Chuck Todd realizes there are "too many crazy white guys" in the Republican Party

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Actually, it's a party controlled and dominated by crazy white guys, to take nothing away from the craziness of the non-whites and/or non-guys, and it's not just on reproductive rights, which was the specific issue Todd was initially referencing, but on pretty much everything. But credit him at least for going there:

On MSNBC's "The Daily Rundown," host Chuck Todd asked Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, on Thursday about report commissioned by two conservative groups that found that the Republican party is still lagging behind the Democratic party with women voters.

According to the report, obtained by Politico on Wednesday, women said the GOP was "stuck in the past" and "intolerant." The poll found that 49 percent of women view the Republican party unfavorably and 39 percent view the Democratic party unfavorably.

When asked why the party is doing worse with female voters than in 2010, Priebus argued that the GOP can close this 10-point gap by ramping up outreach and focusing on the economy.

"You know, I'm not sure," Priebus responded. "But I think the point of that poll wasn't reported by Politico. The point was if you looked at it, women were rejecting the Democratic party by 40 percent; they were rejecting the Republican party by 50 percent. I don't think either party can do a victory lap here."

He continued to say that Republicans just need to "fight" for the votes by countering Democratic attacks and pushing conservative economic policy ideas.

Todd pressed him on this.

"But the problem you seem to have is when it comes to women voters, do the -- do the arguments about contraception end up blind -- basically putting the party on mute with those same women voters who may like your economic proposals but say, you know what, there's just too many crazy white guys who have crazy theories about my reproductive system?" Todd asked, adding that Republicans have the same issue with Latino voters and immigration issues.

And climate change and fiscal policy and foreign policy and labor issues and health care and...

Plan B for Plan B

By Mustang Bobby

After several court battles, the Obama administration and the Department of Health and Human Services has dropped their opposition to imposing age limits on emergency contraception, aka Plan B.

The government’s decision means that any woman or girl will soon be able to walk into a drugstore and buy the pill, Plan B One-Step, without a prescription.

The Justice Department had been fighting to prevent that outcome, but said late Monday afternoon that it would accept its losses in recent court rulings and begin putting into effect a judge’s order to have the Food and Drug Administration certify the drug for nonprescription use. In a letter to Judge Edward R. Korman of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, the administration said it would comply with his demands.

The Justice Department appears to have concluded that it might lose its case with the appeals court and would have to decide whether to appeal to the Supreme Court. That would drastically elevate the debate over the politically delicate issue for Mr. Obama.

I think Booman is on to something: President Obama was really in favor of letting anyone have access to Plan B, but he knew that if he said he supported it, that would galvanize the opposition simply because he’s in favor of it. He also knew that it would infuriate his base among pro-choice voters. But he also knew that if he put up a fight and then gave up after making an adequate attempt, he would have cover on an issue that could have been used against Democrats in the mid-terms. Got it?

It’s exasperating, but that’s how the game is played. The worst part of it is that time, money, and political capital was wasted on a fight that was fixed from the start.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Behind the Ad: Romney wrong on women's health

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.) 

Who: Planned Parenthood.

Where: Colorado and Virginia.

What's going on: Despite the fact that Mitt Romney is trying to have it both ways on reproductive rights, Planned Parenthood wants voters to know they're not buying it.


(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Behind the Ad: The Obama campaign on reproductive rights

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.) 

Who: The Obama-Biden campaign.

Where: Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, and Virginia.

What's  going on: The Obama campaign is still working hard to reach voters about Mitt Romney's dangerous perspective on women's health issues. Steve Benen at The Maddow Blog thinks it could be the fifth ad on Romney and reproductive rights, and I'm not going to argue the point.

It began airing yesterday.

Appropriately, it's called "Dangerous."
 

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

God retarded my baby

By Capt. Fogg

Giving birth to a disabled child is God's way of punishing women for having had a prior abortion, says Virginia Representative Bob Marshall, R-13th:

In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There's a special punishment Christians would suggest.

Yes, it's redundant to mention that he's a Republican, a raging mob which for the last few decades has been the party of and a party to promoting such shameless indecencies. Of course, some biblical scholars tell us that the story of Abraham and Isaac was a priestly way of moving away from a prior and very ancient practice of sacrificial infanticide, but indeed, the first born male lamb in the flock of a Hebrew shepherd was to be sacrificed and the first born son was at one, very pre-Christian time, dedicated to service in the Temple.

Of course, there hasn't been a Temple since the 9th of Av in the year 70 CE, and Christians really don't hold with more than 9 or 10 of the 613 commandments and none of the Rabbinical laws, but that doesn't stop the kind of shoot-from-the-hip theology prevalent in these days of the senescence of American Christianity. Christians might suggest anything in truth, but if they're suggesting any such thing, it's a suggestion with no roots in the teachings of Jesus.

One might be tempted to ask Bob why, according to antique Jewish law largely set aside by Jesus and his followers, Christians who don't force their first born to become priests aren't subject to the same punishment, but his answer isn't very likely to enlighten us.

Surely anyone who still believes in a God with some tenuous attachment to decency if not actual justice will have trouble with the bloody Saturnine entity who condemns a child to a lifetime of pain and deformity because of something his mother did. But not Bob Marshall.

Some will have difficulty reconciling the position that it's indecent to mention that someone may be mentally retarded unless the mention is made by some pasquillant Republican creep like Limbaugh; but not Bob Marshall and probably not a large number of morally retarded, power hungry and profoundly ignorant Republican Theocrats who haven't bothered to consider that the enormously vast majority of children with deformities and defects and abnormalities are not born to mothers who aborted their first pregnancies.

Down Syndrome for one, seems more likely to affect children of older mothers. Conjoined twins, anencephalic babies, spina bifida, heart defects -- can anyone show any statistical correlation with sin? Of course not and anyone promising that virtuous people are less likely to give birth to lives affected by diseases and afflictions and deficiencies is likely to be a liar and an idiot, willing to use other people's tragedies to gain political power -- like Bob Marshall.

I await Sarah Palin's response to what could, amongst people who can actually reason consistently, be taken as an accusation of having had an abortion. I'm sure she'll choose to ignore it however, for fear of damaging the fabric of the alternate universe in which the ultra-right lives: where right and wrong, left and right, up and down are nebulous and interchangeable concepts and useful only to defame the enemies of these Insaneocrats and to yoke Jesus to their bandwagon like an ox.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Bush's 'Right of Conscience' rule is unconscionable

By LindaBethWell, the threatened "right of conscience" regulation was pushed through by President Bush on Thursday as a "midnight regulation." This regulation would allow anyone to refuse to participate in medical procedures they feel goes against their religious beliefs. "Employees" are defined broadly: from the pharmacist filling a prescription for antibiotics to a cashier refusing to ring out oral contraceptives, to the one who cleans the surgical tools after a procedure involving a blood transfusion. From The Washington Post:

The far-reaching regulation cuts off federal funding for any state or local government, hospital, health plan, clinic or other entity that does not accommodate doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other employees who refuse to participate in care they find ethically, morally or religiously objectionable.

The regulation is clearly targeted toward providing a way for medical professionals to opt out of performing or assisting in abortion procedures and prescribing and dispensing the "Morning after Pill." But this isn't *just* an issue of reproductive rights, as if that weren't reason enough to be outraged. Refusing AIDS treatment to unmarried or gay patients, refusing blood transfusions to patients (Jehovah's Witnesses), refusing to treat mental illness with anything but prayer (Christian Scientists) are possibilities as well.

According to an American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists report via The Los Angeles Times:

In calling for limits on “conscientious refusals,” ACOG cited four recent examples. In Texas, a pharmacist rejected a rape victim's prescription for emergency contraception. In Virginia, a 42-year-old mother of two became pregnant after being refused emergency contraception. In California, a physician refused to perform artificial insemination for a lesbian couple. (In August, the California Supreme Court ruled that this refusal amounted to illegal discrimination based on sexual orientation.) And in Nebraska, a 19-year-old with a life-threatening embolism was refused an early abortion at a religiously affiliated hospital.

And from Medical News Today:

Supporters of the proposal said it will protect doctors who do not wish to perform abortions or provide birth control to unmarried women, or perform artificial insemination procedures.

This clearly isn't even about the moral objection to a procedure (such as abortion, birth control, blood transfusions, sex change operations, etc.), which is outrageous enough; but a person who has made life choices with which a medical professional disagrees can essentially be refused treatment. My question is, if one finds the practices of one's profession so objectionable, should you be working in that profession? RA Charo "criticizes those medical professionals who would claim 'an unfettered right to personal autonomy while holding monopolistic control over a public good'" (quoted in the New England Journal of Medicine). There are many jobs or professions I will not work because of ethical objections. For starters, Wal-mart.

But what's most insidious (as if it all weren't), is that the vaguely worded regulation could be stretched to include those not directly involved in the medical procedures (such as equipment cleaners), or those making appointments or ringing customers out for medical procedures or products they disagree with or disagree with their application. As if American sex education isn't fucked up enough as it is, can you picture a Christian refusing to see condoms to a teenager?

Interestingly, that report also defines "conscience" as:

"the private, constant, ethically attuned part of the human character. It operates as an internal sanction that comes into play through critical reflection about a certain action or inaction. An appeal to conscience would express a sentiment such as 'If I were to do 'x,' I could not live with myself/I would hate myself/I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.'"

Oh, the irony of Bush acting on behalf of those who wish to act "conscionably" and being able to live with one's actions from his administration that has been anything but.

Further, I myself feel it is morally unconscionable that we don't have universal health care and that corporate CEOs make 250 times what average workers make. Does this mean I get to stop paying taxes?

(Cross-posted to Speak Truth to Power)

LA Representative wants the poor sterilized, rich to procreate more

By LindaBeth

I just heard on CNN that Louisiana's Rep. John LaBruzzo (R) is looking into a plan to pay poor women to have their tubes tied. This is based on his concern that poor people reproduce at a higher rate than more economically privileged people do, who pay more in taxes. Folks, this is his guess--he has no data to this effect. Mark Waller from The Times-Picayune reports on nola.com that "He said he is gathering statistics now."

Hmmm...so instead of looking at the actual range of factors that affect poverty and aiming to solve those, he's going to racistly assume that it's because they're voluntarily having "too many" children "they can't afford," and if they can't afford them, we should encourage, not free contraception and education, but sterilization, so he's then going to try to find data to support this?

It also could include tax incentives for college-educated, higher-income people to have more children, he said.

Now we're at the meat-and-potatoes. It's not really about "helping" people to avoid welfare (as if having kids is the prime reason people are on welfare in the first place), but also ensuring that the "right" kind of people reproduce--those who are wealthy and educated.

The idea here is that poor citizens receive social welfare and therefore do not have the "right" to have families. This is bullshit in and of itself. On top of that, LaBruzzo is essentially hoping for the "extinction" of the poor on account of his faulty logic that that would reduce or eliminate poverty, as if poverty were a function of people, not of societies and economic systems. Even more, well-educated, wealthier people should have even more children to make more educated, wealthy people! Who knew economic privilege was genetic!

OK, I know he's not saying that. But if he really thought about the implications of poverty begetting poverty, he might realize that helping people out of poverty is not at all accomplished by telling them not to have children (and since when should we coerce the poor with money to do invasive, irreversible, medical procedures on their bodies?--and for the record, he's sure not suggesting that we pay for or demand that poor women have abortions), but to help change the environmental circumstances and social structures that perpetuate economic inequality.

And never mind that the rhetoric that children and families are the "foundation" of our society that justifies a slew of tax advantages given to middle and upper class families. Forget the college tuition credits given, and deductions for homeowners' mortgages that partially subsidize the middle-class American life. The right consistently talks about tax breaks to help families out, but those breaks are for people who owe taxes to begin with: they are tax breaks for the middle class, not the poor. But folks like Rep. LaBruzzo seem appalled that folks on welfare would dare to be free citizens and have children, who allegedly are the reason for their poverty. Meanwhile, middle and upper class families benefit from their own share of social welfare in the form of tax deductions and government-guaranteed education (as well as partially taxpayer-funded state universities), and this welfare is completely invisible to them. I don't have kids, and I am forced, through taxation, to pay for the education of other people's children--even the wealthy.

In one way or another, aren't most of us social welfare recipients?

(Cross-posted to Smart Like Me.)

Pass it forward

By Capt. Fogg

Does Sarah Palin's nomination and her smug arrogance have you feeling like you've been slapped in the face by the GOP? Mad as hell at this campaign to take away reproductive rights, to reduce access to birth control and counselling? Here's how you can return the feeling. Kate Goldstein at Huffington Post suggests that you make a donation to Planned Parenthood in Sarah Palin's name. They will send her a Thank You card.

Make sure you use this link and use the McCain headquarters address so that everyone at that viper's nest will see the card:

McCain for President
1235 S. Clark Street
1st Floor
Arlington, VA 22202

Use that link above or choose the pulldown of Donate -- Honorary or Memorial Donations, not the regular "Donate Online."

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)