updated 3/4/2012 4:55:25 PM ET 2012-03-04T21:55:25

NEW YORK — A flower company is the seventh advertiser to pull its ads from conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh's radio program in reaction to his derogatory comments about a law student who testified about birth control policy.

ProFlowers said Sunday on its Facebook page that it has suspended advertising on Limbaugh's program because his comments about Georgetown University student Sandra Fluke "went beyond political discourse to a personal attack and do not reflect our values as a company."

People get funny when you mess with their money.

There you go.

If the Republicans are smart (and some of them are), the'll let this become a blessing in disguise. Maybe they'll lose their collective fear of that fat asshole and hopefully distance themselves from him.

The remarks that Ronnie posted from George Will were right on the money. The guy is brilliant.

Now AOL has jumped the Limbaugh ship.

I know I'm a little late to this but I don't know one person who even listens to his show anymore.

Allstate too today.

Not that I bothered with this either, but Rush's "additional" comments on his apology allegedly came off as the ultimate pity party, decorated by Victimology-R-Us.

~Ice Cube should've put a cap in his fatass for trying to pass the buck off on rap.

EDIT - and Peter Gabriel is asking Rush to quit playing his song "Sledgehammer" on his radio program.

Rush is not an elected Republican, so the party has no obligation to denounce it.

cough...


Sandra Fluke, Gender Reassignment, and Health Insurance
Stephen Gutowski
March 5, 2012


Sandra Fluke is being sold by the left as something she's not. Namely a random co-ed from Georgetown law who found herself mixed up in the latest front of the culture war who was simply looking to make sure needy women had access to birth control. That, of course, is not the case.

As many have already uncovered Sandra Fluke she is, in reality, a 30 year old long time liberal activist who enrolled at Georgetown with the express purpose of fighting for the school to pay for students' birth control. She has been pushing for mandated coverage of contraceptives at Georgetown for at least three years according to the Washington Post.

However, as I discovered today, birth control is not all that Ms. Fluke believes private health insurance must cover. She also, apparently, believes that it is discrimination deserving of legal action if "gender reassignment" surgeries are not covered by employer provided health insurance. She makes these views clear in an article she co-edited with Karen Hu in the Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law.

The title of the article, which can be purchased in full here, is Employment Discrimination Against LGBTQ Persons and was published in the Journal's 2011 Annual Review. I have posted a transcript of the section I will be quoting from here. In a subsection of the article entitled "Employment Discrimination in Provision of Employment Benefits" starting on page 635 of the review Sandra Fluke and her co-editor describe two forms of discrimination in benefits they believe LGBTQ individuals face in the work place:

"Discrimination typically takes two forms: first, direct discrimination limiting access to benefits specifically needed by LGBTQ persons, and secondly, the unavailability of family-related benefits to LGBTQ families."

Their "prime example" of the first form of discrimination? Not covering sex change operations:

"A prime example of direct discrimination is denying insurance coverage for medical needs of transgender persons physically transitioning to the other gender."

This so called "prime example" of discrimination is expounded on in a subsection titled "Gender Reassignment Medical Services" starting on page 636:

"Transgender persons wishing to undergo the gender reassignment process frequently face heterosexist employer health insurance policies that label the surgery as cosmetic or medically unnecessary and therefore uncovered."

To be clear, the argument here is that employers are engaging in discrimination against their employees who want them to pay for their sex changes because their "heterosexist" health insurance policies don't believe sex changes are medically necessary.

Additionally Sandra Fluke and her co-editor have an answer for why exactly these "heterosexist" insurance policies, and the courts that side with them, deem sex changes as medically unnecessary:

"In Mario v. P & C Food Markets, Inc., an employee who was denied such coverage brought claims under the federal Employee Retirement Income Security (ERISA) and Title VII. The court rejected the ERISA claim, finding the plaintiff's mastectomy and hormone therapy were not medically necessary. The court's ruling was based upon controversy within the medical community regarding that treatment plan. Much of that controversy has been linked to ignorance and bias against transgender persons, and the American Medical Association has declared the lack of coverage to be discrimination."

You see, all opposition to the determination that sex changes are medically necessary, and therefor must be covered by private employer provided health insurance, is based on "ignorance and bias against transgender persons".

The section on discrimination against those seeking gender reassignment ends with Sandra Fluke and her co-editor wondering why more lawsuits aren't filed against private employers on these grounds. Especially in comparison to the frequency with which these types of cases are filed against Medicare, Medicaid, and even the prison system:

"The reason for this lack of cases is unclear. Private employee insurance plans do not more frequently cover this need, so it may be a sign that transgender employees do not see the courts as likely to provide any assistance against private employers."

The argument made in this article edited by Sandra Fluke and Karen Hu is quite clear. "Gender reassignment" is a medically necessary set of procedures that must be covered under employee provided health insurance policies. If it is not covered by those policies that is tantamount to discrimination and legal action should be taken against the employer.

So, as you can see, Sandra Fluke is not what she is being sold as. Instead she is a liberal activist pushing some rather radical ideas. Keep that in mind as the left holds her up in the spotlight.

http://mrctv.org/blog/sandra-fluke-gender-reassignment-and-health-insurance

So we're learning a little more about this woman.

Why not? Media did extensive background check of "Joe The Plumber", so why not do the same here? Fair is fair.

Limbaugh is a wack job and its sad that this guy gets the number of listeners/has the influence he does. I saw this new article that did a national study where they showed as America has become more diverse with different viewpoints from various people, higher educated, etc most Americans (especially those under 35) identify themselves as Liberal. While the GOP continues to have support amongst those who are increasingly old white males with little education, etc.

Just some info.

I guess you want to fit in to the young liberal sect.

Do you consider Italians to be white, "people of color" or somewhere in between, say "ethnics"?

If you think the whites who support the GOP have little education, how would you classify all the minorities and white trash who are life-long liberals? It's not just the GOP that has their fair share of uneducated voters.

Ethnic for Italians

My comment was referring to trend changes in regards to conservative/liberal identification across the country amongst the population. Obcourse I agree that both groups have uneducated segments, and for the record "white trash" eg poor, white uneducated, and mostly rural largely identify as conservative.

this isnt the article i found but this trend is now even more magnified

GOP’s Base Now Predominately Uneducated, Poor White Folk

It seems that the GOP’s current stance on social, cultural and religious issues is finally managing to weed out…well pretty much everyone who has an actual thought process:

Republicans have lost an enormous amount of support among upscale voters, basically just breaking even among those with household incomes above $50,000 a year, a traditional GOP stronghold. Similarly, McCain’s losing to Obama among college graduates and voters who have attended some college underscores how much the GOP franchise is in trouble. My hunch is that the Republican Party’s focus on social, cultural, and religious issues — most notably, fights over embryonic-stem-cell research and Terri Schiavo — cost its candidates dearly among upscale voters.

Sadly, judging by the popular vote totals there’s still a whole crapload of them left.

http://jamespoling.com/gops-base-now-predominately-uneducated-poor-white-folk/

Learn Or Languish
The GOP's focus on social, cultural, and religious issues cost its candidates dearly among upscale voters.

What did we learn from this election? The results certainly confirmed that Republicans are demoralized. President-elect Obama's vote total -- 66 million -- was about 4 million higher than President Bush's total of four years ago. Sen. John McCain's 58 million tally was about 1 million votes fewer than Sen. John Kerry garnered last time. As expected, overall turnout went up, but much of the gain among Democratic voters was offset by a decline among Republicans.

Although young people turned out in higher numbers than they did four years ago, the increase was proportionate with the electorate as a whole. Most non-Republican voters turned out in higher numbers this year than in 2004. One key to Barack Obama's victory, however, was his overwhelming support among voters ages 18 to 29, whom he won by 34 points, 66 percent to 32 percent; and his support among those ages 30 to 44, whom he carried by 6 points, 52 percent to 46 percent. Those numbers are ominous for Republicans looking to 2010 and beyond.

Moreover, this election reminded us yet again that organization matters. Where the huge Obama machine was at work, Democrats tended to do very well. In states that his campaign didn't target, his party fared less well. Democrats looked quite strong in some parts of the country but much less so in others, flipping five state legislative chambers into their column while losing four others. Where Obama was an asset, he really was, and where he was a liability, he really was that, too.

We also learned that there are two Souths. There is a "New South," which includes Virginia, North Carolina, and, to a lesser extent, Georgia. In this South, which has lots of suburbs, transplants, and younger college graduates, Obama and other Democrats won or ran well above the norm for their party. In the older South, which has more small-town and rural voters, fewer transplants, and a more downscale electorate, Obama actually performed worse than Kerry.

In general, in the higher-growth segments of our country, Republicans lost ground, prevailing only in small towns and rural areas. When Democrats win the suburbs, Republicans are in trouble.

Republicans have lost an enormous amount of support among upscale voters, basically just breaking even among those with household incomes above $50,000 a year, a traditional GOP stronghold. Similarly, McCain's losing to Obama among college graduates and voters who have attended some college underscores how much the GOP franchise is in trouble. My hunch is that the Republican Party's focus on social, cultural, and religious issues -- most notably, fights over embryonic-stem-cell research and Terri Schiavo -- cost its candidates dearly among upscale voters.

The question now is whether Republicans will quickly learn from their mistakes -- retooling and rebranding their party soon, putting themselves in a position to capitalize on the missteps of the Obama administration and the rest of the Democratic Party -- or will languish, reduced to waiting for the Democrats to collapse and for GOP candidates to win simply because they aren't Democrats.

Those who write off the 2008 election by saying that Republican candidates weren't conservative enough are in denial. They are political ostriches, refusing to acknowledge that the country and the electorate are changing and that old recipes don't work any more.

Obama's message and agenda were a far cry from those of the Democratic Party of a generation or two ago, but the Republican Party's message and agenda haven't changed much other than becoming even more fixated on cultural issues and tax cuts. A top Republican pollster remarked privately to me after the election that he couldn't think of a single new idea generated on the Republican side during the 2008 campaign.

The dialogue about what the Republican Party is and where it should go will be driven over the next couple of years not by Republican members of Congress or governors or the party apparatus, but by the GOP's presidential contenders for 2012, who will be fanning out across the country before the month is over. The question is whether the party's leaders and members will be listening. Will they be open to new approaches to dealing with a dramatically changed country? Or will they simply say, "Back to the Future"?

http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/cook-report/learn-or-languish-20081115

February 14, 2012
Poor, White, and Republican
Posted by George Packer

F.D.R. called him “the forgotten man,” but that was long ago. By 1972, he was a member of the silent majority and had become a Democrat for Nixon (he wore a hard hat with an American-flag sticker). 1980 produced the Reagan Democrat (this time he came from Macomb County, Michigan, and was discovered by the pollster Stan Greenberg). By 1994 he had curdled into the Angry White Male (he elected the Gingrich Congress). In 2008, he was simply the working-class white—by then he was no longer forgotten, and no longer a Democrat of any kind; he was a member of the much-analyzed Republican base. The television godfather of the type, of course, is Archie Bunker, but you can also trace his lineage more darkly through the string of hard-bitten blue-collar movies that begins with “Joe” (Peter Boyle, 1970), goes on to “Falling Down” (Michael Douglas, 1993), “Gran Torino” (Clint Eastwood, 2008), and, in a rural context, “Winter’s Bone” (2010). He’s a descendant of the thirties Everyman played by Henry Fonda and Gary Cooper, except that in the intervening decades he lost his idealism and grew surly, if not violent, consumed with a hatred of hippies, immigrants, blacks, government, and, finally, himself.

This election year, he’s back and getting a lot of attention from sociologists and pundits (Charles Murray’s new book “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010” sparked the current flurry of commentary). But in 2012 he’s no longer even working class. He’s fallen through the last restraints of decency and industriousness, down into the demoralized and pathological underclass that, in the past, Americans associated with the black poor. There, he lives on disability, is no longer fit for employment nor has any impulse to get a job, is divorced, fathers illegitimate children who grow up to do the same, gets hooked on meth or prescription drugs, does time in prison now and then, and has bad teeth.

Is it useful to make generalizations about whole classes of people? We all know the reasons why it’s not—they stoke prejudice, crush nuance, distort reality, are unkind and unfair. But just as it was wrong for a generation of liberals to reject Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s notorious 1965 report “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” it would be a mistake to dismiss the subject of Murray’s new book simply because it insults half of the Americans who weren’t already tarred by “The Bell Curve.” Murray has a talent for raising important questions on the way to arriving at invidious answers.

Perhaps the biggest political puzzle of our time is why, as the lives of working-class whites have descended from the stability and comfort of “All in the Family” to the chaos and despair of “Gran Torino” and “Winter’s Bone,” these same Americans have voted more and more reliably Republican. Sunday’s Times had a fascinating and disturbing lead story about the pattern of government dependency around the country. A map showing areas of greatest reliance on public benefits corresponds with weird exactness to the map of red America: the South, Appalachia, and rural areas in general.

In addition, reliance on the safety net has more than doubled in the past four decades. During the same period, median incomes in America have stagnated or declined.

The first fact goes to the heart of Murray’s books, from “Losing Ground” and “The Bell Curve” to “Coming Apart.” The second goes unnoticed. His persistent argument is that government programs do more harm than good and create a dependent class rather than alleviating hardship, because socio-economic differences are based on innate ability, not external circumstance. The white working-class has suffered a moral collapse caused in part by the sorting of society into rich and poor, with the traditional virtues surviving only among the former—not by an economic battering at the hands of globalization, technology, and corporate power. Inequality is a natural state, and people at the bottom of society should either resign themselves to their fate, or else revive themselves through a moral and spiritual reawakening (likely inspired by their betters) that will allow them to rise above the lousy hand dealt them by their brain power.

Visit most towns or rural areas where factories are boarded up and all the economic life is confined to strip malls, and you have to acknowledge the force of Murray’s picture. Rampant drug use, high dropout rates, out-of-wedlock births, epidemic obesity, every other working-age person on disability—it’s true even though Charles Murray says it’s true. And the predictable left-right argument over causes and solutions doesn’t help. Is it disappearing jobs, or disappearing values? This isn’t an analytical choice I find very useful. Jobs and values are intertwined: when one starts to go, the other is likely to go with it, and the circle becomes truly vicious. A textile factory moves south of the border, and a town loses its mainstay of employment. Former textile workers scurry to find fast-food and retail positions. The move from blue-collar to service work is brutal, and over time some employees lose the will to stick it out in a hateful job. Their children do even worse. Soon enough there are two or three generations of one family on government help, and kids grow up without a model of the work ethic. When a technology plant opens in the area (with a fifth the number of jobs as the textile factory), few locals are remotely qualified to work there. It’s a dismally familiar story—but is it a story of jobs or values? The obvious answer is both, which is why no one’s five-point solutions or three-word slogan is convincing.

In the Times story, there’s a man named Ki Gulbranson from a small Minnesota town called Chisago, both barely clinging to the middle class. He tries to make ends meet selling apparel and refereeing kids’ soccer games. All around him, he sees growing dependence on government. No fan of government spending, he joined the Tea Party in 2010; at the same time, he benefits from the Earned Income Tax Credit, free school breakfasts for his children, and Medicare for his mother. “I don’t demand that the government does this for me,” he said. “I don’t feel like I need the government.” Yet he finds it hard to imagine surviving without the safety net. “I don’t think so,” he said. “No. I don’t know. Not the way we expect to live as Americans.”

Gulbranson’s moment of hesitation contains a certain explanatory power. He doesn’t want to say that he can’t live without government. In places like Chisago, the old ethic of self-reliance is real and fierce. But it’s disintegrating under the pressure of several bad economic decades. People in Park Slope, Brooklyn and the north shore of Chicago don’t see their neighbors going on disability when they could work. But the more Gulbranson sees it, the more he resents the government. Perhaps he resents it most of all because he knows he needs it. That’s a political conundrum for both parties, but even more, it’s an American problem.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/02/poor-white-and-republican.html

Radio host Rush Limbaugh wasn’t the only one taunting Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke last week.

Actress Patricia Heaton, who stars in ABC’s “The Middle,” tweeted her take on the contraception debate, making sarcastic remarks about Fluke’s congressional testimony. An outspoken conservative, Heaton wrote various tweets on the topic, including this one: "Hey G-Town: stop buying toothpaste, soap, and shampoo! You'll save money, and no one will want to sleep with you!" On Saturday, Heaton apologized to Fluke, writing, “Mea culpa! We have diff opinions but I was too flippant in my attempt at humor.” The actress added that while she still disagrees with Fluke, she “was not showing Christ's love” in the way she handled the discussion.

While Heaton’s Twitter account appeared to be disabled for some time on Monday, the actress resurfaced and reiterated that she was sorry about the tweets.

I take it you never saw UNFORGIVEN because Eastwood would disagree.

To me, "white trash" as always been the whites in Ridgewood, Ozone Park and Deer Park Long Island. That's because I'm from NYC. And these whites are not GOP. You still see this white trash element in NYC. They go to Rangers games, free concerts in Juniper or Forest Park bandshell and they are largely Democrats.

I can never vote for a Democrat because of their assault on whites; white males in particular.

Recent examples are the New Haven Firefighters case in SCOTUS, the housing development in Westchester that bans white families from applying, affirmative action in high school and colleges that seek to reduce the number of whites who are accepted(basically Jim Crow against whites) and of course the bs with FDNY exam(again it's like Jim Crow against whites).

p.s.- The judge in the FDNY case in none other than Garaufis.

Indeed that was the story of the 2010 mid terms. You have shared good accurate information. The story of the 2012 election (besides the economy) will be whether the Democrats can hold on to just enough white working class (non-college educated) voters while maintaining a slight lead everywhere else.

If so they can win. This is a matter of great interest to political analysts. There was a long discussion on C-SPAN which I can't find right now but this article discusses the future of the Obama coalition in much the same terms.

To bring it back to the post subject, Limbaugh's insult is not just a financial misstep for him but it could be symbolic of future Republican losses among white women voters. Certainly the Democrats will do all they can to play this up in the future. The best thing that could happen for the Republicans is that Romney wins the nomination and the Republican disagreements over abortion/contraception/women working/etc are swept under the table.

Right. And that was the same metric used for Reverend Wright?? Only it wasn't.

Limbaugh is an extremely prominent Republican media personality who in his own words is a water carrier for Republican candidates. Of course when he calls a woman out of her name and suggests he wants to watch her having sex people are going to notice and ask Republicans what they think.

Jim Crow against whites??? Really??
Where are the dogs and nightsticks and firehoses?
Where is the lower pct of whites in higher education, grad school or the workforce?
Where is the lower income or wealth of whites?
Where is the higher unemployment rate?
Where are the police stops, harassment and shootings of whites?
and so on....

Because if it's really Jim Crow against whites I would expect to see at least some of that.

I won't even go into the whole Jim Crow thing. Lilo put it perfectly. But in regards to the FDNY being monitored, you left out one crucial little nugget: The FDNY was still 95% white as of last year. That's a fact. Do you really think that's fair?

When Garaufis ruled that the department was a "bastion of white privilege," he probably could have used a better choice of words, but he wasn't far off. The department has been blatantly ignoring Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 since, well, 1964.

Garaufis (who I'm no fan of, by the way) did the right thing.

Obama is the one who brought attention to Wright by writing about him in his book. Obama spoke glowingly about Wright. None of the current GOP candidates has a relationship with Rush. Rush is just another voice on the radio. The GOP is not responsible for what Rush says. They don't employ him. Does Rush even have guests on his show?

Yes, I do think it's fair. It's fair because everyone took the same test. It seems like minorities want to abolish merit and have the courts hand them a job on a silver platter.

FDNY is mostly white because whites perform better on the written. That's simple to understand.

Yes, really. Disqualifying whites for performing better on employment exams or academic entry is a form of Jim Crow against whites.

The FDNY has an exam. Everyone is allowed to take it. You can't give a test and then say it's racist when you don't like the results.

So what if 95% of FDNY is white? I'm sure that 95% of this message board is white. Does that mean we're inherently racist?

Whether it's a job or a message board, just because something is mostly white does not mean racism is the reason.

the FDNY has a dominant "old boy network" of connections in its hiring practices, where friends, relatives, or neighbors are favored over minority applicants without inside Fire Department connections which is one of the things the court found

its just interesting that in a city that largely is 50% minority white men make up 93 percent of the FDNY.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/fdny_minority_report_H7PATQYhFlXxrGrVrkfgxJ#ixzz1oNpBsNwW

not to take anything anyways from the FDNY, i have a bunch of Irish buddies who are firefighters its a very noble thing, im just making a comment

Just because NYC is 50% minority does not mean the FDNY has to be. America is 30% minority yet every time I'm on an airplane the pilots are white. Should we ask why so few pilots are minorities?

Again, just because whites outperform minorities in testing, does not prove racism.

NYC has always had a huge Italian population. Yet for some reason the higher education schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science have been mostly Jewish and Asian for decades. Should I assume bias against Italians because of this?

^^i didnt say the FDNY needs to be 50% minority, I just made a factual observation. The reason that most whites outperform minorities in standardized testing is because the lack of an adequate education many minorities receive/dont receive along with a host of other issues leads to this gap.

By comparing the racial makeup of NYC to that of the FDNY, you kind of are saying that. At the very least, you're implying that there is some kind of inherent racism. There isn't. Everyone takes the same exam. Everyone knows about the exam. This is nothing more than a bunch of activists, and bleeding heart leftists playing the race card.