Tea Party is having a big night

[WAC]

The last sentence is really the clincher

[Mr Spaceship]

Daily Show's extended interview with Grover Norquist is up:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

[transitive]

I give Stewart a lot of credit for actually sitting through this. I would have laughed him out of the room.

[Frank]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html

[Mr Spaceship]

fucking hell. I gotta check Demonoid tonight.

[Jeremy]

Richard Cohen is not in a position to complain about whose idiocy ruined politics.

[Jeremy]

Like you write for the Washington Post and the thing that made you realize that these people are idiots is watching this dramatization of asdlkfjasd;klfjadkls

[sideshow raheem]

I am not that familiar with Richard Cohen but that article was brutal. like what the hell is this paragraph:

So far, the Palin effect has been limited to the GOP. Surely, though, there lurks in the Democratic Party potential candidates who have seen Palin and taken note. Experience, knowledge, accomplishment — these no longer may matter. They will come roaring out of the left proclaiming a hatred of all things Washington, including compromise. The movie had it right. Sarah Palin changed the game.

[nautical hyperblast]

fucking hell. I gotta check Demonoid tonight.

wow. yeah i have my night planned. i love to cringe apparently.

[Grover]

You'd think that by now Grover Norquist would have a good argument as to why the pledge isn't simplistic and childish but nope.

[blurst of times]

i really loved that sam bee segment with norquist about how he came up with the tax pledge when he was 12 or something

[Mr Spaceship]

[transitive]

I don't know, they raise some strong points!

[VHGisdead]

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/03/poor-sandra-fluke-she-wants-you-to-pay-for-her-9month-birth-control-as-she-frolics-in-spain-pompeii/

[transitive]

Can someone please publish a counter-point titled "Local man Barry Thompson Wants You To Pay For His Enzyte As He Reconnects With His Wife in Hawaii"

[waldojeffers1]

"Local union boss wants dental coverage for workers despite owning car, refrigerator"

[orange farmer]

If the south ever does rise again I'm going to need a new place to live.

[Mr Spaceship]

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/03/poor-sandra-fluke-she-wants-you-to-pay-for-her-9month-birth-control-as-she-frolics-in-spain-pompeii/

just for reference:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501367_162- ... h-control/

March 9, 2012 3:41 AM

$100 or $1,000? Wide price range for birth control
WASHINGTON — What does birth control really cost anyway?

It varies dramatically, from $9 a month for generic pills to $90 a month for some of the newest brands — plus a doctor's visit for the prescription.

Want a more goof-proof option? The most reliable contraceptives, so-called long-acting types like IUDs or implants, can cost $600 to nearly $1,000 upfront to be inserted by a doctor.

That's if you don't have insurance that covers at least some of the tab — although many women do. And if those prices are too much, crowded public clinics offer free or reduced-price options. But it might take a while to get an appointment.

Questions about cost and access to birth control have been swirling for weeks now, intensifying after a Georgetown University law school student testified before congressional Democrats in support of a new federal policy to pay for contraception that she said can add up to $1,000 a year, not covered by the Jesuit college's health plan. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh's verbal assault on her comments became the latest skirmish in the birth control wars.

Soon, the new policy will make contraceptives available free of charge as preventive care, just like mammograms, for women with most employer-provided health insurance. Churches are exempt. But for other religious-affiliated organizations, such as colleges or hospitals, their insurance companies would have to pay for the coverage, something that has triggered bitter political debate.

A major study of nearly 10,000 women that's under way in St. Louis provides a tantalizing clue about what might happen when that policy takes effect.

Consider: Nearly half of the nation's 6 million-plus pregnancies each year are unintended. Rates of unplanned pregnancies are far higher among low-income women than their wealthier counterparts. Among the reasons is that condoms can fail. So can birth control pills if the woman forgets to take them every day or can't afford a refill.

Only about 5 percent of U.S. women use the most effective contraceptives — a matchstick-sized implant named Implanon or intrauterine devices known as IUDs. Once inserted, they prevent pregnancy for three, five or 10 years. But Dr. Jeffrey Peipert of Washington University in St. Louis says many women turn them down because of a higher upfront cost that insurance hasn't always covered even though years of pills eventually cost as much.

"How can we cover Viagra and not IUDs?" wonders Peipert, who is leading the new study.

Called the Contraceptive CHOICE Project, the study is providing those options and a range of others for free. Participants also can choose from birth control pills, a monthly patch, a monthly vaginal ring and a once-every-three-months shot. They're told the pros and cons of each but that the long-lasting options have a lower failure rate.

About 75 percent of women in the study are choosing the IUD or the implant, Peipert says. After the first year of the ongoing study, more than 80 percent of the women who chose the long-acting contraceptives are sticking with them compared with about half the pill users, he says.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, the average woman who has two children will spend three decades trying to avoid an unintended pregnancy. The Institute of Medicine says that's one reason that women tend to incur higher out-of-pocket costs for preventive care than men.

Yes, there already are some options for more affordable contraception, such as public clinics or Planned Parenthood.

About 55 percent of local health departments offer some family planning services, according to the National Association of County & City Health Officials. Many of those receive federal Title X funding, which means they can offer contraception on a sliding fee scale. The poorest women may get it free, while others may pay full price or somewhere in between.

There are cheaper generic pills. Peipert says there's little difference between them and pricey new brand-name versions like Yaz.

But some women go through a number of brands before finding one that doesn't cause uncomfortable side effects, says Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. Her organization operates a website, http://www.bedsider.org , that details options along with the price range.

"Not every woman can use generic pills, by any means," Brown says. "Do we say to people, 'Just go get generic cardiac medicines. Hope that works out for you?'"

Peipert notes that contraception is cheaper than what insurers or taxpayer-funded Medicaid pay for prenatal care and delivery. He says economic studies have found that every $1 spent on family planning can save nearly $4 in expenditures on unintended pregnancy.

Do women ask about the price?

"Oh, my gosh, absolutely," exclaims obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Monica Dragoman of New York's Montefiore Medical Center.

Just last week, she saw a woman whose heart condition could make another pregnancy life-threatening but who couldn't afford the IUD that Dragoman wanted to prescribe, and chose a cheaper option.

If a family's already struggling financially, "sometimes contraception is one of the first things to fall off," Dragoman says.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.

the attacks against Sandra Fluke are pretty shitty, from any objective standpoint

[BlackSugar]

Like you write for the Washington Post and the thing that made you realize that these people are idiots is watching this dramatization of asdlkfjasd;klfjadkls

I've been reading richard cohen for many years and he's always been pretty on the ball on calling out political hypocracy/idiocy/etc and he's repeatedly slammed palin over the last 3-4 years

[BlackSugar]

what made me mad was on that same op-ed page, fucking kathleen parker arguing that the stereotype of southern conservatives being ignorant is just so unfair

[WAC]

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/03/poor-sandra-fluke-she-wants-you-to-pay-for-her-9month-birth-control-as-she-frolics-in-spain-pompeii/

http://thegraph.com/2012/03/sandra-flukes-boyfriend/

She's dating a Jew

[WAC]

[Robo-Chachi]

I feel dumb. What is the second word supposed to be?

[sideshow raheem]

I just googled "Bill Maher Palin cunt" to try and figure that out and he also called her a "twat" apparently

[WAC]

"twat"

[Robo-Chachi]

The lack of space between the a and t threw me off for a second there.

[Jeremy]

Didn't Bill Maher defend Rush?

[Grover]

I remember hearing that Maher called Palin "The T word" and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was. Good to know.

[murray st.]

maher is basically just as much of a fucking douche as limbaugh though

[murray st.]

i mean i'm not saying that cartoon isn't asinine i just want everyoen to remember how much of a smug shithead maher is too