Pepper sprayed for public safety.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Many people have pointed out that you can't spell Romney without "more" or "money", but how many people recognize that you can't spell Karl Rove without "real" or "lover".

Recognizing the irony in this coming from me: I think you may not understand this "spelling" thing.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Adder

Recognizing the irony in this coming from me: I think you may not understand this "spelling" thing.

And you can't spell "Bladder" without "adder".

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

And you can't spell "Bladder" without "adder".

Good job! You got it right this time!

And you managed to reproduce Rowan Atkinson's material.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by sgtclub

Discuss:

No.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by sgtclub

He wants to negotiate trade agreements, which wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. I'm no fan of the Donald, but from personal experience know he is a tough negotiator.

I think it would be a great idea. But then, I also hope to one day see a Washington where Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho is President.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Seems like Obama just totally pwned the GOP on birth control.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Seems like Obama just totally pwned the GOP on birth control.

what power does he have to require insurers to offer free contraception? seems like he just makes himself look good while not providing women anything.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

what power does he have to require insurers to offer free contraception? seems like he just makes himself look good while not providing women anything.

I'm not sure he has any power to require insurers to offer anything, except that he has the power to decide what sort of insurance will get get employers a tax deduction. Catholic-oriented employers who don't want to their female employees having access to contraception can just decline to give them health coverage period, or decline to give them the kind of coverage that gets them federal tax advantages, and there's nothing the President can do about it. Turns out they want to have their cake and eat it too.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Seems like Obama just totally pwned the GOP on birth control.

Amanda Marcotte agrees with me:

After two solid weeks of Republicans rapidly escalating attacks on contraception access under the banner of "religous freedom," Obama finally announced what the White House is proposing an accomodation of religiously affiliated employers who don't want to offer birth control coverage as part of their insurance plans. In those situations, the insurance companies will have to reach out directly to employees and offer contraception coverage for free, without going through the employer. Insurance companies are down with the plan, because as Matt Yglesias explained at Moneybox, contraception actually saves insurance companies money, since it's cheaper than abortion and far cheaper than childbirth. Because the insurance companies have to reach out to employees directly, there's very little danger of women not getting coverage because they are unaware they're eligible.

That's the nitty-gritty. The fun part of this is that Obama just pulled a fast one on Republicans. He drew this out for two weeks, letting Republicans work themselves into a frenzy of anti-contraception rhetoric, all thinly disguised as concern for religious liberty, and then created a compromise that addressed their purported concerns but without actually reducing women's access to contraception, which is what this has always been about. (As Dana Goldstein reported in 2010, before the religious liberty gambit was brought up, the Catholic bishops were just demanding that women be denied access and told to abstain from sex instead.) With the fig leaf of religious liberty removed, Republicans are in a bad situation. They can either drop this and slink away knowing they've been punked, or they can double down. But in order to do so, they'll have to be more blatantly anti-contraception, a politically toxic move in a country where 99% of women have used contraception.

My guess is that they'll take their knocks and go home, but a lot of the damage has already been done. Romney was provoked repeatedly to go on the record saying negative things about contraception. Sure, it was in the frame of concern about religious liberty, but as this incident fades into memory, what most people will remember is that Republicans picked a fight with Obama over contraception coverage and lost. This also gave Obama a chance to highlight this benefit and take full credit for it. Obama needs young female voters to turn out at the polls in November, and hijacking two weeks of the news cycle to send the message that he's going to get you your birth control for free is a big win for him in that department. I expect to see some ads in the fall showing Romney saying hostile things about contraception and health care reform, with the message that free birth control is going away if he's elected. It's all so perfect that I'm inclined to think this was Obama's plan all along.

(That went up 20 minutes after my post....)

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Amanda Marcotte agrees with me:



(That went up 20 minutes after my post....)

what did he do? can you say it in English? a Catholic company doesn't want to offer contraception, so an insurance company associated with it must or the company won't get a tax credit? how can he change the tax credit w/o changing the HCR law? It's unconstitutional already, I get that, but he was given the ability to decide which companies get tax credits, really? Plus, i though he wasn't going to change the health care each of us get?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Plus, i though he wasn't going to change the health care each of us get?

Damn, you mean he's increasing coverage on birth control? What's next, fixing your teeth? Horrors.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Damn, you mean he's increasing coverage on birth control? What's next, fixing your teeth? Horrors.

no. i don't think he did anything, other than lie to all of you again.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

what did he do? can you say it in English? a Catholic company doesn't want to offer contraception, so an insurance company associated with it must or the company won't get a tax credit?

The requirement falls on insurers, not on the company. The company doesn't pay for it. (Insurers don't mind because contraception is cheaper than pregnancies.)

how can he change the tax credit w/o changing the HCR law?

I don't think this has anything to do with HCR. It has to do with the executive branch's authority to implement the provisions in the tax code which give a deduction to employers who provide health insurance to employees.

It's unconstitutional already, I get that, but he was given the ability to decide which companies get tax credits, really?

Congress did that long ago.

Plus, i though he wasn't going to change the health care each of us get?

You could get contraception before ("you" in the sense that you have lady parts), but there was a co-pay. The change is to eliminate the co-pay. Creeping socialism, right?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

The change is to eliminate the co-pay. Creeping socialism, right?

no. this reeks more of Stalinism.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

"Obama’s economic strategy has been a victim of political miscalculations more or less since day one. Obama’s economic team has been consistently modest in what it considers politically possible. ... It’s almost as though the Obama economic team — with the notable exception of Christy Romer — was consistently looking for excuses to do less rather than more."