Who knew the job would be so easy?

Obama is about to lift the gag order that prohibited federal funds going to international groups that performed abortions.

He has ordered a review of all of Bush’s last-minute policy acts, stopping them cold.

And look at this:

President Obama is expected to loosen the restrictions [on stem cell research], which many researchers and advocates have complained severely set back work toward curing disease such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and diabetes.

Okarma said Geron did not use any federal funding for its research, and that the Bush restrictions had “devastated the field.”

This is something else, when an incoming president can, in his first week, simply say “no” to all the bad policies of the prior White House occupant and achieve great good. It’s as if any idiot could do this job better than George W. Bush.

I imagine it will get harder, though.

Is the day a little brighter here, or what?

I have my reservations about Obama, but I am seeing clear differences between him and the previous tenant of the White House already — good changes.

US President Barack Obama is expected to announce that he is ordering the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp within a year.
He is also expected to order a ban on abusive interrogations and a review of military trials for terror suspects.

Why do I suddenly feel this unfamiliar sensation? Is this what they call “hope”?

Palin takes home one honor for her efforts

Late last year, the New Humanist podcast was taking nominations for their Bad Faith award, given to the most “deluded fantasist” of the year. It was my honor as one of the Americans on the roster to nominate our very own Sarah Palin.

Either I was extremely persuasive or my nominee was so patently fit for the award that none could oppose her. Sarah Palin wins! I am very pleased to say that it is the only thing she has won, and that it is well deserved.

They have a conscientious need to control your ovaries

If you want to see the consequences of the recent wave of attempts to endorse “provider conscience rules”, in which health care providers are permitted to freely exercise their whims and biases in providing clients and patients their services, read this story. As usual, it’s all about controlling the reproductive choices of women: we’ve had politicians blocking access to Plan B contraception; laws that would allow doctors to deny care if it was against their religious beliefs; and pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions. Beyond simply passive denial of giving a patient what they need, though, we now have gone to the next step: wingnuts actively removing birth control devices against the patient’s will. Nurse practitioner Sylvia Olona of the Presbyterian Medical Services Rio Rancho Family Health Center in New Mexico has been taking it upon herself to yank out the IUDs of patients in her care.

Having the IUD come out was a good thing [because] I personally do not like IUDs. I feel they are a type of abortion. I don’t know how you feel about abortion, but I am against them. …What the IUD does is take the fertilized egg and pushes it out of the uterus.

What Olona is doing is a violation of ethics, a consequence of shameful ignorance, and ought to be criminal. At the very least, she ought to be fired.

That is not what an IUD does. An IUD is a small, typically T-shaped piece of metal or plastic that is inserted into the uterus, where it interferes with conception. In essence, what it does is induce a low-grade, local inflammation in the reproductive tract that causes changes in cervical mucus, hindering the passage of sperm. The device itself also seems to block sperm activity, and some IUDs also slowly release progestin, a hormone that suppresses ovulation. It is not an abortifactant. It is basically a kind of barrier method. Most of the uninformed complaints about the IUD are built on the fact that it also induces changes to the uterine lining which would inhibit implantation if sperm somehow managed to fertilize an egg.

How about firing this bozo because she is ignorant about the facts of her job?

Olona is a serial offender. She is currently being sued by a woman who went in for a trivial adjustment of the IUD, and instead had it completely removed by Olona…by ‘accident’, the nurse claims, but she apparently has a reputation for doing this.

Everyone in the office always laughs and tells me I pull these out on purpose because I am against them, but it’s not true, they accidentally come out when I tug.

Ladies, welcome to your future. A future in which others will decide whether you may have children or not. Don’t worry, though: they will never say “not”. And don’t feel like your choices will be taken out of your hands, you still have a choice. If you don’t want to get pregnant, just never have sex, you slut.

Abort a doughnut today!

It’s inauguration day, and in a fine old American tradition, every event must be associated with a commercial tie-in. Krispy Kreme dougnuts is offering a free choice of a doughnut in honor of the change in presidents.

Did you hear that? Free choice of a doughnut?

Get it? Choice?

Yeah, I know, most of you aren’t obsessive lunatics, so it’s not obvious. You need to see the press release sent out by the American Life League.

The unfortunate reality of a post Roe v. Wade America is that ‘choice’ is synonymous with abortion access, and celebration of ‘freedom of choice’ is a tacit endorsement of abortion rights on demand.

Buying a doughnut is now interpreted as endorsing abortion. This is insane.

Unfortunately, another fine American tradition is the compounding of the insanity. Krispy Kreme caved and rewrote their advertising copy to carefully spell out at the end that “the Inauguration Day promotion is not about any social or political issue.”

I’m sorry, world. Some Americans are flaming morons, and the rest of us fall ass-over-ankles to cater to them.

Inaugural Freak Show – The Daily Beast

I hope most of you are well past your lunch or breakfast now, because this story might ruin it. Never forget that our country is still ruled by a superstitious lot of kooks, a mob of witch doctors wearing suits and ties. This video, which is way too long and boring, shows a Georgia Republican and a pair of clerical loons chanting and nodding and praising each other while they daub a door with magic oil. Seriously.

It’s the door Obama will walk through on his way to giving the oath of office. Apparently, a god will be especially pleased with him if a set of true believers grease the lintel first. Awfully petty of an omnipotent being, don’t you think?

Hasn’t he gone away yet?

I was startled to see that John McCain hasn’t been retired to the WaxWorks Museum of Irrelevant Political Figures yet — he’s still making speeches. Could somebody tell him that he’ll never, ever have a shot at the presidency again?

Anyway the subject of his speech was to sneer at fruit fly research again, and mock lobster research. What’s with the hatin’ on invertebrates, Mr McCain?

At least we don’t have to care what he says anymore: he is officially nobody, a washed-up politician who let himself get upstaged by his airhead running mate.