Bachmann's hubby might be taking Medicare for "gay therapy"Follow

Only if we're to assume they're mixed on accident. But we can't just assume that, now can we? And it's not just this one clinic, we're speaking about faith based organizations all over the country; this is just one example of how our tax dollars could be used right now to illegally promote religion. But I understand that you have a deeply vested interest in downplaying this and pretending it doesn't count or isn't important enough for you to care about.


Still not getting your news from anywhere, I see. I've linked to them in past threads.


Remember how I not only said you were wrong but linked to materials explaining how churches can use their facilities for government funded things even as they were also using them for faith-based events? Maybe you should stop relying on the same wrong claim over and over again to cover for your hypocrisy.

That assumption works either way though right? I'm not sure why you think that matters here. The potential for intermingling is lower in any case, right? I mean, even if some nefarious person decided that they would take every single dollar of that 100k and spend it buying prayer books and rosary beads or something, we're still talking about what is most likely less than 5% of the operating budget of the organization. Depending on the time from of that $100k, it's entirely possible we're talking about much much less.



No... no. I think we're talking about this one clinic, aren't we? We're talking about it specifically because it's connected to a GOP candidate and not really for any other reason too. But it's nice that you think this has anything at all to do with some kind of standards in government spending!


And even if we follow that line, we're still talking about the ratio of funding, which is not even close to the same as that in PP.



Could be, sure. What's your point? This could be an example of how our tax dollars could be used to help pay for the drug habits of space aliens too. I mean, if we're just going to speculate all day about what could be happening...




What interest is that? I certainly don't have a deep interest at all. I don't really care about Bachmann. I will take time to point out what I see as gross exaggerations, wild speculations, and completely unfounded allegations though. Call that "downplaying" if you want. I call it injecting a bit of sanity into an issue.



I recall you linking to statements made by PP or friends of PP insisting that they kept their books separate. Independent audit specifically aimed at determining if any funding from the government was used in any way in part of their abortion business? I don't think so. More word games and assumption on your part, I suspect. There's a difference between PP filing the normal and necessary paperwork they have to file to get the funding in the first place, and being audited (investigated if you prefer that term) to make sure that the funding is only going where it should.



Irrelevant. Remember when I pointed out that the money can flow from the church to the separate "funding qualified" organization, but not the other way? That's to ensure that taxpayer dollars don't end out back in the general church coffers. Obviously, the church can allow the charity to use its facilities as it wishes. That's the equivalent of a donation and does not disqualify funding status.

What you can't do is have the charity use the funding dollars to build a building and then allow the church to use it for "faith based events". Because that means that taxpayer dollars might be going to some prohibited purpose.


We consider funding abortion a prohibited purpose for taxpayer dollars. Yet, we allow an organization like PP to continue to keep the money in the same bucket, with the same organization, and just trust them when they say that the dollars they get in funding aren't used for abortion in any way. Why do we trust them to do this, but we don't trust a church to do the same thing?


I don't think it's unreasonable to apply the same set of rules to both. And I view it as hypocritical for someone to attack faith based organizations, which are subject to much much more strict requirements on some incredibly vague innuendo that money might be misused, while defending an organization in which there are no protections in place *and* arguing against putting any such protections in place as well!

Edited, Jul 15th 2011 5:36pm by gbaji

Volunteered at a good soup kitchen once. The current chef was a gourmand who was trying to do miracles with a tiny budget, but the warning during the volunteer meeting was never provide religion advice or even words of comfort unless you were asked. So if a homeless bum told you, "God bless" you were okay to say "You too" or something along those lines, but you yourself could not initiate the "God bless" conversation.

Was an interesting, good experience. I learned how to make some mean roasted potatoes.

So is the arguments against PP. We've finally caught you up!

Ran out of steam being a hypocrite?

Edited, Jul 15th 2011 9:09pm by lolgaxe

Er? Resort to ad hominem so soon?


The speculation about Backmann's organization is that the methods they use, which they call "reparative therapy" is actually some kind of religious ritual (called by their opponents "pray away the gay") and thus can't be used by an organization which receives medicare funding.

On the other side, there is zero speculation that PP performs abortions, and that politicians from both major parties have promised that abortion would not receive one dime of medicare funding.

No, the speculation is whether or not he's receiving gov't funds to provide this service. The fact that he's providing it is obvious. If he was doing this for free, and paying rent to the clinic in which he's doing it, the conversation would be very different.

I'd still say it was inappropriate, of course. No respectable clinic would allow someone to use practices that every official mental health organization has labeled damaging on their own grounds.

And the fact that he's intentionally deceiving people to the best of his ability regarding what kind of degree he has is also troublesome. Is he breaking the law there? No. But that doesn't make it ethical.

You say it's wrong and damaging to eat vanilla ice cream and yet you support planting birch trees in a national park?!?! Insane!!!

In this example, the "end result" to not making any sense was to cry about posters here.


Edited, Jul 16th 2011 8:30am by Jophiel

That's about how I felt.

So instead of asking for clarification, you posted question marks? Weren't you just throwing a hissy fit about hypocrisy?

This won't end well and you won't be amused with him either, so just stop replying to him and move on Joph. I can understand responding to him once or twice, but after that, you know it's just going to go in to full on bullshit and become so twisted, all enjoyment of ridiculing him is lost.