This time around, let's flip the script to examine what other terrible, no good, very bad things are just like rape. Like health care! The health-care-is-rape argument comes courtesy of WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian. In a piece entitled "Barack Obama and the date-rape of America," he writes:

Good Americans from sea to shining sea are grappling right now with how to mentally process what they're witnessing in Washington, D.C.

The spectacle of a far leftist president literally forcing socialized medicine down the throat of an unwilling center-right America is reminiscent, perhaps more than any other contemporary metaphor, of date rape.

A man determined to have his way with a woman may start off seducing her with lies, flattery and the usual pretense of caring about her. But at a critical moment, when she says, "Stop, I'm not comfortable with this and don't want to go any further," he has a choice: Either do the right thing and back off, or abandon all prior pretensions and take her by force.

As president, Barack Obama courted us with sweet talk, but America grew increasingly uncomfortable with his advances and firmly said, "Stop"—in fact, screamed bloody murder for months. Yet Obama remains obsessed with forcing himself on America.

Kupelian goes on to explain how Obama, much like your undetected date rapist, appears to be an otherwise great guy, until he unsuspectingly rapes America:

How can an apparently decent man like Barack Obama—who undoubtedly loves his daughters and probably reads them bedtime stories, has a good sense of humor, and is highly intelligent and likeable—justify lying and deceiving all the time, pretending to care about Republican input, about transparency, about controlling costs, and so on? Further, how can he justify using such dishonest means to force his will on an unwilling American public? In other words, how can he countenance, in effect, date-raping America?

. . . and how, just like in many date rape scenarios, alcohol is involved:

What we need to understand is that, between his hate-based ideology (Winston Churchill called socialism the "gospel of envy"), extreme narcissism and long-internalized political corruption, Obama and others like him, literally drunk on power, live essentially in a state of delusion: Down is up, truth is cruel and impractical, corruption is just "conducting business," morality is repression, lying is a creative force.

But Kupelian's analogy falls apart when he presents date rape as something that Republicans should actually give a shit about, because for the most part, they really, really don't. If you Google "Republicans date rape," you'll get a lot of hits about Republicans reiterating the idea that bipartisanship amounts to date rape. And Rush Limbaugh equating date rape to extramarital affairs. And Republican Senators refusing to support the right of rape victims to sue their employers. And joking that date rape is like being robbed of expensive jewelry by a beautiful and mysterious woman. Double rape analogy bonus!

Isn't it strange how Republicans seem to only invoke the problem of date rape when they need to use it as a rhetorical tool to transfer sympathy away from real victims of rape and onto themselves? And isn't it odd that when presented with legislation meant to aid real victims of rape, the party refuses to support it? The fact is, Kupelian and his party are far more likely to direct their righteous indignation at people who want everyone to have access to medical care than they are to condemn rapists for raping. So if Kupelian wants us to truly understand how terrible Obama's pursuit of health care is for Republicans, perhaps he should draw comparisons to something that Republicans actually detest. He should also refrain from misusing the term "literally." Twice.

Thankfully for Kupelian, the piece floats several alternate analogies through which Republicans may illustrate their strife. According to Kupelian, Barack Obama is Captain Ahab, and Obamacare is Moby Dick; Barack Obama is a dictator, and America is Zimbabwe; Republicans are "German undercover operatives in the Nazi army plotting to kill Hitler," and Obama is . . . Hitler, presumably.

Did ya'll watch C-SPAN last night? The Republican strategy of frantically burying their racist and classist rhetoric under a protective shield of faux concern for unborn babies was in full, glorious display. Between the white dudes arguing that socialist health care reform will "enslave" the American people (inside) and the white dudes chanting racial epithets at black representatives (outside), I managed to catch this gem from Republican Indiana Rep. Mike Pence (above), who argued that supporting health care amounts to signing a devil's deal with Barack Obama, "the most pro-abortion president in American history."

Because even when the U.S. government explicitly states that it will continue to not fund abortions, Republicans just can't seem to let go of their major justification for denying health care to poor, uninsured Americans: their irrational hatred of women.

"Only in Washington, D.C. could you exchange the pro-life protections enshrined in the law for thirty years for a piece of paper signed by the most pro-abortion president in American history," Pence announced. Well, certainly Obama deserves some sort of award for this distinction! After two centuries of only mildly pro-abortion presidents, and wishy-washy presidents with no discernible views on abortion (I'm looking at you, Millard Fillmore), it's refreshing to finally find a president whose love for abortion can be definitively measured as more intense than the love for abortion held by the 43 men who came before him. I can just imagine Pence furiously calculating Obama's love for abortion, checking and re-checking the mathematics deep into the night in preparation for the health care debate: "multiply by amount of sorrow expressed at George Tiller's murder . . . divided by the cosine of Clinton's love for abortion . . . carry the two . . . my God! It is true!"

All of which is by way of saying, a friend made this commemorative online thingy, and I thought it was funny.

Signed, the most pro-abortion blogger to work in the 2300 block of Champlain St. NW in American history.

A new initiative from youth voting campaign Rock the Vote is encouraging young people to "hold out for health care" by refusing to have sex with people who don't support health care reform. In a strange turn of events, I'm with FOX News on this one: This sucks.

Rock the Vote, an organization which works to "engage and build the political power of young people," is currently collecting signatures for the celebrity-endorsed petition to "hold out for health care."

"We pledge ourselves to the health and liberty of young Americans and to government for the people ... and to never fucking you if you are against us," the video announces. "We will vote against you, work against you, and once again, just in case you forgot, never ever, never ever, never ever, never ever fuck you."

The strategy strikes me as counter-intuitive. After all, what do Republicans hate even more than public health care? Young people having premarital sex! If I were a Republican, I would love this Rock the Vote campaign. It reads like a conservative porn script: No health care, plus a bunch of young hot chicks sexily announcing that they're not going to give it up!

But I'm not a Republican, so I find a few aspects of this Rock the Vote campaign unsettling that have nothing to do with the young people admitting to F-wording each other. First, Rock the Vote President Heather Smith told FOX News that the fucking-withholding petition aims to remind the youth of America that "they have a stake and a say" in the debate over health care. Huh. I thought young people had a stake in the health care debate because they're human beings with a civil right to engage in our country's political process. But I guess it's actually because they're hot and like to fuck. Second, the unsettling sexual stereotypes: According to Rock the Vote, women are sexy teases; men are insatiable buffoons. Finally, this line, meant to to ward off a skeezy Tea Party guy who wants to fuck our hot liberal heroine: "I'm on my period. I don't have a vagina." Would you like some transphobia with your abstinence?

D.C. ladies on the pill: You may not know the name of Gennet Purcell, the woman that Mayor Adrian Fenty appointed to head up the D.C. Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking last August. You should. Purcell may be responsible for sending your birth control costs through the roof. Yesterday, Amie Newman of R.H. Reality Check reported that Purcell recently gave insurance companies the go-ahead to opt out of contraception coverage. [UPDATE: Purcell's office roundly denies Newman's story. Statement after the jump].

Under Purcell's watch, private insurance companies operating in Washington DC are now allowed to opt out of covering contraception in individual plans. This coverage is considered "non-mandatory" by the insurance commissioner and some women are finding their birth control coverage suddenly dropped.

UPDATE: A call I made to DISB this afternoon was not returned, but a DISB rep issued the following statement to DCist:

The Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking (DISB) has not made any changes in its position regarding contraceptive coverage in individual health insurance under Commissioner Gennet Purcell or prior to Commissioner Purcell’s appointment.

In fact, mandated coverages for insurance are not at the discretion of the insurance commissioner, but rather mandated coverages are those that are required by D.C. law. Contraceptive coverage is not now, nor has it ever been, a mandated coverage in D.C. DISB has researched its recent consumer complaint history and found no complaints about individual health insurance not covering contraception. It is surveying insurance companies writing individual health insurance in the District of Columbia and, while responses are still coming in, has found that there are individual plans available in D.C. that provide contraceptive coverage.

Photo by nateOne, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

How long ago was it that a black woman would be denied entrance to a whites-only restroom? Well, at one point in the afternoon, a white woman wearing a shirt that said "Kill Fags," which appeared to be a homemade silkscreen job, felt a similar call of nature. At the door of the Penn Quarter Sports [Tavern] she met Matt Hunter, the bar's marketing and events manager. He told her that she could not use the restroom.

"So you're refusing?" she asked.

"Yes," Matt said. "There's no public option here."

"Bastard," she said.

"I can do you one better," Matt said. "I suck cock."

He then put his tongue in his cheek and cupped his hand, moving it back and forth in front of his mouth in the internationally-recognized gesture for fellatio.

"I'm one of those," he said, pointing at her shirt. She left to find a bathroom more accommodating to her sort.

On the phone, Hunter was more conciliatory to the "Kill Fags" set. "There was a lot of stuff said down here," Hunter confirmed over the telephone. "It was a nightmare down here."

Hunter says that at the Penn Quarter Sports Tavern, "everyone is welcome"—but that the tea bagger protest stretched even the most inclusive bar's resources. "Everyone had to put signs out that said 'restrooms for customers only,'" says Hunter. "It was a big public event, and the city should have helped assist by putting public toilets out." D.C. also could have done Hunter a solid by informing him that hordes of out-of-town tea-baggers would be descending upon the bar. "This whole thing just came out of the blue," he says. "I guess because I don’t watch FOX TV, I had no idea what was going on."

Go to the ACLU Action Center here, or visit Planned Parenthood's action page here, or Compassion & Choices' action page here, all of whom have made it incredibly easy to make your voice heard by the Obama administration.

If all goes according to plan, the conscience rule will have accomplished nothing at all. Mwa ha ha.