Category: The Dish

Critics to the right of me and to the left of me. Here’s one reader defending socialism from George W. Bush:

"I wish you’d stress how immoral he is as a socialist. Bush is a reverse Robin Hood, ensuring the largesse goes to corporations. A true socialist would do something for the poor and middle class, but not this administration. The Medicare drug benefit is a disgrace, profits to insurance companies and pharmaceuticals while leaving the poor in need. Now that they have it in place, they intend to cut Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals. They also propose cuts for cancer research and general cuts to the NIH. Student loans will cost far more though they say they’re in favor of education. Understood that you’re a conservative, but at that you might want something in return for your tax dollars aside from ever increasing corporate welfare to companies which were doing splendidly before Bush came along."

I opposed the Medicare bill; but I don’t see that it doesn’t offer real benefits to many many people. But this email shows how conservatives cannot and should not out-left the left. They’re never satisfied. Every expansion of government Republicans legitimize will merely be the baseline for the left’s subsequent push to tax and spend more. Some Republicans in the grass roots acknowledge this. Here’s one:

"I live in San Diego, and Im sending you this message in response to the article I read in the Drudge report this morning. Bruce B. mentioned a lot of us being reticent about the current admin’s directions and decisions of late. I can tell you there is a ground swell here about what our current President is doing and the principles we hold as true conservatives! He is so out of touch with the mainstream party! I and a lot of my friends have sworn not to give another penny to any of the current elected party members! We dont get it? What’s with all the spending? Ten years, and I still pay more taxes, get less bene’s, and these clowns think were gonna sit by and let this happen! I can see a lot of us sitting on the sidelines in the up coming elections to send a strong signal that enough is enough! They need to wake up!"

Agreed.

The South Dakota bill that would criminalize all abortions, including those occasioned by rape and incest, is a clarifying moment in the debate. National Review favors the substantive law involved (i.e. criminalizing all abortion even in cases of rape and incest), but believes it is a strategic miscalculation for the pro-life side. It’s a miscalculation because SCOTUS will probably dispense with it abruptly. But it is also a miscalculation because it changes the subject to how exactly criminalizing abortion will be enforced. The pro-life activists don’t want to go there yet, because it alienates a lot of people. But if we’re going to go there at some point, why not discuss it now?

Those skeptical of the absolutist pro-life position should ask serious questions about this: if not a charge of first degree murder for abortion, then what? Would women and doctors be liable for criminal charges? What legal distinctions will be brought bear here? What about the use of the morning-after pill? Would that also be a criminal offense at some point? These are legitimate questions that the South Dakota bill raises. I have no real love of the Roe decision. And one of the benefits of removing it from the debate will be the beginning of more nuance. The strategy I’d prefer is not the substantive one in South Dakota. It’s one where only first trimester abortion is legal, and where technology is deployed to lower the rates of unwanted pregnancy and allow abortions as early as humanly possible. One good thing to come of the South Dakota bill might be a discussion along these lines. And it’s already starting.

(Photo of SD governor, Mike Rounds, by Charles Dharapak/AP)

Yes, there’s a connection, and a sad one. From the SI story:

"As far as supplying drugs, Anderson thought of his role as ‘middleman.’ In San Francisco he knew AIDS patients who had prescriptions for testosterone and human growth hormone and were willing to sell their drugs for cash. Anderson bought and resold them virtually at cost to clients who wanted them for their anabolic effects."

Testosterone is used for its anabolic effects for people with HIV as well – to reboot our own testosterone production to avoid weight-loss and wasting. HGH is used primarily for severely wasted men with AIDS but also a treatment for some side-effects of anti-retroviral drugs. As medications, they work well. Until I got testosterone therapy a few years ago, I dealt with insistent fatigue, and mild depression. Maybe some of the prescriptions were not really needed. But if they were, it seems a shame that some are foregoing important treatments so that others can cheat in sports.
(Photo: Mike Segar/Reuters).

Dana Milbank has a report on it here. My comment on Bush’s Christian "socialism" was in a particular context. Margaret Thatcher defined a socialist as someone who knows how to spend other people’s money. That is something George W. Bush has done his entire life. It was once his family’s money or that of foolish investors’. Now it’s yours and mine. Trillions of it.

"The discovery of executed people — sometimes from an entire family, often with their hands bound, their mouths gagged and shot in the head — has become commonplace [in Iraq]," – from the Washington Post today.

A very unholy alliance.

I mean: really bored? Not so bored that you’re reading a blog at lunchtime. Take a number. But really, really bored. Do I have a club for you.

Has the chief theorist of the law-free executive changed his tune? An anonymous liberal wants to know.

This time, a kidney: from one legally married husband to another. And it just happened to be scheduled for Valentine’s Day. Full story here.

A Senate candidate in Ohio wants to impose the death penalty for homosexuals. And, yes, he’s a Democrat.