Month: February 2012

It’s the coercion, stupid

by digby

I’ve been off-line for most of the day, so forgive me if that has been aired thoroughly and I missed it. I keep reading on twitter and elsewhere that the wingnuts are saying that women being forced to undergo a vaginal probe if they are seeking an abortion is the same as having sex (so why should the little sluts object?) Here’s the lovely Dana Loesch:

That’s the big thing that progressives are trying to say, that it’s rape and so on and so forth. And in fact, this big battle that I’ve, uh, totally won with Keith Olbermann by the way, like, not only won once but twice and three times… uh, there were individuals saying, [high voice] “Oh what about the Virginia rape? The rapes that, the forced rapes of women who are pregnant?” What!?

Wait a minute, they had no problem having similar to a trans-vaginal procedure when they engaged in the act that resulted in their pregnancy.

Usually that particular view is expressed by some leering old man saying like “if it’s inevitable, just relax and enjoy it” but the fresh faced Loesch (last heard saying she would like to urinate on corpses) saying it takes it to a different level. Why is it that right wing authoritarian types always equate coercion and humiliation with pleasure?

Here’s the thing that is instinctively obvious to any normal person: the women are being forced to undergo a physically invasive procedure they do not want and which has no medical purpose by state actors for political reasons. It’s like something out of the inquisition. No, these women are not virgins, but the last I heard the definition of rape didn’t require virginity. It’s about the state not being allowed to stick something inside your body in order to persuade you not to do something you have every legal right to do.

The argument about abortion is all about women’s right to make their own decisions about their own bodies. If you want to prove that this is about someone else making decisions about women’s bodies, there can be no better way to do that than insisting that pregnant women seeking abortions first have an instrument shoved inside them against their will. These disgusting little sadists are pretending there’s nothing wrong with that — but the pleasure they are clearly taking in the prospect is what gives them away. They know it’s coercive. That’s the whole point.

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Mainstreaming in minutes

by digby

Check out this headline and storyfrom the AP:

Democrats protest religious freedom hearing

Religious leaders told a House panel Thursday the Obama administration was violating basic rights to religious freedom with its policies for requiring that employees of religion-affiliated institutions have access to birth control coverage.

The unity of the religious leaders contrasted with the partisan divide among lawmakers on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, with Democrats saying they had been denied the ability to present witnesses who might support the government stance or speak for the rights of women to reproductive health coverage. They asked why women weren’t better represented among the 10 witnesses at the hearing.

The issue has sparked a political firestorm for the administration, with Catholics and other religious groups strongly protesting an original Health and Human Services ruling that religion-affiliated institutions such as hospitals and universities must include free birth control coverage in their employee health plans.

I mention this in the context of David’s post below in which he discusses the GOP’s long term strategy. If this story is any indication, at least a few members of the mainstream press are buying it. Think about it: something that until approximately five minutes ago was so commonplace and unremarkable to the American mainstream that we couldn’t conceive of any national politician attacking it, is now “controversial.” This has moved very, very quickly.

Keep in mind that the pharmacists who evoked the conscience clauses were all objecting to emergency contraception — Plan B. They weren’t talking about refusing to fill ordinary prescriptions for the birth control pill. That wasn’t even discussed outside the darkest corners of the far religious right among the Quiverfull fanatics and fundamentalist Catholics. They have managed in record time to create another issue out of something that most people didn’t give a second thought to a year ago.

Now, they won’t win this if the Democratic Party stops listening to the Religion Industrial Complex and beats them back hard. But people should stop high fiving and recognize that this is now a battle and get prepared. They aren’t going to let it go — they’re all in on this “conscience” strategy.

Update: Debcoop was on to this a year ago. And there’s more to it than meets the eye.

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Intrusion

by David Atkins

One of the few reasons to ever read Slate, Dahlia Lithwick, is in fine form:

So the problem is not just that the woman and her physician (the core relationship protected in Roe) no longer matter at all in deciding whether an abortion is proper. It is that the physician is being commandeered by the state to perform a medically unnecessary procedure upon a woman, despite clear ethical directives to the contrary. (There is no evidence at all that the ultrasound is a medical necessity, and nobody attempted to defend it on those grounds.) As an editorial in the Virginian-Pilot put it recently, “Under any other circumstances, forcing an unwilling person to submit to a vaginal probing would be a violation beyond imagining. Requiring a doctor to commit such an act, especially when medically unnecessary, and to submit to an arbitrary waiting period, is to demand an abrogation of medical ethics, if not common decency.”

Evidently the right of conscience for doctors who oppose abortion are a matter of grave national concern. The ethical and professional obligations of physicians who would merely like to perform their jobs without physically violating their own patients are, however, immaterial. Don’t even bother asking whether this law would have passed had it involved physically penetrating a man instead of a woman without consent. Next month the U.S. Supreme Court will hear argument about the obscene government overreach that is the individual mandate in President Obama’s health care law. Yet physical intrusion by government into the vagina of a pregnant woman is so urgently needed that the woman herself should be forced to pay for the privilege.

The bill will undoubtedly be enacted into law by the governor, Bob McDonnell, who is gunning hard for a gig as vice president and has already indicated that he will sign the bill. “I think it gives full information,” he said this week on WTOP radio’s “Ask the Governor” program. “To be able to have that information before making what most people would say is a very important, serious, life-changing decision, I think is appropriate.”

It’s very important for the government to rape a woman to give her “information” against the wishes of herself and her doctor, and make her pay for the privilege.

But it’s not at all important to find out who is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on unaccountable advertisements and legislative bribes to buy our democracy. That would be an impediment to “freedom.”

Perhaps we should require invasive colonoscopies for Republican male “pro-life” politicians to provide them more “information” about the location of their senses of conscience and empathy.

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The intersection where the Republicans all come together

by digby

Walter Shapiro reads Rick Santorum’s book so you don’t have to. And it sounds like you really don’t want to. The guy sounds like a hot tempered idiot. He discusses the influence of the Catholic Church, naturally but there’s another, less obvious, aspect to his worldview as well:

Sometime, presumably early in law school at Penn State, Santorum was introduced to the concept of the slippery slope–and it changed his mental life. In It Takes a Family, Santorum repeatedly warns about the legal consequences flowing from popular Supreme Court decisions. He laments the reasoning behind the 1965 Griswold decision (overturning–yikes!–a Connecticut law that banned the sale of condoms) because it introduced the constitutional zone of privacy that later allowed the Supreme Court to legalize abortion. Santorum even expresses his concern with the precedent set by Loving v. Virginia, the landmark 1967 civil-rights decision that decreed that states could not ban interracial marriages. What troubles Santorum is not the result (ending Jim Crow legislation) but that “16 years later, the IRS ruled that religious groups opposed to interracial marriage could be stripped of their tax-exempt status.”

Now that, my friends, is a dogwhistle. A particularly shrill one:

[W]hat I try to expose in the book and I think I document copiously is that the religious right did not–did not–coalesce as a political movement in direct response to the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. In fact, the Southern Baptist Convention, which is hardly a bastion of liberalism, had passed a resolution calling for the legalization of abortion, and this was a resolution that was reaffirmed in 1974, again in 1976. It was not the abortion issue. What galvanized evangelicals as a political block, as a political movement, was instead the actions of the Internal Revenue Service to go after the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, because of its racially discriminatory policies, and that Carter was unfairly blamed for this by the architects of the religious right, and they used that against him and mobilized to defeat him four years later in 1980. […]

Bob Jones University did not allow African-Americans to be enrolled at the school until 1991 and did not allow unmarried African-Americans as students until 1995. The lower court ruling that really became the catalyst for the rise of the religious right was a ruling called Green v. Connelly, issued in 1971, by the district court of the District of Columbia; and it upheld the Internal Revenue Service in its ruling that any organization that engages in racial segregation or discrimination is not, by definition, a charitable organization and as such has no claim to tax-exempt status. And as the IRS began applying that ruling and enforcing it in various places, including Bob Jones University, that is what galvanized evangelical leaders into a political movement that we know today as the religious right.

According to one of the architects of the religious right, who told me this directly, after they had organized on the issue of Bob Jones University and more broadly the issue of government interference in these schools, as they understood it, there was a conference call among these various evangelical leaders and the political consultants who were trying to organize them into a political movement, and several people mentioned several issues. Finally the voice on the end of one of the lines said, `How about abortion?’ And that’s how abortion was cobbled into the agenda of the religious right, late in the 1970s in preparation for the 1980 presidential election.

Bob Jones University is where GOP libertarianism, white supremacy and social conservatism all come together in one big toxic stew:

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The Republican Upside of the Birth Control Fight

by David Atkins

Greg Sargent crystallizes what many of us understand implicitly about the Republican strategy, but might not be able to verbalize so clearly:

Public polls seem to suggest that the birth control fight has the potential to be terrible politics for Republicans — it could be used as wedge issue against the GOP and could help Obama and Dems win women in the numbers they need this fall.

So are Republican strategists who are in the business of winning elections — as opposed to conservative and evangelical groups who see this as a way to prime their support base — worried about this?

I just got off the phone with Whit Aryes, the well-known GOP strategist, and he laid out the counterargument.

He conceded the battle could go either way, but argued Republicans can win if they frame it “in the context of an overweening government mandate that is part of Obamacare and forces religious institutions to do things they fundamentally disagree with.” He argued Republicans must not allow the argument to “devolve into, `are you for or against contraception…’”

Republicans hope this fight will allow them to advance a key subtext: Obama wants to expand the reach of government into matters of faith and is hostile to religious values.

Two lessons here:

1) Never underestimate the degree to which othering is central to everything Republicans do politically. Even issues that seem to be straight-up Bible-thumping misogyny are just as much about creating a contrast between “us” and “them”, where “them” is dark-skinned egg-headed atheists, and “us” is God-fearing, down home church-going white people. Bizarre as it may seem, most Republican strategists pushing the contraception argument don’t even care about gender, religion or contraception per se; they just want an excuse to subtly divide “good” Americans from “bad” ones. Women’s bodies are just collateral damage.

2) Never underestimate the importance and value of large-scale argument framing. Many progressives tend to dismiss rhetoric and framing as just so much gobbledygook that doesn’t matter if they just bring enough angry people power, or explain policy issues more clearly. People on the left are constantly desperate to win the next media cycle or legislative battle.

Republicans understand the value of sacrificing a chess piece up front in the interest of maintaining a strategy and winning a long-term war, in a way that Democrats often do not. For Republicans, this contraception battle isn’t just about pushing the Overton Window on women’s health. It’s about being willing to potentially lose a media cycle and even a demographic/electoral issue (being perceived as against contraception and thus losing women voters) in exchange for advancing ground on a more subtle ideological war about worldviews (liberals are overreaching, elitist dictatorial busybodies who hate religion and thus hate America.)

They’ll worry about the short-term damage later so long as they can cast their opponents negatively over the long term. Denying more women basic contraception is either a good thing from the fundamentalist perspective, or an unfortunate price of waging the larger war from a more cosmopolitan conservative orientation. And wealthier women conservatives could care less, of course: they’ll always be able to afford contraception regardless, just as they can surreptitiously send their daughters off to parts unknown for an “intentional miscarriage” or two.

After all, contraception is a privilege that should only be available for the deserving, and the longer war serves the interests of the “producers” quite admirably.

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Best election money can buy

by digby

So Sheldon Adelson has agreed to throw Newt another 10 million in order to take out Santorum and nominate Romney.

Adelson reportedly hasn’t shifted allegiances to Romney, but it’s basically implied if he pursues this strategy. The last thing Romney needs at this point is for Gingrich to drop out of the race. And from Romney’s perspective, Adelson’s cash could be put to much better use by funding Gingrich ads against Santorum. After all, Romney doesn’t really need the money at this point, and Newt has more credibility on the right to pull off harsh attacks on Santorum’s social positions.

Then there’s this guy, who has to be the creepiest religious fanatic plutocrat of them all.(It’s shocking how many of them there are.) Interestingly, all these fabulously wealthy Republicans want to elect the most fabulously wealthy candidate. Hmmm.

Basically our elections are now blatantly being manipulated by wealthy titans who have so much money that 20 million is chump change. It makes “voting” seem rather quaint. But then, in a plutocracy, it is. If I were a Republican I’d vote for Santorum just to spite these people.

I don’t know about this, however:

This also shows that any hopes Republicans had of capturing a greater percentage of the Jewish vote may go out the window if Santorum’s the candidate. Moderate Jews who might consider voting Republican based on Israel will probably find it hard to support a candidate with far-right views on abortion, gay marriage and contraception.

Are they saying that the rest of the field doesn’t have far-right views on abortion, gay marriage and contraception? Talk about goal post moving …

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It was funny yesterday when Santorum sugar daddy Foster Friess said that gals could put aspirin between their knees as a form of birth control, but it’s not really as odd and bizarre a sentiment as it seems. After all, this is the official position of the Catholic Bishops:

“I don’t want to overstate or understate our level of concern,” said McQuade, the Catholic bishops’ spokesperson. “We consider [birth control] an elective drug. Married women can practice periodic abstinence. Other women can abstain altogether. Not having sex doesn’t make you sick.”

They do believe that women should just “keep their legs closed” if they don’t want to get themselves pregnant. No word on their preferred method for doing tat although one assumes they have no objection to using aspirin for this purpose.

And Rick Santorum is morphing into Newtie:

SANTORUM: Hold on, Charlie. When you quote a bad joke from a supporter of mine that somehow I’m responsible for, that’s “gotcha.”

ROSE: No one’s saying your responsible, Senator. They’re asking how you would characterize it and what you said to him. Not that you were responsible. It’s to understand how you differ from what this person said.

SANTORUM: So now I’m gonna have to respond to when every supporter says something. Look, this is what you guys do. You don’t do this with President Obama. In fact, with President Obama, you went out and defended him from someone he sat in a church for 20 years and defended him with “Oh, he can’t possibly believe what he listened to for 20 years.” This is a double standard, it’s what you’re pulling off, and I’m gonna call you on it.

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Make My Palin Dreams Come True

by David Atkins

From Sarah Palin’s lips to God’s ears, please:

Fox News analyst Sarah Palin hinted Wednesday that it is not too late for her to get into the Republican presidential contest.

Asked in an interview if she would be interested in jumping in the race if there is no clear winner by the time Republicans gather this summer for their nominating convention, Palin said she would “do whatever I could to help.”

Fox Business interviewer Eric Bolling asked about the possibility of a so-called “brokered convention” in Tampa, Florida, in August — a scenario many consider unlikely.

Palin told Bolling she thinks “it could get to that,” and if it does “all bets are off.”

The former Alaska governor, who has made no secret of her distrust of Romney and desire for a more conservative nominee than the former Massachusetts governor, reiterated her desire for the nominating process to play itself out.

“If it had to be kind of closed up today, the whole nominating process, then we would be looking at a brokered convention. I mean nobody is quite there yet, so I think that months from now, if that is the case, then you know, all bets are off as to who it will be, willing to offer up themselves up in their name in service to their country. I would do whatever I could to help,” Palin said.

There is no way that Democrats have been good enough this year to be granted this storybook scenario by our fairy godmothers. Let’s all just hope for a Santorum candidacy instead. That’s hilarity enough.

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Cracked conservatives

by digby

The good news is that there’s no racism in the mainstream anymore:

This is not the first time Bolling has used racially charged rhetoric on Fox. Last June, on his Fox Business show, Bolling teased a segment about the White House hosting the president of Gabon by saying, “Guess who’s coming to dinner? A dictator. Mr. Obama shares a laugh with one of Africa’s kleptocrats. It’s not the first time he’s had a hoodlum in the hizzouse.” He began the segment itself by saying, in part, “So what’s with all the hoods in the hizzy?” He later issued a brief — and dishonest — apology for the segment.

In May 2011, Bolling claimed Obama was “chugging a few 40s” instead of responding to devastating tornadoes in Joplin, Missouri. Bolling later tried to walk back his “chugging 40s” comment by pretending that he hadn’t engaged in racially charged rhetoric and asserting that he “took some heat for saying Obama should have delayed his European bar crawl.”

He’s a racist piece of trash. Just kidding!!

Update: Alternet is featuring the 10 most repulsive Fox News employees. Bolling, needless to say, makes the cut. The other nine are no picnics.

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Richie Rich

by digby

Even the salt of the earth average guy in the race is very different from you and me:

The former Pennsylvania senator’s tax returns show that his annual income surged from nearly $660,000 in 2007 to $1.1 million in 2009 before slipping to $923,000 in 2010.

Santorum’s wealth doesn’t come close to the multimillion-dollar fortune amassed by Mitt Romney’s high-finance prowess or Newt Gingrich’s smaller but still-lucrative blend of foundation and consulting work. But his newfound affluence reflects his close ties to Washington’s business and lobbying circles during his 12 years in the Senate and his smooth transition into their world after he left office.

His federal income taxes rose from 2007, when he paid $167,000, to $310,000 in 2009, then dropped to $263,000 in 2010. Santorum paid a combined tax rate of 28 percent over the four years, putting him in a high tax bracket but not in the top 35 percent. Gingrich paid an estimated 31 percent, according to his federal returns, while Romney paid 14 percent because many of his earnings came from investments taxed at a lower capital gains rate. Both Romney and Gingrich recently disclosed income tax returns[…]

After his Senate defeat, Santorum did not register as a lobbyist, but he aided corporate and other interests as a consultant. He was paid $142,500 by Consol Energy, a Pennsylvania-based energy firm with numerous Appalachian coal mines. The firm has lobbied against Obama administration efforts to tighten limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

Santorum also was paid $65,000 by the American Continental Group, a D.C. lobbying firm with an assortment of corporate clients, and $125,000 by the Clapham Group, a Virginia firm that aids religious rights organizations. He benefited from media work, earning $230,000 for appearances on Fox News and more than $80,000 for stints as a radio commentator.

Santorum was also paid nearly $400,000 in compensation and stock options as a board director at Universal Health Services, a hospital management firm, after he left the Senate in 2006. He also owns up to $250,000 in Universal stock. As a senator, Santorum had sponsored several unsuccessful bills that would have secured more Medicaid funding for hospitals run by Universal and other medical firms in Puerto Rico.

Santorum also owns five rental properties in State College, Pa., worth $500,000 and $1.25 million, but also with as much as $750,000 in mortgage debt, according to his presidential disclosure. His taxes show that he took mortgage and depreciation deductions on those properties, and also that he sold more than $23,000 worth of stocks in 2010.

Santorum and his wife, Karen, took standard deductions each year for their seven children, the returns show. In 2007, the Santorums took a $4,000 charity deduction for giving away “clothing, footwear, accessories and household items.” That year, the family moved into a larger home in the Virginia suburbs of Washington.

Santorum and his family now live in a four-bedroom northern Virginia house on five acres assessed at $1.4 million in 2010.

And this guy hasn’t won a race in 12 years. I’d guess a presidential run in which you become the it-boy of the social conservatives and take a few primaries has to be worth at least five million from wingnut welfare alone, don’t you think?

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