On an unrelated note, I was never a big fan of Whitney Houston. Just not my kind of music. Having said that, this piece with just her vocal track is pretty amazing.

Night.

So it looks like the Bishops have decided to double-down on their latest effort to have the Federal Government enforce Church Law.

The President offered up a rhetorical solution in response to their rhetorical freak-out over language in a new health insurance rule and the fiction that their objection was about religious freedom was exposed as bullshit. They could walk away, but instead they are pumping up the volume to keep the issue alive. It is a political play that has more to do with Republican politics than almost anything else.

The Bishops are demanding an end to any rule that requires any insurance company to cover any contraception or family planning as basic health issues for women. This is just the latest iteration of a centuries old objection to women having control of their bodies, their lives, their happiness and their liberty by the conservative power-focused elites running the Roman Catholic Church. This objection manifests itself in screeds against anything that treats sex as an activity separate from breeding and/or free from the dictates of Church Law.

And yet, I don’t think this latest play is about sex or even the Church trying to control the lives of women—I think it is about power and that sex, women, gay marriage and a host of other culture warrior issues are the pathway that they see as the golden road.

For anybody who has looked at the history of the Catholic Church (and any organized religion for that matter) a key part of their activities over time becomes how to maintain power, privilege and influence—and all the goodies that come with it. Eventually that is all that matters for the institution. The greatest success in this effort always comes when political leaders bow to the dictates of the Holy Roman Church and agree to make State Law subservient to Church Law. Back in the days of Kings and Queens you only had a handful of elites you had to work with and the mutual pursuit of power inspired many of them to treat Church Law as State Law. It worked for a long while and then came the Reformation, Protestantism, King Henry, the Enlightenment, Democracy and eventually a desire by more and more people to make their laws free of religion and the dictates of any Church.

The United States of America was founded on the belief that Church and State are separate and that the Laws of this Nation trump the laws of any religion—including the Roman Catholic Church. As you can imagine, this has made the conservative wing of the Catholic Church quite sad. For over a century they have been on the losing end of many political fights—especially when it comes to women in America. The Church opposed suffrage for women and any effort over the years that might free women from the Church sanctioned role of breeder. The Church has fought every form of contraception and lost most battles. They also have lost the battle of finding any American politician who was willing to embrace the idea that US Law should be subservient to Church Law—until now.

In the 2012 Republican race there are two Catholics running for the GOP Nomination and both have rejected the JFK formulation that US Laws and the Constitution trump the laws and dictates of the Catholic Church. Both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have signaled they will follow the orders they are given by the Bishops, but Santorum is the one the Bishops are fighting for and that is why they are doubling down on the Contraception flap.

If the Republican Primary is a campaign over the economy or even hatred of President Obama, then the endpoint will be a Mitt Romney victory. The only way to shake things up is to have the Republican base focus on something else.

Newt has placed his bet on neo-Confederate racist dog-whistling and an appeal to white-victimization. It is a smart play, especially with so many Southern primaries coming up and the 40-year old Dixiecrat takeover of the GOP. And while all Republican candidates are working hard to play this card, Newt is something of a Ninja master of the politics of resentment and race baiting. The downside for Newt is that Mitt proved in Florida that money and negative ads could block and distort Newt’s message. Barring a third rise from the ashes (which is still possible for Newt), Mittens has learned how to neutralize the Professor.

Santorum is a different problem for Romney. His shtick is firmly rooted the Culture Wars of wingnutopia. If the conversation of the GOP Primary shifts to the Culture Wars Santorum will surge—especially if the focus of the culture wars is on sex and bodily functions. This is Rick’s sweet spot and the Bishops have decided to double down on their Grail to end the existence of contraception as a way to help move the Republican Primary to topics that will help Santorum win the nomination. If the main topic in the Michigan Primary is the Culture War and the Bishops are sending out Sunday letters, Santorum will surge all over that State. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is working to drive the GOP Primary debate to issues that will help Santorum beat Romney. And all they ask in return is that Rick agrees to bow to the dictates of the Holy Roman Church and place Church Law above US Federal Law and the Constitution. It is a request that Santorum will fulfill.

Supporting a Santorum surge is an opportunity for power and that is why the Bishops are doubling down on opposing any insurance company offering any contraception or family planning services to anybody, anywhere. Ultimately the entire issue is about power and not about sex.

I grew up Catholic. I went to Catholic schools from first grade through College. I worked at a church as a janitor for years while in school. I even seriously considered the Priesthood at one point. I love Liberation Theology, the Catholic Workers and the work they do and the work done by many others in the Church, but there has always been a part of the Church that puts the pursuit of power on this Earth ahead of all other concerns. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops speaks for those weasels in America. The pursuit of power is why pedophiles are still protected by the Church, why human rights for women, LBGT folks and members of other faiths are sometimes opposed by the Church and why a discussion about who gets to control the vaginas of America is more important to the Church than a focus on who will fight for the poor, the oppressed, the imprisoned and the neglected.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is why I walked away from the Church of my upbringing and why my Baptism into the Catholic Church fills me with a bit of shame every time these weasels make another transparent grab for political power.

Cheers

... The concept of “one nation under God” has a noble lineage, originating in Abraham Lincoln’s hope at Gettysburg that “this nation, under God, shall not perish from the earth.” After Lincoln, however, the phrase disappeared from political discourse for decades. But it re-emerged in the mid-20th century, under a much different guise: corporate leaders and conservative clergymen deployed it to discredit Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

During the Great Depression, the prestige of big business sank along with stock prices. Corporate leaders worked frantically to restore their public image and simultaneously roll back the “creeping socialism” of the welfare state. Notably, the American Liberty League, financed by corporations like DuPont and General Motors, made an aggressive case for capitalism. Most, however, dismissed its efforts as self-interested propaganda. (A Democratic Party official joked that the organization should have been called “the American Cellophane League” because “first, it’s a DuPont product and, second, you can see right through it.”)

Realizing that they needed to rely on others, these businessmen took a new tack: using generous financing to enlist sympathetic clergymen as their champions. After all, according to one tycoon, polls showed that, “of all the groups in America, ministers had more to do with molding public opinion” than any other…

If you read the whole thing (it’s not very long!), there are two obvious conclusions to be drawn:

(a) the GOPers haven’t had a new idea in at least fifty years; and

(b) the genuinely religious among us prefer to keep our faith separate from the machinery of government, because trying to combine the two is bad for both endeavors.

So… back in the Reality-Based Community, what’s on the agenda for the evening?

We are nearly through the Alternate Reality Week of the 2012 primary. Rick Santorum won two caucuses and one ballot test which assigned no delegates. This gave him “momentum.” He joined two other candidates (not Ron Paul; I’ll get to that in a bit) at a conference of conservative activists, with a straw poll that, historically, has only fitfully predicted the Republican nominee.

Like magic, it all mattered. Public Policy Polling’s latest national poll (there’s no some thing as a national primary, etc etc, rabble rabble) puts Santorum in the lead…

As further proof that yes, the GOPers really are just that stupid, the Washington Post is running one of its sidebar polls: Do you support the White House’s new compromise on contraceptive coverage for women? And the NO vote percentage is standing at—you guessed it—27 percent!

I seriously wish other religions would get in on the act. I wish Keith Ellison would start sponsoring bills that allow insurers to cut people’s benefits if they don’t pray to Mecca a certain number of times a day. Or someone Jewish proposing a bill requiring circumcisions or you can’t get health insurance. Just flood the zone with bullshit so people can see how out of control our concept of religious liberty has become.

And who gets to decide what religions are real? I’m going to form my own religion, and the central tenets of my religion will be pizza every Friday, the only thing you are allowed to do on Sundays is watch sports, and I am forbidden by my deity to pay taxes. I’ll call it Norquistism. How would the feds react to that? How is my religion any less real than burning bushes, virgin birth, transubstantiation, and the like?

Does no one realize how absurd the Catholic Bishops are behaving? They are attempting, by dictate, to do precisely what the 1st Amendment bans, which is the establishment of a national religion.

It’s obscene. And it is completely political. They are no longer functioning as a religious organization, but as a political party.

This madness has to stop.

Damn if Obama isn’t the luckiest or smartest man in the world.

GOP War on Women Goes Nookyular

After two solid weeks of Republicans rapidly escalating attacks on contraception access under the banner of “religous freedom,” Obama finally announced what the White House is proposing an accomodation of religiously affiliated employers who don’t want to offer birth control coverage as part of their insurance plans. In those situations, the insurance companies will have to reach out directly to employees and offer contraception coverage for free, without going through the employer.

Blunt has introduced an amendment to the PPACA which would allow employers to deny any preventive health services (including breast cancer screening, depression screening, and diabetes screening), under the guise of religious freedom and respecting the right of conscience of insurers, plan sponsors and healthcare providers, among others.  Apparently, that’s the new meme:  Insurance companies are now having their religious freedom infringed. Somebody save them! (I wrote about that nonsense yesterday.)

From Think Progress: 

Despite Obama’s decision to shield nonprofit religious institutions from offering birth control benefits, next week Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) is expected to offer an amendment that would permit any employer or insurance plan to exclude any health service, no matter how essential, from coverage if they morally object to it:

(6) RESPECTING RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE WITH REGARD TO SPECIFIC ITEMS OR SERVICES —

“(A) FOR HEALTH PLANS. — A health plan shall not be considered to have failed to provide the essential health benefits package described in subsection (a) (or preventive health services described in section 2713 of the Public Health Services Act), to fail to be a qualified health plan, or to fail to fulfill any other requirement under this title on the basis that it declines to provide coverage of specific items or services because —

“(i) providing coverage (or, in the case of a sponsor of a group health plan, paying for coverage) of such specific items or services is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the sponsor, issuer, or other entity offering the plan; or

“(ii) such coverage (in the case of individual coverage) is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the purchaser or beneficiary of the coverage.

Under the measure, an insurer or an employer would be able to claim a moral or religious objection to covering HIV/AIDS screenings, Type 2 Diabetes treatments, cancer tests or anything else they deem inappropriate or the result of an “unhealthy” or “immoral” lifestyle. Similarly, a health plan could refuse to cover mental health care on the grounds that the plan believes that psychiatric problems should be treated with prayer.

I poked around the intertrons to find what sorts of treament fall under the rubric of preventive health services and found a list:

• Abdominal aortic aneurysm screening: men


• Alcohol misuse counseling


• Anemia screening: pregnant women


• Aspirin to prevent cardiovascular disease: men


• Aspirin to prevent cardiovascular disease: women


• Bacteriuria screening: pregnant women


• Blood pressure screening in adults


• BRCA screening, counseling about


• Breast cancer preventive medication


• Breast cancer screening


• Breastfeeding counseling


• Cervical cancer screening


• Chlamydial infection screening: non-pregnant women


• Chlamydial infection screening: pregnant women


• Cholesterol abnormalities screening: men 35 and older


• Cholesterol abnormalities screening: men younger than 35


• Cholesterol abnormalities screening: women 45 and older


• Cholesterol abnormalities screening: women younger than 45


• Colorectal cancer screening


• Dental caries chemoprevention: preschool children


• Depression screening: adolescents


• Depression screening: adults


• Diabetes screening


• Folic acid supplementation


• Gonorrhea prophylactic medication: newborns


• Gonorrhea screening: women


• Healthy diet counseling


• Hearing loss screening: newborns


• Hemoglobinopathies screening: newborns


• Hepatitis B screening: pregnant women


• HIV screening


• Hypothyrodism screening: newborns


• Iron supplementation in children


• Obesity screening and counseling: adults


• Obesity screening and counseling: children


• Osteoporosis screening: women


• PKU screening: newborns


• Rh incompatibility screening: first pregnancy visit


• Rh incompatibility screening: 24-28 weeks gestation


• STIs counseling


• Tobacco use counseling and interventions: non-pregnant adults


• Tobacco use counseling: pregnant women


• Syphilis screening: non-pregnant persons


• Syphilis screening: pregnant women


• Visual acuity screening in children

It would be easier of the Republicans just drowned every third woman in a lake.

***Read the full amendment here. You can read more about preventive health services here.

[via Think Progress]

[cross-posted at ABLC]

It’s 19* F here in OKC, and we’re expecting our first snow/winter storm here this weekend.  That means ice over everything, power outages for parts of the state and closed schools for days on end.  One flake hits this town and everything goes to hell.  I also have the flu and have that generalized feeling that death would be a release.

Jesus God, what a braying ninny. Does he think screeching inanities until his neck veins pulse alarmingly and being led away by security personnel is some sort of rhetorical triumph? What an asshole.

[H/T: YAFB at Rumproast]

Apparently Lana Del Rey attracts a lot of haters. Her first album is definitely uneven, but how can you hate someone who can turn in a performance like this? Open thread to discuss that weighty topic or anything else you’d like.

These changes require careful moral analysis, and moreover, appear subject to some measure of change. But we note at the outset that the lack of clear protection for key stakeholders—for self-insured religious employers; for religious and secular for-profit employers; for secular non-profit employers; for religious insurers; and for individuals—is unacceptable and must be corrected. And in the case where the employee and insurer agree to add the objectionable coverage, that coverage is still provided as a part of the objecting employer’s plan, financed in the same way as the rest of the coverage offered by the objecting employer. This, too, raises serious moral concerns.

• “[E]very dollar invested by the government for contraception saves $3.74 in Medicaid expenditures for pregnancy-related care related to births from unintended pregnancies. In total, the services provided at publicly funded family planning clinics resulted in a net savings of $5.1 billion in 2008.  Significantly, these savings do not account for any of the broader health, social or economic benefits to women and families from contraceptive services and supplies, and the ability to time, space and prepare for pregnancies.”


• “Some studies have looked at cost-savings for private insurers specifically. Notably, the federal government, the nation’s largest employer, reported that it experienced no increase in costs at all after Congress required coverage of contraceptives for federal employees in 1998. A 2000 study by the National Business Group on Health, a membership group for large private- and public-sector employers to address their health policy concerns, estimated that it costs employers 15–17% more to not provide contraceptive coverage in employee health plans than to provide such coverage, after accounting for both the direct medical costs of pregnancy and indirect costs such as employee absence and reduced productivity. Mercer, the employee benefits consulting firm, conducted a similar analysis that year and also concluded that contraceptive coverage should be cost-saving for employers.”

In other words, the worry about employee premiums going to finance contraception is ass-backwards.  The real question for the Bishops is where they think the money is going to come from to finance the non-coverage of contraception.  Are they going to sell some altar furniture or downsize their rectories?  I have a serious financial concern here.

The two Americas came face to face briefly Friday afternoon at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. While several thousand conservatives thronged the Wardman Park Marriott Hotel, several hundred progressive unionists marched up to the hotel’s entrance, banging drums, carrying signs like “CPAC: Conservatives Pleasing America’s Corporations” and chanting “We are the 99 percent.” As they were turned back by police and hotel security, conference participants watched, often with disdain.

“Get a job,” shouted one conservative. “I’ve got a job,” one long-haired demonstrator fired back. “I’m a farmer. I grow the food you eat.” The demonstrators, responding to an email message from the D.C. Metropolitan AFL-CIO Labor Council, came from a wide range of unions including the United Auto Workers, the Service Employees International Union, and the Sheet Metal Workers Union. They marched with members from the Fight for Philly community group, the New York Committee for Change, and veterans of the two now-evicted Occupy D.C. sites.

They were a theatrical bunch. One group of protesters dressed up in blue and white baseball uniforms emblazoned with the logo “Tax Dodgers” who posed for a picture with a giant baseball Mitt. (Get it?) Another man dressed up in a suit emblazoned with dollar signs and the Wal-Mart logo said he was running for president as a corporation. “If corporations are people,” explained Ben Waxman, “why not have a corporation as president?”...

Dave Weigel at Slate reports from the other side of the cordon sanitaire:

“Do You Want to Go to Jail?” The Occupy movement arrived at CPAC, a little late, building a line of protest in front of the hotel shortly after noon. Media interest, stoked for days, was high. CPACs interest was in stopping 1200 or so reporters from being distracted from the events they were putting on.

This was done by putting a line of police between the “occupation”—really just a protest, with some kitschy tents—and the conference attendees and reporters. Protesters moved towards the hotel, were ushered away by police, and settled back down the hill. Anyone approaching them, like conservatives with “STAND WITH [SCOTT] WALKER] signs or bloggers with cameras, was told that he would be arrested if he stayed. I filmed a few bloggers as they tried…

Video and more at the link.

And she really deserves her own dedicated post, but Quinn Norton at Wired’s Threat Level has the latest of her beautifully reported #Occupy stories, “Occupy DC Evicted from A Winter of Communal Discontent” up as a counterpoint.

The videos are not unrelated. It’s been a good night, as I watched a couple West Wing episodes, got some shit off my chest, and I think I taught Rosie how to play catch.

Night folks. Stay classy.