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PETA is using posters of Keeley Hazell posing nude for their anti-fur campaign. They are bound to get them plenty of attention:
Posting of these pictures does not represent endorsement of PETA. Posting of these pictures could be taken as an endorsement of the use of nude models in such campaigns.
Nancy Pelosi clearly knows far more than I do about getting bills passed. It is certainly possible that she knows what she is doing in attaching the Stupak Amendment to health care reform. Maybe this was necessary for initial passage in the House and maybe she has reason to be certain that a final bill will be passed without such restrictions on abortion rights. We won’t know until we see how this all plays out but I consider to fear she made a huge mistake.
Talking Points Memo summarizes a study which shows why I doubt that Democrats should have voted for any bill containing the Stupak Amendment as it risks making it impossible for all women to purchase insurance which includes coverage of abortion:
A new study by the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services adds some expert imprimatur to what many progressives have been saying all along: The Stupak amendment to the House health care bill–which will prevent millions of women from buying health insurance policies that cover abortion–is likely to have consequences that reach far beyond its supposedly intended scope.
The report concludes that “the treatment exclusions required under the Stupak/Pitts Amendment will have an industry-wide effect, eliminating coverage of medically indicated abortions over time for all women, not only those whose coverage is derived through a health insurance exchange.”
In other words, though the immediate impact of the Stupak amendment will be limited to the millions of women initially insured through a new insurance exchange, over time, as the exchanges grow, the insurance industry will scale down their abortion coverage options until they offer none at all.
“As a result, Stupak/Pitts can be expected to move the industry away from current norms of coverage for medically indicated abortions. In combination with the Hyde Amendment, Stupak/Pitts will impose a coverage exclusion for medically indicated abortions on such a widespread basis that the health benefit services industry can be expected to recalibrate product design downward across the board in order to accommodate the exclusion in selected markets.”
It is disappointing that the Democrats have so far voted for a bill which contains such an amendment. This is about the fundamental right of a woman to control her own body. Democrats should not be willing to compromise over such fundamentsl rights. Rather than compromising, they should have spoken out against this attempt by Republicans to control health care and interfear in the decisions made between a patient and her doctor.
The Republican Party in recent years has become the organ of an authoritarian movement. The Democrats need to present a clear alternative to their views, not compromise over basic rights. Offering a clear voice in support of individual liberty, on abortion rights as well as other issues where the Republicans desire increased government intervention in the lives of individuals (despite their hypocritical adoption of the language of liberty), might also give independents a reason to stick with the Democrats. If the Democrats fail to offer a clear contrast between themselves and the Republicans we are likely to continue to see stories about the loss of independent support.
One of the ideas behind the Democratic heath care reform plans is to allow all Americans to have the type of choice which members of Congress have. John Kerry’s health care plan explicitly called for this in 2004, and the current health care plan offers those in the individual market similar choices through the exchanges which are to be developed.
The Republican strategy on health care is to deny others they choices they have. Conservatives added an amendment which would greatly restrict insurance coverage of abortions. In contrast, Politico has found that the insurance plan offered to employees of the Republican National Committee has covered abortions.
The RNC has subsequently announced that they will drop this coverage after news came out about this on Thursday.
Yesterday it appeared that Obama was willing to accept the Stupak amendment which would restrict funding of abortion by private insurance companies if this was the cost of passing health care reform. On an interview with ABC News he has expressed reservations about the restrictions:
President Obama suggested Monday that he was not comfortable with abortion restrictions inserted into the House version of major health care legislation, and he prodded Congress to revise them.
“There needs to be some more work before we get to the point where we’re not changing the status quo” on abortion, Mr. Obama said in an interview with ABC News. “And that’s the goal.”
On the one hand, Mr. Obama said, “we’re not looking to change what is the principle that has been in place for a very long time, which is federal dollars are not used to subsidize abortions.”
On the other hand, he said, he wanted to make sure “we’re not restricting women’s insurance choices,” because he had promised that “if you’re happy and satisfied with the insurance that you have, it’s not going to change.”
The irony of the situation is that conservatives are bringing about the problem they have been warning about. While the initial health care legislation does not intrude upon decisions made between a patient and their doctor, the Stupak amendment does restrict such choices with regards to abortion rights.
There is reason for hope that the restrictions of the Stupak amendment will not make it through the Senate. Barbara Boxer has stated that there are not enough votes to add these restrictions in the Senate as it would take sixty votes to change the current language related to abortion.
“If someone wants to offer this very radical amendment, which would really tear apart [a decades-long] compromise, then I think at that point they would need to have 60 votes to do it,” Boxer said. “And I believe in our Senate we can hold it.”
“It is a much more pro-choice Senate than it has been in a long time,” she added. “And it is much more pro-choice than the House.”
One lesson of watching the battle to pass health care reform is that compromises must be made. I don’t agree with everything in the bill and many on the left do not feel it goes far enough. Steven Benen addressed the issue accepting a bill which does too little as a step in the right direction. He referred back to an article form Paul Begala which showed how limited Social Security was when originally passed when FDR was president:
No self-respecting liberal today would support Franklin Roosevelt’s original Social Security Act. It excluded agricultural workers — a huge part of the economy in 1935, and one in which Latinos have traditionally worked. It excluded domestic workers, which included countless African Americans and immigrants. It did not cover the self-employed, or state and local government employees, or railroad employees, or federal employees or employees of nonprofits. It didn’t even cover the clergy. FDR’s Social Security Act did not have benefits for dependents or survivors. It did not have a cost-of-living increase. If you became disabled and couldn’t work, you got nothing from Social Security.
If that version of Social Security were introduced today, progressives like me would call it cramped, parsimonious, mean-spirited and even racist. Perhaps it was all those things. But it was also a start. And for 74 years we have built on that start. We added more people to the winner’s circle: farmworkers and domestic workers and government workers. We extended benefits to the children of working men and women who died. We granted benefits to the disabled. We mandated annual cost-of-living adjustments. And today Social Security is the bedrock of our progressive vision of the common good.
Health care may follow that same trajectory. It would be a bitter disappointment if health reform did not include a public option. A public plan that keeps the insurance companies honest is, I believe, the right policy and the right politics. I believe subsidies should extend to as many Americans as need help and that the hard-earned health benefits of middle-class Americans should not be taxed. I believe insurer abuses like the preexisting-condition rule should be outlawed. The question is not whether I or other progressives will support a health-reform bill that includes everything we want but, rather, whether we will support a bill that doesn’t.
It is totally understandable to accept a bill which doesn’t do enough in the hopes that it will be expanded in the future. Ask any conservative and they will tell you that the inevitable result of a new government program is to see it grow.
The more serious problem is when there are portions of the bill which are not desired. In some cases this is understandable as we know compromise will be necessary. Health care is just too complicated to produce a bill which everyone will agree with. It is necessary to accept some items I do not want in order to achieve the much needed reform. What is not acceptable is to use health care as a back door way to restrict abortion rights.
Conservatives claim that health care reform will result in the government coming in between the patient and their doctor. As the American Medical Association found, the bill originally did not include “any new authority that would overpower the relationship between patients and their physicians.” Suddenly in the rush to achieve a narrow majority it turns out the conservatives are right. A final compromise on the bill does intrude upon medical decision making by restricting abortion rights. After all their bogus scare stories about horrors coming from health care reform we suddenly do have the prospect of a real horror–the return of coat hanger abortions.
Hopefully Pelosi knows what she is doing in accepting this intolerable compromise to gain passage on the bill. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic chief deputy House whip, does predict that the Stupak amendment will be stripped from the final bill. If not, this could doom health care reform as at least forty-one House Democrats have now pledged to vote against the bill if the restrictions on abortion rights are not removed. For now it appears that Obama does not like the Stupak amendment but would not be willing to sacrifice the bill over this.
While we do not know how this will play out, I’m sure that many conservatives love the prospect that it might come down to a choice between reforming health care or preserving abortion rights. It totally escapes them that this tactic results in in bringing about what they claim to fear: government interfering with medical decisions and bringing about substandard forms of medical care.
Different people had different expectations as to what Obama would do after being elected, resulting in differing views of him from the left at present. He has been criticized for not yet being successful on the big issues. I feel this criticism is premature considering how close he is to passing health care reform after so many other presidents have failed at this. I see the big advantages of Obama’s election to be no longer having an incompetent president who has harmed the country in so many ways. Not having a president who repeatedly does bad things is a major positive step.
Obama certainly deserves some credit, even if the amount is not certain, for the economy being in much better shape than most predicted at this time a year ago. Obama also deserves credit for a number of changes which are not top headline news. Since elected Obama has eliminated the ban on federal spending for embryonic stem cell research. He has ended the global gag rule which restricted reproductive rights internationally. He is ending the federal raids on medicinal marijuana. Another achievement came today as Obama announced the end of the HIV travel ban. Andrew Sullivan has posted his remarks:
A couple of years ago Michelle and I were in Africa and we tried to combat the stigma when we were in Kenya by taking a public HIV/AIDS test. And I’m proud to announce today we’re about to take another step towards ending that stigma.
Twenty-two years ago, in a decision rooted in fear rather than fact, the United States instituted a travel ban on entry into the country for people living with HIV/AIDS. Now, we talk about reducing the stigma of this disease — yet we’ve treated a visitor living with it as a threat. We lead the world when it comes to helping stem the AIDS pandemic — yet we are one of only a dozen countries that still bar people from HIV from entering our own country.If we want to be the global leader in combating HIV/AIDS, we need to act like it.
And that’s why, on Monday my administration will publish a final rule that eliminates the travel ban effective just after the New Year. Congress and President Bush began this process last year, and they ought to be commended for it. We are finishing the job. It’s a step that will encourage people to get tested and get treatment, it’s a step that will keep families together, and it’s a step that will save lives.
Interpretation of this is comparable to the question of whether the glass is half full or half empty. Obama has not brought about marriage equality, and there are many other areas where he has not done everything I might desire. That doesn’t change the fact that little by little we are seeing significant accomplishments in the first year of his presidency alone.
Update: The Washington Post has some history on the development of this ban and its elimination:
The regulations are the final procedural step in ending the ban, and will be published Monday in the Federal Register, to be followed by the standard 60-day waiting period prior to implementation.
A ban on travel and immigration to the U.S. by individuals with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, was first established by the Reagan-era U.S. Public Health Service and then given further support when Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) added HIV to the travel-exclusion list in a move that was ultimately passed unanimously by the Senate in 1987.
A 1990-1991 effort to overturn the regulatory ban failed in the face of outcry and lobbying from conservative groups and bureaucratic turf disputes. The ban was upheld in 1993 when Congress added it to U.S. immigration laws.
The Senate finally voted to overturn the ban as part of approving legislation reauthorizing funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, in 2008, and President Bush signed it into law on July 30 of that year. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and then-Sen. Gordon H. Smith (R-Ore.) led the process in the Senate.
I’ve often noted the tendency of many on the right to portray themselves as victims. This includes the protests of the tea baggers over the imaginary injustices and our delusional decline into socialism which they were warned about by watching Fox. (And notice that my use here of Fox, and not “Fox News, ” predates the arguments from the Obama administration that Fox is an arm of the Republican Party and not a legitimate news organization.) The shock of having a black man in the White House, added to all the other imaginary injustices felt by the far right, has led to increased signs of extremism. The Secret Service reports an unprecedented number of death threats against Obama and a rise in racist wing hate groups. Expressions of violence from the right have become commonplace–including from mainstream conservatives in the Republican Party.
In this atmosphere, right wing pundit and Nazi-sympathizer Pat Buchanan feels comfortable being even explicit about his views. He showed his sympathies towards Nazi Germany in a column last month. Now he writes about the persecution that he sees white working-class voters being subjected to. The column is full of absurdities which other bloggers have already discussed at length, so I will limit this to one particularly ridiculous line. Buchanan writes: “In their lifetimes, they have seen their Christian faith purged from schools their taxes paid for…”
Yes, and this is a good thing. The schools are not the place to spread the Christian, or any other faith. Even Mike Huckabee has expressed some support for the idea that prayer does not belong in the schools. (If only he extended this to also opposing the teaching of creationism). Such separation of church and state was a fundamental principle of the founding fathers, who realized that this was necessary to preserve freedom of religion. While I would strongly object, it is logically possible to argue for having a state religion which is supported in the public schools. It makes no sense to argue for this in a column which claims to support traditional American values.
If you support the inclusion of religion in the public schools you are directly opposing traditional American values. With their growing cheering against America and opposition to the values we were founded upon, the word conservative has taken on an Orwellian meaning as we wonder what it is that conservatives want to conserve. This should come as no surprise when we have those on the right who claim to support a strong defense while supporting policies which undermine our national security. The right speaks of freedom while supporting an increasingly authoritarian society, ignoring true violations of civil liberties but see attempts to provide people with affordable health care as an intrusion on our liberties. The right speaks of supporting capitalism while backing a form of crony capitalism which would make Adam Smith roll over in his grave. While Pat Buchanan’s views are contrary to traditional American values, they do fit in will with the contemporary conservative movement.
The ridiculous story of the day was when CNBC correspondent John Harwood claimed that an anonymous White House adviser, referring to those criticizing the Obama administration on gay rights, said that “those bloggers need to take off the pajamas, get dressed and realize that governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult.” Considering the reference to an anonymous adviser, and questions as to what an “adviser” even means, I did not consider this of any consequence, but several bloggers did take this seriously.
Greg Sargent reports receiving this email from White House senior communications adviser Dan Pfeiffer:
“That sentiment does not reflect White House thinking at all, we’ve held easily a dozen calls with the progressive online community because we believe the online communities can often keep the focus on how policy will affect the American people rather than just the political back-and-forth.”
I’m glad that he cleared up that matter. Now the White House communications office can get back to more important matters, such as explaining how Fox is really an “arm of the Republican Party.”
The right wing is composed of a strange coalition which has elements supporting both economic conservatism and the social conservatism of the religious right. Once again there is a sign that support for social conservatism is stronger than the dwindling libertarian elements. The Dallas Morning News reports that Newt Gingrich’s conservative group had named Dawn Rizos as “Entrepreneur of the Year.” The Lodge which she runs is a successful business and Rizos holds conservative economic views:
Rizos said her views include less government intervention in small business, as well as in Americans’ private lives.
Republicans have difficulty with that part about less government intervention in Americans’ private lives. They rescinded the award when they found out that The Lodge is a topless club.
The Los Angeles Times looks at the latest strategy from the right wing to try to circumvent a Supreme Court decision and impose their views upon the country:
Abortion foes, tired of a profusion of laws that limit but do not abolish abortion, are trying to answer the question in a way that they hope could put an end to legalized abortion.
Across the country, they have revived efforts to amend state constitutions to declare that personhood — and all rights accorded human beings — begins at conception.
From Florida to California, abortion foes are gathering signatures, pressing state legislators and raising money to put personhood measures on ballots next year. In Louisiana, a class at a Catholic high school is lobbying state legislators as part of a civics exercise.
“We have big and small efforts going on in 30 states right now,” said Keith Mason, co-founder of Colorado-based Personhood USA. “Our goal is to activate the population.”
Critics deride the effort as the “egg-as-person” movement and say it threatens in vitro fertilization; some kinds of birth control, including IUDs and pills; and stem cell research. They say that Americans will reject it as a government intrusion into their privacy.
Yes, this is real government intrusion in individual’s lives–not the imagined abuses seen by many conservatives. The irony is that such measures are supported by many of the same people who are engaging in right wing protests based upon a delusional view of what Obama is doing, often expressing rhetorical but not real support for freedom
As Ted Miller, spokesman for NARAL Pro-Choice America, said, “It’s a backdoor abortion ban.” So far voters and state legislatures have rejected such efforts. Supporters see a comparison between their efforts and supporters of homosexual rights and even Martin Luther King’s struggle for civil rights. What they fail to recognize is that the general movement of history has been for greater liberty and their attempts to impose such reactionary views have little chance of success in the modern world which they so desperately fight. Despite a rare outlier poll which suggests greater opposition to abortion, the vast majority of Americans would not back such a ban and a return to the era of shirt hanger abortions. A poll from May showed that 68 percent oppose overturning Roe v. Wade with only 30 percent supporting this. By continuing to pursue this issue, the right wing continues to marginalize themselves. Continued opposition to reproductive rights will leave the Republicans as a minority regional party limited to the south and Mormon belt of the west.
