TransVirginianal Talibaptists

I used to half-jokingly say that my move to Olympia was by way of seeking political asylum. But seeing as I came from Virginia, it is no joke.

It was bad enough that the district I left if represented in the US Congress by that hateful conniver Cantor, but the subsequent complete Republican domination of the state legislature--the oldest instrument of democracy in the country--has resulted in a frightening Talibaptist regime that threatens liberty to a degree that would have had the exalted founding fathers up in arms.

This week's news is that the Governor urged his party to back off a bill requiring ultrasound and a waiting period for anyone seeking an abortion. This happened only after protests in the capital city, as well as shock, ridicule, and criticism nationwide. More to the point, it happened after the Gov realized it could hurt his vice-presidential aspirations.

Because even in the Old Dominion, it turns out that state-sponsored rape is not easy to defend.

Rape? Too strong a language, some say, including the embattled Democratic minority in the Virginia legislature. When a medical professional in their midst looked at the bill and thought that the only way to fulfill it's requirements was to insert the ultrasound probe into a woman's vagina, he raised objections obliquely, as this snippet from the Washington Post* describes:

Northam consulted with medical experts, who confirmed that a vaginal probe would be needed in the early stages of pregnancy.

So when the measure came up for a vote in the Senate on Jan. 31, Barker and Northam raised the issue during the floor debate — but delicately. They used the words “transvaginal” and “internal.” But they didn’t use startling terms such as “vaginal penetration” and “state-sponsored rape,” which eventually came to dominate the debate.

Mindful of the teenage Senate pages sitting in the chamber, Barker said, they wanted to be sensitive with their language.

Yes, by all means, protect those tender ears. Let them find out later when they try to terminate the bastard child of some Family Values Republican senator who fucked them. The fact is, the bill would force a woman to have a foreign object inserted into her vagina, whether she wants it or not, simply because she wanted a legal medical procedure.

It took a woman in the legislature to acknowledge the tyranny, and to propose that it be administered fairly across gender lines. (Because that's how deep the problem is in the Commonwealth, that the fix to injustice is to broaden its scope. I know she was trying to highlight absurdity, but what if the amendment had passed, would women be any better off?). Here's more from the Post:

Sen. Janet D. Howell (D-Fairfax) certainly got the point. In an effort to highlight what she considered a gross personal intrusion, she proposed an amendment requiring that men get a rectal exam.

“Prior to prescribing medication for erectile dysfunction, a physician shall perform a digital rectal examination and a cardiac stress test,” declared the amendment, which the Senate clerk read aloud on the floor.

The amendment failed, and the ultrasound billed passed. McDonnell, in a break from his usual practice, announced that day that he would sign the legislation.

So yeah, that's what it has come to in the state where religious freedom and the Bill of Rights began. McDonnell has backtracked, at least as long as his name is bandied about as a potential running mate to Romney. If Santorum wins, though, he may be able to once again support state-mandated rape.

Oops. I said the R-word again. Can I not euphemize with "trans-vaginal," or some other sterilized substitute?

No. If there were some medical necessity, I would not object to legal requirement of a particular procedure, like making surgeons wash their and and use sterilized instruments when cutting someone open. (Ironically, there are those in the religious right who object to forcing true believers to avail their unsuspecting kids of medical technology, but I digress.) But there is no medical necessity here, and furthermore the zealous foes of abortion would happily outlaw the procedure even when it safeguards a mother's life. A woman may want to terminate a pregnancy brought on by rape, but she would have to be violated again. A woman may recognize that she cannot give the child a decent life, that it may be born addicted to drugs, that it is likely to end up a ward of the state, or homeless, or incarcerated, but she would still be forced to go through this humiliation.

Freedom-loving Americans seemed outraged when an Egyptian woman, detained by the military there, was forced to undergo an intrusive "virginity test," recognizing it as a thinly veiled rape. But even there, in a country dominated by a religion we like to think is more unjust to women than Christianity, the courts spoke firmly and directly against such assaults. It makes me sad that in the state where I was born, Talibaptists are not even satisfied to not just let such a heinous violation occur in some rogue facility, but demand that it be the law of the land.

The Virginia Republicans appear to have backed off for the moment (the more aware among the caucus appear embarrassed by the bill), and have even temporarily abandoned their quest to bestow life-protecting "personhood" on a fertilized zygote, but it's hard to believe that they will give up. Lost in the reporting, which focuses on omission of the rape clause, is the fact that while women will now be able to refuse the rape, they must still undergo the ultrasound and the waiting period, this despite the fact that most citizens of the state are against the bill. In the end, the state is still mandating a medical procedure (but will not pay for it), even though the professionals say that the "jelly on the belly" ultrasound cannot achieve the legislated aim (determining gestational age) early in a pregnancy.

But pay no mind; the more deluded and coercive the Righteousness, the more persistent it is. They will continue pushing, sure that while it is OK to send people to war and death row, the Right to Life justifies any means. Should they ever erode the right to personal reproductive choice so completely as to prevent abortion, they will move on to other tyrannies. Tragically, "Sic Semper Tyrannis" has become a sick joke. I only hope that enough Virginians who cherish freedom have not joined the diaspora, and will keep these tyrants in check.

* Yes, Virginia, I know, the Post is a liberal rag unworthy of reading. But I tried to look this up in the Richmond Times Dispatch and got tired of waiting as an ad site loaded. I will admit that the Post, like so many alleged news organizations these days, spent most of its time talking about perceptions, and linking to comedy skits, rather than examining the nitty gritty, or at least, as Mencken advised, afflicting the comfortable.

The Square Root of Rubiks Cube

Two-thirds of my life ago, halfway through high school, people started showing up with a cube, each side a nine-square array of a single color. Or at least, that's how it looked when you bought it. The sub-cubes moved, and the aim was to have it scrambled, then work your way back to one color per side. There are about 43.25 quintillion positions possible, so getting there by randumb luck could take a while, so the toy appealed mostly to puzzlers.

At least initially, but upon entering the American market, the company that licensed it of course wanted it to be the next Big Thing, the toy hit of the early '80s. And for that to happen, it should not test consumers' patience or make them feel like idiots. And so began the stupidification of the Rubik's Cube.

I had a friend who had the Cube. No rube was he, but also not a genius, or even especially dedicated. He was, however clever enough to want to look smart, aware enough to know that there was a book that explained how to solve the cube, and rich enough to buy said book. (I should explain to the kids that there was no internet in that benighted decade--books were how we learned back then.)

Scads of cads bought the book, then showed up and showed off how quickly they could "solve" the cube. Soon enough, even the half-bright denizens of the high school halls knew that these charlatans were just going buy the book, and were nothing special. But Americans with money will not be written off lightly, and when fake-solving the cube did not prove impressive, rubbed others' noses in their impecuniousness. Solving the cube through wits alone was a sign of poverty. I kid you not.

The Rubik's Cube became a tool for showing off on a grander scale as well. Tournaments were organized. The joy of solo solution gave way to speed. America's capitalists took pride in the fact that despite it's invention by a commie, it took the U S of A to turn it into a blockbuster. Erno Rubik was from Hungary, but the name sounded Russki to most Americans, and the few who knew better congratulated themselves that Hungarians worshiped blue-jeans and would have gladly thrown off the Soviet yoke given the chance (or, given the US military support that had been implied when they actually did attempt rebellion, but that's another story). By and large, though, it felt like an appropriation of Eastern science for Western profit, which during the Cold Ware conjured a victory on par with our scoring the Soviet-effacing humor of Jakov Smirnoff. Which again, is not a joke.

So the Rubik's Cube became the Big Thing, until it was supplanted by Cabbage Patch Dolls or something equally brilliant. Wikipedia claims it was advertized as having "billions of positions," which is both 10 orders of magnitude too small and completely reasonable, given the target audience's sub-Soviet numeracy and enthrallment with Carl Sagan. It didn't matter how many positions the damned thing could take, since people tended to go buy the book or toss it into the oblivion drawer.

Meanwhile, the un-square had moved on to something more interesting.