Rubio

[3rdnlng]

Dear Juror#8, I now accept your apology.

 

 

[Buftex]

 

 

So, when you and LA "jerk, jerk" to Ann Coulter, do you do it in the same room? Gross.

[3rdnlng]

So, when you and LA "jerk, jerk" to Ann Coulter, do you do it in the same room? Gross.

 

 

You know I'm lng (long) but since LA is in LA and I'm on the east coast it would be highly unlikely, but if you want to fantasize about it go ahead.

[Buftex]

You know I'm lng (long) but since LA is in LA and I'm on the east coast it would be highly unlikely, but if you want to fantasize about it go ahead.

 

You can use Skype for your circle-jerks.

[Jim in Anchorage]

I have a feeling his current occupation is "Professional OWS Protester."

That seems to fit somehow. Hell I hear a community organizer gig is open in Chicago. Wonderful opportunity for a stardust in my eye fix the world type.

[Magox]

 

 

 

 

In regards to the Obama adm. stance on this position, they better do a 180, if not I see this as being a significant issue that would undoubtedly have an effect on the margins, and in states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio, if you piss off enough catholics, in these battleground states, a few percentage points could make the difference.

 

 

An outraged Dolan called the presidents decision an unprecedented line in the sand and penned a homily accusing HHS of promoting sterilization and contraception. Dolan added: Never before in our U.S. history has the federal government forced citizens to directly purchase what violates our beliefs.

 

On Sunday, Atlantas archbishop angrily denounced what he called a direct attack on our religious freedom and our First Amendment rights, and four clerics vowed unspecified nonviolent resistance.

 

Yet most damaging to Obama was a scathing Washington Post column on Monday by liberal Catholic E.J. Dionne, typically an ally, who accused the president of throwing his progressive Catholic allies under the bus while empowering those inside the Church who had originally sought to derail the health care law.

 

Dionnes under-the-bus remark was a reference to the conflicts within the church over the federal health law, which sometimes boiled down to a battle between nuns who supported the reforms, including Keehan, and the more conservative priests and prelates, men who dominate the church hierarchy.

 

Most Catholics dont support every teaching of their church, but they have been souring on Obama, largely over economic issues. Romney holds a commanding 53-to-40 percent lead over Obama among white Catholics, according to a Pew poll taken early last month. Obama still holds a narrow lead among all Catholic voters, including Hispanics, but his support among white churchgoers has declined steadily since last fall, the poll showed.

 

Obama beat John McCain by 9 points among Catholics in 2008 after trailing him throughout the year, in part on his strength with Latino voters. That isnt likely to happen this year, which could be a major factor in western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, Indiana, Missouri and New Hampshire, all states with substantial populations of older, white Catholics, already skeptical of Obamas leadership.

 

The Catholic vote is in jeopardy here if the president forces Catholic institutions to pay for contraception, Kristen Day , executive director of Democrats for Life of America, told POLITICO Pro late last year.

 

This is what I was talking about, and looks as if he's not gonna change his view, remember all those Reagan Democrats/Independents in the rust belt? Those guys were never enamored with he president as it is, yet they reluctantly broke with the president in 08 ("gun toting" comment see PA.), considering the poor economy, US soaring debt, an issue like this could be the final straw, and as I noted earlier, it very well may be enough to make a difference on the margins in which these battleground states could very well be determined by just a few percentage points.

 

And from what I've been reading, when you include the SUPER PACS, Conservatives very well may end up with more money than the liberals (Obama is underperforming in campaign raising relative to expectations)this year and when you have a guy as politically smart as Karl Rove is who is set to raise $240 Million , you better believe he is gonna hammer this issue over and over and over in this critical ("guntoting") rustbelt region.

 

 

Also, could you just imagine if Rubio accepted the VP selection, who better to discuss with the Latino overwhelmingly catholic population regarding this issue?

 

Turn out the lights....

 

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/72345_Page2.html#ixzz1lEQvABsV

Edited February 2, 2012 by Magox

[Magox]

“You may not agree with what that religion agrees. That’s not the point. The point is that the First Amendment still applies, religious freedom still exists,” said Rubio. “This isn’t even a social issue; it’s a constitutional issue.”

 

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/72711_Page2.html#ixzz1lzarRHF4

 

Another quote from Rubio, and he makes the right point. I wouldn't be surprised if social conservatives such as Rick Santorum and others get so emboldened over this issue that they overplay their hand. If they go too far on the social side of things, it will turn off voters.

 

This has to be about too much centralized power and the overreach of government. Yet another example of a politician like Rubio who is wise beyond his years.

 

Btw, I just heard the White House caved in with a compromise. From what I read it will be based on Hawaii's plan, where they refer them to insurers who provide this sort of care.

 

I imagine they strategically did this today to undercut the message of the GOP candidates at the CPAC convention.

Edited February 10, 2012 by Magox

[LeviF]

One day, Rubio will adhere to the Constitution a little too much for the taste of the Republican bigwigs, and suddenly he'll have no money for a reelection campaign.

[Cinga]

I should be taking the DC Tom route on this... BUT!!!!!

 

Have you read Minor v. Happersett?

 

Do you know what natural-born citizen means?

 

Edit: woops, looks like you already answered my second question.

 

 

 

For those of you who are slower, the answer is "no."

 

I see your friend has a TM on "idiot" and "moron", I will try to be humble in my reply, and ask you ignorant morons (I used the plural DCT, so as not to infringe) if you have read Minor v Happersett, and if so, where am I wrong??

 

F*@#ing idiots that post a disagreement with nothing to back up their s@#t but a blanket piss me off

[DC Tom]

I see your friend has a TM on "idiot" and "moron", I will try to be humble in my reply, and ask you ignorant morons (I used the plural DCT, so as not to infringe) if you have read Minor v Happersett, and if so, where am I wrong??

 

F*@#ing idiots that post a disagreement with nothing to back up their s@#t but a blanket piss me off

 

Oh, Christ...

 

Minor v Happersett is irrelevent, it merely ruled in passing the women are, in fact, citizens, and defined "citizenship" as "being born of citizen parents within the jurisdiction of the United States".

 

But it does not establish the definition of "natural-born citizen", nor does it establish any distinction between "natural-born" and "naturalized". Which is the key point in your ridiculous and ignorant Obama conspiracy: there are only two types of citizenship: you're born a citizen, or you're not and later on become one de jure. There's no gray area. There is absolutely no "Well, you were born a citizen, but you weren't natural born" status.

 

And thus, the only practical definition of "natural born citizen" is "born a citizen", which is defined by 8 U.S.C. § 1401. Paragraph (a):

 

...a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof...

 

Grants Rubio citizenship from birth, hence he is "natural born". And Paragraph (e)...

 

...as "a person born in an outlying possession of the United States of parents one of whom is a citizen of the United States who has been physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a continuous period of one year at any time prior to the birth of such person".

 

...applies to Obama, which should answer you none-too-subtle and completely asinine "I know... brings up a few other questions huh??" statement.

 

Now shut the !@#$ up, dipshit.

[LeviF]

!@#$ you, Tom.

[DC Tom]

!@#$ you, Tom.

 

Like he's going to pay any !@#$ing attention to it anyway.

[Nanker]

Like he's going to pay any !@#$ing attention to it anyway.

 

 

... or pay you any royalties for trademark infringement.

[UConn James]

Na, I'm gonna annoint him, cuz thats whats gonna happen.

 

 

Btw, he will continue to prove himself, watch and see.

 

 

 

In regards to the Obama adm. stance on this position, they better do a 180, if not I see this as being a significant issue that would undoubtedly have an effect on the margins, and in states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio, if you piss off enough catholics, in these battleground states, a few percentage points could make the difference.

 

 

 

And this is before all this **** is happening, if this thing carries on, those numbers will drop, and there are alot of Catholic prolife independent and moderate Democrats in the rust belt region.

 

Well they did a 40* turn. Is that enough?

 

This "compromise" of forcing insurers to take a $ hit on providing abortifacients to employees of religious institutions isn't a compromise. It's backhandedly forcing the institution to do something that violates its teachings, rather than forcing them to directly provide them. What's the real difference? Employees are still getting free services to prevent or destroy pregnancy, the insurers are getting that $ from somewhere (are Catholics' policy rates going to decrease? I hardly think so!), and this just smacks of a smoke and mirrors pre-election move.

 

To say nothing of HHS Sec'y Sebilius's guidelines for what constitutes a religious institution. Which would seem to preclude Catholic charities. Per Krauthammer:

 

Criterion 1: A “religious institution” must have “the inculcation of religious values as its purpose.” But that’s not the purpose of Catholic charities; it’s to give succor to the poor. That’s not the purpose of Catholic hospitals; it’s to give succor to the sick. Therefore, they don’t qualify as “religious” — and therefore can be required, among other things, to provide free morning-after abortifacients.

 

Criterion 2: Any exempt institution must be one that “primarily employs” and “primarily serves persons who share its religious tenets.” Catholic soup kitchens do not demand religious IDs from either the hungry they feed or the custodians they employ. Catholic charities and hospitals — even Catholic schools — do not turn away Hindu or Jew.

...

This all would be merely the story of contradictory theologies, except for this: Sebelius is Obama’s appointee. She works for him. These regulations were his call. Obama authored both gospels.

 

Therefore: To flatter his faith-breakfast guests and justify his tax policies, Obama declares good works to be the essence of religiosity. Yet he turns around and, through Sebelius, tells the faithful who engage in good works that what they’re doing is not religion at all. You want to do religion? Get thee to a nunnery. You want shelter from the power of the state? Get out of your soup kitchen and back to your pews. Outside, Leviathan rules.

[Magox]

From what I read, the Catholic Bishops are calling it "unacceptable"

 

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement late on Friday declaring that the small alteration President Barack Obama had announced earlier in the day to a regulation that would force all health-care plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives--including those that cause abortion--is 'unacceptable" because, among other things, it does not protect the freedom-of-conscience rights of secular for-profit employers, or secular non-profit employers, or religious insurers, or self-insured religious employers, or individual Americans.

 

The alteration President Obama described Friday says merely that insurance companies providing coverage to employees of religious institutions that object to sterilization, contraception or abortifacients will have to provide free coverage for these things to the employees rather than explicitly include them among the benefits covered by the premiums charged to the religious employer.

 

The regulation will still require individual Americans and private-sector employers to buy, and insurers to provide, insurance coverage that pays for sterilizations, contraception and abortifacients--even if doing so violates their religious beliefs.

 

The bishops expressed their hope that the new regulatory mandates the president described today "appear subject to some measure of change." "But," they said, "we note at the outset that the lack of clear protection for key stakeholdersfor self-insured religious employers; for religious and secular for-profit employers; for secular non-profit employers; for religious insurers; and for individualsis unacceptable and must be corrected."

 

Also there is a good editorial piecethat came out this morning from the WSJ.

 

 

Here's a conundrum: The White House wants to impose its birth-control ideology on all Americans, including those for whom sponsoring or subsidizing such services violates their moral conscience. The White House also wants to avoid a political backlash from this blow to religious freedom. These goals are irreconcilable.

 

So you almost have to admire the absurdity of the new plan President Obama floated yesterday: The government will now write a rule that says the best things in life are "free," including contraception. Thus a political mandate will be compounded by an uneconomic onein other words, behold the soul of ObamaCare.

 

 

Under the original Health and Human Services regulation, all religious institutions except for houses of worship would be required to cover birth control, including hospitals, schools and charities. Under the new rule, which the White House stresses is "an accommodation" and not a compromise, nonprofit religious organizations won't have to directly cover birth control and can opt out. But the insurers they hire to cover their employees can't opt out. If that sounds like a distinction without a difference, odds are you're a rational person.

 

Say Notre Dame decides that its health plan won't cover birth control on moral grounds. A faculty member wants such coverage, so Notre Dame's insurer will then be required to offer the benefit as an add-on rider anyway, at no out-of-pocket cost to her, or to any other worker or in higher premiums for the larger group.

 

But wait. Supposedly the original rule was necessary to ensure "access" to contraceptives, which can cost up to $600 a year as Democratic Senators Jeanne Shaheen, Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray wrote in these pages this week. The true number is far less, but where does that $600 or whatever come from, if not from Notre Dame and not the professor?

 

Insurance companies won't be making donations. Drug makers will still charge for the pill. Doctors will still bill for reproductive treatment. The reality, as with all mandated benefits, is that these costs will be borne eventually via higher premiums. The balloon may be squeezed differently over time, and insurers may amortize the cost differently over time, but eventually prices will find an equilibrium. Notre Dame will still pay for birth control, even if it is nominally carried by a third-party corporation.

 

This cut-out may appease a few of the Administration's critics, especially on the Catholic leftbut only if they want to be deceived again, having lobbied for the Affordable Care Act that created the problem in the first place. The faithful for whom birth control is a matter of religious conviction haven't been accommodated at all. They'll merely have to keep two sets of accounting books.

 

The real audience for this non-compromise are the many voters shaken that the White House would so willfully erode the American traditions of religious liberty and pluralism, most of whom don't adhere to anti-contraceptive teachings. On a conference call with reporters yesterday, a senior Administration official not known for his policy chops claimed that the new plan was "our intention all along" and that the furor is nothing more than partisan opportunism. Hmmm.

 

We couldn't recall any spirit of conciliation when the birth-control mandate was finalized in January, so we went back and checked the transcript of that call with senior Administration officials. Sure enough, back then they said that the rule "reflects careful consideration of the rights of religious organizations" and that a one-year grace period "really just gives those organizations some additional time to sort out how they will be adjusting their plans."

 

A journalist asked, "Just to be clear, so it's giving them a year to comply rather than giving them a year to in any way change how they feel or the Administration to change how it feels." Another senior official: "That is correct. It gives them a year to comply."

 

Yesterday's new adventure in damage control and bureaucratic improvisation makes the compliance problem much worse. There is simply no precedent for the government ordering private companies to offer a product for free, even if they recoup the costs indirectly. Why not do that with all health benefits and "bend the cost curve" to zero? The shape of the final rule when the details land in the Federal Register is anyone's guess, including the HHS gnomes who are throwing it together on the fly to meet a political deadline.

 

One major problem will be how the rule applies to large organizations that self-insure. Arrangements in which an employer pays for care directly and uses insurers to manage benefits and process claims (not to take on insurance risk) account for the majority of the private market. In these cases there isn't even a free lunch to pretend exists.

 

***

 

As reporting by Bloomberg and ABC this week has made clear, the contraception mandate was fiercely opposed within the Administration, including by Vice President Joe Biden. The larger tragedy is that none of them objected to government health care, which will always take choices away from individuals and arrogate them to an infallible higher power in Washington. Who was it again who claimed that if you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan?

 

 

Gotta love the WSJ, its one to spout a partisan opinion, its another to get into the details and numbers or the nuts and bolts of these pieces of legislation and absolutely eviscerate it with hard cold facts and logic.

 

Here is something else to chew on, so the administration says ok, we are gonna "accommodate" the Bishops with this deal, and just for ***** and giggles, lets say its a fair compromise, but now they are gonna FORCE healt insureres to pick it up for free?

 

 

You freaking tell me that the Executive branch is gonna just mandate a private corporation to pay for something simply to accommodate another entity? Un!@#$ing real These guys are out of their minds.

 

 

Of course you know what the game plan is right?

 

It goes something like this:

 

Whitehouse: You guys are gonna pick up the tab

 

HealthInsurers: we are?

 

Whitehouse: Yeah you are

 

HI: I don't see how you can make us

 

WH: You wanna !@#$ with us?

 

HI: what do you mean?

 

WH: You remember the health care debate? remember how we demonized you?

 

HI: u huh

 

WH: Before you guys were just heartless callous corporations, now you are gonna be heartless callous corporations that hate womens rights to health insurance.

 

HI: That's BS

 

WH: Comply or its game on bitches!

Edited February 11, 2012 by Magox

[Nanker]

I would hope the health care insurers would sue the office of the executive on grounds that the chief executive does not have the power to force them to provide any service to anyone "for free."

[IDBillzFan]

Gotta love the WSJ, its one to spout a partisan opinion, its another to get into the details and numbers or the nuts and bolts of these pieces of legislation and absolutely eviscerate it with hard cold facts and logic.

It really is an embarrassing turn of events. I had not read anything about Biden being against this as is stated at the end, so I have some searching to do. But the article crushes everything at the end with an extension of this administration's line of thinking:

 

Yesterday's new adventure in damage control and bureaucratic improvisation makes the compliance problem much worse. There is simply no precedent for the government ordering private companies to offer a product for free, even if they recoup the costs indirectly. Why not do that with all health benefits and "bend the cost curve" to zero? The shape of the final rule when the details land in the Federal Register is anyone's guess, including the HHS gnomes who are throwing it together on the fly to meet a political deadline.

 

While this entire ordeal is simply going to get worse before it gets better, we should all at least be glad that while this administration is hellbent on ignoring the constitution and doing what it pleases, we can take comfort in the simple fact that Obama isn't wearing a sweater vest.

 

Because that would just be too much to take.

Edited February 11, 2012 by LABillzFan

[Magox]

It really is an embarrassing turn of events. I had not read anything about Biden being against this as is stated at the end, so I have some searching to do. But the article crushes everything at the end with an extension of this administration's line of thinking:

 

 

 

While this entire ordeal is simply going to get worse before it gets better, we should all at least be glad that while this administration is hellbent on ignoring the constitution and doing what it pleases, we can take comfort in the simple fact that Obama isn't wearing a sweater vest.

 

Because that would just be too much to take.

If I was a political operative I could have a field day with this. Their "accommodative" measures is simply put, more fodder for conservatives. Talk about government overreach. So they went from one form of centralized power to another. Like I said earlier, this can not be about contraceptives or abortions or anything of the like, from a conservative point of view, this has to be about Obama's White House and how they want to enter every phase of your life.

 

They've given conservatives a whole new round of ammo for this upcoming elections, not to mention the badly needed enthusiasm that they have been lacking because of the candidates they have. There will be alot more energy once they nominate their guy, simply because the antiObama sentiment is strong, but now you are talking about injecting a whole new stream of enthusiasm with this debacle that the W.H created, you will get social conservatives that will enter into the equation and you will get conservatives and independents that value overreach of government as a voting issue.

 

1) Weak Economy

 

2) $15 Trillion debt With Trillion dollar deficits projected for many years out

 

3) Failed energy policy with solyndra, keystone, Cap and trade (which you can tie that into too much centralized power) and an activist EPA

 

4) Too much centralized power/government overreach

 

 

ALot of issues to go after them with

[B-Man]

The liberals are trying to divert and make it just another "social" issue, but

 

Its not about birth control...........................its about control.

 

 

 

.

[Wacka]

It's about the first amendment.

 

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."