The Obama Administration can play it cool when it wants to.
Via Feministing by way of TPM, we learn that the forced birth/hate teh gayz crowd took one on the chin last week, and, despite all efforts to the contrary, women (and gays, and transexuals, and just about anyone who thinks it’s none of anyone else’s damn business what we and our doctors decide works for us) regained just a smidgeon of that autonomy the American Inquisition the modern GOP seeks to steal from us.
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Which is to say that AFAIK, this slipped past just about every radar screen:
After two years of struggling to balance the rights of patients against the beliefs of health-care workers, the Obama administration on Friday finally rescinded most of a federal regulation designed to protect those who refuse to provide care they find objectionable on moral or religious grounds.
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The decision guts one of President George W. Bush’s most controversial legacies: a rule that was widely interpreted as shielding workers who refuse to participate in a range of medical services, such as providing birth control pills, caring for gay men with AIDS and performing in-vitro fertilization for lesbians or single women.
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Friday’s move was seen as an important step in countering that trend, which in recent years had led pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for the emergency contraceptive Plan B, doctors in California to reject a lesbian’s request for infertility treatment, and an ambulance driver in Chicago to turn away a woman who needed transportation for an abortion.
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Can we hear an Amen?
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But yeah, Obama is just Bush with a better jump shot.
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(Not to mention that this is just one more reminder of why, in fact, it does matter who wins next time round. Just sayin.)
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Image: Octave Tassaert The Waif aka L’abandonnée, 1852.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
So you finally see how sneaky Obama is. It’s a trap. And it doesn’t matter. And it’s a distraction. And I still don’t have my pony!
/Crierbagger.
opie jeanne, formerly known as Jeanne Ringland
Love the picture. Does it mean that the lady leaning against the pillar has just given up her child to an institution of some sort?
opie jeanne, formerly known as Jeanne Ringland
Oh, and IT’S ABOUT FUCKING TIME!
Mark S.
Not that I think the other shit is okay, but where the fuck did this come from? Medical personnel could refuse to treat gay AIDS patients?
arguingwithsignposts
You fuckin’ obots can’t get anything right!
Shadow's Mom
A-men!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
(As an O-bot)
So Obama is going to be neutral – something good today, something bad tomorrow.
Still better than the nearly pure evil of the last administration.
Martin
@Mark S.:
Teh ghey means the evil can wear off.
So much for my iron-clad plan to be a public sector christian scientist phlebotomist. Man, that was going to be a sweet gig – I object to everything in my job (even myself!) and collect a big fat fucking pension off of all the stupid taxpayers that think that blood tests aren’t against God’s will.
uptown
The obama-bots live!
So it took 2 years for him to figure out that it was a terrible regulation?
jwb
Trolls arriving in 5, 4, 3 . . .
marcopolo
How can this possibly go wrong?
I don’t suppose they would consider backtracking on the whole idea of allowing forms of life to be patented? Or at least only allow a patent of a life form for a few generations of it. Kinda interesting how if GMO crops wind up in your field due to any (that’s right, ANY: seed spillage, wind born cross pollination, etc…) reason those crops are no longer your own and you own the company that created them money.
Anyways, that’s a reform I could get behind.
hamletta
@uptown: Um, no dear.
In other news, the Queen Mary can’t turn on a dime. Film at 11.
Martin
@uptown: Yeah, why didn’t he just sign the obvious ‘All that shit Bush passed is all repealed’ executive order?
marcopolo
Oh well, block quote fail and the damned thing wont let me edit. Block quote meant to end after Senator Teabag Toast Hatch’s comment.
hamletta
@marcopolo: You and me both. Mark Bittman led off his new gig with a poll on people’s concerns about GMO crops.
I’m not worried so much about eating them as I am concerned about the environmental impact and the IP issues you cite.
Martin
@marcopolo: Yeah, even with Dems pushing, the best we can hope for is that they push sideways on something like this.
WyldPirate
@marcopolo:
Way off topic,, but this is fucked up…
why the fuck do we have such lazy fucking reporters that can’t get the most basic facts right that can be found on teh Google in about 0.5 seconds of “research”?
trollhattan
Completely missed that. Did they sneak it through on Friday as a tactic, or were we all just preoccupied with Wisconsin and Libya?
Anyhoo, well done!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@hamletta: If I remember correctly, one of the things they talked about when Bush set this up was that it would take a while before it could be removed. All of the affected agencies would have to report on what the effect of ending the rule would be.
General Stuck
A time for every season, and undoing odious wingnuttery. And doing it dressed in centrist cloth for public consumption. Obama, imho, is a centrist, and even right leaning when it comes to process, but has a solid liberal soul. Not an ideologue one, but solid libtard. And process is the chafe, blows away and leaves the wheat. Except when filibustered by the wingnut.
opie jeanne, formerly known as Jeanne Ringland
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Ok. Well, maybe my impatience was unwarranted.
Snaporaz
What a lazy, brain-dead exercise in knocking down a straw man.
opie jeanne, formerly known as Jeanne Ringland
@General Stuck: Chaff is what you meant, but chafe is funny.
Magatha
@hamletta: I love you, my dear.
Dream On
Words! Just words!
General Stuck
@opie jeanne, formerly known as Jeanne Ringland:
Thanks. It didn’t red line on FF, so I thought it was at least spelled right, just the wrong word. Drat
justawriter
Holy freaking sh*t!
Who said this?
mclaren
You’ve been duped.
Obama differs from Bush or Reagan only in the tiny social-issue policy matters which make no difference to our corporate masters. Whenever the policy issues touch on real money, Obama falls right in line with his corporate masters and follows the same policies Bush and Reagan laid down: eternal expansion of the military-industrial complex, deregulation of Wall Street (with some window dressing to make it seem as though something has been done when it really hasn’t), constant lawlness by the White House, continual subversion and destruction of the Bill of Rights, constant ever more generous tax cuts for the rich.
Wake me when Obama cuts the U.S. military budget or puts some Wall Street thieves in jail. Until then, yes, Democrats are just Republicans in cheaper suits.
And you’ve been scammed, you gullible dupe.
mclaren
You’ve been duped.
Obama differs from Bush or Reagan only in the tiny social-issue policy matters which make no difference to our corporate masters. Whenever the policy issues touch on real money, Obama falls right in line with his corporate masters and follows the same policies Bush and Reagan laid down: eternal expansion of the military-industrial complex, deregulation of Wall Street (with some window dressing to make it seem as though something has been done when it really hasn’t), constant lawlessness by the White House, continual subversion and destruction of the Bill of Rights, constant ever more generous tax cuts for the rich.
Wake me when Obama cuts the U.S. military budget or puts some Wall Street thieves in jail. Until then, yes, Democrats are just Republicans in cheaper suits.
And you’ve been scammed, you gullible dupe.
Marc McKenzie
@General Stuck: Interesting point, General.
But remember, Obama must be no different than Bush (or the Repubs in general) because Glenn Greenwald says so, and Matt Taibbi says so, and Jane Hamsher says so, and etc., etc., etc….
Look, I’m all for honest criticism of the guy. And I do have a couple of gripes with him. But when he steps up to the plate and hits one out of the park for us (as he has done many, many times), it just goes unnoticed and ignored by some, who then continue to squak the line that he’s either the Chocolate Carter or that this is Bush’s third term.
Yeah, right. Health care reform (or at least a major step towards it). Getting troops out of Iraq, trying to take steps to fix the country’s infrastructure and allowing for stem cell research and pushing for green projects.
Yep, sounds like all the stuff Bush would’ve done.
Sorry for the snark…
Marc McKenzie
@mclaren: You have got to be kidding, right?
No, you really must be kidding. Or you’ve been either–ah screw it, I just can’t say it.
Besides, you’ll probably not get the Bolivian marching powder reference.
mclaren
@General Stuck:
Dead right. There’s nothing more centrist in American politics that increasing America’s military budget while freezing social spending in a massive recession. And the signs of Obama’s “liberal soul” are readily apparent: Obama has ordered the kidnapping without charges or trial of American citizens — what could better exemplify liberal values than that? Obama has continued the torture of the Bush regime, a classic liberal value: surely we all remember Thomas Jefferson proclaiming “Torture is a basic American value and the foundation of our democracy.” Obama has ordered the extrajudicial assassination of American citizens without even accusing them of a crime, and this accords well with the values of James Madison and Benjamin Franklin, who as we all know specifically wrote into the constitution provisions which allowed for the extrajudicial murder of American citizens whenever the president felt like it.
Obama has supported and signed tax cuts for the rich in the midst of the worst recession since the 1930s, which everyone surely recognizes is the heart and soul of liberalism.
Are you drunk?
Are you on dope?
Are you even listening to the demented drivel that comes out of your mouth?
Obama is a far-right reactionary, as we’ve come to expect: America has one political party, the party of the wealthy, with two right wings misnamed “Republicans and Democrats.” There are no liberals in politics in America today. People called “centrists” in American politics today differ with the right on minor matters like how long we should torture people never accused of crimes before we kill ’em, or how much we should expand the U.S. military-industrial complex this year while cutting back on the social safety net.
themann1086
I was going to say that to overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male “progressives”, important social issues like this “don’t matter”. But hey, don’t take my word for it, since @mclaren said exactly that.
General Stuck
@mclaren:
Fix your Thorazine drip mclaren.
asiangrrlMN
I read this when it happened and wondered where was the coverage. Actually, no I didn’t. I knew there would be no coverage in the MSM. So, thanks, Tom, for writing about it.
@themann1086: Yes. Wot you said. This isn’t of real import since it only concerns the women with the lady bits and teh gayz. ::rolls eyes::
mclaren
@Marc McKenzie:
The typical spluttering sputtering incoherent response from yet another mark who can’t stand to admit he’s been scammed. Con artists have a term that describes your reaction, and Obama’s method of dealing with it: it’s called the “cool off.” Obama gives a pretty speech and dupes like you calm down and smile. It’s a classic grifter technique used by con men since times immemorial.
On every single substantive policy issue that touches on real money, Obama has followed the far right Grover Norquist-Rush Limbaugh-Ann Coulter policy line.
You can’t even come up with a single substantive objection to my documented facts. Fact: Obama has jacked up America’s already bloated obscenely spendthrift military budget in the midst of the biggest recession since 1929 while freezing social spending across the board. Fact: Obama has refused to fight for a further stimulus but has no problem pissing away endless trillions of dollars on failed and futile pointless wars like Afghanistan. Fact: Obama has no problem with ripping up the constitution and wiping his ass with it by ordering the murder and kidnapping of U.S. citizens in flagrant violation of amendments 5 (due process), amendment 6 (requirement of trial by jury), amendment 8 (no cruel or unusual punished — cue the balloon juice crackpots to rush forward and explain to us why hurling a U.S. citizen into a dungeon forever without trial or any possibility or release isn’t “cruel and unusual punishment”), and amendment 14 (prohibits violation of basic civil rights). Obama has implemented a Republican scheme for health care reform which actually makes things worse.
Source: We continue to study Massachusetts’ health overhaul experiment as a harbinger of ObamaCare. And we continue to see serious problems ahead.
Another source: The Massachusetts Health Plan: Much Pain, Little Gain
Also google “Massachusetts’ Plan: A Failed Model for Health Reform.” (Since I’ve reached the 3-link limit, I can’t include direct links to these additional white papers.)
Or google the 2 March 2009 Boston Globe article “The Mass. Health Care Plan Is Failing Us.”
On policy issue after policy issue Obama has marched right down the line in lockstep with Reagan and Bush — the architects of America’s current collapse and crisis. This is liberalism? This is reform? This is “change you can believe in”?
Get real. Come back when you have facts to post instead of spluttering wordless incoherent outrage reminiscent of the shrieks of a flat earther confronted with a world globe.
Uloborus
@Marc McKenzie:
See @mclaren. Basically, Mclaren makes up his, her, or its own facts. Disproving them is ignored. Eventually you give up and start ignoring, because like dealing with a Teabagger you realize that you can’t have a debate with someone for whom black is white and up is down, and whose only purpose in life seems to be finding new levels of outraged victimhood.
arguingwithsignposts
mclaren – BJ’s own special tl’dr.
mclaren
@themann1086:
You tell me which matters more: being assassinated without charges or trial by an illegal order by the president, or being inconvenienced by additional antiabortion language in some obscure bill.
Here’s a fact you might want to consider: when a JSOC assassination squad shoots you in the head with a boat-tailed sniper bullet, it’s over. There’s nothing you can do. You’re done. End of story.
When some creepy fundamentalist Christian pharmacist refuses to fill some poor black woman’s RU483 prescription, she can always take the bus to some other goddamn pharmacy and get her prescription filled by some other pharmacist.
When a black ops team kidnaps you and puts zip ties on your wrist and a black bag over your head and tosses you into a secret dungeon in an undisclosed location without a lawyer and without charges, there’s nothing you can do. You have zero options.
When you’re an impoverished woman who gets refused an abortion, you do have a few options today. You can contact pro-abortion groups and get assistance, you can get transportation to another state where you can get an abortion, you can get RU486 by other means. There are lots of things you can do.
Stop trying to make a false equivalence between being inconvenienced and being assassinated. There’s no equation twist the two, and you goddamn well know it.
Calouste
@mclaren:
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You could light up the moon with that amount of projection.
General Stuck
@uptown:
It almost always takes that long to change regs published in the federal register. there is a process required, that includes, several public hearings, and written dissent on proposed changes, more hearings, waiting periods, etc.. rinse and repeat. This sort of thing is the normal timing for both dems and repubs, and is repeated on all sorts of ideological initiatives for changing regulations.
mclaren
@Uloborus:
Thanks for telling that lie. I’ve cited fact after fact proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the Massachusetts health care plan on which Obama based his health care non-reform is failing and collapsing.
I’ve cited fact after fact which proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Obama has ordered the assassination of American citizens without even accusing them of a crime.
I’ve cited fact after fact which proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Obama’s Wall Street’ “reforms” are nothing of the kind, and that every single knowledgeable economist has decried them as grossly inadequate and changing nothing and leaving Wall Street wide open to create another global financial meltdown.
I’ve cited fact after fact which proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Obama has continued Bush’s “extraordinary rendition” policy of illegally kidnapping American citizens and hurling ’em into dungeons without charges or a trial, except that Obama has simply renamed this illegal unconstitutional violation of the law “preventive detention.”
You’re lying and everyone knows you’re lying. The facts I state are facts that have been recited by everyone from Glenn Greenwald to Judge Napolitano to Rachel Maddow to James Fallows to Kevin Drum.
Every rational person out there recognizes that the facts I cite describe the reality of Obama’s unconstitutional and illegal violations of the founding principles not just of America, but of the basic rule of law going back 1200 years to the foundation of the principle of habeas corpus, which Obama has torn up and thrown out in gross violation of 1200 years of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence.
Everyone recognizes these basic facts…except the kooks and cranks and crackpots who comment on Balloon Juice.
mclaren
@Calouste:
Get back to us when you have some actual facts or a real argument to counter the documented fact that across the board, on policy point after policy point, Barack Obama has marched right down the line in exact lockstop with the Reagan-Bush tax-cuts-for-the-rich cut-the-social-safety-net-for-the-bottom-80% eternal-foreign-wars and endless-expansion-of-the-American-military agenda.
SRW1
Don’t you, like, need to get both feed off the ground simultaneously while throwing the ball if you want to perform a jump shot? I can’t figure W mastering that feat unless allowing him to pick up some speed on a mountain bike and then crashing it into a rock in order to produce lift-off counts.
Uloborus
@mclaren:
…okay, just once more. For you to ignore.
Fact A) Obama is stuck with two wars he didn’t start and is on schedule for ending, facts that you refuse to acknowledge. Welcome to huge military spending. He and his staff HAVE proposed cuts to military waste, such as those damned fighter planes that caused such a ruckus. Among other things, this fact is also utterly irrelevant to anything in the universe.
Fact B)That Obama ‘refused to fight for the stimulus’ is simply a fact you made up because you somehow think it would be easy for him to have gotten a bigger one. Because you say it does not make it a fact.
Fact C) Obama has done none of these things. The ‘assassination’ you like to scream about was approved by a court and follows standard law about when people give up their right to trial. Sorry, but it does. The tortures literally just didn’t happen. You have never cited anything but rumors that he’s authorized anything that wasn’t pre-Bush standard. Bush detained those people, and Obama’s efforts to release them have been constantly and blocked universally by congress. A 90-8 vote is not something a president can overcome. He has actually released quite a few, and military tribunals sound terrible until you realize it’s that or no trial whatsoever because congress has made it plain it won’t happen in our court system.
Fact C) I am shocked – SHOCKED – that you have found some figures that suggest that the Massachusetts system failed. Of course, the Massachusetts plan does not include the pile of industry regulations and ongoing regulation framework that the ACA does. Also, you seem to feel that saving money for the system is the only measure of success, which I’m sure the Republicans appreciate. Here, at least, you’ve pointed out some facts. They’re just meaningless facts. They don’t remotely change the fact that a giant reform effort was pushed through, they only point out that costs are a problem that may – MAY, because we cannot know if the cost control measures in the ACA work until they’re tried – need to be revisited.
Now you’ve been responded to with facts. Stop pretending no one ever does. I’ve done this to you on a regular occasion.
mclaren
You know, when you people tell these kinds of lies, you not only make yourself look shrewish and ignorant…you make yourselves look deeply stupid. The facts are just so well documented and so throughout disseminated that Calouste’s and Uloboros’ kind of disinformation campaign doesn’t have a chance of working.
FACT: Obama’s Budget: Freezing the Poor.
FACT: The sanctity of military spending.
FACT: Obama orders assassination of U.S. citizen.
Keep screaming the lie that I’m “making up facts” while I continue to beat all of you into the ground with the spiked bludgeon of documented reality. Keeping telling those lies, kooks — you’re destroying your own credibility so far we can all hear a sonic boom.
zuzu (not that one, the other one)
@mclaren: Gosh, you make it sound so easy to be a poor pregnant woman.
Sorry, not so easy. First, no, a woman who doesn’t get her prescription filled can’t necessarily just “take a bus” and “go to another goddamn pharmacy.” First, there may be no bus (transportation funds cut or just a nonexistent bus system where she lives).
Second, she may not have time to go gallivanting around looking for another pharmacy. Buses aren’t like cabs, after all; she may also be doing this on the fifteen minutes she gets for lunch, or she may be watching other kids. You ever dragged a few kids around on a bus?
Third, wingnut pharmacists tend not to disclose their wingnuttery in their weekly shopper ads. So how is our hypothetical poor black woman supposed to know how many pharmacies she has to visit before she gets one that will fill her perfectly lawful prescription?
Fourth, this pharmacy-shopping adventure assumes that the wingnut pharmacist *gave her back her prescription so she can take it elsewhere*. They don’t always do that.
Finally, this is an issue of civil rights just as much as rendition is. More than one issue can be important at once, even if some of them aren’t your particular hobby-horses.
I won’t even get into the absurd claim that it’s so fucking easy to get an abortion these days. You do know that they’re shooting doctors and defunding Planned Parenthood, don’t you?
something fabulous
@Uloborus: You, on the other hand, I adore. If that’s ok.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
No, you’ve cited a crackpot libertarian “think tank” that really seems to think that health care can be fixed by the free market. I realize that counts as a “fact” to you since they’re distorting the statistics to make them say something you desperately want to believe is true, but that’s not actually what a fact is.
Mnemosyne
@Uloborus:
You have to remember, mclaren thinks it’s a “fact” that, unlike Obama, Franklin D. Roosevelt fought WWII without impinging on the civil liberties of American citizens. And when you point out that she’s a fucking moron, she just ignores you and moves on to the next “fact” in her arsenal.
mclaren
@Uloborus:
Time to debunk your lies, which is easy, since everything you’ve said is a provably false lie.
[1] Obama isn’t ending the war in Iraq–there are more U.S. troops in Iraq today than there were when he falsely claimed to be pulling people out. Obama simply ran a scam that gullible dupes like you fell for — he pulled out army troops while putting in many more military contractors. The military contractors are, of course, just ex-army special forces and rangers, so there’s no difference.
Here’s the hard cold proof that you’re lying: Obama’s pullout from Iraq: masquering an empty promise.
Do the math, liar. There are now more military contractors + troops in Iraq today than there were in Iraq back when Bush was supposedly “fighting the war in Iraq.” Obama has increased the number of military personnel in Iraq, he hasn’t decreased them.
As for the war in Afghanistan being “on schedule to end,” that’s a lie and you know it. Obama announced a July 2011 troop withdrawal date which Biden then denied and Petraeus explained wasn’t an actual date but “more like a guideline.” In short, Obama lied about ending the war in Afghanistan, Obama lied about starting to withdraw troops in July 2011, and the facts prove it.
For more proof that you’re lying, see U.S. troop pullout date being revised.
As for your claim that I said Obama “refused to fight for the stimulus,” you’re flat-out lying. I never said that and you know I never said that. What I said is that Obama refused to fight for the additional stimulus package needed because the initial stimulus package was too small. You’re lying, and it’s obvious to everyone that you’re lying. Instead of a second stimulus package, for which Obama stubbornly refuses to fight, Obama approved and signed tax cuts for the rich. You know this and everyone knows this. Stop lying, you’re embarrassing yourself.
As for your most ridiculous lie: “The ‘assassination’ you like to scream about was approved by a court and follows standard law about when people give up their right to trial. Sorry, but it does,” that such a flagrantly ridiculous lie that it requires no rebuttal. Obama’s assassination order violates 1200 years of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence and everyone from federal judges to a symposium at Berkeley of the nation’s leading law professors have denounced it. You’re lying, and everyone knows you’re lying.
As far as Obama’s failed and destruction Health Care non-reform, you lie once again:
Stop lying. I’ve pointed out the documented facts that costs have risen and more people have lost insurance in Massachusetts, all in contradiction to what was claimed for the so-called “health care reform” in that state. I’ve also cited the documented facts from people like Dr. Arnol Relman in his 30 September 2010 New York Review of Books article “Health Care: The Disquieting Truth” in which he points out that unless we get health care costs under control, the entire American health care system is headed for collapse and bankruptcy.
Finally, I pointed out the documented fact that large companies are now using medical tourism to fly their employees to other countries to cut the costs of their health care benefits, a sure sign that America’s health care system is breaking down and falling apart. When even giant companies like AT&T and Exxon can’t afford to pay for health care benefits for their employees and must flying their own employees to third world countries like India for affordable health care, the system is broken — and Obama’s so-called “reform” does nothiing to fix the skyrocketing out-of-control costs of the American health care system, as the ongoing collapse of Massachusett’s health care reform (costs are up, enrollment down) proves.
Google the article “Medical tourism expands as alternative to Obamacare” for details.
You’re lying and everyone knows you’re lying. Keep it up. Your trashing your own credibility in an epochal shitstorm of misinformation, distortion and outright lies.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@mclaren: you should get your own blog
mclaren
@Mnemosyne:
No, I’ve cited literally dozens of different sources all of which come to the same conclusion from running the numbers. Among the sources I’ve cited are Kaiser Health News, which you seemed to adore — you cited them yourself in another post.
Massachusetts Shows Federal Reform Headed For Trouble, Kaiser Health News, 22 July, 2010.
I’ve cited other sources and they all run the numbers and they all agree — the Massachusetts plan does nothing to cut costs, and in fact, Massachusetts is now looking at cutting access to health care…i.e., rationing. So says Dr. Arnold Relman:
Source: “Health Care: The Disquieting Truth,” New York Review of Books, 30 September 2010.
So we have two possibilities:
[1] Every single source I’ve cited, from the Cato Institute to Kaiser Health News, to an independent review article in the New York Times Book Review by an unaffiliated doctor, is all part of a giant conspiracy to falsely convince us that the numbers show the Masachusetts health care reform is failing and falling apart (which bodes ill for Obama’s federal reform, since it’s based on the Massachusetts plan)…
[2] Or…Mnemosyne is lying.
Which is more credible? The New York Times is in cahoots with Kaiser Health News and the Cato Institute as part of a giant evil conspiracy?
Or Mnemosyne is lying yet again?
Gee. Tough one.
Mnemosyne
@mclaren:
You do realize that Kaiser Health News editorial was written by Grace-Marie Turner, the president of the Galen Institute, right? And it was an editorial, not an actual study.
Do you have any sources other than ones that directly trace back to the Galen Institute?
arguingwithsignposts
Is “tl;dr” a fact that you could dispute, mclaren?
Karen
@mclaren:
McLaren….if you can’t see the difference and stayed home, I hope you’re happy now.
I won’t say that you cheered when the one man asked who was going to shoot Obama. But what I will say is that you may not be a teapartier but you’re the opposite side of the coin. You’re so determined to get a Democrat that passes your litmus test, good luck with that.
I’m so sorry that Obama is too Republican for you. I’m sorry that big business is funding politicians so all politicians are owned by big business. Next time find a Democrat as righteously left as you are and make sure it’s someone who’s wealthy enough to use their own money in their campaign.
And when they lose because not all Democrats are as pure and decent as you are and some are pragmatic and want someone in the primary that will actually WIN, then you can sulk and stay home again. Okay?
CaliCat
@Karen: Nicely done.
DPirate
Great. You’ll have good people leaving health care. It was a good thing to allow doctors/nurses to refuse to perform repugnant (to them) procedures. Why anyone ought to be coerced into performing an abortion is beyond me. What was the problem with this, anyway? If there were areas where abortions could not be obtained, I should think this would be an excellent opportunity for an abortion clinic, and anyhow women are allowed to travel freely in this country. If it was something to do with insurance, then it is better served by direct remedy.
I am never in favor of coercion. When did the so-called left become so authoritarian? I always believed it stood for liberty. When liberal was made a dirty word, it seems liberals believed it.
DPirate
@zuzu (not that one, the other one): Greyhound hits every american city. It isn’t like she’s got only a couple of hours to do her business. Don’t try to tell us that finding a pharmacy is hard to do; they are all over the place. Every major supermarket and drugstore has one.
Who cares how many she has to visit? If it is such an awful problem, pharmacists who WILL fill the prescription will advertise the fact. If some fool doesn’t return it, which I seriously doubt has ever happened in the history of the world, then he is open to a lawsuit which should compensate for any added expense and time spent.
This statement is downright insane.
I find none of this to be any argument indicating the necessity of over-ruling personal morality.
@Mnemosyne: Saying it is ok that Obama does it because Roosevelt did it is no different from saying it is ok because Bush did it. So, what then? If one leader has done it, all leaders can do it, whatever it is? That’s a nice justification to hand the next Mao, or Stalin, or even Bush.
@Karen: If it is how you say as to McClaren, then you should applaud him for his ideals. You know the right will not compromise, yet you expect the left to? This just moves the center to the right over and over again. This is why we can call Obama a republican and be correct.
Xenos
@DPirate: coercion? Are you stoned? If an ob-gyn, which is a surgical specialty, does not know how to perform abortions, that doctor is incompetent by definition. If you want to perform abortions as part of your training, be an ear-nose-throught specialist.
That was not so hard, was it? Not coercive in the least.
Xenos
@Xenos: …If you don’t want to perform abrotions…
And is the “A” word now sending me to moderation? Sheesh.
Mike Kay (Peacemaker)
this kinda post just draws all the firebaggers out of the woodwork.
like a laser light drawing in cats.
Barry
@Mark S.: Remember, this is the goal – to f*ck over people that the right doesn’t like. The *excuse* is that right-wingers should not be compelled to actively do things that they object to (liberals, of course, and go along or get fired).
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
@Mark S.: Yes. The cases I recall involved nurses in the hospital setting. Some came right out and said the patient was a sinner and so did not deserve treatment. Others said they were afraid of catching it. On the one hand this was back in the day when no one fully understood how it was transmitted [skips long rant about Reagan]. On the other hand, if you’re afraid of catching shit from patients, what the hell are you doing there in the first place?
Rpx
Needing to draw attention to Obama’s progressive moves is kind of a signal for how rare they are,no? Whatever. It’s only because modern republicans are batshit insane wing nuts that Obama looks like a liberal.
joe from Lowell
Thought experiment:
You know those “troublemakers” Scott Walker wanted to plant among the protesters in Wisconsin?
If Mclaren was a plant, an agent provocateur working to sow dissent among Democrats and hijack conversations into intra-mural shouting matches, how would his comment history and persona be any different?
Because I gotta tell you, I’m drawing a blank.
Joey Maloney
@justawriter: Start looking for a mysteriously-knocked-up 15-year-old daughter among the Scaife household staff.
Peter
@mclaren:
I see you’ve recovered from the last time you tried peddling this bullshit and got shouted down by everybody else.
@joe from Lowell:
Well, if he was a professional, he’d probably be better at it.
Karen
@DPirate:
Really? The right today are kamikaze. They don’t compromise because they don’t care what happens. Basically the new right (who is now the whole right) is saying to Obama, “We’re going to kill everyone if you don’t do what we say.” Obama doesn’t want everyone to die so he tries to come up with as palatable and pragmatic a compromise that he can.
Are you saying that the left should use those same kamikaze tactics? Is the left planning to burn the country to scorched earth to accomplish this goal? Because the right totally is. In fact, that’s how they scorched the earth when it became clear that the GOP would lose.
The new crop of GOP that pitched their tent in Congress and Governorships are fraking insane! Obama can’t work with them to compromise, they don’t care. They flipping don’t care what happens to the country and will kick and scream and take the country with them if they don’t get their way.
And why are they there? Because the left kicked and screamed about not getting their way and stayed home to punish Obama. They played chicken and lost. Or should I say the country lost.
And as for the conscience clause, you’re saying that because I’m Jewish and a Christian doctor and feels I’ll go to hell anyway that he can refuse to treat me and let me die unless I agree to be saved?
That a racist doctor can refuse to treat a black patient?
A pharmacist can refuse to provide insulin to a fat person he feels doesn’t deserve insulin because if they didn’t eat sweets, they wouldn’t need insulin.
There are also the obvious with abortion, contraception, GLBT issues but I thought I’d list other examples of how inhumane that conscience clause was. And it was inhumane because it allows people to suffer just because they happened to be patients that the doctor or pharmacist felt they couldn’t treat because of race, religion and other factors.