Nikki Haley says women don't care about birth control, unless they do

By Michael J.W. Stickings

She was okay on Colbert last night -- amusing for a politician, and fairly likeable, if also typically partisan (can't give Obama any credit whatsoever for the economy!) -- but her appearance on The View yesterday included this brilliant nugget, in response to an easy lob-ball question from resident conservative Elizabeth Hasselbeck (see clip below):

"Women don't care about contraception," Haley said, "they care about jobs and their families..." She was cut off by Joy Behar, who bristled along with the rest of the panel and noted that women should care about contraception. "The media cares about contraception," Haley tried again, and then concluded that while women might care about contraception, they just want to be able to make those decisions themselves, without government involvement. Interesting position for a female Republican governor!

Indeed. Sounds like she's a tad conflicted, as perhaps are many Republican women watching their party wage war on... women.

Of course it's obvious that women (and a lot of men) care about contraception -- they all use it, after all (pretty much, anyway). I suspect that what Haley meant is that in terms of political issues women care more about jobs and the economy than birth control, that is, that women don't want birth control to be a political issue at all -- because it's a settled and firmly private matter, as most of us thought it was before Republicans decided to make it a centerpiece of their misogynistic war.

It just didn't come out that way, and her view that women should be able to make decisions themselves, in private, is a rather un-Republican one these days.

She said on Colbert that she wouldn't accept an invitation to be on Romney's ticket, but of course that's what she has to say. And it seems to me that she'd be a serious contender for the nod given her various demographic and ideological bona fides.

She'll just have to make sure to get the orthodox GOP talking points down if she wants to move up in the party.

It's settled, then: Women, we're at war

By Ramona

Don't expect me to be going over every single attack on women's rights just because I'm writing about modern-day, 21st-century, 2012, just-in-the-last-month attacks, which, as you might have noticed, are escalating at such a dizzying pace we can no longer ignore the rumblings of war.

It's ugly and it's all out there. Even Rush Limbaugh's scrubbed transcripts of his diatribes against Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University student who had the temerity to attempt to testify before certain members of congress about the need for free contraception. Even Patricia Heaton's deleted tweets about that same student (aka G-Town Gal). They're out there. They're not going away.

No, we're here today to look at the big picture: How did this latest war of the sexes start? What was the catalyst? And what can we do to grind it to a halt now that it's started? 

The obvious answer to question number one is that it's all Obama's fault. As a part of his health plan (the catalyst), he told insurance companies they would have to offer contraceptive care at no cost to women. (That would mean, for most, no co-pay.) Birth control aids would be free and available everywhere, and since it was mandatory, not to mention laudatory, not to mention commonsensical and a long time coming, that was supposed to be it. End of conversation.

Ha! We wish!

President Obama's first mistake was that he thought he was taking steps toward helping women more effectively and responsibly manage their reproductive years, when what he was actually doing was antagonizing pissants who have been posing as Manly Men for so long they're not about to be ousted from their comfy zones.

A whole host of Catholic Bishops, pseudo-religious politicians, and paid-to-be-mean pundits jumped on the bandwagon called Control the women by denying birth control, and weren't they surprised when the women they were so itching to suppress wouldn't give in? A real donnybrook ensued, with everybody weighing in, pro and con, and here we are, in the middle of it all, coming out swinging, and if they want a war, okay, they've got one.

Some highlights:

• The Susan G. Komen Foundation is taken over by a right-wing zealot who makes it known from Day One that Planned Parenthood can kiss SGK goodbye. Susan Komen's sister/founder helps figure out a way to do it. A huge, unprecedented fuss ensues. Right-wing zealot goes on to greener pastures. The sister stays and apologizes -- a Pyrrhic victory that nobody feels good about.

• Long probes up the vagina with cameras on the end used not as medical tools but as instruments of shame -- Zap! Gone! Battle won!

• Gooey cold stuff massaged onto a bare belly so a government-issue wand can be waved, not to detect a zygote already determined by other methods to be there, but to establish once and for all that a woman doesn't actually have control over her own body -- still working on it but we've got them in our sights.

• Dozens of state legislatures scrambling to make laws against contraception and abortion so harsh Draco the Greek, if he were still alive, would be crying foul -- this one may take a while.

The legal issues, having some semblance of form and substance, are easier to deal with. There are wise and learned people on our side ready to take them on. But there's another, uglier issue and it's one we've faced many times before. It's our old but formidable nemesis: blind, consuming hatred toward people of our gender.

With the rise of the Tea Party and pressure from the Religious Right-to Life-Until-It-Actually-Becomes-A-Child, fortified by resident misogynist Rush Limbaugh and hardline Catholic men in red robes and black robes and pullover sweater vests, the battle to enforce the reproductive rights we've already fought long and hard for is a battle we can't afford to lose.

The spotlight is on Rush Limbaugh at the moment, but it's Rick Santorum we need to keep an eye on. He showed his hand when he talked about his reaction to John F. Kennedy's 1960 speech to the Baptists, where JFK said he would fight hard for the separation of church and state.

Santorum wanted to throw up when he read that. Why? Because it's disgusting and unforgivable that  Kennedy had the chance to pave the way for an American Pope and he didn't take it. Rick will remedy that when he's president. And guess who will suffer the most under his reign?

The obvious goal is to make sure Rick Santorum never becomes president, but once that threat is gone we'll still be fighting those others working to take us down. We thought that war was over, but all we really won, we know now, was détente.

Men (and, incredibly, other women) are fighting against those of us who go on believing our reproductive rights are sacrosanct. Suddenly they're coming out of the woodwork, no longer pretending that Roe v. Wade is all that's keeping us apart. Now it's about contraception -- a real puzzler, since birth control is the obvious remedy for unwanted pregnancies.

Only women can incubate babies. It's a fact. If they get knocked up and it's not a good time, the sex police want us to believe they have no one to blame but themselves. Really? What other species on the planet punishes the female for being impregnated by a male? Birth control is a two-way street. It's irresponsible and gutless to pretend that women did this to themselves, and yet we're hearing it louder and clearer every day.

And why is that? Because to the people who are coming at us with the same hoary arguments, it's not about the control of birth, it's about the control of sex. That nutty comment by Santorum backer Foster Friess about birth control being as simple as holding an aspirin between our knees? The admonishment from Rick Santorum that all birth control should be banished because it can only lead to badness? Rush Limbaugh's crazed, three-day masturbatory fantasy about the reasons women want free birth control? Sex, sex, and, yet again, sex.

It's the same tiresome struggle, but this time we're going to win. Why? Because we have a secret weapon.

It's men. There are more than just a few good ones out there and they're on our side. They're men who work with us, talk with us, and see us as equals. They're men who live with us and see our roles as complementary and not competitive or without merit. They're men who can love unconditionally and have grown so far beyond the ancient need to keep women bound and tethered, they're willing to fight beside us until this war is ended. Some of them are already at the front lines.

So put that in your pipe and smoke it, you dirty old men of yesterday. A new day dawns and you've been left behind. It has to be this way. It's the way human progress works.

(Cross-posted at Ramona's Voices.)

Control freaks

By Mustang Bobby

There have been a lot of stories -- and comic strips -- recently about birth control and contraception and the attempt by the Republicans and conservatives to make it an issue in the presidential campaign. But this story from Arizona strikes me as the capper:

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 6-2 Monday to endorse a controversial bill that would allow Arizona employers the right to deny health insurance coverage for contraceptives based on religious objections.

Arizona House Bill 2625, authored by Majority Whip Debbie Lesko, R-Glendale, would permit employers to ask their employees for proof of medical prescription if they seek contraceptives for non-reproductive purposes, such as hormone control or acne treatment.

"I believe we live in America. We don't live in the Soviet Union," Lesko said. "So, government should not be telling the organizations or mom and pop employers to do something against their moral beliefs."

Lesko said this bill responds to a contraceptive mandate in the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law March 2010.

"My whole legislation is about our First Amendment rights and freedom of religion," Lesko said. "All my bill does is that an employer can opt out of the mandate if they have any religious objections."

Glendale resident Liza Love said the bill would impose on women's rights to keep their medical records private.

Love spoke to the committee about her struggle with polycystic ovary syndrome and endometriosis, conditions requiring her to use birth control.

"I wouldn't mind showing my employer my medical records," Love said. "But there are 10 women behind me that would be ashamed to do so."

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that none of this has anything whatsoever to do with religious freedom, moral objections, or the rights of an employer to pay or not pay for certain kinds of insurance, mandated or otherwise. (I especially like the part about not living in the Soviet Union as justification for an employer to have dictatorial oversight to an employee's medical history. When it's the state doing it, it's Communism, but when it's a company, it's the free market capitalism at its finest. Irony is lost on this person.) None of it -- not the invasive sonograms, the 24-hour waiting periods, the parental notifications -- is based on medical concerns or the right of a patient to know about a procedure. It is simply that the people who are writing and passing these laws are control freaks who are obsessed with the private lives and morals of everyone else.

(As history has proved time and time again, they are flaming hypocrites when it comes to their own personal lives. How many more stories are we going to read about a straight happily-married evangelical Christian legislator who sponsors anti-gay bills while he has a Gay.com app on his smartphone that says "looking for discrete NSA fun; can't host"? Or how many more lectures will we endure about the sanctity of marriage from a presidential candidate who follows his divorce attorney on Twitter, or a senator who has a record of paying for sex? It's been a part of the repertoire since Aristophanes. As one wag noted, "A happily-married man has to have something on the side. Otherwise he wouldn't be so happy.")

It comes down to their pathological desire to rule, not govern. But they can't come out and say it, because if they do, they'd have to acknowledge that that is all they want. It has nothing to do with the sanctity of life or "values." This is why they're "pro-life" to the point that they destroy any reasonable argument for protecting the developing fetus. Reasonable people can -- and have -- made good points about why abortion should be limited to the first trimester except in cases of threats to the life and health of the mother. But enshrining a fetus with the same rights as a person goes not just against legal logic (the Constitution does not grant citizenship to a person unless they are born or naturalized in the United States) but it makes the argument for their side so ridiculous that even the voters in Mississippi -- a state not known for secular liberalism -- rejected a law that granted "personhood" to a clump of cells.

The spate of laws that require invasive procedures prior to a woman getting an abortion are for the sole purpose of shaming a woman into not going through with the operation. They are couched in the Orwellian niceties of "ensuring that the patient is fully informed," but what they're really saying is that they -- the white straight male proponents of "smaller government and more freedom" -- know what's best for a woman and her doctor. If you're an unmarried woman using birth control, your morals are suspect and you have no expectation of privacy because you're just a whore. And you, the guy with no wedding ring and a rainbow flag bumper sticker: why are you buying condoms, hmm?

These people may say it's about religious freedom -- as long as it's their religion. They may say it's about traditional marriage -- as long as they get to define both "traditional" and "marriage." But hiding behind all this sanctimony of religious claptrap or "traditional values" is just a cover-up for that fact they crave the power to control others... as long as no one controls them.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Dear Eric Cantor, you're an idiot

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Birth control is not the same as kosher food and an organization is not the same as an individual person of faith. Sorry. For that analogy alone, you're an idiot.

For more, read Nicole Belle's post at C&L on Cantor and the Blunt Amendment:

Here's the logic fail on the part of the Republicans and the Blunt Amendment's "moral objection" clause: where does it stop? Who is the ultimate decider? What if the CEO of a corporation is a Scandinavian Lutheran who does not want to include coverage for circumcision, but the Board of Directors has a minority percentage of Jews who do? What if the President of the company is a Christian Scientist and wants to eliminate coverage for blood transfusions, but the Chief Operating Officer has a son who is a hemophiliac and wants it covered? Or a head of a company is a Scientologist and believes that psychiatry and psychiatric drugs are a racket and refuses to include that despite the fact that the head of Human Resources and the person who negotiates with the insurance company has been struggling with clinical depression? Who gets the final say in what kind of coverage an employer can have a moral objection to?

Therein lies the problem. Companies and corporations are not corporeal beings. They are non-living fictitious entities. They have no faith, because they are not a person. Not even a Jesuit institution, such as Georgetown University. The university itself holds no faith. Its Board of Directors even includes a Sunni Muslim woman. It employs Catholics and non-Catholics alike. It accepts non-Catholics as students. Those students pay a significant tuition for the prestige of attending the law school, and even pay their share of premiums for health insurance. All that was asked was that the coverage include a full range of women's health needs. Not for taxpayers to subsidize it. And then in turn, the individual women could follow the tenets of their own faith as they saw fit and either make use of the coverage or not. 

Exactly.

And so actually it's the opposite of what Cantor said. A woman (or man) should have the choice of whether or not to use her (or his) coverage for birth control, just as a Jew should have the choice of whether or not to be kosher. Just as a Jew shouldn't be told what kosher means, a woman shouldn't be denied access to birth control just because of someone else's (or some organization's) moral objections, whatever that even means. No one's telling an organization it has to endorse birth control, just as no one's telling any Jew what he or she may eat.

It's about access and choice, you see. And Cantor opposes both.

I am Rush Limbaugh's wife

Hello. My name is Kathryn Rogers. You might not know me, but I am Rush Limbaugh's wife.

I felt it was time to come out of the shadows and respond to the hate mail we have been getting after what my husband said this week about women and contraception. By now you have heard the comments and are probably wondering, what kind of woman marries a man who says such things? How could a woman be willing to let a man who says such things kiss her? Touch her? Get into the same bed with her? Well, I wanted to let you all know the answers to these questions. I hope it sheds some light on the situation and opens up the conversation.

I am Rush's fourth wife. Yes, lucky number four, as I like to refer to myself. Rush and I met in 2006. I was working as a party planner and Rush was working the party. It was love at first sight. What I mean to say is that Rush thought I was totally hot. It took me a little longer, I have to admit.

Once I got to know him better, I really started to fall in love with him. How could you not? He is so handsome and cuddly, and so sexy. Sure he was married before, but that is only a testament to his wild nature, something I really love about him. Like for example, his first wife was named Roxy. What a slutty name, right? She was a sales secretary at the radio station where he worked at the time. I kid him by calling her his Loni Anderson.

Following Roxy, Rush married a college student who was an "usherette" at a baseball stadium. Her name was Michelle Sixta. I joke that it kind of sounds like "Sexta." He always cracks up when I tell him that. And boy was she a slut. She would use contraception without even telling Rush about it. Not that he ever wanted children. Why would he? Who would want those rug rats anyway? Life is too short and there is too much shopping to do.

Conquest number three for my Rushypoo was a horrid woman named Marta Fitzgerald. She was an aerobics instructor. Can you believe that? They met online. I mean, how slutty is that? This woman paid money to meet men on the Internet. You know who pays money to meet men on the internet? Loser whores! That's who!

People could argue that men pay a membership fee for online dating too. Just the other day Rush and I were talking about this and he had a great idea. If men are going to pay a membership fee to meet women, if men are expected to pay for this, then men want something in return -- videos of all the sex posted online so they can see what they're getting for their money. I thought that was great. I think he used that one on his show the very next day.

So all you sensitive people out there who are offended by how my Rush talks about women on his radio program, I say to you get a life! Rush requires a certain kind of woman to handle him, and it's not you! Jealous? He requires someone who is not a contraceptive-using slut. Someone who is willing to light his cigars, buy him oxycodone and hydrocodone, and protect him from all the hateful sluts out there who just don't understand him.

So stop hating on my man! On second thought, don't. All the hate on my husband actually improves his ratings. To me that means one thing -- I get a raise in my al-low-ance! Holla!! And there is this cute dress that I have had my eye on. It is this short, hot little thing that is so slu... I mean conservatively classy. You would love me in it.

Tootles!

**********

Guest post by tmcbpatriot (not Kathryn Rogers, but close)

tmcbpatriot's informative and always entertaining blog, Take My Country Back, emanates from somewhere out in the Midwest. He writes passionately and as often as possible about a confused, mindless right wing hopelessly lost in the abyss of endless lies and misdirection.

Ed. note: This is the patriot's third guest post for us. His first was on how it's about the vagina, stupid and his second was on gay marriage and the end of the GOP. I'm a big fan of his blog and we're happy to have him on board.

I would just note, for what it's worth, that the fourth Mrs. Limbaugh is considerably younger than Dear Leader Rush -- like, more than 25 years younger. That should tell you something about Rush's view of women.

For more on Rush's sexist and indeed downright mysogynistic assault on Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown student he has repeatedly (and very publicly) called a slut and a prostitute for using birth control, see ABC News, Think Progress, and Media Matters. Here's what he said on Wednesday:

So Miss Fluke, and the rest of you Feminazis, here's the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex. We want something for it. We want you post the videos online so we can all watch.

It's amazing that any woman wants anything at all to do with this asshole. Obviously, he wants women to know their place. Right under his boot. Where he and his ilk can use and abuse them as they see fit.

(And if he thinks women who use birth control are sluts and prostitutes, then it must be that he thinks the overwhelming majority of American women are sluts and prostitutes. That should tell you a lot about what conservative men, and even some conservative women, really think of women.)

As for Ms. Fluke, I hope she fights back with every legal weapon at her disposal.

-- MJWS

The Obama-Santorum conspiracy

By Nicholas Wilbur 

Convinced that President Obama's contraception battle with the Catholic Church is not a "short-term tactical blunder" but yet another example of the president's "strategically shrewd" long game, conservative-turned-Dem-loving-ratiocinator Andrew Sullivan this week dabbled in a potentially promising career as a conspiracy theorist with a column at The Daily Beast that shocked Washington insiders and rubes, Democrats and Republicans, Obamabots and Birthers alike:

The more Machiavellian observer might even suspect this is actually an improved bait and switch by Obama to more firmly identify the religious right with opposition to contraception, its weakest issue by far, and to shore up support among independent women and his more liberal base... And if this was a trap, the religious right walked right into it.

Not only did the right-wing establishment walk right into it, their constituents turned out en masse to vote on it, handing three presidential primary victories to the rigidly conservative and proudly orthodox Catholic Rick Santorum.

Is it therefore impossible to assume that President Obama expected that such a hot-button issue would effect turnout among conservatives, and therefore timed the contraception ruling in order to boost Santorum's odds of besting the only candidate with even a remote chance of beating Obama in November, presumed nominee Mitt Romney?

That's a rhetorical question, of course.

Obviously, the president is going to capitalize on whatever means are available to him in his race for re-election.

It doesn't take a political genius to see that this contraception fight was a win-win-win for Obama. It riled his own base, pissed off the conservative wing of the Republican Party, and "reinforce[d] Obama's reputation as a man willing to compromise, one of his core strengths among independent voters."

As Sullivan observes, riling the "righteous" conservatives is especially important, if only because their extreme views on religious issues have done nothing to improve their popularity among the more moderate masses.

If the Catholic bishops and the religious right eventually reject the proposed Obama compromise, they will be digging themselves even deeper into a hole that is quickly losing traction. Citing the civil union-versus-marriage debate and the religious right's ongoing pursuit to criminalize abortion, Sullivan writes that, "[t]ime after time, they have rejected compromises on social issues because of fundamentalist rigidity, not Christian engagement with a changing world." And as the polling shows, they're losing ground on each of these aforementioned issues.

As this and other social issues come to the fore in an election pundits claim will be "focused almost entirely on jobs," the clear beneficiary is Santorum.

Given the Republican Party's lukewarm enthusiasm for Romney, Santorum's hard-line stances on abortion, gay marriage, and other hot-button issues very well may propel him toward the nomination.

Anything Obama can do to help that potentiality become a reality is just good politics (especially when the majority of Americans support the specific policies being used to divide Republicans, as they do in the case of contraception).

Such political gamesmanship may not land Santorum the nomination, but fracturing Republican voters between the unelectable true-blood conservative and the electable but unlikeable "milquetoast Massachusetts moderate" plays well for the incumbent no matter how you slice it.

In a not-so-subtle hint to the Santorum campaign on what ought to be the focus of their attacks in the coming months, Sullivan states that the contraception issue "could not be more tailor-made to benefit" Santorum.

It could finally unite the Christian fundamentalist right behind him -- especially since Romneycare contained exactly the same provisions on contraception that Obamacare did before last week's compromise was announced. That's right: Romneycare can now accurately be portrayed as falling to the left of Obamacare on the contraception issue.

"[This] could be the issue that wins him the nomination," Sullivan says.

Or it could not be. Santorum could fall short of winning the nomination and succeed only in postponing Romney's expected victory, bleeding the eventual nominee's campaign coffers, dividing the Republican Party along social lines, and riling socially liberal and moderate Americans behind the incumbent's less dogmatic, more pragmatic compromise.

Win or lose, Santorum's surge into the #1 slot in the GOP primary race may prove nothing more than what is already obvious: that Barack Obama is more than a "chess master." He's one BAD motherfucker!

(Also published at Angry Black Lady Chronicles.)

End of the world or just the Republican Party?

Guest post by tmcbpatriot 

Ed. note: His first guest post, on how it's about the vagina, stupid, was on Monday, and two days later we're running his second. I'm a big fan of his blog and we're happy to have him on board. -- MJWS

********** 

tmcbpatriot's informative and always entertaining blog, Take My Country Back, emanates from somewhere out in the Midwest. He writes passionately and as often as possible about a confused, mindless right wing hopelessly lost in the abyss of endless lies and misdirection.

So I'm reading the news the other day and I see this: "Dick Cheney lobbied for Maryland gay marriage bill." I stared at it for a while in disbelief. Is the world ending? Did that pastor finally get it right? Then I did a Google search to find out just what the hell was going on.

We know from his Bush days that Cheney has a gay daughter. But as it turns out The Evil Emperor is also a huge supporter of gay rights! Yes, it's true! While it's hard to believe, and while Cheney has said he would never have gone against a Bush push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, Cheney did publicly voice his disagreement with the idea back in the day. You can read about it here, here, and here.

The recent story has it that the Dark Lord lobbied GOP legislators in Maryland to "urge their support for the same-sex marriage bill that squeaked through the state's House of Delegates Friday." This was all too much for me to take in and it made me wonder, why are we reading about this now? News like this does not just happen by coincidence. This is really a big deal. How did this story make it into the current news cycle, a news cycle filled with anti-gay, anti-contraception, anti-women headlines? A news cycle that saw Rick Santorum become the frontrunner in the neverending campaign for the Republican nomination.

After giving it a think, I came up with three possible scenarios, laid out in random order... or are they? 

Scenario #1: Cheney is at death's door.

Darth Cheney has not been looking well recently. He looks gaunt, thin, a shadow of his shadowy self. And this is a man who has survived five heart attacks! Perhaps the time is nigh for him to return to the crossroads and pay the devil his due.

It got me thinking that maybe this Maryland gay lobbying thing is perhaps Cheney's last attempt to right all the wrongs in his gay daughter's eyes and to prove to her that he does in fact have a heart and a soul. I know, it's a long shot, but nevertheless...

Scenario #2: The GOP establishment REALLY wants Romney.

Let's be real for a moment. I don't care what the polls say or how few caucus voters actually vote for Mitt Romney. At the end of the day the GOP establishment is not as dumb as the people who vote for them. They live to see Obama voted out and they know that Rick Santorum has no chance of beating Obama in a general election.

Perhaps the Cheney gay lobbying story was leaked last week as a way to prove to the general voting public that conservatives are not as extreme as Santorum has been suggesting. If Santorum were to become the nominee, it would prove to so-called "independents" and especially to women that the GOP has in fact been taken over by the Tea Party.

While in most elections Republicans count on white, old, racist men and dimwitted suburban housewives at the polls, this past week we heard things like this: 

-- Rick Santorum on rape: "I believe and I think that the right approach is to accept this horribly created, in the sense of rape, but nevertheless, in a very broken way, a gift of human life, and accept what God is giving to you. As you know, in lots of different aspects of our life we have horrible things happening. I can't think of anything more horrible, but nevertheless we have to make the best out of a bad situation. And that is making the best of a bad situation."

-- Rick Santorum on states outlawing contraception: "The state has a right to do that, I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that. It is not a constitutional right, the state has the right to pass whatever statues they have."

-- Rick Santorum on sex in general: "I think the dangers of contraception in this country... It's not okay because it's a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be."

This type of rhetoric plays great to the religious nuts, but telling women that your candidate thinks rape is God's gift to you? That is not a good plan for the Republicans to go with in any year. That said, Romney is still the only candidate who can compete over the long term. Sure, he is a horrible candidate, but as Grover Norquist said recently: "We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go." And when Romney is compared to Santorum he still has an ace in the hole with his choice for VP. My money has always been on Chris Christie, and Romney is the only candidate who could pull that off.

As John McCain said recently: “We’re dumb, but we’re not stupid.” So true, John, so true. 

Scenario #3: The GOP has seen its future, and it doesn't wear shades.

If you have been following this Republican nomination circus or just been paying attention to the last few years, you might be wondering if the Republicans plan for November is to simply hope for a landslide victory of white, male, rich, middle-aged, senior citizen, racist votes.

Let's also review what the GOP has taught us it hates this election season. The answers that quickly come to mind are health care, illegals (aka Mexicans, or anyone with dark skin in general), gays, abortions, environmental protections, the unemployed, the poor, anyone having sex, black people, Muslims, and, of course, black presidents. Did I miss anything/anyone?

Following this train of thought, what will the GOP look like in the next twenty years when the majority of our citizens are Latino, black, and/or Muslim? Or perhaps when all three are married to their same-sex partners? And provided global warming doesn't make New England into a tropical region, all those young hip northerners will eventually age and move southward for warmer climates. Goodbye, Southern Strategy. It is already happening.

In our world of political correctness, Occupy movements, and information from multiple sources 24/7, the GOP's go-to base of racist ignoramuses is inevitably going to give way to acceptance by a more tolerant and more skeptical society. When that happens, the GOP will be a quaint memory, like smoking on airplanes. And what about Latinos? You think illegal immigrants are all going to be kicked out of this country? Ha! Call me when an American citizen is willing to do the work that these poor people do for their pittance. We will scream and shout about illegals until the moment our food is not at the supermarket, our lawns are not mowed, or we decide that washing dishes for less than minimum wage is a respectable career. By then many of them will have either found a path to citizenship, or have had so many children while in this country who will grow up to not only vote but also be staunchly anti-Republican. Finally, last I checked we have a black president who is going to have a second term. Unless the GOP succeeds in its current effort of voter suppression, they will be, and are already, outnumbered. So you see, it's hopeless.

What, then, is the correct scenario? Who knows? It could be a little of all three. What is certain is that what we are now seeing within the Republican Party are baby steps. With the Dick Cheney revelation, the GOP is trying ever so slightly to get on board with an already unstoppable movement. It is a tiny chance for them to say they are not as hateful and intolerant as someone like Rick Santorum. It is a chance for them to say that one of their most beloved, and one of our most hated, Republicans supports gay marriage. In other words, "please stop supporting Rick Santorum... please!" Once that problem is solved, over the next twenty years they can get the gays to hate some other group, at least until they find a way to include the Mexicans, too. That may take a bit more time, though. Hell, it worked with the Irish and the Jews. Why should this be any different?

Women of GOP Land: What do you see in those men?

By Ramona

Hello, women of the Republican Party: Democratic female of the liberal persuasion here. I know it looks like we couldn't be any farther apart when it comes to ideology, but I know us. I know when it comes to the big issues -- our futures and the well-being of the ones we love -- we're sisters under the skin.

We should talk. I mean really talk. I don't mean the usual chit-chat, the talk about kids and work and what's for dinner. I mean about politics. When we're together we do everything we can to side-step the issue and it does keep us friendly, but you must have noticed that the upcoming presidential election is becoming the bull elephant in the room.
 
I know you won't want to hear this, and I hear you when you tell me it's none of my business, but for a couple of weeks now I've been especially worried about where you're going with the men in your life. It strikes not just me but a lot of us that the relationship is becoming, well -- abusive.

At the moment these four men -- Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul -- are vying for your affections, and from where I sit no matter which one you choose it'll be bad news for you. And, okay, if any one of them wins, it'll be bad for me too. But it's you who has to take control of the situation. When any one of the four tells you he's going to work hard to take away a woman's right to free birth control, it's really disheartening for the rest of us to have to watch you applaud and cheer, as if he was God's gift and aren't you lucky to have him?

At least one of them, Rick Santorum (father of seven, no surprise), doesn't believe in birth control in any form. He says birth control can actually be "harmful to women," suggesting that it promotes sex outside of procreation, which apparently, even for those of us not still living in Medieval times, is a bad thing:

One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country... Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that's okay, contraception is okay. It's not okay. It's a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be."

He blames "radical feminists" for taking women out of the home and into the workplace, yet he's done nothing to help improve the economy enough so that women who want to stay home can stay home. In his book, It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good, written in 2005, he wrote, "Sadly the propaganda campaign launched in the 1960s has taken root. The radical feminists succeeded in undermining the traditional family and convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness."

Ron Paul, a former OB/GYN and a libertarian to boot, said, "Forcing private religious institutions to pay for contraception and sterilization as part of their health care plans is a direct assault on the First Amendment's guarantee of religious liberty. On my first day as President, I will reverse this policy."

Sexual harassment in the workplace? No problem, women. Dr. Paul says, just quit:

Employee rights are said to be valid when employers pressure employees into sexual activity. Why don’t they quit once the so-called harassment starts? Obviously the morals of the harasser cannot be defended, but how can the harassee escape some responsibility for the problem? Seeking protection under civil rights legislation is hardly acceptable.

Newt Gingrich believes strongly in a Personhood Amendment that says life begins at conception -- a loony view with ramifications for everything from the morning-after pill to in vitro fertilization. In his bid to destroy Planned Parenthood, he lied when he said the organization's main thrust was performing abortions. He went so far as to pull a fantastical number out of the air -- 90% of all services were abortions -- when the truer number is three percent out of nearly five million visits a year. In truth, only 34 percent of visits to Planned Parenthood are for reproductive services.

Mitt Romney wants to cut off contraceptive services at community centers as well, and, if he had his druthers, he would kill Planned Parenthood entirely. Even after all the evidence to the contrary, he is still trying to convince you that nothing good comes out of Planned Parenthood, when we all know that in so many communities they've become an essential health-care lifeline. not just for women of reproductive age but for men and women of all ages.

My question is, what is it that you see in these men? When you're out there applauding and encouraging men who want to take womanhood back to the status forced on us even as late as the middle of the 20th century, does it bother you even a little bit that you're egging them on, knowing -- because they've told you in every way possible -- they want to own every little piece of you?

Republican men to all women: Put an aspirin between your knees, pray to God, submit to us, and shut the fuck up about birth control

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Not all Republicans are saying that, whatever the implications of their crusade against birth control, but one prominent one is, Santorum's main benefactor, via his super PAC, the repugnant Foster Friess, who had this to say today about what women should do about birth control:

On this contraceptive thing, my gosh, it's so inexpensive. You know, back in my days, they used Bayer Aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn't that costly.

With Republicans on their theocratic rampage, you knew it was only a matter of time before one of them brought this sort of thing up, but it's still somewhat hard to believe that it would be quite to this extent, with its sense of paternalistic oppression. It's one thing, after all, for the Catholic Church to say in theological terms that birth control is wrong, or even for Santorum to talk about how sex should be "special," quite another to tell women to do what they're told. And make no mistake, this isn't about women having a choice, or being empowered to say no, it's about controlling women so that sexually, and indeed socially, they are really nothing more than receptors, willing or not, for sperm.

Oh, and it's not like things were so wonderful in Friess's "days." Women, like men, are sexual beings who may not want to have to close their legs. Abstinence is fine for some, and certainly for those not yet ready for sexual activity, but it should be a choice, not a requirement, and it's ridiculous to think men or women will just abstain from all non-procreative sex. And, of course, some men will force a women's legs open whether she likes it or not. This was true in Friess's "days" and it's true today. Women have been liberated from the shackles that constrained them for so long, as have men as well. And if you're such a fucking idiot that you don't understand what sex is really all about, in all its multifaceted ways, you should really just shut the fuck up yourself.

But also make no mistake, Friess isn't alone in thinking this. Just today, as you may know, House Republicans led by the repugnant Darrell Issa held a hearing on birth control that featured no women testifying. And across the country Republicans are  promoting "personhood" legislation that would criminalize abortion. It isn't enough to say Republicans are re-waging the culture wars of the '90s, and on issues like birth control the '60s or even earlier. This is now an all-out assault on women's rights, the goal being to deprive them of control over their own bodies and more broadly to restore a sexually tyrannical social order based largely on the dominance of men and the de-humanization of women.

I'd like to think it's hard to believe that we're even having this conversation in 2012, that birth control and women's rights are even issues anymore, but of course this is the Republican Party we're talking about, a party that is descending further and further into madness, a party increasingly of fringe extremism, a party deeply out of touch with the overwhelming majority of Americans, out of touch with contemporary life generally.

On birth control (and sex), it's Santorum (and the crazy, theocratic right) against America

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As Michael Scherer reminds us at Swampland, Rick Santorum had the following to say last October about birth control:

One of the things I will talk about that no President has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea. Many in the Christian faith have said, "Well, that's okay. Contraception's okay."

It's not okay because it's a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.

Etc., etc. Santorum wants sex to be purely conjugal, and specifically procreative. He acknowledges that pleasure is a part of it, but he wants it to be "special." So sex should only be between a man and a women, with no birth control, and with procreation in mind. (No word on what he thinks of the rhythm method.) "That's the perfect way that a sexual union should happen."

America -- not to mention human nature -- would seem to disagree.

As Scherer notes, a Guttmacher Institute survey found that "[v]irtually all women (more than 99%) aged 15–44 who have ever had sexual intercourse have used at least one contraceptive method." And "[a]mong the 43 million fertile, sexually active women who do not want to become pregnant, 89% are practicing contraception."

I'd say that's a decisive majority -- a big reason why President Obama and the Democrats are winning the contraception coverage mandate issue handily. Scherer:

In politics, it is generally not a good thing to characterize something nearly every adult in the country has happily used as "a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be." According to a more recent Pew poll, 85% of the country believes that contraception is either "not a moral issue" or "morally acceptable." Eight percent view contraception as "morally wrong."

Of course, Santorum is wooing the conservative Republican base, not the general electorate, and while it would seem that even most conservative Republicans use birth control, coming out against "licence," and more generally presenting oneself as a moralizing theocrat seeking to take down freedom (particularly for women), can be a vote-winner on the right, where retrograde social conservatism continues to thrive. That is obviously what Santorum is banking on, though he also obviously also sincerely believes this madness.

That makes him insane as well as out-of-touch.

Not to mention the dream choice for Democrats.

The Catholic contraceptive controversy: Where's the health care part?

By Ramona

(Ed. note: Ramona did five excellent guest posts for us -- her last one is here, with links to the others -- and I'm very pleased to welcome her as a regular contributor to The Reaction. -- MJWS)

Effective August 1, thanks to a provision in the Affordable Care Act, most working women will have their contraceptives fully paid for, without a co-pay. That's the good news. The bad news (you knew there had to be bad news, right?) is that the unenlightened among us see it as nothing more than an unconscionable threat to virile manhood. Especially Catholic virile manhood.

The U.S Conference of Catholic Bishops, all male at last count, have decided amongst themselves that they will not be pushed into reversing their age-old hoo-haw laws forcing Catholic women to have as many babies as their wholly-owned bodies can produce. (The laugh's on them: Most Catholic women use artificial birth control. (The Guttmacher Institute says it's as high as 98%.) When was the last time you heard a Catholic woman talking about the rhythm method, except to marvel at how crazy that whole notion was?

Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of the USCCB, sharply criticized the decision by the Obama administration in which it "ordered almost every employer and insurer in the country to provide sterilization and contraceptives, including some abortion-inducing drugs, in their health plans... Never before has the federal government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience. This shouldn't happen in a land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights."

We're talking about birth control here. We're talking about a woman's right to choose when the time is right to carry and bear a child. This is not baby-killing, it's responsibly managing an event as life-changing as it's ever going to get. It's the smart, sane way of controlling the use of our own bodies and, oh, by the way, preventing the birth of unwanted children.

We're talking about birth control products already approved and already a part of most insurance policies. The only mandate is that insurance providers will now be required to provide those products without additional cost to all women who want to use them. The mandate isn't for the use, it's for the availability and the cost.

This is a manufactured right-wing controversy designed to kill yet another positive outcome of "Obamacare," and the Catholic Bishops are more than happy to become the spark that creates yet another phony firestorm.

Mitt Romney, Republican candidate for president and a Mormon who, until now, apparently had no problem with that particular provision in the Affordable Care Act, has jumped on the bandwagon and is now on the side of the Catholic Bishops, taking this grand opportunity to to rail against his expected opponent, Barack Obama, about an issue he clearly doesn't even begin to understand:

"I'm just distressed as I watch our president try and infringe upon our rights, the First Amendment of the Constitution provides the right to worship in the way of our own choice," Romney said to nearly 3,000 people gathered in the gymnasium of Arapahoe High School, in Arapahoe County, an area known as a so-called "swing county" that Obama won in 2008.

"This same administration said that the churches and the institutions they run, such as schools and let's say adoption agencies, hospitals, that they have to provide for their employees free of charge, contraceptives, morning after pills, in other words abortive pills, and the like at no cost," Romney said. "Think what that does to people in faiths that do not share those views. This is a violation of conscience."

"We must have a president who is willing to protect America's first right, our right to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience," he said.

In addition to Romney, two other manly-men candidates for Obama's job, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, are outraged that women should be able to get free birth control. (It only adds to their outrage that women should have the audacity to think they can control their own bodies):

Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Mitt Romney, said in an e-mail that he regarded the administration's rule requiring religious employers to furnish birth control as wrong. "This is a direct attack on religious liberty and will not stand in a Romney presidency," she said. Mr. Romney has also pledged to end a federal program, Title X, that provides family planning services to millions of women. 

Mr. Santorum has taken the position that health insurance plans should not be required to cover birth control. He also favors allowing states to decide whether to ban birth control. He and Mr. Gingrich both support "personhood" initiatives that would legally declare fertilized eggs to be persons, effectively banning not just all abortions but also certain contraceptives, including IUDs and some types of birth control pills. 

Mr. Gingrich wants to withdraw government money from Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions in addition to providing contraceptives, though the federal money cannot be used for abortion.

A lie dressed in pink

I wonder how they feel about Viagra and other male enhancement "medications." Say there was a group of people who believed with their whole entire hearts that workplace insurance coverage of male sex-tool enhancement was not only outside any notion of "health care," it was maybe even "unconscionable." Should that group be exempt from providing it?

And if those bishops had wombs, would they be open to letting someone else tell them what they could do with them? (It's a rhetorical question. No, they wouldn't be open to letting someone else tell them anything.)

Addendum: Well, looky here: Catholic hospitals and universities already provide contraceptive coverage:  Here it is. What's their excuse now? 

(Cross-posted at Ramona's Voices.)

Santorum likes his women barefoot, pregnant, and at the mercy of domineering men

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

Via twitter: 

Feminists are "undermining the traditional family + convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness" -- Santorum 

-- ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress)

And of course he wants to deny women birth control, which was very much the key to their liberation from the shackles of oppressive, repressive patriarchy.

A Catholic theocrat, Santorum is very much in line with the zeitgeist of '12.

1912? No, more like 1612.

And he dares accuse President Obama of being anti-freedom?