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Samizdata quote of the day What a fabulously confident and ingenuous-seeming political narcissist Ms. Fluke is. She really does think—and her party apparently thinks—that in a spending crisis with trillions in debt and many in need, in a nation in existential doubt as to its standing and purpose, in a time when parents struggle to buy the good sneakers for the kids so they’re not embarrassed at school . . . that in that nation the great issue of the day, and the appropriate focus of our concern, is making other people pay for her birth-control pills. That’s not a stand, it’s a non sequitur. She is not, as Rush Limbaugh oafishly, bullyingly said, a slut. She is a ninny, a narcissist and a fool.
– Peggy Noonan.
My own prediction: Obama’s finished.
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The game is on!
Will The cult of Personality carry the day?
That is the issue for the New Totalitarianism.
Hey, it has won before!
Finally, a mockery of Sandra Fluke that doesn’t make me want to throw up reading it.
Why is it oafish and bullying for Limbaugh to call Fluke a slut but perfectly fine for Noonan to call her a ninny, a narcissist, and a fool? Fluke’s own position is that she needs more birth control than she can afford, and she needs it so badly that the state should overturn two hundred years of legal precedent to force the Catholic church to overturn two thousand years of tradition so the Jesuits will have to buy it for her.
It’s probably not true that she’s a slut, but only because she’s actually a statist and a liar, which are worse things to be than slut, ninny, narcissist, or fool.
Ms Fluke was often described as a ‘law student’ at Georgetown University.
If she was a full-time law student at Georgetown, she was paying tuition of $25,000 per annum. It would appear that somebody is able to find that kind of money for her to do, what she wanted to do.
Oh, that’s right – she was on a ‘public interest’ scholarship – so somebody else already paid for her to go to law school.
You can buy contraceptive pills at WalMart for $9 a month, or $108 per year.
But in her testimony to a Congressional gathering, she claimed that the cost of contraception was $3000 over the time that a person was in law school – usually 3 years for a JD degree, so $1000 a year.
So she overstated the cost by an order of magnitude – and she still expects somebody else to pay for it? I’ll bet she spends more than this on double-mocha extra-dry latte with a shot of almond – every month.
I supopose we should not be surpised, since her whole career has consisted of working in taxpayer- and grant-funded organizations of one sort or another. She has always had somebody else pay for her enthusiasms – why not this as well?
A perfect metahhor for the current state of the Democratic party – getting somebody else to pay for her enthusiasms. No wonder they put her front-and-center at the convention.
Sandy, why don’t you go work a couple of shifts at your local McDonalds, and you can earn enough to pay for your contraception for the next year. It might open your eyes to some other realities, as well.
llater,
llamas
‘Why is it oafish and
bullying for Limbaugh to
call Fluke a slut but
perfectly fine for Noonan
to call her a ninny, a
narcissist, and a fool’. Because whether she is a slut or not is totally irrelevant to this whole affair: she could have been a properly married mother of five who did not want to have any more children – and it would still have been ninnyish, narcissistic and foolish for her to demand that other people pay for her contraception.
Even better, she is required by Georgetown to have health insurance. She can either buy the insurance they offer (and lump it in with her other tuition and fees) or get a waiver if she has insurance elsewhere. Says so right on the Student Affairs website: (Link) So, she’s really arguing that she shouldn’t be forced to pay co-pays or other deductables or just pay for it as an over the counter mediciation. Well, too bad. My insurance doesn’t cover some of my meds, even though I need them, so I pay for them out of pocket. Why should her birth control be any different?
I’m not unaware that some of those pills have other non-sex related uses. If it is a medical issue, that’s one thing. If it is a matter of not wanting to get pregnant, that’s on the participants. Buy your own condoms, pills, abortion, or keep your knees together.
Anyone who spends $1,000 a year on contraceptives is a slut. By definition. Of course, if she doesn’t actually spend that much (which I suspect is the case) then she’s a liar. By definition. Either way, she’s a quintessential Democrat. By definition.
‘Anyone who spends $
1,000 a year on contraceptives is a slut. By definition.’ Even if she is married, and only has sex with her husband? Or at least a steady boyfriend? Or is a ‘slut’ just any woman who has much more sex than the person calling her that? Or his wife? I have never listened to Limbaugh, and now I am glad I haven’t.
I just bought a good quality piano that I can’t afford, for my musically promising children. At least I had the decency to hit up my own relatives for the money, and not the taxpayers. You’d think that a 30-year-old student needing public funding for her quality of life diversions would at least be a little grateful to the rest of us. You’d think so, if you knew nothing of the entitlement mentality.
Alisa, contraceptives aren’t that expensive. Not over here, anyway. Birth control pills cost from $15 – $50 per month, generally at the lower end (see), or under $600 per year; condoms cost even less, generally less than $10 per dozen (see). So $1,000 would buy you roughly 1200 of them, 100 per month. If you need that many, you’re a slut. By definition. But you’re also amazing.
“Fluke’s own position is that she needs more birth control than she can afford,”
Err, actually Fluke’s position is that contraceptive pills are sometimes/often prescribed for not having a shag related reasons (for example, to control dysmenorrhea) and that therefore it is outrageous that Georgetown. a Jesuit university, is totally out of order in insisting that the pill will not be part of the health care insurance that the university offers to students.
I still think she’s entirely and stupidly wrong, but for a very different reason indeed. Insurance is a damn stupid way of paying for cheap treatment that many people need/desire.
Insurance as a method of pooling low probability and high cost risks? Yup, sure, that’s just great. Insurance against the costs of cancer treatment, something that some of us will need and none can afford independently? Yup, right on. Or the costs of being scraped off the roads after a car smash: I’m with you.
But come along now, most women these days are going to be using some form of contraception for the majority of their fertile life (and as a heterosexual male I say Hurrah! to that!). This is simply not something that suits the insurance model.
The American health care system really is so screwed that for something like this it would be less expensive if they simply moved to the UK system of tax funding it.
And it would certainly be true if they did that with things like vaccines. Every damn child in the country is going to have these (bar particularly kookie parents) and insurance just ain’t the right way to fund something that everyone has.
Yes, I know, an ASI Senior Fellow arguing against private provision: but really, in some of these cases insurance is even worse than private purchase or even, gasp, simple straight out free at the point of issue paid for from taxes.
Re JP’s prediction, I can’t see how Obama can win, and I base that entirely on the contrasting vibes he emitted last time around with those this time around. That must have electoral consequences. Yet whenever I say what JP says, that Obama is finished, I am told that the polls still have it too close to call.
Could it be that the polls are wrong, and that the truth is a big Repub win? But the Dems want the race still to seem close to encourage their soldiers and voters, and the Repubs ditto, to encourage theirs? Is that what might be happening? Or are these polls actually pretty trustworthy?
“Insurance as a method of pooling low probability and high cost risks? Yup, sure, that’s just great. Insurance against the costs of cancer treatment, something that some of us will need and none can afford independently? ” Dr. Tim
You are right back at the crux. Insurance is the transfer of risk
The Great Distortion has occurred from the attempts to use the mechanisms and contracts of insurance for the spreading of costs.
Those here (at least U S) might be fascinated to know that what is known today as AFLAC began, and built its huge base as an insurer which sold one type of policy which insured against the economic disaster of the single “Dread Disease” Cancer.
It had to fight the efforts of other insurers (who limited benefits for the occurence of Cancer) to “coordinate benefits” against the victims when AFLAC provided coverage, and thus reduce their exposures by reducing the insureds’ benefits.
It had to fight politicians who sought to “protect consumers” from buying single disease coverage.
After over 40 years of professional association, I have been disassociated with AFLAC for many (30+)years now; but, that experience provided a window on how politics and monopoly-seeking (via insurance regulations) has distorted insurance.
Sorry,
I have been awy from AFLAC for only 20+ years.
Laird: you keep repeating ‘by definition’, instead of answering my question – which is: does a woman who has tons of sex with her husband fall under that definition?
In any case, and to go back to my original point: saying ‘she is a slut’ is about as relevant to this issue as saying that she has dark hair or that she likes pizza.
Technically, “slut” is the feminine form of “slob.” But she’s probably not that, either.
Assuming that she’s not actually taking a pill that costs $9/month..hell, let’s assume that she is:
A thousand bucks a year, less $108 for pills, is $892/year. That is 3-4 condoms a day, every day, even at dorm-vending-machine markup.
When does she have time to study?
Jonathon, about your prediction. At this moment the Democratic campaign seems to be flagging and the Republicans seem to be on a roll, but as an avid follower of local letters-to-the-editor web site, I have the solid perception that the election outcome is unpredictable. Judging from the quality of discourse with regard to actual fact and first principles, few of the commenters of either stripe want to understand either the fundamental problems or possible solutions, thus mirroring their candidates. It’s still very much a coin-flip, I think. Neither outcome suggests salvation, in any event.
I share Tim Worsthall’s scepticism about insurance as a means for paying for contraception (And RSS is entirely right – if the premiums are set by the market, in relation to expected health costs of the insured, that’s insurance. If they are set by government, in relation to the expected health costs of people other than the insured, that’s part of the welfare system.)
However, I’m not sure Tim’s right about Georgetown’s insurance policy banning contraceptive devices in non shagging contexts. See for example :
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/in-the-georgetown-health-care-plan-space-for-exce
My admittedly shaky grasp of Roman Catholic doctrine would suggest that using contraceptive devices for other health reasons, not related to preventing procreation, would not be sinful, and so I would not be at all surprised if Georgetown’s policy allowed payment for non shagging use of contraceptives. Doctrine of double effect and all that.
Tim Worstall and RRS both make excellent points about insurance – points that many people (in the world, rather than here) appear to be reluctant to grasp.
I have found that a rather effective way of explaining some aspects of those points is to discuss the health insurance that we have for our cats.
We have four cats and they enjoy excellent (if rather expensive) coverage. Deductibles are negligible, co-pay is zero and chronic conditions are covered for life. However, things such as regular vaccinations, spay / neuter, certain dental treatments – cleaning for example, are excluded from coverage all together.
I occasionally find myself in conversation with people who advocate for plans that cover those excluded treatments. My response is to argue that those treatments are not possibilities, against the risk of which one might reasonably insure. Rather, they are guaranteed certainties and the only way that an insurance plan could sensibly cover them would be to add up the annual cost, add a bit for overhead and some more for profit margin and then charge you more each year than you would pay if you left those elements uninsured.
The odd thing is that people appear able to grasp that easily, when it comes to cats, yet are amazed when I point out how the same arithmetic applies to aspects of human health insurance.
Perhaps I am too pro feminine, but for those prone to use the term “slut” as a character pejorative I will ask what is the equivalent term for that type of male character?
Actually, there are a number of reasons why it can make sense to pay a third party to cover services you expect to use. The simplest case is where the third party can bundle business and secure discounts not available to you as an individual. Or you are particularly bad at negotiating, or simply would rather not shop price for the service and are willing to pay someone else to manage that.
Of course, in the US the big reason to have insurance cover routine medical expenses is that employer-paid insurance has not been considered income for tax purposes. The whole employer-paid insurance system began as a way to bypass wage controls imposed by the government during WW II. Personal finances had nothing to do with it, and haven’t for so long that most people in this country are unaware that true catastrophic insurance even exists.
RRS: Clinton?
Long-Lost Acquaintance: she is both a genius and a slut. A genius slut. Seriously, who cares?
RRS, I am not banging on this because I find the word offensive: a person should be offended by an epithet only if they do not conform to its widely accepted definition. If she sleeps with lots of men and proud of it, then she should wear the epithet as a badge of honor. If she is ashamed of it, that’s her problem. My beef with the use of the word on this context is that it is totally irrelevant to the political issue at hand. You can call her a liar (which she probably is, but you’d need to prove that), or you could call her a ninny, a narcissist and a fool. You could also call her a typical Democrat (although you’d be repeating yourself). All of these would be relevant – unlike ‘slut’.
I find all this quite illustrative of some of the main differences between libertarians and conservatives.
I agree with Allan Ripley. Another way to put it is that as disappointing as Obama is to many voters, Romney is still not appealing enough to enough of them them to tip the balance.
the other rob: the reason for this is that most people are much more rational about the “needs” of cats than they are about the “needs” of humans. The irrational part lies in the failure to make a clear distinction between that which is desirable and that which is possible – even when the impossibility stares one in the face.
Can you explain why pointing out that she is a “narcissist” (proof?) is more relevant to the policy she is advocating than pointing out she is a “slut” (in the commonly-accepted usage)?
Similarly, what does her being a “fool“, a “ninny“, or a “liar” have to do with the merits of the political issue at hand?
lol… yes indeed, if only conservatives were more like that noted libertarian, Peggy Noonan.
Buzz, I think you will find the answer if you read my previous comments. I have done enough thumb typing for now:-)
I did check your comments again, Alisa, and still find that absolutely none of them address the questions I asked.
Perhaps someone else would be kind enough to help out by identifying where you did so?
I’ll try again, Buzz:
Narcissism and foolishness are – arguably – some of the defining qualities of socialists (one’s sexual life style is not). Hence they are at least seemingly relevant to an issue the heart of which is the question ‘socialism good or bad?’
‘Liar’ is relevant in any debate, since reasonable people are not expected to take *any* argument, on any issue, seriously if it is not based on truth.
To help you even further, I’ll repeat myself by saying that even if Ms. Fluke (what a name) was a god-fearing, properly married and entirely faithful to ger husband mother of many children, who decided that she did not want to have any more, it would still be just as wrong for her do demand that other people pay for her contraception.
As to Peggy Noonan, I don’t know and couldn’t care less.
My recollection was that Limbaugh called her a slut because he was making a connection between sex and money, ie he was arguing that she wanted to be paid to have sex and that slut is one of the words that are used to describe ladies whose sexual activity is rewarded with money (or gifts.) So I don’t think it was a random insult, or mere abuse about “excessive” sexual activity, I think he was trying to make a point – what is the usual designation of ladies who have sex for money ? So the reference to sexual lifestyle was essential to his point. She wasn’t merely a thieving socialist, she was a thieving socialist who wanted to be paid to have sex.
I believe after a day or so, he thought better of it. Not because he had had a sudden attack of good taste, but because he recognised that his point was off target. She didn’t in fact want to be paid to have sex, she merely wanted some of the expenses associated with her sexual activity to be met by other people (compulsorily.) (And she wasn’t really talking about herself she was talking about students she felt she was speaking for.) Since we don’t have a special word we already use as an insult for ladies who want their sex expenses met by others, we have to settle for the words we use generally about people who want their expenses of any kind to be met by other people (compulsorily.) Which are “thieving socialist.”
Except it is not. Slut is not a synonym for whore. Slut indicates promiscuousness, not sex for gain. So that defence of Limbaugh, who I have long thought was a jackass, fails on semantic grounds.
As noted above, denotatively slut = slob. Connotatively, slut = ‘c**t hound’. or something like it. This is used (by men) as dismissively as “slut.”
‘Thieving socialist’ is just fine by me, Lee. Plus, what Perry said.
Perry : “Slut is not a synonym for whore.”
Merriam Webster Online ( a dictionary favoured by Americans, I believe) defines “slut ” thus” :
1. (chiefly British) : a slovenly woman
2 a promiscuous woman; especially : prostitute
So slut clearly IS a synonym for whore in American speak. Indeed I have even heard it used in that context in British speak, though more rarely than in reference to mere promiscuity. Perhaps in some parts of America the slut=prostitute usage is common. (And while we’re on the subject I have certainly heard “whore” used in reference to mere promiscuity or infidelity, not just in reference to prostitution.)
‘especially : prostitute’ I have never heard it used in the US that way.
@PfP:
Probably getting out of my syntactical reach, but pejorative is connotative.
So, are the two connotations equivalent. I don’t think so.
In fact I think the connotation of “slut” is one indicating distictions in views of male and female sexual conduct.
I have lived in the USA for a good part of my life and have never once heard it used that way regardless of that the dictionary says.
Of course, the USA is a big place and I do not profess to know what is the accepted usage of ‘slut’ everywhere. That said, I doubt my circles in the USA are all that different to Rush Limbaugh’s circles and thus feel on pretty secure grounds saying that it is unlikely Limbaugh would use the word to mean prostitute even if that were true in the more bleary parts of certain US inner cities.
And I have lived in the UK for even more of my life than the USA and likewise have never heard slut used as a synonym for prostitute.
Sandra Fluke lives a short distance from activist groups (such a the local Planned Parenthood base) that would give her birth control pills for little or nothing.
This dispute was not about poverty – it was about the persecution of the Roman Catholic Church.
Of course only a few centuries ago the Roman Catholic Church persecuted people itself – but that gives no excuse to persecute Roman Catholics now.
And “pay for birth control pills” is only a gesture (a statement of intent) – the “liberal” elite (incliuding perpetual students such as S. Fluke) have a far more compehensive agenda.
As the Cardinal Arch Bishop of Chicago said in 2010.
“I expect to die in bed. But I expect my successor to die in prison, and his successor to die a martyr in the public square”.
Anyone with experience of the universities (and Democrat activists are essentially people who went to university and BELIEVED at the ideology that is taught in such places – just as they believed the stuff in High School) knows that the subversion or wiping out of everything that is not part of the collective is the agenda – it has been since long before Karl Marx (the Jacabins had this agenda – nothing but individuals and the state was their dream).
There are academics at Georgetown itself who share this agenda – so much for it bein a “Catholic University”.
The only things wrong with the Archbishop’s statement is that he got the timeing wrong and he got the style of death wrong.
It will not be the successor of his successor (it will be a lot sooner than that) and it will not be in the public square – it will be in some corner (for example a “medical unit” where “reactionary thought process” is being “treated”).
“Paranoid Paul”.
Actually the collectivists in the United States have been writing formal works accusing (indeed assuming) that dissent is mental illness for at least 60 years.
“The Paranoid Style in American Politics”.
“The Authoritarian Personality”.
And other “classics” of the Frankfurt School of Marxism – oh sorry I mean the school of social research at Columbia univerit.
If people are mentally ill – should they not be treated?
After all Sweden does it – for example with people (such as religious people) who suffer from the mental illness known as homobobia.
Although for some reason the Swedish authorities tend to concentrate their fire on Christians and Jews – Muslims get a pass.
Just as the left give Muslims a pass in the United States.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend” and the common enemy is the West.
Still J.P. made a prediction – that Obama is finished.
That depends on two things…..
Can most voters see past the lie fest that is the “mainstream” media coverage?
And what sort of people are the voters anyway?
What are they, these people out there?
The vast majority went to left dominated schools.
Almost half either work for government or depend on benefits.
All the Founding Fathers insisted that a Republic can only survive if the people have virtue.
By virtue they did not mean the people have to be saints
But they did mean that most people have to be basically honest and decent.
Are they?
I think maybe I could have been clearer: Denotatively, slut (f) equates to slob (m): but in the connotative sense of ‘a promiscuous woman’, slut(f) equates to “c**t hound“(m) – or a couple of other equally contemptuous terms for promiscuous men – and most men use these terms as dismissively about such men as they use slut about a promiscuous woman.
So yes, there are words that apply to men in the same way that slut applies to women.
Ortho Novum: $11 at the Target Pharmacy nearest Georgetown University. Or the price of one martini at the local bistro. What’s the priority, Sandra.
She’s just another, albeit glaring, example of the adult children peopling the US.
I agree with Paul Marks. It’s not simply about thieving socialism and making Peter pay for Paul. It’s about forcing Peter publicly to deny his false gods and affirm the true God. Maybe there’s a benefit to Paul, but it’s almost incidental. The real point is that Peter has a belief that is evil, and he needs not only to be preventing from acting on it, but he needs to be forced into a public repudiation of it.
Thieving socialism makes it sound like it’s something to do with economics and the redistribution of wealth. It’s not. It’s about religion, and the burning of heretics.
Oh, and my predictions are (a) that Obama will still be President four years from now and (b) that the Republican Party will be jolly glad that he is.
Ah! The PMO is up and running, strangley (maybe not strangely) in synch with my current re-reading of de Jouvenal’s On Power.
As that notable organization (PM) implies, we can, if we look, observe the further increasing aggregation of Power, and can see a bit more distinctly the differentiation of State from Government.
As an American, I have heard slut and whore used in different ways. The dictionary may define one as taking money and one not, or both as taking money, or neither, but in common usage slut is a woman who sleeps around but without some emotional value, but whore generally denotes a woman who sleeps with someone else and breaks a heart in the process.
Catty women might remark on their friend by saying “Sally slept with Bob, Tom, and Bill last weekend. She is such a slut.” Slut in this case means Sally is just the town bicycle.
Now Joe, Sally’s erstwhile boyfriend finds out and is brokenhearted over Sally’s extraciricular activities and cries out, “Sally is such a whore!”
Perry, you must have been living in some other dimension. Having been living for the past twenty-odd years with three kids in four states across the U.S., let me assure you that “slut” is almost exclusively used to denote promiscuity. I still recall Daughter saying to one of her school friends: “What? Do you want the guys to think you’re the slut who hangs out behind the gym after school and hands out BJs?” (She was 14 at the time. I blame Bill Clinton for making “BJ” part of the common vernacular.) “Slut” and “whore” are used to denote promiscuity, whether or not a cash transaction takes place.
The common American term to describe one who lives a slovenly lifestyle is “pig”, the place therein “pigsty”. “Slob” is the descriptor for one who wears slovenly clothing, for both sexes.
You really did not read what I wrote, did you. But thanks for making my point anyway. Slut means promiscuous, so ascribing ‘prostitute’ to what Limbaugh actually intended does not really work.
my feeling is it would have been a piece of piss for the republicans to win this if they went with an ideologically consistent candidate. As it stands Mitt Romney is supposed to. be representing the tea party who’s biggest grief is obamacare but obamacare is based on romneycate. how the he’ll is he going to get through a debate? can he seriously say he’s opposed to a system he first devised and implemented? what will he say? I made a mistake? There were reasonable candidates but the main stream media focused on the loopiest Christian fundamentalists and ignored reasonable candidates. Essentially there is conservative opposition to Obama’s very very limited social liberalism but the main criticism the right are united on is on fiscal conservative grounds and Romney doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
Limbaugh is a drug addict, pumping himself full of Oxycontin, so he has no moral ground at all.
The GOP are massive farm subsidy spongers. They only hate welfare that’s for other people.
And, let me add Miss Fluke does not use farm subsidies (anyone who uses them is by default a parasite and a massive drain on the economy).
Miss Fluke also does not pump children full of Ritalin, the taxpayer subsidised made-up drug which dumb, abusive parents make the taxpayer pay for. A nice little earner for the pompous dilletantes at the American Psychological Association (a gang of crooks who have invented numerous mental illnesses which don’t exist, solely to enrich their corporate benefactors and America’s drug dealers (known as “Doctors”).
And as for the taxpayer subsidised Catholic Church, their rampant, obscene sexual abuse of children kind of smashes their credibility. Much like the Doctors, the Vicars are amoral abusers deserving of nothing but contempt.
Perhaps it’s revealing that birth control, the business of women and no one else, angers the vagina-fearing right and so-called Libertarians more than the child-raping drug Ritalin and the wretched, evil APA. Even the communists didn’t devise something as evil as Ritalin.
Perry continues to be wrong (but with impressive doggedness) on two counts.
1. No amount of anecdoting changes the fact that prostitute is one of the accepted meanings of slut, right there in black and white in the dictionary. Hence using it in that sense is not evidence of semantic ignorance
2. That is the meaning that Limbaugh intended, as is made clear from this clip :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ncw-acVB368
“What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We’re the pimps.”
He is then undecided about whether we (the taxpayers) are the pimps or the johns, decides that we’re neither, and then concludes that therefore she can’t be a slut, she’s just “round-heeled” (a synonym for promiscuous.) Therefore he uses slut throughout as meaning prostitute.
But I was wrong to say he realised his analogy was wrong a couple of days later. He realises it’s wrong within the very same paragraph that he raises the idea in the first place.
Perry is obvious free to continue to consider Limbaugh a jackass, of course.
I am happy to put my knowledge of the language up against theirs, particularly in this context. Certainly in white middle aged middle class usage (i.e Limbaugh and his circles) even in the USA, slut simply ain’t a synonym for prostitute. One could argue that a prostitute must be a slut (as a prostitute is by trade promiscuous), but being promiscuous is not what makes someone a prostitute. Being paid in return for sex is what makes someone a prostitute.
And as he so often it, Limbaugh is sloppy even with his use of prostitute (ironic?). Susan Fluke did not asked to be paid for sex, she wanted to be paid to avoid the consequences of sex. Even that does not make her a prostitute.
Of course Susan Fluke may be a slut (ie promiscuous) for all I know, but that is actually a non sequitur as if she only had sex within the confines of marriage but still wanted the state to pay for her birth control, would that make her a slut? A prostitute? Absurd. It makes her essentially a thief, certainly.
In typical Limbaugh fashion, he conflates something he does not ostensibly support (casual sex… something I have no problem with), with state subsidised birth control (which I also oppose). But support for the later does not mean support (let alone participation in) the former.
Please link to a libertarian argument against the use of birth control or shut the fuck up.
Now tax subsidised birth control, well that is different, because libertarians oppose tax subsidising almost everything.
Perry, tellingly, you have not expressed an opinion on Ritalin.
“Public schools have learned how to tap into free-flowing federal funds from Medicaid. Letters sent home to parents brag that the schools “will use this new revenue to add more services for children who require specialized health care, social services, mental health care, speech therapy, counseling, and psychological services.”
“John Merrow, executive producer of the PBS documentary, reported that Ritalin is so plentiful that a black market has developed on the school playground. Ritalin can be crushed and snorted for a cheap and modest buzz, and it has become a “gateway drug” in junior high school, the first drug a child experiments with.”
Why should the US taxpayer fund this criminal drug used by lazy and amoral parents? Any sane, rational person would be far more angry about Ritalin than birth control.
Why, I have to wonder, does female birth control upset you more than taxpayer’s money being wasted on a scams like Ritalin and the numerous other nonsense drugs Americans are addicted to.
If you go to an American doctor and say you are suffering from “depression”, they will lazily give you a bunch of drugs, paid for by the taxpayer, which will profit the doctor and Big Pharma. US Doctors won’t suggest therapy or anything constructive because they don’t profit from it. That’s why America is a nation of gullible drug addicts, dependent on taxpayer subsidised drugs which profit Big Pharma. A classic case of corporatism.
The process is well known:
1. APA invents mental illness
2. Big Pharma makes nonsense drug for said illness
3. Doctors dish out fake drug to gullible fools
4. Doctors and Pharma take the taxpayer dough and laugh their asses off.
The APA wants to classify grief and shyness as mental illnesses, hmmm…I wonder why?
With all this shameless scamming going on by the medical profession and the APA, you bellyache about birth control?
Especially since there’s a strong argument that birth control ultimately saves the taxpayer money (less unwanted babies), whereas the money vortex that is Ritalin and the various made-up drugs creates drug addicts, nut-cases, dependents, and losers.
Looks like the woodwork is due for fumigation…
Watch out Alisa – if you say that (implying that is it related to HDJ) the British “Libertarian Alliance” will run a smear campaign against you – after you have just “admitted” you want to gas people.
As for the new (?) troll who has graced us with their presence…..
Paul breaks the rule and feeds the troll…….
Well HGJ – if you get long term back pain perhaps you will be proscribed meds, and perhaps you will develop a habit.
It took Rush a lot of pain to break that habit I hope you never have to go through that experienc
Still none of that excuses calling S.F. a “slut”.
“Criminal parasite” oh wants to force other people to pay for her lifestyle choices – yes.
“Bigot” who wants to humilate and destroy the Roman Catholic church – by forcing it to obey her beliefs (not its own beliefs) by paying for her pills (when she could get them for little or nothing – just down the road from where she lives) – yes, most certainly yes.
But “slut” – no.
By the way – when have President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and so on, campaigned to end farm subsidies?
I am against farm subsidies – so I would welcome such powerful allies as President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Well Paul, if we’re lucky he will choke on what you just fed him – even before I gas him:-)
“Criminal parasite” oh wants to force other people to pay for her lifestyle choices – yes.
Hmmm…what about parents, schools, and doctors, who pump their kids full of fake drugs like Ritalin and Zoloft?
Ah yes, Bipolar Disorder in children, invented by Dr. Joseph Biederman. Bipolar disorder does not occur in children. So, that’s 8 million US children diagnosed with an illness THAT ONLY OCCURS IN ADULTS!
Hmmm, of all my points the one you avoided was the subject of US Doctors and Psychiatrists pumping children full of drugs for made-up illnesses like ADHD to line their own pockets, at taxpayer expense.
But hey, let’s attack Sarah Fluke and give a free pass to actual criminal parasites like Robert Spitzer and Joseph Biederman, because they are “doctors”. Nice priorities you have there.
Hitomi’s Denim Jacket… your comment is wildly off topic yet again. You might wish it was about whatever bee you have in your bonnet… such as psychiatry… but it is wasn’t.
It is a given that I and just about everyone who hangs out here opposes the vast majority of things done at taxpayers expense, so why would I bother to say anything about it? “Down with tax funded psychiatric doping!” Happy now?
Now it is your turn: provide me with a link to where libertarians argue against the use of birth control, not the tax funding of it, but the use of it, as you claimed.
If your next comment does not contain that and only that, your future comments will be deleted just as they were when you were posting wildly off topic rants under a different name (seriously, you really are not hard to recognise).