You know we've reached a strange point in the political discourse when the right wants to compare President Obama to Hitler, while Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) wanted to compare himself to Martin Luther King.
Two weeks ago, Cuccinelli urged his allies to be willing to "go to jail" to resist the Affordable Care Act's provision that treats contraception as preventive medical care. As Evan Mcmorris-Santoro reported, this week, the state A.G. took this argument to the next level.
In a radio interview, Cuccinelli, Virginia's Republican gubernatorial candidate this year, explained his belief that opposition to contraception coverage is effectively the same thing as the fight for civil rights. He argued:
"Whenever I talk about religious liberty, you know they turn it around. All they talk about -- they don't talk about denying religious liberty. They talk about contraception. And I'm not talking about contraception. Government doesn't have a role in contraception. Government does have a role in protecting your civil rights especially today on MLK Day. The man who really came up with the American non-violent protest theory of civil disobedience. It's pretty egregious that they can't get any higher than contraception when we're talking about protecting people's religious liberty."
Cuccinelli has also begun citing King's Letter from Birmingham Jail for support.
Just so we're clear, in the mind of Virginia's attorney general and GOP gubernatorial candidate, there's a moral equivalence between the fight against racial discrimination and the fight to prevent covering birth control as preventive health care.
And for the record, Cuccinelli wasn't kidding.
Just to reiterate, not only is the comparison ridiculous on its face, but the hysteria surrounding the underlying policy is wholly unnecessary.
Under federal law, insurance companies must now make preventive care available without copays. It was up to the Obama administration to establish what counts as "preventive care" and officials chose a variety of common-sense policies, including mammograms, HIV screenings, immunizations, and contraception.
No one will be required to have any of these services; they'll simply be available. In terms of finances, the Obama administration exempts churches and other houses of worship from financing care they may find objectionable, and the White House also created a compromise in which religiously-affiliated employers wouldn't have to pay for contraception directly.
That's it. That's the entirety of the "controversy."
For the far-right Virginian, this policy is so excessive, people should simply ignore the law and invite punishment -- and he's a modern-day King, leading the fight, because allowing private employers to deny basic medical coverage to their employees is a matter of "religious liberty."
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he needs to watch Larry Wilmore on the Daily Show
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-january-21-2013/what-dr--martin-luther-king-jr--would-have-wanted
Another tone deaf Republican...and your chances in 2014......are diminishing as we speak
I was thinking the same thing. Everyone needs to see Larry's spiel.
Virginia is on the odd year schedule; the Cuckoo is running *this* year, not in '14.
Larry Wilmore's monologue is exactly what I thought of.
It's really not all that surprising that Cuccinelli would do this. There is a right-wing relative of MLK--I forget her name at the moment, but she pops up on Fox a lot--who makes a kind of living distorting his legacy for right-wing audiences. Cuccinelli, like all Republicans I suspect, gets his ideas about MLK filtered through this one bat@!$%#-crazy wingnut relative.
You may be right, Monk, but at most, she's the mechanism, not the strategy. The strategy is to co-opt the opponent's strength and turn it to your own advantage. Rachel has been noting that for some time now. (She sometimes refers to it as "I know you are, but what am I?") MLK is such a revered figure, and some RWNJ's are coming up with ways to cloak their vile selves in his mantle. They really need to do that now, as it's being done to them by their own moderate associates in the area of gun control. (Most NRA members support reasonble restrictions on gun access, Reagan supported reasonable gun control measures, etc.)
The putative successor to Gov. Ultrasound is worried that Va. voters will see his policies on reproductive freedom for what they are: Violent intrusions into private lives for the purpose of foisting his religion on others. Invoking MLK is an attempt to conceal that.
You have a point. It may be better to say that this relative (I just cannot remember her name) is only a medium through which the right tries to legitimatize it's misappropriation of MLK's legacy, rather than portraying her as the source.
Not the next governor of Virginia.
Like I said before, the teapubs talking about mental health evaluations as preventive gun control would do themselves a service having mental evaluations themselves. Especially those seeking office.
Virginian here. 2013 is going to be a very pivotal election year for VA (our governor elections are the year after the presidential one every time). I hope the actions of VA Republicans get lots of airtime between now and election day, because while this state is a patchwork quilt demographically, it's swinging hard to the left in a way that won't go conservative anytime soon.
2017's elections might be even bigger, because they'd potentially have a say in 2020's census redistricting, but the here-and-now isn't small. Here's hoping the Dems can muster the turnout on a non-presidential election day!
There was what I think was a great point made on Hardball last night...Rights are not zero sum. Just because someone has them it does not mean that they had to be taken form anyone else. Power on the other hand is a pit of a zero sum because if someone has that then someone else's necessarily diminishes in some way.
This is about power. The power to tell women what they can and can't do, what they must and must not do, and who gets to tell them.
The idea that this is "Religious Liberty" is a false pretext for the power to control other peoples decisions and actions. Period. and it needs to be seen and treated as such.
I suspect that the right confuses 'rights' with 'privilege'. The first are enhanced the more they are protected. To shift to another subject (because it will make for a simpler illustration): white people lost nothing by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but they did lose a good deal of privilege, which is really no bad thing except to people who don't know how to share. Whenever a right-winger talks about rights, I just mentally substitute the word 'privilege' and that makes what they say more clear (and more obviously odious).
For the Far Right Wingnuts, "liberty" means THEIR right to impose THEIR religious beliefs on everyone else.
I wonder, how long will it be before Inquisitor General Cuccinelli, Defender of the Faith, starts trying to reclaim the "right" to torture confessions out of heretics and unbelievers?
It is fun , on occasions like this , to think of the need for words like hysterical , sociopath , and insane . When Freud was culling his experiences beginning his life's work in pyschotherapy it was with housewives . At that time these women were a vital group of unhappy people , wealthy enough as an inchoate (at that time) group to start the work Betty Friedan focussed on , in my opinion , so well with her work "The Feminine Mystique" .
The turn of the view from women being chattel for fine mens folks like "Koo Koo" Cuccinelli to dispose of as , he , they , wish into a palpable equal certainly creates the opening , inevitable , for the social use of insane and hysterical , and on one hopes , for the rare occasions of need "sociopath" .
I guess the hard work of ranting , that becomes the infantile authority of medieval interpretations of ancient writings composed to frighten rather than enlighten has come full circle .
it's always interesting how schizophrenic some religious politicians are about human sanctity — protect even the unborn, but don't give a damn about the already living as they are threatened by madmen armed with assault weapons, or the disadvantaged and aged who really have no productive place in our increasingly marxist labor situation.
Our state's Republicans have gotten so embarrassing. Virginia used to be such a just-get-things-done type of state. It was in the south, but no one wanted to admit it. Now our Republican party has lost their minds.
To give you an idea of just how obnoxious this is, remember George "Mecaca" Allen? He served a term as our governor. Word has it is that he used to keep a fake tree in his office with a noose on it. And now Mecaca's fellow Republican Cuccinelli is trying to lay claim to MLK? Talk about obnoxious.
Unless the Republicans steal the vote, or if the Democrats punt and put up a horribly lousy candidate (which they are prone to do more often than I'd like), I can't see the GOP winning the governorship later this year.
Northern Virginia is continually growing. And with just a 5% unemployment rate, people from all over the country are coming here looking for work. Our real estate market alone has made an amazing recovery. I bought my home at the bottom of the market at 147k. Since then my neighbors bought their home for 299k!
"It was in the south, but no one wanted to admit it."
HA! 20 years ago, I worked on a film in Richmond about Tad Lincoln. The Mayor's wife, visiting the set, spent about 30 minutes telling everyone what a tyrant and evil guy Lincoln was.
I'm from NC.... that "valley of humility between two mountains of conceit" ... those mountains being VA and SC.... the conceit being the starting place (SC) and the capital (VA) of the Confederacy. I went to school in VA in the 70's and even back then they WERE the South's capital and proud of it... while looking down their noses at AL, MS, GA, etc.... and NC.
Still, as DC attitudes bleed out further and further into the state, it seems to get better. But not in Richmond.
Republican public arguments everywhere have begun their final descent. You can't tell the bullshhit they're throwing out from the stupidest of flimsy lawsuits.
It was not that long ago that Virginia was still practicing eugenics, mandatory sterilization of folks not considered good reproductive material. They were the last state to outlaw it in 1979. With such a rich history of cruelty, one might think they would be more circumspect in their decisions about human rights. Of course that one must be naive.
What is wrong with these people. They are beyond out of touch with everything that MLK represented. They are an embarrassment to the country.
So "religuluous liberty" is now equal to private employer paid health insurance, got it! And what covers those of US that don't believe in "his religuluon"? Are WE to be denied our right to: 1) not believe as he does, & 2) be denied birth control because Ken Cuccinelli speaks for G-d or is having his delusions of his own G-dness? When can WE the PEOPLE start requiring mental health examinations of public officials? And this guy wants to be governor of Virginia, really - he'll make Bob "vaginal probe" McDonnell look like a "moderate". Don't do it to yourselves Virginians!
What has made the right so fear-filled and consumed by other people's actions? I get that the right only clings to words like "democracy, freedoms, & rights" only appeal to them when they are trying to scare the sheeple into doing what they want? When what they really need to be transparent about is exactly how totalitarian a government do they want on US? Just be up front about the fact that if you are not part of the upper 2% - that will fund their campaigns and will never have to experience life "without" (social services, money, etc.), then they want obedient serfs that will mindlessly behave exactly the way the GOTP wants them too - sheeple!
Excellent point, Zora, about their true intention being a totalitarian government, all the while pretending to fight for rights and freedom. ("I'll tell you which rights you have and then you'll be free to exercise them.") A bunch of liars and cheats, if you ask me.
So.... he's going to fight and go to jail for the religious freedoms of....insurance companies....
Alrighty then!
I'm sure there's something else he can (and should) go to jail for.
He 's not planning on going to jail for anything; he wants others (his allies) to. I think being clapped in the pokey might interfere with his gubernatorial ambitions.
Pretty ballsy move, comparing yourself to MLK Jr., when your state took 14 YEARS to officially recognize the holiday in his honor. I guess comparing your struggle to his is the new go-to claim for the GOP iinstead of making stupid-ass comments about women's health choices.
How can it be that we in Europe have no problems with contraception, yet the Americans are running scared? This goes for everything we cherish here in Europe, health care, pensions, social security, unemployment allowance, and yes we have some of the highest taxes in the World here in Europe.
I used to live in Europe. America is a great country but, we sure could learn a thing or two from Europe.
David, you fail to appreciate the fact that the Puritans came and never left, we have been saddled with their twisted take on the world ever since.
Republican weasel.
Here's something else Ken has done recently.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/virginia-supreme-court-should-revisit-pretrial-disclosure-rules/2013/01/02/de0368da-552e-11e2-8b9e-dd8773594efc_story.html
Ken blocked Justin's release with just 40 minutes to go by filing a stay. Granted Justin was no angel but it has been proven that he did not hire the guy to kill the dealer and prosecutorial misconduct has also been proven during his trial and afterwards. He had been on death row for almost 10 years for a crime he did not commit and Cooch wont let him out. He can't afford the bad publicity for his department's crookedness and for his campaign, Its just wrong. Please pursue this on your show as well. We picketed one of his fundraisers with Justin's parents and the support group. Cooch snuck in and out the back door...typical.
what next indeed
I do remember contraception being denounced in a black civil rights context (although not specifically by Dr. King). I think it was in 1971 reading an article in a Black Panthers' publication putting forward the argument that black women should not take the pill, which the author saw as a plot to depopulate the black community.
Interesting the kinds of people Cucinelli is allying himself with!
Just so we're clear - this Republican AG is equating his belief that employers should be allowed to make reproductive health decisions for their employees based on their (not the employees') personal religious convictions to the Civil Rights movement? It's so heartwarming to know that someone is standing up for the right of powerful people to foist their religion onto average Americans and deny women the right to make decisions about their own health needs.
I know this is a bit off-topic, but I was looking for something on abortion. That's because I just watched the segment from last night's show about stealth legislation in the states to constrict access to such a degree as to make it all but impossible. Rachel focused on the effect it would have on women's health to remove access to a safe medical procedure.
Well, as I've noted before, I own several horses and am probably more aware of this faux pas than most. Several years ago, some ardent animal lovers pushed through legislation to shut down horse slaughterhouses. No one wants to think of a beloved partner meeting such an ignominious end. But of course there were unintended consequences.
Because the slaughterhouses were shut down, the market for selling horses fell through the floor. No one would buy the older, unsound horse. Euthanizing and disposing of the carcass can run to many hundreds of dollars. People who could no longer bear the cost of feeding and caring for those horses either left them to starve or released them to fend for themselves, hoping no one would make the connection of who had owned them. Either way, horses were suffering a terrible and lingering death, far worse than the quick end they met at the abattoir.
So now the people who are striving to make abortion all but illegal (since it's federally protected by law) need to look at the bigger picture and think of the horror they're foisting upon a stranger to feed their own personal sense of righteousness.
You can believe as a current Virginian, I WILL BE voting against this numb skull! Smh... -_-
Another instance where a party of white men, dominating, trying to convince the bigoted and racist followers that by invoking MLK, their idiocy has merit.