When they will catch on? Bob Casey is now target of the anti-abortion movement.

[madfloridian]

No matter how hard he tried to work out a compromise with the religious right about reproductive rights for women, no matter how hard he tried to please both sides....in the end he is their target now.

When does our side learn that if you start out talking compromise and bipartisanship with extreme ideologues, it will come back to bite you in the butt.

Sarah Posner at Religion Dispatches has a post about with many interesting points.

“Centrist” Advocates of “Common Ground” Endorse Abortion Restrictions in Health Care Bill

Yes, that is the truth. Our centrist Democrats are anti-choice, and they are having trouble now talking their way around it.

Senate Democrats clinched the final vote for cloture -- breaking the Republican's filibuster -- of their health care bill early this morning by securing the vote of Ben Nelson (D-NE) with a restrictive abortion amendment that infuriated both pro-choice and anti-choice activists. The amendment, now part of the bill that the Senate will vote on later this week, would require women purchasing coverage from the insurance exchange with federal subsidies to write two checks: one for their premium, and one for the portion of the premium that would cover a (hypothetical) abortion. In addition, states could opt out of allowing insurers who cover abortion to participate in exchanges in their states -- placing a further impediment on accessing an abortion for some women.

Posner said it was the so-called center who advocate common ground who gave their stamp of approval.

Casey now being targeted.

Casey is now the target of the hard-right anti-abortion movement for even proposing the compromise, with protests outside his office and television ads running against him in his home town. Nelson is in its crosshairs as well, with former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee traveling to Nebraska with the tea partiers to compare him to Judas.

Clearly looking for religious cover, Casey issued a press release Friday touting the support of leaders like Sojourners' Jim Wallis, Evangelicals for Social Action's Ron Sider, and the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference's Samuel Rodriguez.

There you go. He looked for cover from the religious community.

Posner asks if it should even be necessary to get religious approval as political cover. I totally agree.

Is that what we need, though -- making a religious stamp of approval essential political cover? The House Democratic leadership took heat from church-state separation and reproductive health advocates for caving at the eleventh hour to the USCCB. Requiring another religious stamp of approval for a compromise abortion amendment -- even if it angered the Bishops -- doesn't fix the problem that one medical procedure is singled out as requiring a divine imprimatur. (It doesn't appear, notably, that any member of the Senate felt the need to seek the approval of the many pro-choice religious groups who oppose restrictions.)

Exactly right. They did not feel the need for the approval of pro-choice religious groups, or even the pro-choice groups which have traditionally been the allies of the Democrats.

Maybe they need to pay more attention to "the left" "the progressives" who were basically treated as irrelevant the last few week.

They have beat the drum loudly against a women's reproductive rights, and they have basically won. Our party makes a pretense of standing up to them, but in the end they get their way.

Now it is quite common for Democratic forums to treat an abortion as something a woman chooses to do, just like if she decided to get cosmetic surgery. The right wing has managed to take a serious heartbreaking, emotional, wrenching issue and turn into something very casual. It worked very well. Women's rights to birth control methods are also being challenged by the religious right, the anti-choice pharmacists joined by doctors who allow their religious belief to get in the way.

Since our Democrats have held Congress they upped the amount of money for failed abstinence only training by 28 million dollars. Every time it looks like someone will stand up on the issue, they cave again.

I hear the abstinence only funding was still in the bill heading up to vote time. $50 million dollars worth of it.

The fact that the Speaker of the House sat down with Catholic Bishops, the fact that they helped write Ben Nelson's abortion clause....indicate the conversation is getting pretty one-sided.

Under Democratic control the congress refused to allow women in the military access to emergency contraception in 2007. Has that been changed? Not sure.

There has been almost no change in the rights of gays. There are moments when it looks like progress is being made, but then things come to a halt.

The religious right should not be dictating their agenda to our party.

And we should not be tolerating it.

[babylonsister]

1. Because you say so? Bob Casey is probably asleep enjoying the holidays.

I'm on my way to my date with the Sand Man. :thumbsup: You, too, mad, Happy Holidays.

[madfloridian]

2. Pay no attention to me at all.

I am just a so-called "liberal" spouting my nonsense on message boards.

It is all sound and fury indicating nothing. Until maybe time to vote. Not sure on that yet.

[bananas]

5. I gave you rec #5

and I didn't even read most of your post.

[bananas]

6. and somebody has already unrec'd it down to 4.

[me b zola]

7. I took it back to 5

:kick:

[defendandprotect]

11. kick --

[proud2BlibKansan]

19. WTF??

[KakistocracyHater]

3. well reproductive sovereignity is something the Right despises, so they use

words that make it sound small & selfish, a "choice" like 'bolt on boobs'. The truth is they are obsessed with sexuality & are openly trying to control everyone else's-but not their own, just ask "Diaper Dave", the "Foot-Tapper", Newt & his many wives & divorces......

[madfloridian]

4. Heh heh "control everyone else's-but not their own,"

So true.

:hi:

[Joanne98]

8. There's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos

[Little Star]

9. k&r

[defendandprotect]

10. Wholly disagree with Pelosi or Casey or anyone else catering to the religous right . ..

in fact, I believe in absolute separation -- especially where $$ is concerned.

In this year's budget, we're giving $50 million to "abstinence" teaching!!!

Imagine what that would do for our homeless -- for our impoverished citizens!!!

But, rather, we're subsidizing the Vatican's "faith based" organizations with

hundreds of millions! Don't know the exact figure on this, but the figure I saw

a few years ago was alarming!!!

Meanwhile, there is an ongoing investigation into whether the RCC used money for

"faith based" organizations to pay off their pedophile lawsuits!!

There shouldn't be any Democrat who doesn't 1000% support reproductive freedom --

To hedge on this issue at all suggests to me a disrespect for women -- and obviously

that is true of the entire Vatican/RCC-US Catholic Bishops!!

[madfloridian]

20. They just keep doing it.

And I wonder why?

[defendandprotect]

21. Well . . .

they have to --

If they don't keep organized patriarchal religion propped up, patriarchy will fall.

That's the center of authority -- control --

After the 1960's with social revolution -- challenge to authority -- women's movement

and homosexual battle for equality -- and especially the revolution by youth where

all authority was being challenged -- from medicine and childbirth to breastfeeding and

eating canned foods -- we know there was a backlash.

IMO, a well planned one -- but as fake as any of their "teabagger" movements.

In the 1980's GOP gave start up funding to the Christian Coalition --

Scaife financed Dobson's organization -- and other wealthy Repugs financed Bauer's organization.

In other words, they returned to their primary tool -- religion -- to restore authority.

I'm sure you're as familiar as I am how religion has been used throughout history to

co-opt and undermine nations and their peoples.

And thus we had the fake right wing religious movement which, as Cheney would put it, was

another "reality" they created for us to deal with!



ALSO . . . US/CIA created the Taliban/Al Qaeda during the Carter administration -- did it

thru ISI-Pakistan. We did it to "bait" the Russians into Afghanistan ... "in hopes of giving

them a Vietnam type experience." Carter tsk-tsked about Russians invading Afghanistan and

pretended "shock" and took us out of the Olympics!! Specifics on this below --


FURTHER -- US/CIA created the VIOLENT Islamic teachings and pushed them into the Middle East.

I will requote below the details on this requoting from my Journal ...

--------------------------------------




FIRST PART OF THIS DEALS WITH HOW US/CIA CREATED TALIBAN AND AL QAEDA . . .
TO BAIT RUSSIANS INTO AFGHANISTAN . . .!!!


SECOND PART DEALS WITH THE TEXTBOOKS --



The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan
Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski,
President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser

Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998

Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs <"From the Shadows">, that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

Q: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Q: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

http://www.takeoverworld.info/brzezinski_i... ...


---------------------------------------------------

SECOND PART --


The US spent $100's of millions shooting down Soviet helicopters yet didn't spend a penny helping Afghanis rebuild their infrastructure and institutions.

They also spent millions producing jihad preaching, fundamentalist textbooks and shipping them off to Afghanistan. These were the same text books the Western media discussed in shocked tones and told their audiences were used by fundamentalist teachers to brainwash their charges and to inculcate in young Afghanis a jihad mindset, hatred of foreigners and non-Muslims etc.


Have you heard about the Afghan Jihad schoolbook scandal?

Or perhaps I should say, "Have you heard about the Afghan Jihad schoolbook scandal that's waiting to happen?"

Because it has been almost unreported in the Western media that the US government shipped, and continues to ship, millions of Islamist textbooks into Afghanistan.

Only one English-speaking newspaper we could find has investigated this issue: the Washington Post. The story appeared March 23rd.

Washington Post investigators report that during the past twenty years the US has spent millions of dollars producing fanatical schoolbooks, which were then distributed in Afghanistan.

"The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books..." -- Washington Post, 23 March 2002 (1)

According to the Post the U.S. is now "...wrestling with the unintended consequences of its successful strategy of stirring Islamic fervor to fight communism."

So the books made up the core curriculum in Afghan schools. And what were the unintended consequences? The Post reports that according to unnamed officials the schoolbooks "steeped a generation in violence."

How could this result have been unintended? Did they expect that giving fundamentalist schoolbooks to schoolchildren would make them moderate Muslims?

Nobody with normal intelligence could expect to distribute millions of violent Islamist schoolbooks without influencing school children towards violent Islamism. Therefore one would assume that the unnamed US officials who, we are told, are distressed at these "unintended consequences" must previously have been unaware of the Islamist content of the schoolbooks.

But surely someone was aware. The US government can't write, edit, print and ship millions of violent, Muslim fundamentalist primers into Afghanistan without high officials in the US government approving those primers.

http://www.tenc.net/articles/jared/jihad.h...




:) :evilgrin:

[bread_and_roses]

12. I'll gladly give another R to counter the idiotic "unrecs"

what's to unrec? That the religious right should not be dictating to the Ds? Honest to goddess, I find it hard to even imagine the intellectual contortions some around here must be engaged in to come to the quisling positions they seem to hold.

[oreo3leg]

13. and I will follow you.

[dajoki]

14. I'll take Casey over pRicky anyday n/t

[madfloridian]

16. Casey is much better than Rick of course. Not my point at all.

My point is when do we stop playing their game?

When does the Democratic party stop letting the religious right set the agenda for women and gays?

[dajoki]

18. I wouldn't hold my breath n/t

[debbierlus]

15. Kick & recommend

[bertman]

17. REC and kick. nt

[Vidar]

22. K&R.