George W. Bush – Page 2

A Farewell Kiss

As promised, today is the virtual shoe throw hosted by Lisa at My Ecdysis, in solidarity with the “Iraqi shoe-thrower” Muntader al-Zaidi, and in a final act of extreme disapproval towards Bush on what is finally his last day in office.

As Lisa said best: in defiance of terror, in defiance of war, and in defiance of violence (and yes, in the spirit of a bit of fun), we at Feministe virtually throw our shoes at outgoing president George W. Bush:

Cara kicks things off right with some heavy-duty boots:

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Goodbye, Bush

And good riddance. This oral history of the Bush Administration lays out the astounding incompetence, ignorance, and misguided agendas at play in the White House. For chrissakes, these people were gaslighting, spying on, and sabotoging each other for eight long years.

I went to a communications meeting the day after [Jim] Jeffords switched. I remember feeling like I was looking at people who had won a reality-game ticket to head up the White House. There was this remarkable combination of hubris, excitement, and staggering ignorance.

And,

The contrast with having briefed his father and Clinton and Gore was so marked. And to be told, frankly, early in the administration, by Condi Rice and [her deputy] Steve Hadley, you know, Don’t give the president a lot of long memos, he’s not a big reader—well, shit. I mean, the president of the United States is not a big reader?

And,

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Seven States Sue Government Over Anti-Choice DHHS Rule

An interesting move has been made in the fight over George W. Bush’s last-minute DHHS rule that complicates the definition of abortion and revokes funding from those health providers that “discriminate” against employees (or potential employees) on the basis of their religious or moral opposition to abortion and hormonal birth control. It’s one that I, at least, was not particularly expecting:

Seven states sued the federal government on Thursday over a new rule that expands protections for doctors and other health care workers who refuse to participate in abortions and other medical procedures because of religious or moral objections.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut at a briefing on Thursday in Hartford.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut filed the lawsuit in federal court in Hartford on behalf of the states — California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon and Rhode Island, which joined Connecticut in the lawsuit. The states are seeking a court order blocking the new rule.

They claim the federal rule, issued by the Bush administration last month and set to take effect on Tuesday, would trump state laws protecting women’s access to birth control, reproductive health services and emergency contraception.

Mr. Blumenthal said the regulations were “flawed and defective” and would “unconstitutionally and unconscionably interfere with women’s health care rights.”

Mr. Blumenthal said the rule “shrouds the term abortion in new and unnecessary ambiguity” and encourages medical providers to define it themselves and deny patients contraception, including emergency contraception for rape victims.

At stake are billions of dollars in federal public health money received annually by the states. The Department of Health and Human Services could order a return of all health and human services money from state and local governments that violate the regulation.

Though I’m admittedly sad to see that my state (New York) isn’t involved with the lawsuit, I’m really glad that numerous states are taking action on behalf of women’s health and in support of reproductive health providers. That alone is excellent news.

Of course, President-Elect Barack Obama has vowed to do what he can to overturn the rule once he is in office, but as previously covered, that may be harder than it initially sounds. Estimates say that the rule could be in effect for 60 to 90 days before Obama is able to overturn it — plenty of time, in other words, to still do lots of damage to the lives of women all over the country.

In more predictable news, as the above article notes, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association are both planning on filing their own lawsuits, in addition to the legislation that was been introduced in the House on Thursday to overturn the rule. In other words? This is ugly, but at least folks are working their asses off to ensure that as little damage is done as possible.

Previous (not already linked) coverage of the DHHS rule at Feministe: here, here and here.

“Sanctity of Life” apparently doesn’t apply to girls

Interesting that the same week (blessedly soon-to-be-gone) President Bush announced “Sanctity of Life Day,” UNICEF released a report that girls who give birth before the age of 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than older women. (via)

Worldwide, more than 60 million women who are currently aged 20-24 were married before they were 18, with the most child marriages being in South Asia and in Africa.

If a mother is under the age of 18, her infant’s risk of dying in its first year of life is 60 percent greater than that of an infant born to a mother older than 19.

In addition, the report says adolescent wives are susceptible to violence, abuse and exploitation. Young brides are often forced to drop out of school, have few work opportunities and little chance to influence their own lives.

“If young girls are not in school, they are more vulnerable,” South African Health Minister Barbara Hogan said at the launch. “It’s not just a health issue; it is about the status of young women and girls.”

According to the report in 2007, the latest year for which statistics are available, 9.2 million children died before reaching the age of 5, down from 9.7 million the year before.

Half of these deaths occurred in Africa, which remains the most difficult place in the world for a child to survive.

Africa is also the continent with the highest rate of maternal deaths, with women having a one in 26 lifetime chance of dying during pregnancy or childbirth. This is four times higher than in Asia and more than 300 times higher than in industrialized countries.

Veneman said 80 percent of maternal deaths are preventable if women have access to basic maternity and health care services.

In developing countries a woman has a 1-in-76 chance of dying due to complications during pregnancy or childbirth compared to 1-in-8,000 for women in industrialized countries.

Contrast that with what Bush said in his announcement of Sanctity of Life Day:

“All human life is a gift from our creator that is sacred, unique and worthy of protection. On National Sanctity of Human Life Day, our country recognizes that each person, including every person waiting to be born, has a special place and purpose in this world,”

“The most basic duty of government is to protect the life of the innocent. My administration has been committed to building a culture of life by vigorously promoting adoption and parental notification laws, opposing federal funding for abortions overseas, encouraging teen abstinence and funding crisis pregnancy programs.”

Yeah. Cutting off health care to developing countries and pushing abstinence-until-marriage (even teenage marriage) has done wonders to affirm the lives of women and girls. His administration did absolutely nothing to prevent federal funding for abortion overseas — laws against federal funding of abortions abroad have been on the books for decades. What the Bush administration did do was remove health care funding from clinics that so much as mentioned abortion as an option — meaning that women and men around the world found their access to contraception, condoms, safer sex tools, HIV/AIDS treatment, sexual health information, well-baby care, pre-natal care, and STI care suddenly cut off. And they found themselves being told that the solution to HIV/AIDS is simply to hold off sex until marriage — despite the fact that for a lot of women, marriage is a major risk factor in contracting HIV (not to mention a potential risk for intimate partner violence and other abuses), and early marriage can mean early pregnancy, which can mean early death.

Women around the world need health care. They need basics, like access to clean water and nutritious food and safe housing. They don’t need sanctimonious “sanctity of life” days from leaders who have demonstrated again and again that women’s lives don’t matter, and that the “pro-life” commitment to life outside of the womb is virtually non-existant.

Virtual Shoe Throw on 1/20

Lisa at My Ecdysis came up with a great way to celebrate the fact that Bush is finally leaving office after 8 long years — and to show solidarity with the “Iraqi shoe-thrower” all those who oppose the violence and arrogance that the Bush administration has come to represent.

Lisa says:

When two shoes were thrown at George Bush by a journalist who had seen enough dying children and blood spilled on his country, I watched in disbelief.

What stunned me further was how people debated – in detail – if this man should be imprisoned or punished. Let’s see what would happen if we could turned the tables. Suppose another country invaded our land in the name of democracy and freedom, and through years and years of violence, shed blood on the bones of civilians and children who were never officially counted or reported about in the news. Might you, filled to the depths of your soul with death and injustice, throw your shoes?

So, throw your shoes in solidarity on January 20th, Inauguration Day. As the poster says, all you have to do is take a picture of yours shoes, post it on your blog, and link it back to Lisa’s original post for a round up of participants. It’s that easy, and that cool. Feministe, with any luck, will be participating. And so should you.

Oh, and if you need some help deciding what shoes you want to “throw”? Lisa’s got those goods, too.

Whoops, we do torture people after all

Yeah, oops.

One of the more frustrating aspects about this situation — other than the clear human rights violations — is that prolonged detention without charge or trial, coupled with torture and inhumane treatment, shows a fundamental lack of faith in the justice system of a country that conservatives claim to “love” and hold in high esteem. We have specific safeguards set up so that criminal defendents are not physically brutalized to the point where they suffer from life-threatening conditions (or die, as others at Guantanamo have). Now, because we almost killed this man — who is the alleged “20th 9/11 hijacker” — he may not face trial. Much of the evidence against other potential defendents may be tainted if it was obtained through torture, making it either inadmissible or highly dubious.

I’ve written before about my serious problems with the prison industrial complex and the treatment of criminal defendants in the United States. I maintain that our justice system, in practice, is thoroughly broken. Many of our laws are deeply problematic, and the way those laws are carried out is too often oppressive, inhumane and unjust — especially to people of color, immigrants, and the poor.

But our legal system as conceived is a pretty incredible thing, even if its ideals aren’t properly carried out. And it’s a constant source of deep frustration for me to see that system abused, diminished and flouted in order to commit horrific acts with impunity and without oversight. And of course there’s also this:

In May 2008, Crawford ordered the war-crimes charges against Qahtani dropped but did not state publicly that the harsh interrogations were the reason. “It did shock me,” Crawford said. “I was upset by it. I was embarrassed by it. If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and women, or others in foreign service, are captured and subjected to the same techniques? How can we complain? Where is our moral authority to complain? Well, we may have lost it.”

That’s a big problem, and it puts not only our service people but Americans generally in seriously compromised positions. The Bush administration has wrought devastating consequences in many aspects of our lives, but normalizing torture, trashing the Constitution and putting Americans at risk are among the most offensive.

Immigration Prosecutions Drain Resources

Hopefully, all of us here can agree that the United State’s current policies surrounding prosecuting undocumented immigrants for entering the country, and the ways that those immigrants are treated while in custody, are cruel, inhumane and blatantly racist. But this NY Times article also takes the time to highlight how these prosecutions inevitably take resources away from prosecuting, you know, real crime:

Federal prosecutions of immigration crimes nearly doubled in the last fiscal year, reaching more than 70,000 immigration cases in the 2008 fiscal year, according to federal data compiled by a Syracuse University research group. The emphasis, many federal judges and prosecutors say, has siphoned resources from other crimes, eroded morale among federal lawyers and overloaded the federal court system. Many of those other crimes, including gun trafficking, organized crime and the increasingly violent drug trade, are now routinely referred to state and county officials, who say they often lack the finances or authority to prosecute them effectively.

Bush administration officials say the government’s focus on immigration crimes is an outgrowth of its counterterrorism strategy and vigorous pursuit of immigrants with criminal records.

Immigration prosecutions have steeply risen over the last five years, while white-collar prosecutions have fallen by 18 percent, weapons prosecutions have dropped by 19 percent, organized crime prosecutions are down by 20 percent and public corruption prosecutions have dropped by 14 percent, according to the Syracuse group’s statistics. Drug prosecutions — the enforcement priority of the Reagan, first Bush and Clinton administrations — have declined by 20 percent since 2003.

Well, I guess that at least the drop in drug prosecutions — which frankly, I’m surprised to hear about — is good news. But the drop in prosecutions for white-collar crimes, weapons crimes, organized crime and public corruption? Um, not so good.

There’s lots more interesting stuff in the full article, so I recommend checking it out. But the gist is this: we’re not only propping up racist policy with the lie that prosecuting men and women (and locking up their children in the process) who were just looking for a way to feed their families is for the safety of the American people. Us Good, Worthy American Folk who are supposedly being protected? We’re actually being made less safe as a result.

Good work there, Bush administration. Good work.

Bush’s Last Minute Regulations: They Go Beyond Abortion and Birth Control

Though just last week I got really pissed off at Tim Dickinson’s Rolling Stone piece on Proposition 8, this week he has a really good article about all of the last-minute regulations Bush is putting into place as he walks out the White House door. Of course, we know all about the anti-choice HHS rule . . . but there’s a lot more than that.

While every modern president has implemented last-minute regulations, Bush is rolling them out at a record pace — nearly twice as many as Clinton, and five times more than Reagan. “The administration is handing out final favors to its friends,” says Véronique de Rugy, a scholar at George Mason University who has tracked six decades of midnight regulations. “They couldn’t do it earlier — there would have been too many political repercussions. But with the Republicans having lost seats in Congress and the presidency changing parties, Bush has nothing left to lose.”

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Sorry, ladies, but your vagina conflicts with my morals.

In one more blow to women’s health and rights, the Bush Administration has issued a sweeping new regulation giving just about anyone the right to refuse to offer basic women’s health services. It’s being framed as about abortion, but here’s the thing: There are existing laws that protect health care workers from performing or assisting with abortion. Under current U.S. law, no one can be forced to partake in an abortion procedure if they have a moral objection.

This is about birth control.

Leavitt has said the regulation was intended to protect workers who object to abortion, but both supporters and critics said the rule remains broad enough to protect pharmacists, doctors, nurses and others who do not wish to dispense birth control pills, Plan B emergency contraceptives and other forms of contraception. While primarily aimed at doctors and nurses, it offers protection to anyone — including ultrasound technicians, nurses aides, secretaries and even janitors who have any role in the service.

Leavitt said he requested the new regulation after becoming alarmed by reports that health-care workers were being pressured to perform duties they found repugnant. He cited moves by two professional organizations of obstetricians and gynecologists that, he said, might require doctors who object to abortion to refer patients to other physicians who would provide them.

As it stands, no doctor, nurse, or other health care worker has to perform abortions. But under two professional codes of conduct, if a doctor won’t provide a certain service, he or she needs to refer the patient to someone who will. When the service isn’t an emergency, referal can be a pain in the ass, but it’s reasonable enough for something like abortion, where the surgery has to be scheduled in advance anyway.

So I’m not against making reasonable compromises and accomodations for religious and moral belief. But I am against people refusing to do their damn jobs because of some claimed morality that, interestingly enough, seems to only have the effect of punishing sexually active women:

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Shoes and Democracy

You know, even some Americans *cough* have reacted with amusement at the shoe throwing incident. Bush turned the shoe incident into a serious of puns, saying that he’d “seen the man’s sole” for example, and lauded the incident as a moment in democracy, in effect, that people in a democracy are able to politically express themselves in anger and that’s something that, in light of war, can be celebrated. The president trusts Iraq leadership so much, in fact, that they are leaving the punishment of the reporter who threw the shoes up to the Iraqi government.

A White House spokeswoman said Tuesday that Iraqi leaders are the ones to decide whether punishment is appropriate for the Iraqi journalist who stunned observers by hurling two shoes at President George W. Bush from close range.

“The president believes that Iraq is a sovereign country, a democratic country, and they will have a process that they follow on this,” White House press secretary Dana Perino told reporters. “The president harbors no hard feelings about the incident.”

Which is great. Except that the reporter is reportedly being held at a US-run prison, Camp Cropper, and shows signs of torture. (This wouldn’t be the first time reporter Muntadar al-Zaidi has been beaten — he was reportedly kidnapped and interrogated in late-2007.)

I’m quite with Digby right here:

I actually thought Bush handled this thing quite well. He was literally quick on his feet and didn’t take it too seriously. (I thought the “I saw into his sole” thing was particularly good.) He could do a great thing right now by making a public appeal to the Iraqis to pardon this man. It would be magnanimous and do his personal reputation a world of good — and it would be good for both countries.

If you’re so inclined, you can contact the White House and politely ask them to support clemency for al-Zaidi.

[via Shakesville]