Plan B for Plan B

By Mustang Bobby

After several court battles, the Obama administration and the Department of Health and Human Services has dropped their opposition to imposing age limits on emergency contraception, aka Plan B.

The government’s decision means that any woman or girl will soon be able to walk into a drugstore and buy the pill, Plan B One-Step, without a prescription.

The Justice Department had been fighting to prevent that outcome, but said late Monday afternoon that it would accept its losses in recent court rulings and begin putting into effect a judge’s order to have the Food and Drug Administration certify the drug for nonprescription use. In a letter to Judge Edward R. Korman of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, the administration said it would comply with his demands.

The Justice Department appears to have concluded that it might lose its case with the appeals court and would have to decide whether to appeal to the Supreme Court. That would drastically elevate the debate over the politically delicate issue for Mr. Obama.

I think Booman is on to something: President Obama was really in favor of letting anyone have access to Plan B, but he knew that if he said he supported it, that would galvanize the opposition simply because he’s in favor of it. He also knew that it would infuriate his base among pro-choice voters. But he also knew that if he put up a fight and then gave up after making an adequate attempt, he would have cover on an issue that could have been used against Democrats in the mid-terms. Got it?

It’s exasperating, but that’s how the game is played. The worst part of it is that time, money, and political capital was wasted on a fight that was fixed from the start.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

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Michael Steele may run for governor of Maryland

By Richard K. Barry

I do understand that former RNC Chairman Michael Steele has tried to rehabilitate his image by appearing somewhat reasonable on the occasional MSNBC broadcast. Rachel Maddow talks to him like he's an individual of some integrity and we're suppose to buy that.

Now we hear that he is thinking about running for governor in his home state of Maryland.

The Hill:

"We're looking at it," Steele told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd on Monday. "You're going to take a look at the numbers. Maryland's a tough state, there are a lot of challenges there."

Martin O'Malley, the current governor, is having his own look at the presidency in 2016, but has to move on in 2014 due to term limits.

Steele had a rocky term as RNC chairman, with the organization frequently producing negative headlines about lavish spending. He lost his chairmanship to Reince Priebus in 2011, despite overseeing massive Republican gains in the 2010 election cycle.

My favourite Michael Steele moment has to be his claim that Afghanistan was a "war of Obama's choosing." Yes, there's a man I want to see leading a state government. 



(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

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Have another scandal, please

By Mustang Bobby

If the game plan of the righties was to bog down the Obama administration with claims of scandal and thereby turn the country against him so that he had no choice but to either resign or go back to Kenya, it’s not working out like that.

President Obama’s approval ratings have increased since a trio of controversies involving his administration began dominating the news cycle.

Fifty percent of those surveyed in Gallup’s three-day tracking poll released Wednesday say they approve of the job the president is doing, compared to 43 percent who said they disapprove.

The 7-percentage point positive margin is better than where the president stood in the poll over the two weeks before the IRS and Department of Justice scandals broke, and is near Obama’s rating over the waning days of the 2012 campaign when voters convincingly elected him to a second term in office.

Obama’s Gallup numbers are up three percentage points since the pollster’s May 23-25 survey and suggest Obama’s approval ratings held steady, even as the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of Tea Party groups made headlines.

It looks like things actually get better for the president the more they hound him. Hmm… Not to get all conspiracy-theorist, but maybe that was his plan all along: come up with these fake scandals to trap the GOP into being the assholes that they are to generate sympathy for the President and therefore get his way….

Hey, it’s not that far out there. After all, this is the guy with the parents who planned way back in 1961 to plant a story in the Honolulu classifieds about his “birth” in Oahu just so 45 years later he could run for president and take over the world.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

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The war must be over

By Mustang Bobby

President Obama’s speech on ending the open-ended GWOT:

In a much-anticipated speech at the National Defense University, Mr. Obama sought to turn the page on the era that began on Sept. 11, 2001, when the imperative of preventing terrorist attacks became both the priority and the preoccupation. Instead, the president suggested that the United States had returned to the state of affairs that existed before Al Qaeda toppled the World Trade Center, when terrorism was a persistent but not existential danger. With Al Qaeda’s core now “on the path to defeat,” he argued, the nation must adapt.

“Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue,” Mr. Obama said. “But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. It’s what our democracy demands.”

The politics of this perpetual war may be the hardest part. We have become so used to the drumbeat of invade and occupy from the neocons and the armchair generals who never wore the uniform or picked up anything more than a cigar that moving in any other direction sounds like retreat to them. But for the sake of our country, our treasure, and the lives of the people who are the ones who will have to fight, the war that we were whooped into and then lied to in order to perpetuate it must end, and the speech Mr. Obama gave yesterday was the first indication that it will.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

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