This week has been a crappy one, critter-wise. Yesterday, my sister lost one of her cats. He was pretty ancient (over 20, so he goes back to my parents. Now we have no critters left that knew them), but that doesn’t make it any easier, of course. He was more or less blind, but his sniffer still worked good. Lately, he spent most of his time on his memory foam pillow in front of the pellet stove, occasionally taking a swipe at the other cat if she was dumb enough to get close (not so with the dogs; he loved them all, and they’d routinely slurp him). I’m really hoping that a period of happiness will now settle in. Oh well, time to clean out the garage or something.
I have never had a cat who didn’t get along with the dog, but I’ve had a couple who prefer the dog.
Shhh! Don’t tell Sanctorum.
The Battle Behind the Fight
By GAIL COLLINS
Published: February 10, 2012
As you probably heard, President Obama changed the new rules on health care coverage to accommodate howls of outrage from the Catholic bishops, who didn’t want Catholic institutions paying for anything that provided women with free contraceptives.
Now, they can get a pass. But if their health policies don’t provide the coverage, their female employees will be able to get it anyway, directly from the insurance companies, which will pay the freight. Contraceptives are a win-win for them, since they’re much cheaper than paying for unintended pregnancies and deliveries.
Was it a cave, tweak or compromise? President Obama thinks of himself as a grand bargain kind of guy, but he really strikes me as the kind of person who will, when possible, go for the tweak.
Anyhow, it’s a good tweak. The women still get contraception coverage, the president has shown his respect for the bishops’ strong moral position.
Let’s skip over the flaws in the strong moral position position. Such as the fact that many states already require employers’ health care plans to cover contraception and that all over the United States there are Catholic universities and hospitals that comply.
Or that the bishops have totally failed to convince their own faithful that birth control is a moral evil and now appear to be trying to get the federal government to do the job for them. We’re rising above all that.
On Friday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called the tweak “a first step in the right direction,†which is certainly better than nothing. Sister Carol Keehan, the head of the 600-plus-member umbrella group for Catholic hospitals, applauded the change.
So far so good. Everybody happy?
No way.
Rick Santorum, Presidential Candidate On The Move, was unimpressed. At the White House, he said, they were still “trying to impose their values on somebody else.†Imposing your values on somebody else is definitely an area where Santorum is expert.
The leader of the Republican Study Committee, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, called the tweak a “fig leaf,†which he seemed to regard as a bad thing.
Representative Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican and leader of the House anti-abortion forces, said the latest announcement demonstrated that the president “will use force, coercion and ruinous fines that put faith-based charities, hospitals and schools at risk of closure, harming millions of kids, as well as the poor, sick and disabled that they serve, in order to force obedience to Obama’s will.â€
I would take that to be a no.
Smith, however, seemed pretty mellow compared with Paul Rondeau of the American Life League, who took the president’s willingness to meet his critics halfway as proof of his unbendable will: “This man is totally addicted to abortion and totally addicted to the idea that not only is he the smartest man in the room, he is the smartest in the nation and taxpayers will fund his worldview whether they like it or not.â€
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Potential Vice Presidential Candidate, expressed some vague appreciation for the president’s efforts, then rejected them totally. The whole thing, he said, “shows why we must fully repeal ObamaCare.â€
And here we have the real issue, which goes way beyond contraception.
The bishops have made their point. Even if many of them had managed to avoid noticing the Catholic institutions in their own diocese that were already covering contraceptives to comply with state law, they are absolutely correct that Church doctrine holds that artificial methods of birth control are immoral. They’re not going to let the White House ignore that just because their own flocks do.
But Republican politicians have other fish to fry. They want to use the bishops and the birth control issue to get at health care reform. Right now in Congress, there are bills floating around that would allow employers to refuse to provide health care coverage for drugs or procedures they found immoral. You can’t have national health care coverage — even the patched-together system we’re working toward — with loopholes like that.
Which is the whole idea. National standards, national coverage — all of that offends the Tea Party ethos that wants to keep the federal government out of every aspect of American life that does not involve bombing another country.
But that shouldn’t be a Catholic goal. The church has always been vocal about its mission to aid the needy, and there’s nobody needier than a struggling family without health care coverage. The bishops have a chance to break the peculiar bond between social conservatives and the fiscal hard right that presumes if Jesus returned today, his first move would be to demand the repeal of the estate tax.
Let’s move on. Blessed are the tweakers.
New from Mr. Earl
Freak IT!
The Clutter Family
:sammy:
Mr. FK, a Catholic, said he would like to have seen such swift outrage from the Catholic bishops when it came to little boys being molested.
Vern, a few days ago you wondered about my comment re the Prop 8 case going to the full en banc panel. Yes, you’re right about the anti-8 folks not wanting it to go to the full panel, but it would be the defendants appealing and they would like to get more bang for their buck, so to speak.
And the frosty guy isn’t in ok?
We’re expecting a bit of snow here tomorrow. :banana: :cold:
I went to a great house party this afternoon for Russ Feingold. Not a bad day.
Is Feingold going to run again? I don’t care for what, I’ll support him- maybe if he primaried Obama :fist:
maybe with Obama as veep….a guy can dream can’t he? :billcat:
He definitely is on board with ‘re-elect O’Bama’ based on the fact that if he loses, we lose the SCotUS and the nation for generations if not forever. I think that is why he didn’t mount any quixotic primary challenge. He’s already been vocal on his displeasure with O’Bama about his super pac decision this week. I would have liked to see BHO be a little more vocal about how what he was doing was necessary if not to his liking. I still hope he will come forward with voluntary instant disclosure and advocacy of legislature mandating the same and a serious commitment to real reform of money in politics if and when he gets re-elected.
His focus and that of his Progressives United is to fight against the power of money in politics and mitigating and ending the damage of the ‘Citizens United’ decision. He is not so much of a believer in the constitutional amendment efforts since they are so long term to achieve and possibly futile. The immediate goal is to get better and faster transparency of the contributors. There are also challenges in the court pipeline ongoing and state effort as well.
I don’t discount the possibility that he will run for something again. The Wisconsin gubner thing may not happen for another 6-12 months so I think he decided to continue on the Progressives United path rather than get into that.