‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all.’ –Through The Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll.

I may have mentioned this before, but I’ll bring it up again:

I am both pro-life and pro-choice. Not necessarily in that order.

I admit freely and without qualms, that I am a speciesist. In that vein alone, I am bigoted. I am a bigot towards my own species. It is not that I consider lesser species to be our slaves, toys, or any other ridiculous thing. I simply value human beings above other animals. As such, I do lend value to human embryos, zygotes, blastocysts, or other variations of how a child comes to be.

Hold it right there.

This isn’t meant to be an insinuation, an inference, an implication, that any of these stages have attained the value of personhood, especially contrasted with person of the mother. The woman gets a choice. Simple enough?

My point here, is that through all these years of blogging, I’ve seen numerous EPIC FAIL arguments because of the intense polarization of the dispute. And as polarizing arguments go, both sides go too far. Ours as well as theirs. I’ll cite a few:

A. The growing child in the womb is a parasite.
This fails spectacularly, because actually, parasites don’t detach from the host, grow up, and end up taking care of the host in the host’s golden years.
B. Anybody who is pro-life is a practitioner of ‘sperm magic’
Again, fails. Sperm is only one component, so this is the logical fallacy of composition, not to mention a strawman. I find this particularly obnoxious, so do avoid this stupidity.
C. Accusations of ‘ensoulment’. I don’t need supernatural tendencies to value a child, or the beginnings of a child.

I’m sure numerous others will be brought up, and I’ll deal with those on a case-by-case basis. Here’s the point that grinds my gears:

It’s not a ‘in for a penny in for a pound’ situation. To clarify, the two sides of the issue go to ridiculous extremes. The pro-lifers holler that an embryo has full personhood value, the pro-choicers holler that it has zero. (This is also the fallacy of the false dichotomy.) As it is in real life, the actual answer lies somewhere in-between. As does my point. It’s natural, a part of the human condition, that we go to extremes. You, me, everybody, in some order, in some way, we all go overboard. And on polarizing issues, well, the extreme is almost cliché.

I can pretty much get an all around agreement that the majority of readers here love children. Why do we? Because of all the near-magical possibilities, the potentialities that can reach into the future. Most cultures are based on potentialities anyways, that foresight, looking to the future. And there are fewer more powerful symbols of that than children.

And while being pro-choice as well, I can haul out an extreme (but extremely possible) example: if say a woman who was two days away from giving birth went nutso, and decided that she was carrying the Antichrist, and wanted it cut out of her, there’s no way I could stand by and mumble that I was ‘pro-choice’, because obviously this lady’s brain has landed somewhere south of Pluto and obviously she isn’t fit to make a decision of that import.

And let’s face it: abortion is a no-win situation. Nobody’s in favor of it ‘just because’ – there’s long-term ramifications that have to be examined on a case-to-case basis. Tubular pregnancies, incestual rape (or any rape for that matter), drug addiction – it’s a necessary evil. Not a cause for celebration for anyone. The biggest concern is poverty – because being poor means a lack of education, lack of security, lack of everything that would be optimal for a child’s upbringing. Concerns such as birth control, religious folderol, and varied other variables put forth by the far right in their efforts to control the common woman.

So a wee bit o’ advice: the next time you (figuratively) inhale to bellow at some nimbulb who’s blattering on about abortion, take a bit of a breath, and think first. It’s natural to take the other side of the argument and go to extremes (I’ve done it too, guilty!) – but we promote ourselves as the rational ones, and it behooves us to walk the talk as such.

And that, dear readers, is my nickel’s worth. Spend it freely, or sock it away for a rainy day.

Till the next post, then.

S.E. Cupp’s commentaries on Tucker Carlson’s new conservative website The Daily Caller. You can read her in the online New York Daily News, and you can see her in her role as TV personality/commentator on Faux Fox and CNN.

Who is S.E. Cupp?

She is an American conservative political commentator and writer, and co-author of the book Why You’re Wrong About the Right with Brett Joshpe. She is also a strong “defender of the faith”. Her newest book is titled Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity. Just another fundie crying persecution about the evil liberal media and the evils of evolution? Guess again. S.E. Cupp claims to be an atheist who is defending Judeo-Christian values which she says is what this country was founded upon. In her just released book mentioned above, she also defends creationism. Confused yet?

From her book site:

From her galvanizing introduction, you know where S. E. Cupp stands: She’s an atheist. A non-believer. Which makes her the perfect impartial reporter from the trenches of a culture war dividing America and eroding the Judeo-Christian values on which this country was founded. Starting at the top, she exposes the unwitting courtship of President Obama and the liberal press, which consistently misreports or downplays Obama’s clear discomfort with, or blatant disregard for, religious America—from covering up religious imagery in the backdrop of his Georgetown University speech to his absence from events surrounding the National Day of Prayer, to identifying America in his inaugural address as, among other things, “a nation of non-believers.” She likens the calculated attacks of the liberal media to a class war, a revolution with a singular purpose: to overthrow God and silence Christian America for good. And she sends out an urgent call for all Americans to push back the leftist propaganda blitz striking on the Internet, radio, television, in films, publishing, and print journalism—or invite the tyrannies of a “mainstream” media set on mocking our beliefs, controlling our decisions, and extinguishing our freedoms.

She claims to be an atheist, but her commentary and the content of her books prove otherwise. Is she just using the Christian base in order to stir up support for her conservative bias? It’s either that or she is a liar when claiming to be an atheist.

Steve Levingston has written this commentary about S. E. Cupp at The Washington Post.

Cupp skips the facts in arguing against evolution

This is the article I read first before doing some background research on Cupp. When I read in Wiki that she is an atheist, I had to dig further because they could be wrong. I found that is indeed what she claims herself to be in her own biography at Simon and Schuster.

Here are some highlights from Levingston’s article:

Now she has a new book due out next week called “Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity,” with a foreword by Mike Huckabee. The former presidential candidate vouches for Cupp’s devotion to facts in arguing her points: She “uses the sharp blade of careful research, thoughtful reasoning, and brilliant logic,” he writes, adding “she reaches a level of substance many writers twice and thrice her age only hope for.”

Huckabee, like other fundies compliments her “sharp blade of careful research, thoughtful reasoning and brilliant logic” because she is speaking out in support of his cherished Christian values and willful ignorance.

The thrust of Cupp’s argument is summed up in her introduction in which she says the American media, “with careful, covert nudges from the Obama administration,” are leading a revolution. “This revolution, already in full throttle around the country,” she writes, “is being waged against you and me and every other American, and its goal is simple: to overthrow God, and silence Christian America for good.”

She sounds just like a Christian fundie to me who feels threatened by the ever-increasing number of people giving up the mythology in lieu of Science and reason.

Levingston brings to our attention the chapter in her book titled “Thou Shalt Evolve”:

It is important to distinguish between rhetoric and fact and to hold authors accountable for the information they impart to the public. Statements of fact should have no trouble withstanding educated scrutiny. Mike Huckabee endorses Cupp’s methods. Her “substance,” as Huckabee terms it, is scattered throughout the book. So let’s single out one chapter to zero in on, as a measure of the entire work. I have chosen Chapter Four – Thou Shalt Evolve. In this chapter, Cupp sums up her take on evolution like this: “The debate over the legitimacy of evolution isn’t really about a battle between fact and fiction. It’s about Christianity, and the liberal media’s attempt to eradicate it from all corners of society.”

And here is what Joshua Rosenau has to say in response to Cupp’s chapter on evolution: (”Rosenau is public information project director at the National Center for Science Education, which is a not-for-profit organization devoted to the teaching of evolution in public schools. Among its 4,000 members are scientists, teachers, clergy, and people holding a variety of religious beliefs.”)

S.E. Cupp’s handling of science and religion misrepresents the nature of evolution, obscures the science of biology, and dismisses the deeply-held religious views of most Christians outside of the fundamentalist subculture. This is the sort of misrepresentation which leads her to concoct an anti-Christian conspiracy on the part of reporters, and – bizarrely – to say that Darwin is “quite literally the Anti Christ” for liberals.

Cupp presents creationism as “a counter-argument” to evolution, yet never provides a clear account of what evolution is, nor what she thinks creationism means.

I am deeply insulted when dumb shits claim to be one of us.

Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law. -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

Many, if not most Christian Republicans don’t want the government and their tax money used to help the general public with things like health care and other social programs. They claim to want as little government interference as possible, but they hypocritically and constantly push for “faith based” programs which promote their own version of god delusions onto the general population. They have gotten their way with interjecting “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance long after it was written, and the placement of “in God We Trust” on our country’s currency. We are forced to swear in court on their mythology book, to say it when taking the oath for public office and when joining the military (unless we make a fuss about it, which can have negative outcomes when we do). In many places their Ten Commandments from their book of woo is on display in government buildings and even schools (until someone makes an issue of it). They want to force our children to pray along with them in public schools, even though they are free to pray to themselves any time they want without bothering anyone else. They feel the need to drag everyone forcefully into their “faith”.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU Press Mention) “It’s incredibly hypocritical that Sarah Palin, who disapproves of government involvement in just about anything, now suddenly wants the government to help people be religious,” Barry Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told ABC News. “It is wildly inconsistent with her views on limited government to get the government involved in matters of faith.”"

If one really understands the foundations this country was built on, there should be no question as to if America is a Christian nation. But Sarah Palin and others who hold her fundamentalist sky daddy beliefs just don’t get it. On Friday, Sarah Palin said that it’s mind-boggling to suggest that America is not a Christian nation.

“Lest anyone try to convince you that God should be separated from the state, our founding fathers, they were believers,” said Palin. “And George Washington, he saw faith in God as basic to life.”

“In Washington’s farewell address, he wrote ‘Of all the dispositions and habits that lead to political prosperity, religion, faith, morality are indispensible supports,’” she continued. “So Women of Joy, remember that, and remember that even today this nation needs you.”

According to ABC News “two groups dedicated to the separation of church and state are now speaking out against her, arguing that she is misreading the founders’ intent.”

A spokesman for the Secular Coalition for America told ABC News that Palin is misconstruing the founders’ intent on matters of church and state.

“While the founders’ views on religion varied from person to person, there is no doubt that they believed strongly that religion had no place in government,” said Paul Fidalgo, the communications manager for the Secular Coalition for America. “John Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli which stated in no uncertain terms that ‘the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.’

Palin told the women in attendance, whom she referred to as a “mom of faith movement,” that they should not listen to critics who would make them feel that their movement is “all a low-cost brand of ignorance.”

That’s exactly what it is, though. A “low-cost brand of ignorance”. She describes the fundamentalist religionist mindset perfectly. I call it “willful ignorance”.

Well, one judge in Wisconsin understands the concept of Separation of Church and State.

Judge rules National Day of Prayer unconstitutional

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A federal judge in Wisconsin ruled the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional Thursday, saying the day amounts to a call for religious action.

U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb wrote that the government can no more enact laws supporting a day of prayer than it can encourage citizens to fast during Ramadan, attend a synagogue or practice magic.

However, our President chooses to support the god botherers in the matter and is defending “Talking to Yourself Day”.

Obama will still issue National Day of Prayer proclamation

White House officials say President Barack Obama still will recognize a National Day of Prayer after a federal judge’s ruling the day is unconstitutional.

My Catholic and fundamentalist Christian friends in particular are in a tizzy, posting the rumor on their Facebook statuses anyway that their freedom to pray publicly is being taken away.

The rumor states:

President Obama has decided that there will no longer be a “National day of prayer” held in May. He doesn’t want to offend anybody. Where was his concern about offending Christians last January when he allowed the Muslims to hold a day of prayer on the capitol grounds. As a Christian American “I am offended.” if you agree copy and paste no matter what religion you are!

I point out that whether there is a proclaimed national day of magical incantation or not, they are still free to pray whenever and wherever they want and churches can get the required permits and all join together and talk to their imaginary friends just as atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, KKK members can all come together and form whatever day they want to have. But just don’t expect a secular government to recognize and proclaim a special day for you. I try to explain as politely as I can that when one religion is endorsed, then others will want equal time and it gets insane. Someone will always be left out. Church and State cannot be mixed and must be kept separate.

They just don’t get it. In a country that is 80 something percent Christian, they are still paranoid and thrive on feeling persecuted.

Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann join forces

Democrats and other opponents of the Republican party should be jumping for joy at the possibility of these two running in the 2012 election. I had to laugh at one comment at the end of the Salon article which said, “Why do all female Republican politicians look like realtors?”

“I knew that we’d be buddies when I met her when she said, ‘Drill here, drill now,’” Palin said. “And then I replied, ‘Drill baby drill,’ and then we both said, ‘You betcha!’”

Oh boy, golly gee!

It was an afternoon of barbed lines directed at President Obama and designed to rev up the party faithful. Introduced by Gov. Tim Pawlenty (who was all too happy to hitchhike on board the Palin/Bachmann Express), Bachmann went first. “I think I heard someone say repeal,” she said. “You better believe it, baby. Repeal is what this girl is going to be all about after November!” (Presumably, another re- word — “reelection” — will be keeping her busy until then.) “Two years from now, President Obama will be a one-term president,” Bachmann continued. “Because we are going to elect the boldest, strongest, most courageous, rock-ribbed constitutional conservative president this country’s ever seen! We’re there!”

We scoff at such a notion and don’t want to take this ditzy duo seriously, but after eight years of Dubya, never underestimate the stupidity of many conservative American voters.

I don’t have enough time to write a decent commentary on this, but thought it needed to be posted. You can read the article and discuss amongst yourselves.

Chancellor Falwell Is Trying To Turn Tax-Exempt Liberty University Into A Partisan Political Machine – And Dominate Lynchburg Elections. Will The IRS Step In?

Will the IRS step in? They damn well better!

It’s the law of the land: Health overhaul signed

Our friend Sean would have been so happy to see this day come. However, many of my Xian friends and relatives are quite unhappy and have their panties in a knot that now they will have to pay taxes so that all people may obtain health care coverage. It’s interesting that the richer and more religious the person is, the louder the complaining. The ones who are bitching the most have the least to lose. Some of my family members relentlessly witness for Jesus of their Bible, and at the same time they vehemently oppose helping others with basic things such as health care. On the discussion boards and social networks the religious ones are in a tizzy, crying “socialism has come to America!” Yet at the same time they do not want to part with their cherished Medicare, forgetting that too is a “social” program. The fundamentalist Christians in my family who are retired will fight to keep their Social Security and are quite upset if there is talk about money not being there to fund Social Security for their children and grandchildren.

Religious folks love to tell and retell the Bible stories of Jesus, like when he fed all those people with a few fish and loaves of bread. Jesus owned nothing and went day to day taking handouts from other people because he didn’t own anything of his own. Yet this is the character they follow and worship at the same time speaking against what their “good book” says about the central character of their own faith and helping your fellow human beings who are not as fortunate as you are.

Regardless of their displeasure, the new health care bill is now the law of the land. I am not totally happy with the new bill. I remain skeptical of how it’s all going to “evolve”. At the same time I am thrilled that I won’t have to worry about being denied coverage for my pre-existing conditions if my husband should lose his job and insurance coverage from work. I do understand that there is still much work to do and will take years to work out. What I don’t understand is how those who oppose this bill want to just chuck the whole thing, just dump it and not even want to discuss a plan to work together in order to help make this reform a success for the good of all the American people. It would be amazing if the two parties could work together on anything instead of this just be about one side winning and the other side losing all the time.

We all know how fucked up the state of Utah is on many things:

Utah is not a state known for its legislative sanity. This, after all, is a state that recently made headlines for proposing to honor gun manufacturers on Martin Luther King Day and for considering the elimination of 12th grade to cut back on education spending.

Well, things just keep on getting worse:

In Utah, Miscarriage = Criminal Homicide

Utah just became the first state in the U.S. to criminalize miscarriage and punish women for having or seeking an illegal abortion. Utah’s “Criminal Miscarriage” law:

* expands the definition of illegal abortion to include miscarriages
* removes immunity protections for women who have or seek illegal abortions
* treats women as presumptive criminals and leaves them open to criminal prosecution

But even among states that punish illegal abortions, this “Criminal Miscarriage” law is unique. It not only punishes individuals who perform illegal procedures; it punishes women.

How Utah defined miscarriage as criminal homicide?

Utah’s “Criminal Miscarriage” law (H.B.12) makes simple changes to the state’s definition of “abortion” and the section of the Utah Criminal Code governing “criminal homicide.”

This law:

* defines legal abortion as a procedure “carried out by a physician or through a substance used under the direction of a physician.” Anything else that terminates a pregnancy is now defined as illegal abortion – including miscarriages.

* states that “The killing or attempted killing of a live unborn child in a manner that is not abortion shall be punished as…criminal homicide.” (emphasis mine)

* removes existing immunity from criminal prosecution for women “who seek to have or obtain an abortion” or “upon whom a partial birth abortion is performed.”

* applies the legal standard of an “intentional, knowing or reckless act of the woman” as punishable as criminal homicide.

Translation: If a woman has a miscarriage but didn’t know that she was pregnant, she cannot be charged with criminal homicide. So while this law does not criminalize all miscarriages, anything that could be defined as “knowing” or “reckless” would leave a woman at risk for criminal prosecution.

Could it really be that bad?

Yes, it could. . . It’s Utah!

Practically speaking however, this bill changes the presumption that abortions obtained in this state are legal. If this bill is signed into law, women in this state will essentially be in the uncomfortable and unfortunate position of having to prove that abortions they obtain (or miscarriages that they suffer) are not unlawful.

*snip*

A woman who fails to wear a seatbelt and is in a car accident could be charged with reckless homicide, should she miscarry. Likewise, a woman who has a substance abuse problem is likely to forego necessary prenatal care out of fear that she could be prosecuted for “knowing” or “reckless” homicide by continuing to use illegal substances while pregnant.

What can we do about it?

It’s time for everyone to hear about Utah’s “Criminal Miscarriage” law. The media must to cover it. We must to start conversations all across the country about what this means for women and girls in Utah – and what this precedent means if (or, more likely, when) other states follow suit. (A similar case in Iowa should be all the warning we need.)

So post this on Facebook. Tweet it. Forward it to five friends. And ask them all to do the same.