To whit:

"We hear a lot of arguments today that the reason that we can't get serious about our borders is that we are desperate for all these workers," [Emery] said. "You don't have to think too long. If you kill 44 million of your potential workers, it's not too surprising we would be desperate for workers."

(The 44 million, by the way, is close to the right-wing National Right to Life group's estimation of how many abortions have occurred in the United States since Roe v. Wade made it legal.)

But, really, kudos to Representative Emery. It is a time-tested political tradition to tie an issue on which there is no consensus to a bigger issue that more people are concerned about in order to gain traction. And so, in this spirit, we'd like to make some suggestions for other problems Emery can solve by restricting reproductive choice.

1. The Iraq War
With 44 million extra Americans to use as cannon fodder, there's no way that some insurgent force or nascent civil war would ever overcome our superior occupational forces, and we would leave with no less than the victory John McCain is mad we gave up on in Vietnam!

2. The War On Terror
They don't hate us for all our freedoms, just the reproductive ones. Get rid of them, and we're golden!

3. The Housing Crisis
With 44 million more Americans, the real estate boom could have gone on forever and the party never would have ended! See how selfish you are, baby-killers?

4. The Financial Meltdown
In addition to abortion being the root cause of the housing crisis which then caused, in part, the financial meltdown, with 44 million more Americans' pensions and 401(k)s invested in the stock market, there's just no way the Dow could be down below 8,000 today. So when you bemoan the loss in your investment portfolio, you're really just misplacing your existential sadness over your abortion or the ones you allowed to happen through your heathen support of reproductive rights.

5. The Decline Of The American Automotive Industry
This is a no-brainer — more kids means people would need bigger cars, which would obviously be American-made. So, when the car companies go bankrupt and unemployment goes up to 10 percent, that is as much the fault of the pro-choice movement as the slaughter of millions of innocent souls at the hands of baby killing doctors.

6. Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans
God's wrath, et al, Pat Robertson really said it best. God's just really pissed at us, which is why the lack of time, attention and money paid to rebuilding an American city destroyed by a natural disaster is justified, no matter what anyone says. New Orleans is practically a monument to the unborn and should stay that way.

7. The Energy Crisis
With an extra 44 million Americans on hand, we could totally afford to recycle and reuse more. Plus, we'd be depleting our limited energy supplies more quickly so there would likely be more of a consensus for expanding public transportation and finding alternative sources of fuel on which we could run our enormous SUVs to ferry around all our kids. But if that's too much touchy feel-y hippie crap for Emery, there's always the cannon fodder argument from crisis #1. The Saudis really do have a shitload of oil and no nukes.

8. Pay Equity
If women had to stay home to take care of all the kids they should've been having, they wouldn't be so worried whether or not they are getting paid enough. Problem solved.

9. The Trade Deficit
It's an issue that we import and buy more cheap crap than we export, but increasing the population by 44 million would mean that, with higher unemployment, there would be a downwards motion on wages, decreasing the marginal costs of production, thereby making American exports more affordable abroad. Concurrently, the decline, in real terms, of wages would limit Americans' ability to buy crap, reducing the level of imports.

10. The Health Care Crisis
As John McCain posited during his Presidential campaign, by giving people tax credits and forcing them into the individual insurance market, the increase in participants in that market would lower costs naturally. If this country hadn't perpetrated such a Holocaust on the unborn over the last 35 years, we'd already have 44 million more people in our health care system, so there wouldn't be any more problems with pricing. Plus women would have cheaper health care coverage because abortion wouldn't be an option!

Mo. Panel's Report Links Immigration To Abortion [Washington Post]

Related: Religious Conservatives Claim Katrina Was God's Omen, Punishment For The United States [Media Matters]
A Little Faith Can Heal A Heart That’s Been Betrayed [Attackerman]

Earlier: A Uterus Costs 50% More In McCain's Health Insurance Market

• The California Supreme Court this afternoon granted a hearing to the Prop 8 opponents' challenge to the ballot measure that eliminated same sex marriage rights in the state. It did not, however, issue a stay that would have allowed same sex marriages to continue. [Equality California, California Supreme Court (pdf)]
• Missouri finally finished counting its votes and has narrowly gone for McCain. Obama still gets to be President, though. [Politico]
• A judge has ruled that Al Franken's campaign is entitled to written reasons why certain absentee ballots were rejected, which is expected to help his efforts to oust Norm Coleman. I'd bet the voters whose votes were rejected would like to know that sort of thing, too. [Politico]
• But the Dow fell again, so we're all pretty well screwed for now no matter what. [Huffington Post]

• Not as screwed as the automakers, who aren't going to get their piece of the bailout pie, a quest that was not helped by Mitt Romney— the primary candidate who won Michigan by kissing their asses earlier this year — saying that they should be allowed to go bankrupt. [NY Times, NY Times]
• And the auto industry's favorite Democrat, Michigan Congressman John Dingell — who has been chairing the Commerce Committee to their benefit for 2 years — lost a preliminary vote to keep his Committee chairmanship to upstart Congressman Henry Waxman. So it's really been a shitty week for them so far. [Politico]
• But they are definitely not as screwed as Republican crackpot John Ziegler, who decided to give an interview about his crappy new poll that says all Obama voters are poorly informed to Jezebel Crush Object Nate Silver and ended up, in the face of Silver's superior brain, telling him, "Go fuck yourself." Don't mess with our man, John Ziegler. [FiveThirtyEight]
• In a fit of crazy, Michelle Bachmann blithely declared that she never said that thing about investigating Congress members for being un-American that everyone heard her say. [Politico]
• Even crazier is Joe the Motherfucking Plumber, who has an enormous crush on Sarah Palin. Hustler, are you listening? [Huffington Post]
• Nearly two weeks after it was first reported, Obama's people have confirmed that strategist David Axelrod will join his Administration as a senior adviser along with Greg Craig as White House counsel. [Reuters]
• Dick Cheney has been indicted — along with former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales — on state charges in Texas that his financial interests in Vanguard Group (which runs some prisons there) are tantamount to participating in that company's abuse of power. Don't get your hopes up: prosecutor Juan Guerra "has a history of launching eccentric court and political battles," as though that needed to be said. [The Telegraph]
• Republican Senator Arlen Specter announced today that he plans to fuck with presumed Obama AG nominee Eric Holder about his role in the Marc Rich pardon at the end of the Clinton Administration, as though any of his constituents care. Apparently, Specter is fully prepared to hop on the train to Crazy Partisan Town with the rest of the Republican Party and ignore his many years as a moderate that have helped him get reelected. [Politico]

• Obama's announced his transition team co-chairs — the folks that will help pave the way for his Administration, not a shadow Cabinet — and it includes John Podesta, Pete Rouse (Obama's Senate Chief of Staff) and Valerie Garrett. The advisory board to the co-chairs includes former EPA head Carol Browner; former Commerce Secretary William Daley; former transportation secretary Federico Peña; Obama national security adviser Susan Rice; and Governor Janet Napolitano. Don't expect to see those names on a future list of official appointments, though. [Washington Post]
• Obama's first official appointment will, however, be Congressman Rahm Emanuel. [NY Times]
• Four Senate races remain undecided: Alaska and Oregon are too close to call; Minnesota is likely to have an automatic recount; and Georgia's results require a runoff. [CNN]
• But, the anti-abortion "personhood" amendment in Colorado and the abortion ban in South Dakota went down by wide margins. [Denver Post, Argus Leader]

• By the way, when the state of Missouri elected Denise Juneau to be their superintendent of public instruction, they made her the first Native American woman in the state (and probably the first in the nation) to hold statewide office. Are there any other barriers we can bulldoze this week, please? [Missoulian]
• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave a press conference to state the obvious, which is that, since the economy sucks, Democrats are going to have to set and stick to priorities. Too bad she's spent the last two years proving she knows how to roll over. [Politico]
• Russian President Dmitry Medvedev went out of his way to prove Senator Joe Biden right, threatening to escalate a nuclear standoff with the U.S. in Eastern Europe if Obama moves forward with Bush's missile defense shield there. Cuban Missile Crisis anyone? Bueller? [Washington Post]
• They might be Bushies at heart — and partially responsible for the catastrophe that is the Iraq War and the potential new nuclear standoff for Russia — but electing our first African-American President choked up Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, too. [CNN, Huffington Post]
• More than 70 percent of unmarried women voted for Obama yesterday, but half of the married ones went for McCain. Can married women please fill the rest of us in on what changes with a ring? [US News & World Report]
• More than 130 million Americans turned out to vote yesterday, or about 64% of eligible voters, making it the biggest election ever and the higher voter turnout in a long damn time. [Politico]
• The ACLU, along with the Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, have filed a brief with the California Supreme Court arguing that it should rule Proposition 8 invalid if it officially passes. They argue that, since Prop 8 invalidates another section of California's constitution, it requires greater legislative scrutiny than the average ballot initiative. Good luck! [ACLU]

• If you weren't already aware, voter turnout is really high. That's led to some scattered problems, which will be chronicled after the jump. [Washington Post]
• In the mean time, the fucking Supreme Court heard the fucking case about fucking swearing on fucking TV. They didn't say "fuck" once, so I felt like someone had to. [Washington Post]
• A lot of people in California who really love each other rushed to get married today in case a bunch of small-minded, easily-led voters decide to make it illegal today for them to do so tomorrow. [NY Times]
• Joe Lieberman "fears" for the future of this country if the Democrats gain a filibuster-proof majority today, and has vowed to join with Republicans to filibuster anything they want to show his contempt for his constituents and the Americans who decided they were okay with a Democratic Senate. [Think Progress]

• Actor Tim Robbins was the most prominent victim of the ironically-named Help America Vote Act's mandated purges of voter rolls today. Being rather well-informed, he took his ass to court to force the city of New York to allow him to vote in the regular fashion, rather than provisionally since it would have gotten discarded. Can we just agree HAVA needs to be revisited next year? [NY Times]
• Rudy and Judith Nathan Giuliani apparent had no such difficulties and even got to cut in line. [Village Voice]
• Some people in Detroit waited 4-5 hours to vote. [CNN]
• Ditto in St. Louis. [CNN]
• A bunch of people in New Mexico that requested absentee ballots never got them and were told to show up and cast provisional ballots, as though if one needed to vote absentee that was a possibility. [CNN]
• At one Florida voting site, they had one machine to accommodate all the voters. Yeah, it was in a predominately African-American neighborhood. [Huffington Post]
• There were big problems with broken machines and a lack of paper ballots in Richmond, Virginia today, too. [Huffington Post]
• In Indiana, the GOP violated a judges orders and tried to challenge the voting status of foreclosed-upon voters. [Huffington Post]
• Some voters in Ohio were forced to cast provisional ballots (which might or might not be counted) because poll workers screwed up and thought that the address on the license had to match the address on the registration. It doesn't. [CNN]
• A 92-year-old woman in Texas cast her ballot from an ambulance outside the polling place when her absentee ballot didn't arrive. [CBS]
• Joe the Motherfucking Plumber went to the wrong polling place and tried to good ol' "Do you know who I am?" when he got stopped for speeding this week. Fuck. Off. Dude. [Wonkette]
• Joining JTMP in fucking off should be P.U.M.A. co-founder Will Bower. [CNN]
• Not that she swears, but 114-year-old Gertrude Baines, the daughter of former slaves who voted for Obama today, probably shares that sentiment. [LA Times]

But enough of that; here we have a man, not a closeted gay Bible-thumping Evangelical career fearmonger but a middle-of-the-road retiree clearly realistic enough about the abortion debate not to let it steer his presidential vote away from a pro-choice candidate, exploiting the very weakest opportunity to pass an unconstitutional law because that's just how nuts people get over the abortion debate.

Anyway, I direct your attention to it not because I think it will pass, but because I truly wonder: why don't middle-of-the-road Catholics just go ahead and embrace the abortion pill already?

If you think abortion is wrong — not "murderous" enough to let it eclipse all other policies guiding your political decisions, perhaps, but not a good thing — shouldn't you look at RU-486, sort of like the Plan B "Morning After" pill, as a form of harm reduction? I know lots of Catholics (sigh) who privately do. It is generally only approved for the first seven weeks of pregnancy, before the whole "beating heart" thing, before the ultrasound looks like anything but a mess of cells, before the embryo even technically can claim the designation "fetus." But beyond that, pill abortions, performed at home without anesthesia, suck. They're personal. They hurt. Sometimes like hell. You bleed for a week, or longer. Look it up on the internet: women invariably describe them as "emotional." They are. If you're down for feeling a sense of loss about the whole thing, if you're at all reflective, if you — fuck, if you want to atone, you know, go ahead, it's your call — it's totally the way to go. And most importantly, once you've had one, you don't really want to do it again. (Not that you ever do, really.) I'm not saying anyone should feel this way about the choice to have an abortion. But a lot of us do. So why should we be treated like we're trying to score hallucinogens?

Missouri House Adds Abortion To Restrictive List [Kansas City Star]

And Finland, Germany, Greece, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Malta all have a higher proportion of overweight adults than the United States, according to a report by the International Obesity Task Force in 2005.

Anyway, suffice it to say that no one expects the bill to pass, but you can't fault them for trying to combat obesity, which could result in mass foot amputations remember, in new and innovative ways. And obesity is not the only terrible societal ill they are targeting!

Many bills are likely to fall to the wayside, such as HB 282, which discourages restaurants from serving certain kinds of food to obese people, and HB 291, which authorizes castration as part of a sentence for a rape conviction.

No Fat People Allowed: Only The Slim Will Be Allowed To Dine In Public! [JunkFoodScience]
EU Introduces Food Labeling To Cut Obesity Rates
Legislative Update, Week 3: Cigs And Cells [Jackson Free Press]
Related: Passenger Only Gets Half Her Seat On Delta Flight [Consumerist]