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Right-Wing American Family Association Misfires In The War On Christmas

By Amanda Terkel on Nov 17, 2009 at 7:45 pm

It’s not even Thanksgiving, but the American Family Association (AFA) has already taken up arms in the War on Christmas. On Nov. 11, the right-wing organization announced that it was urging its followers to boycott Gap Inc. (Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy) from now until Christmas Day because the company refuses to say the word “Christmas”:

For years, Gap has refused to use the word Christmas in its television commercials, newspaper ads and in-store promotions, despite tens of thousands of consumer requests to recognize Christmas and in spite of repeated requests from AFA to do the same.

Last year, Gap issued this politically-correct statement to Christmas shoppers: “Gap recognizes that many traditions are celebrated throughout this season and we feel it is important to display holiday signage that is inclusive to everyone.”

Christmas is special because of Jesus. It’s not just a “winter holiday.” For millions of Americans the giving and receiving of gifts is in honor of the One who gave Himself. For the Gap to pretend that isn’t the foundation of the Christmas season is political correctness at best and religious bigotry at worst. The Gap is censoring the word Christmas, pure and simple.

AFA’s first shot in the war is a misfire, as Dan Neil of the LA Times points out today. In one of the first lines of Gap’s new holiday ad, the actors yell, “Go Christmas!” (as well as “Go Hanukkah! Go Kwanzaa! Go Solstice!”) Watch it:

ThinkProgress also checked out the websites of Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy and quickly found several items that feature Christmas items including several Christmas books, a pair of boxer shorts that says “Christmas” in several languages and pajama pants that also have “Christmas” written on them.

Christmas apparel

“The big loser here is the AFA,” writes Neil. “The annual War-on-Christmas drumbeat is absolutely not about defending the sacredness of Christmas. It is instead — transparently — marketing, a ratings gambit for Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, and for the AFA, the centerpiece of its annual fundraising. This year, thanks to Gap, the AFA fumbled its boycott ball and in the process managed to look both intolerant and out of touch.”

Health

The Far Reach Of Stupak’s Amendment, Part II

By Igor Volsky on Nov 17, 2009 at 6:45 pm

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI)

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI)

A new study from George Washington University casts doubt on the argument that “restrictions on abortion coverage approved in the House version of the health-care bill likely will affect the affordability of the procedure for only a small minority of women.” The study finds that “the treatment exclusions required under the Stupak/Pitts Amendment will have an industry-wide effect, eliminating coverage of medically indicated abortions over time for all women, not only those whose coverage is derived through a health insurance exchange”:

In effect, the size of the new market is large enough so that Stupak/Pitts can be expected to alter the “default” customs and practices that guide the health benefits industry as a whole, leading it to drop coverage in all markets in order to meet the lowest common denominator in both the exchange and expanded Medicaid markets. Furthermore, for the reasons outlined above, because the Stupak Amendment bars the subsidization of plan administration activities in connection with prohibited procedures, it can be expected to chill the development of abortion coverage supplements as well as entirely separate plans to non-subsidized women. .

The Stupak amendment “is intended to reach only a specific part of the market,” but in effect, the provision — which prohibits the government from funding any plan that offers abortion coverage — could “move the entire health benefits industry away from its current inclusive coverage norms and toward a new norm of exclusion,” the report concludes.

Given the size of the market in the Exchange (30 million and growing), the scope of the amendment, and the technical challenges and difficulties that arise from administrating supplemental abortion coverage, insurers will “shift away from current abortion coverage norms“; excluding abortion from coverage will become the new norm.

Ultimately, “companies offering coverage products in the employer-sponsored market” “may elect to simply remove the [abortion] procedures from their products so that they can be sold in all markets.” The Stupak amendment will discourage insurance companies from providing abortion coverage and increase the costs of the procedure:

- Amendment could chill the development of abortion coverage supplements: Since Stupak effectively requires that supplemental abortion coverage “be administered separately from other plans,” the cost of supplemental abortion coverage “could be expected to be far higher than simply the cost” of any other supplemental policies.

- Companies would have to absorb the extra administrative costs of providing supplemental abortion coverage: “Not only would companies have to absorb all costs of administration into the supplemental or separate plan fee, but companies would confront having to expand provider networks to assure access to the full range of medically indicated abortions in the case of women who purchase expanded coverage.”

- Cost of later-term abortions would be particularly expensive: The cost of abortions performed later in pregnancy can already “carry a price tag in the thousands of dollars.” However, since this coverage will now be sold as supplement — excluded from the larger risk pool — “the cost of a supplement or a plan that carries additional coverage could be considerable.”

- No incentive for companies to offer additional coverage for women who move into Exchange: While a migration over time of thousands of smaller employers (who offer abortion coverage) into the Exchange “might encourage health benefit services companies to create supplemental abortion coverage products,” the Stupak amendment discourages their development. Currently, almost no insurers offer supplemental abortion coverage in states that already bar the sale of products that offer abortion coverage. The Stupak amendment is designed “to push the price of supplemental coverage higher by prohibiting the integration of administration costs into a single administrative scheme.”

- What if the abortion procedure is part a broader treatment? Under Stupak, plan administrators can only pay for abortions that threaten the life of the mother. But what if the abortion procedure “is part of broader treatment for a serious health condition?” What if the procedure must be performed to in the course of treating a significant health problem? “In these circumstances, how are plan administrators to distinguish between the abortion procedure and the rest of the treatment? Will the entire cost of a course of treatment (e.g., surgery to repair a damaged pelvis following an automobile accident) be denied if abortion is part of the procedure? Health plan administrators, confronted with the prospect of a legal violation for paying for the excluded abortions, may elect to deny the treatment altogether, claiming that it is all related to the excluded treatment.”

The unintended consequences of Stupak are alarming. Legislators have designed a policy that changes the way abortion is treated by insurers and providers in the broader health care market. The amendment devastates the status quo and could prove a serious obstacle to women.

Related Posts

Climate Progress

Reid: “I think if we do it right, the energy bill, the climate bill can be very, very job productive” — plans floor debate on bipartisan bill “sometime in the spring”

By Joe Romm on Nov 17, 2009 at 6:43 pm

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) today confirmed that floor debate on a sweeping energy and global warming bill that will be sold to the American public in part as an economic stimulus measure will be held early next year.

“We’re going to try to do that sometime in the spring,” Reid told reporters when asked about the window for moving a climate bill onto the Senate floor.

So E&E News PM (subs. req’d) reports.   Ideally the debate would start by the end of February, so the Senate vote could be finished by early spring, as I recently wrote.   The bipartisan team of Senators crafting a bill with the White House plan on a blueprint by Copenhagen:

Kerry and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are taking the lead in writing the climate and energy bill with a goal of releasing a blueprint before U.N. global warming negotiations start Dec. 7 in Copenhagen.

The good news is that Reid sees this bill as part of the economic stimulus and jobs package the administration is putting together, which should increase the motivation to pass it:

Read more

Politics

Despite Sessions’ bluster, only 29 senators support Hamilton filibuster.

By Ian Millhiser on Nov 17, 2009 at 6:30 pm

hamiltonOvercoming a failed filibuster attempt by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the Senate voted 70-29 this evening to end debate on President Obama’s first nominee to the federal bench, clearing Judge David Hamilton’s path to become a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Ten Republicans broke with Sessions:

Lamar Alexander (R-TN)
Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
John Cornyn (R-TX)
Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
Richard Lugar (R-IN)
John Thune (R-SD)
Judd Gregg (R-NH)
Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
Susan Collins (R-ME)
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)

Many of Sessions’ implausible attacks on Judge Hamilton appeared more at home on Glenn Beck’s show than they did on the Senate floor.  At one point, Sessions embraced false claims that Hamilton gave Muslims preferential treatment over Christians. Sessions also deemed Hamilton unfit for the bench because Hamilton spent one month working for ACORN in 1979. Yet, for all of his impotent rage against President Obama’s first nominee, Sessions couldn’t even convince much of his own caucus to support a filibuster. Hopefully, Sessions’ utter powerlessness against Hamilton’s nomination will embolden Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to move forward with dozens of other Obama nominees currently being held up in the Senate.

Yglesias

Endgame

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 17, 2009 at 6:14 pm

As cool as ice cream:

— Totally absurd Danish effort to prevent domestic violence.

— Now that Copenhagen’s been downgraded it’s more important than ever for Obama to go to the summit.

— The chance of a great depression is now five percent.

— Someone needs to make Ben Bernanke explain what he’s doing.

— Virtually no women are employed as writers for late-night comedy shows.

— Gilles Dorronsoro’s latest thinking on Afghanistan.

The Raveonettes’ “Bang!” to go with the Danish theme of the first couple of links.

Politics

Florida senatorial candidate Marco Rubio slams Ronald Reagan’s immigration policy.

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Nov 17, 2009 at 5:45 pm

rubioThe Palm Beach Post reports that former Florida House Speaker and Republican senatorial candidate Marco Rubio took issue with President Ronald Reagan’s immigration platform at a Martin County Republican Womens Federated meeting today. The Post reports that Rubio “delivered a six-minute discourse on immigration policy” in which he slammed Reagan’s support of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), which put undocumented immigrants on a path to legalization and made it illegal to knowingly hire unauthorized workers:

In 1986 Ronald Reagan granted amnesty to 3 million people. You know what happened, in addition to becoming 11 million a decade later? There were people trying to enter the country legally, who had done the paperwork, who were here legally, who were going through the process, who claimed, all of a sudden, ‘No, no no no , I’m illegal.’ Because it was easier to do the amnesty program than it was to do the legal process. [...]

Only after you deal with illegal immigration in a serious way — seal the border and the visa problem — can you then create a legal immigration system that works.

Rubio later conceded that “he [Reagan] did it for the right reasons, but I think it ended up working the wrong way.” Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, is staunchly opposed to any effort to fix the immigration status of undocumented immigrants and proposes solving the problem “dramatically by attrition.” The Miami New Times points out that he was 15 years-old when IRCA was signed into law.

Related Posts

Culture

Omri Casspi

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 17, 2009 at 5:32 pm

200px-Omri_Casspi_2 1

The Jewish people are not necessarily known for our athleticism, nor are the Sacremento Kings known these days for winning basketball games, so I was a bit surprised when I looked it up and found that Omri Casspi, the 21 year-old forward who’s the first Israeli to make it to the NBA, is not only playing, he’s playing pretty well—8.5 points and 3.1 rebounds on 60.1 TS% and 21.3 minutes per game. Not All-Star numbers, obviously, but the kind of guy you’d gladly have on your team.

And actually Sacramento, which projected terribly during the offseason, is doing pretty well. A return to form by Kevin Martin and a big sophomore leap from Jason Thompson are the main causes but Casspi is part of the change that Sactown can believe in.

Security

When Do We Stop Pretending Netanyahu Is A Partner For Peace?

By Matt Duss on Nov 17, 2009 at 5:30 pm

Was2345642Americans for Peace Now’s Lara Friedman analyzes Bibi Netanyahu’s latest thumb in the Obama administration’s (and the Abbas government’s, and the international community’s) eye, the authorization of 900 new homes in the East Jerusalem settlement of Gilo. “This is a crisis engineered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” Friedman writes, one “intended to create a head-on collision with the Obama Administration over Jerusalem.”

[W]hile Bibi had a number of “conventional” options for dealing with the issue, he chose to go nuclear by making this issue — and his defiance of US concerns — a top story. In doing so, he has undermined the prospects for the very negotiations he claims he wants. [...]

The plan, if implemented, will allow the construction of 844 units, and these units won’t be inside the existing footprint of the settlement. Rather, they will be on the settlement’s southwestern flank, expanding Gilo in the direction of the Palestinian village of Wallajeh (a village in which a large number of the homes are fighting Israeli demolition orders). This new Gilo plan clearly dovetails with another plan to build a new settlement, called Givat Yael, which would straddle the Jerusalem border and significantly extend Israeli Jerusalem to the south, further sealing the city off from the Bethlehem area and the West Bank (and connecting it to the Etzion settlement bloc). That plan, it was reported yesterday, also appears to be suddenly gaining steam. (for a map showing both the Gilo plan and Givat Yael, click here.)

The Gilo plan is thus extremely provocative on several levels. It represents a clear and public statement from the Netanyahu government that it is neither “freezing” nor acting with “restraint” in East Jerusalem. It compels the Palestinians to respond, just as it compels other regional actors to respond. Finally, it has important strategic implications, since the plan, implemented, would impact on border options for Jerusalem under a future peace agreement.

Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth reported — and a U.S. official confirmed – that Obama administration envoy George Mitchell had asked an aide to Netanyahu at a meeting in London on Monday to block the proposed construction in East Jerusalem. This latest affront comes less than a week after President Obama met with Netanyahu for 70 minutes in the White House.

Writing in yesterday’s New York Times, Roger Cohen suggested that recent history “makes clear that the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won’t deviate from the pattern of settlement growth established since 1967.” The U.S. has its own history of recognizing the illegitimacy of the settlements, and recognizing the role that they play in powering Palestinian resentment and violence, while never undertaking serious measures to pressure Israel to curb them. The Obama administration showed admirable clarity at the outset about these things, but then refused to stand strong behind its demand that Israel abide by its previous commitments to halt settlement growth, and its credibility has suffered for it.

The administration has certainly made its own mistakes on this issue, and I think the Palestinians have been unwise in refusing to negotiate without a complete settlement freeze. But we need to recognize that Netanyahu’s intransigence, born of an ideological commitment to seizing as much Palestinian land as possible, is a huge part of the problem here. Add this to his tendency to provoke crises and humiliate his country’s key patron, the United States, at almost every opportunity, I wonder when the Obama administration will simply stop pretending that Netanyahu is a partner for peace.

Related Posts

Politics

Coburn vows to read the entire health care bill on the Senate floor.

By Matt Corley on Nov 17, 2009 at 5:10 pm

Speaking to reporters last night, the Senate’s top obstructionist, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), said that he would attempt to slow down progress on health care reform by insisting that the 1,000-page-plus health care reform bill be read aloud on the Senate floor. “The American people are going to get to hear this bill read, period,” said Coburn, adding that “he would also block other legislative shortcuts” in an effort to delay the bill, such as requiring “the Senate to use up the entire 30-hour debate period called for after a filibuster has been broken.” According to Roll Call, “earlier this month, Republican leadership aides said Coburn was unlikely to make such a move without the blessing of GOP leaders.”

Yglesias

Ambivalence is a Bad Organizing Tactic

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 17, 2009 at 4:45 pm

160px-Bart_Stupak_official_109th_Congress_photo

A good Jeffrey Toobin article about the Stupak Amendment ends with the observation that a lot of recent trends in abortion-related messaging have arguably left the pro-choice side disarmed to fight these skirmishes:

The President is pro-choice, and he has signalled some misgivings about the Stupak amendment. But, like many modern pro-choice Democrats, he has worked so hard to be respectful of his opponents on this issue that he sometimes seems to cede them the moral high ground. In his book “The Audacity of Hope,” he describes the “undeniably difficult issue of abortion” and ponders “the middle-aged feminist who still mourns her abortion.” Elsewhere, he announces, “Abortion vexes.” The opponents of abortion aren’t vexed—they are mobilized, focussed, and driven to succeed. The Catholic bishops took the lead in pushing for the Stupak amendment, and they squeezed legislators in a way that would do any K Street lobbyist proud. (One never sees that kind of effort on behalf of other aspects of Catholic teaching, like opposition to the death penalty.) Meanwhile, the pro-choice forces temporized. But, as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg observed not long ago, abortion rights “center on a woman’s autonomy to determine her life’s course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature.” Every diminishment of that right diminishes women. With stakes of such magnitude, it is wise to weigh carefully the difference between compromise and surrender.

The crux of the matter is that whether or not “mixed feelings” about abortion are common, it’s hard to find a stable and coherent middle ground position on the issue. If aborting a fetus is morally similar to killing a person, then banning such activity clearly doesn’t diminish women. But if it’s not similar, then as Ginsburg is saying this cuts the heart of women’s status as free and equal autonomous citizens and bargaining rights away becomes very costly. But you can’t make any real sense out of the pro-choice position on a matter like this if you’re constantly apologizing for yourself. The practical consequences of the Stupak Amendment, like the Hyde Amendment before it, aren’t all that major in the macro sense. But they’re not only very major in the lives of the people directly affected, they implicate important issues of principle. But taking a principled stand only works if you’re prepared to defend the principle.

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