They are really going to wage a war on contraception:
Not satisfied with President Obama’s new religious accommodation, Republicans will move forward with legislation by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) that permits any employer to deny birth control coverage in their health insurance plans, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Sunday.
“If we end up having to try to overcome the President’s opposition by legislation, of course I’d be happy to support it, and intend to support it,” McConnell said. “We’ll be voting on that in the Senate and you can anticipate that that would happen as soon as possible.”
I’m simply speechless. I honestly can not believe that in this day and age, the GOP is going to go all out and wage this war. This has nothing to do with religious liberty, and this is just a war on women. They are just done pretending they are anything but religious zealots and fanatics. I wonder if the press will figure that out.
I simply do not understand how they could be this stupid. I also don’t understand how there is anyone out there left who is a moderate Republican who will still vote with these lunatics.
ATTN: Moderate Republicans- at this point, you are out of excuses. No more BS about trying to take the party back. No more crap about your principles or how you are an old school conservative or just don’t feel comfortable with Democrats. You vote Republican, you vote for the maniacs. No more bullshit excuses to help you sleep at night. You vote for them, you are one of them. Period.
Baud
Technically, it’s not a war until the voters fight back.
capt
I dunno if it is just Obama-derangement syndrome or if the GOP has just become a cult. Either way, I cannot imagine a well informed youthful voter attracted to the ideology.
I read this – this morning:
http://www.alternet.org/story/154082/conservatism_thrives_on_low_intelligence_and_poor_information/
That does sum it up.
David Koch
First
kdaug
So the go forth and multiply part, but not the care for poor, sick, and needy part?
Which testament?
“Christ”ians?
Mike G
We can see now the nature of Repuke “freedom” — it’s the freedom of our overlords to dictate to the peasants what they will allow us to have and do.
Repukes don’t hate oppression and authoritarianism, they just want it to be privatized. Here come the Republican Corporate Vagina Police.
rikyrah
bring it, muthafuckas.
BRING.IT!!
gmf
I don’t know if this is a “war on women” but there’s no doubt they’re not above dangling women over a cliff by their ankles to pick a political fight.
Hunter Gathers
There are no ‘Moderate’ Republicans left. The Repubs in the Senate who consider themselves ‘moderate’ dare not go against the Tyrant McConnell, or they’ll lose their chance at committee chairs, which is the only reason to serve in the Senate in the first place. Snowe and Collins would really love to vote against their party, but the threat of being passed over for chair of whatever committee they want to run in the future in favor of Rand Paul keeps them from doing so. Which makes them even worse than your garden variety wingnut Senator from the South. They vote for crazy bullshit because they believe in it. Snowe and Collins do it because they don’t want to be below Pat Toomey in the power structure of Senate GOPers. But that won’t keep Bobo from waxing poetically about their principled Burkean moderate restraint.
wobblybits
@gmf: When you start trying to dictate what I can do with my body, it’s war.
JenJen
I am sincerely surprised at this move. Thought they had a good two weeks of anti-women hysterics and would come to their senses over the weekend. And then I remembered, those old political instincts of the GOP dies in 2010.
El Tiburon
Moderate Republicans. You are a funny guy. Unless you are talking abut the Democratic party.
Sadly, True Liberals are shunned by many in the Democratic party to protect their brand and Leader.
wobblybits
@El Tiburon: So you get to define what a true liberal is?
Alan
Perhaps they’re still listening to the same advisors who told them the Schiavo controversy would be a winning issue?
Alex S.
must be panic
Yutsano
@El Tiburon:
As defined by you amirite?
This is beautiful. Just amazing. And now the Turtle is involved. Are they TRYING to lose in 2012?
@wobblybits: Heh. I’ll take my brain back now please and thank you. :)
celticdragonchick
My mother tried to tell me yesterday that Obama was trying to force Catholic hospitals to do abortions. I gently corrected her and moved to another subject.
Is this the line Fox News is pushing, or is this another WorldNutDaily/email rumor? The disinformation and blatant lies are getting so deep you need fucking wings to stay above them.
PeakVT
Republicans seem bound and determined to give Democrats 60% of the female vote. Good luck winning with that kind of split.
scav
Republicans on a Senate Committee unanimously also voted against approving reauthorization bill for the Violence Against Women Act.
El Tiburon
@rikyrah:
No doubt. Watch Obama draw a barely visible, dotted line in the sand and dare the Repubes to not step too far over that line.
But I am sure Charlie Brown is going to kick the ball this time.
Veritas78
Okay, now I know that Obama did this intentionally and it was BRILLIANT! This chess game goes to 12!
Because employers secretly want their female employees to get pregnant, thus triggering the expenses of the family medical leave requirements and the added insurance costs of pregnancy.
(There’s a reason why insurers are happy to provide contraceptives for free. Don’t ask for a hint.)
Now I know we are going to win, because this bunch of Republicans are too stupid to breath. Obama will run the whole table.
hildebrand
Mayhap the professional left will realize that Obama is not, in fact, just like the Republicans.
celticdragonchick
@Hunter Gathers:
The two women from Maine know that the “Club for
GrowthBeating the Shit Out of You” is going to primary them both, so they had better brush up their bonafides if they don’t want to have to do a Lisa Murkowski indy run to keep their seats.Chuck Butcher
@Hunter Gathers:
For some reason we’ve got Landrieu (Big Oil-LA) in our Party. I suppose some version of sane politics would let her be “R”. Collins and Snowe stay “R” for a reason whether that reflects the interests of their citizenry or not, which apparently it does since they keep getting elected.
Walden (R – OR 2) keeps getting elected and his policies do spit for his constituents.
PIGL
The press will never notice because it is paid not to. As for the so-called moderate Republicans, those are simply those who go to more presentable mainline churches, or don’t go at all. They are just as big asshole cryptofascists as any other Republican.
Tell it, JC.
David Koch
@El Tiburon:
Your boyfriend Glenn isn’t a liberal, he’s a libertarian.
Amir Khalid
What are the prospects of this crazy legislation actually making it through Congress? As I understand things, it should get through the House with its Republican majority, not to mention a gonadless Speaker unable to dissuade his caucus from folly. But would enough Senate Democrats stand firm against it?.
celticdragonchick
@scav:
Sen. Chuck Grassly particularly objected to language in the reauthorization that protected gay people and transgendered people.
Because teh faggots and teh tranny whores have it comin’…
/sarc/
Libby
It’s even worse than that. Blunt is offering an amendment that would deny any preventive care based on moral objections. Like an unauthorized “irresponsible” lifestyle.
Apparently the plan is to kill the health reform act altogether by amendment.
gbear
If only there was a moderate, well reasoned, accommodating candidate that moderates could vote for. I wonder where they’ll ever find him…
Marc
@hildebrand:
We’re not seeing much evidence of that right here.
burnspbesq
@hildebrand:
One can always dream. Some dreams have a higher probability of coming true than others.
wrb
@celticdragonchick:
Whichever it is, it has penetrated to Paula Poundstone, who gave it as the answer to a question about what the flap was about on “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” this weekend.
It was judged an incorrect answer.
wobblybits
@Yutsano: Wait, I can’t keep it just a while longer? :-)
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@El Tiburon:
“True Liberals”, kind of like “True Libertarians”, are told that their purity is not helping the party when the other choice is Republican crazy. If they’re unwilling to learn when it’s time to be pure and time to fight the opposition, they are not true liberals.
I loved what one of the commenters here quoted her dad as saying: “Suffering for your own principles builds character; making others suffer for your principles is pride.”
Suffern ACE
Wouldn’t this be the kind of bill that would, say, get attached to the unpopular (with sitting Conrgressmen – not with the public) insider trading rule bill so that Obama would need to veto it? Otherwise, I can’t see this coming to a vote in the Senate.
Yutsano
@Amir Khalid: Nothing is making Harry Reid bring it to the floor for a vote. And unless they can get past that hurdle, it will die an inglorious death. Not to mention there would be no way Obama would sign it. But getting the Republicans on the record as opposing birth control is election year gold.
gex
@Alan: They are. The Bishops.
RossInDetroit
Unless the GOP strategists have discovered a 12th dimension for the chess game, they just backed themselves into Check and are sitting there waiting to be mated.
I sincerely hope they’re up to something crafty because if they’re not, then they’re fucking nuts and that’s scary to contemplate.
Veritas78
In about a month, some liberals are going to feel really foolish for not having realized that Obama has just rolled the Catholic hierarchy, the wingnuts, both Catholic Republican candidates and the Mormon.
Watch how the topic changes to defending the free contraception built into ObamaCare. Which most people didn’t know was there, actually do want, and now hate Republicans for trying to take it away from them. I’m stunned that no one sees this as strategic mastery, but then that’s why he’s President and we’re not.
Rick Taylor
At least this is more consistent than their previous argument. I’ve been scratching my head wondering what was supposed to make contraception so controversial that it needed to be singled out with an exemption. I’m glad to hear Jehovah’s witnesses will no longer be obligated to offer insurance that covers blood transfusions, and Christian scientists won’t have to offer any insurance at all. For that matter, I suppose any brave Ayn Rand follower might morally object to being forced to supply health insurance by the government.
David Koch
@burnspbesq: The reality is the Professional Left never liked Obama for personal reasons, not political reasons.
Some (you know who) supported Hillary and never have got over her royal highness being defeated by some young, skinny black guy with a funny african name.
Some invested everything in Edwards (you know who), because the John and Elizabeth personally recruited their support and made them feel like players, while Obama never did. And their inflated sense of ego could never get over the insult that Obama didn’t give them a reach around.
It was the height of hilarity that elites who like to wag their keyboards in purity at the rank and file supported war mongers like Hills and Edwards.
Martin
Just to let you know where the argument from the moderate conservatives is going to come from:
They’re going to say that prescription contraception (they’ll hedge a bit on contraceptive procedures, but follow those along as well) shouldn’t be covered for anyone because it’s outside the nature of what insurance is efficient at. And in that local context, they’re correct. Contraception isn’t an unforeseen expense. It’s an unbalanced one in that it’s disproportionately leveled against women, but insurance is efficient when it provides for cost pooling for unforeseen and significant expenses – surgery, cancer, shit like that.
When you lump things like contraception under insurance, you only increase the cost due to administrative overhead – and that’d be true even in a single payer system. There’s a cost benefit to having individuals use their own money because they can choose the best option for them – and cost becomes part of that equation, so an incentive is created for the medical industry to lower the cost of the product.
Taking the religious argument away, a few problems remain:
1) We have no good means of discerning routine prescriptions from unexpected or significantly expensive ones. Unless you take birth control off prescription, it’s better to keep it covered than risk not paying for someones cancer meds (which birth control is sometimes prescribed for).
2) The left is (I think unknowingly) using many of these health care add-ins as a substitute for wage increase. Its easier to win the battle for free birth control than for a significant raise in the minimum wage. After all, the argument above about consumers choosing only works if the consumers have money with which to choose. If everyone is too fucking poor, there’s no ability to choose. Nobody will choose birth control over food, and that’s why this matters to the left – because we know that’s the real choice for many people. And the notion that we should only give free birth control to poor people, well, how the fuck does anyone propose that policy and not get destroyed for it, even if it’s completely well-meaning.
But 2) raises an important question: if we could trade free contraception for a $2 an hour increase in the minimum wage, would we do it?
But we’re ultimately making the broader problem for the country worse, by making it better for a large group of people that need it to be better. How do we then reverse that? How do we get to a point where we can trade guaranteed benefits for wages? Keep in mind that the GOP is trying to get support to offer just such a deal – in exchange for rollbacks in PPACA, they’ll back an increase in the minimum wage and possibly peg the wage to inflation so it automatically increases. The Dems not only haven’t been able to deliver that, they aren’t even proposing it. I think that’d be a solidly winning argument for the GOP if they can put it out there – and Romney has indicated that he will.
That bypasses the whole religious liberty angle and goes right to the heart of voters: which would you rather have, free contraception or that money put into your paycheck?
scav
@celticdragonchick: Yup. Threefer in his eyes: 1) teh faggots and teh tranny whores; 2) illegal immigrantz; and 3) wimminz.
Chuck Butcher
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
You might think that when the alternative is fucking lunacy that it was affordable to shift ever so slightly liberal rather than wandering rightward. But then, criticizing your own side is enabling the dirty commies… er, lunatic right… er, their side…
Rick Taylor
I have to admit, I’ve been a critic of Obama, but maybe his strategy of aggresively embracing reasonable compromise until the opposition party is left with no alternative but to embrace positions even only casually attentive moderate voters can’t help but see are bug fuck insane may have something to it after all. . .
scav
yea! I won a seemingly random FYWP moderation! Actually improved my day, which should be a clue about my day.
gex
@Martin: That’s not a trade I would make. We have some say in the contraception coverage. The Galtians will find a way to snatch that $2/hr away from the worker some other way. Plus the jobless would only get the lose half of the win-lose formulation.
But I suspect with our electorate they’d take the paycheck and not the “socialism”.
Thymezone
We’re going to have the Birth Control election, not the Jobs election, and it’s entirely likely — and desirable — that the GOP is crushed like a maggot in this contest. Look for them to lose the House, lose the White House by a bigger margin than 2008, and lose seats in the Senate. Remember what we said in 2008? That Obama would drive these people over the edge. Well, there they are, going over the edge. So long, don’t let the door hit you in the ass ….
El Tiburon
@wobblybits:
You tell me. A majority of Dems support drone strikes and keeping Gitmo open.
A majority of Dems support a President who continues to keep people in cages without charge and claims the right to do it forever; kills US citizens on his word alone; continues economic policies that favor the wealthy; has stated he will cut social security and Medicare as millions continue to struggle.
And many of you here, when confronted with these facts by the likes of me usually respond like a gaggle of high school bullies with tiny dicks hurling childish insults.
So yeah, continue to puff up your fucking chests and prance around like a prize rooster because ZOMG! Obama stood up (kind of) on fucking contraception. Woo-fucking-Hoo!
Yet, probably today or tomorrow we are going to kill somebody’s infant child in a drone strike. And for what? For nothing. And in Gitmo, dozens of mostly innocent people are going on a decade inside a cage. And for what?
But if you all want to beat on your tribal drums, go for it.
Baud
This thread is trollilicious. Too bad. :(
jnfr
I just can’t figure out what the Republicans think they’re doing here. Surely they can read polls as well as we can. Do they have an actual death wish for their party?
Rick Taylor
@Martin:
The trouble with this argument is that this didn’t start as an argument by economists that funding birth control was inefficient; it started with the catholic church saying they shouldn’t have to fund it because it was immoral, and everyone knows it. This is how the issue has been framed, while Santorum has belatedly attempted to make this an economic argument, it’s a bit late in the game for that. I can imagine that perhaps the tiny number of moderate Republicans may tell themselves this so they can pretend they’re party’s not crazy, but the terms of the debate have already been set up.
Plus if you’re really objecting to this on economic grounds, then there’s no reason to single out birth control; any medical expense that’s not prohibitive ought to be included. And of course there’s the obvious rejoinder, that making birth control available to women might lower the incidence of unwanted pregnancies, and so turn out to make sense economically after all.
Roger Moore
@PeakVT:
WTF is wrong with the other 40%? Other minorities targeted by the GOP have figured out that it doesn’t make sense to vote for somebody who’s committed to oppressing you. Why are any women voting for these evil fuckers?
shortstop
@Libby: Exactly. Don’t get caught up in the “GOP hates women” line — it’s true, of course, but it’s only part of the story with Blunt’s bill, which goes WAY beyond giving employers an out to not cover contraception. This proposed legislation would make it possible for ANY employer or insurer to deny ANY coverage based on a “moral conviction.” That could mean HIV/AIDS treatment, cancer or diabetes care, or just about anything else for which someone gins up a “moral objection.”
This is simply trying to chip away at the PPACA and bleed it to death since they know it won’t be overturned. The women-bashing is a way to get the base on board, not the sum total of the intent.
Thymezone
@Veritas78:
We’re making this way too complicated. Employers use healthcare benefits as hiring and retention tools. That includes Catholic nonprofits who have been doing it for a long time. It is cheaper to give away birth control pills than to hire and train new people who left to get better benefits. Much cheaper.
Felanius Kootea
@El Tiburon: In a thread about Republicans declaring open war on a woman’s right to have access to contraceptives, you try to hijack with the usual Obama-hating rant. You show absolutely no interest in liberal causes as far as I can see, but seem always ready to deflect attention from the damage the Republicans are trying to inflict.
So I ask, what do you think about the bills that the Republicans are trying to pass to restrict a woman’s right to have access to contraceptive pills? If you do actually disagree with the Republicans on this issue, what do you plan to do to register your disapproval?
Rick Taylor
Obama really ought to come out strongly in support of a bill that says kittens are cute, and that we shouldn’t kick puppies. Within a week, the Republican party would be working on a measure averring we will not abridge the freedom of puppy haters to kick puppies.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
I’d put this slogan on my car’s bumper, if I didn’t think it would get my car totaled.
El Tiburon
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Exactly. Seems the New Democrats principles include slavishly praising any battle won while excusing major battles lost.
Hey man, we didn’t have the votes for a Public option!
Hey man, Congress kept Gitmo open!
Hey man, war is dirty and drone strikes are better than soldiers dying!
Bradley Manning who?
pseudonymous in nc
@Martin:
Insurance coverage is already most of the way there, as contraception in most decent group plans is covered under tiered copays. Moving to a zero copay is a mere administrative adjustment, compared to the GOP’s pushback, in which dirty sluttyslutsluts would have to pay the full cost of their Sexytime Medicine.
(The phrase ‘health insurance’ leads to all sorts of scholastic bullshitty arguments. I refuse to participate in them. Most people fundamentally give a picofuck about health insurance qua insurance; they care about affordable and reliable access to healthcare, and the name of the mechanism by which it is achieved is irrelevant.)
Vaccines are also a foreseeable expense. They’re covered without copay under the ACA’s Preventive Services. There’s an obvious public health rationale to do so.
Keep in mind that Lucy is happy to hold the football for Charlie Brown.
David Koch
@El Tiburon:
That would include “true progressives” Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders who both voted voted against shutting down GITMO.
Keep fucking that chicken.
shortstop
@Rick Taylor: Precisely. They set themselves up when they claimed they shouldn’t have to pay for something that violates their consciences; in doing so, they irrevocably entwined the economic and moral threads and they will not be able to now pretend that the moral aspect was not their base argument (from which the economic argument grew) all along.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Martin: I’m on prescription blood pressure and cholesterol medication. Considering it costs a company less to buy these in bulk for their employees rather than pay for the employees to buy it themselves, I think the argument will only go so far.
Once again, a company will not increase everyone’s wages enough to cover individuals buying these, or any type of drug. The only way what you are proposing would work is under a single payer system.
shortstop
@Felanius Kootea: More to the point, does El Tiburon’s healthcare insurance include a mental health benefit? I’m just sayin’.
wrb
@Thymezone:
…it might kill you.
pluege
I’m simply speechless.
huh??? I guess for someone who spends all their time looking at this stuff you’re none too bright. This is perfectly today’s republican MO: go crazy insane extreme right knowing and expecting full well not to get what they’re screaming about, but drag the center marker a little more to the right – THAT is the goal.
Their method of shooting way beyond what is possible IS how we got in this crap situation where even though people agree with progressive policies and are pro-progressive in their thinking, they vote republican lies all the time not knowing what they’re even voting for; and it IS why progressive policies have a bad name; and it IS why we can’t have a public conversation in this country with anything resembling a liberal view; and it IS why we have a center-right president more right than than the sainted reagan, but people believe he is a left wing extremist; and it IS why we have pro-torture as a legitimate position; and on and on and on.
Going batshit insane right IS the republican MO to keep dragging the country to the right.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): To add: The company I work for actually pays all but $10 on my blood pressure medication, because it’s cheaper than a heart attack, and it’s cheaper to pay for the few that need it rather than giving everyone enough to cover it.
barath
There’s also a forgotten benefit to this: increasing contraception decreases population increase which decreases greenhouse emissions, energy use, and overall environmental damage.
Win win win, win.
David Koch
@Felanius Kootea:
The exact manifestation of Obama Derangement Syndrome.
gex
@Rick Taylor: And non-pregnancy is the number one deterrent to having an abortion.
@Roger Moore: There are plenty of misogynistic women. Apparently it’s about 40%.
Felanius Kootea
@shortstop: I sure hope so, for his sake.
bemused senior
@Martin: No, Preventive care, which the Obama decision made contraception a part of, is all predictable, routine care that is meant to improve health outcomes and reduce cost. It has been well studied that people sacrifice preventive care when they must pay out of their own pockets.
dead existentialist
@El Tiburon:
You’re funny.
metalgirl
So what, exactly, are “preventative” tests?? Prostate cancer screenings, colonoscopies, mamograms, what else? What about high blood pressure? The insurance companies are only too happy to pay for birth control because it’s such a cost saving measure. Will they be in the pocket of the Rs on this??
Just when you thought the Rs couldn’t get any worse….
dawinsor
I thought the requirement was part of the ACA’s attempt to control rising health care costs. It requires free preventive care (childhood vaccines, old people’s pneumonia innoculations, checkups) because preventive care is cheaper than letting people get really sick. So then they had to make a list of what counts as “preventive.” I think most women would say birth control is the ultimate in preventive care, and it’s sure as heck cheaper than maternity care or abortion.
Tom Levenson
@RossInDetroit:
And without contraception, too.
El Tiburon
@Felanius Kootea:
WTF? Are you serious? I don’t apologize if I find it amusing that everyone has a hard on because Obama ‘played’ some old Cathoilics. He should have told them to eat dick in the first place. But why I come here with your so-called “Obama hate rants” is because yeah, I do get frustrated when we supposed Liberals consider it a victory that Obama compromised on something to assure something that should not have required a compromise. And my rants are fueled by Obama’s continuance of actual policies that deem contraception moot: namely the death by Feedom bombs of actual living and breathing women and children. So what price this victory when compared to that?
Indeed, I do plan on registering a rather nasty letter to the appropriate person in charge directly after myntea and crumpets, good sir. What I fucking plan to do is bitch and moan and hope enough of us bitch and moan so that the Democrats in power will stand up to these cocksuckers and not fucking compromise!!!
Goddamn what are YOU going to do? Whistle Dixie out of your asshole? What would you have me do? Light myself on fire outside the Pentagon?
What the fuck can I do?
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@El Tiburon:
Um…we didn’t.
Um… they did.
Um… you prefer dead soldiers?
Um… filled out and signed an SF86. Violated it.
Schlemizel
@David Koch:
Thanks for telling me something about myself I didn’t know. Here I thought I didn’t support Obama originally because he was not liberal enough for me. I worked my ass off to get him elected & will do it again even though I have seen that my original opinion of him was very accurate.
But you know everything about those of us who want better than the current DLC Party offers us, the chance to die more slowly.
So now come back and tell me that this is the best that can get elected in the current US, that’ll make it all OK
Roger Moore
@Martin:
This ignores a big part of what insurance (and managed care) companies do, which is to use their ability to buy in bulk to negotiate better deals than individuals could. And a lot of the administrative apparatus already has to be there for prescription medicines, so adding a few more medicines to the list doesn’t add radically to the price.
wrb
@jnfr:
They believe that it can be made an argument not over contraception (which you will still be able to get) but over government forcing people to do shit. Which topic they want front and center as it is key to their assault on the ACA and to their over all identity and appeal.
I’m not positive that they won’t be able to pull this off, but they are throwing their chips down, taking a risk.
It will be an interesting game to watch.
dmsilev
@Rick Taylor:
Sorry, but reality has already lapped your satire. Behold, the Missouri “Puppy Mills are A-OK Act of 2011”.
Martin
@Rick Taylor:
No, I know that. I’m just suggesting that a completely new, independent argument may arrive in order to salvage the operation – one that can rely on the left entrenching in the ‘birth control or bust’ attitude that the church has pushed us into.
Just be prepared for the right to pivot, make the argument that this is only showing up as a religious freedom issue at all because it was poorly conceived from the outset, that the solution to flattening wages isn’t birth control but higher salaries, and then deliver that.
I think the only reason it hasn’t happened is the tea party. I think if the GOP looked as it did even just 4 years ago, they’d be rolling that idea out now – and it’s a position that doesn’t undermine the religious liberty argument at all.
Veritas44
@El Tiburon:
A first glance the idea has merit….
MattF
Just as a point of fact– back in the bad old days, before abortions were legal, Catholic hospitals did as many abortions as any other hospitals, you just had to know the right people. My dad was a physician, so he had access to the statistics of which hospitals did which procedures– so he let me know, one day, that if I ever knew someone who needed an abortion, he’d know where to go to arrange it.
Jennifer
As I said the other day, give them the same compromise given to the Catholic universities and hospitals. Except, charge all of them the additional cost that they would incur (actuarily) from not covering contraception – which is higher, because women not using contraception have a tendency to get pregnant and birth babies, which is a lot more expensive than providing birth control. So, the principled employer gets to pay more for health coverage that covers less; meanwhile, the insurers have to contact their female employees to let them know they have contraceptive coverage at no additional cost through rider x to their plan.
Let the insurers keep a cut of the higher premium as a PIA charge, and refund the remainder to those women who choose to use the contraceptive coverage.
Let any employer who wants to “opt out” of this coverage do it, but make them pay the higher cost for a plan that doesn’t provide cost-saving preventative reproductive care.
My guess is they’ll discover that their “principle” of saving money trumps their deeply-held religious belief that they have a right to dictate to others about using contraception.
Thymezone
Who do you want on your team? Mitch McConnell trying to take away your birth control pills? Or Barack Obama trying to get you closer to universal healthcare coverage? The GOP has just unwittingly given the Dems a perfect foil for the healthcare debate. Who really cares about your health? Us, or them? This ain’t rocket science, folks.
El Tiburon
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
Thank you for illustrating my point 100%. You and the rest will literally accept whatever is put on your plate, even if it is a shit sandwich, gladly chow it down, then beg for some more.
pseudonymous in nc
@El Tiburon:
Your pristine purity makes contraception unnecessary. FDL will give you a gold star.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@El Tiburon:
The only shit sandwiches being served in this thread are on your cart, asshole. Got facts, you pointless little waste of skin? Bring ’em. Otherwise you’re no better than the GOP.
Now I’m done. Apologies to the bystanders for feeding the troll.
Ruckus
You vote Republican, you vote for the maniacs. No more bullshit excuses to help you sleep at night. You vote for them, you are one of them. Period.
Conservatards have been the party of bullshit for a very, very, long time. They are the party of small minds and followers. When was the last time there was an actual intellectual conservative argument? I can’t think of one. Their entire line of bullshit is based upon me, me, me, me, mine, mine, mine.
Martin
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
The company doesn’t buy those. The insurance company negotiates a lower rate. And there’s no question that this is far from a clean issue – where do you draw the line? I’m not suggesting that it’s a perfectly winning issue given how much healthcare has changed, but it’s not an invalid argument considering that even most single payer health care divide along a similar line – hospitalization and similar large catastrophic issues covered under the government plan and then an individual purchased supplemental plan from insurance companies. Your stuff generally would be in the latter.
In the battle for public perception, that doesn’t matter. If the GOP rolls out a “Rather than contraception, we want to give you a raise” message, that’s going to stick. They don’t need to mention blood pressure meds. The GOP proposal will seem more fair to almost everyone.
WereBear
Not only is this something seemingly suited to his “cool” personality, it is also a style of fighting quite reassuring to the likes of, say, Bill O’Reilly types who think every African American is just like the ’70’s blaxploitaion flicks.
There was a great bit in the vastly under-rated Undercover Brother movie, wherein the black hero showed a bit of forcefulness while shopping, and the PA system announced, “Angry Black Man in aisle 5.”
Cain
@Chuck Butcher:
Why does that guy keep getting elected??
Lojasmo
@El Tiburon:
Make sure you write a sternly worded letter to the white house assuring Obama that he should close gitmo, and send the troops back to Iraq.
Dipshit.
Suffern ACE
@jnfr:
Maybe they figure that all the women who are going to vote for Obama are going to vote for him, but they can steal away more Tweety-Kerry-Manchin catholics than he can gain in key races. Also, talking non-stop about young ladies on the pill means not talking about the Ryan Plan.
The people who probably know most about the health care system are the uninsured. 90% of of us with insurance plans through work already have this coverage. But I bet most of us have never bothered to check. So it’s really easy to misinform people about the “Unprecedented Audacity” of this culture war move by Obama. He’s “forcing” people do to something that they are already doing. We should be talking about how Republicans are going to take away a benefit you already have.
PTirebiter
The GOP is in a pickle of their own making. There lunatic base
is as easy as ever to bait, but the switch is becoming problematic.
They can’t win without an energized base and they can’t win with an energized base that doesn’t take the switch. They’re buying time for the switch.
Martin
@bemused senior:
Then you run into their moral argument – people have to be responsible for their own decisions, and they’ll point to all of the people that get free preventative care and don’t use it.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that it’s not a winning argument for the people that believe the economics are wrong here. And they are wrong, but the path to make them right is really damn hard and they offer no better path to better outcomes than we do.
Schlemizel
@Veritas44:
I’d consider it myself if you’ll go first
PIGL
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: I certainly prefer dead American soldiers to dead innocent foreign civilians. And I say the same about Canadian soldiers, who have no greater moral authority than yours.
Cain
@Thymezone:
That’s only an advantage if Democratic party strategists see it that way.
These guys aren’t very good in arguing why progressive politics is better for us than what the Republicans are offering.
They need to swamp the news channels and keep making that case or for fucks sake, just go door to door. I’d support that.
gex
@MattF: That’s the system they want back. You have to be or know the right people. That’s how they seem to want everything to work.
slightly-peeved
I like how people bring up the PPACA as an example of Obama’s failures, immediately after Obama used the power of the PPACA to force insurance companies to cover contraception. And to force Catholic organisations to offer health insurance that meets required levels of coverage. Yeah, insurance companies really stuck it to Obama; they got off scott free apart from having to cover anything Obama tells them to. And spend 80 percent of their premiums on care, as defined by Obama. And offer the same insurance to everyone, and not kick them off.
Dr. Squid
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
I just love how everyone is making him suffer for the principle of the position that gets the most votes gets adopted.
It’s really hard to type coherently when he’s busy nailing himself to a cross.
Cermet
@Martin: Uh? Get a raise? How? The asswipe thugs might say they could lower premiums by a few dollars but 98% of woman of child bearing age need birth control – those families/woman will pay big bucks to get what was a tiny cost before they lost the coverage. Not happening.
Thymezone
@RossInDetroit:
There’s nuts and then there’s stupid nuts. These are stupid nuts. They are going to implode, right on schedule, the Wile E. Coyotes of politics.
David Koch
@Schlemizel:
Really, I didn’t know you were part of the “professional left”. Congratulations. Then again, not, because you clearly didn’t read my comment.
Thymezone
@Cain:
Obama will see it that way. Dems will follow suit if they are smart. I think the biggest sleeper this year is going to be the aggressive and successful sale of ACA in Obama’s campaign. The GOP just basically conceded the point.
Of course, Romney can always come back in the debates and insist that he will repeal Romneycare. That will be fun to watch.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@PIGL:
I’d prefer “none of the above”, myself.
I don’t know about you, but if I lived next door to a terror cell, I’d consider relocating.
Darnell From LA
Er, uh…so let me get this straight: In an election year, with the GOP congress already at an all time low approval rating, and the GOP Presidential candidates already trailing Obama, the GOP has now decided to replay their politically disastrous opposition to the payroll tax cut, while going to war to deprive women everywhere access to birth control.
Is this really happening? And if it is, what wonderful thing must Barack Obama have done in a previous life to deserve such amazingly good fortune? Sweet christ on sale….
slightly-peeved
@martin: Obama’s already making the moral argument against ‘personal responsibility’, as defined by Republicans. He’s been making a very classical left argument that people are successful by working together. This argument against birth control is another example of old rich white men saying ‘screw you, I’ve got mine’. Those are the people Obama is running against with his tax policy, and the proposedd Republican legislation lets Obama run against them for his healthcare policy. It’s the 1 percent deciding what healthcare the 99 percent get. It’s unfair, and Obama’s already making a moral argument about fairness.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Martin: I still don’t think any of that will hold water. The real question Obama has to ask then is “How many times did you get a raise because insurance prices went up?”
Suffern ACE
@Cain:
But we have Elanor Clift all over this issue on Sundays. What could possibly go wrong?
Mike in NC
“Moderate Republicans”? What, are they hanging out with the dodo birds and sabre-toothed tigers?
Chuck Butcher
@Cain:
This CD was a Democratic stronghold until the 80s. The Ds spent quite awhile and quite a bit of effort poisoning wells with the voters. Guns – we got lots and we don’t shoot each other hardly ever, try that sale. Resource extraction – in a fight between extremes jobs will trump. Really shitty framing of issues.
Then also, Walden keeps his head down – you won’t see him on TV fluffing Ryan, he’ll vote that way and keep his trap shut. He won’t tell the voters that the reason PILT keeps getting fucked is because his bunch don’t want to pay it. (oh fuck, urbanites – Payment In Lieu of Taxes – no fed property taxes or other income to the area controlled, timber extraction payments were the method of PILT)
It is also true that not being conservative (ie careful) out here can get you broke or killed. If you go off a US highway out here in the winter it could be a long time before somebody comes along. Change is risky.
West of the Cascades
@Cain: Walden sucks up to the ranchers and the other rural welfare queens (see today’s map in the NYT story on the “safety net”) — eastern Oregon gets far more federal subsidies than the west side (other than the southwestern counties that get scads of money from timber lands).
sb
@El Tiburon:
You mean like “fuck off and die?” That kind of childish insult?
Oh my God, not this shit again. Let’s see…. they didn’t, it did, yes it is and while I feel sorry for the guy, he fucked up.
What else ya got, bunky?
Chuck Butcher
@West of the Cascades:
Must’ve missed you that the last round of what was supposed to be PILT went into the OR General Fund. You really want to start E vs W on BJ?
Bigorange
This can be a good thing for Democrats. By changing the debate to contraception you draw in a larger number of women, independents, and right of center voters. It may be the first time since Nixon that the conversation is moved from abortion to contraception. That was a winner in a Republican year in Mississippi. While Initiative 26 wanted outlaw contraception, the Republicans are beginning to sound that way.
bcinaz
Republicans are turning into one of those isolated tribes that turn up now and then on some remote island or in the Amazon basin – wholly cut off from the modern world. They survive and thrive, yet are mostly incomprehensible to the rest of us. We have no idea how the manage.
kay
I can’t take it seriously as a religious objection because the bishops have made so many purely legal constructs to get around their religious objections in order to merge with other hospitals.
The whole “money is fungible” argument falls apart with the slightest scrutiny of those mergers.
The bishops have a problem with the FACTS.
The factual basis for their objection does not hold up, which is why they’re screaming about liberty and quoting theology.
The bishops make all kinds of accommodations when it suits their business model.
wrb
@Cain:
He’s the Republican in a rural district in a state in which the Democrats have done a wonderful job of alienating rural voters.
Between killing a resource-extraction based economy and sponsoring a land use system that enriches the cities while impoverishing the countryside Dems have killed themselves.
RedKitten
Spend some time on some mom blogs, and you’ll see how incredibly fucking judgmental some women can be. That 40%? They’re morally upstanding, married women who don’t need contraception, and who therefore think that the only ones who do need it are unmarried liberal sluts.
Mind you, a lot of these women can only go without contraception because their husband’s health insurance paid for him to have a vasectomy, but shut up and close your legs if you don’t want to have babies.
Villago Delenda Est
@El Tiburon:
Go die in a fire.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cain:
Fucktards are thick east of the Cascades.
suzanne
I personally will be exercising my conscience by abstaining from fucking any Republicans. Ever.
celticdragonchick
@PIGL:
I prefer they all stay alive, personally.
Emma
@El Tiburon: Oh shut up and go away. Your hate is a miasma that’s probably visible over your head, like the little man under the cloud. That’s all that keeps you going, hatred of the people who fall short of your unspeakable political perfection. Go nurse your bile somewhere else.
kay
I personally think the religious liberty argument is too abstract for most people.
Not that Republicans give a rat’s ass about religious liberty.
They’re contractually obligated to oppose regulation that applies to large employers, so that’s what they’re about.
Jenn
@Villago Delenda Est: Hey, can we not have an east-west war here? Quite frankly, there are assholes on both sides of the Cascades.
Emma
@Martin: Not if you quote prices. Meds aren’t cheap. Ask the question that way: will the raise cover the average (however many dollars) my meds cost at retail?
xian
@Martin: I get it. You have some grave concerns.
Chuck Butcher
@Villago Delenda Est:
You don’t even want to come out and play on that ground, not fucking even a little bit.
El Tiburon
@pseudonymous in nc:
So now, being adamantly against our President being able to lock up whomever he wants for whatever reason he wants for as long as he wants is “pristine purity”?
Theses same actions used to solicit howls of outrage around here when Bush did it. No, perhaps not. I guess it was only Hamsher and Greenwald who gave a fuck. Because I know none of you are hypocrites like that.
But please everyone, back to your regularly scheduled program where Obama totally Kicked Ass on the nefarious Contraception War that was threatening the very existence of our great nation.
Can’t wait for all the You Go Boy! When we attack Iran.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Chuck Butcher:
Eh, speaking as someone who grew up for the first 25 years of her life in the Portland area, the answer is obvious-Eastern Oregon is full of low information, poor voters who get played by culture war shenanigans.
WereBear (itouch)
This whole argument is way out in the woo-woos for the majority of the population. With Santorum’s sudden primary prominence, it will boil down to “the Republicans are against birth control.”
Which is fine. Frankenstein’s monster is knocking at their castle door for a change.
schrodinger's cat
Just like the Komen issue, BJ’s favorite blogger, who also happens to be Catholic has nothing to say about this whole controversy. I guess it is not important because it doesn’t affect him personally, unlike the views from windows or anything regarding marijuana.
Amanda in the South Bay
@wrb:
That’s true too. I grew up in a small town on the other side of the state (timber country) and know for a fact that stuff like the spotted owl fiasco really hurt small towns and blue collar unionized labor-a natural Dem group if there was one.
gwangung
@El Tiburon: You’re a friggin’ idiot who throws a tantrum when people don’t do EXACTLY what you say in EXATLY how you say it. And you don’t bother to listen to people…REALLY listen.
Ran into dozens of tiresome people like you in the 60s and 70s, blathering along about “true” revolutionaries. Anybody who tries to play the more progressive than thou card isn’t being progressive.
AxelFoley
@Felanius Kootea:
Bingo.
That’s all that fucking asshole Tiburon is about: GOP fucking with women’s health issues = Obama’s fault.
He’s a fucking douchebag asswipe.
El Tiburon
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/sunday-review/a-high-tech-war-on-leaks.html?_r=1&ref=adamliptak
More pristine purity trollery. I understand this is really no big deal and I shuould go die in a fire or otherwise FOAD.
A High Tech War on Leaks
Look forward, not ass-backwards.
wrb
@Amanda in the South Bay:
You realize you disqualified yourself with your first few words.
“Eh, speaking as someone who grew up for the first 25 years overseeing darkies, the answers is obvious…”
Chuck Butcher
@Amanda in the South Bay:
So, are you making excuses for your abject stupidity or simply trying to demonstrate the inadequacy of your education thanks to your surroundings?
Amanda in the South Bay
@Chuck Butcher:
What difference does it make? You live in an area that, like every other rural part of the country, elects people who constantly screw you over. After a certain point, you have to take responsibility and stop blaming the Democratic Party.
Mnemosyne
@Martin:
Here’s the fatal flaw in that message, though — there’s no law that the Republicans can pass that will give everyone in the country a $2 raise. So your proposal is actually, “We’ll take your free preventative care away and give that money to poor people making minimum wage.”
Do you really think that Republicans will ever in a million years propose that they’ll literally take benefits away from middle class people and give them to poor people instead?
RossInDetroit
@schrodinger’s cat:
You’re shitting me. I don’t go over there but I assumed The Blogger Who Must Not Be Named would be all over this Catholic/Health/Reproductive Rights punch up. That he’s not speaks volumes.
Chuck Butcher
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Maybe you’d like to explain to these folks why you all passed Prop 5 while it failed in E OR despite higher property taxes, and how it is that now that you cut the nuts off our education you bitch about subsidizing it? Maybe you’d like to explain to these folks here how there is no difference between a patch of dirt that barely supports sage brush and cheat grass and Willamette farm land? Maybe you’d like to explain a lot to these people here on BJ about just how full of shit you are? Maybe it missed your notice that this was a Democratic stronghold? Do you have any idea how long it’s going to take to undo the “gun banning Democrats” label? Maybe you’re just short-changed by your up-bringing and parochialism? Or, maybe you are just fucking stupid.
hildebrand
@El Tiburon: My guess is that you won’t bother to actually read this – but let me give this a shot. Just because a good many folks on this board are rather happy that President Obama found a way through the foolishly sticky wicket of the contraception imbroglio, a way that paints the Republicans as the social neanderthals that they are, does not mean that we do not have the ability to, at the same time, criticize the President for those things which we vehemently disagree. You see, you can actually both like what the President does in some areas, and vigorously dislike other areas. This is called a nuanced position – you may want to give it a go.
Likewise, it should not stretch your capacities to understand that if we only blast Obama for those bits which we dislike and refuse to praise him what he does right, well, folks might think that even his supporters have abandoned him, and thus reason that perhaps they need to give the Republican a try. The problem is that the Republicans are not just sporadically maddening (like Obama), but actual nightmares waiting to be unleashed on a very large percentage of the population.
Can you not see why a great many on this board are somewhat frustrated by your blinkered insistence on only seeing the negative in Obama, whilst completely ignoring the absolute disaster that is the Republican party?
If you cannot see any of this – well, then, you are truly a completely and utterly lost cause. You have become someone for whom thinking and reasoning is simply no longer an activity – you react to particular stimuli, period. Congratulations, you have given up on what makes us truly human. Good luck in your less than exalted state. If you wish to rejoin the human race in the use of reason, you are welcome at the table.
dogwood
@schrodinger’s cat:
He’s actually got a 3 page piece about the issue, where he sides with Obama.
Mnemosyne
@El Tiburon:
I have to say, there’s nothing I love more than having men on the left lecture me about how my access to birth control is a silly, unimportant topic when compared to their very manly and important concerns that have to be talked about at every moment.
I guess all us ladies should give up our silly ideas about equal access to health care until the revolution is won and you have time in your busy day to think about our frivolous worries, amirite?
Suffern ACE
@Mnemosyne: Something tells me that even if Obama had done this in his preferred way (told the bishops to Suck Dicks), he would be complaining that the President wasn’t rude enough in his response.
Yutsano
@El Tiburon:
@Mnemosyne: Watch the tells. The professional ratfuckers ALWAYS leave tells. They just can’t help themselves.
shortstop
It’s not really about Obama for El Tiburon. It’s about being a control freak to the extent that if people don’t do exactly what he demands at all times, he becomes uncontrollably angry. Look at his inability to read social cues, his sincere belief that everyone else is always wrong and his dogged repetition of the same few simplistic insults (hmmmm, a bit Breitbart-like, when I think of it).
If he weren’t shrieking with vein-popping fury about Obama all day long, he’d be doing it about something else/many other things, and I guaran-fucking-tee y’all that in his real life, he is.
SiubhanDuinne
@RossInDetroit:
Since Obama is changing the dimensionality of chess, can we also go ahead and change the terminology?
“Check … And Checkfuck.”
(Note: if playing against Rih Santorum, it would be “Cheh … And Chehfuh.”)
El Tiburon
@hildebrand:
shortstop
@Suffern ACE: Jim, Foolish Literalist, who cracks me up on a near-daily basis (because I’m not here every day), once did a post demanding that Obama break chairs over the heads of Republican congressmen on the House floor…a parody of just that viewpoint. Still makes me laugh to think of it.
shortstop
@SiubhanDuinne: I missed the original “Rih” joke. Can someone explain it to me?
Karen
Bishops scream about religious liberty. And why shouldn’t they? When they say the government should stay out of religion what they really mean is the Church should rule the government. And yes that’s only the church. They want to save Israel but the only use they have for Jews is as cannon fodder to bring on the end of days.
Bishops and the GOP: It’s about religious liberty!
Translation: we should have the right to molest altar boys since a priest is godly therefore, the government is interfering in religion when the priest is arrested. After all, who is the government to stop G-d.
Who cares if the priest gets his rocks off by fucking altar boys, at least the priest can quote Scripture as he climaxes.
Chuck Butcher
@shortstop:
“blah people”
Mnemosyne
@Yutsano:
Speaking of tells …
Karen
@Mnemosyne:
That’s right Mnemoyne, we should just chain ourselves to the kitchen and make babies while the menfolk spread their seed to as many girls as possible. And if the girl works and the man gets tired of her, if the girl is radical enough to have a job then the man should save the children from a hellish life with one.
The nation should just be one huge Quiverful Duggar family.
SiubhanDuinne
@Rick Taylor:
More realistic.
schrodinger's cat
@dogwood: I found nothing on his blog, when I checked it earlier this evening.
schrodinger's cat
@Karen: That Duggar woman scares the crap out of me. What is the deal with her, has she been brainwashed? which woman would want to have so many children?
ETA: Isn’t a moderate Republican an oxymoron?
SiubhanDuinne
@El Tiburon:
‘s a start.
shortstop
@Chuck Butcher: Ah, of course.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@schrodinger’s cat:
It’s not on his blog. I had to Google it.
Found it on Newsweek/DailyBeast.
SiubhanDuinne
@El Tiburon:
If you happened to see a reply and snarky comment from me, I humbly and sincerely apologize. In fact, I apologize even if you didn’t see it. Wrong, rude, and misdirected.
FlipYrWhig
I like how El Tiburon can take a poll that shows that even self-identified liberal Democrats disagree with him sharply on a range of things — meaning that the number of people who agree with him is a segment of liberal Democrats, which is a segment among Democrats, which is itself a segment among people who vote for Democrats — and then use that as a way to say that _true_ liberals are being ignored by Democrats. Well, you know, if you’re a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction, maybe you just have a very bad sense of what a true liberal actually is.
The shark… bites.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike in NC:
You ask this question on Darwin’s birthday?
SiubhanDuinne
@shortstop:
He was video’d saying something about what he would do for black people, or what he would have black people do — when confronted, he claimed he didn’t say “black,” he said “blaaaa” and then changed what he was going to say.
Or something.
Anyhow, it turned into a whole “blah people” meme which turned into a whole “every-time-there’s- a-word-ending-in-CK- change-it-to-H” thus Rick = Rih, black = blah, fuck = fuh, etc.
cmorenc
@Hunter Gathers:
Query if Obama wins in 2012 and the Dems manage to hold a slim majority in the Senate, but this time with filibuster rules watered down enough to frustrate a large portion of the GOP’s ability to obstruct in that body, whether Snowe and Collins will finally consider following Lieberman’s path and declare themselves independents who will caucus with, though not formally join, the Democrats. If the GOP fails to recapture the Senate in 2012, the prospects for dems to hold at least a majority through 2016 and perhaps 2018 will be fairly strong. That prospect would take away much of the potential leverage McConnell could otherwise hold over them re: committees. For all their current betrayals of former moderate principles, neither would be likely to be the sort of treacherously egomanic horse’s ass Lieberman has been.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Darwin was a fraud. Evolution is a hoax to enrich men like Darwin so they can live in large mansions and fly private jets.
Chuck Butcher
@cmorenc:
Really? This is based on what?
LesGS
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: Thanks for the link to Sully’s Newsweek article. He must have posted it from England, as it’s already tomorrow where he is. His underbloggers have been running his site for the last week or so.
Mary
@Martin: If it takes four paragraphs to explain to the electorate, it’s not a winning argument.
Soonergrunt
@shortstop: Rick Santorum, a couple of weeks back, was making a speech, that like most conservatives, equated poor people with low morals and so forth. It was starting to verge into some pretty racist territory when he apparently realized there were cameras there, right as he was about to say “black people” (that’s the only contextural thing that makes sense) and he cut it off at ‘blah.’
So now people occasionally call him “rih” instead of Rick.
kay
My sister says Santorum is horribly disrespectful and patronizing to his wife.
She watched an interview where they were together after a campaign event, on CSPAN.
She says Santorum interrupts, talks over and jumps in to answer questions that are directed to his wife.
I noticed that political media are seizing on his “gender comments” and I wonder if that’s the theme because they see how he treats his wife.
gex
@SiubhanDuinne: I’m guessing it goes like this: Moderate Republicans don’t subscribe to the rape culture of these extremists, so they have a reproductive disadvantage.
Soonergrunt
@SiubhanDuinne,
I’m assuming that since that post reappeared in the filter that you want it to go away?
dww44
@capt: I’ve been out in the boonies all weekend with no internet and no cable TV, so I just have to quickly weigh in at the start on this:
I honestly believe it is more about Obama-derangement symptom than about contraception, but still and all, as a woman who came of age when contraception and abortion became legally safe and obtainable, I am simply gobsmacked that we women are allowing this to happen to us. The women of my generation, whether D or R or I, ought to be standing together and shouting No, loudly and clearly.
Furthermore, this is a ginned-up controversy which otherwise normally sane and progressive males have bought into and the MSM ( of which they are a part) are framing this issue for maxiumum coverage. David Gregory’s lead-in to MTP this morning made me want to throw my shoe at him.
With access only to a TV and digital converter box and antenna, I did catch the Bill Moyers show on one of those dot channels that aren’t available on my cable service (and because public tv people in the state are such cowards that they run Moyers show where it will least likely be seen).
Anyways he had this wonderful conversation with Bruce Bartlett, the sane conservative economist from the Reagan Administration, about tax policy, but in which Bartlett comes right out and says that the conservative movement has totally dominated the political conversation for the last couple of decades, thanks in large part to Fox News. He actually said it. The entire show is worth a watch.
http://billmoyers.com/segment/bruce-bartlett-on-where-the-right-went-wrong/
fellatio alger
Someone needs to inform the Republicans and the Catholic bishops that sex with pre-pubescents is not an acceptable form of birth control.
/delurk
Uriel
@El Tiburon:
I know, right? What’s with all the women’s issues shit? It’s not like they’re important, or make up over half the population, or anything!
Equal pay? Preventative health care? LOL! Back to the kitchen, makin’ those sandwiches while us men-folk discuss all the really important stuff…
cmorenc
@Chuck Butcher:
It’s sort of analogous to the theory of relativity, according to which nothing can exceed the speed of light. Except this is the theory of political relativity, in which no Senator who defects from his party to become a nominal independent can ever exceed the treacherous assholery of Joe Lieberman. He’s one of the fundamental constants of political nature, except defined by darkness instead of light. Just as with what happens with matter in the theory of relativity when one attempts to accelerate it toward the speed of light, the more it approaches it, the more its inertial mass increases exponentially and thus the amount of energy required to further accelerate it increases exponentially. In short, under the political law of Lieberman relativity, neither Collins nor Snowe can possibly summon the amount of political energy needed to reach Lieberman’s level of treacherous assholery. If they ever did, they’d pop out into another political dimension entirely, possibly in Azerbaijan or Turkmenistan or maybe even on a Mars-like planet orbiting a different star as members of parliament in the land of Geekdonia.
Suffern ACE
@dww44: We’ve discussed the futility of glitter bombs before. However, if you do happen to throw your shoe at Chuck Todd, I’ll go on a hunger strike until your portrait is carved into Mount Rushmore.
DanielX
@RossInDetroit:
Yeah, they’re waiting to be mated all right and not in a good way either – gonna be Santorum flying every which way. I have to think the good bishops and Turtle Boy have just handed the election to Obama on a golden platter, and possibly the House as well. At this point all Democratic candidates have to do is say “I will see that your right of access to whatever means of contraception you choose is not changed or impeded in any way.”
Moderate Republicans? It is to laugh…in the presidential race, Mittens is what passes for a moderate Republican. Be on the lookout for any signs of moderation in his speeches in the past few weeks or in coming weeks and months. There won’t be any. He has to double down on teh crazy with every state that goes by, and by November he’ll be chasing parked cars.
Rick Taylor
Just to add, Taylor Marsh who is by no means typically a strong supporter of Obama recently wrote
NickM
Cause corporations and more specifically our employers don’t have enough control over our lives already?
I’ve got an idea – employers can deny birth control if they give two years paid maternity leave. Deal?
Veritas78
@Rick Taylor: Yes!! Agreed, completely. Everyone panned the Gettysburg address the week it was given. Same thing. This was just plain brilliant. Our guy tied everyone and every issue into one neat knot and they’ll spend the next decade trying to undo it and wriggle out.
To mix another metaphor, he caused everyone else to play all their cards, while he has all of his left. It’s 11-dimensional poker. My head aches at how smart he is.
cat48
@Martin:
The Institute of Medicine stated Birth Control should be included in the Well Woman Package. The admin. asked for a Preventative Health Package & that’s what they came back with. I don’t think “liberals” are trying to throw goodies in. Contraceptives can be $1200yr or more & they’re covered in the damn Congress’ package; since the 1990’s. I think your wrong & so does the Institute of Medicine. heh
newhavenguy
@ Cole: If the press were worth half a shit, Art Pope and the Brothers Koch would be whacking them they way they do in the new Russia.
Half-joking about that. I think.
Chuck Butcher
@cmorenc:
So you’re saying that we’re dealing with the calculus of infinite approximation where the interval approaches zero and thus is, but at the same time not, the same as…
and they’re ?fatheads.
Chuck Butcher
@cmorenc:
I sincerly hope it took you awhile to come up with that… or you’ve had it saved up because if that’s off the top of your head, you may be a rather disturbed individual and disqualified from things like taking walks alone…
Odie Hugh Manatee
@El Tiburon:
Did you say something? I thought I heard something. Nope? Ok, carry on.
gf120581
JC is not the only one speechless over this. I am too. I find it absolutely amazing that the GOP has apparently completely given up on the economy and now appears to be staking all their electoral hopes on something the vast majority of Americans take for granted. It’s sheer madness.
Earth to the GOP; if you have given up on the economy as an issue, you have already conceded the election. The only way you were going to beat Obama was on the economy and if that is now off the table, you’re done. You might as well just pack up, go home and by the way, tell Boner to start vacating the Speaker’s office, because Pelosi will be reclaiming it soon.
PIGL
@celticdragonchick: Needless to say, we’d prefer nobody died in the whole world ever.
The point was not wishing death on American soldiery. The point was to scathingly mock the horrific notion that merely the shadow of reduced risk for our spotless christian heroes was sufficient to justify any course of action, notably drone strikes against civilian targets.
Triassic Sands
“Honestly?” You’re lying, John. The truth is that while the GOP has lost its ability to surprise us with their stupidity, they can still shock us. But, nothing they do is unbelievable.
If the president comes out against eating poop, just grab the popcorn and sit back and wait for the Republican legislation mandating the eating of poop.
Bon Poopetit!
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Jenn: “Quite frankly, there are assholes on both sides of the Cascades.”
I’m a certified asshole; I lived in eastern Washington and now I live in western Oregon.
You nailed it! :)
Kane
Think about the conversations that are taking place in the bedrooms across the country where wives and girlfriends are explaning to their mates that condomless sex may be a thing of the past. That’s really going to go over well.
Gretchen
@178 Kay: HuffPost had an article saying that Mrs. Santorum for most of her 20’s lived in sin with a much-older ob/gyn who ran an abortion clinic! That explains Rick’s obsession with abortion doctors and women who use birth control to have consequence-free illicit sex. She’s probably spent their entire marriage doing penance for her sinful past while he shames her/tries to forgive her for having been such a slut. It actually made me feel sorry for her, being grateful to him for rescuing her sinful self and allowing her a new start with uptight, chaste Rick.
TenguPhule
Is it finally time for the glorious purge of the Fanatics on the right, so that the streets flow with rivers of the their black blood?
Joey Maloney
@SiubhanDuinne:
More useful.
SRW1
John B and Mitch McC have concluded that this Romney guy just doesn’t cut it and is turning off the base, thereby not only failing to win the White House, but also endangering the House majority and preventing a takeover in the Senate. So, fuck Mittens, let’s go with riling up the base. Worked for Karl in 2004, after all.
Also foreshadows that the general is gonna be a shit storm of negative campaigning. But that was a given anyway.
Darnell From LA
How far to the right has the modern GOP lurched on the issue of birth control?
Well, to get an idea, guess what US President said this:
Sounds kinda like a flaming liberal, huh? Nope. It was Richard Milhous Nixon in July of 1969!
Uh, yeah. Wow. Nixon would get booed off the stage at CPAC if he were around today. Unreal.
Death Panel Truck
@Jenn: I live east of the Cascades (Pasco, Washington), and I’m definitely not one of the fucktards.
But most of my neighbors are. And I can do fuckall about it, so I don’t try.
Lex
Those of you who are pointing out that there are no more moderate Republicans have stumbled over part of what’s really going on here.
As in 2004, the GOP isn’t going to try to win by appealing to moderates. It’s going to try to win by turning out its wingnut evangelical base. With a unifying, charismatic candidate, or even Santorum, at the top of the ticket, that would be relatively easy. With Willard … well, not so much.
So they’re using “contraception” as code for “birth control” to try to get their base to the polls in November. What support Romney has is an inch deep, and something like one in five evangelicals don’t even think the LDS Church is Christian, so fighting the culture wars again is the only trick they’ve got left.
fuckwit
The Rethugs have invaded Moscow in the winter.
Good luck with that.