Month: February 2012

Back to the dirty-dirty

by digby

I guess this one must be for the kiddies because anyone over the age of 25 already knows more about this than they care to:

A two-part PBS special set to air in February will detail the entire life of former president Bill Clinton, from his childhood in Arkansas to his rise to the White House.

The four-hour documentary will also dedicate a full hour to his sexual dalliances and the highly publicised affair with then White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

The special will highlight many of the former president’s involvements. Mr Clinton’s former congressional campaign aide Maria Crider remembers that women were ‘literally mesmerised by this man.’

‘It was absolutely like fly on honey. And he needed that. He needed that kind of adoration,’ she said.

But at least it will be tasteful:

Producer Barak Goodman said they also did not include interviews from Ms Lewinsky or Linda Trip, saying: ‘We felt it would tilt (the project) towards sensationalism.’

The sad truth is that it is an important piece of history. But if it’s another idiotic bunch of clips of aides and other Democrats going on about how deplorable the whole thing was and how they couldn’t believe the president didn’t tell them he was getting furtive blowjobs in the hallway, I’m not sure it will add anything to the story. If it delves into the insanity of American politics in general during that era it might be interesting.

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Unequal Conscience

by David Atkins

I know readers are probably sick of this story by now, but I want to reiterate that I’m with Digby: I just don’t understand why we’re supposed to be celebrating the Administration’s decision to assuage the feelings of the Bishops, even if women do get guaranteed contraception regardless.

I guess a lot of people feel it’s a win-win-win: the Bishops get their precious fee-fees respected, women get their contraception, and the President gets to look gracious and reasonable. Fine insofar as all that goes. Except the problem is that as Digby pointed out, the Bishops have now staked out a precedent that being against contraception is a legitimate moral “concern” that the Leader of the Free World has to assuage. That’s a big problem. Being against contraception should be as bizarre, antediluvian and worthy of mockery as being against women’s suffrage.

You can believe that women should be subservient to their husbands and not play a role in democracy. But that doesn’t mean that the President of the United States should care about your retrograde views. And yet this deal has given the Bishops just that sort of legitimacy.

John Cole said it well:

When did the 1st Amendment change from basically saying that you can practice whatever religion you want and you won’t be burned at the stake as a heretic and we’re not going to form or recognize a national religion like the Church of England? When did it change to “everyone everywhere has to do what a bunch of old catholics in funny hats wants, because otherwise it hurts their feelings?” And why does it only apply to certain religions?

I seriously wish other religions would get in on the act. I wish Keith Ellison would start sponsoring bills that allow insurers to cut people’s benefits if they don’t pray to Mecca a certain number of times a day. Or someone Jewish proposing a bill requiring circumcisions or you can’t get health insurance. Just flood the zone with bullshit so people can see how out of control our concept of religious liberty has become.

And who gets to decide what religions are real? I’m going to form my own religion, and the central tenets of my religion will be pizza every Friday, the only thing you are allowed to do on Sundays is watch sports, and I am forbidden by my deity to pay taxes. I’ll call it Norquistism. How would the feds react to that? How is my religion any less real than burning bushes, virgin birth, transubstantiation, and the like?

This needs to happen. Various religious minority groups need to start voicing all sorts of religious objections to all manner of unobjectionable things, just as a matter of precedent. There’s no way that Jewish hospitals would be allowed to serve only the circumsized, or to prevent treatment for trichinosis on the grounds that no one should have been eating pork in the first place.

I want to know why the Bishops receive this special “moral” dispensation. Remember that the Catholic laity doesn’t share the views of their Bishops. What is it about the Bishops that makes their strange brand of conscience so much more equal than that of anyone else?

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CPAC fannypack

by digby

I just … wow:

Charles at LGF writes:

Yet another jaw-dropping moment from CPAC, as right wing “comedians” Steven Crowder and Chris Loesch perform an absolutely nauseating “rap” song, wearing “founding fathers” powdered wigs. And don’t miss what happens at about the 2 minute mark, as an African American walks out.

Yes, they’re yelling the N word, pretending they’re saying “knickers.”

I don’t even know if that’s the worst part of it. The audience … The whole thing just makes me feel depressed.

Update: Somebody needs an intervention:

He’s going to stroke out one of these days. Or go postal.

Update II: more on the “knickers” flap.

Bottoms Up

by digby

Adele Stan has a terrific post up about the presidential hopeful CPAC speeches yesterday. The whole thing is great, but I just love this:

Listening to Santorum, it was sometimes difficult to discern whether he was running for president or village idiot. I’m not generally inclined to use those kinds of pejoratives, but what else can be said of a candidate who makes the kinds of claims made by Santorum from the CPAC podium?

Liberals, he said, had preyed on the well-meaning “sentimentality” of Americans who want “to pass a beautiful Earth onto their children” by promoting the “radical idea” of “man-made global warming.” It was all a ruse, he said, to assert government control of choices that should be up to the individual — choices like what kind of light bulb to buy and what kind of car to drive. But that wasn’t even the idiotic part.

Correlating two phenomena as if one caused the other, Santorum pointed out that among the nations of the world, the highest standard of living was enjoyed by those nations that used the most of the world’s energy resources. So, implied, if you want to keep your standard of living up, use more energy than you need. (Going on vacation? Be sure to turn on all the houselights before you leave and return America to greatness!)

He contended that Margaret Thatcher, former prime minister of the United Kingdom, failed “to accomplish what Reagan did” because of Britain’s nationalized health-care system, which encouraged “dependency” among the people.

Visually, Santorum asserted his fecundity offensive, delivering his speech while surrounded by his wife, Karen, and six of their seven children. Yet instead of mentioning his opposition to birth control of any kind (he has said he believes it to be “wrong”), Santorum argued against the administration’s new rules — which will require contraception coverage by employer-provided health insurance — by calling contraceptives “things that only cost a few dollars.” Actually, a month’s supply of birth-control pills goes for about $50, a good chunk of change for, say, an orderly working in a Catholic (or any other kind of) hospital.

Of course, like his fellow candidates — and nearly every other speaker who graced CPAC podium — Santorum characterized the Obama administration’s requirement that workers in Catholic hospitals and universities be granted access to contraception coverage as a violation of religious freedom, a claim that is less idiotic than it is demagogic.

(UPDATE: And speaking of demagogues, Right Wing Watch reported that before the day was through, white nationalist leader Robert Vandervoort, who enjoyed major exposure at CPAC this year, would tweet that he had dinner with Santorum. You’ll recall that Santorum told a group of white Iowans last month at a campaign stop, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.” AlterNet’s Sarah Jaffe has more on Santorum’s use of race anxiety here.)

But back to the idiot piece, someone on Santorum’s staff might want to tell the anti-gay crusader, who once famously said that gay marriage could lead to the sanctioning of “man on dog” sex, that he might want to stop referring to conservatism as a “bottom-up” movement. Just sayin’.

He’s officially the front-runner for the moment. Mitt hasn’t brought in the heavy artillery on him yet, so who knows how long this will last. (And maybe Mitt’s artillery isn’t as powerful against a true social conservative, who knows?)

Anyway, Santorum is truly the lowest of the low. It would be a beautiful thing if they did manage to nominate him. When they lose, there’s no way on earth they could say it was because he wasn’t conservative enough. (Needless to say, the “blahs” of ACORN are going to steal the election anyway, but still.)

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Immoral actors

by digby

There aren’t many people like Matt Stoller who will go on TV and make this argument:

I agree with him on this and I would add that I think all the kow-towing to the hypocritical socially conservative churches on human rights has been really bad for … humans. I would go even further and question why I should care about the delicate sensibilities of these allegedly liberal Catholic elites who hypocritically use birth control themselves and yet insist their Church be able to use it as a political cudgel on behalf of the most retrograde reactionaries in our political system. Their position on this is completely incomprehensible to me. One can only wonder what would happen if they had the courage of their contraception instead of carrying on this absurd charade.

As I said earlier, this particular policy “accommodation” isn’t a bad thing. I don’t have the same concerns about accounting and paperwork processes as the very pious believers apparently do. As long as women can easily obtain the coverage they are entitled to, it’s fine with me. But on the politics, I think the whole flap has allowed the Churches to obtain more authority in the realm of women’s rights and I think we’ll come to regret it.

As people have said over and over again this past week, everyone has issues of conscience with how their money is spent by the government. Every Catholic is forced to pay taxes that are used for capital punishment, for instance. Every evangelical Christian is forced to pay taxes that pay for teachers to teach evolution. Every anti-war liberal is forced to pay taxes to support wars. This is the cost of living in a pluralistic society. And everyone accepts it. It’s only when it comes to the most personal matters of sex and sexuality of other people where suddenly “conscience” is allowed to trump individual rights.

The Bishops, working hand in hand with their GOP allies, have spoken now and here’s what they’ve said:

The Conference, after earlier calling the change a “first step in the right direction,” issued a lengthy statement overnight blasting the plan. And they joined others in calling for legislation in Congress to reverse the policy, something Republicans said they were not abandoning despite Friday’s announcement.

“We think there needs to be a legislative fix to protect our religious liberties,” Bishop William Lori, a member of the Conference, told Fox News on Saturday. “I think that our First Amendment religious rights are far too precious to be entrusted to regulatory rules.”

Lori and the rest of the Conference said they want to see the “mandate” rescinded altogether. They pointed out several lingering concerns. They said the change appears to make no consideration for religious insurers or self-insuring religious employers — or for religious for-profit employers and secular nonprofit employers.

The statement from the Conference, more broadly, expressed concern that the requirement would still facilitate contraceptive coverage even if an employer objects to it.

“And in the case where the employee and insurer agree to add the objectionable coverage, that coverage is still provided as a part of the objecting employer’s plan, financed in the same way as the rest of the coverage offered by the objecting employer. This, too, raises serious moral concerns,” the statement said.

The Conference went on: “But stepping away from the particulars, we note that today’s proposal continues to involve needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions, and to threaten government coercion of religious people and groups to violate their most deeply held convictions. … The only complete solution to this religious liberty problem is for HHS to rescind the mandate of these objectionable services.”

Obviously, if this GOP gambit were to pass, the president would veto it. (Right?) Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that he does. This fight for “conscience” exemptions has now been engaged not just on abortion or Plan B, but on all contraception going forward. And individual employers will join this fight for “religious liberty” now that the “consciences” of religious institutions have been given special moral standing to object to the law.

Kevin Drum wrote an excellent post this week about this subject, explaining how he had once thought that making these kinds of exeptions for religious institutions was harmless and changed his mind in recent years. Here’s the essence of it:

The answer goes back a few years, to the controversy over pharmacists who refused to fill prescriptions for the morning-after pill. I was appalled: If you’re a pharmacist, then you fill people’s prescriptions. That’s the job, full stop. If you object to filling prescriptions, then you need to find another occupation.

But of course, the entire right-wing outrage machine went into high gear over this. And it was at that point that my position shifted: if this was the direction things were going, then it was obvious that there would be no end to religious exemption arguments. The whole affair was, I thought, way over the top, and yet it got the the full-throated support of virtually every conservative pundit and talking head anyway. This was, in plain terms, simply a war on contraception.

So I changed my mind.

Yes, this is a war on contraception. And perhaps the good guys won this skirmish, which is very good for women. But the other side took some ground they didn’t have before and they’re holding on to it, as you can see by that statement by the Bishops. “Conscience” exemptions to Birth Control in the name of “religious liberty” are now a standard part of the political playbook. Perhaps that was inevitable, but I continue to believe that the President should have either quietly allowed the exemption in the beginning if he was going to do it or gone ahead and fought these people back on the principle once he’d made the decision. Putting up a short fight and then ostentatiously coming up with an “accommodation” may make him the only grown-up in the room, and I’m sure that’s a truly terrific thing, but in the end, it empowered a group of morally suspect religious elites to continue their war on women.That’s why I’m not high-fiving this the way everyone else is.

We’ve seen how this works in my lifetime. Here’s a chart that shows public opinion on abortion rights since 1975.

You can see that public opinion has held pretty steady for 37 years. And yet, inexplicably, abortion has gotten harder and harder to obtain and the social conservatives have turned it into a political industry. No longer do both political parties contain pro-choice and anti-choice representatives. Only one does — the Democratic party. (We saw how that works out in practice the health care negotiations.) And I think everyone agrees that when John Roberts believes the Supreme Court has the right case, it’s highly likely they will overturn Roe vs Wade. I only point this out to illustrate the public opinion is no guarantee that the reactionary right will not be successful. This is fundamental to their belief system.

I’ve quoted this numerous times, but it’s very apropos for this discussion. From Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind

The most profound and prophetic stance on the right has been John Adams’s. He believed: cede the field of the public, if you must, stand fast in the private. Allow men and women to become democratic citizens of the state but make sure they remain feudal subjects in the family, the factory, and the field. The priority of conservative political argument has been the maintenance of private regimes of power—even at the cost of the strength and integrity of the state.

This is the fundamental nature of the battle between enlightened liberalism and reactionary conservatism, always has been. In this case it’s a very explicit battle for women. But it’s not confined to women. Everyone should be concerned that this understanding of “liberty” is going to expand to allow any elite property owner whether religious or simply wealthy to opt out of community responsibility whenever it threatens their hegemony in their “private” sphere.

This isn’t just about the lady parts.

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Spending vs. Deficit Reduction is a False Choice

by David Atkins

A part of me dies every time I see supposedly objective journalism that gets basic facts as wrong as this from the New York Times:

Obama Budget Bets Other Concerns Will Trump the Deficit

President Obama will lay out a budget blueprint on Monday that amounts to an election-year bet that a plan for higher taxes on the rich and more spending on popular programs like infrastructure and manufacturing will trump concerns over the deficit.

Ahem:

Let’s leave aside the fact that there is no contradiction at all between deficit reduction and tax increases on the super-wealthy. The notion that those two goals are somehow contradictory is bizarre.

But even the presumption that there’s a discrepancy between popular targeted spending programs and deficit reduction is false. Beyond the initial speculative financial bubble crash that was the immediate cause of the downturn, the continued economic malaise is caused by a lack of demand. That lack of demand stifles growth, jobs, and investment, which in turn leads to less tax revenue and greater strains on the social safety net. Obviously, there comes a point at which the spending ceases to be beneficial and merely adds to the deficit, but demand is so weak in the American economy that we’re nowhere near that point yet, as Paul Krugman is wont to observe.

Take another look at that graph. A huge part of the deficit is due to the economic downturn alone. The Bush tax cuts account for the lion’s share of the rest, while the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the icing on the cake.

Returning the wealthiest Americans to Clinton-era tax rates while boosting demand to fuel eocnomic recovery isn’t at odds with reducing the deficit. That’s how we’ll reduce the deficit.

That journalists at the supposedly “liberal” New York Times have so internalized false conservative memes on macroeconomics that they present an Alice-in-Wonderland case against targeted taxes and spending as matter-of-fact apathy about the deficit is nothing short of terrifying.

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Electric Dumb-ass

by digby

What a good idea:

People alarmed by Ultimate Fighting are sure to be shocked by Ultimate Tazer Ball, a new game in which players use stun guns to floor their opponents.

Its backers say the game will develop into an “exciting sport of the future.”

Although the league has yet to play an official game, Ultimate Tazer Ball has a website touting four teams, including a Toronto franchise called the Terror, and a YouTube video that shows players dashing around an indoor soccer pitch, zapping each other with hand-held stun guns.

The guns are not as powerful as the type used by police, but can still produce a painful shock.

Players on each four-man team attempt to score using a beach-ball sized soccer ball. The video shows players shocking each other with the stun guns. With each successful stun, players collapse to the turf, writhing in pain.

It should be noted that there’s some speculation that this might be some sort of elaborate joke or that it’s a new form of professional wrestling, particularly since these obviously aren’t real tasers which immobilize your muscles and force you to drop to the ground (usually screaming in agony.) It’s too bad really. If the tasers were real these dumb-asses could serve as a voluntary experiment in the health effects of repeated Taser electroshock.

I’m being flippant because this is so unbelievably stupid. But the sad truth is that this is the way torture gets normalized. It’s no big deal to get shot through with electricity. In fact, it’s fun! Why should anyone object to government authorities using it to compel instant compliance and respect from their citizens?

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I’ll see your accommodation and raise you an opt-out

by digby

You just have to laugh after a while:

Republicans and some conservative Catholic groups are not satisfied with the accommodation and hope to use their false claim of “religious persecution” to deny women access to preventive health services. Despite Obama’s decision to shield nonprofit religious institutions from offering birth control benefits, next week Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) is expected to offer an amendment that would permit any employer or insurance plan to exclude any health service, no matter how essential, from coverage if they morally object to it…

Individuals too can opt out of coverage if it is contrary to their religious or moral beliefs, radically undermining “the basic principle of insurance, which involves pooling the risks for all possible medical needs of all enrollees.” As the National Women’s Law Center explains, Blunt’s language is vague enough that “insurers may be able to sell plans that do not cover services required by the new health care law to an entire market because one individual objects, so all consumers in a market lose their right to coverage of the full range of critical health services.” As a result, a man “purchasing an insurance plan offered to women and men could object to maternity coverage, so the plan would not have to cover it, even though such coverage is required as part of the essential health benefits.”

Fairly sure “give them an inch and they’ll take a mile” is in the Book of Revelations, right?

I wonder what this will be attached to the next time. Walter Reed funding? School lunches?

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Why Accommodate the Bishops’ Peculiar Morality?

by David Atkins

Just a reminder:

Although Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York has been leading the national fight against requiring Roman Catholic hospitals, universities and charities to cover birth control in their health insurance plans for employees and students, some Catholic institutions in his own diocese and others throughout New York State have for 10 years been complying with state law mandating precisely that coverage.

The state began requiring contraception coverage in 2002, and Catholic institutions, after losing a court battle over the issue, have followed the law. Historically Catholic institutions like Fordham University, which is run by a lay board of trustees in the tradition of the Jesuit religious order, provide contraception coverage for employees and students.

Religious institutions already comply with state laws requiring contraception. Why should the fed be any less demanding?

It’s hard to understand why the Administration is giving the Bishops even the slightest attention or accommodation on this. The majority of Catholics themselves don’t agree with the Bishops on contraception: they’re out there alone. The laity doesn’t agree with the “leadership.”

Why should the Administration give more leeway to the Bishops for their “conscience” than it does to say, Code Pink for theirs? It’s safe to say that Code Pink actually speaks for the real views of more Americans on warmaking than the Bishops do on contraception. Would the Administration make similar concessions to a conference of Imams?

And given the Catholic Church’s peculiar history of ignoring and hiding certain types of scandals, it’s hard to see why the Administration should play ball with the Bishops’ peculiar version of “morality.”

Ignore them, and make them follow the laws the rest of us do. My minority views on capital punishment and military spending are not respected in the tax code. There’s no reason to give the Bishops any more credence.

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Chart ‘O The Day

by digby

Think Progress

I don’t think I have to make an argument here, do I?

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