Robbing Medicare? Part II

In a previous recent blog post, I argued why the Health Care Reform law was essential due to its cessation of fraud and abuse. I cited a 60 Minutes report from 2010 showing how $60 billion per year was going straight into the pockets of fraudulent claims set up by organized crime circuits. I did not, however, realize two things: One, there was more than just fraud going on. If one counts waste, abuse and inefficiency of Medicare, the number easily exceeds $70 billion. And two, I also didn't realize that the Romney campaign's claim of $700 billion "robbed" from Medicare "to pay for Obamacare," is a projection over 10 years. Previous projections were made out to several years, which is where the $500 billion claim previously came from. Project it out to ten years, and it comes to $700 billion.

Well, this is now the third time I've had to amend that post. (That'll teach me to go off half-cocked.) So here's what I should have said then:

Take that over-$70-billion that Obamacare saves by putting a stop to the organized criminals stealing from the Medicare system, as well as the wasteful inefficiencies within it, and project that out ten years. There's your $716 billion dollars! That amount, which Romney and his cronies are claiming Obama robbed to pay for Romneycare II, is actually money that Obama stole back from Medicare thieves!

I have no problem with Obama stealing back $700 billion from Medicare crooks to pay for "Obamacare." Do you?

Politifact did issue its evaluation of this particular claim of Mitt Romney's campaign. It rated it mostly false. But it didn't go far enough in realizing just how much criminality was policed by Healthcare Reform, and how the dollar amount saved in this way matches the $700 billion quote almost perfectly. Well, Politifact should have rated this one as 'Pants on Fire!'

But my evaluation of Politifact will have to be a different blog post.

Eric

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Why Voter I.D. Will Backfire

I'll hand it to the conservative strategists at the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, they come up with some clever tactics. The latest one is the enacting of voter I.D. laws. Ostensibly, this is done to combat voter fraud. But they made the mistake of highlighting the demographics this would affect the most - namely poor, elderly, young and minority voters - and the cat was let out of the bag. There is a not-so-subtle attempt at nudging the elections over in their favor.  It is gerrymandering on a grand scale.

Now, I'm not going to take the ridiculous position that some on the left have taken and say that there's almost no fraud. Sure, only a dozen or so confirmed cases of fraud have been documented in the recent decade, but voter fraud is something like seeing a cockroach in your kitchen. Sure, it's only one bug, but if you see one, there's likely an entire population living beneath the floorboards or inside the walls somewhere. So I say, yes, there's some fraud, and more than we like to admit. But is voter I.D. the way to solve it?

As any 19-year-old girl who has brought a fake photo I.D. to a club knows, the answer is... hell, no! Photo I.D. can be fooled just as easily as anything, and the elderly volunteers who work at the polls are not as adept at spotting a fake I.D. as, say, a police officer or even a bartender. Requiring a photo I.D. will not stop fraud so much as it will make it much harder to detect, because in those cases where voter fraud has taken place on any significant scale, the defense will always be, "There's no fraud here. Everybody showed their I.D.!" Well, fine, until you realize that a well-financed fake I.D. ring might have been at work.

Guess which party has more financial muscle to force a large-scale phony ident. scheme under the radar?

It used to be that the poor guy on skid row, who had no clean shirt, no socks, and no money even for coffee, could at least console himself with the paltry knowledge that he had one, measly vote to change it, and that the wealthiest asshole was only as wealthy has him in that regard. Now he can't have even that.

To prevent fraud, one needs a means of trying to prevent duplicate or bogus entries. But that's what voter registration is for. You have a person who provides their personal information, address, some sort of verification, etc., assign it a number, and there you go. We already have that. A photo I.D. just makes the process more expensive for the potential voter, thus amounting to a poll tax. In the 21st Century, no less! You'd think we'd grown beyond that. To prevent this, the government must be required to pay for the I.D. So far, I haven't heard one, single Republican politician ask for that. We want smaller government, after all.

(Special note: In Wisconsin, if you are turning 18 before the November elections, you CAN get a free I.D.! Just check the "Free ID" box when filling out your application!)

I don't think all this is being done to unhorse Obama. I can clearly recall (as I'm sure you also can) about how then-Wisconsin-Governor Jim Doyle stood opposed to voter I.D. laws being enacted prior to the 2008 presidential election. The I.D. anti-fraud angle was probably cooked up to oppose Democrats in general, and Hillary Clinton in particular. It was only after the Obama campaign overwhelmed everyone that Republicans, not fully realizing how much they were truly latent xenophobic racists underneath it all (they probably still aren't consciously aware of it!) began getting really adamant about pushing voter I.D. laws through. Apparently, not only have we not grown past poll taxes, we haven't grown past lynchings, either.

That having been said, I'll admit that we're on the cusp of the era where everyone will have some sort of I.D. to vote anyway. We already need an I.D. to buy alcohol, an I.D. to buy cigarettes, an I.D. to enter a club, an I.D. to collect a welfare check, an I.D. for, well, anything. Are the numbers of poor and minority voters without photo I.D. really as high as projections have stated? I'm not so sure.

Well, be that as it may, it is as certain as death and taxes that the whole thing will backfire. Why? Because the surest way to get people to go do something is to attempt to prevent them from doing it. Want to get young people and minorities to get out and vote? Then try to block them from voting! They'll get pissed, and they'll go vote in droves! Already, minority civic leaders and left-leaning political pundits are blowing the whistle, months in advance, preparing to make certain that as many people have photo I.D.s as possible. You will see concerted efforts at voter identification. Entire armies of volunteers will make certain of it.

Also, young people are often jaded about voting, but voter I.D. assuages their fears about having their voices heard. Take Indiana, for example. Indiana was one state which enacted a strong voter I.D. law between 2004 and 2008. Did it prevent young people from voting? No! According to a Pew Research poll, the percentage of young people as an overall share of the vote went up by 5% between 2004 and 2008! Young people in that state felt better about their vote not being negated by any shenanagans, and voted with more confidence.

This will replay itself in 2012 on a much larger scale. Instead of hurting the Democratic vote, it will favor it. Perhaps it will even hurt the Republican vote as the elderly are often more conservative.

Full disclosure: There is one piece of contrary evidence to this theory. A weak voter I.D. law was passed in Ohio in 2006, and the youth vote in that state went down by 4% as a total of the overall vote between '04 and '08. My hypothesis regarding this is that young people burn out more easily when it comes to politics, and no state has more scorched-earth scarring when it comes to political ads than Ohio. I don't blame young people in that state for being turned off. Still, I could be wrong.

What I'm not wrong about is the backlash. There will be efforts to make sure I.D.s don't block the vote, and here now is my BRILLIANT suggestion for making sure voting takes place fairly: SPONSOR AN I.D.! It's a great idea! If you're reading this, you probably have the means to assist someone with getting their I.D. in time for the November elections. You probably can help financially, you likely have a vehicle to make getting to & from needed places to pick up verifying documents easy, and you have the willingness to help. I'll bet someone out there could set up an Internet-based network to link people who need an I.D. with people who are willing to help them get it. Become an I.D. sponsor! It only costs $30 at the most ($28 in Wisconsin, and remember, it's free for first-time applicants), and that beats giving a useless $30 donation to a political campaign already overwhelmed by billion-dollar donors!

As I stated earlier, one needs a photo I.D. for anything these days. I'm fairly certain that more potentially Democratic-party votes have I.D. cards that we give them credit for. But one doesn't need an I.D. to buy a gun these days, thanks to conservatives siding so strongly with the NRA. That means all those who were blocked from voting at the polls will be able to buy a firearm and vent their frustrations on the republican legislators who put voter I.D. laws in place. If they can't vote with a ballot, they might vote with a bullet. (I'm not condoning that behavior, by the way. I'm not Ted Nugent! But the potential for such action will be there.)

I imagine voter I.D. could eventually help the Republicans. In 2016, the tumult over voter I.D. will have died down, and voters might be discouraged from voting. But by then, I predict, Hillary Clinton will cruise to an easy victory. Perhaps the midterm elections in 2018 would allow voter I.D. to impact the outcome, but by then, we all hope, the tenure of Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court will be an unhappy memory.

And a new form of electronic I.D. will have made the whole thing irrelevant, anyway.

Eric

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Why Romney Chose Ryan

Well, my previous post was all muddled. I jumped the gun, and ended up with a klutzy set of thoughts as I was forced to revise everything three hours after I'd put it out onto the net. Well, this time, I'm being anything but too hasty. Everybody has weighed in on Paul Ryan by now. Now it's my turn.

First, I've noticed a trend between winning and losing presidential candidates. It seems that the candidate who's likely to win always chooses a boring and safe running mate, while the candidate who is likely to lose chooses an exciting, risky running mate. This is no accident. Candidates who are winning have no need to rock the boat, while candidates who are losing have every reason to. Thus, in 1988, George Bush, Sr., riding Reagan's coattails, chose a pretty boy from a swing state, Dan Quayle of Indiana, while in 1984 Walter Mondale, who was trailing Reagan by a wide margin, went with a she-wolf in Geraldine Ferraro. In 1992, Bill Clinton had won most of the swing voters away from the failed campaign of H. Ross Perot, and went with another safe VP pick with Al Gore, an "Atari Democrat" from Tennessee. Eight years later, when it was Gore vs. Bush, Jr., Al went with Joseph Liebermann, a Jew, to shake things up, while Bush chose Dick Cheney, who could put children to sleep with his speeches.

Now we have Mitt Romney, and he's chosen a rock-the-boat vice president.

Guess who's likely to win?

I suppose I can't blame Romney. He wants to make it as exciting as possible. He also wants to energize the base to the fullest extent in order to get out the vote. Choosing Ryan does that. The pick makes sense in a number of other ways, too. Ryan is from a swing state, Wisconsin. He's youthful and handsome. He's the darling of the Tea Party. He will help with the thorny problem of conservative Christians who might balk at a Mormon candidate. In many ways, it's a choice that makes sense.

That having been said, Democrats are already opening the champagne. Ryan makes his VP selection, and he's chosen the biggest "scare grandma" candidate available, a guy who was considered a long shot only two months ago. He's the leader of a Congress with a mere 7% approval rating. He makes his fellow right-wing extremists look tame by comparison. He's the new Joseph McCarthy, only this time with brains, and minted for cable television. What a gift! He's put Wisconsin back into play, but has practically surrendered Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania to do it.

Why would Romney do this?

I think I know, and it's not just throwing a "Hail Mary" pass the way John McCain did in '08. I have two insights. One is solid and is undoubtedly correct. The other is a pet hypothesis. A conspiracy theory, if you will. I'll share them here, and leave you, the reader, free to prefer one, the other, or both as you see fit. Here we go:

My solid insight is that Paul Ryan is a solid pick for a financial strategy. Regarding campaign financing, Obama has been outpaced by Romney. This is not a first for a sitting president, as John Kerry outpaced George W. Bush in '04, but it is a first for this massive a scale. Records are being broken on both sides, and this has led the Obama campaign to deal with it directly. Obama's strategists have been launching attack ads early, trying to cripple Romney's campaign so that later donors will trail off, allowing Our Trophy President to win a second term. So far, the strategy is working, with Obama opening up a more than 5% lead, according to most polls.

How does Romney counter this? Why by picking a VP candidate who energizes the Obama haters like no other, thus guaranteeing that his base will not get discouraged, and guaranteeing that he will not falter in raising money come October/November.

This is what Romney does best: raise money. He knows how to get rich people to invest. This is how he had his success with Bain Capital. This is how he helped the 2002 Winter Olympics. He gets rich folks to back him. Nobody does it better. But to get his money, he's embraced extremism. He dug up his treasure chest, and now he's full of dirt and mud. It's a good financial move, but it's not a good political move.

Mitt's Veep choice makes dollars, not sense.

In fact, I'm convinced that this is just a symptom of what Mitt is, as well as what he does. Mitt Romney is a good investment guy. He wins in the business world. But he's just not a good politician. He lost in Massachusetts to Ted Kennedy, and Obama is twice as powerful as Ted Kennedy ever was. Even Hillary Clinton couldn't beat him. Only the best politician could possibly beat Obama. Mitt Romney just doesn't have the skills.

Not that Republicans should feel bad. They didn't  have a candidate to begin with. All they had were a bunch of stumble-bums scampering around Iowa who were crazy enough to think that "Obamacare" can or should be repealed. Most sensible Republicans, like Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, were smart enough to sense that the economy was slowly recovering and decided to stay out of it.

And now for my second insight, and this one is, admittedly, far-fetched. The one thing that Mitt Romney fears most is Ron Paul. That's right, the old geezer who just wouldn't quit and came one plurality state short of throwing a huge monkey wrench into the Republican National Convention. He still has enough pull to cause a shitload of damage, and were he to run as a third-party candidate, he would have enough electoral college votes to ensure a Mitt Romney loss.

So, here's my pet hypothesis: I could just imagine Romney going to Ron Paul and saying, "Look, you can't win, but I know you intend to make an impact. We have to do what's best for the nation. What can I do to ensure you stay out of this from here on out?"

Ron Paul, who is all about lasses faire economics, hands the torch to the next generation, and to a fellow Ayn Rand disciple, by saying, "Make Paul Ryan your running mate, and I promise you, I won't run on a third-party ticket."

So there it is. Paul Ryan is a financial pick, and a backroom deal with the Devil. It's selling out in the hope that money really can buy you love.

Well, I say fuck the money. Fuck the extremism behind it. I'd rather vote for a Chicago politician than let some fool from Janesville embarrass the Dairy State.

Eric

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Robbing Medicare?

On NBC's "Meet the Press" yesterday, RNC chairman Reince Priebus made a bold claim. In response to David Gregory pointing out that Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney's VP pick, has recently pushed a bill in Congress to destroy Medicare and privatize it, Priebus said that Obama had "robbed $700 billion from Medicare and used it to pay for Obamacare. That's really destroying Medicare."

Oh, really?

I wanted this blog post to be about why Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan in the first place. I'll get to that. But first things first...

I also wanted to see what PolitiFact had to say about this one. But, damn it all, I couldn't wait for a claim this bold to be exposed, so I took to researching it myself. DISCLAIMER: An earlier version of this blog post was wrong, wrong, wrong. I quoted Priebus as saying 700 million rather than 700 billion, and my overall premise was off-base. My apologies. But this time, I got it right.

First, it's true that Obamacare -- Oops! Sorry. I meant Romneycare -- does cut spending on Medicare by $500 million. Due to some dickering with numbers, it could be made as high as $700 million. (I recently heard the Romster saying that it was up to $745 billion, or something. It keeps going up!) We'll pretend that $700 million is accurate, just for brevity. That cut, incidentally, prevents Medicare from going insolvent. Pretty damned important, I should say. But let's repay this in slow motion:

The new health care law takes $700 million from Medicare and uses it to help pay for expanded coverage for seniors. That much is true. In other words, "Obamacare" takes $700M from health care coverage for seniors and uses it -- drum roll, please -- to pay for health care coverage for seniors! Go figure!

So this could be framed as "robbing" only if one thinks that the new health care law is paying for something worthless. It isn't of course. If a pickpocket takes the $20 bill from your pocket, then puts a different $20 bill back, has he robbed you of anything?

Maybe if someone convinces you the other $20 bill was a phony. It isn't, but if you believe it, you'll feel robbed.

Another aspect of Obama's saving of Medicaid through strategic cuts is eliminating fraud and waste. That might sound like political bullshit, but it's absolutely possible to save that much and more by eliminating fraud. In a 60 Minutes expose which aired in September of 2010, Steve Kroft reported that Medicare fraud had surpassed the sale of cocaine as a major criminal enterprise.

Again, DISCLAIMER: I'd gotten this part slightly wrong in that I'd previously said that the removal of fraud would more than make up for the "cuts" in Medicare. Not true. But I straightened it out.
It works like this: Crooks set up a phony medical treatment facility, bill real patients for medical treatments they didn't receive, then take the money and run. The pre-Obama reform Medicare system then pays the claim before they're audited! Money first, policing of the money later. By the time the IRS and FBI find the crooks, they've already disappeared, leaving behind only the abandoned storefront which provided nothing more than an address.

60 Minutes reported that some $60 Billion in taxpayer dollars was getting wasted every year this way! With our national debt, we simply can't afford that much money, much less having it go into the pockets of crooks!

But all that was before Obamacare.

One thing Obamacare did which was absolutely essential was to make it far more difficult for criminal interests to put forth phony claims. In other words, thanks to the new Health Care Law, claims are audited first, before money goes out.

Great. But did it work? Is Obamacare eliminating the fraud?

You bet your ass it is! Back in May, the AP reported the largest bust of Medicare fraudsters so far. $500 million in waste was immediately recovered. And that was just one bust! The Obama administration was, at that time, closing in on one billion in recovered fraud losses, and that was just in the first quarter of 2012! And more to come! As crooks see that their criminal enterprise is way more risky, many drop out. That saves even more money! It's a positive multiplier, resulting in billions more saved!

Way to go, Barry!

But if the health care law is repealed, all that goes away. The criminals, real rather than political, will get their $60 billion per year payoff right back again.

Love it, or hate it, you're stuck with Obamacare. You can't repeal. You can only refine.
So where does Priebus, this needle-dicked, two-timing, thrice evil, quadrupedal and quintessential shithead get off calling Obama a crook, when all Our Trophy President did was to crack down on crooks, cut spending, save money, save Medicare and do one hell of a bang-up job in spite of ass-wipes like him getting in the way?!

What an asshole! If RNC Chairman Reince Priebus were twice as smart, he'd still be a retard!

We are not in the Joseph McCarthy Era anymore. We are in a new era where an entire political party is comprised of nothing but McCarthys.

And the latest of them is, like the original McCarthy, also from Wisconsin. But that's my next blog post.

Eric

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It's The Brain, Stupid!

In 1962 Gianna Beretta Molla, a pregnant mother of three, discovered she had a potentially lethal uterine tumor. She faced a horrible predicament which no potential mother should have to face:  An abortion would kill the fetus she was carrying, while leaving it there would likely kill her. She weighed the options and made her choice, telling the doctors not to save her life if it meant terminating the pregnancy.

She died a week after giving birth, leaving her husband a widower and her four children motherless.

On May 16, 2004, Pope John Paul II Canonized her as a Saint, prioritizing her ahead of Mother Teresa for the title.

When it comes to abortion, Christians aren’t kidding.

They are also dead wrong.

In this post, I am going to argue why abortion is absolutely ethical, and why those who oppose it, are unwittingly evil. Yeah, I know, it’s a tall order. More people are irredeemably lost to logic over this one issue than any other. But I believe it’s possible for people to see reason, even here. It’s been said before, and it bears repeating here: We are all pro-life and pro-choice. We can therefore find common ground, tricky though that might be. All it takes is a little bit of scientific knowledge.

First, let’s get one thing straight:  “Saint Gianna,” did a courageous thing. She exercised her right to choose, and she chose the life of her unborn child. She risked her life to save her daughter. Any mother might do the same. But she died as a result, an overall negative – especially for her children as a whole. She is quite rightly hailed as a heroic figure.

But had she known what I’m about to say below, she would have changed her mind.

Let’s begin by making a couple of concessions to the pro-life side. First, it is absolutely true that a fetus is alive. Arguments to the contrary are quite ignorant.  It is comprised of living, human cells, and is thus both living, and human.  Any removal of these living cells is therefore the taking of human life, by any definition. It does little use to deny this fact. However, the removal of an appendix or a set of tonsils might also be considered the taking of human life by this same standard. In both such cases, living human cells are deliberately removed and killed. To differentiate between these surgeries and an abortion, we must ask whether, and when, a fetus is an autonomous, individual being. We'll get back to that, shortly.

The other concession to the pro-life side is this: A late-term fetus is tantamount to a newborn baby. The only real difference between a fetus just before birth and a baby just after birth is that the latter breathes air, and the former breathes amniotic fluid. (Oh, and also that thing about drinking milk as opposed to having an umbilical cord.) Thus, the argument that birth is not a reasonable place to draw the line is not only sound, it’s a scientific fact. We must bow to the scientific evidence regardless of our political preferences, and that means near-full-term fetuses do have rights. The failure of certain activists and a few politicians to see this has driven many in the pro-life movement absolutely white-hot with rage, perhaps understandably. So, in an attempt to force the issue, lawsuits for murder have sometimes been filed in certain legal cases where a pregnant woman has been assaulted and her fetus killed. One such case was that of a woman from right here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, named Tracy Marciniak.

In 1992, Marciniak’s estranged husband, Glenndale Black, assaulted her. According to reports, he brutally beat her, hit her twice in the abdomen, then refused to call 911 or let Tracy call 911. As a result, her baby died, and she was very nearly killed herself. She was only five days away from scheduled full term pregnancy. Maddeningly, when she sought to press charges against Black for the manslaughter of her child, she discovered that she couldn’t because Wisconsin law did not consider a fetus a human being until after it was born. Black was instead only charged with assault and wrongful imprisonment. Tracy Marciniak’s plight became a landmark event which led to a change of the legal code of the State of Wisconsin in 1998, and brought about the “unborn victims of violence act” to the United States Senate and House of Representatives. On April 1st, 2004, President George W. Bush finally signed the act into law. The general public overwhelmingly agreed that birth is not the place to draw the line.

I agree. But then, what about the opposite end of the spectrum?  Does life begin at conception?

Upon examining the evidence, the surprising answer is – no!

Both sperm and egg are very much alive before they join together. Both mother and father are very much alive when they produce sperm and egg. The sperm and eggs which made the parents, in turn, were very much alive before they joined together, and so forth. If we are to be honest with ourselves, we must conclude that life does not begin at conception. Life begins at the dawn of all life upon the planet Earth! The question then is not, “When does life begin?” The question is, “When does the life of an individual being begin?”

Okay, now we have the question accurately phrased, but when is that point exactly?  Why not conception?

To answer that, we must replay the fertilization scene between a sperm and ovum. When sperm meets egg to form a zygote, a living thing with all the genetic material of an individual person has come into being. It has a complete DNA chain, 48 chromosomes, and has begun the process which will eventually cause it to grow to adulthood—a process which it will not fully complete until 21.75 years later. (It’s 21.75 instead of simply 21 because we ought to include the additional nine months’ gestation period.) Based upon these facts, many conclude that an individual life does, in fact, begin at this point. And because some birth control methods work by preventing the zygote from attaching to the uterine wall, the conclusion is sometimes drawn that use of these methods are immoral.

Yet something very interesting can happen after a zygote forms. It is at this point that the cells multiply furiously, going from a few to a few hundred thousand in a very short amount of time. And here it is that the zygote, in rare but not uncommon cases, can split to form two growing zygotes to make a pair of twins! In much rarer cases, the zygote could split three ways to form triplets. So the life of a single individual simply cannot begin at the point of conception, because it could be more than one person. Conception is logically ruled out!

So much for conception.

So if an individual human life does not begin at conception, and definitely does begin before birth, then it must happen somewhere in between. Makes sense in theory, but there’s quite a lot of gray area in between those two.  But if conception doesn’t work, what other possible criteria can be used to determine the point at which growing human cells become growing human being? Is there a definite line?

One possibility could be vital signs. In the medical profession, a doctor determines if a patient is alive or dead based on the tell-tale signs of heartbeat and respiration. A fetus’ heart begins beating after only 22 days. Respiration of uterine fluid begins around 12 weeks, although true breathing of air does not begin until after birth. Yet these vital signs are not absolutes. Circulation and oxygenation of blood can be achieved artificially. A person could lack both a beating heart and a set of working lungs and yet still be obviously alive. Certain patients undergoing radical surgery can have their blood chilled, and their heartbeat slowed to the point that they are clinically dead, yet be warmed and revived after the procedure is completed. Thus, advancements in medical technology have highlighted the fact that vital signs such as heartbeat cannot be used as an indicator, and the bumper stickers which say, ‘Abortion stops a beating heart,’ are completely missing the point. Heart, lungs, and indeed every organ in the human body could potentially be replaced with either a donor organ or a mechanical device. All except one, that is. That organ, of course, is the brain.

Of course! The brain!

When one is alive, that means brain alive, and when someone is dead, we mean that person is brain dead.  All other indications of life could be present, but if the brain is dead, they all mean nothing.

In short, ladies and gentlemen, the brain defines the being!

To illustrate, one can do a simple thought experiment. Suppose one takes a living brain, and just for fun, let’s say that it is the brain of Congressman Paul Ryan. We could surgically remove his brain, put his body on life-support, and then put the brain into a very sophisticated robot which could sustain and interact with it, so that the brain can operate the robot’s arms, move about, and speak to people. Now, we can ask the question, ‘Where is Paul?  Is he in his body, which still shows heartbeat and respiration but is otherwise lifeless, or is he in the robot, which others can talk to and interact with?’ The correct answer, of course, is that the Congressman is inside the robot. Where else could he be? For all functional purposes, the robot would now be Paul Ryan!

Now we can make the debate more interesting: Suppose someone unplugs the life-support on Ryan’s body and allows it to die. Has this person committed murder? Recognizing that the brain is the house of the being, the answer must be no! So long as Paul’s brain is alive and safe, Paul himself is still alive. It is certainly a criminal act; it is destruction of property, it is vandalism, it is cold-heartedly mean, but it is not murder!

This standard can now be applied to the abortion debate. When dealing with a fetus whose brain has not formed yet, abortion may be done with an absolutely clear conscience! Without a formed brain, there is no ‘being’ yet present inside it. To put it in spiritual terms, without a functional container for the soul, there can be no soul contained therein. In other words, a fetus must first pass the ‘point of ensoulment’ to be viable.

We now must face the next question: ‘At what stage of development does a fetal brain become viable?’ Here, there are three clear places one can draw the line. I have labeled them, ‘the three stages of quickening.’ They are as follows:

Stage One quickening happens with the earliest brain activity of any kind. Even pro-life publications admit that this point does not take place until six weeks of development. This gives a one-and-a-half month window in which abortion may always be done with a clear conscience, no matter what. Any abortive procedure which takes place prior to Stage One quickening is absolutely ethical.

Stage Two of quickening happens with the sudden onset of fetal movement. Little, if any, movement takes place within the first nine weeks. Then, at the tenth week of development, the fetus begins very radical movement, indeed!  This indicates the formation and activation of the cerebellum, the brain’s center of locomotion. This is not yet thinking, reasoning, or what we might call an awakening to sentience. That comes later. But we recognize that many will see such movement as definitive. Although I’m convinced that this stage does not yet mean the onset of cognition or awareness, and that abortion may still be ethically done after this point, someone else might choose to draw the line at this stage. If so, I would find that position respectable.

Stage Three of quickening happens with the sudden growth and activation of the cerebellum, the center of thinking and reasoning. This takes place around 20 weeks of development – or roughly the half-way mark of the nine-month gestation cycle. A sudden growth spurt of this part of the brain takes place just prior to this time and it is at this point that electroencephalographs (or, EEG’s) first reveal the sudden appearance of the first true alpha, beta, gamma and theta ‘brain waves.’

This final stage marks the point where I officially draw the line. This is where, I argue, the spiritual line has been crossed, and the “soul” (for want of a better word) enters the body. The point at which abortions should not be performed is at Stage Three quickening, or about the 20th week. Abortion ought not be done after this point, except in extreme medical cases where the fetus suffers from a malady which renders the brain unviable, such as anencephaly, severe hydro-encephalitis, or the pregnancy is such that threatens the health of the mother.

Note that I say ‘health’ of the mother, because although a caesarian-section may not normally be life-threatening, any major surgery has the potential to become so. If a D&C, commonly referred to in the media as a ‘partial-birth abortion,’ is rendered illegal, then the only recourse a doctor would have in such extreme cases would be a caesarian section, thus needlessly jeopardizing a second life when a first has already been lost. Such legislations are unscientific and short-sighted. D&C is, on occasion, medically necessary and should remain legal. Also such decisions should be made by a patient and her physician, and not by legislators who tend to lack the sufficient medical training to make such decisions.

So, there it is! My solution to the abortion debate. You can’t counter-argue science forever (although creationists certainly try). There is an adequate window of opportunity where a woman may have an abortion ethically. It is a position which supports both a woman’s right to choose, and also supports the sanctity of human life. There's no excuse for forcing young people who made one, little mistake into permanent poverty. There's really no excuse for forcing rape victims to bear their assailants' children. There's really, really no excuse for blocking contraception. There's holy shit no excuse for blocking morning after pills! And holy fucking shit is there no excuse for blocking morning after pills to rape victims! And if all this is true, then those who oppose stem cell research based on outdated, conception-based criteria, are criminals. Unwitting criminals perhaps, but criminals, nevertheless!

Oh, I don’t think this outline of mine will solve anything right away, but as surely as I’m writing this, it will be the societal position someday. Population pressures and economic forces will eventually leave us with no other choice. Accept it now, or don’t, but we’ll all accept it sooner or later.

Eric

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Yo, Joe! (Soptic.)

Have you seen this political ad from the Obama campaign? (Well, not actually from the campaign, but from an unaffiliated super-pac.)




Apparently, it's been the cause of some concern. Joe Soptic, the factory worker whose wife tragically died after he lost his insurance coverage after being laid off by Bain Capital, tells the world that he doesn't feel that Romney understands what he puts everyday people through in his business decisions. But Joe's wife died several years after his job with Bain ended. Everyone in the media, from ABC to CNN, is calling the ad "misleading."

I disagree.

Think I'm biased from the outset? Think I'm just being an Obama bunny? I think I can convince you otherwise. It's one thing when Fox News distorts the facts. It's quite another when the three major "rabbit-ear" networks and CNN join in on the error. I'm going to make my case that Joe Soptic is absolutely right, and the Obama campaign has nothing to fear from this ad. There are two main criticisms about why the ad is inaccurate. I will deal with them both individually.

Criticism 1: The Soptic ad states that his wife died several years after Joe had left the factory that was shut down by Bain. This much is true, in as far as it goes. But it really isn't about when she died, is it? No, it's about when she got sick.

The ad clearly states that when she went in for a hospital visit years later for pneumonia, they discovered that she had stage 4 cancer. You simply don't need to be a doctor to know that stage 4 comes after many years of having the cancer inside your body.

You see, as Joe told us (were you paying attention during the ad), his wife got sick right after the time he was downsized by Bain. That means, were he to have had insurance in 2001 or 2002 (his factory was shut down in 2001), his wife's cancer would have been detected early, and she might well have survived.

So how is this ad misleading about his wife? It isn't. Let me state again: It's not about when she died, it's about when she got sick.

Criticism 2: Soptic was given the ax after Romney had already left Bain Capital to work for the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Well, maybe. We've heard the debate about whether he was really at Bain Capital  in 2002 and 2003 before. It's true that Romney probably wasn't doing much for Bain actively at that time, but he was still listed as their CEO and Board Chairman. Why? Well, probably because it assuaged stockholder fears about the company. But if Romney got paid for being CEO, then he was responsible, at least partly, for Joe's predicament. If he took the money, then he took at least some of the responsibility. (Part of why he might never release his tax returns; they would reveal whether or not he was paid by Bain during those years, and if he was...)

Is Romney responsible for the death of Joe's wife? No. The cancer is. Romney is merely culpable for the loss of the insurance which allowed the cancer to kill her. But isn't that what ABC, CNN, CBS and NBC should be reporting? The truth about the ad is not hard to figure out. Yet reporters are apparently so used to political ads being misleading that they don't recognize a legitimate one anymore when someone aims a cleverly framed criticism at it. We can all relate. We're all so jaded about political ads that we usually dismiss an ad as false when someone on the other side of the political argument bitches about it. But that's no excuse for professionals in the field getting fooled by this. We, the public, don't normally have the time to read between the lines. But reporters do. It's their job.  So what excuse does Wolf Blitzer or George Stephanopoulos have? After all, we expect bias from Fox News. But because of that, we expect the other news outlets to not be taken in by Fox News so easily. As soon as the criticism came from that outlet, everyone's B.S. detector should have been set off.

Romney might have been responsible for saving Joe's wife, as Andrea Saul, a Romney spokesperson, pointed out. All Joe Soptic would have had to do would be to move to Massachusetts, and he would have been covered. Conservative pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter threw an absolute conniption-fit over this gaff -- one which told the simple truth for a change. Of course what really helped the Obama campaign was not Saul's gaff, but the tremendous boost in exposure it received when every conservative talking head went ballistic over it, thus putting it on a huge, flashing billboard for all to see! Don't you love how Limbaugh and Coulter's incompetence shines so brightly when they try to highlight other people's incompetence?

Meanwhile, you go, Joe! It's a shame you had to be the only one who told the truth at a time when everyone else in the media got it wrong.

Eric

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10 Things You Didn't Know About Mormonism

This past Sunday morning, a news program called The Chris Matthews Show (yes, the same Chris Matthews who hosts Hardball on MSNBC) aired on WISN 12. It was broadcast right between "Teen Kids News" and formula one racing at the Indianapolis 200. You can guess how many people, other than myself, were watching. But the topic was perfect. It was about Mitt Romney's religion of Mormonism, something that everyone seems bent on not talking about. Love Romney or hate him, nobody wants to say the "M" word.

Well, that's what I'm here for.

With that in mind, I thought I'd share some of the most amazing things I've learned about Mormonism for those who don't know much about it outside of the South Park episode. It's important to remember, before one casts a vote for a Mormon, just how big a joke that religion is (and so by corollary, are those who practice it). So here, for your informative entertainment pleasure, is my outline, "Ten Things I'll Bet You Didn't Know About Mormonism." Enjoy!

10.) Only two major religions have declared open war upon the United States. Islam, of course, is one. Mormonism is the other. (The Utah War, 1858.)

9.) Mormons today may be heart-sickeningly warm and fuzzy today, but this was not always the case. Mormons were once the bloodiest sect in the American Frontier, leaving a trail of riots, blood and death across a swath of North America, ranging from New York, to Ohio, to Illinois, to Missouri, and finally to Utah. Mormons once had so fierce a reputation that they were the main antagonist in one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous Sherlock Holmes stories. (A Study in Scarlet, 1887.)

8.) Mormons have all but taken over the Boy Scouts of America. This is part of why they do not allow gay boys to join.

7.) The once-fierce reputation of Mormonism was well-earned. Of all the American religions, it is the only one which has ever slaughtered large numbers of U.S. citizens and buried them in mass, unmarked graves. (The Mountain Meadows Massacre, 1859.) In fact, it is fair to say that today's ultra-nice tradition of Mormonism probably came about from a large sense of guilt felt by its past generations (something which today's Mormons have probably forgotten).

6.) Mormonism teaches that darkness of skin was a curse of God brought about by sinfulness. This is the Mormon explanation for blacks, Indians, Asians, or anyone else who has a complexion darker than Snow White.

5.) Largely due to the above, blacks were not allowed into the Mormon priesthood until 1978. (To his credit, Marion Romney, a cousin of George Romney, Mitt Romney's father, was instrumental in the reversal.)

4.) Joseph Smith, the author of the Book of Mormon, wrote scientifically proven forgeries into some of Mormonism's canonical scriptures.  (The Book of Abraham, part of The Pearl of Great Price.) That means that at least part of Mormonism is a confirmed lie, and Smith is a confirmed liar.

3.) Yes, it's true, Mormons do not allow women into the workplace. Women are relegated to the home in Mormonism, period. Mormons get around this by arguing that no job is more important than the raising of children, and that therefore women have the highest ranking job of them all. While there is something to be said for the argument, it is a poor excuse for subjugation.

2.) Mormons are very prominent in the secret service. This is partially due to the influence of former Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, who was on the Senate committee which oversees the FBI. It is also true that the Mormon Church has its own private security force.

1.) Mitt Romney is not the highest ranking Mormon in American politics! That honor goes to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a practicing Mormon, and a Democrat! (Okay, an anti-choice, anti-gay Democrat, but a Democrat nevertheless.)