Al-Quds Day and Breaking Obama

So I'm not proving that I can continue to keep this thing up daily, but hey, I'm doing better than I was a month or so ago. You look like you need a good lo-fi jam:



Guided by Voices - My Kind of Soldier

So two main things are on my mind today, one being the Al-Quds Day events in Iran, and the other being health care (wow, I've hardly ever mentioned domestic policy here).

First, a quick bit on Al-Quds Day: After the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini urged all Muslims around the world to unite together in solidarity for the Palestinians on the last Friday of Ramadan (Al-Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem and translates to "the holy"). So every last Friday of every Ramadan since the founding of the Islamic Republic, there have been parades/rallies/etc. opposing Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories (as well as all of what most Israelis refer to as "Israel," I expect) and the continued occupation, oppression, and social and political marginalization of the Palestinians by Israel.

In a sort of funny and ironic (but not altogether unexpected) twist, thousands of people took to the streets of Tehran, not in protest of Israeli oppression, but the Iranian government's oppression, censorship, and inhumane treatment of prisoners following the June elections. Check it:



The BBC has a good article with a nifty little time line near the bottom-right. I like the BBC because they always deliver with the context and the details.

Okay, next thing. I'll be honest, I haven't gone really in-depth with my study of the current health care debate, mainly because I don't really understand the finer financial and far-reaching points of public vs. private health care, insurance rates, and stuff like that, but this clip from Rachel Maddow's show the other night spoke pretty loudly to me:



As Maddow points out, it does seem strange that the most vocal opposition to universal health care is coming from the states with the highest rates of teen pregnancy, premature births, and infant mortality, as well as the lowest birth weights and lowest rates of HPV vaccination.

I particularly love that quote by Jim DeMint:

"If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."

I'm not quite sure what he means by "break him," but this is the kind of stuff I used to say in the midst of an all-night Super Smash Bros. battle in 7th grade. I was just playing a game then; there weren't any consequences and the lives of women and newborn babies weren't at stake like they are here. It's too bad Senator Jim DeMint and others like him are choosing partisan hackery over making real strides in our nation's health care system.

So, if some politicians are more interested in stubbornly pandering to a rapidly-dwindling power base than in women's reproductive health and health care in general, I guess people here will continue to suffer needlessly. Sure, women are dying of a preventable cancer and one out of every five people will go on without health insurance, but we need to "break" Obama, to prove something. What, we're not sure yet, but something.