Davis discloses medically necessary abortion in memoir

Your Friday evening bombshell.

Sen. Wendy Davis, in her memoir due out next week, discloses the most personal of stories preceding her nationally marked fight against tighter abortion restrictions: a decision she and her then-husband made 17 years ago to end a much-wanted pregnancy.

It's very candid and very emotional.

Davis, in a copy of the book obtained by the San Antonio Express-News, wrote that her unborn third daughter had an acute brain abnormality. She said doctors told her the syndrome would cause the baby to suffer and likely was incompatible with life.

After getting several medical opinions and feeling the baby they had named Tate Elise “tremble violently, as if someone were applying an electric shock to her” in the womb, she said the decision was clear.

“She was suffering,” Davis wrote.

The unborn baby's heart was “quieted” by her doctor, and their baby was gone. She was delivered by cesarean section in spring 1997, the memoir says.

Davis wrote that she and her then-husband, Jeff, spent time with Tate the next day and had her baptized. They cried, took photographs and said their good-byes, she wrote, and Tate's lifeless body was taken away the following day.

“An indescribable blackness followed. It was a deep, dark despair and grief, a heavy wave that crushed me, that made me wonder if I would ever surface. ... And when I finally did come through it, I emerged a different person. Changed. Forever changed,” Davis wrote.

The issue of choice has once again laid bare the seething, boiling misogyny of the extreme right.   If the article's comments are any indication, that is.  Mark Jones gets it right for once.

Rice University political scientist Mark Jones said he doesn't expect the revelation to lose any votes for Davis, since he said it's a relative small proportion of voters who oppose abortion in cases of severe fetal abnormality.

“The group that will be most bothered by her having an abortion of a baby with a severe fetal abnormality is a group that wasn't going to vote for her anyway,” he said.

“The positive side of it for her is it humanizes her, and also makes it a little tricky for opponents to attack her on the abortion issue because now, it not only is a political issue for her, but it's a personal issue,” Jones said.

It energizes her core support, and it energizes her core opposition (to the extent that they could be any more angry and bitter and unhinged).  In this Kos diary you find some anecdotal evidence that there are Democrats who weren't supporting Davis before because of her stand on choice, and have, like conservatives, hardened their hearts to a greater degree with this revelation.  This is going to be your news of the day, all weekend.  And the court of public opinion will render a verdict on the political influence it gives both sides in less than 60 days.

Update: More from Socratic Gadfly, and this from Vox.

Talking about abortion is rare — but the actual experience isn't. More than one in every five pregnancies —  21 percent, excluding miscarriages —  are terminated, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit research organization that supports abortion rights. Each year, 1.7 percent of American women between 15 and 44 have an abortion.

There are literally millions of women who share a dark secret.  They are bonded in their... whatever emotions you wish to assign to their experience (a tricky game, for certain).  I stand in support of those women who are the only ones that can understand the heartache, the social stigma, and the consequences of their experience.  All they should receive from all of the rest of us is unequivocal, unconditional support of their choice, whichever choice they made.

But as long as we live in a state and a country that believes there is an invisible man in the clouds watching every thing you do -- and judging you for potential admission into his afterlife paradise -- then his minions in this realm will keep taking on the judgmental part as their personal privilege.

Fuck those assholes. We ain't going back in time to the days when coathangers and pennyroyal tea were the only choices women had.

More updates: Greg Abbott responds, and the UT poll results from last summer are worth repeating.

"Overall, 76% of Texans thought a woman should be allowed to have an abortion when her life was in danger, and 57% thought that a woman should be able to obtain an abortion when there was a strong chance of a serious fetal abnormality."

Those numbers include a lot of Republicans.

The battle for the US Senate, updated

It's been almost six weeks since my last update, and I am not as enthusiastic about the Democrats maintaining control of the upper chamber as I was then.  Nate Silver has something to do with that.

The FiveThirtyEight Senate model is launching (September 3). We’ll be rolling it out in stages, with additional features, functionality and further methodological detail. We’ll also be unveiling our new set of pollster ratings and publicly releasing our database of all the polls used to calculate them. So there’s a lot more to come.

But if you’re looking for a headline, we have two. First, Republicans are favored to take the Senate, at least in our view; the FiveThirtyEight forecast model gives them a 64 percent chance of doing so.

The reasons for the GOP advantage are pretty straightforward. Midterm elections are usually poor for the president’s party, and the Senate contests this year are in states where, on average, President Obama won just 46 percent of the vote in 2012.¹

Democrats are battling a hangover effect in these states, most of which were last contested in 2008, a high-water mark for the party. On the basis of polling and the other indicators our model evaluates, Republicans are more likely than not to win the six seats they need to take over the Senate. This isn’t news, exactly; the same conditions held way back in March.

An equally important theme is the high degree of uncertainty around that outcome. A large number of states remain competitive, and Democrats could easily retain the Senate. It’s also possible that the landscape could shift further in Republicans’ direction. Our model regards a true Republican wave as possible: It gives the party almost a 25 percent chance of finishing with 54 or more Senate seats once all the votes are counted.²

There is much more and deeper analysis at the link.  The other factor clouding my optimism is the Brothers Koch and their massive piles of campaign money coming to the Republicans' rescue.

The secretive political network of conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch has aired more than 43,900 television ads this election cycle in an attempt to help Republicans take control of the Senate in the upcoming November election.

That amounts to nearly one out of every 10 TV ads in the 2014 battle for the Senate according to a new Center for Public Integrity analysis of data provided by Kantar Media/CMAG, an advertising tracking service, covering spending from Jan. 1, 2013, through Aug. 31, 2014.

The total includes the six most active nonprofit groups in the Koch brothers’ coalition: Americans for Prosperity, the American Energy Alliance, Concerned Veterans for America, the Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, Generation Opportunity and the 60 Plus Association.

Their prominence has led to denunciations by Democrats, and praise from Republicans, as they’ve bombarded incumbent lawmakers with negative ads and exulted conservative challengers. No other right-leaning coalition has been as active.

Didi I mention that Harry Reid has called a Senate vote for Monday, September 8 on revoking Citizens United?  Now's the time to call your Senator, especially if their names are John Cornyn and Ted Cruz.  That's after you sign the petition and send them a personal e-mail (find them at the link in this paragraph).

Koch-connected groups reportedly intend to spend $290 million to help Republicans make gains in Congress this November. Thus far, Kantar Media/CMAG spending estimates indicate the groups have invested at least $14.5 million. This amount is undeniably a conservative estimate, as it includes only TV ad buys — not production costs or expenditures related to radio ads, online ads, direct mail, canvassers or other activities.

These so-called “dark money” nonprofit groups are not required to disclose their funders to federal election regulators, unlike candidates, parties, political action committees and super PACs.

And although election-related advocacy can’t be the “primary purpose” of these groups, they’ve nonetheless established themselves among the nation’s most powerful political forces.

The dark money is gushing into our democratic republic like a pipeline leak into our water supply, fouling everything it touches.

Through the end of August, this spending spree has included about 8,600 ads in North Carolina, 6,900 ads in Louisiana, 5,800 ads in Iowa, 4,900 ads in Michigan, 4,700 ads in Arkansas, 4,600 ads in Colorado, 3,600 ads in Alaska and 2,400 ads in Oregon, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of Kantar Media/CMAG data.

And it's only a drop in the bucket of what's to come.  We'll be immune to much of it in Texas, since Cornyn's challenger, David Alameel -- deep-pocketed, but too weak progressively speaking -- has yet to make a difference in his race.  But dark money in Texas is definitely a concern.  You may recall that Rick Perry vetoed a disclosure bill that came out of the last legislative session.

Let's review again the Senate races that will tip the scales.

In three states currently held by Democrats - Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia - Republican victories are all but certain, leaving the GOP only three pickups to wrestle control from the Democrats.

In North Carolina, New Hampshire, Arkansas, Colorado, Alaska and Louisiana, Republican challengers threaten to knock off Democratic incumbents. Three more races - Iowa, Georgia and Michigan - feature open races where the Republican candidate stands a good chance, offering nine possibilities in total.

It's not all about the Republicans on the offensive, however. While far fewer than the Democrats, Republicans still have a few seats they'll have to vigorously defend: Kentucky, Georgia and, to a lesser extent, Kansas.

To a greater extent, Kansas.  And that's despite the KSSOS ruling yesterday that the Democrat who quit earlier in the week must remain on the ballot.  The Republicans are officially panicked that one of their locks is now a tossup.

I also think Mitch McConnell is toast, and Michelle Nunn is all but a prohibitive favorite today.  Mark Begich, despite this recent misstep, has run an extraordinarily good race -- he's effectively distanced himself from Obama in deep red Alaska -- and New Hampshire is smart enough not to elect that carpetbagger Scott Brown.  I don't think Michigan is flipping, either; they have a deeply unpopular Republican governor and a lousy economy, and that state is still blue.

Iowa is a real horse race and will be all the way to the end, and the other states I will watch to see if the GOP can get the three they need are North Carolina (Kay Hagen, D inc.), Arkansas (David Pryor, D inc.), Colorado (Mark Udall, D inc.), and Louisiana (Mary Landrieu, D inc.).

Hagen and Landrieu aren't running away from Obama; they need boosted African American turnout in their states to get past the finish line.  Pryor seems to be both savvy and lucky.  Udall's contest is see-sawing back and forth between he and his challenger, the odious Cory Gardner, and it has many moving parts, among them women's issues and immigration.  Of the four Democratic incumbents, Udall's race is the closest IMHO.  If Mitch McConnell rights the ship, Kansas and Georgia hold, Iowa falls, and one of CO, LA, NC and AR go red, the GOP gains the narrowest of majorities.

Still a tall order but within their grasp.

But if McConnell loses, Nunn wins, and Iowa stays blue then the Republicans have to win all four.  I don't see that happening, but it depends, across the board and across the country, on weak Democratic turnout defying somewhat historical odds and turning back the red wave.  We'll only know more about that as Election Day draws close.

Update: A few third party candidates might have a say in the matter.

General #StrikeFastFood on tap today

It might a little difficult having your fast-food lunch today.

Fast-food workers in more than 150 U.S. cities are planning protests on Thursday to press for a wage increase to $15 an hour and allow them to unionize jobs from the fry-basket at McDonald's to the cash register at Burger King.

"We're going to have walkouts all over the country," said Kendall Fells, organizing director of the movement called Fight for 15. "There are going to be workers who don't show up to work or who walk off the job at 12:01 a.m. or at noon."

Yeah, screw the King from two weeks ago.  They shouldn't be under consideration for your business anyway since they're treasonous anti-American deserters...

The protests come as cities across the United States propose minimum wage increases while Democrats in Congress seek to raise the federal minimum wage ahead of November's mid-term congressional elections.

A recent report by the Economic Policy Institute think tank found the typical worker in the restaurant industry makes $10 an hour compared to $18 an hour typically earned in other industries.

One in six restaurant workers, or 16.7 percent, lives below the official poverty line, compared to 6.3 percent of those working in other industries, the report said.

Fast-food workers are even poorer, earning an average of less than $8 an hour, according to the Service Employees International Union, which supports the fast-food workers' protests.

"Nobody who works 40 hours a week should be living in poverty," U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, said on Twitter. "I applaud the fast-food workers all across the country who will be striking on Thursday to raise the minimum wage to a living wage."

Good ol' Bernie Sanders. I hear he might run as a Democrat in 2016.

Anyway, have lunch at a Mom-and-Pop today.  That would be ten times better for everybody than giving any money to that Rick Perry-loving CEO of Carl's Jr.  Besides, that fast food crap'll kill ya.

I'm lovin' this typo.

Update: Arrests galore today across the country, five in Houston.  And this was the scene at the McDonald's headquarters outside Chicago.

Obama: Bush 2.0

Dan Froomkin, re-introducing himself at  at Glenn Greenwald's The Intercept, has enunciated the reasons why I never looked back after jumping off the Obama bandwagon five years ago.

In some cases, Obama has set even darker precedents than his predecessor. Massively invasive bulk surveillance of Americans and others has been expanded, not constrained. This president secretly condemns people to death without any checks or balances, and shrugs as his errant drones massacre innocent civilians. Whistleblowers and journalists who expose national security wrongdoing face unprecedented criminal prosecution.

In a few cases, Obama publicly distanced himself from Bush/Cheney excesses, but to little effect. He forswore torture, and promised to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. But by actively covering up what happened in the U.S.’s torture chambers, and by refusing to hold the torturers and their political masters in any way accountable, he has done nothing to make sure that the next time a perceived emergency comes up, it won’t all happen again. And Gitmo, which he treated as a political rather than moral issue, is still very much open for business.

It's pretty damning stuff IMO, and the reason as we know that Democrats nominated Obama in 2008 is because he wasn't Hillary Clinton.  So brace yourselves for Bush 3.0 in 2016.

As surely — if not as enthusiastically — as his predecessor, Obama has succumbed to the powerful systemic pressures that serve the needs of the military-intelligence-industrial complex.  Secrecy is rampant. Politics drives policy. There is no accountability. Congressional and judicial oversight have become a bitter joke. And the elite press gets tighter and tighter with those to whom it should be adversarial.

I really don't want to spend any more time mentioning anything about 2016 for a couple more months.  It is simply worth noting that one of the most powerful voices for holding our leaders accountable just got himself a new soapbox.  I'll be following along.