Hillary Clinton’s deliberate misstatement of the law in the Hobby Lobby case
Hillary Clinton is smart, and she’s a lawyer. So of course she knows better than this statement she made about the Hobby Lobby SCOTUS decision:
It’s very troubling that a salesclerk at Hobby Lobby who needs contraception, which is pretty expensive, is not going to get that service through her employer’s health care plan because her employer doesn’t think she should be using contraception.
Politifact rates Clinton’s statement as Mostly False. The WaPo‘s fact-checker gave it 2 Pinocchios.
But although both articles say Clinton is dissembling to a certain extent, they both give Clinton’s statement a more generous interpretation than it deserves, with the WaPo even insinuating that her error might have been inadvertent. Absurd; as I said, Clinton is a razor-sharp lawyer when she wants to be. She should have gotten the maximum number of Pinocchios and then some.
But I’m not writing this post to rail against Politifact or even the WaPo. I don’t expect them to do anything other than protect Hillary as much as they can get away with, and in fact I’m even surprised they criticized her at all. I’m writing to point out how pernicious her statement was, how purposely and cleverly duplicitous, shameless demagoguery of the worst sort. And the women (or men) who might fall for it are ignorant and manipulable. But that’s the way it went in 2012, and that’s the way Democrats hope if will go in 2012 and 2014.
Politifact and the WaPo rightly point out that Hobby Lobby offers 16 of 20 kinds of contraception coverage, and they base their criticism of Hillary’s statement mainly on that. What they fail to mention is another purposeful (and IMHO even more pernicious) lie Hillary tells in that same sentence, one that I have yet to see anyone point out. It’s contained in her phrase “her employer doesn’t think she should be using contraception.”
This not only incorrectly insinuates that all types of contraception were at issue here (they were not), but it incorporates the larger lie that the case was about employers judging their employees negatively for using certain types of birth control. But that obscures the actual issue in the case, which was that Hobby Lobby did not want to be forced by the government to participate in paying for, and therefore being complicit in, the use of particular types of birth control that violated its own religious beliefs.
Nowhere did Hobby Lobby express any interest in judging whether its employees should be using those or any other forms of contraception. And it was very clear that even IUDs and the morning-after pill, the methods being questioned, would in fact end up being provided cost-free to Hobby Lobby’s employees. Hobby Lobby merely asked to not be required to foot the bill itself for something that violated the religious conscience and beliefs of its owners.
But Hillary Clinton knows that opposing religious freedom—which is what she is actually doing here—is nowhere near as popular a stance as fighting supposed attempts to stop women from having contraception. Although no one is actually attempting that, it makes good copy for the fight against the War on Women on which she believes the success of her candidacy depends. She will lie shamelessly to manipulate the women for whom she obviously has a great deal of contempt into believing that’s what’s going on.
It’s another example of the ‘big lie’ in action, Neo. Say it loud, and say it everywhere, and even if it’s a lie and a fairly easily debunked one at that, it will still seep into the heads of the LIV and lodge there like an impacted tooth.
Hillary is clouding the argument in such a way as to make it about the religious intolerance of Hobby Lobby for people using birth control.
There are two issues here that the progs don’t want discussed. The first and, IMO, the most important to them was to get all corporations (who are defined as persons in corporate law) to pay for coverage of abortion inducing meds, (Morning after pill, IUDs.). Once that was firmly established as normal, they could then proceed to say that, if people are paying for abortions through meds, why would they object to paying for actual abortions? It is the camel’s nose under the tent type of maneuver. Allowing closely held corporations to have religious beliefs governing their operations, makes it impossible for them to achieve their goal. And that is why this is such a big deal to them.
Secondly, this is a narrow decision affecting only a small number of corporations. They want people to believe it applies to all corporations. No exceptions. Period.
Another point they want to establish in people’s minds is that the EEEVIL Republicans are opposed to women’s rights [Yes, it’s a right – look in the Constitution – 🙂 ] to have ALL their reproductive (birth control of any kind, and abortions) health care paid for by someone else.
The awful thing is that this kind of dissembling works.
If ever there was an example of making a lie become truth this is the one. This topic is all over Facebook, with my lefty-left friends unanimously outraged that a religious company is forcing its intolerant medieval views onto its employees by restricting access to birth control.
It’s a classic example of inventing the enemy’s position, then attacking both the fictitious position and the enemy for daring to have that position. The result is the marginalization of the enemy to such an extent that it’s impossible to get any sort of truth in edgewise.
I attempted early on to intervene, simply because lefty-lefters annoy me and I am deeply concerned at the use of this tactic, which is dangerous. But the Lie has tarnished the name of the company to such an extent that you merely mention Hobby Lobby and lefty types have an instant mental association with “intolerant religious bigots” and ignore everything you say, then knock their opinion of you down several rungs for being on the side of intolerant religious bigots.
It’s terrifying, really, because you know that the Lie can be done to anyone or any entity that the left chooses to target.
It seems to me that based on what Hoby Lobby does cover, it prefers that women do use contraception as opposed to aborting a fetus. But for the feminists abortion is the greatest good, even when Gosnell performs it. Someone should ask Hillary about Gosnell and what measures she would recommend to assure that his crimes do not reoccur. They should also push her on whether a 13 year old should be able to get an abortion without her parents’ knowledge. Or whether our culture pushes sex on kids at too young an age. She would have to say something that would PO the feminist line.
Hillary is a true prog, and believes any argument, misdirection, and lie that serves them is to be used.
expat, that’s a neat tactic
It would be *fun* to watch her squirm around on that one !
Just a reminder, Hillary is not from Arkansas as some assume, she s actually from Chicago, so like Obama, lying is FIRST nature to the woman.
The other aspect of this issue which greatly bothers me is the redefinition of “access” to mean “providing things for free.”
Gen Y is not old enough to remember when the Pill was controversial and not necessarily available, or when you had to travel to certain states to get abortions, or when some pharmacies would not provide the morning after pill. These are “access” issues.
The left are subverting the meaning of the word “access” to suggest that if someone doesn’t give you something for free they are hampering your access to it. The fact of the matter is, you can walk into any Planned Parenthood and obtain services and products, and that’s what most of us did for decades, quite successfully. You can walk into Walgreens or CVS or presumably any pharmacy and buy the morning after pill, which requires no prescription and costs around $20-40 in my part of the world. Or you could have plain old insurance, which pays for most of the cost of products and services, including contraceptives, like most of working Americans did for years.
The left paints women as so helpless that they cannot be expected to be able to obtain their own birth control products, or so penniless that there is a universal need to provide free contraceptive products for other people’s recreational sex. That insults the heck out of me.
One time PillowC was caught by an interview that she thought was following the rules, but kept asking her hard hitting questions. She said, “you don’t know who you’ve crossed” or something like that at the end.
HRC’s interviews are vetted before hand to keep the riff raff out for a reason.
Obama agrees:
Folks, now, there are some, uh, people, who don’t believe …that . . . access to affordable health care, uh, is a good thing. And, uh, I can’t convince them . . .that it is a good thing, especially for, uh, women who can desperately need. . . that. . . uhm health care . . . for contraception . . . is a good thing, uhhh, for which I can’t convince myself of . . . that . . . let me just say, uhh let me be clear . . . . .
And the women (or men) who might fall for it are ignorant and manipulable.
It’s easy to despise humanity when one figures out that most of humanity is made out of retards that think they are our intellectual kings. When in fact, they are some of the easiest to dupe, the most ridiculous hypnotized chickens in Terran known existence.
The only question is who gets to manipulate the puppets, us or somebody else. But kings, aristocrats, and top 10 percenters, they are not. It is despicable that they think to lord themselves over humanity, as if they were part of the elite.
The Pill is as cheap as Chicklets…
It’s abortions that get pricey.
Hillary is trying to move the issue of socialized abortions under the radar — to include third term — and ultimately post-natal abortions.
The latter can occur at any date — for procrastinators — or to convenience tyrants.
The deep need is for demographic manipulation of the polity.
… Sort of an ethical Holocaust… after a fashion.
{ Bad, politically incorrect, genes are to be suppressed via devious means. Hence, there is no need for Kamps, killing fields nor ethnic cleansing. But, given enough time and manipulations, the same final result (tractive proles) is expected, nay, mandated.}
I asked my yellow dog dem wife about this and she said it is despicable to take contraception away from the women at Hobby Lobby.
When I told her Hobby Lobby women STILL has 16 options for contraception (which she didn’t know) she said that’s not the point. She said it is the law!
When I mentioned O had unilaterally changed the AFC law many times … she said don’t try to weasel out of this by changing the subject … LOL.
Jack, bring up the Kendall issue and how the same FB Hobby Lobby crusaders are trying to put Kendall back in the kitchen, and remove her choice.
Fight poison with poison.
Neo I believe that you have a typo. Hillary Clinton is a razor sharp liar is what I am sure you meant.
I never understood why contraception and abortion were called reproductive health. I thought they were supposed to prevent reproduction. Is pregnancy now a disease?
Pregnancy is a disease in lower classes and races, as attested to by PP’s founder Sanger.
It’s the same reason why there is a non-profit company called ‘Planned Parenthood’ whose business is abortions, abortions now paid for by the government: The Big Lie.
Yes, a moral disease which the government can and should regulate. Owebama on the campaign trail, March, 2008:
Jumping ahead through the comments . . .
It’s “interesting” that abortion is such a prominent issue among the statists. It’s a small jump from requiring corporations to supply abortions to having the government require abortions.
The statists are following in the footsteps of the Chinese who tell citizens when they can have babies and when they must abort them.
The Progressives are acting like getting contraception as a specific required part of ones employment compensation is some “self evident” right like “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. So if your employers does not hand you a tube of toothpaste with your weekly check is he “denying” you preventative health care? I posed this on FB and one lib commented that toothpaste doesn’t cost $50 to $100 a pop. I then asked if your rent, your utility bill, and everything else should be required as a specific part of the compensation package….didn’t get an answer, course I did mock her with scenarios of a husband and wife both working two jobs getting four rent rations, only one of which they could use with little actual cash available because the whole compensation package was whittled down by government mandated ration cards.
“Contraception is natural selection,”
said the man in the store.
“Providence neglects your generation;
despair is yours and more.”
“What do you do, what do you do, what, what,”
the woman rose and cried.
“I heard and obeyed the message, I fought;
baby was lost and died.”
While on the subject of Hillary. I just ran across an ad for a new show on CBS this fall called “Madam Secretary”.
Hollywood is completely shameless
“Madam Secretary,” starring Tea Leoni! a dead ringer for Hildabeast, isn’t she? Well, at least they got the hairdo right.
This is ANOTHER HUGE-ARSE campaign donation in kind to the Leftoids, by See BS.
RickZ,
I would add to the values and morals lessons some information on relationships, trust, and intimacy. And at some point, when they suffer their first broken heart, let them know that what they have learned will be worth the pain because it prepares them for the next and better relationship.
Wait, what? You’re going to cancel the Stalking 101 classes?