then one day

Then one day you wake up and it is as if everything is in its correct place. Maybe not all settled in and fitting correctly, but everything is as it should be.

It was shocking this morning to wake up, start my day and realize, several hours into it that I was effortlessly doing the things I have been struggling to make a part of my daily habits for a month. Such a weird feeling. It was also strange how immediately I chalked it up to a "miracle" and had to remind myself how much work has been involved in making all this happen.

Funny how quickly we forget our own efforts. I think it is a part of the process of losing sight of the forest through the trees. One can get so damn distracted by one thing, one problem, one stumbling block that you can forget to see how everything else around you is still growing and moving forward.

The Republicans are doing a very interesting thing. They are hell bent on reversing the laws about Abortion rights, such as they are, in this country. That would seem to be a funny thing to be focusing on right now given the fact that we are now engaged in three wars and are swiftly going under financially. If you look at the bills being introduced in many states and the rhetoric in the capital - abortion rights is about to become a major battle.

The question is why? Why know?

The simple answer is 'momentum.' Since more and more people support or just don't care about gay rights enough to oppose the marriage issue that has ceased to be a rallying point. War and terrorism, long a rallying point of conservatives has become stickily involved with two things they usually try to avoid  - the UN and the Democrats. With the 2012 elections looming the Republicans have to find a way to motivate their power base for voting - conservatives and the religious right. By generating enough interest in pursuing a reversal of Roe vs. Wade, either through a direct confrontation or through cutting all funding to family planning, democrats and liberals are forced to defend something most see as a key human right - the right to adequate and appropriate medical care  - and in putting their energy into this, democrats will be far more willing to make concessions on the budget.

A national budget, which, by the way, we still don't have, but we now have the one thing I said we would need to pass one - a good war. It is an undeclared one but we are now officially committed to military engagement (which will be followed by "transitional occupation for democracy" or whatever the PC term is) that few can really argue against; although there are many valid arguments against it.

One of the people I follow on twitter (and like, actually read what they say) is Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, his comments about the entire situation in the Mid East have been rather educational.
But back to the culture of distraction, one of the things that several commentators have pointed out is that the single greatest rising population that will shortly be of voting age, are Latinos. The Republicans have an abysmal track record with the Latino population and the Democrats don't have exactly a solid one either. The demographics of this population include those who will be most affected by the budget cuts and those who are wary of the kind of PC nonsense that most of this countries liberalism has devolved into.

So here we sit.

Three wars now. Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
No budget.
And the rights of women are at stake.

Abortion is a complex issue, but at the core of the issue is not the right for abortion-on-demand as a means of birth control, but the rights of a woman to make her own decisions about her healthcare. Like it or not, this is what it boils down to and what is statistically supported. The UNs latest reports on women's health show the corresponding effect of unplanned pregnancies on the overall health of women (terminal illness and disabilities included). The key element in its contribution to those things is the impact of pregnancy of a woman's financial standing. Unplanned pregnancies keep most women in a cycle of poverty.

But then again, none of this is about rights, women, healthcare, babies or any of that; now is it?

c.2011 Cassandra Tribe. All Rights Reserved.