Whiskey Fire

The Dark

I'd not really had time to look at this while it was fresh, but I did rather suspect that the celebrating was misguided:

Irish law prohibits all abortions except those necessary to save a woman’s life, and as a practical matter it imposes daunting obstacles to terminating life-threatening pregnancies as well. In a secularized Europe, Ireland is noticeably out of step. Of the 47 countries covered by the European Convention on Human Rights, only in the fairytale countries of Andorra, Malta and San Marino, where all abortions are illegal, is the law any stricter.

So a decision earlier this month from the European Court of Human Rights in the Case of A, B, and C v. Ireland, promised to be of more than routine interest. A challenge to the Irish law brought by three women asserting rights under the European Convention, it held the potential to express a Continent-wide consensus that abortion rights are human rights.

Indeed, the initial news reports in this country, at least in headlines, indicated that this is what had happened. The European court awarded 15,000 euros, about $20,000, to Plaintiff C, a cancer patient who feared that her life was at risk from an unintended pregnancy and who, like Plaintiffs A and B and thousands of other Irish women every year, had to leave the country to obtain an abortion.

Good, but, er...

But a closer reading of the 40,000-word decision tells a different story. The Strasbourg, France, court — which 30 years ago interpreted the Convention to protect gay rights — actually made clear that it was not recognizing a right to abortion. On behalf of Plaintiff C, who could not find an Irish doctor willing to help her even assess her risks, it was simply telling Ireland that if the country chose to offer a life-saving exception to its abortion ban, it had to give women “an accessible and effective procedure” to demonstrate that they qualified....

No right under the Convention was violated in these two instances, the court said by a vote of 11 to 6. Granted, “the process of traveling abroad for an abortion was psychologically and physically arduous” for these women. And granted also that in their particular circumstances, they could have obtained legal abortions in 35 to 40 other countries covered by the Convention. But because Ireland’s law is based “on the profound moral views of the Irish people as to the nature of life,” the court said, Ireland was entitled to an extra “margin of appreciation.” This phrase expresses a measure of deference toward a country’s right within the framework of international law to chart its own domestic course. With its extra margin, Irish law prevailed.

"Ireland" in this legal sense has the last say over "this Irish woman's body," though "Ireland" would not have such power were the women in question so silly as to not have been rich enough to have surgery abroad.

As a student of modern Ireland, I should like to see evidence that "Ireland" is fit and competent to make moral decisions of any sort whatsoever in any regard before it assumes control over anyone's uterus.

Answers Questions

Steve Benen asks a question as to the ridiculous Gary Bauer:

I continue to marvel at why folks like Bauer wallow in self pity.

Because it makes them rich.

This is Bauer's careeer; he makes pots of money as a professional resentful Christian, and it makes him famous and Important.

Sure, this isn't the whole story. But it is 90% of it.

Cast Into The Pit, I Wish

Not unlike three, five or whatever-yr. olds howling & screeching "But you said! You said so!" at their parental units, the sort of people who enjoy standing downwind from a blazing campfire are still on about the phrase "global warming."

Whoever first used the phrase (As an easy introduction to the great big complicated ideas that the like-to-breathe-shit people would have had trouble wrapping their tiny minds around?) is no doubt sorry now, as the appearance of any temperatures much above 50°F results in this kind of drivel from Bow-Tie Daddy Carlson's Daily AP Feed.

Dr. Patrick J. Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies at The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C., told TheDC that global warming proponents wrongly try to justify numerous weather patterns as being the result of global warming. “Global warming scientists say it will be warmer, colder, snowier, and less snowy all at the same time, which is impossible. Anyone who follows global warming knows the theory is rife with exaggeration,” Michaels said. “What’s disturbing is to see The New York Times put a really fringe idea on their editorial page. Obviously they’re panicking about people’s distrust of the political nature of global warming science. It struck me as desperation pass, knowing the people are abandoning global warming as a signature issue.”

Yes, someone from the Cato Institute said "political nature of global warming science," yet was not referring to himself. Not that the fair & balanced responder acquitted himself well, even allowing for, shall we say, selective editing on the part of typist Donovan.

“Basically anything that would appear like magic would throw the laws of physics into question,” Brad Johnson, a climate editor at the Center for American Progress, a progressive Washington, D.C. think tank, told The Daily Caller. “The only way to disprove the global warming theory is if magic is real and that our understanding of the universe is completely wrong.”

On & on it goes. My real purpose is to display this for all to see, which has been at "TheDC" since 1740 Eastern (W/ an update at 1805.) & remains uncorrected as of almost midnight ET.

Cretins.

M. Bouffant (Plus which, hither.)

What a Better Life!

So there is a long article by Christopher Beam in New York about how libertarianism won't actually get you, or anyone else, laid, though it will indeed get us all fucked.

Jonah Goldberg puppy-dog begs to differ.

Christopher Beam has written a long essay on Libertarianism and its (alleged) problems.

I have a pretty strong suspicion he’s not having a great time opening his email today. I suspect he feels a bit like he went to Costco, bought one of those big industrial size jars of honey, open it, poured it over his head and then went to sit on a libertarian anthill.

That is a very funny joke only marred slightly by the botched execution. Cause see. You're wrong to criticize libertarianism as being assholish, because then libertarians will then act like assholes to you on the Internet!

Rarely has a tautology been so triumphantly, flatuently, trumpeted.

Or else, so flatuently, triumphally, farted.

(Alan Greenspan was in charge of everything forever and that is now why everything is wonderful forevermore. QE to the fucking D.)

(Mas: "absent the special pleading I was hoping for, I guess we do come across to a neutral observer as a gang of assholes. Interesting. Fuck him!")

 

The Sunbird

Doctors will soon be able to receive Medicare payments for end-of-life planning.

Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment....

The new rule says Medicare will cover “voluntary advance care planning,” to discuss end-of-life treatment, as part of the annual visit.

Under the rule, doctors can provide information to patients on how to prepare an “advance directive,” stating how aggressively they wish to be treated if they are so sick that they cannot make health care decisions for themselves.

This is of course completely sensible and will be taken as good news for anyone who has ever watched a loved one face a terminal illness.

It is also of course being screeched at by the wingnut-whippers who avoid having to work real jobs by scamming the pig-ignorant wingnut masses who enjoy frottaging themselves into absurd, hysterical lathers over imaginary oppression. "Death panels"! And even worse, the legislature doing things. Capn' Dinks:

This is just the opening gambit of a strategy Obama will use throughout the coming year in order to achieve through regulation what a Democrat-run Congress could not deliver through legislation.

Funny. I missed this burning rignt-wing resentment over the executive branch acting imperiously in regards to the legislature from the years 2000-2008.

Of course when the Bushitistas were in charge such concerns were expressed in regards not to pretend "issues," but actual ones, like energy policy, stampeding the country into crap wars, and torture, so I guess there is something like consistency in the "conservative" position. This would be the sort of "consistency" to be discovered in substances such as month-old milk.   

The Season

ACTUAL PHOTO of the Christmas decorations on a neighbor's lawn.

Postwar Stubble

Because it's Christmas Eve, here is a Christian, saying things that Jesus Himself would have said, were His head lodged up His ass.

According to National Review Online, there may be a whole lot of homosexuals who just got an unpleasant surprise. With the repeal of the law prohibiting homosexual service in the United States military, they just lost their “get out of jail free” card.

You thought the end of Don't Ask Don't Tell was a civil rights victory? HA! It was a civil rights LOSS! Gay Libtards are gay!

The hyperventilating out-of-the-mainstream media has been full of supposed stories of horrific discrimination against homosexuals in the military which they say resulted in many of the best and and brightest getting ash-canned from the military through invidious witch-hunts. 

However, the facts tell a much different story. And while facts have never troubled the left, let alone played a significant role in any single part of their worldview, these facts actually should be sobering for our pretty-in-pink wannabe soldiers. 

It turns out - get this - that 85% of all homosexuals who got discharged on the basis of the law that prohibits open homosexual service in the armed services threw themselves out of the military....

You can read on; it is all in this vein, about how homosexuals have limp wrists and so forth. The thesis, though, is that the repeal of DADT is awful for conservatives, but also great for conservatives, because now the fags that only signed up for the "ogling male soldiers in the shower" bit are totally screwed, sunshine, because they can't just get to go home by saying they're gay!

There is a logic here according to which bigotry always makes perfect sense, but I would not advise you to go look for it.

Instead, reflect on how you are not this guy; no matter how messed up things might seem for you, you are not this guy.

This guy is hate: snake-tail swallowing sense-defying HATE. Ewwww.

Yeats will always be right about this: "to be choked with hate/ may well be of all evil chances chief."

Nollaig Shona Daoibh.

MAS. Y feliz navidad.

From Molly I & I, yer our family, and actually far less odd than our fleshly ones. Raise a glass of whatever you like, our Whiskey Fire co-conspirators, wherever you are, and bless you. And also, Chuck Norris is a douche.

 

Ho Ho Ho!

This being, technically, Observed Xmas Eve, best wishes & greetings to all, plus which bacon:

Maple syrup, brown sugar, cayenne pepper & a "dusting" of chipotle, baked. Dee-lish!

M. Bouffant (Who sure as hell wasn't the chef.)

Weather Patterns

Some jokes told here.

Anyway, was Copper Blue so damn long ago? (Checks)

DAMN.

This record could have came out yesterday. DADT is why I thought of this video. But this still sounds new! To me, anyhow. Wow. It had never occurred to me that this record would age, and it has not. Fascinating.

 

Answers Questions Etc.

Michael Shear axes the question:

How Did Republicans End Up Against 9/11 Responders Bill?

A Democrat proposed it.

Another edition etc.