Don't Want To Pay For Certain Government Spending? Too Bad.

Jon Stewart says it all so well it doesn't need elaboration.   Don't like paying for some part of government spending?   Quit whining and get used to it.

On his 3/5/2012 Daily Show, Stewart commented on "conservatives' reaction to Rush Limbaugh's incendiary remarks about Sandra Fluke and her congressional testimony on birth control coverage."  Another example of why Stewart's considered our "greatest public intellectual" by a Loyola University bioethicist.

It's about an insurance mandate from the government covering contraceptive medications as part of overall health care.  It's not your tax money that pays for it.  I'm not even going to get into your round-about argument about how somehow money is taken out of your pocket to pay for Georgetown's private insurance plan...

I'm just saying to the people who are upset about their hard-earned tax money going to things they don't like: Welcome to the $%&#* club.  Everyone pays for $%&#* they don't want to all the time.   You know what?  Reimburse me for the Iraq War and oil subsidies, and guess what, then diaphragms are on me.  Prophylactics are on the house.

Indeed.   We're not talking about tax dollars here, we're talking about health insurance.  Let me know when we all get to exclude various government activities and spending from our personal tax dollars.  I can put my list together pretty quickly, how about you?

Anti-rape Amendment Signed Into Law

Back in October, I wrote about Jon Stewart's lampooning of Republican Senators who had voted against a Defense Dept. bill to ban contractors from restricting employee rights to go to court over workplace discrimination, including workplace rape.

Well, the legislation introduced by freshman Senator Al Franken was eventually passed and has now been signed into law by the President. You can read about it at ThinkProgress.org. There are also links to articles about how the Republicans were startled that Americans were unhappy with their votes against the measure.

Go figure.

Jon Stewart Lambastes 30 Republican Senators Who Voted to Sanction Rape

I know why a lot of the younger generation get most of their news from Comedy Central; that's where Jon Stewart lives. I don't know why the "mainstream" media didn't find time or space to blast this story all over the country, but fortunately Jon Stewart did.

Seems that Senator Al Franken introduced legislation that would ban the Pentagon from contracting with any company that forces women employees to sign waivers to not sue the company if they are raped as a result of their employment. Why on earth would we need a law like that? Because one of the biggest military contractors on the face of the earth, Halliburton, has a subsidiary (KBR) that does exactly that. And asserted that one of its employees, a 19 year old woman, couldn't sue KBR because of the waiver, after she was gang-raped by fellow employees and temporarily held captive in Iraq.

You need to watch the clip of Jon Stewart and listen to various Republican Senators explaining on the floor of the Senate why they voted against the amendment. Most of these same Republicans just recently were so outraged by Acorn's bumbling that it was their patriotic duty to ensure that group didn't receive "one penny more of government funds." Banning companies from government contracts if they cover up rape? Not the Senate's business in their view.

Fortunately, 68 other Senators who still had brains voted for the bill. Here's a link to the broadcast ** from The Daily Show. Here's a link to Buzzflash posting of the episode. And it's one sorry episode indeed.

** the link to the Daily Show may not work, and I don't know why... :-(