In her column, "Phony Mommy Wars," Maureen Dowd dismisses as 'piffle' Hilary Rosen's comment that Mitt Romney was foolish to say he depended on his wife's feedback about women's economic concerns because she 'actually never worked a day in her life.' But next, Dowd goes on to criticize Ann Romney for capitalizing on the attack and turning it to her husband's advantage.
Hello? Maureen! Remember all the mileage the left got out of Limbaugh's attack on Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student whose starting salary after graduation will approach $200K but who wants her Catholic university to pay to protect her from the consequences of her own sex life? That's what people _do_ when they're jockeying for political advantage; it's kind of like you snarking about the "wealthy Palm Beach donors who came in fancy cars to eat snapper," while they listened to Mitt, while failing to mention the many dozens of high-dollar fundraisers Obama has attended over the last year. Or your newspaper calling the 'mommy wars' phony while it legitimizes the phony 'war on women.'
Actually, I don't usually mind Dowd--her opinions are rarely a surprise but she's generally not overtly hateful and, occasionally, she'll make me laugh (as when she described Newt Gingrich as a 'crazed Chuckie doll.' I kind of like Newt, but when something's funny, it's funny...)
But, Dowd's partisan panties are clearly showing. In mocking Mitt's claim to have promoted welfare reform in Massachusetts by spending more on state-funded daycare so mothers could have the 'dignity of work' than it would have cost to just continue their welfare, Dowd asks the question "So the dignity of work only applies to poor moms?"
The subtext of this clumsy attempt at sarcasm is that women who stay home with their kids are all like Ann Romney--they can do it without fear or anxiety because a well-off husband can afford it, and the only other moms out there are either welfare moms or 'waitress moms.' It was a silly thing to say, but in spite of its casualness, the remark conveys remarkable ignorance about a big swath of stay-at-home moms--those who aren't poor but who are far from wealthy. The ones who thought long and hard about the material sacrifices their families would have to make, about the added pressure on their husbands, about the possibly permanent effects of the hiatus on their own career trajectories. Those parents are not only letting their children know how much they're valued, but are teaching them by example about frugality, self-reliance, and discipline. So are millions of other parents who would like to make it work with only one earner, but can't, and who still struggle valiantly to do it all.
One gets the sense Dowd doesn't know many of the stay-at-home moms of the sort I describe, but that's no excuse for misrepresenting the choice as the province only of the privileged, like Ann Romney, so she can then call her husband a hypocrite for trying to do something to disrupt the cycle of dependent parents bringing up dependent children. Not only is that transparent partisan hackery, it doesn't even make sense.
The cries by Dowd and others about how the Romney campaign is exploiting what is--I agree--pretty much a tempest in a teapot, are laughable given their determination to similarly exploit anything they can. No doubt we'll be in for that, from both sides, for another six months. But watch for her and her cronies to amp up the sneak attack on Romney's religion. It's already begun, actually, and I say 'sneak' attack because they won't risk a direct one; they'll supply 'information' that's damning and creepy. A little more than a month ago, I commented to a friend that there had been very little floated about Romney's Mormonism, and that I thought it was deliberate--that the Obama campaign (through its surrogates in the media) were leaving the topic alone until Mitt was safely the nominee. Only days later, this column came out:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/dowd-is-elvis-a-mormon.html?ref=maureendowd
Not surprisingly, Dowd has worked the Mormon angle into the 'mommy wars' column, along with others. It won't be the last time. I am not a Mormon and don't know many Mormons and, frankly, even though I'm less than enthusiastic about him, I don't really care that Romney is one. If I thought he might be unduly influenced by it in a negative way as President, I would be concerned, but I don't.
I really hope I'm wrong, but I predict that a just-under-the-radar assault on him, because of it, is forthcoming, and it's going to be ugly. David Axelrod is no fool. He knows he can't run a positive campaign unless things dramatically improve soon, and those voters who aren't currently deceived by the spin aren't likely to fall under the spell. So to capture the undecideds and the waverers, it will be fear and smear. It's going to be a long six months...
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Will any good come out of Trayvon Martin's death? Final thoughts.
Sooner or later, Trayvon Martin's death will fade from the headlines. Not in the next few weeks when a determination should be forthcoming as to whether George Zimmerman should be charged with a crime--and the certain backlash if he isn't--but eventually, it will be old news.
When that happens, will the utterly shameful Sharpton and Jackson, and others who have incited violence in the name of 'justice,' recognize their hypocrisy and perfidy and have a genuine change of heart? Highly doubtful, given that their past rushes to judgment (Tawana Brawley, the Duke lacrosse incident, etc.) have had no discernible chastening effect, and no apparent effect on the media's eagerness to give them a megaphone.
Will NBC think twice, next time, before they edit something to deliberately misrepresent and deceive? Will the rest of the media pack hold back and wait for the facts before they sensationalize the next big story in order to scoop their competitors and keep on top of the 24/7 news cycle? I think we all know the answer to those questions.
So who might actually learn some lesson of value, going forward? Consumers of news, hopefully, but it will only be those with some intelligence and discrimination. But those whom one would really like to see profit are the people--both black and white--who genuinely desire to see the black community flourish and fulfill its enormous potential.
Here is one of the things writer and professor Shelby Steele (who, like Barack Obama, is a product of a black father and a white mother) had to say about the exploitation of the Martin situation: "After the '60s—-in a society guilty for its long abuse of us—-we took our historical victimization as the central theme of our group identity. We could not have made a worse mistake. It has given us a generation of ambulance-chasing leaders, and the illusion that our greatest power lies in the manipulation of white guilt."
It is hard not to agree that those who have fanned the flames in this situation have done so with that goal of manipulating white guilt. How else could they claim, with straight faces, that young black men are being 'hunted down in the streets,' as several have put it, by whites? The numbers are there, and they don't lie. As Steele said--"blacks today are nine times more likely to be killed by other blacks than by whites...the absurdity of Messrs. Jackson and Sharpton is that they want to make a movement out of an anomaly. Black teenagers today are afraid of other black teenagers, not whites." (Writers on the left are attacking Steele, of course, largely on the basis that he is a black conservative, and therefore not worthy of any consideration.)
Someone they would dismiss even more on matters of race (as a white, Jewish conservative) is Mona Charen, who zeroed in on what is probably the most important takeaway in this whole thing. She asks the question, "Why do African-Americans, 12.6 percent of the nation’s population, account for 50 percent of the murder victims?" (And as Steele and a host of others have reminded us, they are overwhelmingly the victims of other blacks--not whites.)
Her answer? "Because fatherlessness is most pervasive among blacks."
She goes on to say that "among blacks, 72 percent of births are to unmarried women. And while some unmarried mothers go on to marry the fathers of their babies, it’s rare in the African-American community, where only 31 percent of couples are married (in 1960, it was 61 percent)...a full 85 percent of youths in prison come from fatherless homes, as do 80 percent of rapists, 71 percent of high-school drop-outs, and 63 percent of teen suicides..."
This statement of hers is the one that should really make people sit up and take notice: "In The Atlantic Monthly, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead wrote that the 'relationship [between single-parent families and crime] is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature.'"
_Erases_ the connection. That's big.
So while this will have to be the subject of another post, I have to comment that there is a tie-in here, for sure, with the latest canard of those who are trying to shore up the women's vote for Obama--the so-called 'war on women.' The illogical equation being posited is that opposition to forcing the Catholic Church to pay for contraception is the same as trying to take away contraception, or that the mere mention of the fact that sexual freedom hasn't been an unalloyed good indicates the desire to send women back into the kitchen, barefoot. It's absurd, of course, but as I said above, there are many credulous people.
But how can it be a matter of dispute between people of good will, whatever their political persuasions, that fathers and family structure matter. As a letter writer to the WSJ rather succinctly put it: "I have nothing to say about whether the sexual revolution has been good for women or not. But I think an important question is, has it been good for children?" Wouldn't it be great if the Sharptons and Jacksons asked that question about black children?
When that happens, will the utterly shameful Sharpton and Jackson, and others who have incited violence in the name of 'justice,' recognize their hypocrisy and perfidy and have a genuine change of heart? Highly doubtful, given that their past rushes to judgment (Tawana Brawley, the Duke lacrosse incident, etc.) have had no discernible chastening effect, and no apparent effect on the media's eagerness to give them a megaphone.
Will NBC think twice, next time, before they edit something to deliberately misrepresent and deceive? Will the rest of the media pack hold back and wait for the facts before they sensationalize the next big story in order to scoop their competitors and keep on top of the 24/7 news cycle? I think we all know the answer to those questions.
So who might actually learn some lesson of value, going forward? Consumers of news, hopefully, but it will only be those with some intelligence and discrimination. But those whom one would really like to see profit are the people--both black and white--who genuinely desire to see the black community flourish and fulfill its enormous potential.
Here is one of the things writer and professor Shelby Steele (who, like Barack Obama, is a product of a black father and a white mother) had to say about the exploitation of the Martin situation: "After the '60s—-in a society guilty for its long abuse of us—-we took our historical victimization as the central theme of our group identity. We could not have made a worse mistake. It has given us a generation of ambulance-chasing leaders, and the illusion that our greatest power lies in the manipulation of white guilt."
It is hard not to agree that those who have fanned the flames in this situation have done so with that goal of manipulating white guilt. How else could they claim, with straight faces, that young black men are being 'hunted down in the streets,' as several have put it, by whites? The numbers are there, and they don't lie. As Steele said--"blacks today are nine times more likely to be killed by other blacks than by whites...the absurdity of Messrs. Jackson and Sharpton is that they want to make a movement out of an anomaly. Black teenagers today are afraid of other black teenagers, not whites." (Writers on the left are attacking Steele, of course, largely on the basis that he is a black conservative, and therefore not worthy of any consideration.)
Someone they would dismiss even more on matters of race (as a white, Jewish conservative) is Mona Charen, who zeroed in on what is probably the most important takeaway in this whole thing. She asks the question, "Why do African-Americans, 12.6 percent of the nation’s population, account for 50 percent of the murder victims?" (And as Steele and a host of others have reminded us, they are overwhelmingly the victims of other blacks--not whites.)
Her answer? "Because fatherlessness is most pervasive among blacks."
She goes on to say that "among blacks, 72 percent of births are to unmarried women. And while some unmarried mothers go on to marry the fathers of their babies, it’s rare in the African-American community, where only 31 percent of couples are married (in 1960, it was 61 percent)...a full 85 percent of youths in prison come from fatherless homes, as do 80 percent of rapists, 71 percent of high-school drop-outs, and 63 percent of teen suicides..."
This statement of hers is the one that should really make people sit up and take notice: "In The Atlantic Monthly, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead wrote that the 'relationship [between single-parent families and crime] is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature.'"
_Erases_ the connection. That's big.
So while this will have to be the subject of another post, I have to comment that there is a tie-in here, for sure, with the latest canard of those who are trying to shore up the women's vote for Obama--the so-called 'war on women.' The illogical equation being posited is that opposition to forcing the Catholic Church to pay for contraception is the same as trying to take away contraception, or that the mere mention of the fact that sexual freedom hasn't been an unalloyed good indicates the desire to send women back into the kitchen, barefoot. It's absurd, of course, but as I said above, there are many credulous people.
But how can it be a matter of dispute between people of good will, whatever their political persuasions, that fathers and family structure matter. As a letter writer to the WSJ rather succinctly put it: "I have nothing to say about whether the sexual revolution has been good for women or not. But I think an important question is, has it been good for children?" Wouldn't it be great if the Sharptons and Jacksons asked that question about black children?
Friday, March 30, 2012
Time for a reality check on the ‘politicizing’ of the Trayvon Martin tragedy
Have the media and Obama’s re-election team made the leap that all of us are stupid, just because a lot of people are? The drumbeat has started that Republicans, and those on the ‘right,’ are politicizing the tragedy and should be ashamed of themselves. Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for Obama’s re-election effort, said it, and now Joe Scarborough on MSNBC has said it, so look for this to be picked up and parroted throughout the media.
Here’s a little refresher:
Left-leaning media outlets reported this case, from the outset, not just as a ‘murder,’ but a racially motivated murder. They didn’t have (and still do not have) a shred of evidence that this was so, but hey, who cares? The goal was to get things stirred up, and that they did.
They initially reported that the shooter was white, so a bit of a wrench was thrown into things when they found out that Zimmerman is only half white. (Good indication of how much investigation they actually did into the facts of the case before they took it and ran with it, don’t you think?) They solved this by calling him a ‘white Hispanic’ henceforth, with the order of the words being no accident, of course.
Sharpton (whom MSNBC considers a worthy mouthpiece) and Jackson and the usual hustlers who couldn’t care less about blacks who are killed by other blacks, or whites who are killed by blacks, descended on Sanford, spewing incendiary rhetoric and whipping crowds into frenzies.
While screaming about justice and how Zimmerman was a ‘vigilante,’ various parties, from obscure ones to the likes of Spike Lee and Roseanne Barr, have publicized the addresses not only of Zimmerman, but of his parents, sending them into hiding. (Lee at first refused to apologize when it was discovered he had tweeted the wrong address for Zimmerman, sending a bewildered older couple into hiding.) The New Black Panther Party issued a bounty for Zimmerman's 'capture' and witnesses were terrified of being identified.
As we all know, President Obama has inserted himself into this, and we have had a Democratic member of the House wearing a hoodie onto the floor of the chamber, and the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation demanding a Justice Department investigation “and an arrest.” Not, you will note, ‘an arrest if it’s warranted,” but an arrest. Why are they even calling for an investigation?
And yet Cutter and Scarborough (and there will be more, you can be sure) have the absolute gall to point fingers at Republicans/conservatives for ‘politicizing’ the tragedy. Scarborough was particularly upset about Trayvon’s social media posts and pictures being scrutinized, and what he considers a ‘blame the victim’ mentality.
I don’t care how many tattoos Trayvon had, or gold teeth, or whatever. I don’t think they ‘prove’ anything about what did or didn’t happen that night. As far as has been reported, Trayvon had no criminal record, which is the most salient fact about him.
But the dishonest and corrupt media precipitated this scrutiny by trying, from the outset, to shape public perception with selective, slanted, and overly emotional coverage. If Trayvon’s tattoos, gold teeth, etc., don’t matter, why did they deliberately hide them? Why did they deliberately use a picture that was years old? We know the answer. They wanted to create a narrative in which an innocent, sweet boy was mercilessly gunned down because he was black, and anything that might have contributed to the impression that he wasn’t a sympathetic victim had to be suppressed.
If I should need to reiterate—I do not believe that anything that’s been revealed about who Trayvon Martin was, five years after that widely disseminated first picture was taken, constitutes “evidence” of anything. And while I don’t believe—at all—that his shooting was racially motivated, I believe it was avoidable, and that a tragedy has occurred, and the investigation should proceed.
But for the people and organizations who deliberately orchestrated a media firestorm to now start complaining because everyone didn’t just shut up and swallow what they were fed, almost defies belief. They started this conflagration, so their lamentations about where it’s spreading ring pretty hollow.
Here’s a little refresher:
Left-leaning media outlets reported this case, from the outset, not just as a ‘murder,’ but a racially motivated murder. They didn’t have (and still do not have) a shred of evidence that this was so, but hey, who cares? The goal was to get things stirred up, and that they did.
They initially reported that the shooter was white, so a bit of a wrench was thrown into things when they found out that Zimmerman is only half white. (Good indication of how much investigation they actually did into the facts of the case before they took it and ran with it, don’t you think?) They solved this by calling him a ‘white Hispanic’ henceforth, with the order of the words being no accident, of course.
Sharpton (whom MSNBC considers a worthy mouthpiece) and Jackson and the usual hustlers who couldn’t care less about blacks who are killed by other blacks, or whites who are killed by blacks, descended on Sanford, spewing incendiary rhetoric and whipping crowds into frenzies.
While screaming about justice and how Zimmerman was a ‘vigilante,’ various parties, from obscure ones to the likes of Spike Lee and Roseanne Barr, have publicized the addresses not only of Zimmerman, but of his parents, sending them into hiding. (Lee at first refused to apologize when it was discovered he had tweeted the wrong address for Zimmerman, sending a bewildered older couple into hiding.) The New Black Panther Party issued a bounty for Zimmerman's 'capture' and witnesses were terrified of being identified.
As we all know, President Obama has inserted himself into this, and we have had a Democratic member of the House wearing a hoodie onto the floor of the chamber, and the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation demanding a Justice Department investigation “and an arrest.” Not, you will note, ‘an arrest if it’s warranted,” but an arrest. Why are they even calling for an investigation?
And yet Cutter and Scarborough (and there will be more, you can be sure) have the absolute gall to point fingers at Republicans/conservatives for ‘politicizing’ the tragedy. Scarborough was particularly upset about Trayvon’s social media posts and pictures being scrutinized, and what he considers a ‘blame the victim’ mentality.
I don’t care how many tattoos Trayvon had, or gold teeth, or whatever. I don’t think they ‘prove’ anything about what did or didn’t happen that night. As far as has been reported, Trayvon had no criminal record, which is the most salient fact about him.
But the dishonest and corrupt media precipitated this scrutiny by trying, from the outset, to shape public perception with selective, slanted, and overly emotional coverage. If Trayvon’s tattoos, gold teeth, etc., don’t matter, why did they deliberately hide them? Why did they deliberately use a picture that was years old? We know the answer. They wanted to create a narrative in which an innocent, sweet boy was mercilessly gunned down because he was black, and anything that might have contributed to the impression that he wasn’t a sympathetic victim had to be suppressed.
If I should need to reiterate—I do not believe that anything that’s been revealed about who Trayvon Martin was, five years after that widely disseminated first picture was taken, constitutes “evidence” of anything. And while I don’t believe—at all—that his shooting was racially motivated, I believe it was avoidable, and that a tragedy has occurred, and the investigation should proceed.
But for the people and organizations who deliberately orchestrated a media firestorm to now start complaining because everyone didn’t just shut up and swallow what they were fed, almost defies belief. They started this conflagration, so their lamentations about where it’s spreading ring pretty hollow.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Trayvon Martin
Okay, this one will be pretty short. Unlike some people, I'm not prepared to rush to judgment, not prepared to decide that the tragic incident which resulted in a young man's death is for sure a 'murder,' not prepared to agree that it's on a par with Emmet Till's murder, not ready to agree it's proof that nothing has changed in this country, not prepared to agree with the increasingly hysterical emotion that passes for activism these days.
What I do agree with is that a tragedy has occurred, Martin's family deserves a thorough, competent and impartial investigation, and George Zimmerman should be held responsible for whatever degree of culpability an investigation and subsequent trial, if there is one, is assigned to him. But I also believe he is entitled, like everyone else, to the presumption of innocence and to due process of law.
'But he should be arrested!' people are screaming. They say that law enforcement failed to do its job. But these same people would be outraged if someone to whom they were sympathetic was arrested without probable cause, and as I understand it, the standards for probable cause in this case were not met. (That said, if the local law enforcement were planning to consider the case closed rather than continue to investigate and try to determine what happened, with an arrest to come if it's warranted, they would be in the wrong. It certainly sounded as if Zimmerman could have avoided a confrontation if he had used better judgment.) But at the scene, the police were confronted with an injured, bleeding man who claimed self-defense, who had already called 911 to report somebody suspicious in his neighborhood, which had been subject to an increasing amount of crime as more houses became vacant. I just read three different articles about this, and none of them even mentioned Zimmerman's injuries or that he had apparently been knocked to the ground. Doesn't need to be mentioned, I guess, if your goal is to stoke the fires. Under this set of circumstances, an arrest was not immediately warranted, but that doesn't mean one was never going to occur, and I've heard nothing to indicate Zimmerman is a flight risk or was refusing to cooperate.
For those who think I am saying the man is innocent--no, I'm not. I don't know that, any more than do those who are sure he's guilty, but that's not stopping _them_. An investigation, conducted by an agency in whom all involved can have confidence, should proceed without delay. But those who are ranting for 'justice,' those like Farrakhan who are making veiled threats of general violence and those who are making explicit death threats to Zimmerman, and those like Sharpton who never seem to have any outrage about racially motivated violence unless the victims are black, don't even know the meaning of the word.
What I do agree with is that a tragedy has occurred, Martin's family deserves a thorough, competent and impartial investigation, and George Zimmerman should be held responsible for whatever degree of culpability an investigation and subsequent trial, if there is one, is assigned to him. But I also believe he is entitled, like everyone else, to the presumption of innocence and to due process of law.
'But he should be arrested!' people are screaming. They say that law enforcement failed to do its job. But these same people would be outraged if someone to whom they were sympathetic was arrested without probable cause, and as I understand it, the standards for probable cause in this case were not met. (That said, if the local law enforcement were planning to consider the case closed rather than continue to investigate and try to determine what happened, with an arrest to come if it's warranted, they would be in the wrong. It certainly sounded as if Zimmerman could have avoided a confrontation if he had used better judgment.) But at the scene, the police were confronted with an injured, bleeding man who claimed self-defense, who had already called 911 to report somebody suspicious in his neighborhood, which had been subject to an increasing amount of crime as more houses became vacant. I just read three different articles about this, and none of them even mentioned Zimmerman's injuries or that he had apparently been knocked to the ground. Doesn't need to be mentioned, I guess, if your goal is to stoke the fires. Under this set of circumstances, an arrest was not immediately warranted, but that doesn't mean one was never going to occur, and I've heard nothing to indicate Zimmerman is a flight risk or was refusing to cooperate.
For those who think I am saying the man is innocent--no, I'm not. I don't know that, any more than do those who are sure he's guilty, but that's not stopping _them_. An investigation, conducted by an agency in whom all involved can have confidence, should proceed without delay. But those who are ranting for 'justice,' those like Farrakhan who are making veiled threats of general violence and those who are making explicit death threats to Zimmerman, and those like Sharpton who never seem to have any outrage about racially motivated violence unless the victims are black, don't even know the meaning of the word.
Friday, February 10, 2012
It's not about pills; it's about power.
The latest news is that the Obama administration has offered what it considers to be an acceptable solution to the objections (primarily by the Catholic Church) to its directive that religious institutions (other than individual houses of worship) provide free birth control and abortifacients to their employees. As best I can understand, the administration's claim is that the religious institutions will not have to pay for these things, after all; their insurance providers will have to provide them.
If you are scratching your head right now, so am I. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if a religious institution's insurance provider will be required to provide access, free of charge, to birth control methods and so-called 'morning after' pills, then the cost of these items will be passed on to the employer. They are going to be paying for it, no matter how you slice it, and it will be interesting to read the defenses of this 'adjustment' that will no doubt be forthcoming.
What's also been interesting (but not surprising given the administration's apparent unpreparedness for the backlash) is its attempt, aided by the dependable lackeys in the media, to characterize the whole controversy as being about contraception, women's health and women's rights, when it is not. There seems to be almost a deliberate strategy to exploit the sloppy and emotional thinking that contributes to forming opinions these days, to obscure the central fact: this is about government's power to impose its will wherever it wants. By railing about how people opposed to the new policy are mounting "an outrageous assault" as Planned Parenthood put it, on women's health, denying them their 'rights,' and so forth, they expect that people will support this serious encroachment on the First Amendment simply because they support the availability of birth control. (The administration and its defenders are shamelessly politicizing the controversy by assailing 'Republicans' for their opposition, but not very successfully, given that many of their most outspoken Catholic critics are Democrats.)
I support the availability of birth control, should I need to make that clear. I used it for a while during my own marriage, and after we decided our family was complete, my ex-husband had a vasectomy, another procedure which is anathema to the Catholic Church. But I don't think my opinion about a matter is sufficient to determine the best policies government should follow, and I'm amazed at the number of people who apparently do. I am also dismayed that so many people's conception of what constitutes a 'right' has gotten so fuzzy. Our mothers used to caution us that life was not fair, but many people seem to believe it can be made so--indeed, that we have a 'right' that it should be so.
Is it 'fair' that women who work for a Catholic university or hospital have had to pay for their own birth control? Maybe not. But no one forced those women to accept employment there, as opposed to somewhere where the insurance provided it. If the answer to that is that those women needed a job and perhaps there were no other available jobs, well maybe that was true. But does that translate into them having a 'right' to employer-funded birth control? I guess if logic isn't your strong suit, maybe it does. But even if that were true, does their right to birth control trump the religious employer's right to follow the deeply held and long-standing tenets of the faith?
Don't get me wrong; I certainly understand the conviction that a woman's ability to plan her family shouldn't be a financial hardship or an impossibility for some women while it's available to others either through their insurance or because they have adequate means. But nothing is ever 'free.' Free means that the government provides or subsidizes it, which means taxpayers are paying, or in this case, if insurance companies provide it, 'free' means employers and/or people who pay premiums are covering it.
So the central question in this case is, does government have the power to force a religious institution to pay for something that violates a core, deeply held and longstanding pillar of its faith (and your opinion, or mine, on birth control, is not what counts here) or does the First Amendment protect them from that intrusion?
If it doesn't, then be prepared for future encroachments on religious liberty that you might not happen to agree with. But, by then, your opinion on the issue itself won't matter, if a precedent is set.
If you are scratching your head right now, so am I. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if a religious institution's insurance provider will be required to provide access, free of charge, to birth control methods and so-called 'morning after' pills, then the cost of these items will be passed on to the employer. They are going to be paying for it, no matter how you slice it, and it will be interesting to read the defenses of this 'adjustment' that will no doubt be forthcoming.
What's also been interesting (but not surprising given the administration's apparent unpreparedness for the backlash) is its attempt, aided by the dependable lackeys in the media, to characterize the whole controversy as being about contraception, women's health and women's rights, when it is not. There seems to be almost a deliberate strategy to exploit the sloppy and emotional thinking that contributes to forming opinions these days, to obscure the central fact: this is about government's power to impose its will wherever it wants. By railing about how people opposed to the new policy are mounting "an outrageous assault" as Planned Parenthood put it, on women's health, denying them their 'rights,' and so forth, they expect that people will support this serious encroachment on the First Amendment simply because they support the availability of birth control. (The administration and its defenders are shamelessly politicizing the controversy by assailing 'Republicans' for their opposition, but not very successfully, given that many of their most outspoken Catholic critics are Democrats.)
I support the availability of birth control, should I need to make that clear. I used it for a while during my own marriage, and after we decided our family was complete, my ex-husband had a vasectomy, another procedure which is anathema to the Catholic Church. But I don't think my opinion about a matter is sufficient to determine the best policies government should follow, and I'm amazed at the number of people who apparently do. I am also dismayed that so many people's conception of what constitutes a 'right' has gotten so fuzzy. Our mothers used to caution us that life was not fair, but many people seem to believe it can be made so--indeed, that we have a 'right' that it should be so.
Is it 'fair' that women who work for a Catholic university or hospital have had to pay for their own birth control? Maybe not. But no one forced those women to accept employment there, as opposed to somewhere where the insurance provided it. If the answer to that is that those women needed a job and perhaps there were no other available jobs, well maybe that was true. But does that translate into them having a 'right' to employer-funded birth control? I guess if logic isn't your strong suit, maybe it does. But even if that were true, does their right to birth control trump the religious employer's right to follow the deeply held and long-standing tenets of the faith?
Don't get me wrong; I certainly understand the conviction that a woman's ability to plan her family shouldn't be a financial hardship or an impossibility for some women while it's available to others either through their insurance or because they have adequate means. But nothing is ever 'free.' Free means that the government provides or subsidizes it, which means taxpayers are paying, or in this case, if insurance companies provide it, 'free' means employers and/or people who pay premiums are covering it.
So the central question in this case is, does government have the power to force a religious institution to pay for something that violates a core, deeply held and longstanding pillar of its faith (and your opinion, or mine, on birth control, is not what counts here) or does the First Amendment protect them from that intrusion?
If it doesn't, then be prepared for future encroachments on religious liberty that you might not happen to agree with. But, by then, your opinion on the issue itself won't matter, if a precedent is set.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Musings on the race for the Republican nomination
I looked back to see when I had written about Herman Cain, and saw that it was mid-October. I think that was shortly after the Florida straw poll when he surprised everyone by winning handily, and his candidacy was just beginning to catch fire. There's nothing but ash now, of course, and burned up in that conflagration was any chance of Cain being selected as another candidate's running mate--a place I thought from the beginning was ideal for him.
About a month after that, I got distracted from following up on Cain, by another story that caught my eye, but mentioned along with him my 'new man,' Newt Gingrich. Since then he has surged and faded, too, although he's not going quietly. (Maureen Dowd actually got a laugh out of me--she referred to him as 'a crazed Chuckie doll.)
Which leaves Mitt the last man standing, because Santorum is unlikely to maintain any momentum outside Iowa, Perry's last hope is South Carolina and he doesn't appear to be polling well there, and Huntsman's performance in New Hampshire notwithstanding, I can't see him getting enough traction in time, or ever engaging the more conservative wing of the party.
So that leaves very few Republicans, or interested Independents like myself, satisfied with what's on the menu. Conservatives can't stand him and threaten to stay home in November or cast a protest vote, establishment Republicans support him not out of any great enthusiasm but because he seems the only viable choice, and the Obama re-election team rejoices, because not only have they have been handed the perfect foil for their planned strategy of class warfare, but the other Republican hopefuls are providing lots of good video clips for attack ads against Romney.
Is what has so far been a raucous, surprise-filled run-up to the 2012 election going to turn into just a long, boring slog? If so, I might just have to check out the news once a week instead of daily, because it will all be the same--blah, blah, blah. There is an occasional flare sent up by one or another of the pundits about the possibility of a brokered convention, but one can't even imagine who could ride in on a white horse at the end of August, and go on to win. The Republican establishment would only be forced into that if they really came to believe disaffected conservatives would stay home in sufficient numbers that Romney didn't have a chance. And again, even if they considered it, who could turn out the vote in only two months? The only conceivable choice would be Palin, but that would be a huge gamble, in terms of losing the Independents/centrists Romney is presumed to have garnered. Not only that--and I never thought I would hear myself say this--I think Palin is going to be a force to be reckoned with in the future; she would be reluctant to jeopardize that with a probably futile attempt to unseat Obama this time.
The wild card, of course, is Paul. If he were to run on the Libertarian ticket, whose chances would he spoil? The usual answer would be a given--the Republican. Think Ross Perot. But Paul is wildly popular with a lot of young people, one of the Obama team's key demographics. If the messages coming out of OWS were any clue, their grasp on economics is tenuous, at best, but there's certainly a growing awareness that, as Obama rails against the likes of Mitt Romney, he's filled his administration with exactly those people. They are beginning to see (contrary to Michelle's pronouncement that the public is 'confused' about how much her husband has accomplished and needs to be educated to that end) that the emperor really doesn't have any clothes. Paul could hurt him a lot more than Romney.
However, it's widely held that Paul won't run as a third-party candidate because of the damage--fatal damage--it would do to the career of his senator son, Rand. No other Libertarian candidate could make so much as a dent in the outcome, so it would have to be Paul, and it's a crying shame that he is so 'out there' on certain things, because he is perhaps the only candidate who really seems to comprehend the seriousness of our financial future as a nation.
So, I think it's Romney and, to use the president's phrase, those of us who hope a Republican candidate will at least steer us away from the abyss instead of stepping on the gas will just have to 'eat our peas' and vote for him.
About a month after that, I got distracted from following up on Cain, by another story that caught my eye, but mentioned along with him my 'new man,' Newt Gingrich. Since then he has surged and faded, too, although he's not going quietly. (Maureen Dowd actually got a laugh out of me--she referred to him as 'a crazed Chuckie doll.)
Which leaves Mitt the last man standing, because Santorum is unlikely to maintain any momentum outside Iowa, Perry's last hope is South Carolina and he doesn't appear to be polling well there, and Huntsman's performance in New Hampshire notwithstanding, I can't see him getting enough traction in time, or ever engaging the more conservative wing of the party.
So that leaves very few Republicans, or interested Independents like myself, satisfied with what's on the menu. Conservatives can't stand him and threaten to stay home in November or cast a protest vote, establishment Republicans support him not out of any great enthusiasm but because he seems the only viable choice, and the Obama re-election team rejoices, because not only have they have been handed the perfect foil for their planned strategy of class warfare, but the other Republican hopefuls are providing lots of good video clips for attack ads against Romney.
Is what has so far been a raucous, surprise-filled run-up to the 2012 election going to turn into just a long, boring slog? If so, I might just have to check out the news once a week instead of daily, because it will all be the same--blah, blah, blah. There is an occasional flare sent up by one or another of the pundits about the possibility of a brokered convention, but one can't even imagine who could ride in on a white horse at the end of August, and go on to win. The Republican establishment would only be forced into that if they really came to believe disaffected conservatives would stay home in sufficient numbers that Romney didn't have a chance. And again, even if they considered it, who could turn out the vote in only two months? The only conceivable choice would be Palin, but that would be a huge gamble, in terms of losing the Independents/centrists Romney is presumed to have garnered. Not only that--and I never thought I would hear myself say this--I think Palin is going to be a force to be reckoned with in the future; she would be reluctant to jeopardize that with a probably futile attempt to unseat Obama this time.
The wild card, of course, is Paul. If he were to run on the Libertarian ticket, whose chances would he spoil? The usual answer would be a given--the Republican. Think Ross Perot. But Paul is wildly popular with a lot of young people, one of the Obama team's key demographics. If the messages coming out of OWS were any clue, their grasp on economics is tenuous, at best, but there's certainly a growing awareness that, as Obama rails against the likes of Mitt Romney, he's filled his administration with exactly those people. They are beginning to see (contrary to Michelle's pronouncement that the public is 'confused' about how much her husband has accomplished and needs to be educated to that end) that the emperor really doesn't have any clothes. Paul could hurt him a lot more than Romney.
However, it's widely held that Paul won't run as a third-party candidate because of the damage--fatal damage--it would do to the career of his senator son, Rand. No other Libertarian candidate could make so much as a dent in the outcome, so it would have to be Paul, and it's a crying shame that he is so 'out there' on certain things, because he is perhaps the only candidate who really seems to comprehend the seriousness of our financial future as a nation.
So, I think it's Romney and, to use the president's phrase, those of us who hope a Republican candidate will at least steer us away from the abyss instead of stepping on the gas will just have to 'eat our peas' and vote for him.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
The vote suppression fraud
One of the things we will hear about a lot in 2012 is the supposed push to ‘suppress’ the minority vote by requiring voters to show valid ID. Those whose sole sources of news are left-leaning outlets like MoveOn, Huffington Post, Daily Kos, MSNBC, and so forth, may already believe there is such a ‘conspiracy’ underway to return us to the days of Jim Crow. That such utter balderdash is being accepted as truth by some intelligent people, along with the credulous, demonstrates the frightening power of propaganda. (These outlets are scrambling to smear the reputation and motives of black Democrats like Artur Davis who are not toeing the party line and have stepped forward to assert that voter fraud does indeed exist and that voter ID laws should be enacted.)
Attorney General Eric Holder, who was unconcerned about members of the New Black Panthers standing at the entrance to a Philadelphia polling place in 2008, armed with billy clubs and telling several voters that they were “about to be ruled by the black man, cracker,” is using his office to block South Carolina’s recently enacted voter ID law, in part on the basis that voter ID requirements cause hardship to the poor, even though the law provides free identification to anyone who needs it. Mr. Holder is apparently unconcerned, as well, that the Supreme Court has already ruled that voter ID laws are constitutional.
It really makes you wonder how we’ve gotten to such a place—where the idea that providing proof that you are a citizen who has the right to vote is being represented by one of our political parties and their allies in the media as not merely a grossly unfair hardship, but evidence of racism and nefarious intent by the other party. It’s mind-boggling. One can’t help but wonder if those people secretly are fine with the idea of an unfair election, as long as it goes their way.
To be perfectly clear, I am not claiming that the securing of valid ID isn’t more of a challenge for people who are poor or otherwise on the margins of society. But the difficulties involved are being vastly overblown, along with the numbers of those affected. Those Democrats who are genuinely concerned about it—as opposed to those who are fanning the flames of irrational hysteria in order to defeat reasonable voter ID requirements—will be out there canvassing to find the people who need a ride, or who need assistance to obtain the ID. The election is nearly a year away—there’s plenty of time for legal citizens who need to acquire ID to do so, and for those who think this is a problem to be out there remedying it. If the NAACP, for instance, is so concerned, why aren’t they organizing to locate the people who need assistance and providing it, instead of lobbying the United Nations to condemn laws passed by U.S. state legislatures as human rights abuses? It beggars belief.
The people who are trying to demagogue this issue are deliberately creating the impression that the laws various states are enacting make the process difficult, on purpose, to deter people, and that is simply not true, something a little open-minded investigation would make evident. The SC law is a good example—an objection always cited is cost, so the ID is free. It should also be instructive that the RI voter ID law was passed with the support of black Democrat legislators. (Media response to that is to ignore it or, again, to smear them.)
If there’s one thing people of good will, whatever their politics, should be able to agree on, it’s that elections should be honest. Only living, legal voters should be able to cast a vote, and they should be able to cast only one vote. By all means, every effort should be made to ensure that those who qualify for proof of voter eligibility but don’t have it, can get it with the least amount of trouble and at no expense if they can’t afford it. But the claim that _any_ burden of proof of eligibility is unfair—never mind abuse—doesn’t pass either the common sense test, or the smell test.
Attorney General Eric Holder, who was unconcerned about members of the New Black Panthers standing at the entrance to a Philadelphia polling place in 2008, armed with billy clubs and telling several voters that they were “about to be ruled by the black man, cracker,” is using his office to block South Carolina’s recently enacted voter ID law, in part on the basis that voter ID requirements cause hardship to the poor, even though the law provides free identification to anyone who needs it. Mr. Holder is apparently unconcerned, as well, that the Supreme Court has already ruled that voter ID laws are constitutional.
It really makes you wonder how we’ve gotten to such a place—where the idea that providing proof that you are a citizen who has the right to vote is being represented by one of our political parties and their allies in the media as not merely a grossly unfair hardship, but evidence of racism and nefarious intent by the other party. It’s mind-boggling. One can’t help but wonder if those people secretly are fine with the idea of an unfair election, as long as it goes their way.
To be perfectly clear, I am not claiming that the securing of valid ID isn’t more of a challenge for people who are poor or otherwise on the margins of society. But the difficulties involved are being vastly overblown, along with the numbers of those affected. Those Democrats who are genuinely concerned about it—as opposed to those who are fanning the flames of irrational hysteria in order to defeat reasonable voter ID requirements—will be out there canvassing to find the people who need a ride, or who need assistance to obtain the ID. The election is nearly a year away—there’s plenty of time for legal citizens who need to acquire ID to do so, and for those who think this is a problem to be out there remedying it. If the NAACP, for instance, is so concerned, why aren’t they organizing to locate the people who need assistance and providing it, instead of lobbying the United Nations to condemn laws passed by U.S. state legislatures as human rights abuses? It beggars belief.
The people who are trying to demagogue this issue are deliberately creating the impression that the laws various states are enacting make the process difficult, on purpose, to deter people, and that is simply not true, something a little open-minded investigation would make evident. The SC law is a good example—an objection always cited is cost, so the ID is free. It should also be instructive that the RI voter ID law was passed with the support of black Democrat legislators. (Media response to that is to ignore it or, again, to smear them.)
If there’s one thing people of good will, whatever their politics, should be able to agree on, it’s that elections should be honest. Only living, legal voters should be able to cast a vote, and they should be able to cast only one vote. By all means, every effort should be made to ensure that those who qualify for proof of voter eligibility but don’t have it, can get it with the least amount of trouble and at no expense if they can’t afford it. But the claim that _any_ burden of proof of eligibility is unfair—never mind abuse—doesn’t pass either the common sense test, or the smell test.
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