I have been disappointed by politicians far more often than I care to admit. From Bill Clinton to Jesse Ventura to even George W. Bush — who managed to do far worse than my meager expectations to him — candidates have been elected to office only to become feckless, spineless, worthless representatives, far more concerned about their own political well-being than the people they represent. See also most of Congress.

What redeems my faith in the system is the fact that every so often, a politician comes along who actually exceeds my expectations, who comports themself the way we expect a politician to — without fear of losing, with more of a focus on the people they represent than the next election. The late, great Sen. Paul Wellstone, DFL-Minn., was one of those politicians. He ran a spirited campaign and talked a good show, but once elected he backed up his words with actions. He walked the talk.

And now, the man who holds his seat in the Senate is doing the same thing.

On Tuesday, Sen. Al Franken, DFL-Minn., served as the keynote speaker for the NARAL Pro-Choice America Roe v. Wade anniversary luncheon. And his remarks to the group were outstanding. Franken gave a full-throated, unapologetic defense of the right of women to choose their own reproductive destinies — and did so with both humor and grace. I haven’t found a video of the event yet — if I do, I’ll post it — but the transcript is exactly what pro-choice Democrats want to hear from our public officials. Here’s a selection:

Shortly after I (finally) became a Senator, I was appointed to the Judiciary Committee.

At first I thought: Well, this is weird. I’m not a lawyer. How am I going to ask the right questions?

But I did some research and discovered most Americans aren’t lawyers. It’s true.

And so to me, the right questions aren’t the ones a lawyer would necessarily ask. They’re questions the American people would ask.

And that’s what I did in my first hearing. It just happened that my first hearing was a high profile one: the Judiciary Committee was considering the nomination for Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.
[...]

Let me set it up a bit. The day before, one of my Republican colleagues had been - I guess the right word is “hectoring” - Judge Sotomayor, repeatedly asking her whether the word “abortion” appeared anywhere in the Constitution.

Of course, it doesn’t. But whether it does or not is beside the point. So she answered by speaking to the question behind the question. But finally after being asked for the third time, Judge Sotomayor replied, “No. The word ‘abortion’ is not in the Constitution.”

Which my colleague treated as an “Aha!” moment.

So the next day, I felt compelled to follow up.

I brought up her exchange with my colleague from the previous day, and then asked, “Do the words ‘birth control’ appear anywhere in the Constitution?”

“No, they don’t,” Judge Sotomayor replied quite correctly.

“How about the word ‘privacy?’ Does that appear anywhere in the Constitution?”

She said. “No, the word ‘privacy’ isn’t in the Constitution either.”

I think you can see where I was going. And so could everyone in the hearing room.

You know, there are a lot of words that express bedrock constitutional principles – words like federalism, checks and balances, and separation of powers – that never appear in the Constitution. That doesn’t mean that the Constitution didn’t set up a federalist system, enumerating certain express powers to the federal government and reserving certain powers for the states. And it doesn’t mean that the Constitution didn’t set up a system of “checks and balances” by creating the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, granting each certain powers, creating what is well known as a “separation of powers.”

And even though the word “privacy” does not appear in the Constitution, the Court has long recognized a protection for privacy.

And that is why I followed my questions about the words “birth control” and “privacy” to ask whether Judge Sotomayor agreed that the Court had held that the Constitution created not just a right to privacy, but that it was also established precedent that women had a right to choose to have an abortion.

She said, yes, that was established precedent. That it was settled law. And she agreed that the job of a Supreme Court justice was not to make new law from the bench.

You know, it’s funny. Whenever a Republican runs for the Senate or for president and is asked, “What do you look for in a prospective Justice for the Supreme Court?” Republicans always answer, “I want a judge that doesn’t make law from the bench.”

[...]

In the last year alone….

We saw Representative Bart Stupak use the health care bill as a bludgeon, restricting women’s health choices in a bill that was meant to expand them.

We watched with frustration as the Supreme Court overturned a century’s worth of precedents to further their conservative activist agenda.

We are watching as the Senate continues to block Dawn Johnsen’s confirmation to a critical role at the Department of Justice because of her pro-choice views.

And we saw Dr. Tiller murdered at church… AT HIS CHURCH…. murdered for the choice he provided for women.

I want to thank Dr. Sella for being here today, and I want to join you in honoring his memory.

And that’s why the work you do at NARAL is indispensible. Because the forces on the other side are persistent, single-minded, and even violent.

A woman’s right to choose is never fully won. It must be won anew every day, every year, every Congress, and every generation.

Even though most Americans support abortion rights, even though most Americans understand that no woman ever plans an unwanted pregnancy, that no woman ever thinks she’ll have to make such a painful and personal choice, those who would deny that choice press on, undeterred.

In a lot of ways that fight is going to be incremental. In 2007 – after Justice O’Connor’s departure, we saw the Roberts Court reject the longstanding precedent that an exception for a woman’s health must be a component of any law that restricts abortion rights.

Even when the woman’s health includes her reproductive health. That’s what Dr. Tiller did so often in his work. Perform abortions on fetuses that would not be viable outside the womb in order to protect a woman’s ability to bear children in the future. Ironically, what could be more pro-life?

[...]

Now, let me say that there are millions of people in this country who have a sincere objection to abortion, and much of that is based on strongly held religious conviction. And I respect that. In America, we respect each other’s religious beliefs. But we are not governed by them.

It’s called the “separation of church and state,” a phrase which, like “separation of powers,” does not appear in the Constitution, but which is created just as clearly in the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

So to those people whose religious conviction leads them to a moral opposition to abortion, I say that’s your right, that’s your choice. Don’t have an abortion. But also, do everything you can to work together with us to diminish the reasons we have abortions.

Support comprehensive sex education and access to affordable family planning services. Support funding for maternal child health programs, WIC, and affordable child care so new mothers have security and the resources they need to raise a healthy child.

Oh yeah, and support comprehensive affordable health care for all.

[...]

I want to leave you today with a story. It’s one that should sound familiar to the millions of women across this country who understand in a very personal way the importance of protecting women’s reproductive rights.

The story is about a Minnesotan named Kim. Kim was a 19-year-old single mother. She was struggling to make ends meet, working full time as a receptionist. Her daughter had health insurance through the state, but she did not. Her boyfriend, her daughter’s father, was extremely abusive.

She was getting the pill through Planned Parenthood at a reduced rate, but after her car broke down, she couldn’t afford that either.

One day her boyfriend demanded that they have sex, but refused to use a condom. He threatened her. She was too afraid to say no. And she ended up pregnant.

She said, “Abortion was absolutely the right choice for me at that time… Had I stayed in that relationship and brought another child into the mix, I would have continued the cycle of abuse and poverty.”

“Making the decision to stop the cycle [allowed me] to concentrate on my daughter and ensure that she will have the financial and emotional stability to go to college and live a successful, happy life. Women need options, women need choices.”

I am here to ask you to keep up the fight, for Kim, and for every woman who has learned – and will learn – that women need options and choices.

Thank you for the work you’ve done – and are continuing to do — to stand up for women’s rights.

I’m proud to stand with you.

I know that’s a long excerpt, but it is as eloquent a defense of the right to choice as any I’ve seen. And it comes during a three-decade run in which Democrats have been almost embarrassed to support a woman’s right to choose, in which we’ve run away from support for abortion rights, even as we paid lip service to them.

Franken’s speech is something we need to hear out of more Democrats. Abortion rights are fundamental rights, because women — as humans — have a fundamental right to control their bodies. It’s nice to hear my junior senator say so.

Is this Carly Fiorina ad the worst political ad of all time of this year? Yes, but of course, the year is young.

So much fail, so little time. Is it the way Fiorina suggests that good fiscal conservatives are mindless sheep? The way she attacks Campbell for deficits while simultaneously attacking him for supporting tax hikes that might have ameliorated them? No, truly the best part of the ad is the Demon Sheep Itself:

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Incidentally, the title of this post comes courtesy of Cake:

Bearing false witness is a sin. But not, evidently, when you have a chance to moralize.

It turns out that, based on her own words, Pam Tebow’s life was never in jeopardy at all during her pregnancy.

The reporting comes from Jodi Jacobson at RH Reality Check:

During a bible study class, Pam Tebow related that “during that pregnancy, a Philippine doctor suggested that she abort the fetus because the strong medications she was being treated with for amoebic dysentery, which she had contacted early in the pregnancy, could cause serious disabilities to the fetus.”

Suggested that she abort the pregnancy? Or laid out the various risks that were possible, leaving her to her own judgment and choices? Made a definitive judgment that the fetus would unquestionably be harmed? Or described the risks of the medication necessary to treat the dysentery, including possible risks to the fetus? All of these are very different scenarios than the ones earlier suggested.

[...]

This indeed changes the whole narrative, and makes even more suspicious the trotting out of Pam Tebow as an anti-choice spokesperson.

First, as someone who herself had to be on strong medication during both of the pregnancies with my now 10- and 13-year old children, and indeed whose own health was at serious risk, the issue of “risks that could cause” problems is very different than receiving a definitive diagnosis either that something is proved to be wrong or that this pregnancy might or will kill you.

This is quite a different story than “My doctor told me that my pregnancy would kill me, but I ignored him and now America’s been blessed with a quarterback.” And quite a bit less powerful. And ultimately, the story still boils down to Pam Tebow having a choice — a choice she and Focus on the Family would deny others.

Ultimately, if you have to lie to convince others of your beliefs, it’s your beliefs that need to be examined. Pam Tebow has now been caught in at least two lies. I think that tells us in no uncertain terms just how weak her case is — and how much credence needs be given to it.

As you know, Tim Tebow — Florida Gators quarterback and the 2010 version of Eric Crouch — is going to star in a Super Bowl ad with his mom, in support of Focus on the Family. In the ad, Tebow and his mother, Pam, will evidently tell the tale of how Pam, pregnant with Tim and doing missionary work in the Philippines — fell ill, and how doctors in the Philippines urged her to have an abortion to save her life. She refused, and now America has had Tim Tebow inflicted on us, thus making the ultimate case for why abortion is a good thing. Kidding! Of course, it’s to argue that if only abortion was illegal, all of us would have kids like Tim Tebow.

Now, there are many directions one could go with this news. One could note that the United Church of Christ was not allowed to run an ad during the Super Bowl because one of its arguments — that homosexuals are human — was “too controversial.” One could note that anti-Bush ads were routinely rejected as “too political.” One could note the fact that the founder of Focus on the Family, James Dobson, has advocated that men shower with young boys to show off their penises. (I am not making this up.)

But the direction I choose to go is different. You see, while Pam Tebow may have been advised by doctors to seek an abortion, she’s leaving a very big background piece unstated: abortion is illegal in the Philippines.

“Well,” you say, “this is different. I mean, her life was in jeopardy, so obviously, that was legal.” Au contraire. The Philippine criminal code makes no exception for life or health of the mother. Had Pam Tebow had an abortion, she could have been jailed, as could her physician and anyone else who assisted her.

Now, that doesn’t mean Pam Tebow is lying. There are about 470,000 abortions performed annually in the Philippines, and about 80,000 women hospitalized for complications of abortion. 12 percent of all maternal deaths in 2000 were due to unsafe abortons, of course, because abortion is illegal — but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. As anyone with a rudimentary understanding of abortion policy knows, outlawing abortion doesn’t stop abortion. It just makes it much less safe.

But this is an important part of the story that Pam and Tim Tebow are ignoring. Because the organization they’re supporting — Focus on the Family — is virulently anti-abortion, and supports making it illegal. But by Pam Tebow’s own admission, outlawing abortion didn’t stop her Filipino physician from recommending it. She had a choice — but one that was more dangerous than it had to be, one that could have had legal repercussions for her and her family.

Understand, I don’t begrudge Pam Tebow if she would have made that choice freely. The whole point of pro-choice is that it places the ultimate decision to continue or abort a pregnancy with the woman who is pregnant. Pam Tebow was willing to risk her life to bring her son into the world. That was her choice.

But doubtless, there are Filipinas who even today are in the same grave position Pam Tebow was in, who would like to make their own informed choice, but who are not American and lack the connections and relative wealth Tebow had. Some may choose to carry to term. Some may choose an abortion. But all of them deserve to make that choice based on the dictates of their own consciences, without fear of jail or death.

Ultimately, Pam and Tim Tebow want to limit the right of women to decide what happens in their own bodies. And to do so, they’re willing to fudge the truth about the circumstances surrounding her own choice — one that was not completely free, one that was not completely safe, one that she could not make based solely on her own conscience. She wants to argue that she had a choice when, frankly, she did not. I do believe the Bible has something to say about bearing false witness. But that, I suppose, isn’t important when you’ve got an anti-choice message to share.

As you no doubt have heard by now, President Obama is expected to announce a non-defense discretionary spending freeze in tomorrow’s State of the Union address. Given that we’re only kinda, sorta on the way to recovery — and that spending freezes are not typical Democratic Party policy — this is obviously a terrible, awful idea that proves the firebaggers right and Barack Obama hates the left and Rahm Emanuel delenda est, right?

It depends on what the meaning of “freeze” is. Indeed, under certain conditions, this could be a great idea.

Before you try me for heresy, read this bit of reporting by Jonathan Chait:

Within the administration, White House budget director Peter Orszag appears to have settled on another solution. Last month, Orszag raised eyebrows when word leaked that he’d asked most cabinet agencies to prepare two budgets: one that freezes spending, the other that cuts it by 5 percent. Many congressional liberals were livid, and, according to multiple sources, Larry Summers’s National Economic Council reacted negatively to the emphasis on the deficit. (“The economic team has a healthy debate about most major issues,” says an administration official. “Getting people back to work is central to addressing the deficit. Similarly, putting the country back on a fiscally sustainable path is vital to confidence in the economy.”) The concern among wonks outside the administration is that clamping down on domestic discretionary spending without touching entitlements would take money out of the economy in the short term while doing nothing to close the long-term deficit.

These same liberals and wonks rejoiced when Obama backed job creation. But there is a logic to Orszag’s gambit, which runs roughly as follows: It’s almost certain that Congress will pass, and the president will sign, a jobs bill early next year, probably in the neighborhood of $100 billion to $200 billion. Given that, and given the difficulty of doing anything about the long-term deficit next year, the administration needs some signal to U.S. bondholders that it takes the deficit seriously. Just not so seriously that it undercuts the extra stimulus.

My guess is that this is the plan — announce, with great fanfare, a “spending freeze” that covers basic departmental budgets and not much else. A freeze that doesn’t come within a furlong of covering the cost of a jobs bill. It’s brilliant politics — you get all the benefits of posing as deficit hawks without any of the actual deep spending cuts (including, it can not be stressed enough, defense) and/or tax increases that a real attack on the deficit would require. Actually, since this is how deficit hawks really behave (when’s the last time Joe Lieberman suggested actually cutting defense? Or Evan Bayh floated a tax hike?), you simply become deficit hawks. And as we all know, deficit hawkishness is A Very Good Thing In Official Washington. Obama’s bound to get great press out of this.

What’s more, eventually, cuts are going to be necessary, as will tax increases. Not now — actually taking on the deficit in the midst of a deep recession would be catastrophic. That said, at some point, some day, we will have to take the deficit on. And that will require dealing with the budget like responsible adults, not Americans. A relatively small, symbolic cut this year to offset a jobs bill and a health care expansion isn’t a bad idea, politically and policywise.

But that’s the key — the Obama Administration can and should find ways to reach out to the center. But they also have to find a way to energize the left. Failing to pass a health care bill would be catastrophic; it guarantees a GOP takeover of at least the House come fall. Passing a health care bill, a jobs bill, and a repeal of DADT while simultaneously limiting other spending growth? That’s a trade that liberals can and should be willing to make.

Of course, if there’s no quid pro quo — if this is a spending freeze just for the sake of freezing spending, and if no jobs bill or health care bill is forthcoming — then it should be rejected out of hand. There’s making a play for the middle, and then there’s rank stupidity. I’m going to bet that the Obama Administration isn’t stupid. But we’ll see.

The recently completed Battlestar Galactica was the story of the death and rebirth of humanity and its creations, a story of humans hunted by their creations to near-extinction — only to reconcile with their creations in order to start anew on a fresh, untamed planet, with their erstwhile enemies as allies.

One of the interesting things about that fresh start was that it was just that — a complete reboot of humanity, jettisoning any technology more advanced than agriculture. Of course, that was partially because BSG was set roughly 140,000 BP, and you can’t have us only inventing electronics in the 20th Century if we were using them 140 millennia ago.

Now, I never found the idea that humans might trade technology for a new start as ridiculous as some people — after all, if technology came a hair’s-breadth from destroying you, you may want to emulate the Amish as well. Especially if you could do it in Africa, with a pretty yellow sun overhead and plenty of food to eat that wasn’t derived from algae.

But there are other reasons that the survivors of the Fall of the Twelve Colonies might want to give up technology. After all, while the Colonies were portrayed as earthlike in their existence, they weren’t Earth. These were peoples with a different history than ours, who had seen technology literally rise up against them and destroy everything they held dear.

That history begins with Caprica.

The new prequel, set 58 years Before the Fall, is the story of two grieving fathers — Daniel Graystone and Joseph Adams — both of whom lost their daughters in a terrorist bombing of an elevated train. (Adams lost his wife as well.) Zoe Graystone was a brilliant, temperamental 16-year-old with a fervent, heretical belief in monotheism — and a boyfriend whose fervor led to the bombing. Tamara Adams and her mother, Shannon, are innocent bystanders.

Adams is a defense attorney from Tauron, a member of a persecuted minority. He’s Capricanized his name — he was born Yosef Adama, but such a name makes him seem more ethnic. He does business with the Tauron mafia, who like many minorities chose a life of crime over toiling as second-class citizens. He does so reluctantly — he has a conscience, and he doesn’t like the violence associated with the mob. But he works with them because they helped him go to college, because his brother is a part of them, and because honestly, it’s easier than the alternative.

Graystone, on the other hand, is a multibillionaire, the Caprican equivalent of Bill Gates, only he’s played by Eric Stoltz, so he’s both more attractive and creepier. He’s working on a defense project — a military robot, one that can be used for defense. It’s not going that well, though — a rival from Tauron has developed a new processor that could doom his project. But he’s not as concerned about that as he is about data left behind by his daughter, including a link to a virtual night club full of unspeakable virtual perversions — including bland ones like orgies and drugs, and more sadistic ones like torture, murder and human sacrifice — all set to bumping techno music. (This is not farfetched. As Graystone’s guide, Zoe’s friend Lacy, notes, the first use for the virtual imagers Graystone himself invented was pornographic — and porn was one of the first serious industries to tap the internet. All of this has happened before….)

But nothing in this virtual club is more odd than Zoe Graystone’s avatar.

That’s because Zoe’s avatar is not just an avatar. It’s Zoe, more or less — a copy made by Zoe before her death, one that includes her memories, her personality, her likes and dislikes, her faults and strengths. The copy is made from many sources, including her school records, medical records, television viewing habits — things that could be used to make a good simulacrum of any human.

And thanks to his daughter’s genius Daniel Graystone finds the chance to do the unthinkable — to raise his daughter from the grave.

Daniel finds an unlikely ally in Joseph, who he meets at an information session for family members of victims of the bombing. He uses Joseph’s connections to steal the Tauron technology that could make his daughter live in the real world — albeit in a body that is made of metal. And he promises Joseph the same — a resurrection of his daughter, and his wife.

Joseph ultimately balks when Daniel shows him the proto-avatar of his daughter — she’s afraid, confused, and certain that something is terribly wrong. Joseph agrees, believing that there’s something Frankensteinian in what Daniel is doing. And yet Daniel is trying to do what any heartbroken, desperate parent would do if they could do it without punishment — bring back his daughter. To let her live the life she was supposed to live, before it was senselessly snuffed out.

Is such a thing Right? I don’t know. I do know that I would rather rip my right arm off than even think about my daughter coming to harm. That I can’t bring myself to write the comparative sentence between myself and Adama or Graystone because the mere thought is too painful for me to bring into enough clarity to express it in English. Suffice to say that I would gleefully make a deal with Satan himself if it guaranteed my daughter’s safety through a long and happy life. Eternal damnation would be a small price to pay. Simply messing with the laws of the Gods and Nature? That’s kid stuff.

That doesn’t mean that there will be no price for violating those laws. Just that in that pit of grief and despair, I can imagine being able to justify almost anything, grasping at any straw, praying to any false idol.

This tension — between Upholding That Which is Right and Saving Those We Love — is the driving force behind Caprica. We know, of course, how it will end — with the nuclear bombardment of the Twelve Colonies, with the flight of Galactica and the fleet, with the eventual colonization of Earth (Mark Two). But how we get there — a path that, like BSG, is not straight or clear, not good or evil, but rather a road paved with good intentions — that appears to be a fascinating journey. And one that I’m looking forward to.

It is fashionable in many quarters to bash the United Nations, and lets face it, there are many good reasons to; as an organization made up of the various governments of the world, the UN operates at the level of dysfunction that one would predict. The organization has not brought universal peace, and it has not fixed all the world’s problem, and it is beset by problems both within its control and outside it.

And yet.

And yet the United Nations, for all its faults, does great work. It sends talented women and men into countries in need, and helps them to grow. It provides fresh water, agricultural know-how, education, and family planning throughout the developing world. No, the UN cannot by itself lift a nation out of poverty. But it can help ameliorate the worst levels of degradation, and it can help countries slowly grow from dysfunction to functional.

The United Nations was engaged in Haiti before an horrific earthquake struck, providing both security and development aid to a nation that has long been dogged by semi-functional government and a broken civil society. They have paid a heavy price for their engagement. At least 36 UN workers have died in the earthquake so far, and it is possible those numbers will grow.

Their deaths are not more tragic than the other tens of thousands of deaths suffered in this earthquake. But they are worthy of note. Because it is easy to mock the UN for its failures. And yet the men and women who died in Haiti serving the UN died in service to humanity’s best impulses, our desire to help those who are worse off than we ourselves.

Humanity’s best impulses will be what helps the nation of Haiti to rebuild from the catastrophe in Port-au-Prince, and not just in the immediate future. The United Nations will remain in Haiti long after the minicams have gone home. They will not solve all the problems that plague Haiti; no organization can. But they will continue to help, as they have been helping for years.

And while it’s fashionable in some corners to criticize the United Nations, I hope we don’t forget that.

There’s never much that can be said in the first few hours of a natural disaster, other than that the disaster has happened, and that help will be needed. Well, disaster has happened. A magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti, right by the nation’s capital, Port-au-Prince. And help will be needed.

Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hempisphere, and one of the densest as well. Port-au-Prince is the nation’s most populous city, and it is full of structures that were built of cheap concrete with little serious engineering behind them. It is a nation with about half of its population subsisting on about $2 a day. Needless to say, that’s not a population building their houses with earthquake-proof redundancies. That’s a population happy to get a roof up that doesn’t leak.

When even the nation’s presidential palace — a structure that was built with care and engineering — has collapsed, it is unquestionable that thousands and thousands of homes of more modest construction have collapsed as well. And tens if not hundreds of thousands of people are at risk of injury, homelessness, and death.

Our neighbors to the south will need our help. The San Francisco Chronicle has a list of some options, and I’ll post more as they come along.

Until then, keep your thoughts and, if you’re so inclined, your prayers with the people of Haiti.

As you all most certainly know, an embarrassing quote from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., surfaced over the weekend. Reid apparently stated during the 2008 election that then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., would be an electable African-American candidate because he was lighter-skinned, and because he had the ability not to speak in a “Negro dialect.”

The quote was cringeworthy, and full of what Josh Marshall once described as “racial grandpaism,” the sort of archaic, muddled statement made by a guy who is generally well-meaning, but also generally possessed by some racist baggage left over from their upbringing.

Was the quote racist? Well, yes. But racism is not a capital offense; I have said racist things and so have you. One can’t grow up in America and not be suffused with some of the racist legacy our culture carries. The best any of us can do is recognize this and strive to overcome it, and apologize and learn when we fail to live up to our responsibility to overcome it.

More to the point, Reid’s statement, while clumsy and racist, was not malicious. He wasn’t saying that Obama shouldn’t be president because he was a charlatan, or that it was reasonable and proper that darker-skinned African-Americans should be less electable. A more artful phrasing of what he was trying to say might have gone something like this: Because of the legacy of racism in this country, a candidate like Barack Obama, who is biracial and who is able to speak to audiences in a manner that is less connected with stereotypically African-American speech patterns, will be more electable than a candidate like, say, Al Sharpton, who is darker-skinned and whose speaking style is more stereotypically African-American.

That doesn’t mean that this is right; it’s a value-neutral statement of fact. And what’s more, it’s true. Just as it’s true to say that being white makes one more “electable,” historically, than not being white, or that men are more likely to be elected president than women. It’s not right. It’s not fair. It’s something we should work to change. But it’s true, and saying so doesn’t make one a racist or sexist. Saying so makes one observant.

Which brings us to former Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss.

As you may recall, Trent Lott used to be Senate Majority Leader until, in 2002, he was forced out in a scandal involving a statement he made that included racist language. The then-Majority Leader’s statement that got him in trouble came in a tribute to retiring Sen. Strom Thurmond, KKK-S.C. Lott said of Thurmond:

I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years either.

Strom Thurmond ran for president in 1948, at a time when he was a Democrat of the traditional Southern variety — i.e., a flaming racist douchebag who nevertheless had an illegitimate biracial daughter conceived, quite probably, in rape.

Southern Democrats were furious at efforts by President Truman to ameliorate the damage caused by the apartheid system of segregation. The breaking point came at the 1948 Democratic National Convention, at which a young Minneapolis mayor by the name of Hubert Humphrey urged the party to “get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.” The speech prompted a walkout of Southern Democrats, who left to form their own party, the Dixiecrats. The Dixiecrats nominated Thurmond, at the time the Governor of South Carolina, as their standard-bearer.

The party’s platform was simple: States’ Rights. Anti-Miscegenation. Pro-Segregation. Pro-Lynching. They were a party whose raison d’être was the full-throated defense of Jim Crow. Perhaps their platform was summed up best by Thurmond, who during the campaign said, “I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there’s not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra [sic] race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.”

Again, when he said those words, he had a 23-year-old African-American daughter.

Flash-forward back to today. Many on the right, apparently wowed by their ability to connect that both Trent Lott and Harry Reid were or are Senate Majority Leaders, and that both were accused of racism, are now calling on Reid to step down as Majority Leader, because the situation is totally the same. Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., said flatly, “If he [Lott] should resign, then Harry Reid should.”

This is, in a word, bonkers.

Again, what Reid said was inartful and cringe-inducing and yes, racist. But it was not malicious. A different phrasing could save it from racism, and the core idea — that America in 2010 will treat candidates of varying racial backgrounds in different ways — is absolutely true.

Compare to what Lott said. Lott said that if America had followed Mississippi’s lead in 1948 and voted for the Dixiecrats, that America today would have avoided a lot of problems.

And yet the Dixiecrats stood for the worst sorts of barbarism committed in this country. They were the spiritual heirs to the slaveholders, the men and women who were absolutely and completely committed to keeping a boot of the throats of all non-white Americans. They expressly supported lynching, for God’s sake.

There is no way to save that quote, no way to phrase it that does not make it offensive and malicious. Lott was saying, flatly, that if only we’d maintained a system of segregation and racial apartheid in the South, that America today would be better off.

To compare the two situations is ludicrous.

As Ta-Nehisi Coates puts it:

Claiming that Harry Reid’s comments are the same, is like claiming that referring to Jews as “Hebrews” is the same as endorsing Nazism. Whereas a reputable portion of black people still use the term Negro without a hint of irony, no black person thinks the guy yelling “Segregation Forever!” would have cured us of “all these problems.”

Leaving aside political cynicism, this entire affair proves that the GOP is not simply still infected with the vestiges of white supremacy and racism, but is neither aware of the infection, nor understands the disease. Listening to Liz Cheney explain why Harry Reid’s comments were racist, was like listening to me give lessons on the finer points of the comma splice. This a party, rightly or wrongly, regarded by significant portions of the country as a haven for racists. They aren’t simply having a hard time re-branding, they don’t actually understand how and why they got the tag.

Exactly right. Harry Reid said something stupid while arguing that a specific African-American man could get himself elected to the presidency. Trent Lott endorsed the worst part of America’s racial legacy, and held it up as our nation’s salvation. That Republicans can take these two situations and not see a difference between them says far more about the Republican Party than about Harry Reid.

If you’ve ever studied anything related to fractals, you’ve no doubt come across the Mandelbrot set. Named for its progenitor, mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, the image takes a simple formula, repeats it, studies how quickly or slowly results approach or escape a boundary, and voil๠— a stunning image is born. And not just at the macro level — zooming in on small pieces of the set reveals striking details. And adding shading to indicate how quickly or slowly numbers escape zero, and you get beautiful images like this:

What’s amazing about that image is that it’s at a magnification of 1 x 10¹⁰. If we showed the rest of the Mandelbrot set to scale, it would need to be on a monitor with a diameter of four million kilometers. And yet there’s incredible detail there, all yielded from a simple equation.

The Mandelbrot set has become famous because it’s an elegant and beautiful example of chaos theory in action. Looking at fine detail in the Mandelbrot set gives us insight into, say, how a simple encoding of DNA can cause a tree to grow its branches, or a snail to grow its shell, or a human to grow its brain. Simple, repetitive steps yield results of staggering complexity.

The Mandelbrot set is beautiful and amazing, but it does have a minor flaw: it’s two-dimensional. That’s not a flaw from the standpoint of mathematics. But it does limit its scope — after all, we live in a three-dimensional world, and while we see in the Mandelbrot set tantalizing hints of biology and geology, it is not a representation of our world.

That thought has led Daniel White and Paul Nylander to work together on the “Mandelbulb,” a three-dimensional representation of a Mandelbrot-like set. It is not a literal three-dimensional Mandelbrot set, as that set is generated by an algorithm that has two variables. Essentially, it’s a two-dimensional equation.²

White and Nylander instead worked to create a set like the Mandelbrot set, that would generate a three-dimensional object that showed the same kind of detail at high levels of zoom.

And while they’re still fine-tuning their algorithm, they’ve reached a point at which their project is bearing fruit.

Now, that’s interesting — but the question is what zooming in on the object yields.

The answer is this:

And this:

And this:

And of course, many, many more startling and beautiful and most amazingly, familiar images, images that could well have come from an alien planet or a close-up of coral or an underwater cave.

This universe is written in the language of mathematics. And in many cases, the greatest beauty comes from the simplest equations. For me, this is the thing that makes me feel most connected to, for lack of a better term, a higher power. If there is a God or something similar, It is so much more interesting than a God who simply wills things into being. It’s a creator with subtle, simple, dazzlingly brilliant skill. And if there is no God, if the universe is truly random — well, we have drawn through random chance a very interesting and remarkable universe indeed.

Either way, it’s explorations like this that remind me how very much we’ve learned — and how very much we have yet to learn. And how worth it the journey is.

1. Okay, it’s more complex than that, but I am not a mathematician, and am not able to adequately express it better. (back)
2. Please, mathematicians, don’t hurt me. I’m just a layman. (back)

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who’s wished me well over the past day. I obviously have had better days, but all things considered I’m feeling fairly positive about the outlook for the future.

I’ve done a lot of reading in the last day, and one thing that I am grateful for, other than the support of friends and readers, is that I’ve been exposed to feminist thought. I know, it seems strange to bring that up in terms of testicular cancer, but I’m serious. One of the recurring themes I’ve seen in my readings is the concern that losing a testicle will make one “less of a man.”

This isn’t a silly fear; we metaphorically refer to manly gumption as “having balls.” We talk freely about men being “neutered” or “castrated” when they’re silenced or marginalized. The testes, even more than the penis, are the metaphorical seat of manliness in popular culture. And so for many men, the loss of a testicle, even in the service of preventing death from cancer, is a traumatic psychological experience.

Fortunately for me, I’ve been exposed to the idea that what defines a person is not their gonads. I am no more “manly” with two testicles than I will be with one, and if cancer takes that one someday, I’ll still be no less manly. Who I am is not dictated by my genitals. And while there are no doubt a few MRA types who will find my demicastration appropriate, I will simply remember that I know an awful lot of humans who have never had testicles, who nevertheless embrace life without fear, who exhibit all the best of “manly” characteristics — bravery, loyalty, intrepidity — despite not being men at all.

And so I know that the loss of a testicle doesn’t make me lose my identity, any more than the loss of my gall bladder has made me a different person. That knowledge is a gift. Yes, it’s scary to face the potential of cancer, and I’m not looking forward to surgery. But at least I do not need to fear that I am going to come out of surgery somehow less worthy than I was before.

Fox News go-to guy on terror and long-term terrorist supporter Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., says something that is, in fact, true:

The fact is while the overwhelming majority of Muslims are outstanding people, on the other hand 100% of the Islamic terrorists are Muslims, and that is our main enemy today.

The fact is that while the overwhelming majority of Americans are outstanding people, on the other hand 100% of the idiot Republicans in Congress are Americans. They are, fortunately, only the enemies of reasoned discourse.

So those of you who follow my twitter feed (and for those of you who don’t, you are welcome to) may have noticed that last night my tweets weren’t so much…fun. This is not because the Vikings managed to lose yet another winnable game on the road, though that of course doesn’t help matters.

No, last night I went into the doctor with pain in my…er…boy parts. The doctor sent me directly to the emergency room, where I got an ultrasound, which showed I likely have testicular cancer.

So that’s not fun.

I know next to nothing right now, other than that tomorrow morning I get to make an appointment to go to see a urologist who will be removing my faulty gonad forthwith. I know nothing beyond that; I assume I’ll find out shortly.

At any rate, this is of course not the most fabulous news, but it is what it is. The good news — and it is good news — is that testicular cancer is extremely treatable, and the vast majority of men who suffer from it are treated successfully, even if the cancer has metastasized. So the odds are in my favor. And there is still a chance it isn’t cancer at all, but just a painful benign tumor, in which case the gonad has to come out, but treatment afterward won’t include any not-fun things like chemotherapy or radiation.

All that said, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit scared by this; cancer is not something you ever want to get. But something’s going to get all of us in the end. I’m just hoping that something, in my case and yours, is extreme old age.

So please, do forgive me if posting is a bit light over the next few days; I’ll update as I have updates. Oh, and men, since this is something I never bothered to do, let me suggest you listen to Mr. Tom Green here.

Via Racialicious, I was directed to this jeremiad, which wins the internet:

Of all the varieties of irritating comment out there, the absolute most annoying has to be “Why can’t you just watch the movie for what it is??? Why can’t you just enjoy it? Why do you have to analyze it???”

If you have posted such a comment, or if you are about to post such a comment, here or anywhere else, let me just advise you: Shut up. Shut the fuck up. Shut your goddamn fucking mouth. SHUT. UP.

First of all, when we analyze art, when we look for deeper meaning in it, we are enjoying it for what it is. Because that is one of the things about art, be it highbrow, lowbrow, mainstream, or avant-garde: Some sort of thought went into its making — even if the thought was, “I’m going to do this as thoughtlessly as possible”! — and as a result, some sort of thought can be gotten from its reception. That is why, among other things, artists (including, for instance, James Cameron) really like to talk about their work.

The entire post — which began as a comment on Annalee Newitz’s brilliant Avatar commentary — is worth reading in full, and I will be invoking Moff’s Law going forward any time someone argues that I should stop analyzing a movie because “it’s just a movie.”

I haven’t seen Avatar yet, in no small part because I don’t really know if I have the patience to put up with three hours of white-guy-saves-too-perfect-to-live-indigenous-people-from-other-white-guys. I may eventually go, because I’ve heard universal praise for the visual and technical effects in the film, but I’m not sure that wizardry is being used in service of good.

More to the point, though, is that James Cameron quite obviously wanted this to be a talked about movie. He could have pretty easily created a dumb-but-visually-stunning movie about plucky soldiers fighting mean aliens. (Heck, he already has.) Instead, he made a movie that by all indications is Trying To Say Something Important about nature and indigenous people. So it’s not exactly a stretch for people to want to question what the movie is saying, and to argue that Cameron’s characterization of the native peoples in Avatar literally dehumanizes them, and ends up reinforcing racism rather than working to destroy it.

Art is supposed to say something to us, even the art that wants us to shut our brains off to enjoy it, like, say, the Transformers franchise. Sometimes what it says is subtle, sometimes it’s subtle as a freight train. But it’s meant to affect, even if just to divert people from their humdrum lives. Because of this, it’s only natural for people to react to how they were affected by art by telling people how they were affected by art. If they’re artists themselves, they may even go further, and create art that is a response to previous works, as Avatar can be seen as a rejoinder, not just to the old, overtly racist treatment of aboriginal peoples as savages, but to Cameron’s own treatment of non-humans in Aliens.

That’s what art is supposed to do — spur discussion, spark creation, and yes, engender criticism. Of course, all too often — and especially when that criticism strays into questions of gender or race — people don’t want to hear that there are problems with films they liked. They want to ignore the flaws in a work of art. That’s their privilege. But it doesn’t mean the rest of us should follow their lead. Art is about communication. And that communication should not be one-way only.

So there was a failed terror attack today, and while that’s kind of scary and all, really, in this case, it’s mostly hilarious:

Per Ed Henry on CNN:

This administration has expressed skepticism of the color chart alert system. They’re concentrating more on improving security checkpoints and other measures at airports, not colors.

Susan Collins on Homeland Security committee says she’s expecting a briefing soon, wonders how the passenger got explosives on the plane to begin with, and if he actually does have ties to any terrorist organization.

Passenger Richard Griffith, who was on the plane, just said the explosives must have been in the guys pocket, ended up “in his crotch”.

Now that’s what I call a crotch rocket.

Naturally, it’s not good that the bomber, Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, got an incendiary device onto a plane. And I’m dreading what new and exciting forms of security theater our friends at the TSA will come up with to make us feel safe that the guy or gal next to us doesn’t have a bomb in their crotch.

But honestly, I’m not all that worried. After all, here’s what evidently happened:

Federal authorities have been told that Abdulmutallab allegedly had taped some material to his leg, then used a syringe to mix some chemicals with the powder while on the airplane, one official said. Officials described the device as incendiary rather than explosive, pending tests by forensics experts at the FBI. Incendiary devices generally deliver less of an impact than explosive devices.

A man who said he was on Flight 253, Syed Jafry of Holland, Mich., told the Detroit Free Press that he noticed a glow three rows ahead in the Airbus 330, then smelled smoke. The next moment, Jafri recounted, “a young man behind me jumped on” Abdulmutallab.

So the guy got some chemicals on that could have maybe started a fire, but weren’t explosive. That’s not particularly scary. Oh, sure, it would be frightening in the moment. But you can’t bring a plane down with an incendiary device. Not even close.

In a way, this is the sort of “attack” that proves that terror countermeasures are working. If this is the best al Qaeda and its sympathizers¹ can do…well, it’s pretty pathetic. Basically, they’re as frightening as your high school friend who discovered you can set hair spray on fire. Both could hurt someone, other than themselves. But that would be more by chance than by design.

No, this attack is not reason to panic. It’s reason to laugh long and hard at those who want to scare us, reason to invoke bad double entendres about this wannabe’s crotch fire, like the one in this sentence. And most of all, it’s reason to cheer the demise of al Qaeda, a truly terrible organization that now has been reduced to setting small fires. I just hope no terrorist decides to egg my house. That could be horrible.

1. The guy evidently claims to be with al Qaeda, but there’s reason to think he might just be self-aggrandizing. (back)

As all denizens of the internets know, Jumping the Shark is a phrase that has come to represent that moment in which a good something becomes permanently broken. It originally referred to the moment on Happy Days when Fonzie, for no evident reason, has to jump over a shark on waterskis because…well, because he had to, okay?

The actions of the formerly redoubtable Jane Hamsher during this health care debate, sadly, have now reached a point beyond Jumping the Shark. Hamsher has Transcended Sharks. She has rocketed over ever every member of Superorder Selachimorpha, and she is gone.

It’s not just her incessant parroting of right-wing talking points on individual mandates in her quixotic quest to “Kill the Bill.” Yes, Hamsher’s rhetoric since the public option was stripped has essentially mirrored the right-wing talking points (the evil government is gonna make you buy insurance! And if you’re doing well, you might even end up spending more on insurance, which will help others get insurance, but so what? What about your rights?), and that was the point at which she jumped the shark.

But now…well, now Jane has just gone beyond beyond. Because she’s allying herself with the worst elements of the Republican party. And I don’t mean that figuratively:

Jane Hamsher, Grover Norquist Call for Rahm Emanuel’s Resignation

By: Jane Hamsher Wednesday December 23, 2009 12:17 pm

Today, Grover Norquist and I are calling for an investigation into Rahm Emanuel’s activities at Freddie Mac, and the White House’s blocking of an Inspector General who would look into it. The letter follows: [...]

This is, in a word, unforgivable. It would be akin to working directly with Dick Cheney. Norquist is, quite frankly, a man who has devoted his entire life to destroying the Democratic Party, and any form of government more robust that that which exists in Somalia. He famously has said of his aims, “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” He wants to eliminate the FDA, the NEA, the IRS, and the Department of Education.

Norquist cut his teeth working with the Contras for Ollie North. He helped Newt Gingrich write the Contract With America. He’s the genius behind the TABOR legislation that’s been slowly strangling Colorado. Norquist was an early and enthusiastic backer of then-Gov. George W. Bush’s run for the presidency in 2000, and he has been associated with Karl Rove for decades. His goals are anathema to the goals of Democrats, or indeed anyone more liberal than James Inhofe.

Quite honestly, if Grover Norquist approached me and asked me to help him in his quest to save puppies, it would lead me to rethink my feelings about puppies. So it’s not just alarming, but flatly wrong for Hamsher to join in common cause with Norquist, even if there was strong evidence that Rahm Emmanuel had done something specifically wrong during his brief tenure at Freddie Mac, which there isn’t.¹

At any rate, Hamsher isn’t concerned about Emmanuel’s ethical problems. She’s mad because Emmanuel put pressure on the Senate to find a compromise that could get through the Senate, and that led us to the bill which lacks the public option, which alone has caused mandates to go from fairly understandable requirements to the worst! violation! of liberty! ever!!! And Hamsher wants to punish Emmanuel and the Obama Administration however she can. if that means making common cause with the likes of Norquist or Phyllis Freakin’ Schlafly, so be it.

Well include me out. I can understand being so frustrated with the bill coming out of the Senate that you’d oppose it. I think the idea that a better bill is just waiting for more willpower, or attacks on Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., or a really good speech from Barack Obama betrays a certain naïveté about the realities of the American system of government, and I think the main lines of attack from the Kill Bill crowd have been specious at best, but I can understand the frustration shared by anti-compromise forces; indeed, I share it, even as I understand that reality means we have to give in to Ben Nelson or Joe Lieberman because that’s the way the system works.

But Hamsher has moved beyond principled opposition to the bill, and beyond even strong and forceful criticism of the Obama Administration. She’s now working with people who do not wish to improve the Obama Administration, but instead wish to destroy it. She’s working with people who do not want to improve the bill working its way though Congress so that more people are helped and corporations get their just deserts, but instead with people who want Congress to end Medicaid because it helps the wrong sort of people.

I’m sorry, but that’s beyond the pale. Hamsher may have the purest of intent. But her actions are helping and emboldening the right. She has, ultimately, become the mirror of her greatest adversary, Holy Joe Lieberman, another person who started out a moderate liberal, and ended up joining forces in common cause with the Republican Party. In his case, it was just the war he was with them on. In Hamsher’s case, it’s just health care and Rahm Emmanuel. In both of their cases, they’re gone. And they’re never coming back.

1. There is some evidence that Emmanuel did nothing during his brief tenure at Freddie Mac, and that he basically received a paycheck for doing said nothing because he’d been a high-ranking official in the Clinton Administration, but while such a deal may be unethical — indeed, is unethical, in my opinion — it isn’t criminal, and isn’t much different than, say, Halliburton hiring a politically-connected former Defense Secretary as its chief. Indeed, such practices are sadly common, on both sides of the aisle. That may be reason to think Rahm isn’t particularly ethical, or even a reason to think Emmanuel’s a bad person. It isn’t by itself reason to call for his resignation. And it certainly isn’t the real reason Hamsher or Norquist are doing so. (back)

So do you remember when Sen. Tom Coburn, R-ExxonMobil, was telling teabaggers the other day to pray that “something” would happen to prevent a Democrat from making it to the Senate to cast their vote for cloture on health care reform? Sure you do. It was essentially a call to pray for the death of 423-year-old Sen. Robert Byrd, D-State Now Named for Robert Byrd.

Anyhoo, it was pretty despicable, and it made Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., pretty furious. I think Coburn thought he was being cryptic enough that nobody would catch on, but Coburn really isn’t that bright. I mean, even Treason-in-Defense-of-Slavery Yankee backed him in hoping for the death of the Senior Senator from Byrdland.

At any rate, it will not surprise you that teabaggers took Coburn’s call to pray to heart. It may surprise you, however, to find out that the prayers worked. A senator did miss a vote today. But not Byrd. Nor conservative bête noire Sen. Al Franken, DFL-Minn. Nor Patty Murray, Roland Burris, nor even Holy Joe Lieberman. No, the senator unable to make it to vote was Sen. James Inhofe, R-Chevron.

Yes, the lulz are serious with that. Coburn managed to encourage a prayer that took out his fellow Oklahoman-slash-Corporate Whore. But it gets better. Because of course, the teabaggers did pray. And they’re a little bit worried about the powers they are dealing with.

It is to laugh.

The best part of the video — which, for the YouTube impaired, features a tearful teabagger telling Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., that his group had “prayed real hard” that Sen. Byrd would die or be unable to make the vote — is the man essentially accusing Barrasso of not praying hard enough for Byrd’s death, thus causing God to punish James Inhofe for…something.

Of course, if I was a man of deep and abiding faith in a God who wants to influence the Senate by killing off its members one-by-one, I would tend to suggest that God making Inhofe sick is not so much evidence that teabaggers weren’t praying hard enough for a senator to die, but more that God has different ideas about which senators are expendable. It might even make me think that God kind of wants this bill to pass, and might support our nation’s slide into Muslim Marxist Communist Fascism.

Alas, I imagine that Inhofe is just under the weather.¹ Still, while I don’t believe in a God that interferes directly in our lives, this tests my lack of faith; if I were God, making Coburn’s fellow Republican just a bit too sick to make the vote is exactly the sort of thing I’d do in response to Coburn’s prayer. The only change I’d make would be that Coburn himself would have food poisoning or a bad cold or some other temporary, non-lethal ailment.

But I suppose that would be too obvious — proof denies faith, after all. And God wouldn’t want that.

Hmm. You don’t think…?

Well played, God. Well played.

UPDATE: Inhofe evidently missed the vote because he had to fly with his wife back to Oklahoma, but he’s going to then fly back to DC to cast more votes. Now, I’m assuming his wife isn’t eleven years old, so I’m not sure why she can’t fly home on her own, other than the general conservative belief that women are not, in fact, people.

1. Which is proof that global warming doesn’t exist. Also. (back)

There is a reason that Mithras’ birthday was celebrated this time of year. A reason that Bacchus’ birthday, the Saturnalia, Jesus’ birthday, and the New Year come this time of year as well. For those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, at 17:47 UTC today (9:47 AM Pacific Standard Time) the Sun’s slow ebb reaches its nadir, and begins its welcome return. For those of us who live in northern climes it is a not insignificant day; the sun will not rise today in Portland until 7:48 AM and will have set by 4:30 PM, a meager eight hours and forty-two minutes of daylight. And Oregon is in the pink compared to, say, Stockholm, where the sunrise doesn’t come until 8:44 AM and sunset is already complete at 2:48 PM–just over six hours of daylight.

It is no wonder that millennia ago, our forebearers saw this day as especially meaningful — the moment at which the Sun began its triumphant rebirth. Thus Mithras, the Sun God, was reborn on this day, to grow and prosper, rising until July, when he slowly began to wither and die. Thus the Son God, Jesus, has a story that, calendar be damned, fits well with the idea of Sol dying, and being resurrected. All of this has happened before, all of this will happen again, an infinite cycle, repeated infinitely — or as close to it as we humans can imagine.

And so today, we celebrate the day that is the progenitor of all our winter festivals, the Winter Solstice–and await again our planet’s rebirth into the light. Happy Solstice.

I think Karoli’s right, that’s going to be the big trade in conference. The language out of the Senate on choice is bad, but not nearly so bad as Stupak. It doesn’t expressly prohibit women from buying plans with abortion coverage on the exchange, and because of that, it’s unlikely to affect abortion coverage across the board the way Stupak did. (It will, of course, studiously avoid paying one thin dime for abortion coverage, and it will allow anti-choice states to opt out of this coverage — which is why it’s still bad).

But the Senate bill has no public option whatsoever. The House bill has the public option, and the Stupak language. And I think Karoli’s right: the big compromise is going to be a weakening of the anti-choice language or a weak public option and/or Medicare expansion, but not both.

For my money, I’d much rather have better language on choice and no public option than Stupak language on choice and a public option. The Nelson language is essentially at my threshold for tolerance of anti-choice gamesmanship; anything to the right of that should be fought. And frankly, I’d like to see better language in the final bill. The public option, contrawise, has never been something I’ve seen as essential. I don’t really care if plans are public, private, or non-profit, or a mixture of both. I guess I’d prefer a public option to none, but not more than I’d prefer more neutrality on choice to what we’ve got going now.

So I’ll throw it open to the crowd: would you rather see a public option, or keep choice from being weakened further? That’s probably the trade-off in conference. And it’s something to consider as we go forward.