Bosses and your lady business

Eighteen companies in the U.S. have gone to Court to avoid having to comply with the ACA’s (Obamacare) required birth control benefit.  They’re reasoning:  1) the benefit covers abortion-inducing drugs and 2) it violates their for-profit company’s religious freedom.  Both reasons are poppycock.

The pill, Plan B, Ella, etc are birth control–not abortifacients–meaning that they prevent an egg from being fertilized-they do NOT cause the body to reject a zygote (fertilized egg).  So their first reason is not true.  Furthermore on this point, the medical definition of pregnancy, which is the legal standard, is that the fertilized egg must implant on the wall of the womb.  Evidently these wealthy and mostly male cadre of entrepreneurs have decided that their individual religious belief that life begins at fertilization trumps the medical and legal one.  Nope, sorry fellas.

Now to the second point…..A company does not have religious freedom–because a company is not a person–no matter what the Supreme Court says.  And even if it did have “religious freedom” then whose religion?  The owner, the majority of the employees’ or the majority the shareholders?  See what a sticky wicket that “corporations are people too” is?  But I digress.

A corporation is both a  thing, an organization, and sometimes it is a group of individuals.  Clearly, the individuals who own it do have religious freedom.  Legal precedence tells us that what matters when considering a violation of religious freedom (and this is true of other “free exercise rights”) is the degree to which the individual is burdened–it has to be a “substantial burden” to constitute a violation.  Therefore, these companies have to show how it is a “substantial burden” to them to provide this benefit.  So far, they have failed to do this.

The courts have said time and time again that providing a “birth control” benefit to female employees is not a substantial burden.  Since employees pay for part or all of the costs of health insurance and therefore “earn” the benefit it isn’t a “substantial burden” on the employer.  Indeed one could argue the opposite.  To deny women birth control IS a substantial burden on female employees.  But who wants to help all those sluts out there, amiright?

One final point…most businesses, indeed even some religious organizations, have been offering the birth control benefit for a long time.  They only just recently decided that their religious freedom was being impinged and it conveniently coincided with the election of the scary Muslim usurper to the White House and passage of healthcare reform.  If a person or a group of persons making up a company feel they cannot provide birth control coverage then don’t run a business with other employees.  Just don’t.  It’s the same point I made when I was discussing the Catholic Church running ER’s and hospitals.  If they can’t provide proper care for pregnant women, which includes the ability to perform D&C’s to REALLY save the life of the mother then they either don’t need to run those hospitals or they don’t need to provide obstetrics.  In the end, the company doesn’t get to impose it’s owners religious rights on it’s employees.  It’s 2012, not 1012 and I’m pretty damn sure my “lady business” is none of their business.

Sarcasm aside….if you think these companies are wrong on this issue go to the Planned Parenthood website and sign their petition.

 

Health for me but not for thee

The Governor of Virginia is finally acquiescing to the need to form a healthcare exchange (instead of letting the Feds do it) to comply with the 2010 Healthcare Reform law, aka, Obamacare. Only problem is, he has decided that any insurance companies that participate, even private companies, cannot cover abortion–you know that perfectly legal medical procedure that saves the lives of women every day. I think if you don’t want to provide those services for women there should also be a restriction on any companies that provide erectile dysfunction meds like Viagra or better yet a restriction on those that provide prostrate surgery. Just sayin

http://hamptonroads.com/2013/02/health-care-exchanges-may-not-cover-abortion

Everything old is new again

I and many other people have been saying that the Republican Party is destroying itself from within and seems to need little help from their opponents in this matter. Every day I am becoming more convinced that we are seeing the GOP in it’s death throes (1) because the things they are doing are getting crazier and dumber.

Today we find out that Ted Nugent, the gun loving, draft dodging (2) and liberal hating singer, is going to be attending the State of the Union tonight as a guest of Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX).  Nugent most recently and famously had this to say about Pres. Obama and three of the most powerful and respected women in the world all while brandishing assault weapons:

Obama, he’s a piece of shit, and I told him to suck on my machine gun. Let’s hear it for him. And then I was in New York. I said, “Hey, Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch. Since I’m in California, how about Barbara Boxer, she might want to suck on my machine gun. And Dianne Feinstein, ride one of these you worthless whore. Any questions?

Yes, that’s the kind of man that the Republican Party wants to highlight on national television while the President has invited regular folks who REALLY represent America.  Part of me is delighted because it shows just how far off the Rails the GOP has gone and probably will alienate moderate voters.  The other part of me is pretty angry.  This guy has implied threats to the President’s life (to the point the Secret Service had to have a little talk with him), said some of the most inflammatory things about women and blacks I’ve heard spoken in public, and threatened to turn traitor.  Now yes, we have freedom of speech and no one is saying he can’t say such stupid and offensive things.  I’m just saying he doesn’t belong at the State of the Union because his views are so insulting, ugly and yes, violent.  You won’t see the left doing things like this.  You won’t see Bill Maher, who called Sarah Palin a cunt, attending the State of the Union.  You know why?  Because it’s totally inappropriate and does not help bridge the gap between the parties.  If anything, these kinds of people only make bipartisanship that much harder.  Dems know that and care who gets to represent them. The parties should show their best face forward at such events.  The American people and indeed the world, is watching.  Republicans must not give a shit about what anybody thinks.  They must want a racist, woman hating coward to represent them.  To channel Senator McCain, that’s a problem, my friends.

How about this one…..there is a right-wing radio host, Kevin Swanson, who had this to say:

[W]omen who are on the birth control pill, there are these little tiny fetuses, these little babies, that are embedded into the womb. They’re just like dead babies. They’re on the inside of the womb. And these wombs of women who have been on the birth control pill effectively have become graveyards for lots and lots of little babies.

Did you know this idea is called a homunculus (3) and it dates back to Ancient Greece, in particular to Aristotle?  Did you know that Aristotle and most Greek men at that time hated women?  To them the highest form of love was between two men.  Women were only there for two things:  serving as slaves to their husbands and for breeding.  The idea was adopted by the Catholic Church and stood for a couple of thousand years (may still be part of their catechism).  But in the 19th Century modern science began to understand about sperm and eggs and development of the fetus, etc so that this homunculus theory has been proven wrong.  Pushing this kind of ignorant and debunked thought is now makes no sense unless they want people to start thinking this way again.  After all it won’t be too much of stretch for many Republicans, if their politicians are any indication.   Why?  Let me show you.

• A bill was recently introduced in New Mexico that would make any woman who aborted a baby conceived due to rape a criminal.  For what?  Tampering with evidence.  The bill was withdrawn, however the fact that they thought it was perfectly acceptable to bring it up for discussion is horrifying to me.
• So many politicians have said stupid and offensive things about rape in the last couple of years so that the GOP held a retreat and had to have an outside consultant talk to them and convince them that they needed to stop using the word “rape”.  Not change their thoughts about it, not reconsider their position or become more empathic to their constituents positions on it, but just stop saying the word.  Nothing about the wrong and right of it, just completely stop talking about the topic.  See, if a guy thinks that “some women rape easy” or that the vagina has defensive mechanisms to repel a rapists sperm or that there are forms of legitimate rape (4), then they can think it, the ethics of it be damned, all they want but they can’t alert their female constituents to their beliefs because it will cost them votes.  Hmmm, wonder why it would cost them votes…..? Because it’s completely wrong and  horribly offensive, maybe?!?!
• Besides an attempt to have a national amendment for Personhood, several state Republican legislators have been pushing Personhood laws and amendments as well.  In which things like abortion at any stage would be murder.  IVF (5) would be murder.  Miscarriage would be investigated because what causes a woman to miscarriage?  You don’t know until you investigate, right?  And the fetus would be a person, so did the mother do anything to cause it? Can you imagine just having had a miscarriage while you are grieving you could be investigated for murder for that very same thing?

Such willful ignorance as Swanson spewing is falling upon very fertile ground.  That ground is full of conservatives who think in similar ways, believe similar things, and who reject science if it doesn’t fit their narrative.  They home school their kids and teach their kids abstinence.  They believe what their preacher, their priest, their favorite  right-wing TV and/or radio host, and their Republican politicians tell them, even if it is just batshit crazy.

Yet another example of the nutso caucus was the decision to have not one but two Republicans give a response to the State of the Union.  See it’s tradition for one of the opposing party to speak after the President. The GOP decided they would have Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) speak in English and then Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) speak in Spanish.  This idea was quickly squashed by others in the Party not because it is breaking with the tradition of only one response. Not because it is a waste of time since all three of the Hispanics who really want to watch the speeches can find a million other ways to hear and read it translated.  It was squashed because Republicans didn’t want to give the impression that they supported any other language but English.  That’s right.  They turned down the opportunity to reach out to the fastest growing ethnic group in the U.S., a group whose vote they resoundingly lost in 2012, because they didn’t want to legitimize that group’s language.  Keep going Republicans, you’re doing great!

Another….the President receives 30 threats against his life every day.  This is 400% increase.  He is so threatened that the Secret Service is being overwhelmed.

And so many others like…..

• the rapid growth in the gap between rich and poor and the corresponding shrinking of the middle class,
• the extreme opposition to reasonable requests for gun control reform,
• the rise of a propaganda arm of the conservative agenda that disguises itself as objective journalism (Fox News),
• the gamble with the debt ceiling and putting the global economy in jeopardy,
• the willingness to let the sequestration occur and slow down the U.S. economy’s growth just after a recession,
• the number of threats of impeachment the President has received,
• the entire “Birther Movement”,
• the purposeful misconstruing of the health care law,
• the surge in actual political power enjoyed by shock jockeys and TV grifters like Limbaugh and Beck,
• the resurgence of secession talk, etc, etc, etc.

I know that none of these things alone are all that unusual and they have all happened before (except for the Nugent thing, I guess, but we could consider the “You lie!” yell during the 2009 State of the Union to be in this class of offensive and tasteless behavior).  But put together, I am beginning to see a pattern of hate, rage even, that is coordinated, stoked and growing.  And it is helping the Republicans destroy themselves.  Which, in all honesty, is to the good in my eyes.  Unfortunately, it’s also hurting the rest of the country too.   If we don’t learn from the past we are doomed to repeat it and I can tell you, minorities and women do not want to and WILL NOT allow us to go backwards to the dark days when we only had second-class status.

Notes:  

1.  It will take several more election cycles, but I’m thinking around 2020

2.  Just in case you didn’t know, this man who is constantly brandishing guns and bragging about how he would revolt and fight against the evil Government, wasn’t so brave when he actually had a chance to serve his country, in order to avoid going to Vietnam Nugent by his own admission smeared shit all over his body and feigned insanity.  He got a deferment 4 times and was eventually given a 4-F.   But now, now he’s a big, big man and people should fear him.  Did he grow a pair over the last 20 years or is it that his kettle of bigotry and misogyny finally boiled over?

3.  various spellings, not sure which is official

4.  there are too many examples to link to here

5.  IVF, test tube babies, usually they fertilize many eggs, implant them in the womb and then once they attach, those that aren’t attached are removed and disposed of

The inconvenience of personhood

The Catholic Church has been a major pro-life player in U.S. politics and one of their explicitly stated goals is to overturn Roe V. Wade. Although they opposed the failed push for fetal personhood in Mississippi in 2010, they did so not based on any moral grounds but because they felt, legally, it was smarter to push for a Federal Constitutional Amendment. Their reasoning, why waste time on a state level? They felt it smarter to pool their resources and put maximum pressure on Congressional members. After all, they get much bigger bang for the buck in Washington, D.C. than Jackson, MS. Amiright?

Now, here comes the heart wrenching tale of a 31-year-old mother who was seven months pregnant with twins who died while sitting in an ER–a Catholic hospital’s ER. The mother and both babies died. The father sued, of course. Unfortunately for the father, he will not receive compensation for three lives lost–only the one, his wife. Why? Because the Catholic Church argued that babies were not, legally speaking, “persons”.

Some are crowing that it’s hypocritical (ht to JM Ashby at BobCesca.com for alerting me to this story). Yes, it is and you can put me in that “crowing” category. While the tragedy is indeed horrible, this case just goes to show you how incredibly opportunistic and dare I say venal the Catholic Church truly is. They are clearly taking this stance because it will save them money. And make no mistake about it, it is about the money. If it was about the principle of the thing, they’d simply pay the poor grieving man for the lives of three people and not one.

There are two reasons that this irks me so. First is the Church’s refusal to acknowledge other equally ugly scandals in order to avoid moral responsibility but also to avoid having to pay out enormous sums of money. The most obvious one being the hundreds of if not thousands of years of pedophilia that they knowingly protected and ultimately institutionalized. Sure they made private settlements but those were nothing compared to what they would have paid out in terms of money and reputation had they been taken to civil court for each and every case. That’s why settlements are made in the first place–to save the accused money and embarrassment. They are never, ever about the accused conceding that they were truly wrong in any way. The Church saved money by making settlements and it avoided admitting fault. Where’s the principle in that?

The other reason it irks me so is that I have seen with my own eyes the tip of the Vatican iceberg of treasure. I don’t mean the struggling parishes throughout the U.S. or the destitute missions in third world countries. No, that’s not how it works. See for the most part parishes and missions support themselves and if the hierarchy wants to spread that wealth downward they do. That allows the Bishoprics and the Vatican to keep a death grip on their own treasure. What I mean is that I have seen the Vatican itself. The actual buildings, the stolen treasures from Ancient Civilizations (yes, stolen, you don’t think Egypt willingly gave up those mummies and all their afterlife treasure did you?), the vestments, the artwork, etc, etc, etc. And that is only what you can see. They have investments in the hundreds of millions in the largest and most profitable companies in the U.S. alone. They have billions in solid gold. They have stuff in storage that will never see the light of day that is worth just as much. The Vatican alone is worth more than most countries in the world to say nothing of the worth of the Bishopric of some of the larger U.S. cities like Boston. In spite of their vast riches, they will not payout a measly sum to acknowledge their own principle that the life of a fetus is equal to that of the mother. Hell no!

And as much as their penny-pinching irks me, there is something else equally annoying. Some on the left are arguing that the Catholic Church is following the law and that’s a good thing. Their point being that, by making such an argument, the Church is establishing a legal precedence that a fetus is indeed not a person and they are also showing signs of being reasonable. And if you’re pro-Choice, then you should be all for that, right? Except this presumes two things. First it assumes that the Catholic Church will continue to act in this way. Only a naive fool would believe such a thing. They have been and will continue to be one of the most powerful forces behind a national personhood amendment in the U.S. (and elsewhere). The second is that this legal precedence will actually matter. And if we were only considering a strictly legal case that worked its way up through our system to the Supreme Court, this MIGHT be true. But we’re not talking about a single case making the long trek to SCOTUS where legal precedence is SUPPOSED to matter*. We’re talking about either a law passed by Congress or a federal Constitutional amendment. Neither of those processes, nor the actors in those processes, really give a tinker’s damn about legal precedence.

So the fact that the Catholic Church is being a hypocrite about their very own morality for the sole purpose of protecting their pocketbook should be loudly exposed. Shout it from the rooftops and don’t give them any credit for being reasonable. Their intention is to save money, not to do what is right. Silly me, expecting a church supposedly representing Christ on Earth to actually do the right thing for the right reasons! The left is often so incredibly naive and willing to believe that others will be on their best behavior, even when it has been proven otherwise. Since there is nothing in the Church’s character nor their past behavior to indicate they will in any way continue to be reasonable in future nor care that they have taken the opposite stance in the past, I refuse to be so sanguine.

__________

*There are so many SCOTUS bad cases that were decided without a lack of precedence like Citizens United–that I have no faith that the precedence in this one case or even a dozen similar cases would amount to a hill of beans in the end.

Thoughts on the Day

• Ann Coulter is a disgusting human being–she thinks the government should make a list of all women who have had abortions. I honestly don’t think she believes a single thing that comes out of her mouth. She’s a grifter making a ton of money off ignorant, conservative American voters just like Beck, Limbaugh, etc. But the irresponsibility of such talk, all for the sake of making money, takes my breath away. What’s next? Scarlet A’s for the women on the list? I have a suggestion. How about a big “C” brand for Coulter’s forehead?*
  
• It’s official. Sheriff Joe Arpaio now has members of his all volunteer posse patrolling carrying weapons at approximately 50 schools in Maricopa County today. Congratulations Arizona! You’ve joined the ranks of third world countries with authoritarian governments. Woohoo! So proud, I could weep. Fortunately they’re not patrolling in Peoria where my daughter goes to school or I would be there following their ass around with a protest sign and videotaping their dumbasses. I wonder how they would feel if I came with my Ruger Speed 6 loaded with jacketed hollow point 38 Special rounds with two speed loaders full? If they can carry on campus, why can’t I? I have security clearances or at least, I used to. I’m more qualified than many in his damn posse, some of whom have a criminal past.   Ht to Bob Cesca

• Here’s a question for you to ponder. Why are private for profit charter schools not held to the same standards as public schools? They receive our tax dollars. Here’s another. How come no one ever talks about the profit being made by these private corporations and how they’re in bed with the standardized test makers? Why are we allowing corporations who only care about the bottom line take over public functions like schools, prisons, health care, etc? What is most important in those particular types of services? The profit or the people? Whenever a profit motive is introduced corruption and a lack of oversight gets introduced. At least with government we have oversight, legal recourse, etc–we have built in mechanisms for controlling them. Charter schools are a new and growing business and it’s a particular problem in Ari-loony-zona. Unfortunately, there is no proof that they actually educate our kids any better or educate them on the right things. They also play favorites. They take the cream of the crop and leave the rest, the harder to teach to the underfunded public schools. The entire set up is a national recipe for failure. If you care to read more, Kay over at Balloon Juice follows educational issues and she’s got a ton of information on this topic.
• They were fer em before they were agin em! The President has nominated former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) to replace Panetta as the Secretary of the Department of Defense. Of course, if you hop into the “way back” machine and go to the mid-2000′s you’ll see that McCain and other GOP leaders thought Hagel was the bees knees. Now that the Brown Muslim Manchurian Socialist Usurper has chosen him, they don’t think he’s qualified.  They must think we’re stupid….oh, that’s right….
• Here’s some background information you need to remember when you start hearing about the “fight over the debt ceiling” in the coming months. Raising the debt ceiling does NOT authorize the President to spend more. It authorizes the President, specifically through the Treasury Department, to pay the bills on debt that CONGRESS PREVIOUSLY AND CONSCIOUSLY decided to incur. Here’s a simple metaphor. You work for a company with a board of directors. The company needs to buy some new property and buildings. The Board itself sets the limits on how much they can spend. The Board then proceeds to spend more than they were authorized. The Board now has to raise the limit on what they can spend to pay for the extra amount. But the Board is trying to blame the office secretary that pays the bills and accusing him/her of asking for unlimited spending power. If the Board refuses to raise the limit, does not pay those bills, the company’s credit will be destroyed. This company is crucial to their industry and if it collapses so will those related companies. Similarly, the President is trying to pay the bills. The US is the largest issuer of currency–money and credit. So the entire world economy depends on us and our good credit status. If we default on paying our debts, our credit goes bad. If our credit goes bad a serious of dominoes will fall and affect the world economy, very, very badly. Do you see how crazy it is to play politics with such a serious issue? Do you see how the Republicans are jeopardizing us and even the entire world by doing so? It’s madness.
• A Republican Lobbying group in Washington, D.C. is taking the term “Republican” out of their name. However, they are saying that they still “represent the governing wing of the Republican Party”. Is you or is you not a Republican? This is like naming a law that allows the federal government to spy on citizens without a warrant the “Patriot Act”. Doublespeak bullshit.
• You know how conservatives and even some moderates have been saying we need to “cut spending” and “tighten our government belt” like they did in Europe in response to the recent Recession? Well they were and are wrong. According to the International Monetary Fund:
  

  On Friday, in its first working paper of the year, it revealed the full horror of what did happen. Personally authored by the fund’s chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, the paper said for every dollar those nations cut their budgets their economies crumpled something more like $1.50.

  [snip]

  His defence [sic] is that in normal times they would have got it right. In normal times a budget cut of $1 would have cut economic growth by 50¢. But the times weren’t normal. European interest rates had been cut to nearly zero, meaning there wasn’t the normal room for authorities to cut further, and households were more heavily indebted than normal, so cuts to their income flowed through more quickly than normal to cuts in their spending. And the starting point was different. The European economies had been in recession, which was far from normal.

  The U.S. was one of the few nations, other than China, to actually do some Stimulus and the U.S. is in much better shape than most of Europe as a result. And the situation in the U.S. remains similar to what the conditions were in Europe at the time they decided to trod down the austerity path–low interest rates and households still heavily indebted. We have a consumer driven society. If consumers don’t have liquidity to spend on stuff the economy cannot and will not grow.  We don’t need austerity–we need investment in our national infrastructure and new, sustainable energy.

• Remember Lt. Bradley Manning, the young man who leaked classified material to WikiLeaks who then plastered it all over the Internet? Well I’ve been saying all along that his treatment during pre-trial detention was excessive and illegal. I KNOW what is acceptable and what is not, even in a military prison, and the way they treated him was unacceptable. Innocent until proven guilty, folks. Anyway, seems a judge actually agrees with me. Regardless of whether you think Manning did the right thing or not (I don’t think he did, actually) you should stand up for his rights in this particular regard. This is America dammit–we shouldn’t allow this kind of thing.
• And finally, have you heard about SHART? They are the Society of Heavily Armed Resistance Troopers….and they want a “Gun Appreciation Day”!**

_________________

Notes:   

*The C stands for a word that rhymes with “bunt”

**Hehe, the “article” purports to be from Smallwood, TX….small wood indeed