News Roundup for 3/8/12

Boehner came up with a brilliant wedge issue
-- and now he's stuck with it

-Headline of the Day-
"Dems twist knife in birth control fight."

You hear about this Rush Limbaugh thing? Oh, it's terrible! He's yelling at ladies he doesn't even know and calling them whores and prostitutes, just because they want prescription drug coverage.

Turns out that this isn't just a sudden bout of Tourette's or something. It was brought about by a big Republican freak out over employers' coverage of birth control. It seems that employers can no longer force employees to live by the employers' religious beliefs and this is the worst thing ever!

Anyway, this is becoming a problem for Republicans, since the whole thing is stupid and everybody knows it. GOP leaders just want it all to go away (although Limbaugh isn't really playing along on that point).

So a bunch of Democrats, who also happen to be women, cooked up a plan. This thing isn't going to fade away, as GOP leadership hopes. Republicans are going to have to come out -- in public and on the record -- about how they feel about contraceptive coverage.

According to Greg Sargent, "In a letter to Speaker John Boehner — which was sent my way by a source — the 12 female Senate Dems, led by Patty Murray, are demanding that he drop his promise to hold a vote on the House version of the Blunt amendment, which has over 200 Republicans co-sponsors.

"The letter from the female Senators — which is timed to International Women’s Day — asks Boehner to pledge not to move any more birth-control-related legislation in the House."

See, the problem here is that the nuts are dug in on this issue because of Limbaugh. They think they have to defend him and in doing so have taken his whole slut/whore/bitch line as Gospel. If Boehner drops the issue, they're going to be ma-ad. But if he puts it up to a vote, everyone else will be. For the record, "everyone else" outnumbers the nuts by, like, a lot. This is what you call being between yer rock and a hard place. If Boehner let's the issue fade, a bunch of females get to shout "victory!" from the rooftops and piss off the GOP base. If not... well, that's pretty much like flooring it into the brick wall of public opinion -- in an election year that's already looking a little shaky for the Grand Old Party.

Of course, it wasn't the dem women who put Boehner between that rock and that hard place. Some guy named "John Boehner" did that.

They're just making sure he stays there for a while. (Plum Line)


-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, this week we're going to learn all about a Iran and the nuclear weapons program it doesn't actually have...


Click for animation

Bonus fun: it wouldn't really be a war over nuclear weapons, since Iran doesn't actually have any of those. It'd be a war against Forbidden Knowledge -- which is futile. (MarkFiore.com)


-Bonus HotD-
"Joe The Plumber/Future Congressman Whining About ‘Gotcha’ Questions Already."

Hey, he learned that whine from the best. (Wonkette)