I Would Do Anything For Love, But I Won’t Douthat
As many of you know, I am a very agnostic person. I don’t know if a god exists, ever existed, or ever will exist, and neither do any of the Churches. Those of you who disagree with me are free to do so, and good on you for it.
What I’m all about is the fact that the Church, in the name of religious freedom, is trying to use the Republican party to cram their religious beliefs down the throats of millions of Americans who are not members of that church. We all know this to be the case. Well, I’ve found an essay about this very thing, and I’d like you all to read it when you get a chance.
Garry Willis, in the New York Review of Books, posted this well researched and well thought out answer to a lot of your questions about the church and it’s positions on the use of contraception.
Contraception’s Con Men is a quickly read takedown of the ideas that the ban on contraception has a scriptural basis, or a Natural Law basis under which the Church, by its own rules of logic and faith, may regulate or deny the use of contraception. Basically it’s a holdover from Pius XI deciding that Genesis 38:9, condemning Onan for spilling his seed meant that passage forbade the act of sex for anything but procreation. This was in the 1930s.
Now, you really should read the whole thing, even if you’re not a current or former student of Catholic theology and church politics—the two concepts being essentially the same thing, but if you can’t, here’s the takeaway:
When Paul reaffirmed the ban on birth control in Humanae Vitae (1968) there was massive rejection of it. Some left the church. Some just ignored it. Paradoxically, the document formed to convey the idea that papal teaching is inerrant just convinced most people that it can be loony. The priest-sociologist Andrew Greeley said that Humanae Vitae did more damage to the papacy than any of the so-called “liberal” movements in Catholicism. When Pius IX condemned democracy and modern science in his Syllabus of Errors (1864), the Catholic historian Lord Acton said that Catholics were too sensible to go crazy every time a pope does. The reaction to Humanae Vitae proves that.
And this is important to know and understand. The Bishops are out on a limb on this one. The laity is firmly in the “what I do with my own body is my business” camp, and this is even more so the case since the beginning of the still-ongoing child-sex-abuse scandal. Considering that things are heating up again in that scandal, particularly in the Milwaukee Archdiocese, I have to wonder how much of this isn’t about the Bishops trying to re-establish some moral authority that they lost (and didn’t really have to begin with.)
And since I forgot the actual part of the post that referenced Chunky Reese Whitherspoon, here is the link to Chunky’s column wherein he lets us all know that just because nobody actually pays attention to the Bishops, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t set national policy by their will. Apparently because Douthat is unable to enjoy non-procreative sex.
Title stolen shamelessly from Tbogg.
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February 17, 2012 12:49 pm ![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.balloon-juice.com%2Fwp-content%2Fthemes%2Fballoon-juice%2Fimg%2Ftag.gif)
Posted in: Election 2012, Vagina Outrage, Wingnut Event Horizon ![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.balloon-juice.com%2Fwp-content%2Fthemes%2Fballoon-juice%2Fimg%2Fcomments.gif)
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War is over if you want it
Sometimes I think there are more things in heaven and earth, Atrios, than are dreamt of in your philosophy, but mostly I think it’s true that official discourse is dominated by the idea that the hippies are always wrong and that real voters want to respect Bishops’ authoriteh, enact belt-tightening austerity measures, use Bayer aspirin as birth control (the way their up-by-the-bootstraps grandparents did), bat balloons endlessly in front of the faces of poor, brain-dead people, etc.
It may be that once upon a time there were enough Real Murkin-type voters to make culture war and eat-your-vegetables type stuff a political winner. It seems increasingly clear that those days are over, but that no one in the Village knows it.
February 17, 2012 12:08 pm Posted in: David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute 54 Comments
Most don’t
I’ve been looking at the reactions to Mitt Romney’s panicked, dishonest defense of his opposition to the auto bailout. I’ve chosen a couple of Romney’s particularly egregious lies, with the facts following each, because I really do think these lies give one a good sense of the man and his priorities.
I covered those bailouts in Washington as a reporter for the Detroit Free Press, following them through Congress to the White House to the bankruptcy courts a few blocks off Wall Street. As a first-hand witness, I can attest that some of Romney’s new arguments hold their own — but most don’t.
We have a witness! Unlike, say, Grover Norquist or the franchise known as Politifact, this guy was there!
The crux of Romney’s argument: If Obama had not acted, private companies would have stepped in and run a “managed bankruptcy.” What this ignores is that in the fall of 2008, before Obama was even sworn in, no one on Wall Street or anywhere else was willing to lend GM and Chrysler a penny — let alone the $81 billion they and their financial arms eventually needed.
Both companies’ bankruptcies required money on a scale not seen in legal history. Unlike airlines, which can keep running with much smaller short-term loans while they restructure, automakers need massive amounts of up-front capital to pay suppliers and workers while they build cars; their finance companies need even more to keep making car loans that can bring in revenues. The potential damage wasn’t just layoffs; Chrysler executives testified on the first day of bankruptcy that without immediate cash the company risked destroying hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of equipment.
Even after Obama took office, GM and Chrysler searched frantically for paths to avoid bankruptcy, including a possible merger. Chrysler held a one-week garage sale of its assets in February 2009, inviting anyone with enough money to bid for parts of the company. No one bit.
Chrysler’s secured creditors were a group of Wall Street banks — including J.P. Morgan, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs — and investment firms, some of whom had bought the company’s secured bonds in the months ahead of bankruptcy hoping to cash in. They could have rejected the government’s offer of 28 cents on the dollar in cash for their $6.7 billion in bonds and paid to liquidate Chrysler themselves, but decided that not only would they come out even further behind, they’d also be blamed for destroying an American automaker. (GM’s secured creditors − also mostly Wall Street banks — were paid in full, and endorsed the Obama bankruptcy plan.)
As for the “union-boss-controlled trust fund,” that’s what’s known as a VEBA trust that now pays the health care of 426,409 retirees from GM, Ford and Chrysler — and in return, owns all future health-care obligations from the companies for those retirees. With this, Romney appears to argue that before hundreds of thousands of UAW retirees got health care, Wall Street should have been made whole.
Romney opposed the bailout. Nearly all conservatives opposed the bailout. It was the DC-punditry- conventional wisdom standard to oppose the bailout. Mitt Romney really isn’t much of a risk-taker, so he followed the stampeding herd and took the safe bet against Detroit. Obama took the political risk, so is now collecting the political reward. If the bailouts had failed Obama would be getting killed on it, right now. That’s how political risk works. There’s a downside.
Romney, being Romney, wants it both ways: oppose the bailouts when it looks like they’ll fail, then try to weasel out of that when they succeed, by reciting stupid smears about “union bosses” to distract and cloud the issue. Did he learn this skill in the private sector? Dodging responsibility?
I know he’ll never admit he was wrong, but I do think it’s great that someone who knows something about what actually happened is examining his claims.
February 17, 2012 11:42 am Posted in: #notintendedtobeafactualstatement 46 Comments
Something told me it was over
I’m afraid Bananas Foster marks the end of peak Santorum:
The pattern is the same: non-Mitt pulls ahead of Mitt, non-Mitt gets involved with stuff too weird even for Republican primary voters (moon-mining, sexual harassment, debating under the influence), and non-Mitt falls in the polls.
I hope to Tebow I am wrong here, but I’m resigning myself, yet again, to months of hearing about Romney’s Burkean humility.
February 17, 2012 11:35 am Posted in: Burkean bells, Mitt Or Get Off The Pot 27 Comments
Where Are The Republican Women On This?
And expanding on what Betty said below, I’m asking out of genuine curiosity the about the opinions when it comes to Republican women and the birth control brouhaha. Short of The Distinguished Ladies From Maine wanting to see “final details” of President Obama’s rule changes to provide contraception coverage through insurance companies, I’ve heard basically nothing from prominent conservative women this week on the GOP’s trip back in time. It’s mind-blowingly obvious as to what I think about the sheer horror of it all, but I’m seriously trying to figure out if it’s deafening silence that implies support (or silent rage), if it’s none of my damned business, or if I’m just completely missing something.
And as Charles Pierce notes, at least one GOP woman candidate is running on the whole thing being nothing more than a First Amendment issue, like the campaign of Sarah Steelman in Missouri.
February 17, 2012 10:30 am Posted in: Assholes, IOKIYAR, Religion, Republican Venality, Teabagger Stupidity, Vagina Outrage, Wingnut Event Horizon 101 Comments
54 million, estimated
Yesterday, certain religious leaders and Republicans gathered in Congress to plan how to best to destroy those portions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that regulate employee health plans offered by large businesses as part of employee compensation packages. Employee pay, in other words.
Just to be clear, because there seems to be some confusion, certain religious leaders and Republicans are demanding a broad waiver for all large businesses, and without regulation of large businesses, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care is effectively gutted.
No opposing witnesses were allowed, which left a full day for certain religious leaders and Republicans to congratulate each other on their piety, charity and generosity, uninterrupted by anyone from out here in the cheap seats who might upset, challenge or otherwise fail to show the absolute fawning deference which we have foolishly allowed them to become accustomed to, and, naturally, they now demand.
Because we’re apparently a little tougher than Republicans or certain religious leaders, and we don’t require careful protection from an opposing view, I read Blunt’s defense of the new law he and the religious leaders drafted and are sponsoring, and here’s his suggestion to those of us who may lose health insurance coverage as a result of their law:
He suggests that workers who are denied coverage take their claim to a federal court, so that’s helpful, and I appreciate that advice. In case you’re wondering, Blunt’s defense means that everything lawyers are saying about Blunt’s new law is, well, TRUE. Employers could deny any coverage, and employees would then petition a federal court and demand that their current employer show proof that he or she actually has a religious or moral objection to health insurance coverage. Accusing your employer of lying about their moral convictions or religion may be problematic for your average employee, sure, but Blunt and certain religious leaders think you’re up to the challenge, and they say go for it. See you in court, suckers!
I don’t expect we’ll hear much on the reality for the peons on cost sharing and the PPACA now that Republicans and certain religious leaders have made this all about them, so here goes:
While some plans already covered these services, millions of Americans were previously in health plans that did not. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Employer Health Benefits Survey in 2011, 31% of all workers were covered by plans that expanded their list of covered preventive services due to the Affordable Care Act.[3] The most recent data from the Census Bureau show that 173 million Americans ages 0 to 64 currently have private coverage.[4] Putting these facts together, we estimate that approximately 54 million Americans received expanded coverage of at least some preventive services due to the Affordable Care Act in 2011.[5]
Using national survey data on children and adults with private insurance, we next estimated how those 54 million people are distributed across states, and across age, race, and ethnic groups. We examined the following age/gender groups, and provide here a sample of the services they are now eligible for without any cost-sharing. Note that this is not an exhaustive list of covered services and is only meant to highlight several examples.
•Children (0-17): Coverage includes regular pediatrician visits, vision and hearing screening, developmental assessments, immunizations, and screening and counseling to address obesity and help children maintain a healthy weight.
•Women (18-64): Coverage includes cancer screening such as pap smears for those ages 21 to 64, mammograms for those ages 50 to 64, and colonoscopy for those 50 to 64; recommended immunizations such as HPV vaccination for women ages 19 to 26, flu shots for all adults, and meningococcal and pneumococcal vaccinations for high-risk adults; healthy diet counseling and obesity screening; cholesterol and blood pressure screening; screening for sexually-transmitted infections and HIV; depression screening; and tobacco-use counseling. Starting in August 2012, additional preventive services specific to women, such as screening for gestational diabetes and contraception, will be covered by new health plans with no cost sharing.
•Men (18-64): Coverage includes recommended immunizations such as flu shots for all adults and meningococcal and pneumococcal vaccinations for high-risk adults; cancer screening including colonoscopy for adults 50 to 64; healthy diet counseling and obesity screening; cholesterol and blood pressure screening; screening for HIV; depression screening; and tobacco-use counseling.
54 million people now stand to benefit from no cost sharing for preventive services under the PPACA. Just keep that in mind when you’re listening to the same rotating cast of 150 people “debate” whether regulation of large businesses under the PPACA is necessary, or whether workers really deserve these protections.
February 17, 2012 8:58 am Posted in: Election 2012, The Decadent Left In Its Enclaves On The Coasts, Vote Like Your Country Depends On It 60 Comments
To Serve Women (a cookbook)
This really might be the dumbest, most ill-conceived and poorly written Daily Caller opinion piece ever, which, lordamercy, is saying something:
Why, to serve as civilizing hose-bags and poop out babies, of course! Well, at the very least, the column puts paid to any notion that the GOP’s “woman problem” will end when dinosaurs like Foster Friess finally lumber into the tar pit.
[X-POSTED at Rumproast]
February 17, 2012 7:37 am Posted in: Assholes, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Vagina Outrage 88 Comments
Pat Buchanan out at MSNBC
Pat Buchanan gave the keynote speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention. He had failed to secure the nomination, but had done well enough to demand the spotlight during prime time. Molly Ivins said later of his speech that “it probably sounded better in the original German.”
Speaking of which, Buchanan was quite the amature apologist for Hitler himself, having once said the Fuhrer was “misunderstood” and that the US and Germany should’ve fought on the same side in WWII.
Buchanan took to the ‘pages’ of the Creators’ Syndicate, of which he’s been a long time member.
Media Matters parroted the party line: He has blasphemed!
Well, with the disaster of optics that was today’s hearings on contraception sponsored by the Congressional Republicans and only featuring male witnesses, and that fool Freisse, or Freak, or Fuckwit or whatever the hell his name was, and then this? I’d say the forces of light have had a pretty good day.
Oh, yeah—Open Thread
February 17, 2012 12:23 am Posted in: Assholes, Because of wow., DC Press Corpse, Good News For Conservatives, I Read These Morons So You Don't Have To, Open Thread, Republican Stupidity 143 Comments
Santorum calls Foster Friess’s Bayer aspirin comment a “bad jokeâ€
Rosie Gray, writing at BuzzFeed, chatted up Rick Santorum about the unfortunate comments his SuperPAC backer, Foster Friess, made about contraception earlier:
Today on MSNBC, Friess said “Back in my days they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives,” adding, “The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.”
Asked about the quote outside the Oakland County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner here in Novi, Santorum wasn’t at first aware of the incident—but when it was described to him, he told BuzzFeed “I’m not responsible for every bad joke one of my supporters makes.”
Friess will be appearing on MSNBC again at 10 tonight to “set the record straight” on his aspirin remark, he tweeted earlier.
Speaking with Lawrence O’Donnell this evening, Friess played dumb, saying: “Back in my days, they didn’t have the birth control pill, so to suggest that Bayer Aspirin could be a birth control was considered pretty ridiculous and quite funny. So I think that was the gist of that story, but what’s been nice, it gives an opportunity to really look at what this contraceptive issue is all about.”
Right, the part about putting the aspiring between girls’ knees had nothing to do with it.
“I have been blessed by contraceptives,” Friess went on, inexplicably. “It’s an important thing for many women. it’s allowed them to advance their careers and make their own choices. That’s what’s special about America. People can choose. That’s what’s so annoying about this idea that President Obama forcing people to do something that is against their religious beliefs and that’s what the issue’s about, where Rick Santorum, as I said earlier, you know what his position is, but yet he’s never had any attempts, in fact, has even funded contraceptives to fight aids in Africa.”
What an odd shuffle. It’s almost as though Santorum and Friess are coordinating their message, and when Santorum expressed his distaste for Friess’s joke, Friess backed away from it. Not surprising, really, given Santorum’s meteoric rise in the polls and his need to start appealing to larger swaths of the American public. One can only play the far-right social conservative card in so many settings. After a while you need to diversify.
The problem for Santorum is that he really can’t shake his social conservative bona fides. That’s his strength and his weakness. Despite what Politfact might say, a majority of Americans are not hardcore so-cons, and most Americans are pro-birth control. 2011 was the first year that most Americans voiced a favorable opinion about gay marriage, for that matter. Santorum’s politics are a dying breed.
I hope he wins the nomination, even though I’m pretty sure he won’t.
February 16, 2012 10:59 pm Tags: Andrea Mitchell, Bayer aspirin birth control, BuzzFeed, Foster Friess, GOP 2012, Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC, Rick Santorum · Posted in: Assholes 75 Comments
GOP Justification for State-Sanctioned Rape in Virginia
blink
Apparently, once vaginally-penetrated, always vaginally-penetrated:
So ladies, if you’ve ever had sex, used a sex toy, or even used a fucking tampon, then you’ve given up the right not to have the government shove a foreign object into your vagina.
Welcome to the 18th 21st century.
[via Slate; Feministe; RH Reality Check]
RELATED POST: Happy Valentine’s Day, Ladies of Virginia! Your GOP Hates You and Your Uteri (by asiangrrlMN)
[cross-posted at ABLC]
February 16, 2012 10:34 pm Posted in: Fucked-up-edness, Vagina Outrage 99 Comments
Thursday Night Recipe Swap – Mardi Gras (Gumbo!)
From our Food Goddess, TaMara:
I wanted to do gumbo, but didn’t have time to recipe test anything this week, except a death-by-chocolate Texas Sheet Cake, and I find my own gumbo recipes lacking. Luckily when it comes to gumbo, JeffreyW runs circles around me. Here’s his take on a shrimp gumbo:
Seemed to work pretty well:
Serve over rice, and be sure to have a bottle of hot sauce on the table lest you be taunted.
February 16, 2012 9:27 pm Posted in: Cooking, Open Thread 40 Comments
Quitters Never Win
I understand why Mitt Romney would pull out of the March 1 CNN debate (four days before Super Tuesday). He should miss every opportunity for voters to calibrate their dislike for him, and an event on the eve of some primaries he and his PAC advertising will probably be able to buy is doubly worth a miss. But why the hell did Ron Paul and Rick Santorum pull out? Romney is going to bury those guys in negative ads, which they don’t have the budget to counteract, yet they decided to give up a big chance at free media right before the most important day in the Republican primaries.
That seems odd, especially for Santorum, since a debate without Romney be a golden opportunity to pound home the point that Romney is a chickenshit who hides behind his negative ads. Perhaps they’re assuming the February 22 debate, which is still on, will do that work for them, but that’s missing the point that the more Romney people see, the less they like.
Also, too, speaking of quitting, I’ll be following Mitt, Rick and Ron’s lead and taking a few days off to travel.
February 16, 2012 6:10 pm Posted in: Election 2012 99 Comments
Look back in anger
My opinion on the contraception coverage issue for churches is that it will have no political effect. I think it’s too complicated and most people just don’t care. It was a bad move for the Catholic church, but it probably won’t impact whether people vote Republican or Democrat this fall.
Democracy Corps thinks it has the potential to hurt Republicans and they make a good point that I hadn’t thought of:
More broadly, voters may wonder why the Republicans are consumed with pushing back health coverage for women rather than continuing to focus on the economy, spending and debt.
We may yet look back on this debate and wonder whether this was a Terry Schiavo moment.
The Obama position finds a two-thirds majority among suburban voters and a 61 percent majority among single women. These results loom large when voters prefer Democrats over Republicans by 52 to 26 percent on women’s issues, including a 36-point margin among senior women and a 47-point margin among unmarried women.
The reason Schiavo hurt Republicans was probably not so much because the public agreed with the husband (though they did), but because they wondered why the Republican Congress was hot-dogging the issue. The same could be true with the contraception coverage issue.
February 16, 2012 5:28 pm Posted in: Hoot-Smalley, Vagina Outrage 159 Comments
Thursday Evening Open Thread: Moral Objections
(Jeff Danziger’s website)
This cartoon is from last year—like any good reactionary, Santorum’s been banging the same dishonest themes since he started his campaign. With his help, we can look forward to Walmart explaining that they refuse to pay for insurance to cover “lifestyle-related” problems like heart disease and diabetes, on the highly moral grounds that such coverage only encourages employees to neglect their own best interests. And then Tyson will demand an exemption for repetitive stress injuries and cancer, because Job 5:7 clearly states that “Man was born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward“...
What’s going on this evening that doesn’t require a return to the worst of the Gilded Age?
February 16, 2012 5:20 pm Posted in: Assholes, Open Thread, Republican Stupidity, Republican Venality 32 Comments
Wingnut Medical Science
NH Republican Jeanine Notter asserted that the pill causes cancer. Prostate cancer. In men. You do the math:
Is it possible that maybe the public is just punking us all by electing these morons for entertainment purposes?
February 16, 2012 3:03 pm Posted in: #notintendedtobeafactualstatement, Teabagger Stupidity 239 Comments
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