Obama’s Birth Control Mandate: the Center of the Universe

Every time another Bible-humping inbred makes the headlines yelling about fetuses and stem cells being sacred, the “experts” tell us that elections aren’t decided by social/culture-war issues.  Republicans can flame all they want with their personhood amendments and attempts to outlaw birth control — let alone abortion — and supposedly they won’t lose any votes.

But as soon as President Obama requires employers to include coverage for contraception as part of their insurance plans — BOOM!!!  This contraception mandate is the center of the universe.  For both sides.

“Don’t you DARE require religious institutions to pay for birth control!”

“Don’t you DARE reverse your decision and start caving in to Catholics!”

WTF???  Didn’t we have, uhh, something about a debt crisis?  A high unemployment rate?  Where’d they go?

It’s true that millions of Catholics are Democrats, and Obama can’t afford to alienate them.  Would they actually vote Republican over this contraception mandate?

Would millions of liberals and feminists stay home on Election Day if Obama eases up on this mandate?

What say you?

Thoughts on the 2011 Election Results

Mostly it was encouraging.  Ohio voters kidney-punched Governor John Kasich, trouncing his Koch-ordered union-crippling law in a statewide referendum.  The 99 percenters have got some momentum now.  Next stop — Wisconsin.  And Michigan, Florida..

And you’ve gotta love John Kasich’s concession speech after his signature law got repealed:

“It's clear that the people have spoken. My view is when people speak in a campaign like this, in a referendum, you have to listen.  I've heard their voices. I understand their decision. And frankly I respect what people have to say in an effort like this. As a result of that, it requires me to take a deep breath and spend some time reflecting on what happened.”

Gee, ya think?  How magnanimous of the pompous little prick.

Maine voters showed they can’t be purchased by a jillion-dollar anonymous bribe.  Maine’s legislature and teajob governor passed a voter-restriction law — basically eliminating a decades-long tradition of allowing voters to register on Election Day.  Voters put a referendum on the ballot to overturn the voter-restriction law.  Just a few days before the election, an anonymous conservative donor contributed $250,000 to the rightwing campaign to keep the disenfranchise-the-voters law in place.  Didn’t work.  Once again, Maine residents can register to vote on Election Day.

Arizona voters have recalled state Senator Russell Pearce (R—Ku Klux Klan), the architect of Arizona’s infamous “he looks swarthy, let’s stop and frisk him” law.

And thank you Jesus, Mississippi voters trounced the state’s “personhood” amendment.  This was an attempt to define life as beginning at fertilization.  This would ban all abortions — no exceptions! — and some forms of contraception as well.  Even though this abortional idea (pun intended) got squelched by the voters, the Salem Witch-hunters who are promoting it might keep putting this question on other state ballots.  This could be the “gay marriage” of the 2012 election — a scheme for getting every snake-handling fetus-humping Biblewipe to crawl out from under their rock and into the voting booth.

On the downside, Mississippi voters did approve a law requiring all voters to present a government-issued I.D. in order to vote.  (I thought conservatives didn’t trust them government bureaucrats.)  And in Washington State, Costco has discovered that if you keep doing the same thing over and over, you CAN get a different result.  (More on that in a later post.)