Why Women Take Birth Control Medicine

A lot of controversy has been swirling around the use of birth control since the Supreme Court's terrible Burwell v Hobby Lobby inc. ruling a few weeks back. In response, Buzzfeed released an excellent article asking twenty-two of their female contributors why they use birth control meds.

You can read the article here. My favorite, of course, is this one:

 

A female friend of mine, who made me aware of the article's existence (shout out to my good friend Kristi B.!), pointed out that it's unfortunate that women have to justify - to lawmakers, their employers, etc - their use of birth control meds lest they are assumed to be sluts. I had assumed that we settled the birth control debate fifty years ago, but that's just another testament to the extremism among many of those on the right.

Muslims in the US

I was planning to (finally) update this blog with the Daily Caller's hilariously inept attempt to smear Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey (more on this soon - check back) or other news pieces. However, I found a blog entry that was so damn good that I couldn't pass up posting it here. It's a long read, but well worth the time.

Believe it or not, Muslim support for the Republican Party did not waver in the face of its gradual Christianization. On the contrary, Muslims saw common ground with Christians on most social issues. While the topic of abortion is not nearly as cut-and-dried for Muslims as it is for many Christians, the Muslim community certainly agreed with the goal of limiting them as much as possible – and more to the point, in limiting unwanted pregnancies in the first place by stigmatizing casual sexual encounters. Muslims shared with their Christian neighbors their belief in the sanctity of the nuclear family, and their belief that a household headed by a married mother and father was the best household in which to raise children.

By 2000, the Muslim community in America was several decades old, and had started to mature as a political entity. Muslim organizations almost unanimously endorsed George W. Bush. I voted for Bush that year. I would have voted for Bob Dole in 1996 if I weren’t so busy with medical school that I forgot to vote; I would have voted for Bush Sr. in 1992 if I weren’t still 17 years old.

In the 2000 election, approximately 70% of Muslims in America voted for Bush; among non-African-American Muslims, the ratio was over 80%.

Four years later, Bush’s share of the vote among Muslims was 4%.

What happened? Well, a lot.

The GOP and Me

The most shameful legacy of the 9/11 years is not torture, not Gitmo, not Abu Ghraib or even the Patriot Act. It's the irrational fear and hatred that the attacks have caused some in this country to harbor towards Muslim Americans: casting suspicion on Muslim Americans who want to build a mosque in their neighborhood, placing innocents on the 'do not fly' list, searching the private records or Muslims who were born and raised in this country but committed no crime - just happened to have a name that sounded "Arab".

9/11 should have been a chance for this country to show the world that we were better than those who attacked us. We don't allow the terrorists the privilege of seeing that their goal - to frighten us into submission - has worked.

But that's exactly what we did. The Patriot Act, torture, even the war in Iraq - those were not signs of strength, but the desperate acts of a people who were so scared that they were willing to go back on some of their most cherished beliefs for an illusion of security.

In that sense, Osama and his terrorist allies won the moment we allowed fear - and not rationality - rule the day.

The Party of the 'Little Guy'

From an excellent op/ed article written by Dana Milbank:

“The president claims his economic agenda is for the middle class. But it’s actually for the well-connected,” Paul Ryan, the GOP’s 2012 vice presidential nominee, wrote this week in USA Today, rejecting Obama’s latest proposal for a corporate tax cut. “There’s no doubt that it works well for them. But for the rest of us, it’s not working at all.”

Ryan, in his brief commentary, protested that Obama is “interested in tax reform for corporations — but not for families or small business.” He further accused Obama of implementing health-care and regulatory policies that favor big businesses and big banks.
That’s rich.

Source: The GOP Flips the Script on Obama

The Republican party's sudden shift to the party of the 'little guy' is nothing short of amazing.

Let's remember that this is the party that opposes regulation of any kind, opposed Wall Street reform, and constantly fights against people who work for a living (labor). In fact, most Republicans are quick to label as "Socialist" anything that smacks of even being moderately disapproving of big business.

Now the party of Donald Trump, Mitt Romney and the Koch brothers is suddenly positioning itself as the party of "joe six-pack"?

One just can't help but be astounded at the sheer chutzpah.

An aspect of this situation that Milbank did not address in his column is this: the fact that the sudden shift from a party of the rich and powerful to the party of "the little people" is less about genuine concern for the poor and more about cynical politics.

Republicans are desperate to do whatever they can to defund so-called "Obamacare" before it takes effect next year. So single-mindedly focused are they on this goal that many of them are willing to risk major political blowback by shutting down the government if Obama does not cave to their demands - a tactic that even uber-conservative Charles Krauthammer denounced as crazy in a recent column.

Unfortunately, Republican efforts to defund and/or discredit "Obamacare" are not going so well; there have been encouraging signs that health reform is actually working extremely well in those states that are already implementing changes: in Washington, Oregon and Maryland, insurance premiums are turning out to be lower than expected.

Sources: Medical Daily
              Washington Post

Republicans are left with few alternatives, so that means falling back on a tried-and-true tactic: throwing everything at Obama and seeing what sticks. If that means crying crocodile tears about the poor being screwed over in favor of the rich, in an attempt to discredit a federal program that will benefit the poor by allowing them to purchase health insurance, so be it. Destroying"Obamacare", it seems, is more important than, you know, actually giving a damn about the "joe six-packs" of the country.

The New Political Correctness

Note: This is not my work; it is from Paul Krugman's excellent blog 'The Conscience of a Liberal".

Remember the furor over liberal political correctness? Yes, some of it was over the top — but it was mainly silly, not something that actually warped our national discussion.

Today, however, the big threat to our discourse is right-wing political correctness, which — unlike the liberal version — has lots of power and money behind it. And the goal is very much the kind of thing Orwell tried to convey with his notion of Newspeak: to make it impossible to talk, and possibly even think, about ideas that challenge the established order.

Thus, even talking about “the wealthy” brings angry denunciations; we’re supposed to call them “job creators”. Even talking about inequality is “class warfare”.

And then there’s the teaching of history. Eric Rauchway has a great post about attacks on the history curriculum, in which even talking about “immigration and ethnicity” or “environmental history” becomes part of a left-wing conspiracy. As he says, he’ll name his new course “US History: The Awesomeness of Awesome Americans.” That, after all, seems to be the only safe kind of thing to say.

Actually, this reminds me of an essay I read a long time ago about Soviet science fiction. The author — if anyone remembers where this came from — noted that most science fiction is about one of two thoughts: “if only”, or “if this goes on”. Both were subversive, from the Soviet point of view: the first implied that things could be better, the second that there was something wrong with the way things are. So stories had to be written about “if only this goes on”, extolling the wonders of being wonderful Soviets.
And now that’s happening in America.


Source: The Conscience of a Liberal

A Day In the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican

This is not my work, and I do not present it here as such. It was just so good, however, that I just couldn't pass up sharing it with...whomever is out there.

Joe gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and work as advertised.

All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employers medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

Joe takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; His bottle is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government subsidized ride to work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medicals benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn’t think he should loose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

Its noon time, Joe needs to make a Bank Deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten Mortgage and his below market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his life-time.

Joe is home from work, he plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to dads; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. He was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electric until some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republican’s would still be sitting in the dark)

He is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to. After his visit with dad he gets back in his car for the ride home.

He turns on a radio talk show, the host’s keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. (He doesn’t tell Joe that his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day)  Joe agrees, “We don’t need those big government liberals ruining our lives; after all, I’m a self made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have”.