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[Thad]

The rage over the video itself is overstated; it's the capper on a consistent string of terrible, terrible mistakes that start way back with, what, London?

A string of terrible, terrible mistakes that start with BARRY GOLDWATER.  (Who, as he himself noted, was considered a raging liberal within his party by the time he died, but that's another discussion.)

That's the thing, I think: people suffered this exact line of bullshit with a smile when it was Reagan doing it, and then elected his VP President, and then elected his son President (at least one of the two terms he served).  Repeat Romney's line verbatim to someone who was backing Bush in 2004 and he'd nod in agreement.  Do it four years ago and he'd probably STILL nod in agreement, while pretending he never liked Bush after all.

But those are the other two factors at work here.  First, because it's Romney supposedly speaking his heart.  We accept a bunch of terrible things a politician says to another group because, well, we believe they're feeding us a line of bullshit, so it's comforting to believe that he's feeding them a line of bullshit as well.  When the campaign is over, he'll shake up the Etch-a-Sketch, and magically become the real Mitt Romney who just so happens to be the perfect candidate we always wanted him to be e.g. the exact opposite of the one he claimed to be.

Well, that's certainly the problem a good bunch of liberal Obama supporters have run smack-dab into, anyway.

The other factor of course is, he's said some offensive things about the poor, holds some policies that will definitely hurt us, and may obviously not give a shit, but he has never up to this point said anything as definitive as "These people are not useful to me, so I am not going to pay attention to them."

Well, again, I disagree; I don't think it's substantively different from what he told that college student months ago.  Sure, he hangs a number on it, but the outrage over "people who pay no income tax" has been a Republican line of attack for years and years.

Here's a famous go-to example: The Non-Taxpaying Class, from the Wall Street Journal, 2002, perhaps best known for describing people too poor to pay income tax as "lucky duckies".  (This is BEFORE Murdoch bought the WSJ.)

And then there's a third, that's unique to this country: We really, really love our democracy, or at least our rough semblance of it.  If you say out loud, "47% of the people have no voice as far as I'm concerned", then you're just about a rounding error away from being Against the People.

Bears noting that any given candidate doesn't give a fuck about the plurality of the population that doesn't vote at all.  But I think it's become pretty obvious that there's one major party that wants to increase voter turnout and one that wants to reduce it, and that's been clear for at least a dozen years, never mind the CURRENT election cycle.

I mean, I dunno.  I'm happy that people are finally noticing Mitt Romney is a sneering plutocrat.  But I'm still fucking perplexed as to what took them so long.

[Büge]

What's the old saying? A lie can circle the world while the truth is still tying its shoes?

[Brentai]

Well, again, I disagree; I don't think it's substantively different from what he told that college student months ago.  Sure, he hangs a number on it, but the outrage over "people who pay no income tax" has been a Republican line of attack for years and years.

For reference:

This is not Mitt going off-message; it's not even Mitt saying anything different from what he was saying in public a few months ago (I'm thinking specifically of the line he gave at a college Q&A; don't remember the exact quote but it was along the lines of "Well if you think the government's job is to give you a handout, vote for the other guy.").

And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49, 48—he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn't connect. And he'll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that's what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people—I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

Wow, that lined up better than I thought.  To wit:

"Well if you think the government's job is to give you a handout, vote for the other guy."

And so my job is not to worry about those people—I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

I'd say there's a clear difference between "my job is not to give you a handout" and "my job is not to worry about you".  If the President can help people in some other way than a handout, terrific - people don't want fucking handouts, and of course that's what makes the first remark somewhat insulting, but whatever, fine, roll with it.  But if the President isn't going to even address the issue, then what the fuck good is he?  If he's so quick to throw aside people who are useless to him, why should the people hesitate to throw him aside if he is clearly just as useless to them?

Romney's entire campaign - 100% of it - was based on the idea that electing him as an alternative to Obama is going to Fix the Problem.  What he's done here is what the Obama campaign has spent months trying to do unsuccessfully - convince people that that's not going to work.  At least not for an undefined 47% of the population, the majority of whom are, contrary to what the man wants to believe, not Barack Obama voters.  Those people are, well... they were looking up to him and shouting "Save us!", and he just looked down and whispered, "No."

So they're probably staying home this year.

The rest of us who have the good fortune to to be above minimum income required to wind up with income taxes are probably starting to catch on (if it wasn't already obvious) that this guy is all smoke and mirrors.  He follows up this bombshell with a rare look at how he plans to actually do what he has promised to do, and Fix the Problem:

If it looks like the president's going to win, the markets should not be terribly happy. It depends, of course, which markets you're talking about, which types of commodities and so forth, but my own view is, if we win on November 6th there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We'll see capital come back, and we'll see—without actually doing anything—we'll actually get a boost in the economy.

The Problem Will Fix Itself, because I'm Mitt Romney.  Sir, we did not get mildly successful by buying up lottery tickets.  You're going to have to do a lot better than that.

So he's done.  We're all tired of this shit.  Nobody wants to listen to him anymore.  He can rant and scream about how he's the solution, how Obama has failed, and what goddam fairy dust he's going to pour over the economy to fix everyone's problems (even though he doesn't want it to!), but it doesn't matter any more.  The genie is out of the bottle and nobody is able to lie to themselves that this man will ever lift a finger for them anymore.  Even Romney himself, in damage control mode, didn't have the stomach to try and backpedal; his message was "Okay, yeah, I hate you people, but I'm your only hope!"

If the people are allowed to remain desperate enough, they may grasp back at that straw, weeping and gnashing their teeth all the while.  But if a better, more plausible solution presents itself, they will flock to it.  Immediately.

A solution like ending the congressional gridlock, and letting Barack Obama finally do his job (for better or worse).  Because that man gives a shit.  He was elected entirely on the basis of what a refreshingly huge shit he gives.  You can disagree with his policies, and Lord knows I do too, but the last thing he's going to do is go horseback riding while America burns.

So let's get to work, guys.

[Cait]

I'm not going to pretend I know anything about US taxes, but did he actually screw charities? The way I read it, he donated the same he would have usually, but did not report the full amount on his tax paperwork, which is to say he did not claim the entire fiscal recompense he was entitled to in order to artificially inflate his tax rate. Like the key word here is that he reduced deductions, not donations. Maybe I'm just figuring wrong though.

Wouldn't that make him ineligible to be President by his own criteria?

July 29, 2012 Interview with Mitt Romney

Romney: I haven't calculated that. I'm happy to go back and look but my view is I've paid all the taxes required by law. From time to time I've been audited as happens I think to other citizens as well and the accounting firm which prepares y taxes has done a very thorough and complete job pay taxes as legally due. I don't pay more than are legally due and frankly if I had paid more than are legally due I don't think I'd be qualified to become president. I'd think people would want me to follow the law and pay only what the tax code requires.

[Caithness]

Yes, that's the quote I was thinking of. Thank you.

So he paid more taxes than were legally required in order to meet the 13% threshold. And that means he doesn't think he's qualified to become president.

[Ted Belmont]

That would certainly explain the current state of his campaign.

[Brentai]

It's silly shit and really just proves that Mitt Romney is kind of bad with numbers.

Which is a problem when your only selling point has always been "Is good with numbers."

[Thad]

I'd say there's a clear difference between "my job is not to give you a handout" and "my job is not to worry about you".  If the President can help people in some other way than a handout, terrific - people don't want fucking handouts, and of course that's what makes the first remark somewhat insulting, but whatever, fine, roll with it.

Well, I mean, that's it exactly.  Someone asked him for something reasonable (I looked it up, it was birth control coverage) and he dismissed her as asking for handouts.  (Exact quote: "If you're looking for free stuff you don't have to pay for, vote for the other guy -- that's what he's all about, OK? That's not, that’s not what I'm about.")

So maybe the difference is that the roughly 50% of the population he dismissed on THAT occasion was women.

And certainly the gap between him and Obama on that particular demographic DOES show they're paying attention and remarks like that have an impact.  Very good, then.

But I still think it's substantively the same thing: if you ask for assistance from the government, you're a moocher who wants something for nothing and we are going to mock and deride you.  Again, it's the same talk the party's been doing since that "welfare queens" nonsense -- but it worked back then, because people liked Reagan.

You know, I'm increasingly of the opinion that elections come down to charm more than anything else.

(Though I guess given that Gore should have rightly won Florida in 2000, that would be an exception.)

But if the President isn't going to even address the issue, then what the fuck good is he?  If he's so quick to throw aside people who are useless to him, why should the people hesitate to throw him aside if he is clearly just as useless to them?

I don't know.  But that's what every single poor person who's voted Republican since 1980 has done.

(I keep giving Nixon a pass on this because, odious as he was for a myriad of other reasons, he tried to back off his party's demonization of the New Deal.  He wasn't interested in all the "welfare queens" rhetoric, and he even tried to institute universal healthcare -- and probably came closer than any President prior to the current one.)

I mean, again, it's swell that people are waking up to this shit.  I just don't understand why it took them this long or why this YouTube video was the thing that finally explained the past 3 decades of Republican domestic policy to them.

Romney's entire campaign - 100% of it - was based on the idea that electing him as an alternative to Obama is going to Fix the Problem.  What he's done here is what the Obama campaign has spent months trying to do unsuccessfully - convince people that that's not going to work.  At least not for an undefined 47% of the population, the majority of whom are, contrary to what the man wants to believe, not Barack Obama voters.  Those people are, well... they were looking up to him and shouting "Save us!", and he just looked down and whispered, "No."

So they're probably staying home this year.

And vote Republican again in 4 years.

So it goes.

The rest of us who have the good fortune to to be above minimum income required to wind up with income taxes are probably starting to catch on (if it wasn't already obvious) that this guy is all smoke and mirrors.  He follows up this bombshell with a rare look at how he plans to actually do what he has promised to do, and Fix the Problem:

If it looks like the president's going to win, the markets should not be terribly happy. It depends, of course, which markets you're talking about, which types of commodities and so forth, but my own view is, if we win on November 6th there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We'll see capital come back, and we'll see—without actually doing anything—we'll actually get a boost in the economy.

The Problem Will Fix Itself, because I'm Mitt Romney.  Sir, we did not get mildly successful by buying up lottery tickets.  You're going to have to do a lot better than that.

Yeah, Daily Show had a montage the other day of Fox News saying Romney's losing because he won't get into policy specifics.

That's pretty much bullshit, of course; he's losing because nobody likes him.  But the lack of policy specifics IS just one more thing on the long, long list of things the Democrats can use against him.

So he's done.

Hope so.  But if Obama's smart he'll go by the old saw of always campaigning like you're ten points behind.

A solution like ending the congressional gridlock, and letting Barack Obama finally do his job (for better or worse).  Because that man gives a shit.  He was elected entirely on the basis of what a refreshingly huge shit he gives.  You can disagree with his policies, and Lord knows I do too, but the last thing he's going to do is go horseback riding while America burns.

This comes interestingly close to how I feel about guys like Gary Johnson and John Huntsman and Bob Dole and George Bush Sr -- there's a hell of a lot I don't agree with them on, but I respect them as Serious Republicans, people who are actually interested in governing instead of just looting the treasury, paying off their buddies, and setting the damn world on fire.

I'm thinking that the transition of Democrats into Republicans and Republicans into Something Else Entirely is pretty close to complete.

The problem is that the Republican Party hasn't collapsed and made room for another party to challenge the Democrats from the other side.  We've still got a race between Center-Right and Far Right going on here (oversimplifications, of course, but let's go with them for now).

If the Dems take the House, that'd be swell.  But I don't think it even needs to come to that to end the gridlock -- remember during the budget showdown where Boehner made a deal with Obama but couldn't get the votes from his own party to actually make it happen?  The Dems don't need a majority to start making shit happen; they just need to kick enough of the lunatics out that they're left with people who are willing to occasionally compromise.

Course, whether that happens or not is an open question too.  Because Obama's signature achievement is still "adopt the Republicans' healthcare plan, pass it with zero Republican votes."

[Brentai]

I was just in Walgreen's, looking for some particularly hard to find cleaning shit.  Someone made the mistake of asking a rather... haggard looking man how he was doing, and he answered "Fine, as long as the Republicans don't win."

Then he launched into an uninterruptible tirade about how Romney is going to raise his taxes by $2000/yr, how Jesus Christ is going to punish the people who try to hurt the poor, and how he watches CNN so "he knows what's up".

Granted, this is California, but hearing a nickel-store pedagogue stump for the Dems?  In the middle of Orange County?  That's more than even I bargained for.

[Metal Slime]

[Thad]

And The Onion pretty much nails my bafflement about this whole story with a video titled Romney Still In Hot Water After Reading GOP Platform Verbatim.

[Brentai]

I'd say there's a clear difference between "my job is not to give you a handout" and "my job is not to worry about you".  If the President can help people in some other way than a handout, terrific - people don't want fucking handouts, and of course that's what makes the first remark somewhat insulting, but whatever, fine, roll with it.

Well, I mean, that's it exactly.  Someone asked him for something reasonable (I looked it up, it was birth control coverage) and he dismissed her as asking for handouts.  (Exact quote: "If you're looking for free stuff you don't have to pay for, vote for the other guy -- that's what he's all about, OK? That's not, that’s not what I'm about.")

So maybe the difference is that the roughly 50% of the population he dismissed on THAT occasion was women.

Missed this before.  Here's the thing.

100% of women don't need birth control.
100% of women who need birth control don't need government assistance to buy it.

So the man's not saying "You can't have birth control."  He's saying, "If you really need birth control, you should buy your own instead of demanding the government (or your employer) give it to you."  And I'll let you in on a little secret: I completely agree with him on this point.  It's not really a medically vital thing.  And it approaches the problem from exactly the wrong angle: Birth control pills are covered, condoms are not.  So we're not talking about something that promotes sexual health from the right direction at all, it's just something really convenient for women that they feel entitled to.

(If you bring up emergency contraceptives in obvious use cases I will punch you in the nose.  That is not what we are talking about here.)

Does most of the country disagree on that point?  Is it tone-deaf?  Should Romney have kept his mouth shut about it?  Yes, yes, and sure.  Am I attacking the cooters of women everywhere?  Oh, fuck off.

But the difference here is that, okay, maaaaaybe women don't (or at the very least not all women do) need guaranteed birth control coverage, but most agree that they should have it and Romney's telling them "No."  That's aggravating, and it will cost him points, but it's not unacceptable, and quite honestly there are examples to show (cough California cough) that sometimes you need to look at the majority and tell them that they need to really check their entitlement.  That's leadership.

But everyone needs something.  People right now need a lot of something.  And most of these things are stuff that pretty much everyone except the Ron Paul Nation will agree really are vital things.  Food.  Medicine for unavoidable illnesses.  Shelter.  Education.  Opportunities.  Hope.

Normally, people would be able (with minimal assistance) to bootstrap up those things, because it turns out we're not actually a nation of babbies after all.  Problem is, people right now can't, largely because of the swirling Catch-22 that is the modern job market (only employed people can be employed; no people are employed; THEREFORE all people are fucked).  Romney's message up to now has been "Okay, well, I'm against feeding all that straight to you, because I believe in hard work.  But WHAT I WANT TO DO FOR YOU is to fix the goddam state of affairs so that you can actually bootstrap again, and then we won't need to talk about it any more."

Great, fine, whatever, do it.  But then behind closed doors, the message becomes, "Well, those people caught in the Catch-22 are there because it's their own fault, so fuck 'em.  I DON'T WANT TO DO ANYTHING FOR THEM."

In actuality, he is going against his own stated policy; he has no interest in creating jobs or any of those things he's been talking about for months.  It might happen by accident, but if it does it would honestly probably just irritate the man that those lazy fucks in the 47% churn pool are benefiting from his wonderful Romneyness.

He can't say "I hate you but I plan to help you anyway" any more.  He got caught red-handed admitting that that is a complete lie.  He got caught telling a lie.

So now when he says "If you're looking for free stuff you don't have to pay for, vote for the other guy -- that's what he's all about, OK? That's not, that’s not what I'm about.", the implication in most people's heads isn't that he's about something other than free stuff, that will benefit you just as much (if not more) than free stuff would.  It was before.  Now it is not.

To you and I, those kinds of statements always sounded exactly like what they were: "Fuck off."  But to the less cynical, it sounded like: "I'm going to help you work for it instead, wouldn't that be better?"  To most of the rest of the nation, this awareness is brand new, and it's a huge and bitter pill to swallow.  Imagine just now realizing that everything he had said for the last few months are exactly the way that you, Thad, have always interpreted it.

The Krikkiters have just gotten their first glimpse of the universe.

The reason it took this long is because people aren't as smart as you, and need instructions on how to use toothpicks.  So cut them a little slack, all right?

[Caithness]

So the man's not saying "You can't have birth control."  He's saying, "If you really need birth control, you should buy your own instead of demanding the government (or your employer) give it to you."  And I'll let you in on a little secret: I completely agree with him on this point.  It's not really a medically vital thing.  And it approaches the problem from exactly the wrong angle: Birth control pills are covered, condoms are not.  So we're not talking about something that promotes sexual health from the right direction at all, it's just something really convenient for women that they feel entitled to.

(If you bring up emergency contraceptives in obvious use cases I will punch you in the nose.  That is not what we are talking about here.)

Plenty of women need The Pill for reasons entirely unrelated to preventing conception. They need it to avoid constant pain, for example.

[Brentai]

I have never heard that and I am going to go out on a limb and say that a lot of people have not heard that.  Maybe you should talk about that instead of contraception?

[Ted Belmont]

Someone did try that. Rush Limbaugh called her a slut.

[Mongrel]

Starr says people with endometriosis or bleeding disorders among other things (including but not limited to migraines, heart conditions, or hormone-responsive tumors) are prescribed the pill as prevention.

Basically the pill can be an effective form of hormone regulation to the half of the species that suffers more from hormonal swings. 

[Disposable Ninja]

So the man's not saying "You can't have birth control."  He's saying, "If you really need birth control, you should buy your own instead of demanding the government (or your employer) give it to you."  And I'll let you in on a little secret: I completely agree with him on this point.  It's not really a medically vital thing.

That birth control can be medically vital aside, this in and of itself isn't that big of a deal. Really. But combine that with the fact that the GOP advocates platforms such as Pro-Life, Abstinence-Only Sex Education, The Traditional Family Unit, Privatized Health Care, Objectivism, keeping Gays from adopting, etc., and society begins to foster a very serious problem: unsupervised children in poverty.

That pretty much sums up the bigger problem with the current Republican dogma, in my opinion: they expect well over three hundred million Americans to be hardworking and pious. That shit is just unsustainable. And if just one person ends up not living according to those very strict standards, they can easily drag their entire family down with them, and that just makes it doubly unsustainable.

[Royal☭]

Hey, Brent. This may seem crazy, but birth control prescribed as, well, birth control is actually beneficial for twice the amount of people it's prescribed to.

[MarsDragon]

Starr says people with endometriosis or bleeding disorders among other things (including but not limited to migraines, heart conditions, or hormone-responsive tumors) are prescribed the pill as prevention.

Basically the pill can be an effective form of hormone regulation to the half of the species that suffers more from hormonal swings. 

Yeah, I have LADY PROBLEMS that require contraception to keep my ovaries from fucking themselves up. It's not going to kill me if I don't have it, but there are a lot of things covered under insurance that won't strictly kill you if you don't have them.

The problem is that no one believes this because it's called "birth control" and therefore MUST only be for not having babies.

[Thad]

100% of women don't need birth control.

Very close to 100% of women need it AT SOME POINT IN THEIR LIVES.

100% of women who need birth control don't need government assistance to buy it.

Replace "birth control" in that sentence with pretty much any other noun and it still holds, so I can't really see how it's relevant.

Given sufficient wealth, private individuals can afford just about anything, including, in extreme cases, space travel and private militaries.  "Well if you've got enough money you can pay for that yourself" isn't a good argument against a government providing something.  I'd argue that health coverage is pretty high on the list of examples of that.

So the man's not saying "You can't have birth control."  He's saying, "If you really need birth control, you should buy your own instead of demanding the government (or your employer) give it to you."  And I'll let you in on a little secret: I completely agree with him on this point.  It's not really a medically vital thing.  And it approaches the problem from exactly the wrong angle: Birth control pills are covered, condoms are not.  So we're not talking about something that promotes sexual health from the right direction at all, it's just something really convenient for women that they feel entitled to.

Dude.  You know I love you but that is such a load of bullshit that I don't even know where to begin.

Guess I'll start with the implication that the government does not pay for condoms.

Because the government TOTALLY PAYS FOR CONDOMS.

Here's the first search result I found for the phrase condom distribution.  Here's the second.  That's without getting into organizations like Planned Parenthood that use government subsidies to distribute condoms and other forms of birth control, and the point that those subsidies are rapidly dwindling.

I'll grant that government funding for condoms does not take the form of subsidies for prescription drug coverage.  This is because condoms do not require a prescription.  Now, if you think that employer-provided insurance plans should be required to subsidize pharmaceuticals that don't require a prescription, then I think that's an interesting line of discussion, but under the circumstances the reason that people are pushing for prescription drug coverage for birth control pills and not for condoms is that birth control pills are prescription drugs and condoms are not.

And since we ARE talking about private insurance plans that are subsidized by the government, that DOES bring up some issues of double-standards.  I'm assuming you've heard the talking point about plans that cover Viagra but not birth control.  Now, granted, Viagra has purposes that aren't related to sex.  But birth control does too.  Which brings us to:

I have never heard that and I am going to go out on a limb and say that a lot of people have not heard that.  Maybe you should talk about that instead of contraception?

Here's the complete text of Sandra Fluke's testimony from seven months ago.

Here's the bit that's got to do with birth control pills used for things besides birth control:

These denial of contraceptive coverage impact real people.

In the worst cases, women who need these medications for other medical conditions suffer very dire consequences.

A friend of mine, for example, has polycystic ovarian syndrome, and she has to take prescription birth control to stop cysts from growing on her ovaries. Her prescription is technically covered by Georgetown’s insurance because it’s not intended to prevent pregnancy.

Unfortunately, under many religious institutions and insurance plans, it wouldn’t be. There would be no exception for other medical needs. And under Sen. Blunt’s amendment, Sen. Rubio’s bill or Rep. Fortenberry’s bill there’s no requirement that such an exception be made for these medical needs.

When this exception does exist, these exceptions don’t accomplish their well-intended goals because when you let university administrators or other employers rather than women and their doctors dictate whose medical needs are legitimate and whose are not, women’s health takes a back seat to a bureaucracy focused on policing her body.

In 65% of the cases at our school, our female students were interrogated by insurance representatives and university medical staff about why they needed prescription and whether they were lying about their symptoms.

For my friend and 20% of the women in her situation, she never got the insurance company to cover her prescription. Despite verifications of her illness from her doctor, her claim was denied repeatedly on the assumption that she really wanted birth control to prevent pregnancy. She’s gay. So clearly polycystic ovarian syndrome was a much more urgent concern than accidental pregnancy for her.

After months 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’d woke up thinking I’ve 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.

On the morning I was originally scheduled to give this testimony, she was sitting in a doctor’s office, trying to cope with the consequences of this medical catastrophe.

Since last year’s surgery, she’s been experiencing night sweats and weight gain and other symptoms of early menopause as a result of the removal of her ovary. She’s 32-years-old.

As she put it, ‘If my body indeed does enter early menopause, no fertility specialist in the world will be able to help me have my own children. I will have no choice at giving my mother her desperately desired grandbabies simply because the insurance policy that I paid for, totally unsubsidized by my school, wouldn’t cover my prescription for birth control when I needed it.’

Now, in addition to potentially facing the health complications that come with having menopause at such an early age – increased risk of cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis – she may never be able to conceive a child.

Some may say that my friend’s tragic story is rare. It’s not. I wish it were

One woman told us doctors believe she has endometriosis, but that can’t be proven without surgery. So the insurance has not been willing to cover her medication – the contraception she needs to treat her endometriosis.

Recently, another woman told me that she also has polycystic ovarian syndrome and she’s struggling to pay for her medication and is terrified to not have access to it.

Due to the barriers erected by Georgetown’s policy, she hasn’t been reimbursed for her medications since last August.

I sincerely pray that we don’t have to wait until she loses an ovary or is diagnosed with cancer before her needs and the needs of all of these women are taken seriously.

Because this is the message that not requiring coverage of contraception sends: A woman’s reproductive health care isn’t a necessity, isn’t a priority.

All of which is kind of important, but even if that WEREN'T the case I still think access to contraception is a right.

And even if it weren't, it's just smart.  Fewer accidental pregnancies is, inherently, a good thing.  Even when approached from a purely financial point of view; fewer accidental pregnancies means fewer people relying on the government for childcare, which tends to be a hell of a lot more expensive than contraception.

You know as well as I do that the "Well, if they can't afford it then they just shouldn't have sex" argument is completely ineffective.  But I'm having trouble drawing a distinction between that and what you're saying.

(If you bring up emergency contraceptives in obvious use cases I will punch you in the nose.  That is not what we are talking about here.)

I fully support access to emergency contraceptives.

You know what's better than having access to emergency contraceptives?  Already being on regular contraceptives.

Does most of the country disagree on that point?  Is it tone-deaf?  Should Romney have kept his mouth shut about it?  Yes, yes, and sure.  Am I attacking the cooters of women everywhere?  Oh, fuck off.

But the difference here is that, okay, maaaaaybe women don't (or at the very least not all women do) need guaranteed birth control coverage, but most agree that they should have it and Romney's telling them "No."  That's aggravating, and it will cost him points, but it's not unacceptable, and quite honestly there are examples to show (cough California cough) that sometimes you need to look at the majority and tell them that they need to really check their entitlement.  That's leadership.

The irony is that you're complaining about entitlement while demonstrating privilege.

But everyone needs something.  People right now need a lot of something.  And most of these things are stuff that pretty much everyone except the Ron Paul Nation will agree really are vital things.  Food.  Medicine for unavoidable illnesses.

We are TALKING about medicine for unavoidable illnesses.

Normally, people would be able (with minimal assistance) to bootstrap up those things, because it turns out we're not actually a nation of babbies after all.  Problem is, people right now can't, largely because of the swirling Catch-22 that is the modern job market (only employed people can be employed; no people are employed; THEREFORE all people are fucked).  Romney's message up to now has been "Okay, well, I'm against feeding all that straight to you, because I believe in hard work.  But WHAT I WANT TO DO FOR YOU is to fix the goddam state of affairs so that you can actually bootstrap again, and then we won't need to talk about it any more."

Great, fine, whatever, do it.  But then behind closed doors, the message becomes, "Well, those people caught in the Catch-22 are there because it's their own fault, so fuck 'em.  I DON'T WANT TO DO ANYTHING FOR THEM."

But again, I'm missing the part where this is new.  It fits right in with his (completely false) statements about Obama gutting welfare-to-work, and with every other statement any Republican's ever made about Bootstraps.  The poor are poor because they're lazy, or because of Democrats, or both; whichever's most politically expedient.  Democrats are bad because they give handouts.

And yeah, his remark to that woman WAS utterly dismissive and DID indicate a total lack of concern for a great big chunk of the population.

So now when he says "If you're looking for free stuff you don't have to pay for, vote for the other guy -- that's what he's all about, OK? That's not, that’s not what I'm about.", the implication in most people's heads isn't that he's about something other than free stuff, that will benefit you just as much (if not more) than free stuff would.  It was before.  Now it is not.

Again, I really don't think the gap between him and Obama in support among women indicates that's how women saw his attitude, his party's attitude, at all.  Indeed, come election time we're going to see a wider gap with women than men, even now; I'm quite confident of that.

To you and I, those kinds of statements always sounded exactly like what they were: "Fuck off."  But to the less cynical, it sounded like: "I'm going to help you work for it instead, wouldn't that be better?"  To most of the rest of the nation, this awareness is brand new, and it's a huge and bitter pill to swallow.  Imagine just now realizing that everything he had said for the last few months are exactly the way that you, Thad, have always interpreted it.

The Krikkiters have just gotten their first glimpse of the universe.

The reason it took this long is because people aren't as smart as you, and need instructions on how to use toothpicks.  So cut them a little slack, all right?

Well, I guess that's exactly what baffles me.  Constantly.  People's inability to observe mountains of evidence and interpret it in a logical fashion.

Then again, in a country where a sizable chunk of the population doesn't believe in evolution, I guess it's always going to be an uphill battle.