And I was in such a good mood...
(via Ezra)

An amendment, expected to pass, added to the healthcare bill:

The amendment will prohibit federal funds for abortion services in the public option. It also prohibits individuals who receive affordability credits from purchasing a plan that provides elective abortions. However, it allows individuals, both who receive affordability credits and who do not, to separately purchase with their own funds plans that cover elective abortions. It also clarifies that private plans may still offer elective abortions.

You know what? Just fucking make it illegal. Because either abortion is legal, and is a medical procedure, between a woman and her doctor, and not subject to arbitrary legislation, or it's illegal. Emphasis in the above paragraph is mine. I am, sadly, not surprised by the first bit. Of course pandering politicians had to assure anti-choicers that their precious tax dollars wouldn't be spent on that horrible procedure for bad women. But to go another step and prohibit certain individuals (those individuals who, by definition, are least able to afford an abortion - but hey! I'm sure having a kid is cheaper, right?) to prohibit those individuals from choosing a plan (NOT the public option) that covers abortion? But really, why does even that surprise me? We spent the past eight years (and another eight under Bush I) forbidding NGOs that receive federal funding from even talking about abortion.

Books and Exploration

I've been getting out in the city a bit again (new intern = new buddy for city adventures). Last night we went to Mission Muralismo, a celebration of decades of artwork in the Mission district at the de Young Museum. The music was great, the projections of the murals were fabulous, but since we weren't willing to spring for a museum ticket, we couldn't really get beyond the lobby. So instead we had a couple of drinks and I impulse bought Museum Legs, a collection of essays on why museums matter and why people get bored in them. Then we headed out for dinner, passing Green Apple Books, where the intern insisted I needed a copy of Tales of the City. The problem now being that I'm only about a third of the way through Settling Accounts, I'm still not enamoured with it, but I feel obligated to finish it (ocd) and I have these two shiny new books I'd rather be reading!

This afternoon we biked nine or ten miles all over Inner and Outer Richmond and Golden Gate Park, led around by the SF Bicycle Coalition. In theory, we were trekking around looking at examples of Reid Brothers architecture, but really the natural views were much better!

Nice.