Cheap shots and lunar Spam

"Would you like to supersize that?" "No thanks." "Ok sir. Can I take your name?" "Stephen. With a 'ph'." "Great." pic.twitter.com/eBjWYklFxt
— James Rhodes (@JRhodesPianist) September 9, 2013

This goes out to @StevenErtelt

As you will no doubt recall, in 2009 the invincibly stupid then-Rep. Bart Stupak (Blue Dog-MI) became convinced that the Affordable Care Act was the cover for a secret conspiracy to get the federal government to finance recreational abortions—no, Steve, just [jump]
kidding, that the ACA was going to allow the use of federal dollars to help pay for abortions in contravention of the Hyde Amendment and the wishes of God, with whom Rep. Stupak was in direct communication, and the clear language of the bill itself. So he held the government hostage for some months with a campaign to stop this outrage, until finally, in March 2010, President Obama signed an executive order forbidding it, just in case he was mistaken and it wasn't forbidden already.

Anti-choice activists, however, refused to believe in their victory and continued to oppose the bill, and, as its major provisions are finally getting ready to kick in on October 1, one Steven (or perhaps Phteven) Ertelt, editor of LifeNews.com, has begun sending out a flurry of panicky Tweets denouncing all the Obamacare-funded abortions that are imminently going to take place.

Image by Laura, 9, from Make Art for Change.

One of the things that struck me about Ertelt's tweetstorm was that the evidence he linked to consisted almost entirely of articles written by himself for LifeNews.com, and that the evidence cited in those articles consisted almost entirely of movement propaganda plus a grand total of THREE items from more respectable sources: one article from Time magazine, one from the AP, and one from Politifact. After a certain amount of troll-baiting, I was able to get him to provide a link to the Time article, and promised I would check it out and get back to him.

Anyway, I am now able to report that

• The Time magazine article to which he refers was published in August 2009, before Stupak's successful crusade, and thus has no relevance to the question of what the ACA says today;
• I never got him to provide a link to the AP article, but he first discussed it in an article of 2009 of his own, so the same applies; and
• The Politifact article is a Politifact article. From Georgia.

What I mean by that last statement is that Politifact, in its anxiety to correct for what Stephen (or Phteven) Colbert famously referred to as the liberal bias shown by truth, often veers into crazy, as in the present case from its Georgia outpost, which is a discussion of a 2012 book by Karen Handel, late of Planned Parenthood, alleging a left-wing conspiracy driving her out of the organization. The book, Planned Bullyhood,

 lays out Handel’s case, including a claim PolitiFact Georgia found interesting. Handel wrote that Planned Parenthood will receive millions of dollars in grants under the federal government’s health care law, which conservatives derisively call "Obamacare."

"[M]ost disturbing, is the fact that Obamacare will provide coverage for abortions, despite the president’s commitment that it would not," Handel, a Republican, wrote on page 161 of the book.

While it is absolutely true that under the ACA no federal dollars may be spent to cover or pay for any abortion other than those allowed by the Hyde amendment, the ACA does allow state governments to cover them as their laws permit, by having individuals covered in the insurance exchanges pay an extra premium of a dollar a month. In other words, the legislation applies what conservatives call the "Tenth Amendment" and other constitutionally guaranteed freedoms. Because of this, Politifact Georgia rates Handel's claim as "Mostly True". Uh, really? And if I walk you over to the saloon on Ladies' Night and leave you there while the barkeep plies you with bottomless brandy Alexanders, is it Mostly True that I bought you a drink?

(Also, "wrote on page 161" suggests that it was a marginal note made after the book was published, so I rate the whole thing as Mostly Badly Written, but never mind.)

Thus I find myself in the happy situation of the defense attorney with no case to answer. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, go home, and if you'd like to buy me a drink, I'll be at the Old Entomologist.

From Riddled.

Speaking of Politifact

The Virginia branch did a very remarkable number on the gubernatorial campaign in that state, where Republican anti–oral sex campaigner Ken Cuccinelli is running neck-and-neck, or perhaps I should say dick-and-dick, against Democrat Terry McAuliffe, who is... well... not a Republican, anyhow. Cuccinelli once proposed getting rid of Virginia's no-fault divorce law, apparently planning to replace it with something more along the lines that were so troublesome for the late Henry VIII. So McAuliffe has run an ad claiming that Cuccinelli's plan would make it more difficult for an abused wife to get a divorce.

Politifact Virginia acknowledges that McAuliffe's claim is true, but:

No doubt, the bill would have it harder for moms to obtain divorces. But McAuliffe, in trying to portray it as an attack on women, omits that the legislation would have made it equally more difficult for dads to get divorces.

And therefore they have rated the ad Mostly False. Because if the people of Virginia knew Cuccinelli wanted to take away protections from abused husbands, they would totally support that. It's the powerful anti–abused husband vote McAuliffe is treacherously deceiving.

From Riddled.

Speaking of Cuccinelli

@NRO Hahaha. Cuccinelli is certainly the anti-sucker candidate. And anti-suckee as well. Guess nobody at NRO would be affected.
— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) September 16, 2013

Korean Lunar Thanksgiving

That's what BBC World Service called it when they celebrated yesterday's Mid-Autumn festival not by consuming mooncakes but by making fun of Koreans for eating Spam, the dubious canned luncheon meat introduced to them 60 years ago by GI's during the Korean War.

The Mid-Autumn festival takes place in China, Korea, Vietnam, and throughout the Chinese cultural orbit, on the 15th day of the 8th month of the ancient Chinese calendar, the full-moon day closest to to the Autumnal Equinox, when the moon is thought to be at its most spectacularly beautiful, and scholars and ladies would gather at particular vantage points to admire it. The mooncakes only date from the 14th century, though, when Han rebels used them to carry messages in their drive to overthrow their Mongol overlords and establish the Ming dynasty. BBC made it sound as if they owed the whole thing to the Americans except that the Americans were too cheap to provide turkey.

Photo by -Reuters from last night, Xuyi, Jiangsu.