The Administration's policy on Birth Control is correct

The Obama administration has taken action to make sure that Birth Control is included in all health insurance programs offered in this country. This wonderful news has offended some of the right, inducing cries of how this is both unfair to religious groups and how this is a war on the faithful. The convulsive backlash is both expected and dishonest, yet may result in the administration backing away from full implementation of this very smart policy.

This would be a huge mistake.

First, this is not unfair to religious organizations; it is holding them to the same standards that everyone else in the US is held to. It is about equity and liberty. Yes, some faiths do view birth control as something to be avoided, and for those of faith who do not want to use birth control are not compelled to. However, those who do want or need birth control will now have full insurance assisted access to it. The power in this relationship has been transferred from the institution who wants to deny birth control to the individual who now gets to make the final decisions themselves, and that defines liberty.

And as to the war on faith foolishness being promoted by the right wing and their media enablers consider this. Yes the Catholic church opposes this policy, and the Democratic party supports it; However, the Republican party favors the death penalty, opposes immigrants rights, supports and cheers on war in the middle east and hates all forms of social safety net programs ... all of these positions are opposed by the Catholic church and the Democratic party.

Leaving me to wonder, who is really at war with the faithful, for it sure doesn't look like is it the current administration.



TagsObama, Birth Control, Right Wing

What He Said

This piece by Michael Bérubé is worth your time.

Open letter to conservatives

These are tough times for everyone, but I know these are especially tough times for you. From Iraq to Katrina to this global financial meltdown, you’ve made rather a mess of things, and now your party’s standardbearer is running a historically abysmal campaign made up of one part lies and two parts hate. His proposal for health care is somewhere between stupid and vicious, and his response to the financial crisis is, amazingly, even worse. Who’s his base now? Left Behind fans and people who can get hoppin’ mad at Barack Hussein Obama for spending three million dollars on an overhead projector thingy whatsis.

.....

Face it, folks, there’s nothing left. You have a big bag of fail at this point. Just the lies and the hate, which is more than enough to generate a $20 million salary for Sean Hannity but not enough to keep ordinary people from understanding that racial minorities are not to blame for the subprime crisis, and that Bill Ayers is not responsible for the Dow’s collapse.

...

Folks, I don’t think you understand how we truly feel about you. We mock you and tease you, I know, and you hate us for it. But we don’t hate you back. Really, we don’t. We’re secular pluralists, after all, and we know we have to find ways of sharing this planet with people who can’t stand secular pluralists. We really just want you to leave us alone. Still, we have our limits. The way you’ve behaved over the past decade or two leads us to believe that you’ll do whatever it takes to make the next decade or two a living hell for everyone who’s sincerely trying to clean up all the messes you’ve made. And we just can’t be bothered with that nonsense right now. This is too important.

Very funny stuff, with a wonderful proposal a the end.

Tags
Right Wing

Conservatives Are Cowards

I have noted before how fear filled the right wing's bed wetting brigade can act with something goes bump. I have always considered it to be a notable factor in the make-up of many of those on the right.

Well, it appears I was right.

a new study in the prestigious journal Science says that people with right wing views blink and flinch far harder than liberals when confronted with startling stimuli.

In the first study to directly link politics and physiology, the University of Nebraska led study suggests that people who hold conservative views on things like foreign policy and gun control, are more frightened than those with a more left-leaning bent on those issues.

This clearly would not apply across the board to everyone who has conservative views and it does appear to apply to protective issues more than broader issues. That said, this is the first step in confirming a detail that I have long suspected; Many of those on the right who have been screeching the loudest are doing so because they are afraid.

As s follow up to this study I think that there is another effect that should be reviewed. I would love to see the effect that ever increasing scare tactics has on how voters vote. I bet it moves them to the right, at least a little, no matter where they are on the political spectrum.

And that is why the Bush administration worked so hard to keep everyone freaked out from 2001 to 2006; It help in their political efforts.




Tags
Conservatism, Republicans, Right Wing

I Sprained my Shoulder

Patting my self on the back.

Yesterday I mentioned that the Tennessee Shooter, while being a general nut, was not doubt influenced by the bile that is so often vomited up by the American right wing media.

well guess what he was.

A Powell man sits alone in a jail cell following a fatal shotgun rampage in a church prompted by a hatred of liberalism and Democratic leaders who have hamstrung the nation's war on terror, records show.

....

Still seized three books from Adkisson's home, including "The O'Reilly Factor," by television commentator Bill O'Reilly; "Liberalism is a Mental Disorder," by radio personality Michael Savage; and "Let Freedom Ring," by political pundit Sean Hannity.

He bought books by O'Reilly, Savage and Hannity. I bet that the spent hours watching Fox news and listening to Rush and the rest of the tiny brain crowd.

I will also note how the paper didn't add perceived to the line about Democratic leaders but why anyone expect the traditional media do their job.


Tags
Limbaugh, Murder, Right Wing, Violence

Friday, Some Post Of Interest

Click on over and check them out.

At Orcinus, a look at ICE and the far right


Some very big investors are getting very nervous, at AMERICAblog.


At Informed Comment, a look at John McCain, Turkey and Iraq


And the passing of William Buckley cannot be ignored. It is marked with some legitimate praise, and some well earned contempt.



Tags
Racism, Economy, McCain, Iraq, Right Wing

Right-wing Authoritarian

Over at Orcinus, a great piece on the behavior and thinking of many on the right wing.

In fact, that naivete -- deceptively packaged as purity and innocence -- is one of the main things people are seeking when they're drawn into authoritarian systems. They join up because they feel overwhelmed by the complexity and nuance in the world. There's just too much to keep up with, too much responsibility, too much chaos. Often, they've been caught in the gears of the machinery of modernity, and have had large parts of their lives chewed up by the works. It all feels out of control. (Chris Hedges, in his new book American Fascism, describes how Christianist proselytizers are taught to seek out people going through hard times-- they're the hottest conversion prospects.)

This ties in quite nicely with the revelation that the Kansas Republican party is now considering some form of loyalty oath

The state committee's actions struck a sour note for some Republicans, particularly moderates on issues such as abortion. Bob Beatty, a Washburn University political scientist, suggested the loyalty committee could prove a "public relations disaster."

"Ironically, it smacks most of the Communist Party," Beatty said Monday. "That's the kind of public irony that most parties try to avoid -- the party of freedom telling people they have no freedom."

Terrorist Attack Thwarted in Virginia

It appears they have followed us here.

Campbell County authorities arrested a Liberty University student for having several homemade bombs in his car.

The student, 19-year-old Mark D. Uhl of Amissville, Va., reportedly told authorities that he was making the bombs to stop protesters from disrupting the funeral service. The devices were made of a combination of gasoline and detergent

....

Three other suspects are being sought, one of whom is a soldier from Fort Benning, Ga., and another is a high school student.

Ooopppps

It appears that these terrorist were already here. I wonder if the right wing wack jobs are going to flip out like they did about the Miami and Ft. Dix groups (who do not appear to have been this close to making an attack).

Dr. Laura's New Difficulties

(At least she is not naked this time)

As a media product, She has been in decline for a while now. It appears that the behavior of her sole reason for being (her Son) may, if true, speed up her disappearance from the American media scene.

The soldier son of talk radio relationship counselor Laura Schlessinger is under investigation for a graphic personal Web page that one Army official has called "repulsive."

Unfortunately as well as being repulsive, it is also similar to many other such projects that have been produced by members of our armed forces, who, a recent study suggest, think torture is a fine idea.

It is alarming what four years of lies and pointless warfare is producing.

Just How Stupid Is Americia's Right Wing?

Being to busy to see straight, I will just link to Vanity Press, where you can be introduced to Stupidpedia, the rights attempt at fact gathering.

Via CC, here's the Conservapedia, which is supposed to be Wikipedia for the ideologically fragile. Not surprisingly, it's actually just for the dumb. PZ Myers has already noted its mistakes on Darwin (big surprise there), but I thought I'd list a few more:


They think that in The Divine Comedy, Dante's guide through Hell was Aristotle. Actually, it was Virgil.

They think that the Christian undertones in Tolkien are "altogether unintentional." Actually, we know from many of Tolkien's letters that they were deliberate.

They think that Chaucer's Middle English is "so different from modern English that [his writings] are usually read in modern English translation." Actually, every college student who's studied even a little Chaucer reads him in Middle English.

They think that Chaucer's poem The Parliament of Fowles is called "The Assembly of Fowles."

They think that Beowulf is an epic (it isn't), and that it is "the oldest surviving literature in the English Language." It almost certainly isn't.

And that's not even mentioning the spelling, grammatical, and stylistic mistakes. This project is a really bad idea. It's just another example of epistemological relativism, of the kind that's too common on the modern right to begin with.

Both Ed Brayton and PZ Myers have been having fun with the rights latest public display of gross stupidity.