“Not Gonna Take It Anymore”: Hold This Between Your Knees, Rush Limbaugh
I thought I’d lost my capacity to be disgusted by Rush Limbaugh. He lives for that; why give him the satisfaction? But he crossed into new territory with his attacks on Sandra Fluke, who used to be a private citizen working toward a Georgetown University law degree, until the Catholic bishops meddled in American politics and in her personal life, and she decided to tell her story.
Fluke tried to testify on behalf of President Obama’s contraception coverage requirements at Rep. Darrell Issa’s Inquisition; excuse me, his hearing on the regulations, which featured an all-male panel to lead off. But she was denied permission, on the grounds that Issa was interested in threats to religious liberty, not women’s lives. That was bad enough. After the GOP congressman shut her down, she told her story to House Democrats as well as journalists. Limbaugh called her a “slut” and a “prostitute,” and promised to buy Fluke and Georgetown women “as much aspirin to put between their knees as they want. We are paying her for having sex. We are getting screwed. So Ms. Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here’s the deal: If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I’ll tell you what it is: We want you to post the videos online, so we can all watch.”
I’m not making this up. I’ve been attacked by Limbaugh before; it’s an honor for liberals. But his remarks about Fluke are unbelievable. Literally. I had to hear it twice to believe it’s what he said. (After I wrote this, President Obama called Fluke to commend her courage and tell her that her parents should be proud of her.)
Limbaugh’s behavior is just the far-right edge on a continuum of conservative misogyny that’s gone beyond trying to outlaw abortion, moved into the once-unimaginable realm of contraception, and mocks women in a way we haven’t heard since my childhood, I think. His “joke” is based on the remark by Rick Santorum’s moneyman Foster Freiss, on the same day as Issa’s “hearing,” recalling the days when gals didn’t need birth control because they put aspirin between their knees. But it’s not just for fun: The entire GOP presidential field has endorsed a “personhood” amendment that could outlaw most non-barrier forms of contraception. On Thursday, Sen. Roy Blunt’s shameful attempt to give employers the right to deny health insurance coverage for any treatment they didn’t approve of – targeting but not limited to contraception – was tabled in the Senate, but not before it got 48 votes, including every Republican except the departing Olympia Snowe, plus three cowardly Democrats, Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey.
I’m happy to say, though, that women – and the men who care about them – are fighting back as never before in my memory. We forced Susan G. Komen to rescind its decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood. Despite the frothing of conservatives, the Obama administration is still requiring insurers to provide cost-free contraception. The president’s courage on the issue is bringing women back into the Democratic fold, according to recent opinion polls – and has them running away from Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.
But we have to do more. I’m putting my energy into two causes in the coming months: a grass-roots effort to turn out the women’s vote called #usethe19th – you’ve seen a lot of it on Twitter today – and helping to promote Salon Core. Salon has led the way in covering news about women, by women, since our founding in 1995. We stand out in a world where men’s voices are still dominant – after the discouraging news this week that the nation’s best magazines still overwhelmingly feature men on their table of contents page, ThinkProgress produced a list of 10 women writers they should hire – and two of them, Tracy Clark-Flory and Irin Carmon, work for Salon (and several of the others freelance for us).
Over the years we’ve featured an unmatched array of smart women; Arianna Huffington, Tina Brown, Anne Lamott and Camille Paglia as leading columnists; on the culture side, Laura Miller and my former colleagues Heather Havrilesky and Stephanie Zacharek, some of the smartest writers anywhere; Rebecca Traister is one of the bravest, clearest writers on feminism and American politics that I know. And Mary Elizabeth Williams is one of my favorite writers on everything she writes about. I couldn’t have done the work I do with total freedom and support any place other than Salon.
The only good thing about this assault on women’s rights is that the women writers I know are becoming even more active than ever before. A whole lot of people have jumped into the #usethe19th fray – join us! We need to elect better leaders. We need to tell our stories. And we need to put our money where our mouths are – behind media outlets that tell those stories, as well as politicians who listen.
Over the years Salon has often turned to its readers for support, and this year we’re developing a new membership program to support our work – and support yours, too. I’ll be out on the road during this election season covering the candidates but also meeting Salon Core readers at a new roster of events we’re putting together for our members. When my book comes out in November, we’ll have a special offer for Core. We’ll be hosting members-only chats and other political convenings through November.
Republicans like to say this is the most important election year of their lifetimes. I agree. Make noise. Lobby. Campaign. Run for office. Raise money. Write. Vote. Join Salon Core – support those who support you. And piss off that angry old misogynist, Rush Limbaugh.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, March 2, 2012
“Sexist-Enabling Jackass”: Committee Chair Darrell Issa Blames Democrats For Rush Limbaugh’s “Slut” Attacks
When it comes to defending Rush Limbaugh and his attacks on a college student who had the audacity to testify at a hearing, thus earning multiple days of namecalling and sexual insults from Rush, the hits from Republicans just keep on coming. Via The Hill:
Democrats are largely to blame for the name-calling and personal insults of the contraception debate, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) charged Friday.
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has spent part of his last three shows referring to a Georgetown University law student as a “slut” with “boyfriends … lined up around the block.” But Issa said Democrats are also complicit in the deteriorating rhetoric, accusing them of insulting people of faith.Issa didn’t allow the student (or any ‘anti-mandate’ women) to testify during his hearing on how certain religious-minded menfolk were so very sad they couldn’t tell their employees to go to hell rather than give them the same contraceptive/medical coverage required of all other employers. The Democrats had to hold a separate hearing themselves to allow testimony from those women, which is exactly what led to Rush Limbaugh and his “slut” rampage against a college student who dared to attend.
Issa? Issa doesn’t give a rat’s ass. He apparently thinks it’s the Democrats’ fault.
“While your letter raises important concerns about these inappropriate comments and the tone of the current debate over religious freedom and Obamacare, I am struck by your clear failure to recognize your own contributions to the denigration of this discussion and attacks on people of religious faith,” Issa said in response to Cummings.
Hey, want a denigration of the discussion? Issa’s a crapsack. He always has been. It’s entirely likely he’s a crook, too, although he always seems to have a story for why these felonies that happen around him had nothing to do with him.
Once again, you can see that Republicans will tolerate any rhetoric from Limbaugh. No matter how racist, no matter how sexist (and really, calling someone a “slut”, asserting they have boyfriends “lining up” and suggesting they should be posting sex tapes—that’s beyond even Limbaugh’s usual daily venom, and it’s amazing to see even this not get more than the mildest of tsking reactions from Republican leadership), can anyone name any other so-called “political voice” that would be defended for such things? Oh yes yes, it’s “inappropriate”. But, Darrell Issa asks, is it really more appropriate than you calling those women to my hearing? Why, my religious folks might have had to make eye contact with them or something! How rude!
I can’t wait to hear what rhetoric Issa comes up with that he considers so very outrageous, compared to what Limbaugh said (or to the attacks Issa himself glories in, because they make, in his words, “good theater.”) I suspect he won’t even bother coming up with any, though. He’s probably too occupied planning how his Oversight Committee can most effectively keep from Overseeing a damn thing.
So now we’re to the point where someone who dares give non-conservative-approved testimony to the House of Representatives gets labeled a “slut” and gets told they should be posting sex tapes. That’s where we are. And it’s still doesn’t count as bad enough for Republicans to distance themselves from it.
As for Limbaugh, anyone that advertises with him, or interviews him, or identifies themselves with him in any way knows full well what he stands for and what he says on a daily basis. If they’re still willing to chain themselves to that cannonball even after this, they own it. Sign the petition and let’s rid ourselves of these stupid “oh, we don’t control what he says” advertisers. No, you don’t control it. You just keep paying him a mountain of cash to do it, you sexist-enabling, racist-enabling jackasses.
By: Hunter, Daily Kos Staff, Daily Kos, March 2, 2012
“Lessons Of A Severe Conservative”: Mitt Romney Urged President Obama To Propose Individual Mandate
Andrew Kaczynski digs up a remarkable July 2009 op-edfrom Mitt Romney in which Romney not only brags about the effectiveness of the individual mandate in Massachusetts, but urges President Obama to support it at the federal level:
Because of President Obama’s frantic approach, health care has run off the rails. For the sake of 47 million uninsured Americans, we need to get it back on track.Health care cannot be handled the same way as the stimulus and cap-and-trade bills. With those, the president stuck to the old style of lawmaking: He threw in every special favor imaginable, ground it up and crammed it through a partisan Democratic Congress. Health care is simply too important to the economy, to employment and to America’s families to be larded up and rushed through on an artificial deadline. There’s a better way. And the lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find it.
And what were those lessons?
First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages “free riders” to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others.
That, my friends, is the individual mandate. And Mitt was proud of it:
The Massachusetts reform aimed at getting virtually all our citizens insured. In that, it worked: 98% of our citizens are insured, 440,000 previously uninsured are covered and almost half of those purchased insurance on their own, with no subsidy.
And if President Obama had been willing to move forward without the public option (which he was), then Mitt Romney said he was ready to move forward with a national plan:
Republicans will join with the Democrats if the president abandons his government insurance plan, if he endeavors to craft a plan that does not burden the nation with greater debt, if he broadens his scope to reduce health costs for all Americans, and if he is willing to devote the rigorous effort, requisite time and bipartisan process that health care reform deserves.
And, as Mitt Romney made clear at the top of his op-ed, the plan he supported was one built around what he said worked in Massachusetts—including the individual mandate.
Yet despite his clear embrace of the individual mandate as part of federal health care reform, Mitt Romney has faced such a weak set of rival candidates that not a single one of them has brought this up in the twenty Republican debates.
But as fortunate as Mitt Romney has been to face such a staggeringly incompetent Republican field, he won’t be so lucky next fall. And you can bet your bottom dollar that the very first time he tries to attack President Obama over health care reform in the debates, he’s going to get this thrown right back in his face. And he’ s not going to like how it turns out.
By: Jed Lewison, Daily Kos, March 2, 2012
“Common Sense Policy”: How Access To Contraception Benefits The Economy
Rush Limbaugh has been on a several day long sexist tirade against Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke, who testified before Congress on the Obama administration’s proposed rule requiring employers to provide contraception coverage in their health plans. Limbaugh’s misogynistic attacks have earned him the condemnation of 75 Democratic lawmakers and lost him the support of at least four advertisers.
Conservatives have tried to frame the debate over the contraception rule as one of religious freedom, while progressives have countered that it’s simply about women’s health. However, as New Deal 2.0′s Bryce Covert noted, providing access to contraception is also simply good economic policy:
Research consistently demonstrates a link between decreased fertility thanks to contraception and increased female employment. And right on cue, women, freed up from unwanted child bearing and child rearing, consequently flooded the workforce after the pill became widely accessible. In 1950, 18 million women were in the workforce. By the 1980s, the pill’s impact had had such an effect that 60 percent of women of reproductive age were employed. By 2000, the ranks of women in the workforce had more than tripled since the ’50s, rising to 66 million. Overall, from 1970 to 2009 women went from holding 37 percent of all jobs to almost half of them.
This change has had a significant impact on women’s lives and families, the fallout of which is still reverberating throughout the culture wars. But the impact on our economy is easy to quantify. The private sector has long recognized this fact: consulting giant McKinsey explains that without the huge increase in women’s workforce participation since the 1970s, “our economy would be 25% smaller today — an amount equal to the combined GDP of Illinois, California and New York.”
According to the Economist, since the 1970′s, “back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the employment of extra women has not only added more to GDP than new jobs for men but has also chipped in more than either capital investment or increased productivity.”
And then, of course, there are the health care savings that come with contraception. Nationally, every dollar spent on family planning saves $3 in Medicaid costs. According to the Guttmacher Institute, “every $1 spent on public funding for family planning saves taxpayers $3.74 in pregnancy-related costs.” When California spent $400 million on family planning services in 2002, “$1.1 billion was saved in public funds that would have been spent on medical care, income support, and social services through averting pregnancies up to age two, and $2.2 billion up to age five.”
By: Pat Garofalo, Think Progress, March 2, 2012
There’s More To Women’s Health Than Contraception
If you have been listening to the contraception debate in Washington (sort of hard to avoid, isn’t it?), you may be under the impression that preventive health for women equals contraception. Or contraception equals women’s preventive health. (We’re putting aside, for the purpose of this post, the debate about religion, conscience and the role of government).
The Senate has defeated one bid to overturn the administration rule requiring employers to provide an insurance plan with first-dollar coverage of birth control, and it’s not clear what the House will do. But the issue is likely to percolate in Washington, state legislatures and the courts for some time to come.
The health reform law, and the regulations being developed to implement it, has a far more expansive definition of prevention and what it means for women’s health. Here are more details on the new regulations and a tutorial from Kaiser.edu. According to the new women’s preventive health rule, new health plans must cover, without cost-sharing, a lot more than the pill:
- well-woman visits;
- screening for gestational diabetes;
- human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA testing for women 30 years and older;
- sexually-transmitted infection counseling;
- human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) screening and counseling;
- FDA-approved contraception methods and contraceptive counseling;
- breastfeeding support, supplies, and counseling; and
- domestic violence screening and counseling.
These requirements will go into effect in August (with another year allowed to finalize how the religious exemptions will work). Grandfathered plans won’t have to follow the new rule, while they maintain their “grandfather” status. Over time, many health plans will go through changes that will mean that they will no longer be “grandfathered.” Then they too will have to follow the new regulations.
Of course, more women will get these benefits, simply because more women will be insured. Approximately one in five women of reproductive age is currently uninsured. Most of them will get coverage, including preventive services, starting in 2014 whether through Medicaid, through subsidized coverage in the exchanges or by buying coverage. Right now, coverage of maternity benefits is spotty on the individual insurance market, but the plans in the health exchanges will cover it.
The law also requires many other preventive services – some free – for men, women and children. They have not gotten much attention in the polarized birth control debate.
The conversation (and press coverage) about the contraceptive rules have included lots of misinformation about abortion. Politicians who misstate policy don’t help, but reporters need to know what the law does and does not do.
The health law does not mandate abortion coverage and this preventive health rule does not change that. In fact, states under health reform have the explicit ability to limit abortion coverage in policies sold in state exchanges and several have already taken action to do precisely that. Plans that do cover abortion in the exchange will have to wall that off in a way to keep it apart from the federal subsidies.
A few more stray but relevant facts:
According to the Kaiser.edu materials, about two-thirds of women aged 15 to 44 use contraception – and do so for about 30 years.
Most employer-based insurance plans do cover contraception, though there are often co-pays. Among large employers, more than 80 percent cover contraception.
Federal Medicaid dollars do not cover abortion under the Hyde Amendment (except for rape, incest or when the life of the mother is in danger) – although some states use their own money to cover abortion in some circumstances. But Medicaid does cover contraception. In fact, Medicaid pays for more than 70 percent of publicly financed family planning services.
And Title X funds family planning clinics (created in 1970 under the Nixon presidency). According to HHS, about 5 million women and men get family planning services through more than 4,500 community-based clinics. Someone with religious objections to providing contraceptives for employees is indirectly paying for Medicaid birth control coverage – and indirectly for the tax subsidies of employer-sponsored insurance – just as we all pay taxes that fund some things we agree with and some we don’t.
By: Joanne Kenen, Association of Health Care Journalists, March 1, 2012
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