad day for Arizona!

PS: And next Tuesday they will begin their attempt to allow the Payday Lending industry to continue.

It's one grenade after another up here.

Thanks for standing with us in fighting these horrible cuts.

Regards,
Paula Aboud
State Senator
District 28, Tucson
1-800-352-8404 X 6-5262

Appropriations Committee, Ranking Democrat Health Committee Education Committee

What an amazing fucking state I live in.

Saw, Sand

Carpentry has been demanding most of my free time and attention the past couple weeks, with the result that the blog has been neglected in the corner, sniffling, for most of that. As is the case with many dykes of a certain age, my girlfriend was married once to a guy, and as is seemingly the case with many dykes of any age, family ties have transcended orientation and marital status, so the guy is like a brother or brother-in-law or something to both of us, and his parents remained as tight with my girlfriend as they had been when she was married.

Anyway. The parents got old, one passed away, and the other is in a nursing home, and the family house is in need of a lot of work before whatever happens next can happen. So the de facto brother-in-law hired me to build bookcases and tables and countertops in the guesthouse portion of the property in preparation for renting it out again. So we have been busy, me sawing and sanding, the girlfriend scraping and painting, the de facto brother-in-law's girlfriend painting and cleaning and wrangling electricians and plumbers. And some of de facto's sister's kids dropped by and variously pitched in and pitched a fit.

They don't want the house sold, or substantially changed, even when some of that change involves scrubbing years of grime from the kitchen cabinets or emptying drawers of decades' worth of sweepstakes entries, lunch menus, expired credit cards, expired medications. They don't live in town, of course, and have made minimal appearances here over the years, never--save this last visit, by one of the four--to help with the house, either physically or fiscally. They were a military familty growing up, so I understand their distress at seeing Grandma and Grandpa's house--the anchor of their childhood memories--fall into disrepair, and understand how painful it can be to think about a place that has always meant family to you more than any other pass into strangers' hands and be closed off to you forever.

It's unnerving when a place you thought was immutable proves itself vulnerable to time after all, when having to untether your memories from a house unmoors your sense of self along with them. But a house without the people is little better than a mausoleum, an empty stage with a set but no actors, a shell populated only by increasingly distant memories. My own anchor back in southern Illinois is slowly being cranked up too, my own grandparents' house set to sell on May 1, the yellow house with high ceilings and warm lights where my childhood self lives poised to move on into other hands, another family, ready for the next set of generations and memories. I don't want that house and everything in it to go away either, but I know it's not my call. I haven't been there and am too far away to help go through the drawers, the boxes, the closets crammed with stuff. Anything my uncle saves for me will be a gift.

It sucks. But it's also inevitable in our mobile reality. Here in my girlfriend's adopted family's home I sweep up as I go where I've moved the kitchen table away to make room for my saw and try to keep the sawdust intrusion to a minimum, putting things back as I found them, doing what I can to ease this transition as my own proceeds apace without me a thousand miles away. I hope they will like what I build for them.

A Toast, and Some Required Reading

Sure, we'll call it a toast, because that sounds much nicer than invective, and I need a drink after this anyway, so we're covered.

Fuck Bart Stupak.

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., today said he and 11 other House members will not vote for the health care bill unless it includes more stringent language to prevent federal funding from going toward abortion services. Some Dems want to remove public funding for abortions from Obama's proposal.

"We're not going to vote for this bill with that kind of language," Stupak told "Good Morning America's" George Stephanopoulos today, referring to the Senate health care bill, which includes less restrictive language than what the Democratic lawmaker proposed in the House.

Stupak said he is willing to take the criticism that will be hurled at him if he blocks the bill because of the abortion language, but that he won't back down on his principles.

Aaaaaaaand drink. Oh, finish the whole thing. Now the required reading, first a refresher from last year courtesy of Katha Pollitt (well, courtesy of my friend who sends me this stuff when I miss it the first time around), responding to the meme that prochoicers need to just suck it up and accept that perpetually increasing abortion restrictions are just the price we (women) have to pay for healthcare getting passed:

You know what I don't want to hear right now about the Stupak-Pitts amendment banning abortion coverage from federally subsidized health insurance policies? That it's the price of reform, and prochoice women should shut up and take one for the team. "If you want to rebuild the American welfare state," Peter Beinart writes in the Daily Beast, "there is no alternative" than for Democrats to abandon "cultural" issues like gender and racial equality. Hey, Peter, Representative Stupak and your sixty-four Democratic supporters, Jim Wallis and other antichoice "progressive" Christians, men: why don't you take one for the team for a change and see how you like it?

For example, budget hawks in Congress say they'll vote against the bill because it's too expensive. Maybe you could win them over if you volunteered to cut out funding for male-exclusive stuff, like prostate cancer, Viagra, male infertility, vasectomies, growth-hormone shots for short little boys, long-term care for macho guys who won't wear motorcycle helmets and, I dunno, psychotherapy for pedophile priests. Men could always pay in advance for an insurance policy rider, as women are blithely told they can do if Stupak becomes part of the final bill.

...

Enough already. Prochoicers have been taking one for the team since 1976, when Congress passed the Hyde amendment, which Jimmy Carter would later defend with the immortal comment, "There are many things in life that are not fair." Time for the theocrats and male chauvinists to give something up for the greater good--to say nothing of the twenty prochoicers, all men, who supported Stupak out of sheer careerism. After all, if it weren't for prochoicers, there wouldn't be much of a team for them to play on.

If you need to make additional and possibly expanded or more specific and detailed toasts at this point, feel free to leave them in the comments. Then schlork down the rest of your glass and settle in with last week's column from Jessica Arons, in which she takes Stupak's insistence that no abortion be funded with any federal dollars, no matter how indirectly, to its reasonable conclusion.

Money in Stupak's world is "fungible," or interchangeable, meaning whatever money the government gives you frees up private money for you to use on something else. So every dollar the government pays toward your health insurance premium allows you and the insurer to spend private funds in that plan that you might not otherwise have had on abortion. To Stupak, that subsidization is the equivalent of a direct payment.

But by that token, every government benefit a woman receives, whether monetary or in-kind, whether for healthcare or for something else, could be seen as subsidizing an abortion if she has one.

Either there is no such thing as indirect funding or everything receives indirect funding, but there is no in between. Either the government pays for abortion or it does not. Stupak, who until recently lived in the "C Street House"--a townhouse owned by a religiously affiliated organization that receives a tax exemption--cannot accept indirect subsidies in one area but reject them in others.

Remember, water in equal measure to alcohol, and two ibuprofen and a dollop of toothpaste before bed--face it, if you'd planned on keeping that liver forever you would have started treating it better a long time ago--and hope tomorrow isn't a workday in your world.

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Inspiration hasn't struck in a few days. Things on my mind:

1. Spring training is upon us, and the Cubs have (a) ditched Milton Bradley, which is like foisting off the FORGERY card in Masterpiece on somebody who wasn't paying attention, (b) lost roughly 20 pounds of Carlos Zambrano, which may or may not help him delay his inevitable meltdown until May, and (c) got themselves bought by new ownership, which includes an out lesbian community activist. Of the three, I'm most excited by (a). That guy was pure poison on the field and in the clubhouse. Did he kick puppies on off days? It's possible.

2. My brothers are displaying an alarming lack of brainpower, by (a) running up enough debts to have collection agencies calling my dad's house, by doing things like not realizing being on a cruise ship means international phone rates which means a $500 bill when you get home after five days, which then means not having a phone any more (the older one), and (b) weighing whether or not to take my niece to the doctor when she's sick, because my brother lost his insurance, because he decided to change jobs (didn't actually lose the first job, just decided to take a more interesting and oh by the way TEMPORARY job instead) during a recession with two little kids and a pregnant wife (the younger one). They're actually brothers from a different mother (how long have I been waiting to say that?), so mitochondrial DNA FTW!

3. The downside of #2 above is that we do share the same father, which means I get to deal with said father's increasing depression and drinking due to the asshole factors being exhibited by his male spawn. Thanks, guys.

4. Moving from family to Family, the WPS season is upon us as well, with plenty of excitement promised by the LA Sol's dispersal. The competition level should be amped up a notch, and more internationals are flocking to our fair shores as well. Atlanta Beat, you were dead before you even started. The hotdog stand color scheme and logo design should have been the first hint that you should scrap it and start over. Well, every league needs a doormat, and as a Red Stars fan I have nothing to say but THANK YOU ATLANTA.

5. Also, carpentry. My afternoons and weekends are being consumed by building bookcases and tables for a rental property held somewhere within my too-lesboriffic-to-explain extended family. Lungs are full of sawdust, knuckles are nicked. And I need a masonry bit for the adobe walls.

The end.

One More Thing on Team Canada

Skip Bayless and Jay Feely? Get the fuck over yourselves. Particularly you, Skip; at least Feely managed to not tremble in spitting indignation while decrying alcohol (eeek!) and cigars (quelle horreur!) playing visible roles in a team's championship celebration.

I don't recall Bayless getting the vapors when Michael Jordan smoked cigars in front of the cameras after his NBA championships, or when Red Sox players sprayed fans with champagne from the warning track, nor do I recall him, you know, wondering what message it sends the children (tremble, sputter) when NHL hockey players have been shown drinking champagne out of the Stanley Cup on the sacred stage of their sport (ZOMG!!!!11!1!1eleventy uno uno!).

Won't someone please think of the children?

Oh, it wouldn't be that big a deal for Sidney Crosby to take a Molson and a Cohiba along on his victory lap because NHL players are hardcore professionals, Bayless says, so that's different. With "hardcore" here meaning, of course, "men," and "professionals" also meaning "men" since there's no professional women's hockey league around awarding cups for their players to drink champagne out of on national TV, or at least as national as Versus is.

As Dana points out, it's not like they were drinking and then jumping into cars to drive. But they were drinking while female in the presence of cameras, and role modeling and decorum are apparently very very serious matters when it's women involved. Bayless and Feely toss in some very concerned concern trolling over perpetuating drunk-Canadian stereotypes, just in case they looked like they were focusing too much on the hockey players' failure to uphold the standards of decency and chaste pure holy Olympic honor that exist mostly in their heads, but I haven't seen many people tsk-tsking over the Jon Montgomery (male skeleton gold-medal winner) chugging a pitcher of beer as he walked down the street.

In other words, this.

Summary: Some hockey players drank and smoked in an empty arena, and one of them is less than a month shy of legal drinking age in BC, although she is of legal age in her home province of Quebec. Evaluation: (1) They're hockey players; and (2) big fucking deal.

Don't clutch those pearls too tightly, Skip. Your head is liable to explode clean off your neck.

Oh Canada!

The IOC has its collective shorts in a knot over Team Canada's (women, hockey) post-gold-medal beers-and-cigars-on-ice celebration. Just look at the pure joy and try not to be happy. I mean, if the US had to lose to somebody, it might as well be this lot.


















I don't see the problem here.

My shorts are in a knot too, if only because hockey was my absolute favorite sport to play when I was in high school, but wasn't available as a women's sport when and where I went to college, so I never got to do anything approaching this after a game:

Then again, I'm not sure any of my teammates were this hot. No offense, y'all, but damn.

When the Fetus Trumps All

This is a story about Nicaragua. Actually, this is a story about a Nicaraguan woman who has been sentenced to death by her government and her church because of two medical conditions, cancer and pregnancy. Guess which one they care about more.

Nicaraguan authorities have withheld life-saving treatment from a pregnant cancer patient because it could harm the foetus and violate a total ban on abortion.

A state-run hospital has monitored the cancer spreading in the body of the 27-year-old named only as Amalia since her admission on February 12 but has not offered chemotherapy, radiotherapy or a therapeutic abortion, citing the law.

The decision has ignited furious protests from relatives and campaigners who say the woman, who has a 10-year-old daughter and is 10 weeks pregnant, will die unless treated. The cancer is suspected to have spread to her brain, lungs and breasts. They have petitioned the courts, government and the pan-regional Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to intervene.

The case has revived controversy over the 2007 law which made Nicaragua one of the few countries to prohibit abortion under any circumstances. Girls and women who seek an abortion, and health professionals who provide health services associated with abortion, face jail.

Abortion is prohibited under any circumstances. Let that sink in for a moment. Under. Any. Circumstances. Ectopic pregnancies--in which the fertilized egg attaches to the fallopian tube instead of traveling into the uterus, and which always lead to a tubal rupture and the death of the embryo within a couple of months, and frequently the death of the woman as well--must be carried to term. Let that one sink in. A woman who is found to have an embryo implanted in her fallopian tube, an embryo that by definition has no possibility of forming into a full-term baby that can be delivered and will survive outside the woman's body, is prohibited from having surgery that will remove the embryo and save her life. She simply has to wait until her fallopian tube ruptures, and then hope she can get to the hospital before she hemorrhages to death. Anencephalic fetuses--in which the brain fails to develop, leaving a tiny skull void of anything but spinal fluid, and a body that cannot sustain itself once the umbilical cord is cut--must be left in place for the full forty weeks, with the woman forced to undergo weeks of heartache carrying a doomed baby, all so she can also endure the dangers and pain of delivering a baby that may or may not already be dead by the time she is allowed to push it out of her body.

But there's more. If, like Amalia, you find you have cancer shortly after you find you are pregnant, you are not allowed to have the treatments that might save your life. Because of a ten-week-old fetus. Because as far as the Catholic Church is concerned, a 27-year-old, living, breathing, thinking, feeling, existing woman has no value compared to a ten-week-old fetus that is the size of a medium shrimp, and it certainly doesn't matter that by sentencing Amalia to a slow, painful death, said fetus will die as well (it will have reached four inches in length if she lives another month, maybe six or six and a half inches if she makes it four weeks past that). Nor does it matter that Amalia has an existing ten-year-old daughter who will be left motherless, or that she has parents, siblings, a significant other, friends. Or that she simply exists. None of that matters. The fetus in the immediate now trumps everything, even its own assured destruction when its repairable incubator is simply allowed to cease functioning.

Yeah, incubator. It's pointless to even discuss women as women, as people, under this kind of reasoning, pointless to call death what it is. Under Daniel Ortega's shameless and soulless alliance with the Church, there is no logic, and there are no longer women in Nicaragua. Just ambulatory incubators.

As Marxist rebels in the 1970s and as a revolutionary government in the 1980s, the Sandinistas championed women's rights – including limited abortion rights.After losing power in 1990 their veteran leader, Daniel Ortega, embraced Catholicism. When making a comeback in a tight 2006 election he joined conservative foes in backing a church-led iniative for a total abortion ban.

Amalia's story is only the most recent, and one of the few we've actually heard about here. Her cancer is metastatic, and even with aggressive treatment her prognosis is probably bleak. But there are untold numbers of women in similar situations who are being denied treatments that would be life-saving, to say nothing of women and girls who are pregnant as the result of rape. Amnesty International reported last summer on the total abortion ban's toll, and I don't recall it making the US papers.

Amnesty International delegates met with young girls who, having been subjected to sexual violence at the hands of close family members or friends, were compelled to carry the resulting pregnancies to term –giving birth in many instances to their own brothers or sisters –because they were denied access to alternatives. It is deeply troubling that there was a recorded rise in pregnant teenagers committing suicide by consuming poison in 2008.

Obstetricians, gynaecologists and family doctors in Nicaragua told Amnesty International that under this Penal Code they can no longer legally provide effective medical treatment for life threatening diseases in pregnant women and girls because of the potential risk to the foetus.

One doctor told Amnesty International that she prays she will not receive a patient with an anencephalic pregnancy (a condition which means the foetus cannot survive) because of the prospect of telling the woman she will be compelled to carry the pregnancy to full term, despite its devastating physiological and psychological impact on the woman.

"There’s only one way to describe what we have seen in Nicaragua: sheer horror," said Kate Gilmore. "Children are being compelled to bear children. Pregnant women are being denied essential including life saving medical care."

"What alternatives is this government offering a 10-year-old pregnant as a result of rape? And to a cancer sufferer who is denied life saving treatment just because she is pregnant, while she has other children waiting at home?" said Kate Gilmore.

"Girls pregnant as a result of incest had the courage to meet with us to speak out against the situation but President Ortega did not. It appears the Nicaraguan authorities could not stand up for the law, would not be accountable for the law nor commit themselves to its urgent repeal."

This is the Religious Right's vision for America writ large. This is the outcome when Bart Stupak gets what he wants, when the Utah legislature get what they want, when South Dakota gets what it wants. This is what happens when the venom you heard in John McCain's voice spitting "the woman's health" between gritted teeth is allowed to flow, in the name of religion, into law. Amalia is being left to die, her daughter being left without a mother, her parents without their child, Amalia without her life. All in service of the fetishizing of the fetus, in lip service to a god who I hope would be appalled, in true service to propping up power structures. Political power, religious power, brokered deals and favors traded back and forth, with women crushed at the bottom.

more from The Guardian here.

What the Whuh?

The health care conference/summit/roundtable convenes in a few minutes, with President Obama pushing for comprehensive changes in the current system rather than the incremental approach favored by many Republicans. It should be fascinating, assuming Lamar Alexander speaks for the Republican contingent as a whole when he says

The White House seems to be obsessed with this idea that a bunch of professors sitting around a table can come up with a comprehensive bill and change one seventh of the American economy all at once. We're not that smart. We don't do comprehensive that well.

Seriously? News flash for Republican senators and potential presidential candidates: you're supposed to be smarter than the rest of us. You're fucking running the country, and that's not a job for the average American schlub who can't think critically enough to figure out that a subprime adjustable rate mortgage is a bad idea. Professors are smart. People running the country are also supposed to be smart. You don't do comprehensive? Your job sorta requires it. If you're not smart enough to do comprehensive, then get the fuck outta the way and let somebody with half a brain do it. Jesus.

In the House.

The Olympics have inspired me. In short, curling. Curling! The untold hours in college I sacrificed to bar games instead of studying can finally pay off! Because, seriously, me, a couple buddies, and a few beers would have to add up to a better performance than anything the US teams have done this time around. Maybe they're not drunk enough? Because they're playing mini-shuffleboard with the zoom set at about 1000%, on ice, with feckin' brooms! Clearly! Another game that you play better when drinking! And they're in Canada, for fuck's sake! Bring on the Labatt's!

Also, there are hats, and I dearly want one. Preferably yellow.

Now if the Olympics would just add Those Mini Bowling Machines That Are Sorta Like Skee-Ball With The Pins On Strings as a demonstration sport, Team Boltgirl could be bringing home the gold in two events!

Red Flags Snapping in the Breeze

When you're the biggest asshole in the room, it's generally a problem no matter what. When you're the biggest asshole in the room at CPAC, well, that should probably tell you you have a huge problem.

Today in Religion

The first thing Imma do when I get home today is take some measurements and then file for a patent on the magical miracle transporter chamber that must exist somewhere in the vicinity of my pillowtop Serta, because I went to bed in Arizona and swear I woke up in Alabama.

Saying the minority must be tolerant of the majority, Republicans who control the Senate Appropriations Committee voted Tuesday to require a copy of the Ten Commandments to be erected in front of the old state Capitol.

Tempting as it may be to suspect Roy Moore of taking over the bodies of several state legislators in Phoenix, at least Ol' Roy was straightforward with his motivation when he erected his own two-ton block of granite in front of the Alabama state courthouse. In contrast, the AZ Republicans are falling over each other to see who can be the most disingenuous.

Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, who crafted the measure, said it's wrong to think of the Ten Commandments as religious. Instead, he called them "10 little rules," saying that if everyone honored them, "boy, what a better place this would be."

Anyway, Pearce said it is clear the United States was founded on those principles. And he said the intent of the First Amendment, providing freedom of religion, is not to keep the government from displaying symbols like this but to keep the government from interfering with religious worship.

What, the Ten Commandments are religious? Shoooooot. Them's just ten little rules! Not religious at all! Oh, those first four little rules about I AM THE LORD THY GOD, BITCHEZ, SO DON'T GO WORSHIPPING ANYBODY ELSE OR BOWING DOWN TO STATUES, AND YES, CATHOLICS, I AM LOOKING AT YOU you can probably just ignore. Or don't ignore, actually, because anyway, the United States was founded on religious principles and the First Amendment doesn't say the government can't display religious symbols, which you should not think of this particular religious symbol as. Religious, that is. Because it's just ten little rules.

"Tolerance works two ways," responded Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake. "People need to be tolerant of the majority's beliefs as well as the majority needs to be tolerant of the minority's beliefs.

"I don't know why it would be that offensive," she continued. Allen said anyone who doesn't believe in what the Ten Commandments say is free to ignore the words, even if they are posted next to a government building.

"There are many things on TV that I'm offended by," she continued. "Everybody says, 'Just turn it off.' "

Because a commercial TV broadcast is exactly the same as a government-sanctioned (and, in this case, government-mandated) display of one particular religion's rules on the grounds of the state Capitol.

Sen. Ron Gould, R-Lake Havasu City, said his colleagues are worrying too much about running afoul of the First Amendment. It says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

"The 'establishment' clause of the United States Constitution doesn't apply to the states," he said.

Gould said states such as Virginia actually had state religions before the formation of the federal government. He said the deal that resulted in the Constitution was designed to let states continue down that path with a promise Congress would not get in the way.

Yes, colonies and states did have their own religions, and that worked so well--say, in Massachusetts--that Roger Williams ended up creating Rhode Island so that non-Puritans could live without worrying about paying state taxes directed to churches, or being jailed for not going to church, or, you know, being executed for heresy. Not that such things are likely to happen now, at least not the jailing and dying bits, but once a church is made an official organ of a state, it gets state funding. Interesting as it might be to watch the resulting mental gymnastics on the part of legislators who firmly oppose taxation in Arizona for anything but Joe Arpaio's pink tent jail--and that only grudgingly--it's really not a road I would like to see any state try to travel.

The revisionist history of Christian Reconstructionism has been thoroughly debunked (Chris Rodda has done most of the heavy lifting; go here when you have a few evenings to devote to reading), leaving Pearce's assertion that the US was founded on the principles of the Ten Commandments in the dust. Even if that were true, however, he's forgetting that the US was at its core founded on the principles of individual liberty with minimal interference from the government, and as we have evolved into a pluralistic nation of more belief systems than the founders could have imagined, government cheerleading on behalf of a single creed doesn't wash. Pearce is free to post a monument with "little rules" he thinks would improve life. Shit, make it a ten-ton block of granite inscribed with "don't kill" and "don't steal" and "don't be a dick." I'm all over it. Just don't include appeals to a deity, or reminders of that deity's jealousy and the generations of hurt promised to anyone who breaks on of its rules.

Let's review the past couple of weeks in Arizona. We have had the Take an Extra Four Months to Get Divorced bill, the No Booze or Cigarettes if You're on Public Assistance bill, the No Gay Adoptions Married Straight Couples Get Dibs on Adoptions bill, and now a Ten Commandments Are Required but They're not Religious Honest We Mean It bill. Oh, in case you forgot, we also have a governor who thinks God picked her to be governor and relies on team prayer to address state business. I can't wait to see what they come up with today in the legislature in lieu of addressing the state's squintillion-dollar deficit.

Remember the Married-Preference Adoption BIll? It Lives.

Remember, you read it here first.

Saying children do better in a home with a mother and a father, the state House voted Monday to give married couples preference when placing children for adoption.

HB 2148 would overrule the existing practice of the Department of Economic Security that makes the "best interests of the child" the primary factor when considering placing a child for adoption. Instead, it would require the DES and agencies that contract with the state to give "primary consideration to placement with a married couple."

The DES could consider a single person "only if a qualified married couple is not available."

The measure is being pushed by Rep. Warde Nichols, R-Gilbert. He said married couples should be "moved to the head of the line" for adoption if they've gone through the certification process.

About the only new interesting twist is what they're all not saying, and while "what they're not saying" does admittedly provide acres of leeway for conjecture, one quote in particular makes it pretty clear what the point of this exercise really is. After pointing out several exceptions, including placing a child with an unmarried relative, or with an unmarried person who has established a meaningful relationship with the child, or with any qualified unmarried person if the alternative is extended foster care, Mr. Nichols sums up:

"This will not leave more children in the system at all," he said. "It just sets up a preference priority to say that, in the best interest of the child, they go to a married man and woman."

Ah yes, one man, one woman. C'mon, guys, just come out and say it already. You want to keep kids away from The Gay unless they're otherwise unadoptable. By the by, your no-confidence vote for single parents will also be very much appreciated by my single (and straight) neighbor, who adopted her son two and a half years ago and has been quite happily bringing him up with occasional assists from family and friends. You know, just like a "real" parent would.

The Jokes Write Themselves

Arizona may be the single best state to be blogging from these days, as its legislature is the gift that just keeps on giving. The newest proposed attempt to annoy the citizenry--amazingly enough, aimed at straight people this time--comes from perennial all-star Rep. Nancy Barto (R-Phoenix), who wants to require people to be super duper double dog secret squirrel sure they want to be divorced before they can, well, finalize things and move on with their lives.

State lawmakers are moving to make couples who have decided their marriage isn't working wait four months longer to divorce.

And those with children would first have to go through education programs telling them about alternatives to divorce and the resources available to improve or strengthen their marriages.

Rep. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, the sponsor of HB 2650, said she believes requiring couples to wait 180 days will result in more people deciding they actually should stay together.

And, surprise surprise, the driving force behind this one is the Center for Arizona Policy, a group that has been a chronic burr under the saddle of gay, liberal, progressive, inclusive, non-racist, and other reality-based factions in the state for some time. One the one hand, it's gratifying to see them taking baby steps toward the logical conclusion their perpetual sanctity-of-marriage must lead to (banning divorce); it's always nice when hypocrisy of any stripe gets dialed down a notch. It's also inevitable, however, that this must go hand in hand with some unintended consequences, such as imposing undue hardships on people whose marriages are abusive or simply over.

Colleen McNally, the presiding family court judge for Maricopa County, warned that stretching out the process actually could be dangerous. She said domestic-violence attacks actually increase the moment a spouse tries to get out of an abusive marriage.

Barto said she is willing to alter her measure when it goes to the full House to keep the waiting period at 60 days for domestic-violence victims. But foes said that still doesn't answer the question of why the state should be prolonging decisions that may have been mutually agreed on by couples.

So, just to review the past 48 hours in Arizona, we have (1) one legislator who believes adults don't have the right to consume alcohol if they're receiving any form of government assistance, and now (2) another who believes adults don't have the right to quickly end a legal arrangement they both agree isn't working out for them. And if you want to go back a full 72 hours, (3) yet another state representative thinks voters shouldn't be allowed to choose their U.S. Senate candidates in primaries, but should leave the nominating process to the brainiacs in Phoenix who brought you nos. (1) and (2) above.

Coming from Illinois, this level of hackery is almost cute in a toddler sort of way--I mean, no money, patronage, or Senate seats are changing hands--but still, I gotta live here. When Jon Kyl and John McCain have gravitas in comparison to the minor leagues, there's a problem.

Frank Antenori's Interesting Approach to Cost Containment

The state of Arizona is pretty well broke. The feds are pretty well broke. Intrepid Arizona state legislator Frank Antenori (R-Southern Arizona But Not Tucson Fer Crissakes) decided to tackle part of the problem by introducing legislation limiting the kinds of products and services people on public assistance are allowed to buy. No alcohol, no cigarettes. Not a surprise, right, since you can't buy those things with food stamps anyway? Mmm, Frank would like to push it a titch further. It's not simply a matter of what products are food-stamp (or, more accurately, Electronic Benefit Transfer card)- eligible. It's what people on assistance can purchase, period, whether it's on their EBT or with cash, and what happens to them if they break the rules.

While welfare recipients would not be able to buy alcohol and tobacco products, they could acquire other items that are not a necessity - up to a point. His proposal would allow assistance beneficiaries to buy a vehicle worth no more than $5,000 or a television, as long as it doesn't cost more than $300.

That's no alcohol or tobacco, period, no matter how you pay for it. No cell phones, either, unless you don't have a landline, and basic cable only. And--hang on, this is the best part--should the bill become law, until the legislature figures out an enforcement mechanism, it primarily hinges on the most reliable compliance system known to humanity: ratting somebody out.

But until the law gets some legal teeth, Antenori said he foresees a system in which people report those they see at the grocery store using food stamps and then pulling out cash for that bottle of wine or pack of smokes.

"People put $100 of food up on the register, run the EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer card) through, and then throw two big jugs of booze and two cartons of cigarettes (onto the conveyor belt) and pull $100 out of their pocket. If you see that, you call a 1-800 number and notify somebody," Antenori said.

Awesome. No potential for abuse there! None!

The larger problem here is that Antenori is, quite simply, attempting to legislate morality from a position of unexamined privilege, reducing a problem that comes in a dog's-eye-view rainbow of gray to overly simplified black and white, complete with draconian penalties.

That would mean a single bottle of beer could cost a family its food stamps, free health care and any other welfare benefits. Antenori said he has no problem with that.

"If you don't have enough money to buy your own food to exist for your own sustenance, and you need some other hardworking taxpayer that's out there and working and paying taxes to subsidize your food, then you shouldn't have the luxury, at the expense of some other taxpayer, to go out and enjoy the niceties in life," he said.

Frank's indignation at "two big jugs of booze" being rung up for cash mean a bottle of cheap red wine will cost you your healthcare, and that's really going to bite you in the ass when the big jugs of syrupy juice drink and cases of salt-soaked ramen he is happy to subsidize contribute to you developing diabetes and hypertension. I do understand what he's trying to accomplish; if you're on government assistance, yeah, it would be a really good idea to prioritize your cash spending and limit it to things you and your family absolutely need to survive, and cigarettes are never on that list (although processed flour and corn syrup are a-ok). If your budgeting skills suck to the extent that you're blowing your extra cash on a 50" plasma TV and Chivas by the quart, well, I don't see you moving into an actual tax bracket anytime soon, and maybe that's its own punishment. But does accepting food stamps mean you surrender your agency as an adult, so long as your craptastic decision-making stays on the legal side of the line? In Frank Antenori's world, yeah, you do. And Frank gets to decide what you need and don't need, apparently based on rather Monopoly-esque notions of luxury and Marie Antionettish notions of how people should solve any problems this law might cause them.

Antenori said he had not considered whether there should be programs to help those on public assistance quit smoking so they don't lose their benefits. But he said he's not sure they're necessary, adding that people could just quit.

And you know, if they don't want the welfare restrictions, they could just get off welfare. And if they want a beer, they're gonna to be off welfare soon enough anyway, AMIRITE? As long as the good people of Arizona do their jobs and call the 800 number, that is. Not another peep from any of the twelve co-sponsors of this bill decrying the nanny state, 'k?

Edited to add: The bill includes a provision that is sheer morality-legislating, which I did not notice before:

A person shall not receive assistance or cash assistance under this title if the person is found:

1. in possession of, consuming or purchasing alcoholic beverages, tobacco products or illegal drugs.

So merely drinking a beer bought for you by a buddy will get your kids kicked off AHCCCS. This has absolutely nothing to do with people misusing taxpayer dollars, and the argument that it simply keeps people from lying to 1-800-ANTENORI that hey man, it's not mine, it's my friend's is the equivalent of making the entire team run sprints for an hour because one guy's fucking around. Career welfare sucks for society, but this isn't the way to end it. It's not even enforceable. You either grant people some level of funding and accept that some of them are going to piss their last dime away on booze and other things you don't like, or you take complete control of their subsistence behaviors and deliver a box of approved food to the debtor's jail once a week, and the latter isn't going to wash in a free society. Educate people and make quality subsistence both affordable and accessible. But selectively applying 24-hour blue laws to them because you think they're all lazy bastards while you go home to Oro Valley smacks far less of proaction and far more of punitive legislation.

Never Mind Who Dat, What the Fuck Dat?

Damn, what a call--opening the second half with an onside kick? The Saints converted that bit of ballsiness into a touchdown, grabbed the momentum, and 30 minutes and several clutch plays later, grabbed the Lombardi Trophy. And, as my friend India pointed out, felt no need for Jesus shout-outs in the postgame interviews.

That was the good. The bad? The breathtaking misogyny in the commercials. Forget Tim Tebow and his mom; against the baseline set by GoDaddy.com, FloTV, and Bridgestone, Focus on the Family rated a giant meh. What knocked the Tebows completely off my radar? Oh look, here's Danica Patrick abandoning her last shred of dignity and getting into a strip-off, with the promise of additional unrated web content. Ah, here's Jim Nance saying that a guy who goes shopping with his girlfriend has lost his spine! Oh, here's a guy who gets conceived, grows up, gets a job, gets married, and sires a kid of his own--whew, he deserves a break after all that! And here's a guy who abandons his wife to a Road Warrior gang rather than give up his tires! Oh, look, men strike back! Because they're been so grievously put upon for the past couple of decades out of the last 160,000 years of anatomically modern human history!

Fuck. Oh, want to see them? Here.

In happier news, chocolate Chex + rice Chex + chocolate Cheerios + pretzel sticks + mini marshmallows + mini chocolate chips + butter + vanilla + NUTELLA = OMFG awesome snackies. Also, roasting thinly sliced cauliflower with olive oil, garlic, and rosemary results in some stunning crunchy/tender bits of FUCK YES CAULIFLOWER IS GOOD. Who knew? My mom always boiled it to death. I would have eaten a lot more of it without complaining if she'd roasted it instead.

Offerred Without Comment

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

The Week in Sports

The WPS LA Sol fire sale Dispersal Draft took place yesterday. Oddly, despite usually sending out more Tweets per fan than any other professional sports league, the Twitterfeed was silent until it was all over, leaving dozens of people biting their nails wondering where Marta would land. She wound up going third, to the apparently named by an AYSO U-14 girls team that won the lottery Gold Pride, newly of the East Bay. Former Notre Dame and current women's national team stalwart holding midfielder Shannon Boxx was the first pick, going to St. Louis, which totally cleaned up by also adding Aya Miyama and Tina DiMartino; red hot Candian keeper Karina LeBlanc went to Philadelphia. My hometown Red Stars passed on veteran players, grabbing rookie Tarheel Casey Nogueira with pick #4, and with that decision hopefully both saved a lot of cash and (potentially) increased their anemic scoring output by a factor of maybe four. Of course, without Tarpley in the midfield any more, that's a lot of reliance on Megan Rapinoe's ability to remember she can pass the ball now instead of having to do it all on her own.

In baseball news, Big Z showed up early (!) to spring training, with a shiny new good attitude and svelte physique, both of which should asplode right on schedule the first time he walks three guys in a row and blows a two-run lead, which we'll peg at 'round about April 8.

And in other baseball news, this.

Admiral Mike Mullen. For. The. Win.

No additional comments from my end are necessary. Oh, except that John McCain is an awful, awful man.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

BOTL: Now with More Tebow, More Abstinence, More Kerfuffle

A laundry list of items, and the sun isn't even up yet.

The Daily Star ran an editorial the New York Times flung out on Sunday, which I missed at the time.

A letter sent to CBS by the Women's Media Center and other groups argues that the commercial "uses one family's story to dictate morality to the American public, and encourages young women to disregard medical advice, putting their lives at risk" - a lame attempt to portray the ad as life-threatening.

The would-be censors are on the wrong track.

Instead of trying to silence an opponent, advocates for allowing women to make their own decisions about whether to have a child should be using the Super Bowl spotlight to convey what their movement is all about: protecting the right of women like Pam Tebow to make their private reproductive choices.

The editorial notes that the Tebows' story is being brought to you by Focus on the Family, but conveniently omits the fact that FoF works tirelessly--with nearly bottomless funding from their adherents--to increasingly restrict women's rights to make choices about their pregnancies, with the ultimate goal of eliminating the choice of abortion altogether, as well as eliminating many forms of contraception as well. Pam Tebow ostensibly had a choice (although abortion for any reason has been illegal since 1930 in the Phillippines, where Tim was born, it's questionable whether she actually had the choice she claims to have made), and she's shilling the story of that choice on behalf of an organization that is committed to removing the same choice from other women. Nice job on nuance, NYT and Daily Star!

Next up, abstinence!

A new study shows for the first time that a sex-education class emphasizing abstinence only - ignoring moral implications of sexual activity - can reduce sexual activity by nearly a third in 12- and 13-year-olds compared with students who received no sex education.

"This study, in our view, is game-changing science," said Bill Albert, chief program officer at the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group based in Washington, D.C.

"It provides for the first time evidence that abstinence-only intervention helped young teens delay sexual activity."

The study reported here covered 600+ low-income African-American 12- and 13-year-olds in the Northeast, who were split into four groups who received different eight hour courses in 8th grade. The control group got generic healthy living, the first test group got abstinence-only, the second safe sex (excluding abstinence), and the third got a combination of safe sex and abstinence. Over the following two years, half the safe-sex kids reported sexual activity, while only a third of the abstinence-only kids did; the comprehensive group was in the middle.

Okay, so abstinence-only education was tops at keeping 12- and 13-year-olds from having sex before they turned 14 or 15. Fair enough. But is there a kicker?

None of the classes appeared to influence the use of condoms or other birth control when the students did have sex. The children thus remained at risk of pregnancy and venereal disease.

About 8.8 percent of participants in the comprehensive class reported activity with multiple partners, compared with 14.1 percent in the control group, indicating that the comprehensive class reduced the risk of disease. Neither diseases nor pregnancies were monitored, however.

Ding ding ding! Maybe abstinence should be hammered at the younger kids--this study certainly suggests it's an effective tactic--but I have to ask if 55 kids (33% of the control group) having sex at 14 with no understanding of contraception is really a preferable outcome to 86 kids having sex at 14 after at least having been taught about condoms. The difference is statistically significant, but in terms of actual lives, 55 and 86 are pretty much a wash. If anything, the study does make it horribly clear that a huge unresolved problem is how to convince kids to use the goddamn condoms and other contraception once they've learned about them. Too bad disease and pregnancy were not monitored; since those are the two conditions abstinence-only and comprehensive sex ed agree need to be minimized, those are the outcomes that would seem to be the most salient.

Oh, and on the teeny tiny kerfuffle of the NYT gays-aren't-monogamous story? A few commenters elsewhere have read my objections as being objections to open relationships and rational thinking about partnering, and possibly to gay men as well. No, no, no. Got no problem with people negotiating relationship parameters that work for them, and am not unaware of the high incidence of infidelity in hetero marriages and the problems that causes when couples don't write external affairs into their rules but go on to have them anyway. Nor do I think all gay partnerships must hew to the mythological Ozzie-and-Harriet model in order for us to have a chance at marriage equality; what works for me might not work for you, and that's fine. I just despair when I see glosses reported as science, particularly when I know exactly the kinds of bozos in my own state and possibly own family who will pounce on the pronouncement that half of all gay relationships incorporate non-monogamy and use it as the only justification they will ever need to keep voting against full civil rights for us and to keep throwing money at organizations that think we should all be executed, or jailed, or maybe just subjected to compulsory reparative therapy.

Blah.

Blah. That is all.