Fumesucker
Fumesucker's JournalThe Abortion That Mitt Doesn't Talk About Any More..
http://www.salon.com/2011/08/08/mitt_romney_abortion_ann_keenan/singleton/In a 1994 Senate debate with Ted Kennedy, Mitt Romney revealed a startling chapter from his past: A close relative had died many years earlier in a botched illegal abortion, shaping Romney’s stance in favor of safe and legal access to abortion for all women. But in the many years since that revelation, even as Romney flipped his position and became an ardent opponent of legal abortion, the details of his young relative’s story, including even her name, have never been reported.
The relative he was referring to back in ’94, Salon has learned, was a Detroit woman named Ann Keenan. She was the sister of Romney’s brother-in-law and died at the age of 21 in 1963, a full decade before Roe v. Wade. While much of what happened remains murky, an investigation by Salon has uncovered never-reported details about her life and death, including: how she died (an infection); that her grief-stricken parents asked for memorial donations to be made to Planned Parenthood; and that the family apparently wanted to keep the death quiet because Romney’s politically ambitious father, George, was then governor of Michigan.
With access to abortion increasingly restricted in many states and the possibility that a Republican victory in 2012 — potentially by Romney — will tilt the balance of the Supreme Court against Roe v. Wade, Romney’s account of how a back-alley abortion touched his own family is more relevant than ever. The episode is a window into an era when obtaining an abortion meant the real risk of serious injury or death. It also represents a key part of Romney’s political journey on the issue of abortion, which has more than any other tarred him as a flip-flopper.
The outlines of the story first became public when Romney — unprompted — brought it up in that 1994 debate with Kennedy, whom he was trying to unseat. At the time, Romney, who was making his first bid for office, was struggling to prove his pro-choice bona fides to liberal Massachusetts voters. In the debate, he insisted that he separated his personal beliefs — opposition to abortion — from his policy position that abortion “should be safe and legal in this country.” Accused by Kennedy of being “multiple-choice,” Romney angrily fired back:
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Read the rest of the piece at the link..
EV: 100+ mph, 121 mile city range, 55 highway range, $16,995, looks cool..
http://thekneeslider.com/archives/2012/05/11/brammo-empulse-shes-got-the-looks/
Most everyone interested in electric motorcycles has heard by now, the Brammo Empulse is out in its final production form and it's a looker. From the start, the Empulse had a lot of visual appeal and the production version looks even better. There's both an Empulse and Empulse R, priced at $16,995 for the standard version and $18,995 if you want the carbon fiber extras.
So what does the Empulse offer? The technology is pretty impressive, it has a 54hp water cooled AC motor and a six speed transmission with a hydraulic clutch for those of us that like to fiddle with gears. Regenerative braking puts a bit of energy back into the batteries and makes the deceleration feel more like conventional engine braking.
It has a 100mph+ top speed and a city range of 121 miles, highway driving runs out at 56 miles and a combined half and half driving type yields 77 miles before recharge. Recharging at Level 1 (120 volt single phase) takes 8 hours and Level 2 (240 volt three phase) takes 3.5 hours.
The Empulse represents the best the electric motorcycle manufacturers have right now and there is certainly a lot to like. Electric enthusiasts will cheer and I would hope they start spending hard earned dollars to back up their enthusiasm with a purchase and then begin using the Empulse for daily riding.
Betty Cracker: Let's Do The Time Warp Again..
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/05/10/lets-do-the-time-warp-again-2/Mrs. Mitt seems like a nice enough person—she comes across as exponentially more human than her husband. Admittedly, that’s a low bar since anyone who seemed less human would be relegated to the cargo hold of a commercial airliner without a notarized document from an anthropologist.
But Mrs. Mitt seems as pleasant as a clueless rich lady could possibly be when she’s trying to sell you an animatronic plutocrat with an anti-99%, anti-woman and anti-gay agenda. Sort of like a defanged Lynne Cheney. So I don’t mean to pick on her. But this passage of a Mothers’ Day op-ed she penned for USA Today struck me as odd:
Sweet al dente Flying Spaghetti Monster, is she actually suggesting that daughters are universally better mannered and tidier than boys? I’d disabuse her of that notion by posting a picture of my teenage daughter’s room right now, but that would be invading the kid’s privacy. Trust me, I’d stack that girl’s smart mouth and capacity for generating household-roiling mayhem against all five Little Lord Fontleromneys.
But that’s not all that bugs me about the piece. It illustrates something more broad and disturbing—a weird trapped-in-amber vibe to both Romneys, something that can’t really be explained away as a generational thing. They are about the same age as my parents, and though my parents’ political views differ significantly from the Romneys’ (my dad is way to their right and my mom is way to their left—divorced ages ago, obviously!), you can tell my parents experienced the decades that followed 1959 and took away certain lessons, for good or ill.
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Read the rest of the piece at the link..
T.E.A.B.A.G.G.E.R. = Totally Enraged About Blacks And Gays Getting Equal Rights
Not my creation but I thought it worth passing on..
"I'm sure a Mormon corporate raider will be an improvement."
That was my sarcastic but deadpan line to a store manager I know a little today when I overheard him complaining about "Obummer" and "socialism" with a little more about Kenya and Nazis being socialists. It came out before I could help myself I wasn't really looking for a confrontation or to be religiously bigoted.
I might as well have been speaking Carthaginian.
It took five minutes explaining what I meant at about a fourth grade level, he didn't recognize Romney's name or know anything about him, didn't know what a corporate raider is, never heard of the Cayman Islands and so on..
Then I really threw him, I asked if he knew what USSR stood for, when he said no then I told him Union of Soviet Socialist *Republics*, really emphasized that last word..
I left him with a very puzzled expression.
Edited for grammer.
"Obama is powerless" is not a right wing meme.. But it's not a left wing meme either..
Wingnuts all believe Obama is practically a Kenyan socialist Nazi dictator-for-life and the black helicopters are coming to take away their guns and throw them in a FEMA camp right after the election.
Pony pining pinkos also see Obama as a powerful figure, one who could for instance order the DEA to act on the actual science and change the scheduling of pot.
So where is the "Obama is powerless" meme coming from?
I didn't say this but I wish I had..
Post #6
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/05/05/tears-of-a-banker/#comments
Jewish Steel Says:
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the quantity of their capital, but by the content of their character.
How would the world be a different place today if Barack Obama had gotten busted for drugs?
That's my Point Of Divergence as they say in alternate history, Barack Obama gets busted for drugs back in the day when he was young and dumb..
But wait, we've read his letter to his girlfriend that was recently posted, he sure wasn't dumb, brilliant in fact.
One of the tenets of alternate history is you cannot do just one thing, change one thing and everything after it is different, go back and bribe or convince the art school to take Hitler and history is vastly different. Barack Obama getting a record for drugs would echo through history, by now I suspect the echo would be near volcanic in our political world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Want_of_a_Nail_(proverb)
So, Aquinas is Rand Paul's latest philosophical guru?
Oops...
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/thomas_aquinas_2.html#yscZqdb8lU1M5fHy.99
Man should not consider his material possession his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need. -Thomas Aquinas
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Member since: Sat Mar 29, 2008, 10:11 PMNumber of posts: 45,851
