I was thinking about Donald Trump yesterday afternoon at the Mall. I was shopping for a bag, and visited several stores. Although I was right in front of the entrance, I decided not to go into Macy’s specifically because of their connection with Donald Trump. I don’t want to encourage a business relationship involving Trump because I think that any thing that makes Trump more visible is bad for the Country.
Time Magazine reported last week that Trump has taken another step to endear himself with the nut jobs, and alienate himself from folks like me (the intelligent and virtuous sort). The Attorney General of New York is suing Trump to recover $40 million in damages for alleged fraud, connected to “Trump University.” AG Schneiderman claims Trump U. collected tuition, but never delivered the lessons they promised.
Those allegations are either true or not. What makes this a nut job issue is that Trump said that Obama ordered Schneiderman to bring the suit presumably in retaliation for Trump’s investigation of the the President’s birth certificate.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Trump’s real claim to fame writing a book about how he failed miserably in Real Estate?
I think Donald Trump or Sarah Palin would probably make great Presidents. They both have common sense and don’t have the “affectations” that are sooo beloved by the Main Stream Press. College educated commentators have a bias in favor of people who act like them, are educated like them, and have that certain “attitude” of noblesse oblige. Which is the phrase that comes to mind, but is not really the one I am looking for.
For example, Obama was a Harvard graduate, and he mouthed all the proper things, so that, even if he didn’t have the black thing working for him, the press would have been in his camp. Yet, looking back, the guy had ZERO qualifications for the job. He never had a real job that lasted more than a few years, and hadn’t a bit of executive experience.
But, I am in the minority on this, because I am also somebody who thinks your average plumber or auto mechanic is a smarter and more grounded in Reality than your average college educated person. Plumbers and mechanics must actually do real work that holds up or somebody is in their face about it. Teachers and educators and talking heads, on the other hand, can screw up for decades without anybody catching on to them.
Because, in my opinion, too much of education focuses on the appearance of intelligence, as opposed to actual intelligence.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
As a college-educated person who worked very hard building a company at considerable risk, I find your generalizations offensive.
Do you really believe that Donald Trump is without affectations? Are you unaware that he is the son of a millionaire or that he attended one of the most exclusive colleges in the nation (University of Pennsylvania) and graduated with a B.S. from one of the most prestigious business programs (Wharton)? As far as Sarah Palin having common sense, so does a horse–but I wouldn’t vote for one.
As a teacher, I also find her sophomoric generalizations offensive.
Really, Squeeky, you’re starting to sound like your old self, you know the one from 2009 when you were defending Orly Taitz on the OC Weekly website?
So I guess Squeeky would prefer to send Joe the Plumber over to the G20 conference ? Maybe sit down with Putin to discuss nuclear arms reductions ?
Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter:
But, I am in the minority on this, because I am also somebody who thinks your average plumber or auto mechanic is a smarter and more grounded in Reality than your average college educated person. Plumbers and mechanics must actually do real work that holds up or somebody is in their face about it. Teachers and educators and talking heads, on the other hand, can screw up for decades without anybody catching on to them.
Dr. C:
Well, if you worked hard to build a company, then I guess that you have some experience with real life and doing real work. The same as Trump and Palin, who both have college degrees. Do you think the same applies to say, Sandra Fluke? Or most commentators on MSNBC? How about some of the clowns who went straight from college to a career in community organizing? Or, a job in government, and not at the DMV level where people really have to work. Or, straight from college to a career in teaching? Where they get a paycheck every week, and their failures show up in remedial college classes.
I would assume that if you started your own company, there were times when you didn’t get a regular paycheck, and times when you had to make choices. My GUESS is that you learned a whole lot more about life and how things really work in your business, than you did in college.
Sooo, if I am right, I am not seeing why you are offended.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
The common sense of Sarah Palin got her eloping with the Toddster and having Track in that oft-reported miracle of biology: having your first baby full-term in only seven months.
The clear common sense lesson from this for her was that “abstinence-only” sex education works, which she used her common sense to apply to rearing her own children, and (so far) the oldest two have both had their first children out of wedlock. So, kudos for common sense, Sarah!
Common-Sense Sarah also sticks in my mind as again applying her own life experience — because that’s what common sense is! — to her choice for her first major policy speech as a vice-presidential candidate: special-needs children. (That part actually makes sense, by the way.) Where, with common sense and humility, she chose to mock them non-commonsensical scientists, because hey, she’s just a common sense gal and she knows that spending money on fruit fly research is ridick, you betcha!
The common sense of Sarah is exemplified yet again by her choices with her own special needs child, Prop, whom she only put in serious danger with the so-called “Wild Ride”, which really should have been named the “Common Sense Ride.”
And we’ve just barely scratched the surface of her record of common sense. For a real trip down the rabbit hole of Sarah’s common sense, grab some popcorn and a video of her Common Sensical Quittin’ speech from 2009.
I’d like to think you’re being sardonic here, but seeing how you’ve chosen as your screen name a member of the Manson murder clan, I don’t think you are.
Ms. Fromm, to put it generously, is from the “Mr. Smith goes to Washington” school of thought, the idea that one can simply elect a good person and that he can go to Washington and know exactly what to make this country right. This is, of course, total hogwash.
We ought to be looking for Presidents with the resume of George Bush (the first) and not for folks like Obama, Palin or Trump who lack institutional knowledge and experience.
I learned important lessons in many different aspects of my life. I don’t think that my work experience was any more valuable than college (except that I worked longer than I was in college). Indeed, excessive dedication to work was one of my life mistakes, and pushing aside the liberal arts made me a poorer person.
I realize that there are cushy jobs and people who are too important to fail; however, those are the outliers and not the rule.
John Reilly:
George Bush the first, led a privileged life, but he also spent the first part of that life as a pilot in WWII, getting shot at and sunk and everything else. And, seeing the same happen to his friends. He was not insulated from reality. IMHO, far too many people are of the opinion that a college degree makes them smart. Certain degrees probably do, like medicine and engineering, within their fields.
IMHO, we are beset by too many Prufrocks and too many Sweeneys, and not enough of a happy medium. And, the Prufrocks are worse.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
One part of me agrees with you, but another doesn’t. If you’re just considering resume, Obama was probably better qualified than Abraham Lincoln.
A President can hire the “best people” for the purpose of running a bureaucracy, and formulating policy. However, without a moral compass–no matter how qualified–we get Richard Nixon. If we have a good resume, a moral compass, but poor leadership skills, we get Gerald Ford.
What I look for in a President is two things, trustworthiness and motivational skills. The rest can be outsourced.
I’m no expert on American Presidents, but from what I do know, I don’t see a strong correlation between resume and effectiveness in office.
In my opinion, this is much better training to be POTUS than running a business. Being president is not about making decisions and giving orders—it is about designing policy and getting it enacted by Congress. In other words, it’s about organizing a spectacularly dysfunctional community. Not something that a business executive has any experience dealing with (nor should they). As someone who is in the process of starting a business and has been educating themselves on how to do so (since all I had is that “useless” knowledge I gained in 14 years of undergraduate and graduate education), I can unequivocally say that the skills that I am working hard to learn are not the skills necessary to be a successful president.
The objective fact is that Republican “common sense” or “business sense” has been horrible for our country over the last four decades, not to mention that Democratic rule was been better for business (small business in particular) throughout the 20th century. It cannot be denied that, since Jimmy Carter took office, the budget deficit has increased by over $1.7 Trillion under budgets written during Republican administrations and, if projections for the next four years are accurate, it will have decreased almost $1.3 Trillion under Democratic budgets. Any way you slice it, electing Republican presidents is BAD business. Don’t worry, I’m sure if we just get 8 more years of President Clinton we’ll have a budget surplus again…
Does this mean you think Palin’s 18 months as Governor of Alaska during which she was frequently seen leaving her office at 2 P.M. on a daily basis qualifies her for the Presidency? The woman needed to attend five different colleges before she
allegedly obtained her degree. I said “allegedly” because I do know of someone who called the University of Idaho and asked about Sarah Heath’s degree, requesting verification of the same, yet they were told that they had no record of a Sarah Heath having graduated. They also asked if it could be under her married name and they were told it would only be listed under her married name if she was using that at the time she graduated. (she wasn’t married at the time she claims she graduated) However, when the name Palin came up they said they couldn’t give out any further info.
Palin is the same person who tried to demean President Obama’s education, saying only “elitists” went to Harvard, yet recently claimed Ted Cruz’s background and education gave him the necessary credentials to run for President. That’s Palin, your typical RWNJ whose hypocrisy is never-ending.
When Palin ran for Mayor of Wasilla, she was asked about her lack of experience in running any type of organization. Her claim that it was only $6M and 50+ employees came back to bite her in the ass when she found that she couldn’t handle the day to day duties of the Mayor and for the first time in Wasilla’s history, hired a city manager for $52K/yr. She also had the nerve to brag about how she didn’t accept a raise in salary that was voted on by city council. The raise was only $3k but she didn’t mind spending an additional $49k for a city mgr. along with redecorating the Mayor’s office for $50k and leasing an SUV for herself at taxpayer’s expense. These type of expenditures had previously been voted on by council, although no Mayor had ever claimed they needed a vehicle at taxpayer’s expense or redecorated the office so lavishly. Palin’s response, “I’ll do what I want until the court tells me I can’t”. Her Mayoral experience was in name only. She absolutely had no clue as to what she was doing when she became Governor. Her emails show a petty, vindictive woman who spent more time on her Blackberrys’ during meeting with legislators than paying attention to anything that was going on around her. When in June 2009 the federal government stepped in for the first time ever to take over the state offices that oversaw spending for the needy, sick and homeless in Alaska due to over 250 people dying while waiting for treatment, Palin said nothing. Although as Governor she never got around to appointing the necessary people to run the offices. She quit several days later.
To pretend that President Obama never had a job or experience is a joke. He accomplished plenty with a very meager budget for the people in Chicago. He had a job with the same law firm before he ran for the State Senate and also taught at the University of Chicago for several years. Palin, on the other hand, never ran anything on her own. Her colleagues revealed plenty about Alaska and what didn’t get done while she was Governor. Do you think people were walking around with pins that said, “Where’s Sarah?” PRIOR to the campaign because she was doing such a good job? Her security detail spoke about how she left the office everyday at 2 P.M., going shopping at the nearby mall. They also had no problem speaking out and didn’t do it anonymously.
Donald Trump and Sarah Palin are both attention whores and willingly sell themselves to the highest bidder. To consider them as legitimate candidates for the Presidency would make us the butt of jokes around the world.
Donald Trump is a walking, talking affectation….nothing more.
I can only judge Sarah Palin by what I have seen and what I hear from friends who live in Palmer, Alaska. What I see with my own eyes is someone who just doesn’t appear to be very bright and according to my friends who have known her for years she’s well……as they succinctly put it….an idiot.
Both of them have played the American public, and conservatives in particular, for fools.
That you find them acceptable to lead our country says more about you than it does about them.
Oh well, so much for sweetness and light. You unicorns, back in to the trailer.
Dr.C:
Well, I wrote a very cool poem the other day which may call back the unicorns. If it doesn’t just move it to the open thread:
An UR-Rational Number
by Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter
“Your actions are not rational!”
The Libertarian said.
“You’re demanding all my money.
With a gun held to my head.”
“But your epistemology
Is filled with contradiction.
And Tort-wise, have you heard the phrase,
“Intentional infliction???”
“Let’s look at this objectively,
For I’m certain you’ll agree.
Initiating the use of force
Makes no sense rationally.”
The Robber thought for just a bit,
Then he made a brief reply,
“My pistol-mology says this,
“You can cough it up or die!”
“I hope that you are rational.
I did not come here to kill.
The Bible says to kill’s a sin.
I don’t want to, but I will!”
The Libertarian just sighed,
And said in tone, ironic,
“Dude, there is no Higher Power,”
To think so is moronic!”
“Really, your belief in a God,
And Commandments carved in stone,
Just proves you are illogical,
And can not think on your own!”
The Robber thought for just a skosh,
Then. . . BANG BANG his pistol went.
There lay the Libertarian.
But. . . he won the argument!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
two linked conceits among anti-intellectuals is the denigration of expertise and elevation of “common sense”. they demand authority and respect for their opinions, especially the ones they hold dear, but it frustrates them to no end to find themselves on the wrong side of a passionate debate with an expert. while no expert is an expert in all things, honest folk recognize that one is afforded authority in the specific areas for which one is trained and employed. in his field the expert gets the benefit of the doubt. yet for the anti-intellectual, any lack of expertise on any subject allows him to transmute his ignorance and malformed opinions into the more noble-sounding “common sense” and thereby win the class struggle if not the debate.
Very eloquently put, sir.
Well, I think Donald Trump is suffering from the early signs of dementia. He clearly has lost his capacity for reason.
His friend Barbara Walters said it best: “Donald, you and I have known each other for many years and you know that I am your friend and I think you are a brilliant businessman and you are great on television and you have a fascinating personality.
Donald, you’re making a fool of yourself. You’re not hurting Obama, you’re hurting Donald and that hurts me because you’re a decent man. Stop it. Get off it, Donald.”
Sarah Palin doesn’t have an ounce of common sense and Donald Trump is an idiot birther and an attention whore.
…and what is “the black thing?” Oh well……the old birther/bigot squeeky is back.
Is this what they call a “tell”? I’m trying to figure out what Sandra Fluke, who has not, to my knowledge, ever run for public office, is doing in this conversation. She is highly educated, spoke eloquently on the need for sanity in the discussion of contraception, and was consequently demonized by the professional demagogues of the right.
She does seems to be an example of someone who is both educated and in possession of common sense. What’s your beef with her?
You know, the thing that got President Jesse Jackson and President Sharpton elected.
I have worked in the government sector and the private sector and volunteered in the non-profit sector and have some notion of how they each work. They each work differently. The private sector requires the least finesse.
justlw:
It is not so much that I have a “beef” with her. It is more that I have “nothing” with her. What’s her life experience that I should pay any attention to her, period? Why should I listen or agree, that I should pay for her condoms, or her abortion. (Should we also pay for her a membership in eharmony???) Just more typical feel good warm and fuzzy blathering about stuff she doesn’t really know anything about. Perhaps, in 10 or 15 years if/when she has been kicked around by life a little, maybe has a kid or two, and has had to get up and go to a real job for a prolonged period of time, maybe she will have a voice worth listening to. I truly hope so.
For the time being, she is just a cardboard female figure put out in front of a crowd by people who need a cardboard female figure to say the things they want her to say for their own purposes. She is Miley Cyrus, bumping and grinding, to a different beat, in nicer clothes.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Indeed. Squeeky is aligning herself with the likes of Rush Limbaugh and the conservative version of slut-shaming. By the way, this is the same Squeeky who first gained notoriety back in the fall of 2009 by defending Orly Taitz against “man beasts” who she claimed were unfairly criticizing the dentist/lawyer on sexist grounds.
You hide behind a cartoon avatar and a made up name, and then scorn the accomplishments of others. What have you accomplished?
Well it looks like squeeky has descended back into the madness from whence she came. Sandra Fluke wasnt asking for people to pay for her abortions or condoms. She was asking for equal access under the law. Birth control for a lot of women is a neccessity. She relayed a story of a friend who had ovarian cysts and birth control helped regulate it. Students at the school paid for medical insurance but then didnt get the medical neccessities they paid for. It shows how little you actually paid attention to the story squeeks
C’mon people. We don’t need infighting here. Save the grumpies for when John rears his head again.
What Dr. N said. Very disappointing to see you opining on this based on what is clearly zero knowledge of what the issue was or what she actually said.
Our experiences are similar and I agree completely.
The only thing I have to say about Squeeky, after wading through this thread, is that all she seems to be capable of is strawman-fuelled anti-intellectualism. In short, she is yet another juvenile, resentful bloviator, living proof that empty vessels do indeed make the most noise.
The next time Squeeky needs surgery, let’s send her to a plumber.
No you don’t.
You have distorted and misrepresented what she said while claiming she means “nothing” to you.
As it regards a “voice worth listening to”: She’s a cum laude graduate of Georgetown law who stood up on her own in front of the nation to give voice to what she believes. You, on the other hand, are a bitter, anonymous internet troll.
You don’t need an advanced degree to figure out which of you is worth listening to.
Must…resist Doctor Mario…reference…
I suppose Squeeky doesn’t consider any of the following to be “work.”
“Sandra Fluke co-founded the New York Statewide Coalition for Fair Access to Family Court, which successfully advocated for legislation granting access to civil orders of protection for unmarried victims of domestic violence. Fluke was also a member of the Manhattan Borough President’s Taskforce on Domestic Violence and numerous other New York City and New York State coalitions that successfully advocated for policy improvements impacting victims of domestic violence. While in New York City, she worked for Sanctuary for Families, which aids victims of domestic violence and human trafficking.
In 2011, Fluke was a recipient of the Women Lawyers of Los Angeles’ Fran Kandel Public Interest Grant from Georgetown University Law Center, which supported her production of a video on how to take out a restraining order. She also “represented numerous victims of domestic violence and human trafficking” and worked to help child victims of domestic human trafficking in Kenya. She served as president of the Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice student organization, and graduated cum laude in 2012. She passed the California Bar in July 2012.”
America has a rich and pathetic tradition of anti-intellectualism that seems to be back in full bloom.
I disagree that Obama had ZERO qualifications. He was a lawyer, had been an Illinois State Senator for 7+ years and was a first term US Senator. Not a former governor of a large state, but hardly zero. Remember, in 2008, he ran against McCain, a long time US Senator, but he had no executive experience either.
It’s disappointing that you didn’t really listen to her message. It had nothing to do with contraception or condom or abortions. It was about the refusal of the University’s health plan to dispense oral contraceptives – hormones – for medical reasons such as ovarian cysts and endometriosis, a condition in which uterine-lining tissue grows in other pelvic areas, leading to scarring, severe pain, and sometimes infertility.
Thankfully, we have highly educated medical doctors and nurse practitioners who treat such conditions. Thankfully, we have highly-educated biochemical scientists who work for pharmaceutical companies to develop treatments. Thankfully, we have college-educated pharmacists who dispense the medicines that restore our health.
And thankfully we have educated people willing to advocate for health.
I am sad to see Squeeky’s posts in this thread. She clearly has no idea what happened in the Sandra Fluke hearing, why Fluke was called to testify or what Fluke actually said.
Squeeky, you are showing a Sean Hannity level of knowledge, which is about as shallow as it gets. I thought you were capable of more.
Ignorance and lack of education are a bad thing. They don’t become better things by labelling them “common sense.”
Isaac Asimov said it best: “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”
Well, everybody is kind of proving what I said early on, to wit:
“College educated commentators have a bias in favor of people who act like them, are educated like them, and have that certain “attitude” of noblesse oblige. [ ]
For example, Obama was a Harvard graduate, and he mouthed all the proper things, so that, even if he didn’t have the black thing working for him, the press would have been in his camp.”
Sooo, the wonderful Sandra Fluke, has (1)has been to a proper college, Cornell and Georgetown. (2) mouthed all the proper things like fuzzy warm “the school health plan (somebody else) should pay for sex change hormones! and condoms! and abortions! and teddy bears!”
Meanwhile, old troglodyte Sarah Palin got married, had babies, and learned how to hunt and knock salmon in the head for food to get by; got through college however she had to; became a mayor; became the governor of a state; and she isn’t worth the time of day unless somebody needs a target to throw stones at.
Wow, and I’m the anti-intellectual.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
That was part of the theme of a program on SC Educational Radio today, with Rev. Beth Templeton talking about poverty, and how there is a shared experience of what is right and what one ought to do among most folks that comes from their social and ethnic background, experience and some other things. Her point was that people in poverty don’t share that background and don’t look at things the same way. BTW, I thought it was interesting segment, and the archive is online. It runs about 17 minutes. I think I met Templeton a couple of years ago when I attended a break-out session on poverty in Greenville, SC. She does a really good job helping people to get over some of their prejudices about poverty. One gets a hint of that on the program.
Still, Sandra Fluke did not in any way that I can see deserve criticism or to be held up as a model of what is wrong with anybody, and nobody deserves to be slandered and lied about and called a slut. That’s human decency, not elitism.
Fluke wasn’t advocating for sex change hormones or for teddy bears. She was arguing that school insurance plans should cover contraception. I personally think making contraception readily available to college students reduces unwanted pregnancies, which is a social good. It doesn’t matter how much or little education that someone with that position has. For 6 years I worked in public health where we provided free contraception services to the working poor and to those on public assistance–many of whom hadn’t finished high school. I think that was a social good too. It has nothing to do with education or elitism.
The problem with Palin is not her education, but that she was a lousy mayor, and a lousy governor.
No….the only thing we’re seeing proof of is never ending ignorance.
You rushed to judgment about Sandra Fluke and now you’re doing the same about people on this blog.
You have no idea where, or even if, any of us involved in this thread went to college, do you?
Well, you’re the one going with the alternative view of history, that’s for sure. I guess that’s kinda anti-intellectual?
Can you point out where Sandra Fluke was saying anything about sex change hormones? Or asking that “somebody else” should pay for anything?
Saying that the school health plan is paid for by “somebody else” is like saying “somebody else” is paying the professors’ salaries, so maybe we shouldn’t have professors at schools, either.
The “wounded victimhood” radiation meter is swinging squarely into the “Charo” zone at this point.
Squeeky,
Please look up a transcript of Sandra Fluke’s testimony. She did not advocate anyone else paying for contraception, etc. She was advocating that the health plan students paid for, UNSIBSIDIZED by the school, should cover contraception, especially if medically necessary.
Dr. C:
Actually, she probably was in favor of sex change hormones if this article is correct:
“As many have already uncovered Sandra Fluke she is, in reality, a 30 year old long time liberal activist who enrolled at Georgetown with the express purpose of fighting for the school to pay for students’ birth control. She has been pushing for mandated coverage of contraceptives at Georgetown for at least three years according to the Washington Post.
However, as I discovered today, birth control is not all that Ms. Fluke believes private health insurance must cover. She also, apparently, believes that it is discrimination deserving of legal action if “gender reassignment” surgeries are not covered by employer provided health insurance. She makes these views clear in an article she co-edited with Karen Hu in the Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law.”
http://www.mrctv.org/blog/sandra-fluke-gender-reassignment-and-health-insurance
I have not read the law school article, so I can not swear to this. The “teddy bears” was sarcasm. But basically, she has been Georgetown and advocates for one person/entity to pay for another person’s stuff. In this case, so that the “another person”, who is a grown up, can get their condoms and birth control pills paid for.
I am not finding that to be all that spectacular an endeavor.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
You’re right. It has to do with humanity. Something that conservatives have long been a little short on.
In addition to preventing unwanted pregnancies many birth control medications help control otherwise irregular and painful menstrual cycles. That conservative women don’t acknowledge this has always fascinated me.
This is the exact reason that Mike Bloomberg listed Mayor of NYC as one of his 5 dream jobs, but not POTUS. He understands that despite being “leader of the free world”, the President actually is very restricted in what he can get done just by ordering it so.
Weasel words are bad enough when they’re yours but when you present someone else’s weasel words to make your point it’s just pathetic. The notion that she enrolled in Georgetown law with the “express purpose of fighting for the school to pay for students’ birth control” is just preposterous.
You don’t graduate cum laude from one of the nation’s top law schools with anything on your mind other than studying law.
This, mam, is a classic example of anti-intellectualism. You will believe what you want no matter what.
If you read the actual transcript that provides the basis for that screamingly biased report you linked to, you will not find Fluke advocating that private insurance should cover sex change operations.She does say that such lack of coverage is discriminatory, stating the American Medical Association position that it is discriminatory. It’s a law review article, and law review articles talk about the state of the law. Her law review article talks about health coverage in the work place, for working people. So that sort of destroys your elitist argument. It’s not about elite persons or college students. It’s about working people.
But medical support for transgendered persons is not what she was advocating before Congress and not what got Rush Limbaugh drooling over her imagined promiscuous sex life.
This is probably to what Squeeky is referring:
:
Fluke came to Georgetown University interested in contraceptive coverage: She researched the Jesuit college’s health plans for students before enrolling, and found that birth control was not included. “I decided I was absolutely not willing to compromise the quality of my education in exchange for my health care,” says Fluke, who has spent the past three years lobbying the administration to change its policy on the issue. The issue got the university president’s office last spring, where Georgetown declined to change its policy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/meet-sandra-fluke-the-woman-you-didnt-hear-at-congress-contraceptives-hearing/2012/02/16/gIQAJh57HR_blog.html
Take from it what you will.
FYI: (Something in the water…)
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/11/14/estrogen-in-drinking-water-prostate-cancer_n_1093696.html
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1976909_1976907_1976871,00.html
Charo:
Thank you for the link. Sandra Fluke is not somebody I pay much attention to. In fact, I try not to think about her, but every so often her name pops up in an article. For me she is like the poster child for “blah.”
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
She went to Georgetown to get a law degree. While I admire her efforts in regards to women’s health care I’m afraid fighting with a private, Jesuit school about birth control coverage on your insurance plan is a Quixotic effort.
If birth control had been her priority I doubt she would have sought a place at Georgetown.
Experience has been a mixed pot when it comes to Presidents. One of the most qualified men to ever hold the office Herbert Hoover ended up being one of the worst. Under Wilson Hoover was head of the Food Administration, Head of the American Relief Administration, Secretary of Commerce and had many other administrative roles.
Ah, that would account for eight messages from you in this thread in the last eight hours. Uh, huh.
Again you’re distorting what was actually said to you. Nowhere did she call for Condoms and abortions. It shows you have a fundamental problem with actual facts. You do know that Georgetown Students pay premiums for their plans?
Sex change hormones? Wtf? I’m starting to question if you know anything about women’s issues let alone reality.
So lets see you’re basing your claim off of what someone else thought she believed instead of what Ms Fluke herself said she believed? Why should we take you seriously?
On Wednesday, Fluke and more than 780 of her classmates sent a letter to university administrators that urged them not to wait until 2013 to add coverage of contraception.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/campus-overload/post/sandra-fluke-georgetown-students-continue-fight-for-contraception-coverage/2012/04/20/gIQAiP0BWT_blog.html
I’m surprised you don’t know how this one turned out. Anyways… so long
Thanks for the extra info/context. If that is the basis for the originally quoted article then I have to give its author credit for completely twisting the meaning of her words while still being able to argue that the quote is technically accurate. Based on the WashPo article it seems pretty clear that while she did decide to fight for contraceptive coverage before she went to Georgetown, it was not the reason why she decided to go to Georgetown. If anything the lack of coverage was a potential negative reason against choosing the school, but she decided that it was most important to go to her top academic choice. How utterly normal.
And, yes, I know how it turned out which is irrelevant to the gross misrepresentation of what she said before Congress last year.
Not only that, but the school has a health care mandate.
Whoever said it was free? Students paid premiums and it looks like they made a good decision
What is your point?
Squeeky Fromm, you’ve already been justifiably raked over the coals for your comments here, so I won’t pile on. But I just want to say that in my mind, the whole idea behind the need for “business experience” seems absurd. How does Donald Trump’s business experience — running a company (BADLY!) where everyone does what he says WHEN he says, with no negotiation, no argument, no questioning… how does that POSSIBLY prepare him for the negotiations and compromises and partnerships required by the office of the President?
If you had actually spoken to people in Wasilla, they’d laugh at the idea of Sarah actually going fishing. What you saw in the reality shows was the exact opposite of her upbringing. In the hunting episode, she actually proved she was clueless when using a rifle, grabbing it with her finger on the trigger, with her father having to re-load for her. Real women who know how to hunt can load their own gun and don’t ask stupid questions like, “Does it kick?”
Palin didn’t raise her kids, her family did. In fact, she was known for farming her kids off on anybody who would take them. You really know absolutely nothing about her. You fell for the fairy tale version of her life that was completely debunked by her own actions and words.
When it came down to education, for Obama, it was a negative yet it helped to enrich Cruz’s past. Just like the RWNJ’s screamed about PBO’s father who he spent approximately 3 to 4 weeks with after the age of 2, they overlook the fact that Cruz’s father fought for Castro. If it had been Obama’s father, they would be claiming he was a Communist and was working to bring Castro’s vision to the U.S. but Cruz gets a pass. The hypocrisy is overwhelming and the moderate Republicans that I know are more than willing to admit it and laugh at people like Cruz and Palin. For allegedly being such a smart guy, Cruz didn’t know he had Canadian citizenship? His b.c. got a pass, too. No calls for a hospital name or physician’s name were made. It was accepted as it was. President Obama was never afforded the same courtesy.
People that claim that common sense is more important than education are the people that mix Bleach with Ammonia, because it’s common sense that they are great cleaners and mixing them together will make a great cleaner. Common Sense was a great pamphlet by Thomas Paine. Other than that it is just people uneducated that want to feel like they are better or equal than educated people. And I’m not saying that all people with college degrees are any smarter than anyone else. I’m not taking my car to a medical doctor, but I’m not going to listen to my mechanic on a heart condition. That’s common sense. LOL 😉
You apparently do not comprehend that one person/entity paying for another person’s “stuff” is the essence of insurance.
The auto premiums of people who never have accidents pay for the damages incurred by people who have accidents.
The health insurance premiums of healthy people pay for the medical care of the sick.
The life insurance premiums paid by people who live long lives pay for the death benefits of people who die young.
The students at Georgetown pay for their health insurance premiums. Perhaps not directly, but as Charo said nothing is free. If Georgetown is paying the premiums, it is with money which they collect in tuition payments.
I also noticed how you have glossed over Sandra Fluke’s considerable achievements in helping victims of domestic violence and human trafficking. Do you really believe that is insignificant?
Hey, I’ve done that. Not sure how it is for cleaning rooms, but for clearing rooms, it’s quite good.
If I heard a business leader that ran for the GOP and had integrity about closing off loopholes in the tax code for especially big business then I might listen as long as he wasn’t all about banning gay marriage, and abortion, going to war for no reason. Yeah, my common sense says that will never happen.
Rickey said to Squeeky:
I also noticed how you have glossed over Sandra Fluke’s considerable achievements in helping victims of domestic violence and human trafficking. Do you really believe that is insignificant?
…and the answer is no, squeeky doesn’t think this is significant. She’s a birther and birthers are particularly gifted in ignoring things that don’t go with the preconceived notions of the world around them.
Yeah it’ll clear out a room if they make it out in time. 😉 LOL Since you posted that, I guess everyone made it out unharmed.
Paul:
Being raked over the coals just comes with the territory. If you will review what I said, I don’t think I ever said candidates needed “business experience.” I think I said real life experience. Being an Army general is good experience. Being an actual executive office holder is good. Even being a college professor is good, as long as a person has some experience outside of a cocoon of college life and public interest nonsense.
Now, that being said, a person who has run their own business, either successfully or unsuccessfully is going to be exposed to some degree to the discipline of no workee-no payee. I think too many people in office, and in talking head jobs, are people who have not had that kind of discipline.
Like Sandra Fluke, who seems to have drifted from public interest job to public interest job to law school back to public interest job. I have no interest in persecuting her, but I also am not particularly impressed by her wisdom, either. Frankly, she hasn’t been around enough, or been through enough to have garnered much. IMO. I would be more impressed by her if she had worked for 10 years at Wal-Mart. At least there, she would have been exposed to actual, real suffering as opposed to those horribly mistreated college chippies who had to pay for their own birth control pills or had lovers too cheap to fork out some cash for some condoms.
However, she does have two wonderful things to recommend her to some here:
1) She has been to the right kind of college; and
2) She has mouthed all the proper things.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeaky:
It’s people like you making ad hominen attacks on decent people like Sandra Fluke which will sink the Republican Party. All she wanted was for her health insurance to cover things important to her.
She never asked for free condoms.
That’s a lie.
And Squeaky, you know it’s a lie.
Squeeky, I like you, but I think you are assuming too many facts kind of like Rush did when he attacked her. Do you know if Sandra worked while she was in college? Maybe she did because the cost was more than what her parents or her student loans provided. I was there, and many of my friends had to do the same thing. I worked a full time job and went to school. I think that is real world instead families like Bush, Kennedy, and probably Clinton. (Probably name hundreds that didn’t have to pay a dime because of their family name and probably got a degree just for that fact, and donations from that family) So I agree to a point with you, but real education isn’t a bad thing and never will be. It’s what made us one of the greatest nations in human history.
John Reilly:
The Republican Party will sink itself without any help from me. I suspect that sooner or later, the Democratic Party will also.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
So Squeaky, you don’t deny you lied.
Sounds like she is repeating what Rush said.
JRC:
I actually learned more negative stuff about her tonight than I ever knew. My opinion, yesterday, was that she was pretty much a know-nothing who had been foisted on the scene by some Democrats wanting a face for their “Republican War on Women” nonsense. Because she had been to the right college and mouthed the proper things.
Now, I find out that she is actually 32 years old, with a history of public interest foolishness, and that she went to Georgetown simply to screw with the Catholics there. But all in all, I still think she is just a not very deep person who will hopefully add some real life experiences as she ages. Hopefully.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
More weasel words. You don’t want to criticize her, you don’t want to persecute her……until you decide to denigrate what she’s done and who she is.
Hypocrisy thy name is Squeeky.
Well Squeeky, I don’t have that information in front of me, and maybe that is true. If you told me that Albert Einstein liked to have sex with goats, it doesn’t make what he said any less true about gravity. If what you say is true, doesn’t make what she said in front of Congress any less true either. And you did misquote her.
Hormones for sex change change operations? Where the f*** did you get THAT from her testimony or from anyone here? Exaggeration and spin do nothing to enhance your argument, Squeeks.
Common sense would dictate that one research ovarian cysts, endometriosis and related female reproductive maladies before making that ridiculous statement. Here is a link to information about ovarian cysts — and, yes, their prevention by the use of oral contraceptives — from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. http://www.acog.org/~/media/For%20Patients/faq075.pdf?dmc=1&ts=20130903T0020594627 You might be doing yourself and your future health (or a loved one’s health) a favor by reading this and learning to recognize the symptoms and possible complications of this medical condition. Here is a fact sheet put together by the ACOG concerning endometriosis which, as the organization notes, is also very commonly treated by birth control pills. http://www.acog.org/~/media/For%20Patients/faq013.pdf?dmc=1&ts=20130903T0026596678 Untreated, endometriosis can lead to infertility and hysterectomy.
How old are you, Squeeky? What’s your work history? Degrees? Real life experience?
ButterflyB:
Out of the 8,400 or so female students at Georgetown, I doubt the majority need birth control pills for ovarian cysts. You and others just need to face the facts, Sandra Fluke went to Georgetown to stir up problems with the contraception issue. I just found this blurb:
“Fluke’s lack of freebies is not a health care issue. It is nothing. She could get birth control pills or condoms for cheap or free at lots of different places: Planned Parenthood, other women’s clinics, publicly funded health clinics, regular old doctor’s offices, etc,” she said. “She doesn’t want free or cheap contraception from anywhere, though. She wants free or cheap contraception provided by a Catholic university. It’s not about access. It’s about forcing Catholics to do what she thinks they should do. She’s been in the news for days now talking about the tragedy of turning “women’s health” into a “political football,” when she is doing exactly that.”
The writer continued, “For all their fuming that we want to intrude into their sex lives, they sure are inviting us in, aren’t they? “U.S. out of my uterus! Oh, except, buy me stuff for my uterus!”
Not a bad assessment IMO.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
George Bush the Lesser should be a poster child for how that idea really has no place in reality. He founded and and ran several businesses before running for office. It didn’t stop him being lazy and incompetent, despite being a rather intelligent guy in reality. But he was intellectually lazy, demanding simple solutions before heading out for another round of golf. Indeed he played so much golf that he put his knee out and was told by his doctors to quit.
And saying that Barack Obama never had a job is ludicrous. He ran an office of his law firm, and they would not give the job of running an office to a lazy guy. AND he worked for them for 15 years while balancing his community orginising work AND his work as a state senator. He probably would have been the hardest working guy you would have ever met. Calling him lazy and inexperienced is offensive and utter rot.
As for the Sandra Fluke thing, the interesting thing for me is that what she was asking for is actually allowed in Catholic Doctrine. Despite it never being mentioned once in the heated news coverage, Catholicism has no issues with contraceptives being used for medical conditions. Indeed, its right there in black and white in Huminae Vitae back in 1968;
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html
So what she was asking for the Church would actually have no issue with, despite the usual demonizing of the Catholic Church. So there must have been something else going on here, whether in the motives of the college or the plaintiffs, but I don’t know enough about the case to speculate further. But the whole case was utterly incomprehensible to me for that reason.
Have you personally polled the entire female student body? I find it totally callous how you ignore that there should be access for those who need it though as oppose to not providing access to it. There is nothing pointing to that since she was chosen to give testimony after republicans decided to shut women out of women’s issues and instead had an all male panel consisting of among others priests who are so far removed from the whole contraception issue.
I notice the quote you pull from is once again someone else’s opinion of Fluke and not what she herself has said.
Most full-time students are mandated to enroll in the plan offered by Georgetown University. They get charged for it whether they would have chosen that plan or not. They are offered no choice of plans to get the coverage they want and need.
The insurance provider is UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company, not Georgetown University. No one is asking a Jesuit institution to provide birth control pills or condoms or any other form of contraception. Such are provided by pharmacies that are off campus, and payment is shared between the insurer and the insured. The University has absolutely no role in the transaction.
The issue is that the University is dictating not only what coverage the students must purchase, but also intervening in medical decisions that should be made only by a patient and doctor, by restricting their choice to a single plan that the University chose and that the student has not choice but to pay for.
Don’t bother to respond. I will not read it because I’m already familiar with the cut-and-paste talking points of the anti-contraceptive religious right.
One point as a reminder in the discussion of Sarah Palin’s resume: she quit.
First hit from that quote. I’m surprised she didn’t post on link. NOT!
I’d love to read that in her actual statements instead of a source like this.
This is the About page.
LifeNews.com is an independent news agency devoted to reporting news that affects the pro-life community. With a team of experienced journalists and bloggers, LifeNews.com reaches more than 750,000 pro-life advocates each week via our web site, email news reports, social networking outreach and weekday radio program.
http://www.lifenews.com/2012/03/07/sandra-fluke-get-out-of-my-uterus-but-buy-stuff-for-it/
Dr. Ken Noisewater:
You said: I notice the quote you pull from is once again someone else’s opinion of Fluke and not what she herself has said.
Duh! Didn’t I tell you she is not somebody I find worth reading about on a regular basis. She’s just some chippie who was whining about contraception, when birth control pills and condoms are neither hard to get, nor expensive. In other words, a perfect thing for your average superficial Democrat to get all excised about. But, she has been to the right college, and mouths the proper things. . . sooo she becomes a spokesperson!
Think of her like “Joe the Plumber” for the left.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
So in other words you’d rather take someone’s word for it than what she actually says. Meaning you’d rather stay ignorant on a topic and lie about the lady rather than get it from the actual source. It’s funny how you say you won’t insult or persecute her and yet you’ve gone to doing exactly that, lying about what she’s said calling her names and discrediting yourself in the process. How long have you been a law student of limited means to complain about having access to such things?
Um no how exactly would she be joe the plumber of the left? Joe lied from the getgo about his circumstances. Fluke relayed a story from one of her classmates. Joe tried running for public office and keeps himself in the public while Fluke hasn’t for the most part. Joe was only out to better himself while Fluke was trying to better other people. If you’re going to make a comparison try to sound like you have some idea of what you’re talking about.
You have no idea why women at Georgetown (or anywhere else for that matter) need or seek contraceptives. To presume you do is arrogance of the first order.
As far as the unsourced screed you posted it is simply one person’s opinion from one anti-abortion website reprinted on another anti-abortion website:
http://www.lifenews.com/2012/03/07/sandra-fluke-get-out-of-my-uterus-but-buy-stuff-for-it/
It was written by the vice president of an anti-abortion group New Wave Feminists for Life http://www.newwavefeminists.com/#!
Why didn’t you provide the sources for what you posted?
Probably because she knows she’s full of shikaka
LifeNews.com is an independent news agency devoted to reporting news that affects the pro-life community. With a team of experienced propagandists. FIFT
JRC:
OMG!!! You actually read something from a PRO-LIFE website! Quick, tear your eyes out! Eeeeeeeyahhhh!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Are you opposed to the death penalty?
Squeeky, I don’t need to tear my eyes out. It’s about weighing sources. I’m sure I can find her actual words instead of a biased website. Nothing wrong with being pro-life. And providing these drugs to young women is pro-life.
Nice to see that squeeky has not a monopoly on unthinking ignorant statements. So priests are far removed from contraception issues are they? I guess they never EVER have to deal with issues like that EVER with their female parishioners. Because every priest I ever met would have had to deal with it and other issues like it on a regular basis.
Just because a priest has a penis and does not get married does not mean they don’t deal with ever issues of contraception ya know, nor does it mean that priests are not qualified to deal with issue of birth control. Unless you are saying that only alcoholics can treat someone else’s alcoholism.
And on a similar vein, what the hell are you doing commentating on this Sandra Fluke thing anyway. YOU’RE A MAN!! You don’t REALLY understand!! (Unless you agree with Fluke in which case you really are in tune with the issues, right?)
Statements like that are just to wall off people you don’t want to listen to from the right to have an opinion. Not in my world.
I think it’s a woman’s choice what to do with her own medical issues which is why the priest would be far removed. Individual patients and their doctors should be making these choices.
The point was in the original hearing before Sandra Fluke was involved the Republicans who held the majority only invited men quite a few of them being pastors or priests while no women were involved in the original testimony
Why would a Priest be far removed? Priests and Ministers serve in hospitals you know. Hell some priests work as doctors too, and nurses (though that’s rarer). Would you exclude a priest that’s qualified and has worked as a medical doctor from anything to do with contraception too? Nuns used to staff hospitals all the time by the way, I suppose you would exclude them as they have never had anything to do with childbirth either?
Yes I’m being ridiculous there, but so are you. Such blanket black and white statements serve no place in a civilized discussion. It’s just calling on a stereotype and is no less ignorant that Squeekys “just a community organizer” statements.
Now I have no idea about what happened with the meeting or around the timeframe of the meeting so I’m not going to comment on that. The point I wanted to get across was that the Catholic Church would have no issue with what Fluke wanted, so blaming Priests as such is missing the real issue here, whatever it was.
Suranis: Thank you, I think???
Carl Orcas: Yes, I believe in capital punishment. I also believe it is horribly misused.
JRC: The person at the pro-life site offered an OPINION based on the fact that birth control pills and condoms are neither hard to get, nor expensive. Is there a source that says otherwise???
It has been over three years since I have bought any BC pills, and IIRC they were only about $13 per month plus a few cents. I didn’t even waste time filing it on my insurance. It would not have hit the deductible. That’s how much of a non issue this whole thing is.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
How was Bishop Lori who testified involved in a patient’s medical decision? Or say Reverend Matthew Harrison? Ben Mitchell who teaches philosophy. Or Craig Mitchell who teaches ethics? Each of the people picked by the republican side strictly had to do with “moral philosophy” or religious dogmatism.
Well, one thing you and I have to agree on: enrolling in law school, actually attending for three years, and graduating cum laude, just to get some free condoms, shows dedication!
justlw:
True dat! LOL! I wonder if she is kin to the paperboy in the Better Off Dead movie???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I ask the question to determine if you are pro-life or anti-abortion. The answer is you are anti-abortion.
Every source I find on the web indicates that birth control pills will cost $15 to $50 a month after the woman visits her doctor and pays for an office visit and, possible, a physical examination.
For a woman on a fixed income or a student with no income that is not a “non issue”.
I suppose the obvious comeback if you really want an argument about it, and if you want to continue ignoring my real point, is “How was Sandra Fluke qualified?” I suppose having a uterus gives one deep telepathic understanding of all issues and medical conditions to do with being a cunt, the exact same as us men have that deep telepathic connection and understanding with all medical issues to do with being a prick.
And If I cared and bothered to read their testimony I suppose I could find some of their qualifications to do with it. But I’m not getting dragged into defending anyone, and you will notice I haven’t attacked or defended Fluke either. I’m glad that you have moved on from simply attacking people who testified for simply being Priests through “Priests and ministers” to asking me to defend individual people, only one of whom was a Priest. Progress
But really, I am not interested beyond the fact that the church has no issue with what Fluke says she wanted. Which I have brought up several times here and other places, and so far no-one has ever even acknowledged that I said it. I would guess what was really going on has more to do with American society and the battles going on there rather than the religious aspect, and as part of that people desperately want to keep the Catholic church square in there as some sort of a fig leaf and reason for tyranny. Saying “yes the church had no issue here, so what was really going on?” would force them to look beyond their simple narrative. Its much easier to keep on pointlessly clubbing one another with the same clubs, I suppose.
Oddly, I would probably find a discussion on what the Fluke case means as a reflection of American society rather interesting, but good luck getting a discussion on that going. You might as well try and start a discussion on whether Miley Cyrus means you live in a sexually abusive society. *drops bomb and sits back to watch it explode.
First, incompetent teachers do exist, of course, just as there incompetent plumbers. Bad teachers tend to get weeded out much quicker than bad plumbers.
Second, failures showing up in college remedial courses are not, in general, there because of bad teachers, but because of their own bad study habits or unfortunate circumstances.
It is a standard coping mechanism to blame others for your own failings, but it is seldom the case. Blaming teachers for lack of resources, lack of student family support, student learning deficiencies, etc, etc, etc, is wrong.
I can’t find the words to express how angry this attitude makes me.
What makes this notion so self-indulgent is that Trump’s big to-do about Obama’s birth certificate was over TWO YEARS AGO. Trump is suggesting that Obama waited two years, during which time he won a second term and thus mooted the issue entirely, to enact his revenge. And that he then did so by using a state official, and to target an obscure online branch of the Trump brand.
You’d think that if Obama wanted retaliation, it’d make more sense to, say, have Celebrity Apprentice cancelled. And yet it’s had two more seasons since Trump went Birther.
Doing geology in Australia is a qualification for Pres? Or any thing to do with food?
Keith:
Rather than get mad, why don’t you become a conservative, if you aren’t one already? Because if you’re not, you are kind of locked into that whole “attitude” thing that started this brouhaha. The “proper” attitude is that we must spend more money on education, and anybody who disagrees is heartless, racist, sexist, primitive, etc. etc. Which, more money isn’t going to fix the problem, but hey, it is mouthing all the proper things!
It looks to me like you have some valid gripes with lack of family support and student deficiencies. But, this may require you to abandon certain cherished leftish-type sacred cows. IMO.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky,
I was one of those who on some fora was particularly cutting and unpleasant to you in the past. I realized my commenting was saying somewhat more about my difficulty in toleration for ideas I found wholly unpalatable and stopped responding.
I saw you come to the “halleluiah” moment when you rejected arrant birferism and moved to the “make mock” Squeeky
This apparent move back into fact free, right wing denigration of people whose entire background and ethos has been to support your gender is truly disappointing.
Shame Squeeky, shame………
Hi Bovril!!!
Oh, I never took what you said personally, so it never hurt my feelings or anything. Sooo, please don’t ever worry about any of that. As far as right wing denigration, I balance it out and do some left wing denigration of people every once in a while, too. The problem is, I see rampant stupidity on both sides of the political fence so I usually just stay away from politics. Because it is a hopeless situation. IMO.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Actually what convinced me that Obama was ready for the Presidency was how he ran his 2008 campaign. I would equate running a presidential campaign to running a medium sized business – and it was near faultless.
The only reasoning(s)* out there for blocking coverage of The Pill are all ideological, not biological / medical. Testosterone treatments are covered; their female analog, “birth control” should be covered as well.
The facts of biology are the same for everyone (whether they accept them or not!), and can be explored and applied rationally. Ideology, not so much. I don’t want anyone’s ideology governing my biology.
Whether or not the expense will clear someone’s deductible, incorporating medicines into insurance coverage adds them to the coverage’s formulary and secures discounted pricing thanks to anticipated volume purchasing, regardless of deductible-related concerns.
Not reporting ‘small’ expenses to insurance is an effort to foretell the future, to time a market. Good luck with that.
* Using that word very … umm … liberally here 😉
I agree. A modern presidential campaign is a crucible. and test of leadership.
OK, here’s a sacred cow test:
Do you consider the phrase “liberal activist” to have a negative connotation?
It seems to me that your entire discussion is a generalized ad hominem argument that goes something like:
“Your opinion has no value because are educated and educated people are biased.”
or
“You cannot be objective because you all stick together.”
The article you linked to about Sandra Fluke basically said that she was wrong because she was a bad person, and she was a bad person because she was a liberal activist or that the was a feminist, that the discovery that she supports certain rights for LGBT persons discredits everything she says and justifies any slanderous thing said about her (ala Limbaugh). There was nothing whatever substantial in the form of an argument about the value of contraception in college medical plans, but rather the entire argument became about the moral character of Sandra Fluke, or the value of education in general. There could be no better example of an ad hominem argument.
Look back at the discussion. While folks were making substantial arguments over the relative merits of issues, you were ignoring the merits and throwing out stereotypes and ad hominems. It was pathetic, and very disappointing.
It seems to me that what you are criticizing in others is at the core of everything you said in this thread. IF you want to talk about sacred cows, hold up the mirror and first have the conversation with yourself.
No sacred cows on your side of the aisle?
Second.
Obama v. Trump, anyone?
Who?
Well, Trump would be at a severe disadvantage, without his tribble.
As I recall, Queensbury rules prohibit the use of animals, living or dead, during a match.
But did Sandra Fluke have granite kitchen counter tops?
(This may be somewhat esoteric, so:
http://www.bytheriverblog.com/2007/10/pathetic_desperation.html )
Anyone who thinks, for even a second, that someone attends a law school for the express purpose of anything but getting a JD has a few screws loose. And this is coming from someone who attended that very same law school. Georgetown is one of the top 14 law schools in the country. It’s very competitive to get into, and takes a great amount of dedication and sacrifice to complete. To finish near the top of the class, means she serious busted her backside while there. I’m guessing she attended GULC because of the school’s reputation, its commitment to public service, and the doors a GULC diploma opens.
As for Ms. Fluke’s positions on birth control…thank you for again showing your bias against not only those more educated than yourself, but against facts. She never asked for “free” anything. She was arguing that the insurance, THAT SHE PAYS FOR, should be required to treat women’s health issues the same as men’s. A discussion between a patient and her doctor. Not her, her doctor, her employer, a few random priests, ministers and bishops to which she has no connection, and the random congressman and lobbyist. Fact of the matter is every insurance company treats Viagra and other ED treatments as they do any other drug treating a medical issue. ED treatments, for the most part are nothing more than allowing men to fight the reality that when you get old, some things start to break down, and they can’t get their rocks off. Men, never have to get a special letter from their doctor, priest, or parent, saying, “Yes, he really needs this medically…it’s just about him wanting sexual pleasure like he was a horny teenager.” So why should a woman’s health decisions, made between her and her doctor, be subject to review by a panel of men who for the most part, have no medical training what so ever? And the religious institution is not being required to provide anything. The insurance carriers are the ones providing the coverage. Hospitals affiliated with the Catholic church still do not have to provide sterilization procedures, or abortions, or even precriptions to birth control. You don’t like that, you don’t go to a Catholic hospital. If the religiously affiliated institutions feel that providing health insurance violates their core beliefs, they can opt out of providing their empolyees (and students) any medical insurance of any sort, pay the penalties under the Afordable Care Act, and deal with the loss of quality employees, because no one will want to work for employer that doesn’t provide health benefits if they have an option. Of course, an institution like Georgetown would never do that, because sticking to these supposed “core beliefs” that don’t permit them to allow their insurance carriers to cover birth control will never trump the need to protect the schools rankings, and no one in GULC’s administration would ever propose sticking to these “principals” at the cost of maintaining the current level of qualified faculty. We’re talking about GULC, not the Ave Maria school of law. GULC first and foremost a top quality school of law, and nominially a Catholic institution. You have to go on a serious scavenger hunt to find a single crucifix anywhere, and the chapel is a windowless space in the basement (right across from the kosher kitchen). The law school has nothing to do with the church’s role of ministry, so why exactly should it get special breaks from the law?
Exactly.
As a fellow alum of GULC, I second what JoZeppy so eloquently stated.
IIRC, this saga began when schools and hospitals with religious affiliations objected to the requirement to provide their female employees and/or students with contraception coverage, per the new healthcare law. The majority were Catholic and a large group of Catholic institutions sued the government over the provision.
Politically, Dems supported healthcare act and women’s access to contraception coverage and the Reps supported the institutions, claiming the requirement violated the first amendment to the Constitution.
Hoover had administrative experience that’s what I was getting at.
Thor think birth control good. Squeeky fromm bad.
Hulk think Thor need to find new speaking coach!
Hulk have no sense of irony!
I watched the movie Thor last night.
Did it tempt you to throw a empty mug on the floor every time you finished your coffee?
What would you call Martin Luther King Jr.’s experience- public interest foolishness?
You brought up Sandra Fluke in this thread- not any of us. Frankly she is totally unrelated to all of this- she is not running for office, she merely testified before Congress with her opinion.
Do you think she was not entitled to have an opinion because she has a ‘history of public interest foolishness’?
I bring up MLK Jr., because that is what he was doing- advocating ‘public interest foolishness’- he was just much better at it and did it for a longer period of time.
I think every person can bring to the table something valuable from their life experiences. I no more discount the person who has spent 40 years working at Walmart than I do the person who has spent his entire career teaching at Harvard. I can learn something from each of them- we all can.
Does this mean that either of them are qualified to be President- of course not.
Luckily the voters ultimately decide what experience is necessary in order to be President. Sometimes they get it right sometimes they don’t.
LOL! Squeeky think birth control cheap!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I recall another 32-year-old whom some considered to be drifter, as he went from town to town advocating in the public interest.
He was called Jesus of Nazareth.
Then you should be all for collectively providing it as a means of highly cost-efficient preventative care. Sounds fiscal conservatism. Conservatives do believe it’s better to spend $1 today rather than $10 tomorrow,right? Ounce of prevention beats pound of cure, right?
As far as it being cheap for an individual … woman shall not live on birth control alone.
She worked for women who were victims of domestic violence and human trafficking. You don’t consider that those women experienced real suffering?
I tried to explain how insurance works to Squeeky last night, but she ignored me.
I get “almost free” medical care from the V.A. (I pay modest co-pays but no premiums), but I paid for it in other ways. For one thing, I gave up four years of my youth (ages 19-23) and got paid damned little for it back in pre-volunteer military days. And I pay taxes, part of which goes to fund the V.A.
By the same token, any student at Georgetown pays premiums for health insurance coverage, and the claims are paid out of the premiums which are collected. In Squeeky’s mind that is “someone else” paying for it, but it is actually the students who are paying for it.
In fact, the only reason Georgetown objected to coverage for contraception was on grounds of morality, and that is not a sound basis for determining what should be covered by health insurance.
We always have had a vicious anti-intellectual tradition. Remember the attacks on science and scientists during the 1950s, with them being denounced as “eggheads” and Communists. Then one day the Soviets flung Sputnik into orbit and incredibly, they were ahead of us in the space race. Suddenly we needed money spent on science and technology, and we were warned about the “missile gap.”
Now it’s gone back to normal. We disdain science and learning again. We value colleges and universities by prestigious names or the excellence of their football and basketball teams. Never mind the fact that our best science and engineering schools and classes are full of kids from overseas who then go back home with their talents.
We encourage our kids to be professional athletes, supermodels, pop singers, kick-butt insurance salesmen and stockbrokers, and occasionally, military heroes. We don’t think much of thinkers. Sadly.
Squeeky, of late, has either shown herself to be not as smart as I thought she was (doubtful) or has been taking stupid positions (like this one, and on Trayvon Martin) to stir up lively debate.
I can believe she’s stupid enough to buy into the wingnut meme that people like Fluke want “somebody else” to pay for her birth control. It makes no sense. If you buy health insurance, and two years later need a kidney transplant, I guarantee you somebody else (other subscribers) will be “paying for it.” That is, as you say, how insurance works.
But that’s because of the high cost. If she buys insurance, and check-ups and BC are “free”, she’s paid for them by paying her monthly bill.
I don’t get it. Squeeky may be playing dumb.
What is ironic is that the Soviets did the same thing in the early part of the 20th century, viewing scientists as elitists and counterrevolutionary. The early Communists had disdain for education and put working men and women, uneducated and unqualified, in positions of leadership.
So if you want to look at the world as Squeeky suggests it should be, look and the privation of Russia following the Revolution–or look at the birther movement.
But that would require Squeeky to actually bother finding out that some students, particularly law students (even more students at GULC where public service is highly encouraged), spend their precious down time on more than just getting drunk and having sex. That would just shoot to hell her whole narrative, wouldn’t it? Because, afterall, you learn nothing when trying to help the poor and disadvantaged. You only learn something by being poor and disadvantaged (hmmm…would explain some of the Republican’s recent policies).
Can’t expect Squeeky to actually research and learn something, can we? By doing that, she would become what she hates. Better cling to your assumptions and prejudices than lean something and find out the facts, and become “one of them.”
I think its more that you have been encouraging people from overseas that come from other countries public school systems to come over and settle in “the land of opportunity.” Unfortunately since the 0.01% basically raped and pillaged all the money (because they are greedy and stupid, there no more opportunity, so the kids aren’t staying anymore.
And unfortunately, the era of slashing public school funds as you didn’t need them as you are relying on importing talent from abroad is now coming home to roost. You guys need to actually start funding your schools and fast.
Yes, our schools are in parlous shape, unfortunately. That, combined with our anti-intellectualism, is a recipe for disaster.
Too many politicians look at the education crisis as a money issue. Or about whether or not to censor books, particularly fiction and evolution.
There are still people bent out of shape about “Catcher in the Rye.” My daughter read it, and pronounced the book boring and the narrating character whiny and self-centered. All he did in the hotel room was talk to the hooker. She wondered what all the fuss was about.
Suggestion: Before you make sweeping claims about the state of things here you might want to do some research.
Expenditures for primary and secondary education in the U.S. have risen steadily for the last 50 years:
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66
Google is your friend.
There are lots of things to be concerned about as it regards education in the U.S. but underfunding is not one of them. See link in message to Suranis.
The politicizing of curricula and the resulting anti-intellectualism is of far more concern, in my opinion.
I would be curious to see how those numbers changed since 2009 when Republicans in Congress suddenly remembered that government spending is bad and deficits do matter. I would also be curious to see a breakdown of where that money is going. Are wealthier communities spending more and more money to improve their already good schools while poorer communities are getting less money? Or is the money being spread out more evenly? Or is it properly focused on the districts that need it the most? I do not dispute the numbers or that total spending on education is going up, but I do still see too many schools in need of additional funding (and hear too many stories about teacher layoffs) that it makes me wonder where exactly that money is going.
Squeeky lost me (and I’ll bet lots of others) when she said that Sandra Fluke enrolled in law school for the “express purpose” of fighting for students birth control. I guarantee you that she is embarassed to have said that because it sounds so utterly stupid that I almost think someone has highjacked the girl’s account. I said almost, because after squeeky went all nuts with the Zimmernan thing, I am not at all surprised that she’s gone back to being right wing nut job birther from…I don’t know….somewhere, but back to being that.
…and you do have beef with Ms. Fluke, squeeky, and that beef is green (with envy). You’re jealous of her. She’s accomplished and so you’ve spent almost the entire thread trying to miminize her and and for what….you can’t even explain why. Finally, you gave up and totally embarassed yourself by waying that being educated is bad and being stupid is good, as if working at Wal-Mart is better than working at, say, a bank. Why does one have to be better than the other….both are honest work. But you don’t understand that because you’re all eaten up with jealousy about this woman who you don’t even know…….sounds kind of pathetic to me.
Thomas Brown:
Thank you for at least entertaining doubts about my stupidity! That is the nicest thing anybody has said about me today. Anyway, here is what people said about somebody I like a lot, H.L.Mencken:
“He was accused of being everything from a socialist to a right-winger to a traitor. Despite decades of brilliant work, he never won journalism’s most famous honor, the Pulitzer Prize, unlike a long train of neutered mediocrities who are justly unknown, unloved and unread today.”
Just stop and ask yourself what Mencken would have written about Sandra Fluke if he was alive. It’s an OPINION question, but mine is, he would have lampooned the beejezus out of her. Please consider the same about some of the other things you think I am on the wrong side of.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky, I’m not sure if you’re trying to troll us on this, but frankly, what you said about Sandra Fluke is offensive. But I’m not going to get any more into that for you. Here’s a fundamental question.
Do you think that your employer should be able to impose their religious beliefs onto you? Do you think that your employer should be able to force you to abide by their religious beliefs? Let’s take it out of birth control and Catholics, but put it into another context.
Let’s say that you work for someone of another religious belief, say a Jehovah’s Witness. This just happens to be your boss. Jehovah’s Witnesses generally believe that blood transfusions are immoral as you should not put anything foreign into your body. So would you support your employer not offering any plan that includes blood transfusions as part of the coverage?
This is the same principal that we’re looking at, whether the employer who is offering a public service should be able to force their employees to abide by their religious choices. It isn’t about religious freedom. It’s about employers forcing others to abide by the employer’s religious choice.
listen to even the saner freepers long enough and they’ll eventually remind you why they’re a freeper.
just like former birfers will remind you why they became one in the first place.
Depends on the particular district, and the attitudes thereof on the funding.
Unfortunately, some political types only look at education in terms of money…I’ll never forget a Hoboken Municipal Council candidate who came to our door 30 years ago, seeking our vote for the seat.
My mother talked to him about textbooks, scholarships, test scores, and curricula, and it was clear this guy didn’t have the foggiest clue about any of that stuff. His eyes were dull, his face fogged over.
Then my mother said, “For what we spend on our schools, we could send every kid to Eton or Harrow.”
Suddenly the politician’s face lit up, his eyes glowed, and I could hear the cash register go “ca-ching!” in his head. He got all excited, talking about the budget, the school district’s money, and its spending. Grades he didn’t know about and didn’t care. Money he knew, and that he cared about.
At that moment, I knew that all he cared about was the money and what he could do with it — which pretty much meant “Steer it to his buddies and get kickbacks.”
He lost that election, won the next one, and lost his re-election bid, gaining a seat on the county sewerage commission, voting on rate hikes and contracts. Ultimately, he was nailed for accepting bribes in the parking lot of a nearby diner in Chris Christie’s huge “Jersey Sting” case, and did 18 months in the federal can, after pleading guilty and weeping about his “serious error in judgment.” I just laughed.
Maybe i did make a mistake by focusing on cash. Maybe i should have said that they are unconcerned with education as they have always been able to fill American jobs with highly educated workers from abroad.
dunst:
Presuming the employer had the right to offer or not offer health insurance in the first place, then I would think they had the right to exclude blood transfusions in the absence of any state law which prevented that. I am not sure how such a prohibition would work vis a vis standards of medical care.
With Fluke’s scenario, I think a better example might be “a gym membership.” That is something that is preventive in nature. And probably a good thing. By exercising, I might prevent future harm to myself. Similarly, birth control pills might prevent future events from happening. But, are those events necessarily, “harmful”??? Are those events controllable in any fashion?
And, you can’t just dismiss the alternatives. Heck, you can get free birth control pills, (and even gym memberships are not that expensive). Even if you pay for your pills, they are usually pretty cheap. Some plans have never covered birth control pills. However, the law changed the first of this year, and this whole thing is probably moot.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
What amazes me is that for years when discussing funding for abortions, conservatives would scream about the fungibility of money and how giving money to Planned Parenthood to help them do breast cancer screening, for example, frees up other money in that organization’s budget to provide abortions. But now that it comes to contraceptive coverage, they have decided there is a huge distinction between a company paying for health coverage that includes birth control directly versus a company paying employees their salary which they would then use to pay for birth control. The fungibility of money no longer seems to matter.
The unequal distribution of education funding is a more important issue than funding per se.
New York State recently released the results of standardized tests in high schools throughout the states. Almost without exception, students in wealthy suburban areas did better than students in New York City, Yonkers, Mount Vernon, etc.
Well the beat goes on…..today in her defense she wants us to imagine what H.L. Mencken would have written about Ms. Fluke. Bizarre. Truly bizarre.
Funding is only part of the picture when you get to individual districts. Community support, economics, etc., etc., all factor in.
Bottom line: We’re spending more than ever for education so maybe it’s time to take a look at how we spend it.
Absolutely! And, of course, the wealthier districts aren’t going to give up a dime to help the poorer ones.
Absurd. You don’t need a prescription to get a gym membership and, of course, contraceptives aren’t used just to prevent pregnancy but you know that, don’t you?
Why?
Uh, sooo you could maybe learn how to think out of the box. Instead of simply spouting off one idiotic absurdity after another. Try it. You may like it!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
If by “people” you mean one editor in Providence, then yes, people describe Mencken that way. Here’s a cherrypicked Mencken salvo to subject to your confirmation bias 😉
Batten down the irony meters.
Sorry Squeeky but you’ve cornered the market on “idiotic” absurdities on this blog.
Mencken’s imagined thoughts on Sandra Fluke are just nonsense….irrelevant nonsense.
Umm.. Squeeky.
I hope you understand that the grief Sarah Palin recieved had to do with the idea that someone as uninformed and shallow as she might be a heartbeat away from being the leader of the Free World.
Believe me, if the Democrats had ever suggested that Sandra Fluke be their vice presidential nominee, I would raise holy hell about that too. She is also grossly unqualified.
But they didn’t do that, did they?
And as a law student testifying before Congress, Fluke did pretty well, and she got an obscene amount of deceitful hostility directed toward her by the right wing media machine as a result. You bought into that nonsense, and now you are unable to back down gracefully.
You are acting like…. like a birther.
Jpotter:
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
OMG!!! Female students can’t get contraceptives!!! Oh Noes!!! We’re all going to die of ovarian cysts!!! And, frustration! Aaaaaahhhh!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I see squeeky has crossed over into absurdist territory now.
Predicto:
My point was, it would not have mattered what Sarah Palin said whether, smart, dumb, both, neither, etc. The Left, particularly, would have been against her because of the way that she said it. What she says will never be heard. Who she is will never be known. For better, or worse.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I live on Planet Earth. I never leave it.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I take your effort as a recognition of the practicality of taking women’s health seriously, and treating it respectfully. As you indicated “practical” politics.
Now, c’mon, 1 out of 5?
Ummm, no. It was definitely the ‘what’ that was the problem LOL
If “the way that she said it” includes the lack of a coherent, logical argument supported by facts and evidence, then I have to agree with Squeeky that “the Left” was against Palin because of the way that she said it.
JPotter: No problemo!
2) In this world of political correctness, there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Democrat!
3) For every complex problem there is a government response that is clear, simple, and wrong.
4) Nannystatism is the theory that we know what the common people need, and they deserve to get it good and hard.
5) I believe that it is more dangerous to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to belong to a political party. And I believe it is safer and quieter to know, and keep your mouth shut, than to say anything.
I could have written them more ways than that. And sideways.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
What she said AND how she said it was her problem.In every foray outside the conservative cocoon she started out fine because she is a dynamic person but her problems began when she opened her mouth and nonsense tumbled out. Check her approval ratings in Alaska; they dropped in half in two years.
As far as never being heard you may want to check in with happenings on Planet Earth. She’s in the news virtually ever day and, of course, she’s back on Fox.
The hell with protecting our precious irony meters; the nation’s straw man shortage will soon be headline news.
Good God!! Didn’t you hear Dr. Conspiracy ask you to look in a mirror!!!! Good grief!!!
You sure you’re in the right dimension?
Post of the day to this squeeky nut!!
Squeeky wrote: “2) In this world of political correctness, there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Democrat!
So do I!!!!!!!!!!
Quantity w/o quality. Did you retire yesterday?
Pity the wanna-be martyrs!
Summed the thread up nicely there! Are you related to “Gilgamesh Girl”? Same rinse cycle at the cloning vats, perhaps?
Belittling ovarian cysts has got to be some bad karma 😈
jayhg:
Hmmm. I thought the one comparing Sandra Fluke to Jesus should have won. I mean, how could I ever answer that??? I was totally stymied and flummoxed. I lost control of bowels. But don’t tell anybody, because that is kind of personal.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Your response cracked me up!
Agreed. It is preposterous to claim that “who she is will never be known”, when she herself is the one going out of her way on a regular basis, whether on TV or facebook or whatnot, to open her mouth and spew nonsense, and often spiteful nonsense at that. She puts herself and her opinion views on display all the time. She is certainly not an “unknown” quantity in any sensible use of the term.
Donald Trump … great president? Such a puffed-up jerk! He can’t go two sentences without boasting about himself — how he’s the great writer, business mogul, husband and father (divorce court records belie this), TV show host, the greatest statesman who will never serve because he can’t spare himself to heed his country’s call — and birther.
No affectations? Trump is 100 percent affectation!
I thought Squeeks had abandoned birtherdom, but now she’s throwing her feet at one of its most blowhard advocates, I fear she’s suffered a relapse.
Recall that Trump, many believe, outright lied about having people in Hawaii investigating the President’s background, and “they’re not believing what they’re finding.” His whole demeanor as he said this was spot-on with that of the congenital liar character on Saturday Night Live in days of old. Where did these investigators go, and what happened to the information they gathered, if they really existed?
Ah Sarah Palin — Palin’s a college graduate, although didn’t it take her six years at undistinguished colleges to do so. While Obama attended some of the most prestigous insitutions on the planet, and did all right. So the logic of Squeeks seems to be not only that not attending college is better than attending, but getting a mediocre college education is better than getting a first-rate one.
And what executive experience can Mrs. Palin boast? A half term in Alaska, surely one of the less challenging governorships of the 50, judging by how much time she put in. Before that, mayor of a small town in Alaska I’d never heard of before she burst onto the scene.
Obama’s resume was more like that of Abraham Lincoln’s than any other. Lincoln was a lawyer, and he did practice that profession longer than did Obama, because Obama became a lawyer at a later age and left the practice of law at an earlier age to attend to the full-time job of U.S. Senator and then President.
Lincoln served eight years in the Illinois Legislature, as did Obama, although Honest Abe served in the lower chamber and Obama in the upper. Lincoln also served in Congress, but only two years to Obama’s four, and again in the lower chamber while Obama served in the upper.
So does this show that Obama as president is much like Lincoln?
No, not at all — he is far short of measuring up to the Great Emancipator, but that merely puts him in the same company with almost every other president.
Agreed! My wife has battled with her stage-four Endometriosis for years. She’s had several painful (and not inexpensive) treatments and surgeries to remove large ovarian cysts. Sadly, birth control is the only thing that keeps it in check. A lot of women suffer from endometriosis and other reproductive health issues. It really saddens me to see some selfish, callous female belittle and attack other women’s health problems, just because they themselves are lucky and naive enough not to have to suffer from the same…
🙁
G:
Quit posturing. If your wife is sick it has nothing to do with Sandra Fluke and the issues at hand. It has nothing to do with some histrionic moron out there whining for some freebie birth control pills from the Catholic college she chose to go to so that she could have something to whine about. You should be ashamed of yourself for injecting that into the conversation.
If you think it changes my mind, it doesn’t. You might as well rail at the fact that McDonalds doesn’t hand out free birth control pills and condoms at its drive-thru windows and blame your wife’s illness on that. OMG, McDonalds can sell $1.00 cheeseburgers, and here my poor wife is suffering because they won’t put birth control pills in its Happy Meals!
Sheeesh!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
No…the left was against what she said for its substance, just like the right is against the substance of our President, and VP. We mocked her for being an idiot for the stupid things she said…you know, like claiming foreign policy experience based on seeing Russia from parts of Alaska or flights from Russia passing over Alaska. We heard pretty clearly who she was, and that was more frightening than the some of her policy positions that we may disagree with.
You really are impervious to facts, aren’t you? Nowhere did Sandra Fluke ask for anything free. But why should we be surprised that someone who thinks being educated is a bad thing refuse to bother to learn the facts of something she ignorantly spouts off even after being repeatedly corrected. If anyone should be ashamed, it should be you. But as you have repeatedly shown, you have no shame.
If, before this thread, the country were lacking for an argument in favor of a single payer healthcare system, it lacks no more.
JoZeppy:
OK, if Sandra Fluke is whining about the cost of contraception, which may be all of $15 per month, then does Sandra want to pay more than $15 per month thru her insurance or less??? Because, if it is either the same, or more, then she would still be unable to afford it. Bingo! She wants to pay less! Now, who’s paying the difference?
JPotter: FWIW, I was in favor of a single payer system back when Obamacare was being debated. Because what we have isn’t working either with or without Obamacare.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
How would you know what she wants since you’ve already stated you won’t listen to the actual testimony or read what she’s written but instead rely on the distortion of what others claim she’s said?
You have no idea what Ms. Fluke was talking about in her testimony nor what her beef was…that is clear. You embrace ignorance and wear it as a badge of honor. There is no point in trying to discuss details with the willfully ignorant. No surprise you embrace the likes of Palin and Trump.
More painful irony from you.
You ignore facts, you distort what people say and then ridicule them when they put a human face on the matter.
You are, to put it bluntly, a pathetic creature
Ahem. Has anyone noticed the following, posted by Doc right below the Quote of the Day?
“Sometimes people leave comments designed to offend or outrage the reader, and invoke a firestorm of protest in response. These are the Internet trolls. Replying to them is feeding them and they will come back for more. Refusing to play their game encourages them to go away.”
ButterflyB:
Well, I resent the implication that I am a “troll.” And, frankly, I find it a pretty cheesy accusation. But, that’s not the first time I have heard it, and probably not the last either.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky, you just don’t get it.
The argument that the Republicans used was that somehow, requiring insurance companies to provide women with contraception was infringing on the religious freedom of employers, because those employers may not agree with contraception (such as the catholics). They weren’t just saying religious institutions, but they were saying that all employers had this ability, and therefore making insurance companies provide those plans would be a violation of the 1st amendment. If it’s a violation of the 1st amendment, then neither the states, nor the federal government can require this.
So, let me ask you this: is this your argument? Should employers be able to determine what employees have in terms of medical coverage based upon their own religious beliefs? Do you think that Jahovah’s witnesses who own companies have a constitutional right to not provide blood transfusions as part of their employer based coverage to their employees? Do you think that faith healers have a constitutional right to refuse to provide any insurance at all (or at least insurance that pays for anything that doesn’t involve faith healing) just because the employer has the religion there?
It’s the same basic principle here.
Dunst:
Yes, to the degree allowed by state law. If not, employers who do not believe in abortion on demand may be forced to pay for abortions at some point beyond those required from medical necessity. Any medical insurance plan is a compromise between what is deemed to be needed and what is affordable. For example, most health plans do not pay for dental work unless an oral surgeon is needed. Yet, people do get extremely sick, and even die, from abscessed teeth. Not to mention the pain.
Some plans cover plastic and reconstructive surgery, and some don’t. Others do not cover health issues caused by criminal activity. Some plans cover Viagra, and some don’t. Some even cover preventative health services. Many plans, besides just Georgetown’s, do not cover birth control pills. Vasectomies are hit and miss, too. Often, things that are relatively cheap do not get covered like eyeglasses, contact lenses, and OTC meds like aspirins.
The point is, health insurance plans are all over the place, and each state may or may not permit certain exclusions. Who knows all the ways Obamacare will affect this. For Fluke to pick out that one issue and thump on it like she did, when she knew full well the college did not cover that for religious reasons, is extremely disingenuous. She could just as well have picked out Dental Care and provided a horror story about some students’ bad teeth.
Which puts me back to my original thoughts on the matter. Birth control is cheap. It is readily available, often for free. What was her point?
Now, as to the practicality of covering contraceptive care, yes it might be cheaper to provide it, or it might not. Maternity benefits were probably covered at Georgetown. Who knows the costs of both? With Jehovah’s Witnesses, I think their hangup is pretty bizarre, but when you view it in light of the many options available, it isn’t completely out of the question. Now, if I worked for the State Insurance Department, I would urge that any plan NOT providing for a minimum standard of medical care be rejected. IMO, transfusions would fall into that, and therefore would not be excludable.
However, birth control IS CHEAP. Just like aspirins are cheap, and toothpaste, and mouthwash, and vitamins etc. I would not force that to be built in. However, I think Obamacare has so mandated it, sooo why argue about it? Religious concerns do constitute an acceptable basis for certain procedures to be excluded IMO. However, like with many such considerations, the overall reasonableness is subject to regulation.
Personally, I think the Catholic Church is overly harsh about contraception and birth control. But, that is their religion, and it is not completely unreasonable for them to exclude that from their package. The law may decide differently.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
We tend to use terms such as “nutjob”, “rightwing crazy” etc about people who believe in bizarre conspiracy theories or who deny reality in various areas of science — whether biology, climate change or sexuality. It’s an easy and convenient way to express their lack of contact with reality.
Increasingly, however, it seems to me that Donald Trump is in fact mentally ill, in the actual sense of the term. In that case, we should leave him alone and should refrain from calling him a nutjob. Hopefully he will seek help, or those around him will recognize his state and do something about it.
Unfortunately, people who are mentally ill, but who also have a great deal of power and/or money, can go for a long time without their illness being a least officially recognized or dealt with. And such people can inflict untold harm on others — as we have often seen, in the past and the present.
Why state law but not federal law?
(EDIT: And how do you think those state laws came into being? There was a legislative debate where various perspectives were heard and arguments were made before there was a vote to determine what the law would be. Sandra Fluke was a small part of a similar process on the federal level. Why should she be demonized for that?)
Squeaky:
As to insurance, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Yet again.
Those people who are paying for insurance, like Ms. Fluke, ought to have a say in what is covered. If she decides not to follow the teachings of the Church, that is her choice. The Church and the law school are not required to perform abortions, distribute contraceptives, or anything else contrary to their beliefs.
As a business owner, I participate in buying group health insurance for our employees in California and Indiana. I’m pro-life. I don’t try to impose my views on others. If the Church’s teachings do not persuade people, I’m not in favor of reinstituting the Inquisition. I don’t inquire as to whether my employees have abortions, are greedy, lust after their neighbor, live in sin, or violate any of the other precepts of my faith or theirs. In my California business I now have several Jewish partners. They don’t insist that all of our employees keep Kosher food rules or observe Saturday as the Sabbath. They don’t insist the newborn male children be circumcised by a Rabbi. We understand in planning an work related function we need to be sensitive to their food preferences, just like we know who is a vegetarian or who has food allergies. I have a Mormon partner, but I’m not about to have multiple wives in part because Mrs. Reilly would object. We have enough problems in running our two businesses without checking to see if all of our employees meet someone’s idea of ideological purity. As the book says, let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Good advice. You ought to follow it.
Entities, like corporations, law schools, etc., simply do not have a religion. Individuals do. And we let the individuals who work for us follow their religious beliefs without imposing on others.
And the virtue of group insurance as to low-cost drugs is that the insurers negotiate prices. The idea that you pay for drugs without notifying your pharmacy of your insurance coverage is as nutty as anything else you have said. My local pharmacy has both my military and my private coverage on file. My family gets the negotiated price, and pays a co-pay when required. It is quite automated. There is nothing I’ve had to do since my wife provided copies of our cards to the pharmacy. The process is transparent to us. Once again, you have no idea what you are talking about.
Last, your attacks on Ms. Fluke’s character are despicable.
Most health insurance plans (and auto insurance, life insurance, property insurance, title insurance, etc.) are regulated by the individual state’s insurance departments. That is why most health plans are not portable across state lines. Some companies offer plans in one state, and not another. I am not sure what kind of impact Obamacare will have on this.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
1. States have no problem. This is an issue of interstate commerce, clearly under the pervue of the Federal Government. The argument that somehow states have the ability to regulate this, while the Federal Government does not does not hold with the constitution. This is directly related to interstate commerce, therefore pervue under the Federal Government.
2. The argument that Republicans were using, which was that it violated religious freedom, and therefore a violation of the 1st Amendment, if true, would mean that neither the Federal Government, nor the States, would be able to regulate the issue. The Bill of Rights is enforced by the states by the 14th Amendment (equal protection clause), and the states do not have any special powers to infringe on religious liberty than what the Federal Government does.
3. Legally, there is no difference between covering contraception, and a person objecting to it, than there is to providing blood transfusions, or any other medical insurance at all and having a person object to it. I find it odd that you think that the employer of someone should have any say, especially when they’re employed in a service industry (and I’m not just talking about churches, the republicans were making moves to allow any employer to object for religious purposes. You work for Bank of America, well then Bank of America’s CEO would be able to object to any portion of your health insurance and refuse to pay for it.) Obama’s compromise was actually the following, saying that okay, that religious institutions did not need to do it, but when it wasn’t done, then the insurance company needed to provide at no additional cost a plan that would cover contraception.
4. There are medically necessary reasons for contraception, other than just to prevent pregencies. You say that you don’t think that employers would be able to provide abortions if they were not medically neccessairly? What about the ones that were? There was a woman over in Ireland that actually died in a hospital because the hospital declined to provide a medically necessary abortion because of religious institutions. Do you think that the employer should have the ability to say that “No, I think that all abortions are wrong. Therefore, there will be no abortions provided on my plan, whether or not the doctor determines they are medically necessary.”
This is about a fundamentally different thing. You seem to think that a religious institution that the employer belongs to gets to get in the way between you and your doctor. I believe the decision should be left to the individual person, and not be imposed upon by the employer. It’s a fundamental individual right. If you don’t believe in contraception, don’t take it. However, your decision to not take it should not be enforced on me by force just because you don’t want to pay for it.
Obamacare creates regulations at the federal level. That is the whole reason there was a debate about contraceptive coverage in the first place.
John Reilly:
Nice argument!
“I am open and tolerant, sooo openness and tolerance is great!”
But, what if you weren’t open and tolerant? What if it really disturbed you on a personal level to think you were paying for an abortion? What would that argument look like:
“I am not open and tolerant, sooo openness and tolerance is __________.”
great,unreasonable,wrong,wonderful, an intrusion on my personal beliefs
The other thing is that some entities are churches, or faith-based type services. I think maybe they are a little different than gas stations, or grocery stores, etc.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
dunst:
All your insurance departments are not belong to “U.S.”, yet.
http://www.naic.org/state_web_map.htm
This is why Romney could do Romneycare in Massachusetts, and why Auto Insurance can be mandated by state law. The Federal Government does not have general police powers. Which is why SCOTUS approved Obamacare as a “tax.”
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
All insurance other than military is on a state by state basis because insurers insisted on it, backed by Republicans, long ago. Obamacare does not change this.
The Book says render under Caesar that which is Caesar’s, render unto God that which is God’s. No church is being forced to perform an abortion, or, indeed, any other procedure. You simply do not know what you are talking about.
I think we are on the same page, but to clarify: Obamacare will set some minimum standards (no denial of coverage due to pre-existing conditions, children on their parents coverage through 25, a minumum medical costs to premiums ratio, no copays or deductibles for certain preventive medical procedures including FDA approved contraceptives, annual and lifetime caps on costs and others that I am forgetting) and an individual mandate that cannot be pre-empted by less stringent state laws. However for anything not directly covered by Obamacare, the existing state by state framework remains in place.
I would argue that in this day and age the federal government could probably use the interstate commerce clause to justify regulating auto insurance. But since there isn’t any sort of nationwide problem with the current system, like there was with health insurance, I don’t think there is any desire to pass federal legislation.
John Reilly:
Well, the Courts will decide the issue. Also, it looks like it was the Democrats who saved insurance regulation for the states in 1945. They controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarran%E2%80%93Ferguson_Act
Do you have some information that I don’t???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Trump’s claim is classic conspiracy theory: your enemy has unlimited cosmic power, but itty bitty brain space.
AKA, “…and I would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for those meddling brainiacs on the Internet forums.”
If I had done a little research, I would have realized the Supreme Court has already ruled that the federal government has the right to regulate insurance under the commerce clause in 1944 in United States v. South-Eastern Underwriters Association which was the case that led to the McCarran Ferguson Act that Squeeky linked to above. As the prohibition against federal government is legislative rather than constitutional, it can easily be reversed or ammended by future legislation. (EDIT: I am also realizing I don’t know if that case applied to the regulation of insurance in general or only to a specific type of insurance or a specific type of regulation. And it is time for bed so the answer is going to have to wait until tomorrow)
And the court was right to, but not for the reason you are saying here.
Taxes are not inherently evil, in fact quite the opposite. The Boston Tea Party was a protest against the imposition of Taxes without representation. But since some people have successfully persuaded Americans that taxes are horrible Obama and co had to call it a fee to get it through congress. But it should have been a tax as thats how universal health care is paid for,
And before you drag out the laffer curve, Laffer himself postulated 90% as the point where increasing taxes start reducing revenue, not 20%. Reagan himself took back about 50% of his big 1982 tax cut, and indeed spent the majority of his term raising taxes, not cutting them, as in real terms revenue fell through the floor after his tax cut and it actually slowed economic growth and the Dept rose for the first time since World War 2. But he didn’t have the honesty to call it raising taxes. That’s why Bush the Greater is the last great republican President, as he had the honesty to call raising taxes “raising taxes.” Sure Democrats pilloried him for it, but after Republicans had acted like he was personally cutting their wrists with a razor.
Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.
According to this source : USGovernmentSpending.com (custom report: Arizona K-12 spending v total spending) , spending in Arizona rose from 2.62 to 8.32 billion between 1988 and 2013, in unadjusted dollars.
As a percentage of State GDP, K-12 spending FELL from 4.03% to 3.01%
As a percentage of total State expenditure, K-12 spending FELL from 19.34% to 18.89%
So it depends on how you look at it. Arizona’s spending priorities have changed. Education is not as important to Arizona’s budgetary priorities as it used to be.
Those comparisons are not huge, (19.3 to 18.8 say), but they are real and have real consequences in the classroom.
I don’t have any expertise in this area, but I would speculate that he is nothing more than an extreme narcissist. He wealth has shielded him from most of the pitfalls that narcissists face, but thankfully not from public ridicule.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder
I can think of a few other birthers that fit this description.
Edited to add link.
Trump knows that his only talent and skill, and most importantly product that he can sell, is being Donald Trump. Therefore he will do more and more zany things to keep himself in the headlines. Unfortunately it is in the end totally self destructive behavior as sooner or later you are forced to step too far and you end up in the gutter.
Trump has been doing Trump for too long and is finally trapped by being Donald Trump. I honestly have no idea if he is clever or not, as all I or anyone can see is the giant caricature that he has constructed himself.
But hey, at least I don’t have a combover. As a fellow bald guy I feel qualified to say that is utterly daft. I mean no-one likes losing their hair, lord knows I hated it, but come on.
One of these things is not like the others …. one of these things is not like the others … 😉
I’m not really in a position to have a well educated opinion on the subject, since I don’t have “feet on the ground” as it were, but I find it strange to read Ms Fromm’s comments regarding what she calls “nannystateism” and which indeed mirrors what I’ve seen from other US right-wing bloggers.
I hope some of you might enlighten me as to why the Government is systematically portrayed as this appalling scarecrow. I supose there are historical reasons, going back to the Civil War, but viewed from Europe, it always sounds a bit weird.
More specifically:
1) The world is not just divided between the US, would-be paradise of little or no Government intervention, and the highly-controlled & planned economies of the former USSR, China, etc. It’s not just black or white, and there is a whole gamut of countries in between, such as France, Germany, Scandinavia, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, etc, etc. which are not socialist hells and where people do not live in chains, their enterprising spirits broken. Surely, Americans must have gone on vacation abroad at some point and be aware of that? So why persist in erecting a faux scarecrow in discussing the valid issue of the Government’s role in society?
Ms Fromm, there are plenty of countries where Governments play a major role in the economy and which arguably are doing better than the US, depending what yardsticks one uses.
2)Besides, surely most Americans realize that at least 50% (if not more?) of the US economy is already dependent on your Government’s support. Your banking sector would disappear overnight if it couldn’t borrow money “printed” by the Fed at 0% (or nearly); the bailout of the US auto industry is well known; Boeing would collapse without US Government support, and so would many aerospace companies without defense contracts; your agricultural industry relies on price supports just as much as ours; I’m sure there many other examples.
Ms Fromm, attacking the notion of Government’s intervention is like a fish attacking water. You’re already deep in it. What’s left to discuss is not whether you should have it (that boat has sailed), but who’s going to benefit.
I certainly understand that there is room for an intelligent debate on “where” and “how” should the Government intervene in society, but to deny that it does or portray it as the ultimate evil makes no sense whatsoever.
I think I vaguely get a notion of what Squeeky Fromm is “against”, unrealistically so IMHO, but I genuinely have no idea what she is “for”.
Oh, Lupin, Lupin, Lupin. You underestimate the insularity of this large, largely waterlocked nation. Google Americans travel abroad for a good time. It seems the State Dept should have a handle on # of passports issued …. popular estimates are running 30-35%, and all sources agree that’s a massive increase.
So, the general answer to your question is, nope, no they haven’t. The “working poor” could never afford it anyway!
I have run across more than one hyperconservative emigré who has fled the American “nanny state” for capitalist paradises like … France and Switzerland (LOL!) Some of the lesser hypocrites dream of going to Belize. Wingnuts are fascinated with Belize … prob because English is the official language 😉
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/02/04/americans.travel.domestically/index.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-d-chalmers/the-great-american-passpo_b_1920287.html
https://corporate.livingsocial.com/inthenews/articles/174
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewbender/2012/01/30/record-number-of-americans-now-hold-passports/
Most of your vile and pathetic rant has NOTHING to do with anything I actually talked about. Nowhere did I mention Sandra Fluke or any of the silly nonsense you are ranting about. I responded directly to the issue of ovarian cysts and related only a little portion of the many personal and painful costs that a woman and her family go through with diseases that cause them, like Endemetriosis. A very real disease that birth control is a necessary treatment to prevent or reduce painful and dangerous reoccurring cyst growth and other worse damages to the ovaries, uterus and other surrounding internal organs.
Your response was unhinged, deranged and contemptuous on such a personal attack level, that it shows you are the one that is truly sick in the head here. Something has gone wrong with you Squeeky and you’ve become a selfish and spiteful little sociopath.
Maybe you should spend some time actually researching these medical conditions and what they can do, instead of spouting off like an ignorant and hateful little twerp.
That’s because it is weird and it even predates the Civil War but it really took off then and two world wars just fed the fires.
Acutally it’s less than that and falling…..which is another interesting thing. Take a look at this piece put together by PolitiFact during the last election:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/aug/12/mitt-romney/romney-says-government-has-grown-27-percent-37-per/
I’m not sure she does either. For many it’s the “good old days”. For others it is Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on the hill”.
G:
The only thing “vile and pathetic” is YOU, interjecting your wife’s private medical information into a silly internet argument to get some Pity Points. Where it is available for all the world to see. Plus, cowardly and delusional for trying to act like it had nothing to do with the Fluke Flack that was going on. I would tell you to go apologize to your wife, but she would probably bounce something off your head. Not that it would hurt your head, but she might lose a piece of Lennox or something.
If you have any sense of decency, or shame, you would ask Dr. C. to remove your original comment, my response, your reply to my response, and then this comment from the thread to mitigate the intrusion upon your wife’s privacy. I would not oppose such a move.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Thank you for the links, very interesting, esp. the article from HuffPost.
So do you think that when some right-wing folks see European countries as some kind of socialist inferno, it is plain ignorance, or cognitive dissonance? Or a bit of both?
(I have no doubt that those who spread the clichés are well informed and only try to deceive their audiences.)
I’m not sure I’m using the same yardstick to look at the situation.
I’ve read somewhere that the US financial services industry now accounts for 25% of your GDP. My contention is that that industry could not function without the Fed’s wllingness to print money & lend it at 0%.
So that’s 1/4 of your GDP already.
Government itself is 13% of GDP. Add automobile + aerospace, that’s at least another 10%. And I think that with agricultural price supports, etc. we pickup the remaining 2% to get at 50%.
I’m using figures from Table C of this pdf for a GDP breakdown by industry
http://www.bea.gov/scb/pdf/2003/05May/0503GDPbyIndy.pdf
Anyway, my point is that without the US Government’s direct or indirect support, the country would immediately collapse. To constantly attack the so-called “nanny state” itself (as opposed to its priorities) is absurd when you live in the cradle.
EVERY woman is pro-choice AND pro-life – we ALL have a choice and when we make the choice of LIFE it is about our life and about the life/lives we carry to term or not – it is about the life we wish to make for ourselves and “ourselves” includes those we carry (or not)
BEFORE we go to a doctor, we KNOW what choices we will make – MANY of us are already mothers (61%), pay in cash so no one will know (62%), and decide before the 21st week (98.5%) – 90% of WOMEN who have a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis result in abortion
I’ve been following the pregnancy and now birth of abigail to jamie herrera beutler – she was born at 28 weeks without kidneys after the republican representative from wash. announced her pregnancy in may and diagnosis of Potter’s in july – who has the MONEY she has from insurance WE PAY FOR to travel from wash. state every week for 5 weeks and then to CA?
why don’t MEN have vasectomies at birth which are easily reversed when they marry?
we ALREADY pay for:
1. Erectile dysfunction drugs 2. Vacuum erection devices 3. Penile implants
4. Vasectomies 5. Circumcision
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/20/5-sexual-health-services-insurance-will-cover-for-men/
G is quite correct, IMHO,
First, you did write the above post, which I think you meant as satire (I’m being kind here) but can be very hurtful for someone with a personal stake.
The normal response to G’s initial remark would have been to apologize and say that you didn’t mean to hurt anyone’s feeling or make fun of their personal tragedies.
Instead, you come across, quite frankly, as unhinged.
And how perverse it is that Squeeky cited Trump as a person with “common sense” who would make a good President, considering that Trump possesses none of the experience which Squeeky claims is necessary to have common sense. He was born wealthy, went to the exclusive Wharton School, and was given control of his family’s company at the ripe old age of 25. He also has presided over several businesses which have gone bankrupt under his leadership – the Taj Majal Casino, the Trump Plaza Hotel, and Trump Entertainment Resorts (the latter company went into bankruptcy twice).
And I’m sure that the Donald has never missed a paycheck.
Lupin: plain ignorance, or cognitive dissonance
Both. I perceive a complex, multifaceted conception of Europe on their part. A discussion of which would be yet another branch shooting off this mangled thread LOL
I did think it important to point out what a coccoon America is to its native inhabitants. I believe that can be very hard for others to grasp, and suspect the same phenomenon can be seen in other large countries, with large, travel-limited populations, such as Russia, China, India, Brazil.
This bowl needs mixing.
This might surprise you, but I completely agree with you. There is a sane role for government to play. But that presupposes that you have a sane citizenry. Here in America, we do not. My GUESS is, that it has a lot to do with the excessive politicalization of all issues. I think some of this is spurred on by the huge financial rewards of controlling government. I think more is caused by a fanatical desire of the extremists on both sides to Preach Salvation to the masses.
A few decades ago, in Mencken’s time, America was covered up with Christian do-gooders preaching the uplifting virtues of an alcohol free life, the dangers of modern music (like jazz), and going into tizzies about sexual fumblings in the rumble seat. As overwrought as much of that was, it was strictly bush-league compared to what goes on now that the teams and the leagues have got more organized.
Now, 80 some odd years later, the puritanical Christians have lost the lead position to the equally puritanical and fanatical Politically Correct crowd convinced of their own Moral Superiority. Meanwhile, the other side, is fighting like hell to catch up and pull ahead. As a result, there is a constant bombardment of “Cant” from both sides. Every attempt at rational discourse is sidetracked by this struggle.
I am loath to even give an example, because whatever topic I pick will sic the leftish mob here at me with foaming mouths. (Were I at a predominantly right wing site, it would be foaming right-wingers after me. But, simply look above and read the comments and see how much venom got spewed at me over Sandra Fluke if you want an example.)
In America, we do not have civilized discussions. Every problem is simply fodder for whichever political side wishes to make brownie points off it. This is not restricted to right wingers. While the right wing is stupid and partisan, the left wingers are just as stupid and partisan. In the meantime, nothing we do will work well.
As far as what I want, I am thinking maybe an Epiphone Swingster or a Fender Jazzmaster. I am reluctant though, because I probably just need to learn to play the guitars that I have, particularly the Epiphone Black Royale Riviera with the 3 p90 pickups. It makes really pretty sounds sometimes, when my fingers go where they are supposed to.
Here is a good editorial I read this morning:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/09/the_democrat_moral_superiority_complex.html
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
You really are a deplorable little creature, aren’t you.
This article will help dispel the notion that b.c. pills are as inexpensive as Squeeky posted. $13/mo. sounds like the price paid AFTER insurance has paid their portion.
Prices quoted in this article range from $37 to $162/mo. depending on insurance or out-of-pocket payment.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/37-162-strange-world-birth-103004259.html
Banking is in private hands here….for better or worse. The Federal Reserve is simply the central bank and issuer of our currency. It does not do business with the public.
I can’t think of a nation where the government doesn’t back the currency. We tried that and it didn’t work.
You’re right. I defy Squeeky and her friends to name a country where that isn’t the case.
DIVIDE BY ZERO ERROR
Oh, but let’s read it, shall we?
“I met a straw man liberal the other day”
“This other straw man liberal I know thinks…”
And we have now warmed to our premise:
“Democrats believe that good and evil in this country divided along party lines, with all the caring people in their party, and all the greedy, mean people in the other.”
BOOM go the irony meters!
I will grant you that what you say is certainly true across the public boards that I participate in.
But the difference between this board and say Politicalforum(which I participate in) is that the general tenor here is more polite.
What I found objectionable to your bringing Fluke into this discussion are two things
a) Fluke had nothing to do with the topic- bringing her into the thread derailed the thread into a discussion about Fluke
b) I think that the argument that you presented aimed at Fluke was very flawed, and intended to irritate.
That was why I focused in your statement about “public interest foolishness,”- you dropped that in I think just to piss people off- because you didn’t present a sound argument as to why you thought that that this is a bad thing- as you imply.
On these boards, generally most posters can carry on a respectful dialogue- but when you make comments like
Sooo, the wonderful Sandra Fluke, has (1)has been to a proper college, Cornell and Georgetown. (2) mouthed all the proper things like fuzzy warm “the school health plan (somebody else) should pay for sex change hormones! and condoms! and abortions! and teddy bears!”
You can expect to be called our for both the tone- and the content. If you can’t stand the heat- don’t step into the kitchen. You brought up Fluke- you made her a part of the conversation, and since then I haven’t seen you able to defend the statements you made.
Generally speaking- the tenor of the responses here tends to match the tenor of the post.
In fact she continues to insinuate that Fluke chose Georgetown in order to raise a stink about contraceptive coverage there instead of the reality that Fluke chose Georgetown because it was her top academic choice and she decided to enroll DESPITE the lack of contraceptive coverage because she was not willing to compromise on educational quality.
sjeff:
Actually, I looked above and Fluke came into the conversation as part of a string of persons who I presented as having gone from college straight to advocacy. At that time, I did not know she came from advocacy to college and back to advocacy. Which actually put her in a worse light than what I originally thought. From ingenuous to disingenuous. As far as the tenor of the posts and responses, people can read for themselves and judge.
kate: I googled it too, and saw a lot of $9.00. I think some people even supply them for free. Mine were never run thru insurance. It was just $13something a month. It has been over three years, so maybe the price has gone up, or not. I don’t know. I don’t think they are hard to get. I have not seen any stories on TV about women having to walk the street to pay for them or anything.
justlw: People often mistake their truth meters for irony meters. I think it is a psychological thing.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky has gone into full passive-aggressive victim mode.
It’s sad.
Squeeky, you’ve been around here for longer than I have. Why is the Quote button still a mystery to you?
I still think there’s a lot of irony to an editorial with the premise “The problem with all them Democrats is that they think of the other side as one broad caricature.”
Since I personally do not fit the mold of either Straw Man 1 or Straw Man 2, I have to remain unsurprised that the truth meters in fact failed to budge.
justlw:
I am hard-pressed to remember reading any political article that I ever agreed with 100%. I know that going in, and read things for what is there. IMO, that one hit some nails on the head.
“Quote” generally picks up too much of a comment for me, which is why I seldom use it.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
American Thinker. Wow. Welp, there went that last shred of credibility.
What a melt down o.O
what an excellent description of Squeaky’s current incarnation. She used to be a fool, then she became mildly amusing – and now she’s just offensive and ignorant. Troll she may be, or not, but certainly she should be ignored.
Bill The Cat:
Yezzzz. You are sooo smart and sooo good and nobody could ever teach you anything or give you any insight that you don’t already have! You are just practically perfect in every way!
Wow, I sure wish somebody could do a good editorial on that kind of attitude! Oh wait! They did! See above.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Highlight just the part of the comment you want to quote, as though you were about to “cut” (ctrl-C or Apple-C) it. Press Quote instead of “cut” (ctrl-C or Apple-C).
If there are multiple parts of the comment you want to quote, do these two steps for each part you would like to respond to.
I of course meant “copy” above; sorry for any confusion this may have caused.
I find it ironic that an article with the title “The Democrat Moral Superiority Complex” that is filled with generalizations and straw men about what all liberals/Democrats believe and how they act starts off by complaining that some liberals have made generalizations about the Tea Party.
Squeeky,
I don’t want to get involved in the argument other than to say that I’ve very disappointed in you—not in your arguments (even though they are foolish), but in your unwillingness or inability (I suspect both) to address any of counterarguments made in good faith and your incessant caricature of anyone who disagrees with you or you don’t like as a straw man liberal. If you understood this site at all, you would know that it welcomes discussions based on facts and sound reasoning, but instead of defending your ridiculous statements by appeals logical, fact-based argument or credible authority you seem content to be nothing more than a troll. I find this to be a great pity, but it’s your choice to attempt to worsen the partisan divide in this country rather than trying to engage in productive discussion with those who disagree with you. Furthermore, I found your comments regarding G’s wife to be thoroughly despicable. His story about his wife directly contradicted one of your glib positions and, as such, was an appropriate, if personal, anecdote. In response, instead of expressing even a tiny bit of sympathy and explaining why his story didn’t destroy the argument you were so poorly trying to make, you choose attack him personally for trying to gain sympathy—as if that was the only possible reason that people might agree with him. I don’t know if you are a Christian Squeeky, but, if so, like many Republicans, you SUCK at it.
I sincerely doubt that my disappointment with you will have any impact on your behavior, but there is one point on which I might be able to help:
If you select the portion of a comment which you would like to respond to and then click on “quote”, only the selected part will be copied into your post, so you can respond to a particular part of what someone said as well as providing a link to their whole comment. You can also quote multiple people in the same comment. On an active thread like this one it is a helpful courtesy to which shows respect to the others in the conversation. And, quite frankly, you could use some small gestures of respect since your large gestures of contempt have been quite clear.
Cue Squeeky at line: [Dodging/Intentionally missing the point] “But I’m not a Republican!”
I was never much amused by any of her antics. She was a birther simpleton (do we all remember her insipid “KISS” mantra), she was equally insipid as an anti-birther, and now she’s just willfully ignorant and offensive, tightly embracing the worst anti-intellectualism the US has to offer.
Squeeky,
The only reason that the venom you say that you recieve is because you attacked Sandra Fluke for testifying that one of her girlfriends had a medical condition that had to be controlled by a medication that the right-wing considers medically objectionable. That is the reason that you guys attack Sandra Fluke, nothing more, nothing less.
You have the right-wing calling her a slut, mis-characterizing her testimony by saying that she wanted others to pay for her to have sex, and a bunch of other things that you parrotted back here. You admit that you have not read the testimony, or listened to the testimony, but relied upon the right-wing media’s characterization of her to form your opinion. My question is why?
And as far as your lionizing of a person, and persuming that they’d be on your side. The person you talk about would actually be more likely to be on Sandra Fluke’s side, making fun of the Religious extremism that’s going on in the Republican Party, where their argument is that the employer can impose their moral values upon the imposed, and any attempt to regulate insurance is infringing on the religious freedom of those employers. He’d be pointing out that the easiest thing for employers to do who don’t want to take birth control pills is to not take them, not to be getting into the choices of the others.
You’re taking your pre-formed view, and applying it to what you think your hero would comply to that view. He went against religion getting into politics there, and he’d probably go against religion getting into politics here as well. You may think that he may be on your side. However, it is more likely that he would have gone against your view.
The one thing that I will say about her “KISS” mantra was that it was honest—unlike other birther arguments which require the wholesale acceptance of a wide range of falsehood, Squeeky’s insipid “KISS” argument was merely and naive and stupid analysis of the actual facts. I thought that was indicative of some integrity, but her conduct in this thread (and elsewhere) suggests I was mistaken.
If you know what it’s going to say before you read it why do you waste your time reading it?
This is how you use the “Quote” button. You highlight what you want and then hit “Quote” and it will copy just that to the Reply screen and you can do it as often as you want with pieces of the message you are responding to.
??? Now, the whole dang Right Wing of the country is anti-birth control pills??? Wow, that is a new one! Obviously, it is my perception that has been clouded, because that just slipped right me!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Slarti, this is complete hogwash! G’s story contradicted nothing. I don’t care who uses birth control pills. That’s their business. If the Pope and the Catholic Church don’t like them, that is their business, too. I could care less. I’m Southern Baptist, on Easter and maybe a few other Sundays a year, sooo what does the Pope mean to me???
But, if they want to believe that, more power to them! That’s their religion. If it bothered Fluke, then she should have gone to college somewhere else. Or who knows, the courts may get involved. But if she wants to pipe up because somebody else doesn’t want to pay for her birth control pills, or make them cheaper for her, then she should expect to get teased about it! The darn things are cheap, sometimes free, and easy to get. Its nothing but a farce.
Now, if all you guys want to turn her into St. Sandra The Maligned, the Patron Saint
of Waaah!, then knock yourselves out! I think it’s hilarious. And shallow.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Thank you for using the quote function like myself and several other suggested. Once again, you are missing the point and jumping your straw man talking points. Why should I (or anyone else here) try to discuss the matter with you when you are clearly more interested in trolling than in honest debate?
Take 5 minutes to read what Fluke actually said. It may help you understand what people here are saying.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2012/mar/06/context-sandra-fluke-contraceptives-and-womens-hea/
Her friend is gay and wants contraceptives to limit the effects of polycystic ovarian syndrome? Obviously a slut who just wants others to pay for her birth control.
From Fluke’s testimony so maybe Squeeky will see it: (emphasis mine)
They are knee-jerk against anything labeled “liberal.”
I got the idea that Squeeky was all about performance art early on. But one never knows.
One in the article was as low as $9.
Well this is your original post:
Well, if you worked hard to build a company, then I guess that you have some experience with real life and doing real work. The same as Trump and Palin, who both have college degrees. Do you think the same applies to say, Sandra Fluke? Or most commentators on MSNBC? How about some of the clowns who went straight from college to a career in community organizing?
Why did you decide to include Sandra Fluke- a relative unknown whose only claim to fame is testifying before Congress and being called a slut by Rush Limbaugh- in the company of Palin, Trump and Obama?
I really don’t know. Certainly whatever your intent was, you failed to establish it.
You are right- people can read for themselves and judge.
And that is what you have done- and we have done.
You made this thread about Sandra Fluke- and yourself.
And I still really don’t know what your purpose or thesis is.
Or as Limbaugh says “slut”
If someone called my daughter a “slut” and then said he was just ‘teasing’, he would be picking up his teeth off of the pavement.
Calling someone’s daughter a slut is not teasing.
Not in my world.
dunst above, explained the situation very well:
“This is about a fundamentally different thing. You seem to think that a religious institution that the employer belongs to gets to get in the way between you and your doctor. I believe the decision should be left to the individual person, and not be imposed upon by the employer. It’s a fundamental individual right. If you don’t believe in contraception, don’t take it. However, your decision to not take it should not be enforced on me by force just because you don’t want to pay for it.”
Sandra Fluke wants the people who “don’t want to pay for it” to be forced to “pay for it.” Nobody prevented either Fluke, or her parade-of-horribles people from getting the medical care they needed, with perhaps the exception of the insurance company. Who if they did, should be sued.
In short, Sandra wants somebody else to pay for stuff for her. Stuff, that is cheap and readily available. Being educated, but not too smart, which is what landed her in my list in the first place, to wit:
==========
“Without insurance coverage, contraception can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school,” Fluke testified before Pelosi’s panel.
“For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary,” Fluke testified. “Forty percent of female students at Georgetown Law report struggling financially as a result of this policy.”
“Just last week, a married female student told me she had to stop using contraception because she couldn’t afford it any longer,” Fluke testified. “Women employed in low-wage jobs without contraceptive coverage face the same choice. You might respond that contraception is accessible in lots of other ways. Unfortunately, that’s not true.”
On Tuesday, Fluke spoke at an event at the U.S. Capitol in celebration of women’s history month. After the event, CNSNews.com asked Fluke: “Were you aware of the Target store that’s 3 miles from Georgetown Law that sells a month’s supply of birth control pills for $9 a month without insurance coverage? Were you aware of that?”
CNS continues, from an MRC video interviewing Fluke:
Fluke said: “So, I’m not familiar with specific department store policies. I know that some generic forms of contraception are less expensive than others and that that has been widely reported. But what has not been widely reported is that many women cannot use those forms of contraception.”
“Women have different types of medical needs that require much more expensive forms,” she said. “One woman contacted me. She was very, very upset that that quote was being emphasized because she has a genetic condition that requires her to use contraception that costs $1,500.”
==========
http://twitchy.com/2012/03/22/sandra-fluke-on-9-per-month-pill-at-target-i-did-not-know-that/
Sooo, for girls without “genetic conditions”, which is most of us, the cost is $9.00 per month, or $108.00 per year. But you all keep on hitting the “Outrage Button” anyway. It will keep you busy, and it is still pretty quiet here in Texas.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
For some people the issue is economic, but one shouldn’t have to make an economic argument on questions of discrimination.
I agree. It should be a medical question. And if you are too poor to afford it, then you ought to get help. I am not Catholic, but my GUESS is, they aren’t too hot on vasectomies either. Plus, I only have experience with my plan, where birth control pills were covered, but far less than my deductible.
But I understand there were many non-Catholic health care plans that did not cover birth control pills. Is this incorrect?
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I think Squeeky is another invented character along with Billy Bob Neck and Cowboy Joe Salvitorio. Even Billy Bob Neck never said anything that stupid. My hat is off to you Squeeky. You made me laugh.
Why is it an insult to say that SF had an agenda to go to Georgetown? You still have to have credentials to get accepted into Georgetown even if you have an agenda. She won all around- name recognition and fame of heroic proportions almost. She just was admitted to the California Bar in December of 2012 yet has been credited with representing various victims throughout law school. I hope to see her name in the future associated with the cause of human trafficking, particularly children, now that she is a full fledged attorney.
The biggest problem I have with her testimony is the use of the anecdotal story of her friend. Not as important is that the friend herself did not testify. But my point nonetheless, is that Georgetown did allow the medical use of birth control pills. What happened to her friend was medical malpractice. She should not have been denied the pill prescription. Catholic teaching allows it. The Georgetown policy allowed it. (SF said “technically” allowed it). A bunch of lawyers couldn’t get a case out of that at Georgetown?
I
Sure… Mexico and Canada. Maybe. A few of them.
Some of them have traveled. I live in Australia and just got back from a trip to Vietnam and Cambodia.
Travelers make up Squeeky Fromme’s “unexperienced elite” and are not to be trusted.
I didn’t want to imply that I agree with the outcome from my own religious view. I won’t discuss religion here, but I felt wrong to imply I was in agreement with SF.
keith:
Well, Australians and New Zealanders are a lot smarter and more sane than Americans. They are able to have more government that works better than ours. But, they are not insane, and caught up in politics the same way Americans are. Who knows, but that one day I may be living there myself.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Unless, of course, they are a properly anti-intellectual Republican like the Donald or Rafael Cruz or President Bush. Then their elite upbringing shouldn’t be held against them.
It’s not an insult to Sandra Fluke; it’s an insult to logic and reason.
EDIT: That is, it’s an insult to logic and reason to believe that she “enrolled at Georgetown with the express purpose of fighting for the school to pay for students’ birth control.”
Rather than, you know, enrolling at Georgetown to obtain a law degree at one of the country’s pre-eminent law schools.
And what’s with all the “…and ZOMG, she’s thirty!” stuff?
I cited a source above (way above) that shows she took the policy into account when applying. The source was not biased against her. It is flattering to her that she would have such an impact. Why do you think she was chosen to testify? Because she had not been making noise about the issue? It’s called activism, and if you examine what SF has been doing since college, it is activism.
I think the story behind her being 30 is that at first she was portrayed as a 23 year old, who would not be as worldly or experienced as a 30 year old. I am not sure, though, if that is to what you referred.
“”girls”? Hmmm.
Anyway the cost isn’t $9 a month for most women. It is the least expensive generic option offered by some providers in some states.
It’s clear that for many women (most, I suspect) the simple generic version isn’t an option.
http://health.costhelper.com/birth-control-pills.html
The “story behind her” is that Rush Limbaugh thought it was appropriate to call her a “slut” and a “prostitute” because of what she said.
If he hadn’t done that I suspect the general public would never have heard of Ms. Fluke.
The quote from the article you cited (way above) is:
What I get from this is that she chose to attend Georgetown, and in the process of researching her future school discovered this was the case, but enrolled anyway and embarked on a crusade to get the policy changed.
That is about 180 degrees away from her choosing to go to school at Georgetown because she knew she could pick a fight there. Although it seems that on occasion people do visit places because they know they can pick a fight there, but I digress.
I’d not seen that as an assertion before; it would be interesting to know if that is in fact the case.
This is exactly what I get from the quote as well. I can’t say exactly in the process she figure out Georgetown’s health care details, but it is pretty clear that it was a secondary factor to the quality of education she would receive.
Or to put it differently, Sandra Fluke would have chosen Georgetown regardless of the details of their health insurance policies. If Georgetown had provided contraceptive coverage, I don’t think Sandra Fluke would have chosen a different school without it just so that she could have an issue to advocate for on campus.
There is a world of diference between “taking something into account” and it being the imputus for a choice. The article you cited quotes her saying, “I decided I was absolutely not willing to compromise the quality of my education in exchange for my health care.”
I “took into account” my commute when I applied to Georgetown. I decided I wasn’t going to let a longer drive to school comprise the quality of my education. This is very different than saying Georgetown was accross the street from my apartment, so I chose to go there.
Her reproductive health care was something she considered important to her so she researched it. From her quote, she chose Georgetown IN SPITE OF the insurance policy rather than BECAUSE OF. And being the lawyerly/advocate type, she decided rather than roll over and accept the thing she didn’t like about the school, she would try to change it.
Given that she also said that 65% of women reported that university medical staff questioned them about their need for prescriptions, I think it is pretty clear that the university was encouraging the insurance company to be as restrictive as possible with their coverage. If the woman cannot cover $100 a month out of pocket for contraception, she is not going to have the money or time to spend fighting the the insurance bureaucracy. Even if she wins, she will have lost based on the resources she would be required to use. And that is exactly what the insurance companies are hoping for.
Well, if one is an activist going into a university, specifically checks out their health care policy on contraception, then enrolls in said university, and finally, immediately goes into a three year activist struggle to change said policy . . .then is it really unreasonable to hold the OPINION that is why she chose that particular university?
Because frankly, neither you nor I have any special insight into her mind, and all that either of us have is an OPINION or GUESS. I don’t think your opinion is unreasonable. I don’t think mine is either.
I don’t feel any particular need to castigate you, or your opinion. Can you say the same about me?
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
That was her testimony and maybe those numbers are accurate, maybe they are not. (65%). I don’t know if she was citing a report from a survey or what. In any case, if there were so many, that is an even better case because if medical evidence showed they needed the prescription, it seems to be a no brainer. Lawyers take cases where you don’t pay unless you win. You don’t have to come up with resources. Some will do cases pro bono for the publicity and/or the cause. The policy was not being followed, at least in the case of her friend.
Bingo!
I do think you should apologize to G for your earlier comment. I understand your reasoning about anecdotal cases, but G has been a long time commenter, and he shared something very personal about a loved one. Sometimes being right is not as important as being compassionate. I struggle with “being right” myself.
Yup.
Yes. It is when she explicitly says that she wasn’t going to let the lack of contraceptive healthcare prevent her from getting the best education. I’ll start by noting that anyone would be foolish to attend a university without checking out their health insurance policies. But using JoZeppy’s analogy, if I say the lack of mass transit from my community to the university will not get in the way of my getting the best education possible and then once I get to the university I try and advocate for better mass transit from my home, it would be pretty unreasonable to hold the opinion that fighting for mass transit is why I chose the school. You say that Ms Fluke is an activist with the implication that she chose a university where she could advocate for something on campus. But that ignores her history of being an advocate/activist for causes in the communities she was in. She could have chosen from numerous worthy causes in the DC area to focus her attention on if Georgetown had included contraceptive coverage. And there is no reason to believe that she would have gone to a different school in order to advocate for contraception there.
They take cases when the amount of the settlement will yield fees for them that not only pay for their effort, but their risk. I don’t we’re talking about that amount of money in this situation.
A gentleman would not call a lady a “slut” or a “prostitute” absent the lady having a criminal record, and even then he might well hold his tongue.
I don’t care if Ms. Fluke is 20 or 30. I don’t care if she went to Georgetown specifically to pick a fight.
All that is important is the question of policy. Should the students who actually pay for the insurance have any say in what the coverage is? May a religious institution impose its values on the insurance policy the students pay for, even if those students are of a different faith? What if the employer is a business instead of a religious institution? What if the management of the employer changes from atheist to Christian Scientist and health insurance changes (to say the least.)
Yet Squeaky (who names herself after a terrorist) delights in calling people names.
I have nothing against “G.” He has usually been very nice to me, and I overlook his name calling as par for the course when people fight on the Internet. I don’t take that kind of stuff personally. I do hope he takes my advice and takes some of that personal stuff off the thread if he can. He can leave the name calling stuff there if that is his opinion.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
A powerful and accurate characterization. Her breakdown first started to show in a contemptible article she wrote about Trayvon Martin.
Pain and suffering? Damages also depend on the make-up of the community, how much they will mete out. There are firms/solo practitioners that will take even somewhat nominal cases. Strings of them add up.
Lawsuits seeking damages arising out of health insurance policies covered by ERISA (which is most health insurance) are limited to actual damages, but include attorneys fees. I understand it is difficult to find a lawyer to take such a case, since the actual damages are often quite low. The circumstances may be frustrating to the people suing, but if they should have paid $1,000 and instead were charged $2,000, they have damages of $1,000. Attorneys fees may be limited to what a judge would think a rational person would pay in legal fees to collect $1,000.
To put this in Ms. Fluke’s situation, assume her insurance does not cover contraception, which instead costs her $1,200 per year. That’s the limit of her damages.
As an employer, I’m happy about those limitations.
Frankly, the big thing I found out when we started fighting about this stuff was that Georgetown FORCES its students to have health coverage. That was kind of news to me, sooo I looked up Texas and most colleges here don’t require it. Embarassingly, the one I went to is one of the few that does and I never really knew it. I know they asked for my health insurance card, which I had one, so I never thought anymore about it. But to me, this is a much bigger economic issue than birth control pills.
As far as whether students should have a say, in insurance they are forced to buy, of course. That is an easy answer, yes. Now, should the University have to agree with them, no. If they know up front what the rules are, and they don’t like them, or can’t live with them, then don’t go there. Go to a Baptist or Episcopalian college. Real simple. The world doesn’t revolve around Sandra Fluke.
Can the states regulate the permissible plans? Yes, they legally can. Georgetown is in D.C., so I don’t know for sure who regulates the insurance business, or even if it is regulated there. I believe that many non-Catholic health plans did not offer contraception coverage until Obamacare. So, if I am correct, what is it exactly that made Georgetown such a target?
Religious faiths and beliefs should be respected by the law as long as they are not too far out there. Which is how the courts basically see it.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Why is going to the school and advocating for a change that the vast majority of students support such a deplorable course of action?
People who decide to go to law school generally aren’t wall flowers. They consist of what most people would call activists, fighters, and type A personalities. They also have a tendency to over thing and over research everything. I’m guessing there are plenty of other things that Ms Fluke researched before deciding to go to GULC. Some I’m guessing weren’t all that important in making her decision, like access to mass transit, and others she gave more weight to, like the quality of GULC’s legal clinics. l’m guessing the health care policy probably feel somewhere in the middle.
Your opinion on why she chose GULC is not only unreasonable, but it is genuinely stupid and ignorant. GULC is one of the best law schools in the US. Not only is it one of the best, but it is located in Washington, DC (the closest law school that is ranked higher than GULC is UVA, which is located in the middle of no where Virginia). It not only trivalizes prestige of attending Georgetown, it trivializes the commitment and effort attending law school in general takes. That, and you base your entire opinion on smear piece from a right wing rag.
That’s because you’re an idiot. Not all opinions are created equal. You base your opinions on a right wing smear job about her. I base my opinion on the fact that there are 200 ABA accredited law schools in the US, and as of this year only 13 are ranked higher than Georgetown. There are tens of thousands of law students and even more lawyers who would have given their left nut (or overy) to attend Georgetown. If you think someone is going to decide to go to law school, picking one of the toughest ones in the US, just to pick a fight with the administration over birth control, you really need to get some perspective in life.
No I can’t. I also can’t say you don’t deserve much worse. You’re offensive, willfully ignorant, and place intellectual mediocrity on a pedestal. Why would you think that anyone would think that type of behavior is OK?
I think I am the one who is supposed to be “deplorable”??? As far as Sandra Fluke, I find her more lame, inane, and whiny. Which means she has a great future ahead of her in the Democratic Party!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
“FORCES”? Well……how about requires? Here is the wording from the Georgetown website:
“For all students, good health is essential to achieving educational goals. Because maintaining good health requires access to health care when you need it, Georgetown University requires most students, according to registration criteria, to have health insurance.”
http://studenthealth.georgetown.edu/insurance/
And further it says:
“Most full-time students in a degree program are required to have adequate health insurance. A charge for the Premier Plan appears on students’ accounts when their course registration meets the eligibility criteria. Enrollment in the Premier Plan can be waived if a student has other adequate coverage.”
What do you find so unreasonable about that?
The only world that seems to revolve around Ms. Fluke is yours.
More irony meters biting the dust.
A simple “no” would have sufficed. I noticed that you made a lot of guesses, went outside the facts presented, ignored what she herself said about researching the health care provisions, and ignored her history. Supposedly because you dislike the source(s) which presented the underlying facts, which do not seem to be in dispute.
What is in dispute is the CONCLUSION, about which you have your opinion, and I have mine. Apparently, you are of the OPINION that One L’s are extremely self-confident and have loads of time to complain to TPTB about the availability of birth control pills.
I prefer my perspective.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
OK. So why does her advocacy for something she believes in and that the overwhelming majority of her peers support make her lame, inane or whiny?
My irony meter just exploded.
This is about her friend who it appears was illegally denied coverage. I said possible medical malpractice if the doctor was part of it. I don’t know. In a culture of lawyers, someone could have filed the case for her. About ERISA:
Seventh Circuit Finds That ERISA Allows Monetary Damages as Part of Equitable Remedies
Employee Benefits Law Update
On June 13, 2013, the Seventh Circuit ruled that a plan beneficiary could bring a breach of fiduciary duty claim seeking monetary damages relating to a decision to deny benefits as appropriate equitable relief under the Employment Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”). This case, which is based on a recent ruling from the United States Supreme Court, Cigna Corp. v. Amara, 131 S. Ct. 1866 (2011), is a notable departure from previous holdings of courts in the Seventh Circuit and other courts that had severely limited the ability of a plan beneficiary to seek monetary remedies for a breach of fiduciary claim.
http://www.quarles.com/erisa-equitable-remedies-2013/
I haven’t researched more for other circuits, but the Supreme Court case will have an impact.
Uh, because she, and her fellow students knew they were attending a CATHOLIC university, and that the thing they were seeking is both cheap and widely available. If you are having trouble with that, then imagine Ms. Fluke attending The University of Mohammed, and complaining because the campus cafeteria didn’t have bacon, ham sandwiches, and pork rinds.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to how college students in general have tended to act in the past 50 years, but there’s a goodly number of them that have idealist/activist streak to them. Student activists have not only been successful in organizing to change their own university’s policies, but even national policy (just how many freedom riders and other civil rights activists were college students). And particularly when you’re talking about law school, and even more so Georgetown, being an activist isn’t considered a negative.
And again, from the quote Charo provided, all indication is that she chose Georgetown because of the quality of the institution, and inspite of the health insurance policy. Why should she sacrifice the quality of her education over the issue? She did what one would expect of a Georgetown University Law Center student to do. Fight for change.
Georgetown was only a target in the sense that she was advocating for change while she was attending. Her testimony was targeting Georgetown specifically, although she drew her examples from her experience at GULC. Her testimony was trageting what was the current debate about permitting religiously affiliated organizations from being exempted from the ACA’s requirement that birth control be part of the minimum coverage package.
Being part of a religion does not exempt one from the laws of the US. The Constitution guarentees the free exercise of religion. It does not grant carte blanche to people of faith to do whatever they please in all aspects of their lives. Running a law school has very little to do with practicing a religion (particularly when you’re speaking about GULC) or the ministerial role of the church. I can see little reason why a law school associated with a religion should have the privilege of wedging itself between a woman and her doctor.
This is why I shouldn’t allow off-topic discussions.
How much pain and suffering can you get for $100 in birth control (or $9)?
Strings of cases add up; they add up to more work. There are huge class action settlements, but this is not huge, and not a lot of money.
Try to make plausible arguments.
If you want me just to hush, and let it die down, say so and I will. This is why I put the Birther stuff into a separate blog a few years ago. We are too strange of bedfellows to bring politics into this. At least on the social stuff.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
After months of paying over $100 out of pocket, she just couldn’t afford her medication anymore, and she had to stop taking it. I learned about all of this when I walked out of a test and got a message from her that, in the middle of the night in her final-exam period, she’d been in the emergency room. She’d been there all night in just terrible, excruciating pain. She wrote to me: “It was so painful I woke up thinking I’d been shot.” Without her taking the birth control, a massive cyst the size of a tennis ball had grown on her ovary. She had to have surgery to remove her entire ovary as a result. (Testimony of Sandra Fluke).
Breach of fiduciary duty, denial of claim- see ERISA case in my above comment
This case wouldn’t even need to be part of a class action. Pain, surgery, losing an ovary, potential fertility issues, interruption of education, I would call that pain and suffering.
Time to hush now.
Actually, no, a simple no would not have sufficed. Your statements merit serious rebuke. And actually, no, I did not ignore what she said about herself. Nor did I dregard the underlying facts in the sources you presented. I just pointed out that their conclusions aren’t remotely supported by the very facts they site. Ms. Fluke said she researched the policy and would not let that policy get in the way of a quality education. That is radically different for attending a university for the express purpose fighting a policy, and is a conclusion that has no support. I also didn’t ingore her history. The thing is, her history is not praticularly remarkable for a law student, and even less so a Georgetown student. She has a history of advocacy in a broad range of issues that effect women. A good portion of GULC have a history in some form of advocacy. It’s not surprising nor is it the basis to come to the insane conclusion that she chose GULC for the express purpose of challenging the birth control policy. If that were the case, she could have simply gone for a fluff MA at the main campus of Georgetown that would have required far less effort and dedication.
And as I said before, not all opinions are created equal. And yes..1L are pretty confident, and that usually last up until finals of the first semester. If you got into law school, you were probably pretty successful as an undergrad. You were probably also pretty active as an undergrad. You’re probably also a bit of an alpha personality. So stirring things up isn’t particularly shocking.
Well, you’ve already established that you have little care for facts, education, or intellect, so what else do you have.
I’ll stick with my perspective, which is based on what she actually said, not what wild leaps of conclusions a right wing hit piece had…oh, that and also having actually attended the law school in question.
*sigh*
Even if I were to accept that ridiculous premise that contraceptive coverage can be compared to cafeteria food choices, we would have to add to your hypothetical that most students at the University of Mohammed, including Muslims, want bacon, ham sandwiches and pork rinds to be available in the cafeteria for those who wish to purchase them. In that case I would be critical of the institution for being resistant to a logical, popular change and supportive of the students and their leader. Pretty much the same as with Ms Fluke.
How could you find her anything since you’ve refused to listen to her testimony or read anything she’s written. Your basing your opinion completely on what other people have said. This doesn’t make you sound like a credible person.
Interfering with medical practice, by denying coverage of a class of prescription medicine, a class which has multiple medical purposes, on purely ideological grounds related to one of those purposes, is “too far out there”. How do states and courts react to parents and sects that refuse to seek treatment for minors?
OK, now I’m really disappointed. That would either be
“As for Sandra Fluke, I…”
or
“As far as Sandra Fluke is concerned, I…”
I’m sorry, but there are some lines that should not be crossed.
BTW…you do know that the CATHOLIC university you speak of has a kosher kitchen? I’m guessing that at some point, some Jewish students did some “advocacy” to make that happen.
yeah . . . Texas.
Did Kinky Friedman attend Georgetown?
This response from you was worse than your first. It merely demonstrates that you have no sense of shame or awareness of your behavior.
I have an extremely extensive history of posting here for many years. Myself and others have shared certain personal information as relevant anecdotes, very selectively, when we’ve felt its important and helps to explain our understanding of a situation. That is certainly NOT going after “pity”, which is not something I’ve looked for or done here. We all have a right to both personal privacy here and also to reveal personal information about our own lives or situations, as we see fit. You do not get to dictate what others can express or share about their lives.
I rarely bring up or mention difficult or personal tragedies in my real life and it was a very hard and emotional decision to touch upon our endometriosis situation. I left out so, so very much about the associated problems, costs, personal life ramifications, impacts and additional health problems that her endometriosis has led to, because it is a very personal and painful topic to broach and I was certainly NOT looking for “pity” and didn’t want to say more than what I felt was necessary to illustrate my SOLE point on that ovarian cysts are not all that rare, nor are they trivial and that yes, something as seemingly simple as birth control can be a vital preventative and unfortunately necessarily ongoing treatment to prevent even more serious damage from occurring. Beyond that, my difficult decision to express a direct and personal experience with such issues is meant to tangentially explain why I, even though I am a male, can not just empathize, but also understand and see women’s health issues (and especially reproductive health issues) –In terms of access to testing, treatment, prevention, care and yes, medical insurance coverage too – as a VERY serious and important matter.
YOU are the one with the bizarre and juvenile personal obsession with Sandra Fluke. I have not once referenced her or weighed in at all with any opinion of her. It is the health issues themself, in particular as related to situations of ovarian cysts and their treatment in which I had interest and in which I have weighed in upon; not some mere spokesperson who brought up the topic. While that may be your obsessive focus, it has never been mine, so take your “cowardly…for trying to act like it has nothing do do with…Fluke” nonsense and shove it! Again, your unhinged response demonstrates that you cannot act like an adult and respond to what I actually said and instead have to resort to invented and weak straw-man in order to inject unwarranted personal attacks.
Further, in your extremely uncalled for (and offensively laughable) statements in regards to my wife, believe me, I have NOTHING to apologize for on this. This is a very, VERY serious and important issue to her and as painful and reluctant as we are to discuss this anywhere, she is quite the adamant advocate for women’s reproductive health issues, BECAUSE of what she’s directly experienced and will quite passionately and emotionally broach the painful topic in similar discussions, when she feels serious concerns and needs are being belittled by selfish ignorance. Trust me, if you had the gall to say something so callous, appalling and offensive to her face (or most other women in a similar circumstance), you’d better hope that there was someone like me present to hold them back from very forcefully “responding” and shredding you down to nothing.
Currently, you have demonstrated neither a sense of decency nor shame and your statements and behavior has been mainly indecent and shameful and only spiraling further downward, IMHO.
I am certainly not kowtowing to your latest passive/aggressive bullying attempt to remove ANY of my posts, as I stand by them and am not ashamed of them, nor am I in any way ashamed of my wife or of putting a very real and personal face on the serious health dangers and impact of ovarian cysts and why certain forms of birth control (and no, the “generic” can’t be used in her case nor in many similar cases) are medically necessary in those situations.
You are free to ask Dr. C. to remove your vile responses, but what I’ve stated, including my characterization of how your latest behavior and actions come across, stand. That is what it was, not silly “name calling”, which has no valid meaning, but my very serious opinion of characterizing your latest, very baffling and sudden personality shift and extreme callousness.
To try to now proclaim you have “nothing against” me, well, that just shows an extreme lack of emotional intelligence (look it up) and social awareness for what your responses to my statement have been – they are unnecessarily and excessively rude and are personal insults and attacks towards both myself, my wife and towards anyone who has to live with such challenging medical conditions, whether directly or as a family member.
I don’t understand what has suddenly gotten into you, but yes, I truly think you are way-out-of-line and acting in a sociopathic manner. That is NOT “name calling”, which is just your juvenile escape mechanism to glibly deny any personal responsibility for your unwillingness to look in the mirror and reflect upon your bizarre and poor behavior. No, those words are merely apt descriptors for how you are coming across. May you one day regain some sense of compassion and moral compass beyond your own righteous selfishness and narcissism.
G:
May you one day just regain some sense.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
May you soon gain a sense of shame.
Hmmm. Maybe you are right after all. OK, I am going to go ahead and apologize in advance for my remarks above about bacon, ham sandwiches, and pork rinds in case anybody ever got a case of lockjaw from some bad ham.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky: You started off in this thread being offensive and insulting and have now doubled down.
G was pointing out that when folks have a medical issue that is between them and their doctor. And that is how it should be. I should not have to go to my employer and say my kid is sick and then have to debate that maybe little Johnny shouldn’t have played in the rain or that blood transfusions are morally prohibited.
John Reilly:
I don’t have anything to be ashamed about, and I am not about to act like I do. You may call that “doubling down.” I don’t. If you have a problem with the Catholics and their religious beliefs vis a vis what they are willing to pay for, then either write the Pope, or talk to your state insurance commission.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
She named herself after an assassin. That’s deplorable and bizarre.
Have you no sense of decency at long last?