This appears to be exactly the middle finger that the Bishops deserve:
On a conference call with reporters Friday, a senior administration official announced that the White House will move the onus to provide women free contraceptive services to insurance companies if their religiously-affiliated employers object to providing insurance coverage that covers birth control.
“All women will still have access to free preventive care that includes contraceptive services,” the official said. “The insurance company will be required to reach out directly and offer her contraceptive coverage free of charge,” if the employer objects to providing that coverage in its benefit package.
In other words, if you offer your employees a health benefit package, your female employees are going to get free contraceptive coverage regardless of whether or not you directly authorize it. It can be part of your benefits package, or not. The result will be the same.
Hopefully, this rule will be implemented immediately, obviating the need for a year-long grace period for religious institutions to implement the previous rule. Also, this will hopefully be applied even to the churches that were previously exempted. If so, all the Bishops got for their disingenuous hissy-fit is a lesson in STFU.
more than what they deserve
Obama and his campaign team are running circles around the Republican leadership. From helping to sow the Republican primary disarray to forcing the right into untenable positions for the general election, they are toying with them. They have a bunch of these issue bombs lined up and ready to go—they spring them in response to the latest primary results or after the latest Romney misspeak. This is yet another winner–although you’d never know it from the way the press is covering it. Virtually every woman in the country and all but a handful of frothy mix men can’t “conceive” of a world in which contraceptives aren’t readily available.
I’ve gotta say, this looks like genius. I’m often a screamer of ‘Obama caved again!’ but if this is a cave, I’m a spelunker. And I’m not a spelunker.
Between this and the Dems sticking with the Supercommittee-triggered defense cuts, I’m going to have to reassess some beliefs.
Recommended homework: go watch the 5 part Obama health care summit from Feb 2010. http://www.whitehouse.gov/health-care-meeting/bipartisan-meeting
amazing and funny
Oh well, I guess he didn’t make it apply to churches. Too bad. Then maybe these rants would make some sort of sense.
ot:* A Rasmussen tracking poll shows Obama up ten points over Mitt. That’s Rasmussen, folks.
I’ll say it again: if RAS has POTUS up by 10…
that means he’s up by 15
Not necessarily. According to Nate Silver (who started all this), the Rasmussen results were most obviously biased in the case of small state analysis and individual races.
I don’t know how much the national scene would be affected. Also to be considered, Ras got caught in the cookie jar. Maybe they’ve changed their methodology to avoid losing their customers?
In Jersy, anythings legal as long as you don’t get caught … but they got caught.
Yup. Punk’d countless progressives, too, who should apologize, but won’t.
How?
By using words like “compromise” and “accommodation,” he got them to send out their ritualistic yawps about “caving” and “surrender,” thus helping him look like Mr. Reasonable and his opponents like whack-a-loons.
And he did this without giving up a single inch of ground, just by using the right trigger words to make them do their trick.
Hey, if it’s by design, I’m happy to be punked. I get to scream and then good policy happens anyway! America!
I’m not seeing anyone calling this a caving and surrender. Not like I have with other topics. And how does using progressives and their worries about his capitulations to bring the Republicans to heel without actually giving anything up, give Progressive a black eye? That’s what they wanted.
I think this one is simply force of habit.
Right now Obama is reminding me of Greg Maddux. Unlike power pitchers like Randy Johnson, Maddux wanted the batter to hit the enticing pitch he dangled. Usually it became a double-player grounder to shortstop.
Oops, that’s supposed to be “double-play grounder”.
That’s a bad strategy even if you’re a good pitcher. Why?
Because it relies on the guys who are making the play. You need people who are good enough to turn the double. That’s THREE guys in addition to the pitcher. So that’s FOUR spots that MUST WORK or the thing fails. There are pitchers that can do that, and are good at it, but as we saw with the Twins, even if your pitchers are decent, if your fielders are shit-on-fire then you get blown apart.
Yes, that is why it is called a TEAM sport. You pretty much just described a good team.
.
Sure, but you don’t want to RELY on it. Statistically it’s a riskier way of pitching.
You are 100%. After all, you don’t want a double play combo of Ben Nelson and HolyJoe.
* shrug *
I would have preferred the church just be broken on this issue because the principle is important: you want to play the game, you have to not discriminate. Period. It also moves health insurance a step closer to being viewed as a right instead of a commodity. I would have also liked the spectacle of Republicans attacking women to have continued much much longer. By the election it could be forgotten.
But substantively it’s a good move.
I watched his statement and laughed and laughed. It’s when he acts like that when I know he can’t lose. Every woman of child bearing age, including republican women, went ‘f$&k ya!’.
The republicans seem to have forgotten, that when their wives and daughters go into the booth to vote, they GO ALONE. You try to mess with the pill, they will burn you.
nalbar
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."The easiest question a Catholic can ever be asked is, Whom do you trust more, the nuns or the bishops?
I hate the Bishops. that is all….