Retro❉Politics

House Passes Health Care Bill With Anti-Abortion Funding Amendment

Howard Friedman | Religion Clause: In an historic vote tonight, the U.S. House of Representatives passed HR 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act by a vote of 220-215. (New York Times.) Paving the way for the favorable vote was the passage of the Stupak-Ellsworth-Pitts-Kaptur-Dahlkemper-Lipinski-Smith Amendment (full text) by a vote of 240-194. (Christian Science Monitor background.) That amendment assures that federal funds will not be used to pay for abortions (except in cases of rape, incest or threat to the life of the mother). Abortion coverage will be available through non-subsidized private health plans. Supplemental policies may be purchased with an individual’s own funds or with state or local funds other than state or local matching Medicaid funds. Any private company offering an unsubsidized plan through the insurance Exchange that covers abortion must also offer an identical plan that excludes abortion coverage. In letters to members of Congress today, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops strongly supported the amendment. [Updated.]

Public Service Announcement* From Retro❉Politics

“The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.” -Theodore Roosevelt, Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918

*For those of you who feel the need to point out that I’ve posted this before - thank you I appreciate it but there is no need. I know I have. It will be posted one time once a month or when my spacey ass remembers to post it until it’s no longer necessary.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled feed…

Student Stuns Iran, Criticizes Supreme Leader to His Face

azblg:

shaneblog:

An unassuming college math student has become an unlikely hero to many in Iran for daring to criticize the country’s most powerful man to his face.

Mahmoud Vahidnia has received an outpouring of support from government opponents for the challenge — unprecedented in a country where insulting supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is a crime punishable by prison.

WotD: ideology

Political Ideology

An ideology is a collection of ideas. Typically, each ideology contains certain ideas on what it considers to be the best form of government (e.g. democracy, theocracy, etc), and the best economic system (e.g. capitalism, socialism, etc). Sometimes the same word is used to identify both an ideology and one of its main ideas. For instance, “socialism” may refer to an economic system, or it may refer to an ideology which supports that economic system.

Ideologies also identify themselves by their position on the political spectrum (such as the left, the center or the right), though this is very often controversial. Finally, ideologies can be distinguished from political strategies (e.g. populism) and from single issues that a party may be built around (e.g. opposition to European integration or the legalization of marijuana). Philosopher Michael Oakeshott provides a good definition of ideology as “the formalized abridgment of the supposed sub-stratum of the rational truth contained in the tradition.”

Studies of the concept of ideology itself (rather than specific ideologies) have been carried out under the name of systematic ideology.

Political ideologies are concerned with many different aspects of a society, some of which are: the economy, education, health care, labor law, criminal law, the justice system, the provision of social security and social welfare, trade, the environment, minors, immigration, race, use of the military, patriotism and established religion.

(via)

Adult Christianity: Pretty in Pink, or Carrie Prejean and the Sound of One Hand Clapping

The New & [un]Improved Retooled Religious Right: Now with 100% more irony than before.

Dispatch From Lostinthought

What’s next, Religionists? Requiring women to register their uterus’ with the state? Tracking devices? Uterine barcodes? GAH. ENOUGH is ENOUGH! Get your backwards neanderthal morals out of my uterus! If ya’ll want a uterus GO GET YOUR OWN! I’m sure there is a surgeon that will be happy to help you out. If you already have one - why are you being greedy? Greed is a sin, is it not? With all your righteousness I would think you would be much more careful than that.

/snarkydisgusteddispatch

Politics, Not Religion, At Heart of Health Care Reform Wrangle on Abortion

Sarah Posner | ReligionDispatches

As the House of Representatives health care reform bill edges closer to a vote, anti-choice Democrats continue their threats to hijack the bill over abortion funding. These members, and their supporters, are the very constituency Democrats have been urged to placate on abortion-related issues. That strategy, misguided to begin with, seems even more so as the “pro-life” Democrats are trying to bring down their own party’s signature legislative initiative.

As part of Democrats’ re-tooling in the post-“values voters” election of 2004, they tried to be more “friendly” to religion. A big part of that strategy included making anti-choice Democrats feel more “welcome” in the party by being less doctrinaire on choice, and acknowledging the claimed heartfelt religious belief at the core of these Democrats’ position.

But now some of these Democrats, who claim to be pro-life, are playing politics with health care reform, aligning themselves more closely with the anti-choice hard right and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) than their own party. They insist that efforts to ensure that no public funds will be used to cover abortion services are insufficient. This game-playing is not about public funding of abortion, already outlawed in the Hyde Amendment (which bars federal funding from being used to pay for abortions for low-income women under Medicaid and other programs). Indeed, the House bill already incorporates Hyde through its own amendment authored by pro-choice California Democrat, Rep. Lois Capps.

Instead, these Democrats, led by Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, are pushing for an amendment to restrict womens’ access to abortion. And that’s not theology, it’s politics.

Even so, says Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, those attempting to torpedo health care reform over the abortion issue do not represent mainstream religious views. “Pro-choice religious groups and leaders are very mainstream. They are supporting health care reform in the broadest framework,” she said in an interview with RD.

While the USCCB has taken a hard line on opposing health care reform (which it claims to support) if abortion isn’t sufficiently restricted, it does not represent the views of most Catholics. A recent poll commissioned by Catholics for Choice found that 68% of Catholics disapproved of the Bishops’ opposition to health care reform that includes abortion coverage; 56% believed the Bishops shouldn’t even be taking a position on the health care reform legislation. The views of the country’s 65 million Catholics, said Jon O’Brien, the group’s president, “are not represented by 350 members of the USCCB.”

More…

icanseenewyorkcityfrommyhouse:

joyengel:

“If this amendment passes, it will mean that virtually all women with insurance through the exchange who find themselves in the unwanted and unexpected position of needing to terminate a pregnancy will not have coverage for the procedure. Abortion coverage will not be outlawed in this country. It will simply be tiered, reserved for those rich enough to afford insurance themselves or lucky enough to receive from their employers.”

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Call your Representative NOW

Sigh. I thought neo-conservatism had been chased out of town. Guessed wrong.

“Opposition from anti-abortion Democrats, driven in large part by aggressive activism from the Catholic Church, forced Democratic leadership to allow a vote on Bart Stupak’s amendment limiting elective abortion coverage from both private and public insurers on the exchange.” -Ezra Klein

As I Please: Robot Bombs

George Orwell | Tribune | 30 June 1944

I notice that apart from the widespread complaint that the German pilotless planes “seem so unnatural” (a bomb dropped by a live airman is quite natural, apparently), some journalists are denouncing them as barbarous, inhumane and “an indiscriminate attack on civilians.”

After what we have been doing to the Germans over the past two years, this seems a bit thick, but it is the normal human response to every new weapon. Poison gas, the machine-gun, the submarine, gunpowder, and even the crossbow were similarly denounced in their day. Every weapon seems unfair until you have adopted it yourself. But I would not deny that the pilotless plane, flying bomb, or whatever its correct name may be, is an exceptionally unpleasant thing, because, unlike most other projectiles, it gives you time to think. What is your first reaction when you hear that droning, zooming noise? Inevitably it is a hope that the noise won’t stop. You want to hear the bomb pass safely overhead and die away into the distance before the engine cuts out. In other words, you are hoping it will fall on somebody else. So also when you dodge a shell or an ordinary bomb — but in that case you have only about five seconds to take cover and no time to speculate on the bottomless selfishness of the human being.

(via)

Dispatch From Lostinthought

It seems to me that the politicians have gotten very good at identifying the problems and pointing them out. Next step: actually doing something to fix the problems. It’s all well and good to point out the stinking pile of trash and the need to remove it. However, if you don’t actually remove the trash and end up adding to it, it’s nothing more than hypocritical empty talk. If you want to get rid of a problem you have to strike at the root. If you don’t pull a weed up by the root what happens? It grows back.

/dispatch