Live Blog: Obama Announces “Accommodation” on Contraception Rule
Posted: February 10, 2012 Filed under: just because 121 Comments
Obama: "Yes sir, may I have another?"
We all expected it, but I’m still enraged and horrified. I’m beyond livid. I don’t know if my blood pressure will ever get back to normal.
At 12:15, our faux Democratic President will genuflect to a hoard of pedophile-enabling old men who really should be in jail right now for the hard they have caused to children and families. I thought we needed a live blog to follow the media circus that leads up to Obama’s upcoming impersonation of a scared little boy who is afraid there are monsters under his bed. After that we can document the reactions of the DC press corps–who knew they were mostly elderly Catholic prep school boys?
RH Reality Check says the change is going to be good for women.
Today, the White House did the right thing for women, public health and human rights. Despite deep concerns, including my own, based on what transpired in the past under health reform, the White House has decided on a plan to address the birth control mandate that will enable women to get contraceptive coverage directly through their insurance plans without having to buy a rider or a second plan, and without having to negotiate with or through religious entities or administrations that are hostile to primary reproductive health care, including but not limited to contraception.
Under this plan, every insurance company will be obligated to provide contraceptive coverage. Administration officials stated that a woman’s insurance company “will be required to reach out directly and offer her contraceptive care free of charge. The religious institutions will not have to pay for it.”
Moreover, women will not have to opt in or out; contraceptive care will be part of the basic package of benefits offered to everyone. Contraceptive care will simply be “part of the bundle of services that all insurance companies are required to offer,” said a White House official.
“We are actually more comfortable having the insurance industry offer and market this to women than religious institutions,” said the White House official because they “understand how contraception works” to prevent unintended pregnancy and reduce health care costs. “This makes sense financially.”
The way it works is this: Insurers will create policy not including contraceptive coverage in the contract for religious organizations that object. Second, the same insurance company must simultaneously offer contraceptive coverage to all employees, and can not charge an additional premium. This provides free contraceptive coverage to women. The reason this works for insurance companies is because offering contraception is cost-neutral and cost-effective; companies realize the tremendous cost benefits of spacing pregnancies, and limiting unintended pregnancies, planned pregnancies and health benefits of contraception.
I doubt if this will mollify the Catholic bishops, and I still have a problem with the President responding to their complaints in the first place. Their goal is obviously to get their foot in the door so to speak, so they can continue to press for outlawing contraception along with abortion.
Dakinikat says that Terry O’Neill was on the Ed Show last night. She said that Obama has been talking personally to the bishops but has refused to deal directly with any women’s groups. Unbelievable!
Greg Sargent: Has Obama found a way out of the contraception mess?
On a conference call with reporters just now, senior Obama administration officials announced the outlines of the “accommodation” the White House has settled on with regard to the contraception controversy.
The gist is that women who work for religious institutions that object to offering birth control coverage will get contraception for free, directly from their insurers. The institutions won’t have to pay for it. The White House argues that this preserves both the “liberty” of those institutions and the core, inviolate principle that all women will have equal access to birth control, no matter where they work.
On the politics of this “accommodation,” Sargent writes:
Obviously you can argue over whether the administration should have reached any accommodation at all, and the politics of this, as Kevin Drum notes, could still prove a morass for the administration. Some on the left will see the administration’s efforts to appease the U.S. Conference of Bishops as unnecessary appeasment. Meanwhile, it seems all but certain that the Conference of Bishops, which had previously insisted that the rule be scrapped altogher, will not be mollified in the slightest, and Republican officials and the 2012 GOP candidates will still continue attacking the Obama administration over this, pushing not only the “war on religion” line but also the subtext, i.e., that Obama is forever looking to expand the reach of government.
But the Obama team is betting that any further objections to this policy will unmask opponents primarily as hidebound foes of birth control at any costs, a politically difficult position to sustain, rather than as defenders of religious liberty. Indeed, this looks like an effort to reframe the debate to Obama’s advantage: If Team Obama has its way, the argument will now be about whether all women should have access to contraception, and not about whether these institutions should have their religious freedom impinged upon.
They’ve already been exposed, as far as I’m concerned; but I guess Obama feels he has to convince the Catholic boyz in the DC press. Good luck with that. Frankly, Mark Shields, Chris Matthews, and E.J. Dionne are dead to me now, regardless of how they react to this. Dead. To. Me.
What do you think?
Thursday Reads: Male Politicians and Pundits should Worry about their “Erectile Dysfunction” and STFU about Women’s Health (and Other News)
Posted: February 9, 2012 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, 2012 primaries, morning reads, religious extremists, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, Republican politics, Republican presidential politics, Team Obama, U.S. Politics, War on Women, Women's Rights | Tags: autonomy, Birth Control, chastity belt, Chris Matthews, contraception, EJ Dionne, history of birth control, Mark Shields, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, privacy, Rick Santorum, sponges, Tim Kaine 50 Comments
Morning News by Ellen Day Hale (1855-1940)
Good Morning!
I thought this painting was appropriate, since we are being dragged back into the 19th Century by both Democrats and Republicans these days. We all know about the war on women being waged by Willard “Mitt” Romney, Rick “the Dick” Santorum, Nasty Newt Gingrich and Ron “White Power” Paul. But Democrats have now been empowered the Catholic Church’s attack on Obama’s attempt to protect women’s health care.
But now “liberal” pundits like Chris Matthews, Mark Shields, and E.J. Dionne have joined the battle to remove any semblance of privacy and autonomy from women.
Today former DNC Chairman and Governor of VA–and likely Senate candidate Tim Kaine came out against the requirement that contraception be included in health insurance policies.
Pat J is right. We need a women’s freedom party. Aren’t any of these dinosaurs aware that birth control (and abortion) have been with us during most of recorded history? Check out this series of photos in Newsweek drawn from the history of birth control.
Did you know that Aristotle recommended birth control methods for women in the 4th Century BC?
The philosopher recommended that women “anoint that part of the womb on which the seed falls” with olive oil in order to prevent pregnancy. His other top picks for spermicides included cedar oil, lead ointment, or frankincense oil. If the lips of the cervix were smooth, he noted, then conception would be difficult.
Sponges used for contraception
Ancient Egyptian women used sponges.
Long before Seinfeld’s Elaine Benes weighed the merits of a man to determine his spongeworthiness, women were using sponges as a method of preventing pregnancy. The sponge has its roots in early Egyptian civilization, and this photo depicts the variety of models available in the early 20th century. Those sponges were made of a variety of materials, and were sometimes drenched in lemon juice or vinegar to act as a spermicide. Today’s sponges (called, in fact, Today’s Sponge) are synthetic, and use a chemical spermicide.
Another early method was the chastity belt. Perhaps religious nuts like Rick Santorum and Mark Shields would find that one acceptable?
At Wonkblog, Sarah Kliff thinks the Obama administration “sees political opportunity in the contraception battle,” because of the data shown in this chart:
(Public Religion Research Institute)
Kliff writes:
while Catholic leadership has blasted the new regulation, polls show that a majority of Catholics are actually more supportive of the provision than the rest of the country. A poll out Tuesday from the Public Religion Research Institute finds 52 percent of Catholic voters agreed with the statement, “employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception and birth control at no cost.” That’s pretty much in line with overall support for the provision, which hovers at 55 percent – likely because Catholics use contraceptives at rates similar to the rest of Americans.
A majority of Catholics – 52 percent – also agree with the Obama administration’s decision to not exempt religious hospitals and universities from the provision. “Outside the political punditry, most Catholics agree with the administration on the issue,” says one Obama campaign official, explaining the view that this could be a political win.
And a lot of this likely isn’t about Catholic voters at all.
Rather, it may well be about the demographics that are most supportive of this particular health reform provision: young voters and women. In the PRRI poll, both groups register support above 60 percent for the provision.
Those two demographics are important here for a key reason: they were crucial to Obama’s victory in 2008. Third Way crunched the numbers earlier this month and found that the “Obama Independents” — the swing group that proved crucial to his 2008 victory — are, as Ryan Lizza put it, “disproportionately young, female and secular.”
Let’s hope Obama keeps all that in mind instead of bending to the will of the old gray white male Catholic Bishops and the elderly male fake-liberal pundits who won’t STFU and let women make their own choices.
Even some of the saner folks in the GOP are warning their wingnut colleagues that a fight against contraception would be a “disaster” for their party.
Tuesday Reads: More Caucuses and a Beauty Contest; Dems Support Anti-Union Bill; and Protecting Children vs. Parents’ Rights
Posted: February 7, 2012 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, 2012 primaries, Mitt Romney, morning reads, Newt Gingrich, Reproductive Rights, Republican presidential politics, U.S. Politics, Women's Rights | Tags: Braden and Charlie Powell, breast cancer, Colorado caucuses, Josh Powell, Komen Foundation, Maine caucuses, Minnesota caucuses, Missouri primary, Nancy Brinker, NEGATIVE campaigning, Rick Santorum, Susan Powell 51 Comments
Good Morning!!
There are four more Republican caucuses and one “primary” coming up this week. Tomorrow, Minnesota and Colorado will hold caucuses and Missouri has a beauty contest, a non-binding primary (actual delegates will be apportioned by the Missouri Republican party on March 17). Maine holds it’s caucuses on Saturday. After that, we get a two-week respite with no primaries. Won’t that be great?
Right now, Rick Santorum is leading in the polls in Minnesota, and Mitt Romney has wasted no time in turning his mean-spirited attacks on the new upstart. Wall Street Journal:
In a radio interview in Minnesota on Monday, Mr. Romney criticized Mr. Santorum for voting to raise the country’s borrowing limit, allowing earmark spending to proliferate and letting government spending explode.
“His approach was not effective and, frankly, I happen to believe if we’re going to change Washington we can’t just keep on sending the same people there in different chairs,” he said in an interview on WCCO.
The Romney camp also circulated a research memo to challenge Mr. Santorum’s contention that Mr. Romney imposed a “top-down, government-run” health-care system in Massachusetts that led to higher costs and longer wait times. For good measure, the Romney team rereleased Mr. Santorum’s endorsement of Mr. Romney in the 2008 race.
Romney is currently leading in Colorado, but there are suggestions that Santorum could do well there too–maybe even take first place. From CNN:
Could Rick Santorum pull off a surprise victory in this week’s caucuses? Newt Gingrich thinks so.
“I think that Santorum’s going to have a pretty good day tomorrow and he will have earned it. He targeted differently than I did,” Gingrich told reporters gathered outside an energy forum in Golden, Colorado….
Speaking to reporters after the same forum, Santorum opted against setting any expectations for the caucuses. But he questioned Mitt Romney’s ability to close the deal with Republican voters, noting the former Massachusetts governor has failed to attract as many voters as he did in 2008 in some previous contests.
“He’s underperformed from four years ago. And I suspect he will again,” Santorum said about Tuesday’s caucuses.
Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum has spent the past few days shuttling among Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado hoping that a good showing in one or all Tuesday would show the conservative electorate was not solidly behind former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
“Our hope is conservatives are stepping back and looking at the race and making the same calculations that I’ve just made that a Romney nomination will not be in the best interest of us winning the general election,” Santorum told reporters here Monday. “We need to have a conservative alternative and my feeling is that Speaker Gingrich has sort of had his chance in the arena and came up short in Florida and Nevada, and now it’s our turn.”
Santorum has spent a great deal of time in Missouri while the other candidates were competing in Nevada. He apparently thinks the “show me” state will help him launch a comeback in the race.
Tomorrow’s primary in Missouri is the staging ground for Rick Santorum’s latest campaign message—that he is the real conservative alternative to Mitt Romney and that he is the person who can best compete with Barack Obama.
A win in Missouri would be absolutely crucial in keeping Santorum’s campaign afloat. His chances look good there because Newt Gingrich—whose campaign has been plagued by logistical missteps such as failing to get on the ballot in Virginia—decided not to sign up for tomorrow’s primary.
Unfortunately for Santorum, a win won’t get him any delegates.
Yesterday, Democrats in the Senate joined their right-wing colleagues in passing an anti-union FAA bill.
The Senate passed a Federal Aviation Administration bill on Monday that includes an anti-union measure bitterly opposed by labor groups.
The bill, which modernizes America’s air traffic control system and funds the FAA through 2014, was fought over for four years, leading to a partial shutdown of the FAA last summer because of anti-union measures added by the Republican-controlled House.
It passed 75 to 20, with a majority of Democrats backing it.
Among the controversial provisions were changes to labor law for rail and airline workers — backed by the airline industry — that would count anyone who did not vote in an election for a union as voting against it, making it much more difficult to certify attempts to organize new unions.
What’s the point of voting for Democrats if they’re no different from Republicans?
Braden and Charlie Powell
This story makes me so sad that I had to share it with you. It demonstrates one of the worst thing about U.S. family courts–they care more about parents rights than they do children’s safety and well-being. Yesterday, the husband of a missing Utah woman, Susan Powell, committed suicide and chose to take his two sons along with him.
The deaths of a Washington man and his two sons in what authorities believe was a murder-suicide may mean the 2009 disappearance of the children’s mother may never be solved.
Josh Powell, a suspect in the disappearance of Susan Cox-Powell, died Sunday along with his two sons, 5-year-old Braden and 7-year-old Charlie, in what police believe was an intentionally set fire in Powell’s Puyallup, Washington, home.
It was a tragic development in a puzzling case that began two years ago in the Salt Lake City suburb of West Valley City, Utah, when Susan Cox-Powell, 28, went missing.
Josh Powell was never charged in her disappearance, and was embroiled in a bitter custody dispute with his wife’s parents.
Why was this man allowed access to his children? If the court believed he had the right to see them, why not arrange for the meeting to take place in a neutral location? Not only was this man a strong suspect in the murder of the children’s mother, but also he had allowed the boys to live with his father who was arrested awhile ago for possession of child pornography. The arrest led to Powell’s in-laws getting custody of the two boys. Powell apparently had been planning the murder suicide for some time.
Authorities say Josh Powell planned the deadly house fire that killed him and his young sons for some time, dropping toys at charities and sending final emails to multiple acquaintances.
Powell, the husband of missing Utah woman Susan Powell, died along with his children Sunday.
Authorities say they found 10 gallons of gasoline inside the home. A five-gallon can was spread throughout the house and used as an accelerant in the huge blaze. Another can was found by the bodies.
They say Josh Powell did send longer emails to some people, including his cousin and pastor, with instructions such as where to find his money and how to shut off his utilities
The motive for killing the boys might have been the fact that once they were away from their father, they began talking about the night their mom disappeared.
The children of missing woman Susan Cox Powell have said for years that “Mommy’s in the mine,” an attorney representing the Cox family said on Monday….adding the boys mentioned their mother may have been looking for crystals in the mine.
Another lawyer representing the Cox family said the children had started talking to their grandparents about things they remembered from the night their mother vanished.
“They were beginning to verbalize more,” said attorney Steve Downing. “The oldest boy talked about that they went camping and that Mommy was in the trunk. Mom and Dad got out of the car and Mom disappeared.”
The attorney said Charlie Powell drew a disturbing picture as a part of a school assignment several months ago. The drawing depicted the boy’s father driving the van with Charlie and Braden sitting in the backseat, and their mother in the trunk.
“There was a subsequent question with regard to, ‘Why is your mother in the trunk?’ And his response was simply that he didn’t know, but his mother and father had gotten out of the van, and his mother then got lost,” said Downing.
So why was the man allowed access to his children? A psychologist quoted in an article in the Christian Science Monitor seems troubled by the decision.
Joy Silberg, a psychologist who specializes in child protection and abuse cases, says courts often place more value on parental rights than a child’s safety – or see them as equal concerns, when in her view, the parental rights should be secondary.
“I have situations where the child has disclosed very clear disclosures about a parent, or terror at being near a parent … and the judge still orders a child to go [to visitation] because the parental right is seen as having so much more power,” says Dr. Silberg.
While she doesn’t know all the facts of the Powell case, she adds, “it’s hard for me to believe that this was completely out of the blue and that no one knew he was this destructive. People usually leave clues.”
In fact, Powell was named a “person of interest” by the authorities when his wife, Susan Cox-Powell, disappeared two years ago. But he was never officially charged with any crime, and no details have ever been made public linking him with the case.
I don’t like to end with an utterly heartbreaking story like that, so I’ll add this one from The Daily Beast on Nancy Brinker and her really really bad decision to defund Planned Parenthood. Apparently Brinker is real meanie when it comes to competition with other groups raising funds for breast cancer.
“Komen plays hardball and is determined to stay on top,” says a member of another cancer organization, who declined to be identified. “Let’s be honest about all this: people think of breast cancer as a charity, but it’s really a major business.”
I’m going to keep that in mind the next time I get a request for funds for breast cancer. I’ll especially want to find out what each group’s attitude is toward women’s autonomy. More from the article:
…in the early ’80s, she [Nancy] met and married multimillionaire restaurateur Norman Brinker, a major Republican donor. He had previously been married to Grand Slam tennis star Maureen “Little Mo” Connnelly, who had died from ovarian cancer.
When they tied the knot, the union provided Nancy with a network of A-list political connections and friends, plus the funds to lead a luxurious lifestyle and create the Komen Foundation, now the Susan G. Komen for the Cure with affiliates in 170 communities in 50 nations. (Interesting note: the largest Race for the Cure, a three-day run, is held in Rome, Italy.)In 1993 Norman Brinker suffered severe head injuries during a polo match and remained on crutches for the rest of his life. Several years later the couple divorced and with a hefty settlement, formidable drive, and her chum George W. Bush in the White House, Nancy was ready to step onto the world stage. First the [resident appointed her ambassador to Hungary and then U.S. chief of protocol.
Did Nancy dump her rich hubby because his health problems were a pain in the a$$. Inquiring minds want to know. There’s more gossipy stuff in the article if you’re interested.
Now what are you reading and blogging about today?
Obama Changes Course — Will Use SuperPACs After All
Posted: February 6, 2012 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, U.S. Politics | Tags: Barack Obama, policy reversals, superpacs 11 Comments
Obama is very worried about superPACs
President Obama has reversed himself–again. He sure has a bad habit of changing his mind on issues. Now, according to Politico, he’s “reluctantly” decided to “permit” his bundlers to raise money for a superPAC that will provide “outside” support for his reelection campaign.
President Barack Obama — a vehement opponent of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision — is offering a reluctant blessing to his top bundlers to raise cash for his pet super PAC in a bid to kick-start sluggish fundraising for Priorities USA Action, according to three Democrats with knowledge of the decision….
Top Obama campaign staff will appear at super PAC events, although the president himself will not.
Obama told Matt Lauer in an interview shown just this morning that he “worries” about superPACs.
“One of the worries we have obviously in the next campaign is that there are so many of these so-called super PACs, these independent expenditures that are gonna be out there,” Obama told NBC’s Matt Lauer in an interview taped before the Super Bowl on Sunday. “There is gonna be just a lot of money floating around, and I guarantee a bunch of it’s gonna be negative.”
As of tonight:
Two former White House aides have formed a super PAC, Priorities USA Action, which — along with an affiliated nonprofit group — hopes to raise $100 million to support Obama. But so far, its funding has been dwarfed by Republican groups’. In all of 2011, the Priorities groups reported raising $6.7 million while a single donor, casino owner Sheldon Adelson, has poured $10 million into a super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich.
Obama’s campaign has vowed that neither Obama nor his aides will raise money for super PACs, but the president’s senior campaign staff is now allowing top fundraisers to request that wealthy contributors donate to Priorities USA Action.
Obama was also very concerned about NAFTA, immunity for telecoms, and the Iraq war before reversing his positions on those issues, so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised.
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