Ironically, Lawless noted, all the attention to contraception at the moment may end up boosting the overall public standing of the 2010 health care law. Free preventive health care, whether it’s a cancer screening or the pill, may well become as popular as provisions like allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ health plans until age 26. – 2012: The year of ‘birth control moms’?
Religious conservatives, their right-wing supporters and their Republican allies have finally overstepped and what played out last week was proof. The Susan G. Komen catastrophe, starring right-wing ideologue Karen Handel, now seems like foreshadowing.
The Tea Party was the germination, which inspired the Koch Bros, Dick Armey and an explosion of political opportunists, beginning with Rush, Sean and the wingnut radio bunch, leaching on to the energy. Well-funded and stoked on anger, Republicans harnessed that energy, but couldn’t control it, including in Congress.
Because of the 2010 political malpractice by the Democratic Party, state legislatures turned Republican in record numbers, unleashing a wave of anti-women’s freedom campaigns that culminated most recently in Virginia.
Representing a crescendo of events over months that turned into years, in walks Pres. Obama with his free contraceptive mandate and we were off to the First Amendment races, which has tripped up every religious conservative, no matter the party, and right-wing Republicans, as well as moderately perceived advocates, in droves.
The Catholic Church is telling women we shouldn’t use birth control.
Religious conservatives are holding hearings on the issue without a single female witness.
Joe Scarborough compared Obama’s mandate to a federal mandate for female deacons to be ordained in Southern Baptists churches. Even after challenged by his co-host Mika Brzezinski, he dug in; when I challenged him in a column Scarborough unraveled.
Republicans like Joe Scarborough and religious conservatives, represented so well by Rick Santorum, who is now caterwauling about Obama’s policies aren’t based on the Bible, are entitled to their own ideological beliefs and opinions. They are not entitled to their own facts. If Mika Brzezinski’s opinion was valued equally to Scarborough’s the discussion might have ended differently.
Rick Santorum is bellyaching because of a media double-standard he sees regarding his Super PAC sugar daddy versus Jeremiah Wright.
Pres. Obama can be called a “secret Muslim,” be forced to give a speech on race and religion, but Mitt Romney’s Mormonism can’t be discussed and his spokesperson gets away with stonewalling the press on a subject Romney himself opened up, baptismal of the dead, euphemistically called “proxy baptism”.
People are aware that the Mormon Church and Romney benefactor Frank VanderSloot poured massive funding into the Proposition 8 fiasco in California that was just overturned? How many know the heavy hand of billionaire Frank VanderSloot and the threats he uses to silence critics?
From an important investigative piece by Glenn Greenwald:
Most of those who have been successfully bullied out of their free speech rights are reluctant to talk about what happened for fear of further retribution. But now, VanderSloot may have picked the wrong person to bully.
Jody May-Chang is an independent journalist and an LGBT spokesperson in Boise. By coincidence, she was one of the local reporters who interviewed me last weekend when I spoke to the annual Bill of Rights dinner of the ACLU in Idaho. At the end of the interview, she mentioned to me the series of threats issued to local LGBT journalists and bloggers by VanderSloot. Unbeknownst to May-Chang at the time, she, too, had been targeted for the crime of speaking critically of the Idaho CEO.
What are we saying if we let the traditional media and cable news-tainment show hosts purposefully ignore important facts even when challenged? Or we refuse to question religious institutions and individuals who are flexing their power across the political spectrum in ways that make Jerry Falwell’s dreams seem modest?
If we’re not going to ask questions after a politician says something that would lead any curious person to probe further, then what’s the point of the modern day religious test?
If we don’t want specifics and an honest conversation about religion, are we saying we don’t care what your religion is as long as you believe in God?
Nothing impacts public policy across this country where women are concerned greater than the interference of religious institutions in public policy matters. We’ve also found that religious institutions have taken for granted the ignorance of politicians and the public. Through the exercise of watching the shock when women like myself and many others challenge them that the First Amendment swings both ways, we’ve found religious conservatives, our cable talking heads and the media don’t think that’s important.
Religious conservatism also interferes with our diplomacy, the use of soft power and the focus on women’s roles, which Secy. Clinton has brought to the forefront through women’s empowerment being at the heart of stabilizing developing nations. As I’ve written innumerable times, it’s another aspect of the Hillary Effect.
But as long as we’re cherry-picking religious questions, is a Jewish president out because he’s not a Christian or because of the offensive notion of possible duel loyalties?
All we need to know is the person is god-fearing, right?
Oh, and not a Muslim.
Sean Hannity still brings up Jeremiah Wright when talking about Barack Obama. Following right-wing radio talking points, Rick Santorum did it this week.
Rick Santorum’s bag man thinks it’s funny to play Old Coot and say women are just too emotional about birth control. Take an aspirin, honey, preferably between your knees.
Religious conservatives like Virginia’s Gov. Bob McDonnell and Republicans across this country, state by state, have decided it’s a good idea to assault a woman with a transvaginal probe when she’s in crisis.
Everyone’s faith is a little bit kooky to an unbeliever. Watch Bill Maher’s “Religulous”, now available online free to see, and you’ll be challenged. I’m sure many people would find my meditation, backed by an Episcopalian and Christian foundation, not only non-traditional but blasphemous for the way I see Jesus Christ after a lifetime of contemplation.
It’s pretty clear after the latest argument on contraception that we could not do any worse with an atheist in the Oval Office.
That won’t happen in America, because religious conservatives and the institutions that back them control the political and legislative processes, as well as the politicians who win elections and the media who reports on it all.
That’s the system Pres. Obama and his administration challenged with the contraceptive mandate, which is no doubt bolstered by polling proving the majority of women in this country stand behind him.
Religious conservatives and their allies in the media and news-tainment shows know they’ve lost the biggest battle of all due to a constitutional carve-out that was as ingenious to create as it was to proffer. It’s clear they don’t intend to go down quietly.
Another “out-of-the-park” analysis. Plus I LOVE the graphic. The caveman model has been playing in my mind for the last two weeks. The Republicans might as well change the name of the party to the “Neanderthalicans”.
However many years ago it was that the “traditional marriage” arguments errupted, three of us ”gay activists,” as we were usually called, were on a local television station early morning show. The “other side of the argument” was represented by the pastor of one of the larger local Southern Baptist congregations. The conversation quickly moved to LGBT equality in general. The pastor’s biggest argument against “homosexual rights” was because gaining them was certain to be disruptive to society, cause strife that would be harmful to “this great nation of ours, which was founded on Christianity.” “Gay rights,” he insisted, would be as dangerous to “our innocent children” as had been “the women’s movement.” And somehow he managed to bring abortion into it.
Rewrapped in 2012 language, the current attacks on women, and on the “homosexuals” and the “illegals” and whoever else fills the “them” role for the “us” who seriously believe their beliefs should be the norm for the nation (well actually, for the world and probably the universe) have an unfortunately long and deep history upon which to draw. I don’t think the current moment will put an end to all of this, but it may very well be another step along the way in more people firmly rejecting the merge of “church and state.”
What this has finally done is show once and for all that what these people hate are women. They hate women in the biblical sense, in that women are sinners and evil, that they are a threat to men. This is what it has been about all along. They hate sex; it reminds me of a documentary a while back about old Afghan men getting married to 14 year old girls; they have sex with them and then go take a bath to wash the “filth” off. Muslim women are forced to cover themselves up so as not to agitate men. So because Allah apparently gave men no self control their women must pay the price. An orthodox Israeli sect makes women sit in the back of the bus and attacks them on the street for dressing “ immodestly .” Then of course we have the Mormons, a religion created out of thin air by one John Smith, who one day decided that he needed to have sex with more than one woman and announced that god had decreed it. How many sects created and nurtured by charismatic preachers have turned out to be nothing but a vehicle for raping young women. I sometimes think this is what religion was always all about; a group of men needed a mechanism to hold sway over women and the poor and came up with the perfect way to control them. Women in this country better wake up, religious fanatics are the same the world over, it’s only their religion that is different. All of them see women the same way; a necessary evil needed for procreation.
“All of them see women the same way; a necessary evil needed for procreation.”
… and pleasure too, BUT only for the men of course. What really riles them is women having sex for pleasure or for a purpose other than procreation.
I must say, the more we discuss this issue the more I am amazed that we are discussing birth control and sex in an election year. One person commenting on Krugman NYT’s blog described the Republican party as a very sick animal on a suicide mission. I personally with the party good luck and hope they expedite the whole process. While it has been hugely entertaining to see the party self-destruct and listen to the clowns that are running for office, it is scary that anyone holding (or pretending to hold) their views have a credible shot at the presidency, and we really deserve a better opposition party. As a result of right wing craziness Obama’s very real failings are not discussed as thoroughly and intelligently as they deserve to be.
Obama must be laughing in that Oval office of his. By espousing most of the center right policies traditionally promoted by the right, none the least on health care and foreign policy, he has forced the current crop of candidates to enter the extreme wingnut crazy land. If Romney is the nominee it will be interesting to see how he manages the journey back to sanity.
I must say, when I and the lil redhead left for Europe 6 months ago I never imagined that I would come back and end up in a episode of the Twilight Zone. I knew republicans where out in right field, but I never thought in my wildest dreams that they would have left the planet and fell down the rabbit hole. To come back and see these clowns declaring war on women and thinking this is what Americans want is just plain insane.
I think maybe I’ll wake up and find out that its just all a bad dream and Rod Serling has been playing a trick on me from the grave but alas, it isn’t a dream, its a god damn nightmare.
You should have stayed in Europe. Like that guy in the elevator on that old Twilight Zone episode, you’ve just gotten off on the 13th floor.
Lol.
I saw that episode this week on the syfy channel. Creepy. And, one of the tamer but appropriate words that can be used in all of these disgusting displays.
I’m really thrilled to read your comments & see how much the issues here move you. I never tire or am surprised when I look in at comments to find such unique musings.
This graphic and the one posted yesterday by Taylor from ladywalker68 (to begin to illustrate what has been happening in this country and annotated in this post by Taylor) should be put in a hall of shame-fame for the year 2012 as we chronicle the ongoing full assault from irrational, hate-mongering, sex-petrified, woman-fearing/loathing, religion-whoring (those who are religious or not and who use religion as a political weapon), fire-breathing mostly scared, inferior and inadequate males (and the few twisted females who agree and submit to their madness) in their war to end all wars against us women.
I keep pinching myself and checking to see if our household still has most of the conveniences of the 21 century at our fingertips and if my typing these words on this laptop is all a dream and I’m actually back in time spending all day breaking my back washing the family laundry down by the river.
Which is it?
I hope greenberg’s pollng is right and this whole bcontrol thing is changing the electoral advantages. these nuts need to be flushed out of office. they must be purged- out of step on so many things from bcontrol to the vra etc.. the list is endless I hope there is another wave in 12 to take out these dangerous yahoos.
Seconded.
“Because of the 2010 political malpractice by the Democratic Party, state legislatures turned Republican in record numbers, unleashing a wave of anti-women’s freedom campaigns that culminated most recently in Virginia.”
That is the money shot in all of this. I mean really, can you blame shit house rat crazy repugnantklaner/teabaggers for behaving like shit house rat crazy repugnantklaner/teabaggers?
And I don’t say that to start another round of blaming the voters…I simply want to start from a point in the reality based universe. The Dems once they had the Presidency and Senate and House just sat back and figured back to same ol same ol and keep the corporate money machine chugging along.
The REPUGS forced along with the monster they had created the teabaggers were energized.
Young people, first time voters and women were disgusted with the Dems and stayed home. Repug./bagger wave thunders in. NOT that they had convinced anyone their insanity was a better deal, the Dems, disgusted with the same ol same ol stayed home.
But the repug/bagger morons…being morons actually BELIEVE they have a mandate from the people and start acting like the shit house rat crazy, superstition based universe imbecilic assmonkeys they are and we find ourselves at this point in history.
And the public stares in open mouthed horror and amazement. Let’s hope come election day the public remembers just how mediEVIL these superstition based world view Koch suckers are.
Yup, it can’t be overlooked or denied, the Dems had the advantage starting again in 2009 and blew it.
I’ve never seen so much cowardice on both sides of the isle (the elephants for fearing the tea party fanatics will primary them so they kowtow to almost every tea party whim to the point of even voting against legislation they once supported or by refusing to compromise) in all of my years of paying attention to politics and that was at 12 years old and glued in front of my TV set mesmerized by the Watergate hearings.
It’s not only sad, it’s dangerous that this is the case as so many of us see now with what has happened recently with the GOP (and the now-questionable and forever tainted “charitable” Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation) going after and in some cases like in Virginia chipping away at Roe, going after Planned Parenthood and women’s health and reproductive freedoms.
Courage and Statesmanship in the US Congress nowadays is dangerously extinct.
Related: On C-Span Books, Sen. Bernie Sanders will host/interview Ira Shapiro who Wrote “The Last Great Senate: Courage and Statesmanship in Times of Crisis” (the Senate of the 1960′s and 1970′s) at 9 this evening on C-Span2 aka C-Span Books.
http://tinyurl.com/8yn7l3t
I’m tuning in and I’m putting this book on my list. It should be mandatory (I know, the wee elephants just hate that word nowadays) reading for every member of Congress. And, also for anyone interested in political history to see just how far down the rabbit hole we’ve fallen.
As Taylor and many of her followers know, the one issue that gets my blood boiling is taking a woman’s right to choose away. I spent more than 1/2 of my professional life in reproductive health care, mostly in the developing world. When I hear a nut-case like Rick Santorum say that “contraception is dangerous” I have to wonder how many people understand the ramifications of not preventing pregnancies. Contraceptives have prevented untold deaths from occurring during pregnancy and delivery (something the Catholic Church and the men in red dresses and red pointed shoes refuse to admit). My great-grandmother died following the death of her 6th child. The benefits of contraception far out way the risks and that is statistically proven. And when surveyed prior to the Roe v Wade decision a majority of women said that they would obtain an abortion if they felt they couldn’t go through a pregnancy, “back-ally or legally.” Add to that, the number of women who died as a result of “back-ally, kitchen table” abortions, you have an excellent reason for allowing a woman to choose. Not to mention it’s her body and no one should reign supreme over a woman’s body except the woman.
If the men of the Santorum-ilk and their “Stepford Wives” want to follow their religious beliefs, so be it but they have no right to impose their beliefs on those who do not subscribe to those beliefs. I will not be ruled by the Vatican and a bunch of men who haven’t a clue about the realities of women’s lives or the dangers that they impose on them by not allowing the use of contraceptives.
This is the 21st century not medieval Europe. American women better stay on their toes; otherwise they might find themselves “barefoot and pregnant” as in the past.
I started calling the GOP The Other Guys several years ago. I did that because, like their namesakes from that Stargate SG-1 episode, I don’t expect anything better of them than what they do. So, yes, I can’t really blame them. They are what they are, though it’s often I’ve wished they were more.
OTOH, I can’t blame the Democrats for being as they are, either. Progressives keep supporting them, no matter how little they do for us. They are going to have to experience at least one more election loss, maybe two, before they get the stupid knocked out of them. That won’t happen until either the Republicans get better at governing, or progressives get better at punishing their politicians for screwing up.
What’s going to happen is that eventually, the Right will get what it wants, because they are smart enough to not allow their politicians to get away with not doing what they want. Call them crazy if you want, but they’re still way ahead of us, and likely to stay there.
Democrats – neither the voters, nor the office-holders, nor the party pros – would not support an atheist candidate, either.
That’s a deal-breaker for both major parties, and evidently will be for many years to come.
Americans are very odd about religion, these days.
They can’t abide an atheist and it seems increasingly many insist on taking their sacred texts as written, rather than fewer with the passing years.
But however guilty they feel about it they want their birth control, their legal abortions, and a good dose of sex in their ordinary culture, pop and high.
And a whole lot of Christian moms are only too anxious to start their girls on the pill as soon as they hit menarche.
They certainly don’t want the bishops making the rules.
But the Republicans can’t win without the religious right and the Democrats feel a need to tease them away.
So we see a nation that wants no part of it increasingly at risk of intrusive clerical power.
Hasn’t something very like this happened to Israeli politics, over recent decades?
Well, that would because many people have no clue about the Christianity they espouse. The meditative, contemplative and, dare I say ecstatic ,forms of the Christian faith have been around since the Holy Fools* of Egypt accidentally started the monastic movement.
* the term is not disparaging. The tradition of the Holy Fool for God has a very strong base in the Orthodox Christian faith, especially in the Russian Orthodox faith. In the Western , Roman Catholic, faith Saint Francis of Assisi is the sin qua non of the Holy Fool for God.
This is exactly why I don’t comment here anymore. I am beyond words at the faith bashing that goes on at this site.
Any timidity to join a full range discussion on issues relating to religion is your choice. Blaming others for it is beneath you and the debate, which is warranted considering what’s being done in the name of faith from state to state in this country.
Shameful comment, kris.
No one here is faith bashing. What people here are upset about is when someone like Santorum wants to make me conform to his idea of what faith is. When someone who is running for President thinks that his faith is the only true faith and he will use his power as President to make sure we all conform to what he thinks his god is telling him, I for one have a problem.
I think back to the line that the late Christopher Hitchens liked to use…”Mr. President, build up that wall”. I’ll add another line… Mr. President, keep your hands off my body and out of my bedroom.
I would be reasonably sure some folks would consider me a “faith bashing” sort. If they mean I will not sit idly by when someone is making absurd claims for powerful nvisible friends in the sky when reality points in another direction….well “faith based” folks have always called those who insist on dealing from the reality based universe “bashers”. If your faith is so strong….how can widdle ol me and my kindred spirits shake it with simple old science and reality? But I don’t INSIST you(anyone…not anyone in particular, unless you recognize yourself) give up your superstitious delusion.They DO insist we all live according to theirs.
Other than Secular, no one is bashing “faith” around here. What is being called to task is individuals who use their “faith” as a club to impose their authoritarian world view on others.
To echo Taylor, you decide to post or not to post; don’t blame others for your silence. An open forum like Taylor Marsh is going to attract all sorts of views. Some of those views will be off-putting, perhaps even rude.
But as rude as some of us may seem, we do have a right to our views. Secular owes you exactly zero deference to your religious views. He has the right to even openly mock them, that is freedom of speech, and freedom of conscience. You can either choose to defend your views or not. But this concern trolling is beneath you Kris. You are not a victim, your faith is not under any type of assault. What may be under assault is your assumption that religion is owed deference, that religions’ delicate sensibilities be honored. Nonsense Kris, just because monotheists are an overwhelming majority ( belief in a deity polling around 85%) does not given them any special privileges. That majority does not incur any kind of deference or privilege.
You have two options here, get off the fainting couch and engage, or you can invoke the right to remain silent. Either way; no whining allowed.
Mr. President, keep your hands off my body and out of my bedroom.
And there you have the illogic of liberalism. If you root for a government to put their hands into people’s pockets, it ain’t all that inconsistent when they end up on other pieces of an individual’s property as well.
Liberals displayed the tools of government control to the SoCons and now the Liberals reap what they sowed.
And I spend my life learning how to effectively manuever around both your forms of disease.
1.”Mr. President, keep your hands off my body and out of my bedroom.
And there you have the illogic of liberalism. If you root for a government to put their hands into people’s pockets, it ain’t all that inconsistent when they end up on other pieces of an individual’s property as well.”
That has got to be hands down the stupidest thing posted here for some time….and that’s saying something considering.
2.”Liberals displayed the tools of government control to the SoCons and now the Liberals reap what they sowed.”
NOPE…I was wrong….this is even MORE stupid and equally as dishonest.
3.”And I spend my life learning how to effectively manuever around both your forms of disease.”
Is that supposed to actually mean anything?
Wow Casual,
Did uncle Rush put those gems in your mind, or did you read them off a bathroom wall?
The only way your argument makes any sense is if you, like the Supreme Court, consider corporations people. Otherwise, the government has every right to regulate the actions of an organization wholly created out of the laws created by that government. Without government, without contract law, corporations do not exist–got it? Businesses need an impartial referee when disputes come up between businesses and customers. Without a stable monetary platform, business goes away and is replaced by barter. Guess who provides the money? Guess who provides the police force to protect that business’s property? Guess who provides the roads that helps move the business’ goods? Guess who provides protection of the business’ intellectual property?
I’m also unaware of this “theft” you talk about. Government does collect taxes, which are nothing more than the dues you have to pay to live in civilized society. They are the insurance policy you pay to prevent dieing in the street should you be struck down by disease or misfortune or economic downturn. But hey if you have a problem with the social safety net, you can live free in the Libertarian paradise of Somalia, or in the depths of the Congo , where the Kalashnikov is law. No dirty, mean liberals keeping you down there Casual– I can’t believe you haven’t booked a flight yet.
“No dirty, mean liberals keeping you down there Casual– I can’t believe you haven’t booked a flight yet.”
Because that would require integrity and BALLS…that’s why.
Hahahahahahahahaha! you are a funny guy casual.