Thursday, November 3, 2011

Is the 99% Movement the Modern Equivalent of Storming the Bastille

Here is a startling statistic, the candidate for office in America with the most money backing him or her wins 94% of the races. In other words money buys almost every election. This fact means they really aren't elections, they are auctions. Character doesn't matter, positions don't matter, honesty doesn't matter; what matters is who puts in the highest bid and raises the most money. Guess where that money comes from and why do you think that money is spent? Any wonder our country is so fucked up? At its core, that is an extremely disheartening statistic because it says something terrible about how a democracy can be corrupted if money is allowed into the election process. That 94% statistic proves that a gullible electorate can be led to any conclusion with enough slick advertising. The Citizens United case has made things even worse, allowing unlimited corporate spending to influence elections.
We are caught in a catch-22; in order to throw off the shackles we would have to elect large majorities in the House and Senate to pass a Constitutional amendment removing money influence in elections, but we can't even begin to elect those majorities since the moneyed interests can buy any number of representatives they chose. Our hope rests with the 99% uprising or if they fail with another outraged grassroot populist movement with even greater intensity. If the groundswell of outrage grows to enough people and the outrage is sufficiently intense, maybe we can overthrow the moneyed interests despite their attempts to buy our government. This is the only way I can see that the people of America can reclaim their democracy from the 1%. Storm the Bastille!

Friday, September 23, 2011

Is Financial Collapse Inevitable

As our national debt approaches 100 % of GDP, I would just like to point out that in many respects we have been here before. After WWII we had a crushing debt of 120% of GDP. Many thought it was an impossible situation that would inevitably lead to financial collapse. But, after a couple decades of high taxes on the wealthy (90-70%), GDP growth and modest inflation, that debt dwindled in the rear view mirror into a fairly insignificant amount.
Republicans, with great wailing and gnashing of teeth, like to tell us we are in an impossible gloom and doom situation, the world is going to end, we have to cut spending and make the economy smaller (which by-the-way makes the debt bigger in relation to the economy). They tell us we can't accomplish big things; we need to aim lower and do less.
The real problem is 30 years of tax cuts, after more tax cuts, after even more tax cuts for the wealthy which has left the government starved of revenue, thus creating huge deficits. The wealthy in America pay the least taxes they have since just before the Great Depression. The resulting wealth disparity means that a bigger and bigger piece of the pie goes to a smaller and smaller group at the top leaving that much less for everyone else. Malcom Gladwell make an excellent point about how America has previously sliced up the pie in this video.
The solution is simple; raise taxes on high incomes to the levels they were after WWII. It worked before and it can work again but the problem is uncompromising, unrelenting Republican obstructionism. Almost every Republican in congress has signed a pledge of allegiance to Grover Norquist. If you don't know who Grover Norquist is, he is the guy who hates the U.S. Government so much that he famously said his goal is to starve the government of revenue to the point that he can “drag it to the bathtub and drown it.” Republicans have become so consumed with protecting every penny of tax cuts for the wealthy that they have lost all sense of perspective and will go to every extreme to obstruct raising revenue, even if it means destroying the country. The only solution that remains is to remove from office every Republican (or Democrat for that matter) who has signed the pledge of allegiance to Grover Norquist or any other special interest group, and replace them with folks who pledge allegiance to the United States, in-other-words, folks that put country before ideology or party.

Friday, August 12, 2011

Godly Politics


From the look of things it seems God is a little partial to dumb Texas governors who like to wear their religion on their sleeves. Rick Perry (you know, the guy who wants to be president of the country from which he wants to secede) recently held a prayer event in a football stadium (Matthew 6:6) to ask for God's help in dealing with the problems our nation faces. Guess what? To my complete and utter surprise, according to Rick Perry, God wholeheartedly endorses Rick Perry's political ideas. Might as well spill out the goat entrails and see what Ba'al has in mind for 2012.
When you mix your politics with your religion, you wind up with a toxic stew that is poison to both; your religion inevitably gets corrupted by the lying and deceitfulness inherent in the politics and your politics must be perfect and unquestionable because it comes from God. Could the right wing political co-opting of religion be a contributing factor to why American church attendance is going down by about one million per year? When exactly did God anoint the GOP as His chosen people? If God chose George Bush as President, as many, many swore He did back in 2000, then surely God must have known that George was going to make an awful mess of the economy, so what conclusions can we draw about God from this choice? Religion and politics don't mix well because when your Godly politics fail, as they inevitably will (because they actually come from partisan humans), it calls into question your religious beliefs; it pulls your religion down into the muck of politics. If God chooses a president or a political ideology, then God owns the outcome. But according to almost all Christian doctrine, the whole point of our existence is to exercise free will, so if God is choosing our presidents, or steering hurricanes or causing earthquakes or in any other way interfering in human affairs, then we don't really have free will; Do we? So maybe God really isn't partial to dumb Texas governors; maybe it is actually people that don't understand the point of their religion that are partial to dumb Texas governors.

Monday, August 8, 2011

America Held Hostage

The Republicans are doing everything in their power to sabotage the economy and force us into a double dip recession because, as they have openly admitted, it will greatly enhance their chances in the 2012 elections. According to most economists, the debt deal recently forced on Obama at gunpoint will result in about 1+ to 2.0% decrease in GDP which in turn results in 0.5% to 0.7% decrease in employment according to Okun's law. Since current employment is 150 million, the result of the deal will be a loss in the neighborhood of 750k to 1 million jobs in 2012. Republican speaker John Boehner chortles, “I got 98% of what I wanted.” Republican senate leader Mitch McConnell admits, “I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting, most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming.” To top it off, not only will the spending cuts forced on a weak economy probably push the economy back into recession and result in weaker revenue, actually increasing the deficit, but these cuts have already cost us more in projected future interest payments than the cuts were supposed to save in the first place. A lose, lose, lose situation for the nation with the only winner being the Republican Party.
So, in summary: Republicans, behaving like terrorists, hold the American economy hostage with a gun (in the form of threatening a US default on its debt) and swear they will pull the trigger if the president doesn't give them everything they want. Obama, being the reasonable moderate sort of nice guy that he is, pleads with them to release the hostage until the last minute but then gives in to almost all of the Republican demands in order to save the country (1 Kings 3:16). The Republicans, knowing that no president has ever been reelected when the economy is in recession and unemployment is rising, get rewarded with a double dip recession and higher unemployment in an election year. Evil wins. 

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Thorium Reactors are Safer, Cheaper, Carbon-Free and More Efficient

With the recent unfolding nuclear reactor disasters in Japan, the public is going to turn away from nuclear power even more than they had previously. Before Fukushima, it was difficult and expensive to get approval for new reactors; now it is going to become near impossible. This may open the door for a new and safer type of technology known as the Thorium Reactor.
Thorium Reactors also known more accurately as Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs pronounced “lifters”) are a proven alternative to the present day nuclear reactors known as Light Water Reactors (LWR).

Advantages of Thorium Reactors:
  1. Safer; if power is lost like in Fukushima, the reactor just shuts down with no chance of meltdown. The thorium reactor is self controlling; as the liquid fuel gets hotter, it expands and reduces the number of fuel atoms in the reactor which results in less heat. Since low pressures are used, no need for expensive and vulnerable backup cooling, control and containment structures.
  2. There will be start up costs associated with the research and development of new thorium reactors but they will be cheaper in the long run. Fuel is more plentiful and cheaper and doesn't need assembly into fuel rods. Doesn't need control rods and expensive emergency systems to control the reactor. Doesn't need a massive pressure containment vessel. Since they are inherently safer, LFTRs will need less government regulation once their safety has been well established.
  3. Less Nuclear Waste. LFTRs produce only a tiny fraction of the waste generated by a LWR and the waste decays rather rapidly to near background levels in about 300 years. Contrast that to the large amount of waste from LWRs that takes hundreds of thousands of years to decay. Realizing that the Pyramids are only 5000 years old; who is going to be around to warn lifeforms away from a waste site 100,000 years in the future? Fortunately, the LFTR can “burn” the waste from the LWRs down to a much smaller and manageable form.
  4. More efficient. Nearly all of the thorium is used in an LFTR versus only about 0.7% of uranium in a LWR (one reason the LWR produces so much more waste). One pound of thorium produces the power of 200-300 pounds of uranium. Plus, there is a lot more thorium than uranium in the world.
  5. Scalability: LFTRs can be made large or small from 100-kilowatt to multi-gigawatt. It would be possible for small communities to have their own 1 megawatt LFTR and produce their own power instead of inefficiently consuming power from lines traveling hundreds of miles from a large regional power plant.

The One Disadvantage of Thorium Reactors and the reason we have LWRs instead.
  1. It's very hard, almost impossible, to make atomic bombs from the LFTR.
This one reason, the ability to make plutonium, was why we (the USA) decided to go the LWR route. Now we have about 1000 tons of plutonium in storage and about 200 tons in our nuclear weapons; so we don't need more plutonium. Therefore the main rationale for pursuing the LWR route is no longer in effect. As many people as possible need to view this informative video featuring Kirk Sorensen where he clearly lays out the history and science behind Thorium reactors.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Are Republicans Willing to Destroy America to Hurt Obama

Since the election of Barack Obama, the strategy of many in the right wing has been to promote failure for the United States. Success of the left and Barack Obama would conspicuously advertise the failure of the Republicans during the Bush administration. Moreover, success by the left would legitimize the role of government in preventing economic ruin and pulling the country back from the brink of disaster that the country was facing when Obama took office.

Evidence of right wing obstruction and efforts against America:
  1. During the first two years of the Obama administration, the Republicans in the senate, in a move to delay and disrupt legislation, performed and threatened more filibusters than any time in US history.
  2. Republicans are even rooting against the success of America because if America succeeds under a liberal administration their own right wing policies will be more glaringly shown as failures. Here is a video showing a conservative group breaking out in spontaneous applause upon hearing the breaking news that America lost the Olympic bid. Wow, it never occurred to me to root against the US Olympic hockey team just because Reagan was president or to cheer as the WTC buildings collapsed because George Bush was president. The Republican hatred of Obama clearly trumps any love they might have for America.
  3. Day in and day out, the repeated doomsday predictions for America have an effect on the psychology of our country. There is an element of self full-filling prophesy in the calls for financial Armageddon. A recent poll shows that 79% of Americans now believe a financial disaster is looming.
  4. Now the Republicans are threatening to refuse to raise the debt ceiling. Practically all economists agree that even to talk about not raising the debt ceiling will have a negative effect on the economy but to actually refuse to raise it will be epic economic suicide, forcing the country into a full blown depression. The repeated doomsday predictions and the prevailing belief in economic ruin are the fuel vapor in the room while the threat of American default on our debt may prove to be the spark that sets it off.
The Republicans have clearly brought all their weapons to bear in order to make sure the Obama administration fails. Many Republicans have made a cynical calculation that if Obama, and by extension America, fails that it will benefit them politically. As Rush Limbaugh said, "Let's be honest. Every Republican in America is hoping for Obama's failure." The Republicans are holding a gun to the head of America, threatening to kill us and they are insanely blinded by hatred of Obama (Obama derangement syndrome). The peril is real.

Friday, April 8, 2011

Can Tax Cuts Magically Increase Revenue

Since Reagan, Republicans have been operating under the illusion that tax cuts somehow magically increase government revenue. As an example here is a 2001 article by the Heritage Foundation erroneously predicting that the Bush tax cuts would pay off the entire national debt by 2011. It is worth noting that the idea of tax cuts increasing revenue can actually work in certain circumstances as shown is this simplified graph of the Laffer Curve.



Note on the graph, if we are at point B and reduce taxes, revenue would go up while if we are at point A and reduce taxes, revenue would drop. The problem is that Republicans ALWAYS think we are at point B even when we are clearly at point A.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Selling Only High Risk Insurance is Bad Business; The Solution to Medicare

The original idea of insurance, whether is was for life, fire, health or what-have-you, was that everyone paid the same small amount into a fund and then if someone had the misfortune to need it, they were covered. The idea was to spread the risk of catastrophe among a large number of people. In any given year, most people paying the insurance would not need it.
Insurance evolved into a for-profit business and actuarial tables allowed the business to assign probabilities to the insured and separate them into risk pools. Insurance companies learned that if they could remove those most likely to collect on the insurance from the pool, their profits would soar. Now instead of everyone paying into a pool that was there for those that needed it, the business of insurance became one of trying to identify who might need it and excluding them from the pool. So if you are in the business of selling life insurance, you love to sell it to that 20-year-old but forget that 95-year-old. Selling life insurance to a 95-year-old is bad for business unless the premium is astronomically priced close to the face value.
In recent times, insurance companies have become better and better at predicting who might need actually need the insurance so they can be excluded or placed into a high risk pool.
When it comes to medical care, older people on average need a lot more medical services than younger people; the older they are, the more medical services the are likely to need. We all get there eventually; when we are young, we rarely need medical services but as we get older, things start going wrong and we need more medical help. Insurance companies don't want to sell medical insurance to old people because they have to charge them an exorbitant premium of thousands of dollars a month. Few old people could afford these premiums so they would wind up dying on the steps of the for-profit-hospitals; denied medical care. Not a pretty picture.
Enter Medicare. The government assumes coverage for the old people high risk pool and old people only have to pay a modest monthly premium that the government subsidizes. Health insurance companies are happy because the people most likely to need health care services are removed from their pools. They make more money because they get to sell health insurance to people who are not likely to need it and the government bears the brunt of health care for old people.
The problem is that selling only high risk insurance is bad business; adverse selection results in an insurance death spiral. If you are only covering people that need the services, you will go bankrupt; it really isn't even insurance anymore since everyone is needing service; there is no spreading of risk among a large group. It is just paying a relatively small fee for a large amount of healthcare.
The solution is to get back to the original idea of insurance; everyone pays the same into the pool. Do away with separating people into higher and lower risk pools. The premium that everyone pays is determined so that the pool is sufficient to pay all healthcare; young, old, healthy and sick alike. Everyone is covered with an affordable premium. Twenty-somethings pay more than they would if separated into a low risk pool but someday those twenty-somethings will be seventy-somethings so it all evens out in the long run. Everyone is covered; the program is self funded and adds nothing to the deficit and grandma doesn't have to die curled up on the steps of the hospital denied healthcare.

Friday, April 1, 2011

Democrats Should See the Republican's 61 Billion and Raise Them 200 Billion

The House Republicans are crowing about their 61 billion in cuts from Head Start, school lunches, Planned Parenthood, NPR and other small left wing programs and challenging the Democrats to put up or shut up. Sixty-one billion is about three percent of the deficit and is almost meaningless if you actually want to balance the budget. The Republicans are waging a propaganda war and trying to paint themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility and lower deficits for the 2012 elections.


Look how insignificant the 61 billion is in the big picture.

The Republicans are at a disadvantage with a very limited stake in the no limit poker game of deficit reductions since the only bets they can place come from non-defense discretionary spending which is a small part of the budget. The Democrats on the other hand have an almost unlimited stake since there is plenty of room to raise taxes from the present low levels and find cuts in the bloated military budget. The Democrats, holding a virtual royal flush, are in a no lose situation but they don't realize it and will probably wind up folding.
If the Democrats had any brains, they would see the Republican's 61 billion and raise them 200 billion. The 200 billion can easily be found by combining some cuts from the huge pentagon budget with very modest tax increases on the wealthy; the two things that are verboten to Republicans. Then every time a Republican crows that they can't get Democrats to agree to close the deficit, the Democrats could point out that they are trying to close the deficit even more but the Republicans will not go along.
I said "if the Democrats had any brains"; unfortunately, unless the Democrats radically depart from their history, they will play right into the messaging of the Republicans and allow the Republicans to convince Americans that the Republicans are the responsible party of smaller deficits.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Is Birtherism Rooted in Racism

My take is that birtherism is indeed rooted in racism. Did anyone demand to see George Bush's birth certificate or Bill Clinton's or HW Bush's or Reagan's? No. It was never an issue until we had someone with dark skin running for president. Then crowds of older white people started claiming that he is not one of them and questioning his legitimacy. It is clearly because he is of African descent; clearly racism.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

You Want to Balance the Budget; It's Really Not Too Hard

Hey Republican Tea Party, so you want to balance the budget? Are you serious or just using your new found disdain for deficits as an excuse to cut tiny and budgetarily insignificant programs with which you have a partisan disagreement like Pell Grants, Planned Parenthood or school lunches. If you are serious about balancing the budget, you are going to have to make HUGE changes to expenditures and revenue. That means raising taxes AND cutting discretionary spending.

Here are some ideas that would actually make a difference:
  1. When you or I go to a Las Vegas casino and place a bet, a portion of our bet goes toward taxes. When a giant hedge fund or bank goes to the Wall Street casino and places multi-billion dollar bets, the bets are tax free. Here's an idea; place a tiny one tenth of one percent tax on the 500 trillion dollar Wall Street casino handle. The result would bring in $500 billion to the treasury and put us on a trajectory to a balanced budget within the decade.
  1. Most workers and tax payers pay 12.4% for Social Security taxes yet Bill Gates and other extreme high earners only pay a tiny fraction of one percent. So here is a dose of common sense: Have everyone, rich and poor alike, pay the same 12.4% tax. This would make Social Security solvent into the far future so it would be there for all our kids.
  1. The lion's share of discretionary spending is found in our military budget. Do we really need a gigantic world girdling military? Do we need 1000 plus military bases stationed all over the world? Are the vast Canadian hordes poised to sweep down on us the minute we let our guard down? Over the course of the decade we can phase out about 90% of our foreign military bases which will still leave us with about 100 military bases outside our country. For comparison, do you know how many military bases China has outside its country? Zero.
  1. Raise taxes on income over $500,000 to levels comparable to what we had in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. After World War 2, we had a bigger debt than we have now as a percent of the economy and we didn't go broke. We raised taxes on the wealthy to over 90% and guess what? The rich prospered along with the middle class. As it turns out the rich heavily invested in business creation in order to avoid the high taxes, and in the process created millions of new jobs resulting in increased tax revenue. A win-win-win scenario that resulted in decades of robust growth and low deficits.

Our current fiscal problems are solvable. We just have to overcome 30 years of Republican propaganda that has convinced most Americans, liberal and conservative alike, that low taxes on the wealthy creates jobs. It does not; it is just the opposite. Our country has been in similar circumstances before; the playbook has been written and it has worked before. All we have to do is open our eyes and see the obvious truth that taxes must be in line with our spending.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Thirty Years of “Starve the Beast” has Crippled America

The Republican “Starve the Beast” strategy of cutting taxes depends on the mistaken idea that government spending will somehow magically follow tax revenues down. Thirty years of this magical thinking as regards tax policy has crippled America and left us with massive deficits.

Instead of proposing politically unpopular spending cuts, Republicans in the 1970s developed a strategy called “Starve the Beast” by which they would promote massive tax cuts, with the deliberate intention of worsening the deficit. With the high deficits, spending cuts could then be sold as a necessity to deal with the budget short falls; a sort of fiscal bait-and-switch. Bruce Bartlett, a conservative who worked in the Reagan and H.W. Bush administrations, provides an insightful history of Starve the Beast.

If you raise taxes to pay for government programs, you’re essentially making government programs more expensive. Conversely, if you cut taxes, you’re making government programs cheaper. Econ 101 tell us that when you reduce the price of something the demand for it goes up. Therefore, tax cuts make government programs cheaper thereby increasing demand for said government programs; the exact opposite of the theoretical intended effect of the Starve the Beast strategy.

The simple and obvious solution to 30 years of Starve the Beast idiocy is to raise taxes back to the pre-STB levels of the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Sanity Break

Human Beings are just animals. But they are THE BEST animals, because they invented cake. 

Friday, March 18, 2011

Republican Tea Party; Are You Serious About Reducing the Deficit

The current Republican Tea Party obsession with cutting programs like Pell Grants, Planned Parenthood and school lunches is really just a way to sneak in a stealth tax increase on the middle class and poorer segments of our country. Every dollar cut out of these programs has to be made up by increasing fees on average Americans. All these cuts taken together are a tiny fraction of one percent of our budget and are insignificant if you are actually trying to reduce the deficit. These cuts are nothing more than a phoney attempt to use the large deficit as an excuse to cut programs the Republican Tea partiers are against for partisan political reasons.

Hey Republican Tea party, if you are serious about reducing the deficit, here is an idea:
Do away with the proliferation of phoney tax shelters and raise taxes on income over $500,000 to 70%. After World War 2, we had a bigger debt than we have now as a percent of the economy and the world didn't end. We raised taxes on the wealthy to over 90% and guess what? The rich prospered along with the middle class. As it turns out the rich heavily invested in business creation in order to avoid the high taxes, and in the process created millions of new jobs resulting in increased tax revenue. A win-win-win scenario that resulted in decades of robust growth, high employment and low deficits.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

We All, Quite Literally, Start Off as Ass Holes

All chordates (animals with spinal cords) are dueterostomes.
The defining characteristic of all dueterostomes is the fact that the hollow ball of cells called a blastopore develops a dent that turns into the anus as the first stage of differentiation. So, in other words, the first thing that happens in our early embryonic development is that we turn into little ass holes.

Ironically, our whole existence consists of growing and evolving beyond that auspicious start; both literally and metaphorically.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

There is No Tea Party; They are Tea Bag Republicans

What is the best and most fair term to describe these Tea Bag Republicans. The term “Tea Party” is dishonest. There is no Tea Party; when they run for office they all have “Republican” after their names. These supposed Tea Partiers are almost all Republicans that are ashamed of the mess that Bush left and don't want to own it so they claim to be something other than Republican; yet these Tea Partiers want to double down with a more extreme version of the same Republican policies that have nearly destroyed our economy. I think "Republican" has to be included in their description because that is what they are; they are just trying to hide from being called Republican.
I am open to using a term that doesn't have negative connotations such as Tea Bag Republican which is a fairly accurate term but it is a mouthful. Folks have used the term “Tea Bagger” because Tea Bagger is the term they first used for themselves and many think it accurately depicts what they want to do to this country, but the term "Tea Bagger" has a decidedly negative connotation and prejudices the conversation.
When they appear on the ballot with Tea Party after their name alongside Republican and Democratic candidates, then it will be fair to call them Tea Partiers, until then, they should be called something that doesn't let them run from their Republican affiliation such as Tea Bag Republicans, Tea Party Republicans or just Republican Tea Partiers.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Is Morality Absolute or Relative

Almost everyone alive today knows that slavery is wrong. Two hundred years ago most people thought slavery was acceptable and two thousand years ago everyone thought slavery was the natural order and perfectly justified. Even Jesus never spoke out against slavery and the Bible is fine with slavery; instructing on how to treat your slaves. Obviously our view of the morality of slavery has changed over time, proving that, as for as slavery, morality is not absolute. Continue for a deeper and more detailed examination of relative and absolute morality.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Is America's Future Coming to an End

Sometimes it feels like America's future is coming to an end but I think it is important to keep things in perspective.

Over the last 500 years, humanity has gotten more and more democratic, more and more free, more and more capable of determining its own direction. The internet is revolutionizing the availability of information. There are problems, yes, but there are solutions. Every problem we face today is solvable.

At the moment, 90% of the country's wealth is owned or controlled by 10% of the population. Does this 10% also contribute 90% to the maintenance and improvement of society? No, not even close. The wealthy in this country are not pulling their weight.

After World War II, when we had to pay back an even bigger debt than we have now, we taxed the rich at 90% of their income. Yes, 90%. Oddly enough, that left them still rich.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Self Deception: I Believe it, Therefore it Must be True

People make decisions based on emotion, and then come up with “rational” reasons for that decision. It's not that just other people lie to themselves, it's that "we all" by our human nature lie to ourselves. We can get better at not deceiving ourselves by means of introspection and constantly challenging our own assumptions. The more points of view you expose yourself to, the more probable it is that you will catch your faulty thinking.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

A Clue About Beliefs

If your beliefs result in you feeling hateful toward other humans, maybe that should be taken as a clue that something is wrong. 

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Does Abortion Allow a Woman to Avoid the Consequences of Sin

I remember back in the late sixties listening to a preacher get worked up over abortion. He was a young guy; probably mid-twenties clearly without much life experience with short-medium length hair slicked back, horn rimed glasses and that typical young Republican clean shaven look. The guy worked himself into a vein bulging rage over the idea that a woman could sin and then get pregnant and then avoid the consequences of that sin by getting an abortion; kind of like she was cheating God.
In the intervening decades I have watched as the anti-abortion movement has evolved away from “the woman is avoiding the consequences of her sin” to “compassion for the life of the unborn”. This argument has brought new adherents into the anti-abortion movement because, let's face it, it has some justification. It's perfectly reasonable that we should care about the unborn; just as we should care about the born, the sick or the disadvantaged. When I see it displayed so ardently though, I wonder if the intense compassion for the life of the unborn is real or is just a cover for “the woman is avoiding the consequences of her sin” rage.
A clue as to the true motivation of the anti-choicers can be found in their attitude toward others in need of compassion. The telling point for me is the simple fact that in most cases that I have witnessed the “compassion for the life of the unborn” disappears once the kid is born. I can't help but suspect that in many cases the outward show of compassion is largely fake and what lurks behind it is that hate-filled preacher from the sixties.