Hold An Aspirin Between Your Knees
February 21st 2012 19:45
We know Barack Obama is an intelligent man, not because he’s President (we’ve had a few quite ordinary presidents and a few borderline morons) but because he graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School (usually, very intelligent people attend and graduate from those schools). While in law school, he was President of the Harvard Law Review, and after graduation, he was a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School. I’m leaving out his time as a U.S. Senator, because if you listen to the dunderheads who call themselves U.S. Senators when they debate what’s “good” for this country, you’d know that this is not something to put on your resume if you’re trying to convince someone of your intelligence.
So, why, when President Obama is gaining in the opinion polls (the latest approval polls give him an approval rating of 50%), and the presumptive Republican/Conservative Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is losing big chunks of popularity to upstart Rick Santorum, who is really Sarah Palin without the lipstick or dress, would the President do something so stupid as give the Republican/Conservative candidates fodder to liven up their base, especially at a time when the economy is very slowly improving, unemployment is being reduced ever so slightly but continuously (about .1% per month), and the housing market is starting to turn around. All of these improvements are taking away the Republican/Conservative arguments that the Obama fiscal and economic policies of the last three years have done nothing but exacerbate the recession. Why would President Obama open up the birth control/abortion debate and give the Republican/Conservatives relief from their own self-destructive tendencies?
On January 20, 2012 Nancy Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, with the backing of the Obama administration, announced that contraceptives would be part of women’s preventive services starting in 2012 in the Affordable Care Act (known to Republican/Conservatives as Obamacare). This means that, while religious institutions (churches, synagogues, mosques, etc.), still did not have to provide them to their employees free of charge, their affiliates would have to. This would include religious sponsored medical facilities, schools, day care, etc.
Many religious groups, including Catholic bishops and other Christian denominations, denounced the ruling as government interference in religious affairs. They claimed it was the right of the religious employers to set policy even though 98% of women, including those employed by those groups, use or have used contraceptives.
I back the right of any religious group to set policy for their religion; no level of government has the right to interfere in the policy making of any religious group as long as that group abides by the laws of this country, and so does the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Having said that, can religious organizations really impose their religious beliefs on the employees of their affiliates? Can the Catholic Church require the female nurses in a Catholic affiliated hospital, to refrain from using contraceptives? If not, and the hospital provides them with health insurance, and they are required to provide their female employees with other preventive health services such as mammograms and pap smears, why not contraceptives? Women don’t have to use them if they’re Catholic and religious.
I find it interesting that Catholic bishops, those same good old boys who shielded pedophiles priests from the law, would find it necessary to protect intelligent women from the evils of contraceptives when they wouldn’t protect little children from deviant priests (it’s also interesting that Pope Benedict XVI would appoint 22 new conservative cardinals to preserve his ideas on child pedophilia for another generation after his certain death; he’s certain to die because Paul died, and he’s certainly not holier than Paul, unless he can prove he can walk on water, produce enough bread to feed the masses, and change water into wine).
This decision to include contraceptives, and ignite the pro-life debate again after it’s been a non-issue in this campaign has invigorated Rick Santorum’s campaign. Santorum, who has been running around the country trying to prove he’s the only true Conservative, has likened the imposition of contraceptives to restriction of religious freedom and the involvement in government in our daily lives, this from the guy who voted for the “bridge to nowhere,” a big government boondoggle in Alaska, when he was a one term senator. I guess when it comes to stealing and wasting government money, you can’t have enough government involvement, other wise it’s not good.
Now Santorum has gone the next logical step, in his small mind, calling amniocentesis the precursor to abortion because, if genetic damage is found (such as Down’s syndrome), the doctor will often recommend an abortion. However, during his foaming at the mouth oratory, he neglects to say that it is still the woman’s choice.
Just ask Sarah Palin.
That’s what the Obama administration is trying to do: give every woman a choice. Obama’s problem is that he could have waited until after the election, until he cruised to a victory, to give all women this choice, not just middle class and wealthy women, and not just women with health insurance that covers contraceptives.
So, why, when President Obama is gaining in the opinion polls (the latest approval polls give him an approval rating of 50%), and the presumptive Republican/Conservative Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is losing big chunks of popularity to upstart Rick Santorum, who is really Sarah Palin without the lipstick or dress, would the President do something so stupid as give the Republican/Conservative candidates fodder to liven up their base, especially at a time when the economy is very slowly improving, unemployment is being reduced ever so slightly but continuously (about .1% per month), and the housing market is starting to turn around. All of these improvements are taking away the Republican/Conservative arguments that the Obama fiscal and economic policies of the last three years have done nothing but exacerbate the recession. Why would President Obama open up the birth control/abortion debate and give the Republican/Conservatives relief from their own self-destructive tendencies?
On January 20, 2012 Nancy Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, with the backing of the Obama administration, announced that contraceptives would be part of women’s preventive services starting in 2012 in the Affordable Care Act (known to Republican/Conservatives as Obamacare). This means that, while religious institutions (churches, synagogues, mosques, etc.), still did not have to provide them to their employees free of charge, their affiliates would have to. This would include religious sponsored medical facilities, schools, day care, etc.
Many religious groups, including Catholic bishops and other Christian denominations, denounced the ruling as government interference in religious affairs. They claimed it was the right of the religious employers to set policy even though 98% of women, including those employed by those groups, use or have used contraceptives.
I back the right of any religious group to set policy for their religion; no level of government has the right to interfere in the policy making of any religious group as long as that group abides by the laws of this country, and so does the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Having said that, can religious organizations really impose their religious beliefs on the employees of their affiliates? Can the Catholic Church require the female nurses in a Catholic affiliated hospital, to refrain from using contraceptives? If not, and the hospital provides them with health insurance, and they are required to provide their female employees with other preventive health services such as mammograms and pap smears, why not contraceptives? Women don’t have to use them if they’re Catholic and religious.
I find it interesting that Catholic bishops, those same good old boys who shielded pedophiles priests from the law, would find it necessary to protect intelligent women from the evils of contraceptives when they wouldn’t protect little children from deviant priests (it’s also interesting that Pope Benedict XVI would appoint 22 new conservative cardinals to preserve his ideas on child pedophilia for another generation after his certain death; he’s certain to die because Paul died, and he’s certainly not holier than Paul, unless he can prove he can walk on water, produce enough bread to feed the masses, and change water into wine).
This decision to include contraceptives, and ignite the pro-life debate again after it’s been a non-issue in this campaign has invigorated Rick Santorum’s campaign. Santorum, who has been running around the country trying to prove he’s the only true Conservative, has likened the imposition of contraceptives to restriction of religious freedom and the involvement in government in our daily lives, this from the guy who voted for the “bridge to nowhere,” a big government boondoggle in Alaska, when he was a one term senator. I guess when it comes to stealing and wasting government money, you can’t have enough government involvement, other wise it’s not good.
Now Santorum has gone the next logical step, in his small mind, calling amniocentesis the precursor to abortion because, if genetic damage is found (such as Down’s syndrome), the doctor will often recommend an abortion. However, during his foaming at the mouth oratory, he neglects to say that it is still the woman’s choice.
Just ask Sarah Palin.
That’s what the Obama administration is trying to do: give every woman a choice. Obama’s problem is that he could have waited until after the election, until he cruised to a victory, to give all women this choice, not just middle class and wealthy women, and not just women with health insurance that covers contraceptives.
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