Sen. Harry Reid voted against the Senate Democrats’ contraception bill, which is nothing more than a ploy to use the Hobby Lobby decision as an electoral wedge issue. That bill won a majority vote, but did not get the 60 votes it would need to actually pass the Senate.
None of that really matters though, because even if it did pass the Senate, the House won’t take it up. It’s a dead letter.
The bill isn’t even intended to pass and become law. Its entire point is to use the Hobby Lobby decision as a wedge issue this fall. It’s not serious legislation. It’s legislative abuse.
If if did pass, the Supreme Court would probably strike it down, since they just ruled on the matter.
Here’s a sample of how the media are reporting this. Note that most people won’t drill down past the headline. The headlines themselves, therefore, are what most people are likely to base their opinion on.
The “Senate GOP blocks” headline is a creature from the Associated Press’s Donna Cassata.
It’s a lie. The Senate GOP didn’t “block” anything. In fact, three of the GOP’s senators are such weak-minded fools that they voted for the Democrats’ partisan bill. They are Sens. Susan Collins (of course), Lisa Murkowski and Mark Kirk. A jedi would have a field day with those three.
The final vote was 56-43. The bill wasn’t “blocked,” it got a vote. It just failed to pass the Senate based on its rules. The bill has no chance of even getting a vote in the House. Because it’s a partisan bill engineered by Democrats to help Democrats.
Reid’s no vote keeps the bill — the issue — alive so that he can bring it up again closer to the election. The AP story points that out, actually. What it doesn’t point out is how cynical that is.
It doesn’t point out how idiotic this quote is.
“A woman’s health care decision should be made with her doctor, with her family, with her faith, not by her employer with her employer’s faith,” [Dem. Sen. Jeanne] Shaheen said in a Senate speech.
Right. When you force employers to pay for something, you make it their business. When you force employers to have to choose between their faith and their business, as Sen. Chuck Schumer explicitly said last week, you force them to make decisions. If you don’t give them any say, you’re more or less stealing their property and giving it to someone else in the hope that they will vote for you. If you don’t give them any say about the matter, and smear them after the fact, you’re a tyrant.
The entire exercise of this bill is a game to divide Americans and drive the low-information voters who still support Obama out to vote in November. It’s the Democrats’ only shot at retaining the Senate, and it’s a long shot. It depends on Democrats lying shamelessly (check!) and their voters being clueless (check!) and the media enabling dishonesty (in the case of the AP’s Donna Cassata, check!).
Here’s how the AP’s Cassata delves into the “issue” at hand. Watch for the sleight of hand. It’s not subtle.
National statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that more than 99 percent of women ages 15 to 44 who have had sexual intercourse have used at least one form of contraception.
And your point is? As the AP’s Donna Cassata ought to know and likely does know, the Hobby Lobby case only deals with four specific types of abortifacients. Hobby Lobby covers 16 types of actual contraception in its insurance plans. The decision only deals with a narrow set of business owners. Throwing that contraception statistic out in the way Cassata did is a red herring. She ought to be writing the DNC’s talking points for them.
Well, actually, she is. The DNC ought to report Cassata’s work as an in-kind donations.
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