Martin Bosworth brings us the news that one of Bush's final eff yous to the women of America will be an attempt to define contraception as abortion, covering such things as birth control and the morning after pill.

Bosworth surmises that the right wing just wants people to breed more, which seems a reasonable conclusion. While that's always seemed the case to me, I never could figure out why they seem so dead set against any kind of financial, food or medical assistance for pregnant women and new mothers. Why not directly incentivize your end goal? I guess that encourages the Wrong Kind of People to breed; for them, we have an infant mortality rate hike, to take care of the problem the other way around. Once they're born, screw 'em -- but don't use a condom, that'd be morally reprehensible.

It's hard to tell what McCain would do regarding contraception, because as Steve Benen points out, McCain is confused by contraception and acts offended when tricksy reporters ask him about it. I expect though, as baffled as McCain seems to be in the matter, that he'll be happy to listen to his new best friends in the fundamentalist community to supply him with the correct views.

And looking for good news in all this, because it's been in short supply lately, I'm gratified to be reading about these issues from progressive male colleagues outside the 'usual suspect' ring of feminist bloggers. Maybe one of these days it could come to seem strange that anyone would make a distinction between feminist and progressive sites. I can dream.

Update [2008-7-16 16:53:2 by Todd Beeton]:Senators Hillary Clinton and Patty Murray are on it. They sent the following letter to Health & Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt:

Dear Mr. Secretary:

It has come to our attention that the Department of Health and Human Services may be preparing draft regulations that would create new obstacles for women seeking contraceptive services.

One of the most troubling aspects of the proposed rules is the overly-broad definition of "abortion." This definition would allow health-care corporations or individuals to classify many common forms of contraception – including the birth control pill, emergency contraception and IUDs – "abortions" and therefore to refuse to provide contraception to women who need it.

As a consequence, these draft regulations could disrupt state laws securing women's access to birth control. They could jeopardize federal programs like Medicaid and Title X that provide family-planning services to millions of women. They could even undermine state laws that ensure survivors of sexual assault and rape receive emergency contraception in hospital emergency rooms.

We strongly urge you to reconsider these regulations before they are released. We are extremely concerned by this proposal's potential to affect millions of women's reproductive health.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely yours,

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton

Senator Patty Murray

by Walter Brasch

    George W. Bush looked into the TV camera, Tuesday morning [July 15] and tried to assuage the fears of about 300 million Americans who believed they were in the middle of a Recession.

    "The economy is growing," said the President. "Productivity is high," he told us. "Trade's up. People are working," he said. In the Bush White House, the "R Word" is just a myth. Of course, the man who once wanted to be known as the Compassionate Conservative did say he knew "It's been a difficult time for many American families."

    "Difficult" doesn't even begin to describe what has happened to Americans the past seven years.

    Within hours of the President's speech, a less optimistic Ben Bernanke, chair of the Federal Reserve, told the Senate Banking Committee that inflation is high and "seems likely to move temporarily higher in the near term." In sworn testimony, he told the senators that "Many financial markets and institutions remain under considerable stress, in part because of the outlook for the economy and thus for credit quality, remains uncertain." Market Watch reports that over the past year, "inflation at the wholesale level gained 9.2%-- the largest year-over-year gain since June 1981."

    On the day that the President assuaged and the Federal Reserve chairman testified, General Motors announced it would freeze job hirings in several areas, lay off salaried workers, suspend shareholder dividends, and borrow up to $3 billion. Six weeks earlier, GM announced it was closing four plants; on the day the President spoke, GM announced four more plant closings. The nation's largest corporation, which saw a 16 percent sales decline in the first half of the year, announced that it was giving retired workers a slight pension increase but was cutting health care benefits.

    About 8.5 million Americans actively seeking work are unemployed, an increase of about 21.4 percent over one year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The unemployment rate of 5.5 percent is up from 4.6 percent a year ago. More important, about 1.5 million of the 8.5 million unemployed have been unemployed at least six months, a 37 percent increase over the past year, according to the BLS. Not included in the numbers are the "1.6 million people who are `marginally attached' to the workforce, who had looked for work in the previous 12 months, but not in the last month," according to Andre Damon of Global Research. Damon also reports that the BLS data does not include about 420,000 "`discouraged workers', who had given up looking for work because they think that there is no work available."

    Work is available in dozens of other countries, where American companies seeking to "maximize the bottom line" have been outsourcing jobs for years. About 14 million American jobs are going to be outsourced in the next four years, according to a report issued by the University of California at Berkeley. Short-sighted and greedy, these CEOs and their boards believe child labor and wages that can dip below $1 an hour is just another acceptable business practice. The "Made in America" label is now becoming as extinct as corporate morality.

    Americans who have been using credit cards to survive the Recession and have now reached their credit limit can raise their limit or sometimes reduce their payments or rate. All they have to do is call a credit card agency's toll-free number, which is answered by someone at a call center in India. Those same call centers are also telemarketing Americans to get into even more debt by getting credit cards.

    In a true "global economy," as many now euphemistically refer to outsourcing, persons having trouble with their computers assembled from parts made in Mexico and several Asian countries can now call technicians in India for assistance.

    Book and magazine publishers have been outsourcing art, design, editing, and printing overseas. Even newspapers have figured out how to cut even more costs while driving up profits. The Orange County (Calif.) Register, which laid off 90 persons in 2007, outsourced copyediting and page design to journalists in India. The Modesto (Calif.) Bee and Sacramento Bee have outsourced most of their advertising design departments to India.

    For Americans who have jobs, getting to them is more expensive. It makes no difference if the worker drives or takes public transportation, the rising cost of oil has pushed Americans into a crisis. Gas prices rose more than 25 percent in the past year, to more than $4 by July 1; diesel prices are up more than 30 percent to more than $5. The higher fuel costs affect almost every service and industry from home heating to food production and road repair.

    Flushed with an inflated housing boom, banks and mortgage companies had begun issuing mortgages, usually with excessive fees and high interest rates, to just about anyone with a pulse. The weaker the credit rating, the higher the fees and interest. Even if the economy was healthy, there would have been several hundred thousand defaults. By the end of 2007, about 2.5 million mortgages were in default, almost 40 percent higher than one year earlier. Attached to the problem is that many new homeowners bought houses at inflated prices, assured by lending companies that housing prices would continue to rise, are making monthly payments that put them at financial risk, and are now watching the value of their houses decline.

    Foreclosures and the Recession have driven down housing prices throughout the country. In 20 major American cities, house prices declined about 15 percent, according to the Case-Shiller index of housing prices. Prices declined by 25 percent in Las Vegas, Miami, and Phoenix, according to Case-Shiller. In California, the median price of houses declined by 35 percent over last year, according to the California Association of Realtors.

    Monday morning, the day before the President's speech, hundreds of Americans stood in line at the 33 Southern California branches of IndyMac Bank, now renamed Indymac Federal Bank, to withdraw what they hoped was all of their money. Over 11 days, customers had withdrawn about $1.3 billion, amid rumors that the bank was failing. The previous Friday, federal regulators seized the bank, once one of the nation's largest mortgage lenders. Last year, the bank lost $615 million; the books bled red another $184 million the first three months of this year. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.(FDIC) guarantees each individual account to $100,000, joint accounts to $200,000, and retirement accounts to $250,000. Those with less knew they would get all of their money. For those with more, some were just hoping to recover 50 cents on the dollar. The cost to the FDIC is expected to be $4-8 billion. IndyMac was the fifth bank to fail in the previous six months.

    Also failing were the Federal National Mortgage Association (better known as Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. (better known as Freddie Mac). The quasi-governmental agencies either own the loans or guarantee loans for almost half of the nation's $11 trillion in mortgages. But, with more homeowners buying houses they couldn't afford and now being subjected to rising costs in almost every area, combined with higher unemployment, both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac faced collapse, their stock value freefalling about 90 percent in the past year. To keep the two agencies from failing, which would undoubtedly throw the nation into a deeper Recession that could dive into a Depression, the Federal Reserve announced it would issue low-cost loans of up to $15 billion.

    While 15 billion taxpayer dollars may seem significant, it is only about 9 percent of the $168 billion Congress appropriated for the war this year. President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, and their advisors were vigorous in demanding the U.S. go to war in Iraq and vigorous in demanding massive funding for that war, which may now cost more than $1 trillion.

    President Bush did acknowledge that the economy wasn't "as good as we'd like, and to the extent that we'll find weaknesses, we'll move." As domestic problems piled up the past few years, much caused by a diversion of the budget and assets to Iraq, it seemed that the Bush-Cheney Administration moved on domestic policies at the speed of a glacier.

    Not receiving much help are the 47 million Americans who don't have medical insurance, mostly because they can't afford the premiums, and the 3.5 million homeless, most of whom once had homes and jobs but are now living in their cars or makeshift shelters. About one-fourth of the homeless are veterans; slightly more than one-third of the homeless are children.

    In 1992, Bill Clinton and Al Gore campaigned against President George H.W. Bush on the slogan, "It's the economy, Stupid." The politics of that election came down to asking Americans if they were better off under that President Bush after four years than they were when his presidency began. Four presidential terms later, after eight years of a rising economy under President Clinton, it's the economy--not the war, the attack upon civil liberties, the destruction of the environment, or any of a few dozen other destructive policies--that may be what finally scuttles this Bush's legacy.

    [Dr. Brasch, an award-winning syndicated columnist, is professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University and president of the Pennsylvania Press Club. His latest book is Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush (November 2007), available through amazon.com and other bookstores. You may contact Brasch at brasch@bloomu.edu or through his website at: www.walterbrasch.com.]

     Someone once described courage as not never being afraid, but going on in spite of the fear. As a nation and as elected officials we seem to be running dangerously low on courage. Oh  we have the tough talk down, we have the posturing, but do we really have true courage? Since 9/11 when at least 2,985 people died from the terrorists attacks I think that what has been lost in all the hype is some perspective. While this was surely a tragedy, the population of the United States in the year 2001 was somewhere around 290 million people. Based on those numbers the terrorist attacks killed less than .02% of the population, yet since the attack we have responded by invading sovereign nations, torturing our fellow human beings, and gutting our Constitutional protections.

Yesterday, I quoted a well-known cable news figure as having said, "The list of things we could attach the word "-gate" to in the Bush administration is now 50 items long." I respectfully disagree - off the top of my head, I came up with 56 separate scandals.

This list is impartial, thrown together off the top of my head, which really says something about the Bush administration. It is no particular order - that would have taken too long, since my WiFi runs out at 10, and been beside the point anyway, which is to show the cumulative total of Bush's incompetence. Additionally, these are only scandals, not positions. This list takes on the Bush administration for his arrogance, incompetence, corruption, dishonesty, and disloyalty to the Constitution, not for their wrong positions or doofus moments. Thus, you'll see no GI bill, tax cuts for the rich, or SCHIP, and no pretzel choking, German backrubs, or Bushisms. Furthermore, this is just the administration, not the larger Republican Party. We're not talking about Bob Ney, or Duke Cunningham, or Don Young, or Tom DeLay (although his list would be just as long), or the Swift Boat vets, or the NRSC attacks on Max Cleland, or, or, or, or. So here's my list, and please add to it in the comments!

A H/T to randomnonviolence for also suggesting "Hugh's List of Bush Scandals," a list 368 items along, although one that contains not just shenanigans but issues, thus far broader than my own definition of scandal.

Let's IMPEACH them, NOW! I pray this to honor every Iraqi child who was blown into redness for absolutely nothing -- other than happening to be born on oil-soaked sand -- in order to satisfy a bunch of chicken-hawk draft-dodgers who are currently running our nation using this bizarre, filthy, far-out Neocon "quasi-fascist" Middle-Eastern colonization attempt, just to help their buddies at Exxon and Haliburton. I really hope there is a fair judging for heaven and hell because that's where the Bush war criminals are going!

I think we all have to have a great deal of respect for Dennis Kucinich who has tried time and again to have Bush impeached for truly obvious misdeeds. He has faced Nancy Pelosi's "no impeachment" position and has added to his following in single Congressional digits every time (Pelosi doesn't even want Karl Rove brought to justice for ignoring a Congressional warrant from Conyers' committee).

Kucinich just put out this letter in response to the revelations by the Pentagon that we got into Iran due to a lie which Bush was aware of. Instead of bringing 35 charges, he is bringing only one... maybe the rest of Congress can absorb one issue.

They call it missing in action, but those soldiers are missing at home, too, at every wedding and every graduation and every holiday.

Sometimes you meet an old man who has children and grandchildren now, and he never had a father. You meet amputees who had twenty good years ahead of them, playing softball or throwing a football around on Thanksgiving or pushing a stroller and lifting a baby ever so carefully out of it...

No war ever ends.

I remember Mr. Bush in the Press Club video, looking under a table for WMDs and all the elite reporters laughing, Karl Rove and Rumsfeld laughing and all the elite reporters laughing with them. Remember them!

There's always broken souls and crazy men raging in bare rooms, and women who wake up screaming, and children alone in the dark, listening.

Names and dates of birth on tombstones and monuments, and a mother who remembers every birthday, soldiers buried in consecrated ground and others unburied in jungles and wastelands. This was the father who would have given the bride away. This was the brother who would have been the best man.

No war ever ends.

John McCain and George W. Bush might not share the same stage at the same time between now and election day, but that doesn't mean that McCain isn't going to allow the President to address the Republican National Convention.

Sen. John McCain's plans are gradually unfolding for the Republican National Convention in September as he tries to walk a tightrope between conflicting demands.

First is the question of how to give President Bush a forum as the party's two-time nominee but at the same time keep McCain at a distance from the unpopular incumbent. The answer, according to McCain aides, will be to have Bush give a speech on the first night of the convention--a Monday--and let him have the moment to himself. McCain isn't scheduled to arrive in Minneapolis-St. Paul, the convention site, until Tuesday at the earliest, after Bush leaves, which means that, at this point, the two men won't be seen with each other that week.

What a great plan -- having the most unpopular President in the history of polling address the Republican National Convention. With the networks trying their darndest to get out of covering the conventions under the theory that they do not constitute news (leaving aside, of course, the fact that the American public has given the networks the gift of free broadcast spectrum worth tens of billions of dollars in return for the promise to cover events like party conventions), an address from the stage of the convention by the sitting President of the United States (however unpopular) will have to get wall-to-wall coverage. Does anyone actually think this would be a good development for the McCain campaign?