When a social policy regarding chldren's education or medical care is made in the Norwegian capital, it is not that difficult to persuade citizens in one part of the country that children in another part of the country are "their" children too, and should have the same benefits and tax dollars spent.

Just try that in Washington DC. You think the people in "the heartland" really relate to the children in inner cities as though they are their own?

We have our own strengths, and need to build on them. We have quite a way to go. But imagining a Nordic Socialist Paradise replicating itself in the US any time soon is folly.

Here is my story, not of 1950 when I was only three years old, but later, when I was 11 or 12, of a young woman who came to stay with the family across the street for awhile. She was probably 20, and as the pungent saying was at the time, "she had gotten herself pregnant."

Her boyfriend was a Marine who dropped her like a shot when she got pregnant, so she went to the base and found his commanding officer, hoping he would make the young man "do the right thing." She was told she was not the first young woman to come to the CO with that tale of woe -- but the fifth. Let that sink in.

So, there being no alternative either safe or legal, she continued with the pregnancy and stayed with older friends, our neighbors. She had a plan: she would return to the Mainland with her baby and pass herself off to her parents as a widow.

Could the story get uglier? Yes it could. Baby came, birth certificate came, and on it was stamped for all the world to see: ILLEGITIMATE. Let that sink in.

My mother, in her flaming outrage at this injustice, told me the whole story at this point. She told me that damned birth certificate was going to have to be presented every step of the way, including school enrollment. There was no possibility of the fiction of widowhood and respectability -- just lifelong shame for both mother and child. The woman who transgressed and the product of that transgression.

Someone here recently came up with the phrase: "behavior modification for women," regarding abortion bans. I thought that was a good way of putting it -- and it comes wrapped in a whole lot of other behavior mods, like making sure that babies carry shame for having been born at all.

...I remember that particular bitter battle here at DU for 8 long years, as he was accused of spelunking and bus-ejection daily.

All the while he was actually laying the groundwork for one accomplishment after another, like gays in the military and gay marriage around the country.

All the while the GOP was fulfilling the oath they made on Inauguration Day: to oppose every freaking thing Obama said and did, from "My what a nice day" onward.

Frankly, I think the lens with which I will look at Barack Obama's current and future efforts is the same one I used for his presidency.

How about you?

...exemptions for medical care for women. If it offends the "conscience" of a pharmacist to dispense birth control pills, he doesn't have to. If it offends the conscience of a pharmacist to fill a Plan B prescription, he doesn't have to. All up the chain -- from the doctors who prescribe (they don't have to), to the pharmacists who dispense (likewise). Hospitals do not have to perform abortions, nor do they have to refer.

And by the way, as community hospitals around the country closed and consolidated during the Bush years, guess who was left continuing their traditional mission of mercy? Yes, the Catholics. I would have absolutely no problem with that if there were alternatives in the community, but have you checked lately?

I was outraged by the BushCheney administration in so many ways, and the policies regarding contraception and abortion laid groundwork for what's happening now.

"Conscience" my rosy Irish ass.

ETA: look up the Global Gag Order if you really want to choke on your morning coffee

This rally is not taking place in a vacuum, and I would wager that zero of our Democratic presidential candidates would increase our problems.

This is 2019 and we are in a fight for the life and soul of our nation as well as the planet.

No one who spends their time tearing down Democrats who have signed on to our party platform on key issues is going to get my respect or support. I expect it of GOPers -- I will not tolerate it from Democrats/Greens/Socialists/Progressives/Liberals and others who claim to be on the left and are asking for my vote.

In addition, the gutting of the Voter Rights Act and the resurgence of New Jim Crow laws means the suppression of minority votes across a large swath of the country. Those helpful computerized programs for cleaning up old voter registration files mean that -- for instance -- only one person named Jose Garcia in a particular district in Florida might be the valid Jose Garcia, and all the rest of them must be fraudulent, so out they go despite the fact the local phone directory is filled with Garcias.

We have a lot of work to do to, but it won't help if we blind ourselves to the facts -- among which is: this country voted for Hillary over Trump, and saying she was unpopular and (take your pick) not strong enough or not warm and fuzzy enough, while implying we are sore losers obscures the horrible truth of how Trump actually came to sit in the WH.

As for the history books, current books coming out by the day are going to be a stunning testament that the spirit of Paul Revere is alive and well, and that we were warned.

...in the "pro-life" community. It's why my evangelical neighbor thought I approved of a "Holocaust of Babies" 35 years ago -- my Planned Parenthood bumpersticker that said "Pro Child. Pro Family. Pro Choice" was clearly code for "I support ripping viable babies from their mommies' wombs," you know?

It's not new and is unlikely to be treated as news. It's just vile.

Remember when he was going on about human trafficking at the border? All those poor women tied up, tightly bound by their captors, duct tape over their mouths, stuffed in trunks by evil coyotes? He looooved repeating that story, with embellishments. Now that we have homegrown white militias on the border, he's gone on to the next thing.

Trump deliberately instigates violence. In the case of people who are fanatically anti-choice, he has an already-violent core who willingly support the murder of doctors who abort zygotes, and have been calling pro-choice people like me "baby killers" for 30+ years.

All that matters to Trump is whipping his cultists into a murderous frenzy.

The fanatics have been calling pro-choice advocates "baby killers" for 30+ years, and I am talking about abortion of a zygote. They are so unhinged they call nearly every form of contraceptive an abortifacient.

They are violent people who stalk the children of clinic workers and gun down doctors. And you know how Trump loves violent people.

As for the media, they have never known how to deal with the issue because anti-choice fanatics made it a religious issue and painted the rest of us as dirty people who believe in sex without consequences. There is an American white Christian terrorist network that kills doctors and destroys clinics, but since they aren't Muslim we can't call them terrorists, can we?

...he is not talking to you. He is talking to violent people, and he will double down and tell this story again and again until he needs another vile lie to whip up his cultists.

Remember the "human trafficking" story he told to justify the border wall and his abuse of migrants? How lovingly he detailed the picture of helpless women being tied up, the duct tape over their mouths? He stroked this image, and told the story over and over.

He gets pornographic in his descriptions of violence being done to the helpless. Do you think he cares about captive women or slaughtered children even a tiny bit? No, but he sure cares about whipping his audience into a frenzy and aiming them like a cannon at the rest of us.

He will double down. Facts be damned.