Perhaps the horse might talk.

A court Jester is said to have made a bet with his king that he could make a horse talk within some length of time. When asked why he would be so reckless as to bet on an impossible thing, he replied:  before the time is up, I might die, the king might die and perhaps the horse might talk.  So it seems to be with the anti-abortion crowd and its attempts to overturn a Supreme Court ruling based on constitutional presumptions.

Easter, which has been around far, far longer than Christianity, is the spring holiday when Western traditions celebrate the Moon and fertility goddess Oestra, from whom the name Easter derives.  She was often depicted with rabbit ears like the Playboy bunnies and for the same reason. Easter, like so much of what Christianity has turned into in this third millennium, is all about sex and procreation.

Funny perhaps that they've picked the season to make another attempt to forbid women to terminate pregnancies; usually for any reason. Arkansas and North Dakota passed laws this month forbidding any abortion after sensitive (and vaginally intrusive) instruments could detect a foetal heartbeat.     Other states seem to be considering this end-run around Roe Vs. Wade.  Of course that landmark decision says that states cannot ban abortion before a fetus is viable outside the womb, but this doomed sort of legislative Hail Mary pass is usually done in the same spirit one buys lottery tickets.  The odds are ridiculous, but you never know. 

It also helps keep the pseudo-religious congressmen visible and thus more likely to get those Bible thumping votes.  Too bad there's really no biblical support for the fuss about personhood for something that doesn't breathe, but when did popular theology require anything resembling logical or factual or even Biblical consistency?  We're dealing with passionate groups who worry that the universe will grow dark or that some God-O-Love will not only kill us, but consign us mercilessly to eternal torture should we prevent an ovum from implanting itself in some uterine wall.

Of course having a few pulsating cells in a proto-heart doesn't meet the test of viability as stipulated by the high court, but as I said, it's not about logic, it's about conviction and it's about harassing the courts and being seen to be harassing the courts and to be in support of the Theocratic insurgents who have no interest whatever in popular sovereignty or any real concept of Democracy.

The Court has repeatedly deemed laws of this sort to be unconstitutional but to a group that not coincidentally asserts that the real constitution is the Christian Bible, there's no obstacle here if we can only get rid of the heretics, atheists and other spawn of Satan. Therein lies the real danger to our future. The Christian Bible fails to denounce and even supports slavery and the subjugation of women along with the notion that political power derives from people who can get away with declaring that God appointed them.

This attack will probably fail but like a Zombie Apocalypse, the attackers keep coming at you even if they're chopped in pieces. With endless and implacable onslaughts, who can tell?  With enough time, who can tell?  Perhaps the horse might talk.

 Far more than an attack on the personal sovereignty, the ownership of  one's body and its functions that seem to underlie the self-evident assumptions of our nation, this religious war, the Crusade against reproductive rights and control of one's body and destiny is a denial of the stated fundamentals of our nation, a struggle against Democracy.  Perhaps it's time to spend less time on the hysterical distractions and diversions in the headlines and take notice.

Tales of the Bizarro World

Remember Bizarro World, where everything is its opposite?  As Superman said, "If I win this crazy game, these Super-Creatures will say I lose"  Hit the ball over the fence and they'll call you out.

Somehow this has been the tactic behind Republican campaigns since that great Victim, elder statesman and non-crook Richard Nixon was forced to resign rather than be convicted of burglary and obstruction. Everything is its opposite, the loonies run the asylum. Democrats want to oppress women by allowing them to use birth control, or get innoculated against HPV and by not forcing them to give birth to two-headed, hydrocephalic offspring of rapists. Democrats (according to radio ads for Allen West) want to take away our Social Security, while the Army Colonel who had to resign rather than face 11 years in Leavenworth for war crimes is a "war hero."

Of course it's not just Republicans, it's the Christian Right some of whom insist that "you can't be a Christian if you don't own a gun"  Just like Jesus would if Jesus were his own opposite.

Dr. Gary Cass, with heavy-hitter credentials in the Republican Party and the Bizarro World of forcing militant, heavily armed Christianity upon America and the World -- Dr. Gary who now heads the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission,  perhaps another exercise in contradictory rhetorical gymnastics, insists that Christians need guns because those Satanic, non-cult members want to kill babies and allow people to marry in contradiction of Dr. Gary Cass's 'moral' compass.  Bizarre enough for ya?  Is he saying that these "Christians" need to kill doctors and blow up women's health clinics in the name of morality?  Sounds like it to me, but then it could mean the opposite, couldn't it?

Could it be that the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission is the Bizarro way of being the Defamation-of-everyone-else-Commission?  Certainly, or of course not, depending on whether you're a Bizarre Super Creature or a rational human being. If you are a Bizarro creature, you see, Victims are victimizing the persecutors and the ancient institution that's been persecuting others for millennia, is the Victim here:  the victim of the victims and if you shoot someone for not obeying you, why you're the victim. Just like Jesus.

When arguing with the Right, you can't win because they'll declare you the loser, just Like Superman said -- so should I declare that you can't be a Liberal, or even that you can't be moral if you don't own a gun?  Sounds Bizarro right to me -- make mine a Kalshnikov.

Let them get pregnant, like God intended.

What's worse than a bunch of creepy old man religious perverts conspiring against the health and well being of women? Well, perhaps a creepy young woman trying to make sure -- using copious amounts of taxpayer money -- to fight a requirement that health insurers cover the modest cost of birth control. Worse still, she's fighting something that in some cases is a medical necessity and in very many cases will prevent women from becoming unable to work and winding up in poverty and their children on public assistance.

Such things don't seem to matter to GOP apparatchiks like Pam Bondi, Florida Attorney General who is suing the Federal Government over the Affordable Care Act, a law that is starting to provide health care to Florida's 4.5 million uninsured and access to contraception. As the ACA will come before the US Supreme Court this month, the redundancy of this suit is as obvious as the smug unconcern Bondi has for truth, justice and freedom from the tyranny of religious nuts.

Sold as another attempt at "smaller" government, it's really nothing but a power play by the Religious Rich to make their perverted, obsessive, inhumane and antique dogmas into public policy no matter the cost. Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi may not be one of these foul, disgusting old men, but she sure as hell works for them while collecting a salary paid by the people she'd like to keep barefoot and pregnant and poor and in thrall to the superstition salesmen with the effrontery to use our freedom of religion and our tax revenues against us.

Rights, religion and cockroaches

Even if you're not a criminal, you probably know that a good way to pull off a heist is to create a distraction. Plainly, when nature or circumstances provide one, the slight of hand artists, the flim-flammers and fast fingered scammers; the looters and pillagers come out of the woodwork like roaches -- and so do the Christianists.

No, it's not just the nutjobs with sandwich boards yelling about the end of the world, it's the politicians and preachers and the "crossover" models as they say in Detroit. Sure, the argument for the apocalypse seems better every day, but that's never enough satisfaction for God's own nihilists. They have to make sure we're all either under strict control, or lined up like ducks for the Jeezimator to come and blow us all away.

Take South Carolina State Senator Robert Ford. He is trying to get a bill banning profanity passed that would make it a felony to utter certain unspecified words and which would carry a five year maximum sentence. The push goes on and is probably advancing, to convince us all that the Constitution was really founded on the Bible so Christianity should be the State Religion and while we still haven't retrieved the civil rights the last Republican Administration took away, the State of North Dakota is trying to grant them to any fertilized human egg cell. That's right, "any organism with the genome of homo sapiens" according to the bill, is a person and a citizen. As far as I can tell, King Tut's mummy is an organism with a human genome, but he doesn't live in North Dakota where all that treasure would have to be given back to him.

"This is very simply defining when life begins, and giving that life some protections under our Constitution — the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"

says the bill's sponsor, Rep. Dan Ruby. I wonder why swearing isn't my right, but I don't have to tell you he's a Republican and I shouldn't have to tell you he's a moron either, since the Constitution says no such thing, those words being the preamble to the Declaration of Independence.

I shouldn't have to tell you, unless you were educated in some remote jungle, that both the zygotes involved in fertilization were already alive and that in fact, human life exists in an unbroken line back to some microbe or proto-microbe that lived back before the Pre-Cambrian. I shouldn't have to tell you either, that the Bible; the same Bible these same folks tell you is the basis for our laws, contains no such prohibition but rather asserts that life begins with breath. Even the Biblical word n'shemah is deliberately mistranslated as "soul" by Christians which is really what the right-to-life scammers want to protect. It really means "breath."

It takes a certain kind of mind to look at this picture and see a "baby;" an organism capable of thought, action or even life outside of another human body that has more rights for instance than someone who is accused of being an "enemy combatant" by an unreliable source. It takes a certain kind of person to brag about our freedom while wanting to take it away for using the anglo-saxon word for feces. It takes a certain kind of person to read the angry denunciations of Christianity by James Madison and Tom Jefferson and call them devout fundamentalist Christians.

So when someone bumps you in a crowd, or there's a commotion in a busy street or when the economy is collapsing all around you, keep your eyes open, your hand on your wallet and maybe your finger on the trigger. Yes, they are out to get you.

Pass it forward

Does Sarah Palin's nomination and her smug arrogance have you feeling like you've been slapped in the face by the GOP? Mad as hell at this campaign to take away reproductive rights, to reduce access to birth control and counselling? Here's how you can return the feeling. Kate Goldstein at Huffington Post suggests that you make a donation to Planned Parenthood in Sarah Palin's name. They will send her a Thank You card.

Make sure you use this link and use the McCain headquarters address so that everyone at that viper's nest will see the card:

McCain for President
1235 S. Clark Street
1st Floor
Arlington, VA 22202

Use that link above or choose the pulldown of Donate--Honorary or Memorial Donations, not the regular "Donate Online."