Biggest audience in years...

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Whatever his intentions, Limbaugh's sexist tirade reinforced a narrative that depicts resistance to the contraceptive mandate as part of "a systematic war against women," as Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) put it last week. But that narrative remains false, no matter how many stupid jokes Rush Limbaugh makes. Mikulski was responding to a bill, narrowly rejected by the Senate, that would have exempted employers and insurers from medical coverage mandates to which they object on moral or religious grounds. "The Senate will not allow women's health care choices to be taken away from them," declared Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).
It's a mystery how revising a mandate that has not yet gone into effect takes any kind of choice away from anyone. But for Fluke, who spoke to a group of House Democrats last month on behalf of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice, free birth control at someone else's expense is a straightforward matter of gender equality.
Although Fluke chose to attend a Jesuit university knowing that its student health plan did not cover contraceptives, she believes it is unfair that she has to live with the consequences of that decision. "We refuse to pick between a quality education and our health," she said, "and we resent that, in the 21st century, anyone thinks it’s acceptable to ask us to make this choice simply because we are women."
Fluke claimed that "without insurance coverage, contraception can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school," which translates into $1,000 a year, or about $83 a month. Even taking into account the cost of a medical appointment, that estimate seems high, since you can buy a month's worth of birth control pills for less than $20 online or pay $9 for generic versions at Walmart. Condoms are about 50 cents each in packs of 12, and the amortized cost of a diaphragm, according to Planned Parenthood, averages about $2 a month.
Yet Fluke reported that two-fifths of female law students at Georgetown are "struggling" to pay for birth control, while some cannot afford it at all. If so, abstinence is always an option.
Cost aside, the essence of Fluke's argument is that reproductive freedom requires free birth control. By the same logic, religious freedom requires kosher food subsidies, freedom of speech requires taxpayer-funded computers, and the right to keep and bear arms requires government-supplied guns.
If you do not agree with this reasoning, according to a recent fundraising appeal from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on behalf of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, you are joining "Republicans' disgraceful assault on women’s rights." I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Republican, but Fluke's idea of "reproductive justice"—compelling other people to pay for her contraceptives, even when they object to that requirement for religious reasons—strikes me as decidedly unjust.
Last week Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said "the Obama administration believes that decisions about medical care should be made by a woman and her doctor, not a woman and her boss." Yet her boss not only retained the market-distorting, price-inflating tax policies that create an artificial incentive for employer-provided health insurance; he made the connection between employment and medical coverage mandatory, then decreed exactly what it would include, thereby precipitating this whole controversy. If President Obama does not want employers involved in medical coverage, why is he forcing them to be?
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by Jacob Sullum, posted at Reason magazine.
Sandra Fluke's Protection Racket - Reason Magazine
 
The real war on women:

Metaphors can be useful, unless they are allowed to override reality. In recent weeks, advocates for "reproductive freedom" have said that part of the Republican "war on women" is the proposal to let religious employers refuse to buy contraceptive coverage in their health insurance plans.


But who is the enemy? Most women, a New York Times/CBS News poll finds, agree that religious hospitals and universities should be free to opt out. Nearly half think any employer should have that prerogative.


If the effort to limit the contraceptive mandate were truly a frontal assault on women, a majority of them would not be endorsing the offensive. But the ideology of groups like Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women (NOW) sometimes ignores inconvenient gender realities.


Those advocates have been distracted from a different and far less figurative war on women—which, as it happens, is helped rather than hindered by one of the "reproductive rights" they champion. Legal abortion may empower women, but it has also become a powerful method for the mass elimination of females.


Modern technology allows prospective parents to learn the sex of a fetus, and many of them use that knowledge to exercise a preference for sons. Absent such intervention, about 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. But as Mara Hvistendahl reports in her 2011 book "Unnatural Selection," the number for boys per 100 girls has risen to 112 in India and 121 in China.


It was once assumed that the general preference for male offspring would subside as countries became richer and women became more educated. But in country after country, that has proved false.

Nor is the phenomenon limited to the eastern hemisphere. Rajendra Kale, editor-in-chief of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, writes that "female feticide" is so common in Canada that he believes "doctors should be allowed to disclose this information only after about 30 weeks of pregnancy -- in other words, when an unquestioned abortion is all but impossible."


French demographer Christophe Guilmoto, reports Hvistendahl, regards gender imbalance as "an epidemic. In the number of lives it has touched, he says, sex selection merits comparison with AIDS." Worldwide, experts say, the number of "missing girls" amounts to a stunning 163 million -- more than the entire female population of the United States.


The gender imbalance is particularly outsized in China partly because of the government's compulsory one-child policy. Yet that policy has sometimes been excused by supporters of women's rights. In 1989, as president of NOW, Molly Yard praised the Chinese population policy [of forced abortion] as "among the most intelligent in the world."


Selective abortion, however, does not target only girls. Recent screening advances now make it easier and safer to detect Down syndrome in the womb. Universal screening will have a predictable impact, because 92 percent of fetuses diagnosed with the abnormality are aborted.


Paul Root Wolpe, director of Emory University's Center for Ethics, told the New York Post, "What you end up having is a world without people with Down syndrome."
No one would object if that were achieved by curing the condition. But eradicating it through abortion doesn't sound so benign. A survey reported in the American Journal of Medical Genetics found that only 4 percent of parents with Down syndrome children regret having them—and nearly 99 percent of the people with the disorder said they are happy with their lives.


The practice of eliminating people who are regarded as unacceptable because of their sex or significant defects was probably an inevitable result of the proliferation of abortion. There may be others even more ominous.


A recent article in the Journal of Medical Ethics argues that abortion should not be limited to fetuses that have not yet been born. The authors propose instead to allow "after-birth abortion," which is "ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be"—which means, really, for any reason at all.


That policy may not be so improbable. Ann Furedi, head of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, has said, "There is nothing magical about passing through the birth canal that transforms it from a fetus into a person." The Netherlands now allows physicians to euthanize newborns with a "hopeless prognosis" and "unbearable suffering" if the parents authorize it.


Abortion-rights advocates think the right to choose has conferred great benefits. Maybe so, but not on everyone.
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"Collateral Damage from Reproductive Rights"
Collateral Damage from 'Reproductive Rights' - Reason Magazine
 
aaaaannnnnddddddd here it is.... the latest news -

Obama Birth Control Policy: Administration Lays Out Proposals For Carrying Out Compromise
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration signaled Friday it's willing to help insurance companies offset the cost of providing free birth control to women working at church-affiliated institutions like hospitals and colleges.

By finding a way to make the middlemen whole, the administration may be able to extricate itself from an unexpected political furor over birth control that has mobilized partisans across the political spectrum a half-century after the advent of the pill.

A 32-page regulatory proposal unveiled Friday offered options for providing free birth control to women whose employers object to contraception on religious grounds. The government now classifies birth control as preventive care, and President Barack Obama's health care law requires health plans to cover prevention at no cost to the consumer.

Churches, synagogues, mosques and other institutions whose primary purpose is to propagate faith are exempt from the mandate. But when the administration sought to impose the requirement on religious nonprofits serving the public, it triggered a backlash. That forced President Barack Obama himself to offer a compromise: insurers, not the religious employers would bear the responsibility.

Friday's proposal lists options for carrying out the president's compromise without forcing insurers to bear the whole cost – or tempting them to engineer backdoor maneuvers to recoup money from religious institutions that object to birth control.

Administration officials are seeking public comment for 90 days and will sift the responses before making any final decision. Reflecting the sensitivity of the issue, officials spoke only on condition of anonymity.

"Our general principle is that we want to maintain the posture that a religious organization that objects to paying for contraception, won't," said an official who briefed reporters.

The basic idea is to use the levers of government policy to reimburse the insurance companies, for example, by providing them credits against fees they would have to pay under another provision of the health care law. Finding a balance will be tricky because of the complexity of the health care law.

Women's groups were generally supportive of the administration's latest move, although it seemed unlikely to please religious conservatives. Catholic bishops have taken a forceful stand opposing the birth control requirement as an affront to religious freedom.

Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, questioned the timing of the announcement, late Friday on the eve of St. Patrick's Day festivities. She said church leaders will begin studying the proposal immediately, "but now is too soon to know what it actually says."

Administration officials say they don't expect an endorsement from the bishops, but they are hoping the accommodation will work for hospitals, colleges and charitable organizations.

The head of the Catholic Health Association, a trade group representing more than 600 hospitals around the country, also withheld judgment.

"We have to spend time reviewing it," said Sister Carol Keehan.

Her group provided critical support for passage of Obama's health care law through Congress, publicly breaking with the bishops in a dispute over the legislations restrictions on taxpayer funding for abortions.

The insurance industry also said it would need more time to study the proposals.

Additionally, the administration released new rules for student health plans on Friday. Generally, the requirements will lead to more robust coverage. But because of a previously unforeseen gap in federal legislation, not all student plans will have to upgrade. Plans sponsored by religious colleges would be given more time to comply with the birth control coverage provisions.
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Obama can paint this picture any way he wants but it is still a back door entitlement.
Just like I don't want my tax money to subsidize the oil companies, the auto manufactor, the airlines, etc. I certainly don't want to be used to subsidy the insurance compainies.
 
rolling7 said:
Obama can paint this picture any way he wants but it is still a back door entitlement.
Just like I don't want my tax money to subsidize the oil companies, the auto manufactor, the airlines, etc. I certainly don't want to be used to subsidy the insurance compainies.
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Exactly. The "compromise" is a total joke. Obviously Obama is counting on people buying the snake oil again. Sadly, I think it will be a winning bet for him.
 
rolling7 said:
Obama can paint this picture any way he wants but it is still a back door entitlement.
Just like I don't want my tax money to subsidize the oil companies, the auto manufactor, the airlines, etc. I certainly don't want to be used to subsidy the insurance compainies.
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okie dokie.

Obama killed Osama bin Laden but you blame him anyway and say Bush wins.
Obama officially withdraw troops out of Iraq but you blame him anyway and say Bush wins.
Obama caused oil price to go up when in fact it didn't but you blame him anyway and say Bush wins.

okie dokie. orderly!
78652-071dg.jpg
 
TXgolfer said:
Exactly. The "compromise" is a total joke. Obviously Obama is counting on people buying the snake oil again. Sadly, I think it will be a winning bet for him.
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I hate to have to agree with you but you are right....America is asleep at the ballot box.
 
Jiro said:
okie dokie.

Obama killed Osama bin Laden but you blame him anyway and say Bush wins.
Obama officially withdraw troops out of Iraq but you blame him anyway and say Bush wins.
Obama caused oil price to go up when in fact it didn't but you blame him anyway and say Bush wins.

okie dokie. orderly!
78652-071dg.jpg
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This isn't a thread about Bush or Obama. Feel free to start one if you want. :laugh2:
 
saywhatkid said:
Having fun saving Rush's rock solid reputation in AD? :giggle:
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How is anything I have ever said saving the reputation of a radio personality I do not like and do not listen to?

Criticizing the media double standard is not defending Rush.
Criticizing the double standard of politicians is not defending Rush.

Teasing Jiro is not defending Rush.
 
More irony....

Limbaugh: "The advertisers who hung in here are going gangbusters, yes. I mean, that’s the simple truth. The only ones who got hurt are the ones who left. And that’s its own tragedy because they left under false, trumped up, unreal pretenses. I don’t want to relive that. I just wanted to answer the question without getting too specific, because everybody’s asking about it.."

Ratings up from 10 to 60% across 600 stations.
‘Rush Limbaugh Show’ Ratings Up 60% Since Sandra Fluke Controversy – Daily Rush Limbaugh & Conservative Media Post


Congrats, folks. Just made Rush even more popular.
 
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