Word is that Harry Reid is going to allow the Senate to vote on the Roy Blunt amendment that would allow employers to opt out of mandated health insurance coverage for “moral” reasons.
There are all kinds of polls out now that say a majority of the public favors President Obama’s policy on mandated birth control coverage. The battle with the bishops hasn’t hurt Obama even among Catholic voters.
If Republicans are clueless enough to keep fighting this fight, then let ’em. We could end up with a nice stockpile of videos of old white guys ranting about the immorality of family planning.
Speaking of old white guys — now that the GOP nomination race is between Frothy and Mittens, I want to point to some data from a recent CNN/ORC poll (click to enlarge).
Click to Enlarge
Note that women tend to favor Mittens and men prefer Frothy. Notice also the conspicuous lack of nonwhites and people under 50. Heh. You’d think with all their antipathy to birth control there’d be some younger folks represented in the sampling.
maha,
From October of 2009, until August of 2010, I worked part-time for a Republican polling company here in my home town.
The bulk of the people who answer their phones to polling companies, and answer any questions, are over 60 – with most of them over 70-75. I think most of them are glad that someone’s calling them, let alone asking their opinions.
The younger the age, the less you were able to get a hold of them. Either they had Caller ID and didn’t pick-up, or cell phones, whose numbers we didn’t have access to.
That’s why I take any phone polling numbers with a huge grain of salt, because of this. The statistics are skewed to the older, generally more conservative, part of our population.
And internet polls have the opposite result – they’re skewed to the younger demographic.
When everyone had a land-line, and before Caller ID, I think phone polling was highly accurate. Since those days are long gone, I have less and less faith in the phone results.
Now, it’s almost like 1948 when the polls predicted that Dewey would easily beat Truman. The phone polling used to come to this result was in error. In 1948, not every home/apartment had a telephone, so they were polling people who were in the higher than normal income bracket – and those people skewed Conservative then, as the ones who still have a land-line do now. I don’t know of anyone under 30 who’s still got a land-line. Unless, of course, they’re living with their parents. Hell, I’m 54 in a little over a week, and I’ll probably be ditching my CELL phone, once my final foray into unemployment ends in a month. We’ll still have a land-line. Not that employers have exactly been ringing either phone off the hook. I think I have a better chance of a Sports Illustrated super-model calling me for a date, than I have of being offered a job.
Frothy? OK, wait… I don’t wanna know.
“President Obama’s policy on mandated birth control coverage”
The problem these dimwitted yucks have (among many) is they can’t distinguish between “coverage” and “mandate”. They are selling the lie that birth control is being mandated and that freedom of religion lies with these so called churches. Freedom of religion lies with the individual, we are free to think on our own, or follow some half baked tax-exempt cult. Unfortunately a good many of us have chosen the latter and may be convinced otherwise.
cund – A few years ago I read that only about 28% of an original polling group is ever polled – people hang up, don’t answer the phone, won’t answer the questions in person, etc. The result is that poll-takers ‘make up’ lists which most often don’t reflect a cross-section of the population (as the original group did). Does this sound right to you?
Since then, I treat all poll results with a huge grain of salt – in fact, I think their results should not be made public. Besides the band-wagon effect (people like to go with a ‘winner’) their results are meaningless.
Yeah, there’s some truth to it, Felicity.
The demographic about the person is situated at the end of the call. You don’t get credit for the call unless you get the age, race, etc., about the person.
NO experienced rep ever waits until the end. Some of the polls these MFing political geniuses dream-up are 20-30 minutes long, and even longer – and the person keeps asking how much longer it will be? Hang-ups are rampant.
So, you then ask the demographics somewhere in the beginning of the call, and then, depending how many of the idiotic questions they answer, a lot of times you get credit for the call, without them finishing it.
I have very little faith in phone polling, or internet polling, as a consequence.
And don’t even get me started on ‘push-polling.’ GOD, that’s disgusting!!!
All of these factors made this the 2nd worst job of my entire life. And I was a bartender on the Lower East Side of NY, a bouncer in NYC, and a CSR and dockworker in upstate NY, as well as a training manager and director, and an adjunct professor in a college – so, when I tell you I hated the jf’in job, please take me at my word. Btw – the WORST was telemarketing. OY!!!
Remember, it was a REPUBLICAN polling company, so I talked to FOX-watching and Rush-listening morons. After I took the demographics, and I asked who the person watches of listens to, and they mentioned those two, and the other usual suspects, I didn’t need to ask them any more questions – I could fill-out the rest of the survey for them. Only ONE guy, who said he was a FOX viewer and a Rush listener, out of the hundreds of Republicans I talked to ever surprised me – he said he was FOR a woman’s right to choose. I almost fell out of my uncomfortable plastic chair.
Polling is an awful, hideous job.
So, if any of you out there ever get a polling call, help that poor person out, and complete it. There were a lot of Liberals working there just to help make ends meet, like I was – before that telemarketing job unraveled, and I also quit the polling one. Most of us had some good laughs at the expense of the idiots and cave-dwellers we talked to. They appreciate talking to bright and caring people. You’ll make their day.
The right isn’t clueless… this is sending a signal to businesses that “we’re looking out for you” to get campaign donations.
JR — how is denying insurance coverage for contraception “sending a signal to business”?
RIGHT!!!
When it comes to you, or your girl/boy friend(s) banging away, or paying for an abortion, or child-birth, the health care companies covering you will tell you to ‘bang the night the hell away,” – and will be happy to pay for the birth control – unless it’s run by a “Vagina Ideologue” like Icky Sticky Ricky.
Ricky got lucky finding the one, the only, lonely, stupid, ignorant, complicit, compliant, and religious (but, I repeat myself), woman in this country, allowing him to invade her “cuntry” (sic).
Gulag, I actually don’t think you’re right about the Mrs. Santorum. She apparently has a past, as they say, which doesn’t apparently coincide with the good Catholic upbringing she had supposedly enjoyed. I thought I had also read that her father was an adamant science/Darwinist, but can’t find anything on that as of now.
From Mother Jones –
‘But Blunt’s proposal doesn’t just apply to religious employers and birth control. Instead, it would allow any insurer or employer, religiously affiliated or otherwise, to opt out of providing any health care services required by federal law—everything from maternity care to screening for diabetes. Employers wouldn’t have to cite religious reasons for their decision; they could just say the treatment goes against their moral convictions. That exception could include almost anything—an employer could theoretically claim a “moral objection” to the cost of providing a given benefit. The bill would also allow employers to sue if state or federal regulators try to make them comply with the law.”
This means in theory that on “moral”, not religious, grounds – any employer can slice out any portion of AHC and refuse to offer it. Think of it as the GOP equivalent of a Get-out-of-Jail card for Obamacare. There’s a reason why they are going out on a limb with only the fig leaf of the Catholic Bishops for cover. It’s an attempt to make Obamacare a voluntary program.
Maha… I think the right will try to frame it as government intrusion, as Obama and Big Government trying to regulate businesses instead of standing back and letting the market work it’s magic, and so on. It’s just a theory though. I think on election day businesses will remember this fight, if not the subject it was about. It’s just a theory though.
“I think on election day businesses will remember this fight, if not the subject it was about”
Who cares, corporations can’t vote (not yet anyway).
Its’ always “bizarro world” with the GOP. Religion intrudes on governance and all of a sudden, it’s the Government intruding on religion. I find it amusing that even the GOP’s line is not even gaining traction amongst the allegedly offended party, Catholics. Plenty of play in the right-owned media, though, who keep insisting “this could be a big problem for Obama”.
Martin Bashier (sp?) said that choosing between a Rightie Prez and a Leftie Prez is choosing between intervention in the bedroom or intervention in the boardroom. I can’t get that out of my mind when I read stuff like this.
“I have very little faith in phone polling” cause you don’t believe in Jesus!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53CT6f5f4ak&feature=related