Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Addicted to Oil, Obama Follows Bush Offshore Oil Dream

In the words of George W. Bush: "We are addicted to oil." Never doubt that Obama will do anything to please Republicans -- including opening half the east coast to offshore drilling. The Democratic President will also do anything to further demoralize the base.

We still have some wildlife alive and well down here in the South. Time to end all that. (Our Generation Screwed by Obama's Offshore Drilling Plan - MAP)
Like my mama said: None of this would be happening if we had a freaking Democrat in the White House!

The Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time, officials said Tuesday. . the sheer breadth of the offshore drilling decision will take some of his supporters aback. . . even as Mr. Obama curries favors with pro-drilling interests, he risks a backlash from some coastal governors, senators and environmental advocates, who say that the relatively small amounts of oil to be gained in the offshore areas are not worth the environmental risks.

The Obama administration’s plan adopts some drilling proposals floated by President George W. Bush near the end of his tenure, including opening much of the Atlantic and Arctic Coasts. Those proposals were challenged in court on environmental grounds and set aside by President Obama shortly after he took office.

Posted by egalia at

Hillary in Canada: Maternal Health Includes Access to Abortion

Quote of the Day

“You cannot have maternal health without reproductive health and reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortions. I do not think governments should be involved in making these decisions. It is perfectly legitimate for people to hold their own personal views based on conscience, religion or any other basis. But I’ve always believed that the government should not intervene in decisions of such intimacy.”

Abortion is health care? Who will tell the President of the U.S.? Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was responding to a question from the media and, thus, weighing in on the Canadian controversy over whether conservative Prime Minister Harper’s maternal and child health initiative at the G8 summit this year will include access to contraception AND abortion.


"I laid out a very simple principle, which is this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill."

Posted by egalia at

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Teen Girl Bullied to Death

Worst of all, teachers and staff knew about the bullying and did nothing to stop it. The young girl's tormentors called her an "Irish slut" and "a whore." Phoebe Prince was 15:

The prosecutor brought charges Monday against nine teenagers, saying their taunting and physical threats were beyond the pale and led the freshman, Phoebe Prince, to hang herself from a stairwell in January. .

In the uproar around the suicides of Ms. Prince, 15, and an 11-year-old boy subjected to harassment in nearby Springfield last year, the Massachusetts legislature stepped up work on an anti-bullying law that is now near passage. The law would require school staff members to report suspected incidents and principals to investigate them. It would also demand that schools teach about the dangers of bullying. Forty-one other states have anti-bullying laws of varying strength. .


On Jan. 14, the investigation found, students abused her in the school library, the lunchroom and the hallways and threw a canned drink at her as she walked home. Her sister found her hanging from a stairwell at home, still in her school clothes, at 4:30 p.m.

Posted by egalia at

French President Nicolas Sarkozy Criticizes U.S. on Humaneness of Health Care

Quote of the Day

"Welcome to the club of states who don't turn their back on the sick and the poor. When we look at the American debate on reforming health care, it's difficult to believe. The very fact that there should have been such a violent debate simply on the fact that the poorest of Americans should not be left out in the streets without a cent to look after them... is something astonishing to us. If you come to France and something happens to you, you won't be asked for your credit card before you're rushed to the hospital."

Sarkozy is a conservative, in his country. Like they say, a European conservative is the equivalent of an American socialist. In other words, there is no left left in America. Sarkozy was speaking in New York at Columbia University. Obviously, the French President misspoke. Sadly, the U.S. continues to be a very long way from joining "the club of countries that does not dump its sick people."

Posted by egalia at

Monday, March 29, 2010

Feminist-Ruled Iceland Outlaws Strip Clubs

Creating a culture where women are regarded as humans rather than sex objects on this male-dominated planet can't be easy. But when a country frees itself from male-domination, some very startling changes clearly ensue, like Iceland's legislative assault on the sex industry, which has outlawed lap-dancing and strip clubs.

With a lesbian head of state and women making up almost half the nation's legislators, Iceland's many women and girl friendly laws should be no surprise. Here in the U.S., equality means that women get to join the men in exploitation by going to strip clubs as paying customers. Women get to go to war and kill and be killed right alongside the men. Growing up steeped in cowboy ideology, it can be hard to imagine a better way. . . a better way, as envisioned in Iceland, is where the first thing girls learn in puberty is NOT that girls are sex objects:

[T]he Nordic state is the first country in the world to ban stripping and lapdancing for feminist, rather than religious, reasons. Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir, the politician who first proposed the ban, firmly told the national press on Wednesday: "It is not acceptable that women or people in general are a product to be sold." When I asked her if she thinks Iceland has become the greatest feminist country in the world, she replied: "It is certainly up there. Mainly as a result of the feminist groups putting pressure on parliamentarians. These women work 24 hours a day, seven days a week with their campaigns and it eventually filters down to all of society."

Jónsdóttir says the ban could mean the death of the sex industry. "Last year we passed a law against the purchase of sex, recently introduced an action plan on trafficking of women, and now we have shut down the strip clubs. The Nordic countries are leading the way on women's equality, recognising women as equal citizens rather than commodities for sale."

Jónsdóttir is confident that the law will create a change in attitudes towards women. "I guess the men of Iceland will just have to get used to the idea that women are not for sale."


“Once you break past the glass ceiling and have more than one third of female politicians, something changes. Feminist energy seems to permeate everything.”
-- Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir

Posted by egalia at

Tennessee & Delaware Win Millions in Education Grants

Tennessee Wins Race to the Top Contest -- Many states applied, so it is rather shocking that only two states won the Department of Education's $4.35 billion Race to the Top contest. Goddess knows, Tennessee -- which supports itself (just barely) via a sales tax (!) -- is always beyond desperate for money. It's like when your kid wins the magnet school lottery, you're so glad that your kid is going to get a decent education, but sorry about all those other kids. Yay for the kids in Tennessee and Delaware! Too bad about the kids in the 48 other states. "The Department of Education said that Delaware would be awarded about $100 million and Tennessee about $500 million."
Posted by egalia at

Iceland Leads World in Gender Equality. US Ranks #31.

Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden and New Zealand 'lead the world in gender equality,' according to the 2009 Global Gender Gap report released by Switzerland's World Economic Forum:

[T]he land of glaciers and puffins, population 319,000, is the most gender egalitarian country on earth, with women having closed 80 percent of the gap with men. Finland (2), Norway (3), Sweden (4) and Denmark (7) are in the top ten too, as is New Zealand (5). You could try harder, Spain (17) and Germany (12) — in 2007 you were in the top ten. And O, Canada: 25. Very sad.

Not surprisingly, these are nations that have made serious strides in the feminist and humanist goal of eradicating male domination. As is the case in so very many areas, the United States has a painfully long way to go. Oh, well, at least we are ahead of Namibia:

The United States, which prides itself on civil rights progress during the past half century, fell four spots from last year to stand at 31st place behind Lithuania and ahead of Namibia, according to the World Economic Forum, a nonprofit group based in Switzerland.

The report ranked countries according to how much they reduced gender disparities based on economic participation, education, health and political empowerment while attempting to strip out the effects of a nation's overall wealth.

Posted by egalia at

RIP Liz Carpenter, Feminist, ERA Activist, LBJ Aide

Liz Carpenter's friends included Molly Ivins and Ann Richards. Roe v. Wade attorney Sarah Weddington spoke at her memorial service along with progressive hero Bill Moyers. She co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus and was first Vice President Johnson's and later Lady Bird Johnson's press secretary. She was a journalist when women were largely confined to newspaper's fashion pages.

She was an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) activist who said she did not want to die while women were excluded from the U.S. Constitution. Liz Carpenter died on March 20th, in Austin, Texas:

In 1971, out of the White House, Ms. Carpenter turned her energy to women’s causes, including the fight for an Equal Rights Amendment. Her efforts to establish the National Women’s Political Caucus grew out of a commitment to seeing more women elected to state and federal posts.

Earlier, Ms. Carpenter was a prime mover in the battle to permit women to join the National Press Club, which had been an important institution in Washington for reporters as well as politicians since its founding in 1908. Before being accepted as members, women with press credentials fought to be admitted at least to the club luncheons at which visiting heads of state customarily appeared.

“We made a great breakthrough in 1956,” Helen Thomas, a reporter who has covered Washington since World War II, once recalled. “Liz Carpenter got them to agree to let us sit in the balcony of the ballroom, in purdah, and listen to the luncheon speaker as we looked down on our press colleagues and the public relations men and the lobbyists as they ate.”

It was not until 1971 that women were admitted as members.


“I personally am going to go to that Great Precinct Meeting in the Sky kicking and screaming if I'm not in the Constitution of the country that I worked for, paid taxes to, tried to be a total thinking citizen in.”

Posted by egalia at

Friday, March 26, 2010

NOW Prez Terry O'Neill Condemns Hyde Health Deform on Bill Moyers Journal Tonight

Bill Moyers interviews NOW President Terry O'Neill and the Nation's John Nichols. Watch it tonight on PBS or watch it online. Huff Post has a 6 minute clip up already.

Over a period of years, insurance companies -- all insurance companies in all plans -- will eventually conclude that it is too much trouble to offer abortion coverage at all. 87 percent of private insurance policies today cover abortion care. That goes away if we don't make changes to this law.
-- Terry O'Neill, NOW President

The only mistake that progressives would make would be to think that it is the job of progressives to defend this bill as is.
-- John Nichols

Posted by egalia at

Obama Bumpersticker Sparks Violent Road Rage in Nashville

Gawd. Are we headed for a another civil war, or what? This bizarre story is all over the national internet and on progressive radio too. This happened on the 'good' side of the railroad tracks, in the Vandy area:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A Nashville man says he and his 10-year-old daughter were victims of road rage Thursday afternoon, all because of a political bumper sticker on his car. He said Harry Weisiger gave him the bird and rammed into his vehicle, after noticing an Obama-Biden sticker on his car bumper.

Duren had just picked up his 10-year-old daughter from school and had her in the car with him. "He pointed at the back of my car," Duren said, "the bumper, flipped me off, one finger salute."

Once he started driving again, down Blair Boulevard, towards his home, he said, "I looked in the rear view mirror again, and this same SUV was speeding, flying up behind me, bumped me."

Duren said he applied his brake and the SUV smashed into the back of his car. He then put his car in park to take care of the accident, but Weisiger started pushing the car using his SUV. Duren said, "He pushed my car up towards the sidewalk, almost onto the sidewalk."

Mark Duren Tells Story on Thom Hartmann

Think Progress has a video clip of the WKRN news report.
Crooks and Liars: TN Man Enraged By Obama Sticker Slams SUV Into Car With 10 Year Old Child Inside
Political Carnival: Video- Tennesee Man Rams Car Carrying Child Due to Obama Bumpersticker [ via ]

Posted by egalia at

NOW Prez Terry O'Neill: Health Reform Bill Is Sex Discrimination (Video)

It certainly is sex discrimination. And NOW has a long and valiant history of winning sex discrimination cases. Granted, that seems like a very long time ago, but with a little luck, we are on our way back to that kind of era. Conservative eras only seem like they last forever.

Terry O'Neill lays out the sexist health deform bill, in the video clip below. At the Campus Progress discussion, the National Organization for Women (NOW) President added that NOW intends to wage a campaign to repeal the atrocious Hyde Amendment (watch that video clip here).


"[A]bortion rights advocates will find a strange bedfellow in the "pro-life" Susan B. Anthony List, which has vowed to oppose the re-election of any Democrat abortion rights opponents who voted for health care reform, including Stupak. The group had previously endorsed him and was planning to honor him until the congressman reached a deal with the White House on abortion."


"It really pains me to conclude that on balance this law is not good for women. It's health reform that has been achieved on the backs of women and at the expense of women. . I've heard women complain very loudly, 'This would never have happened if Hillary had been president.'"

Posted by egalia at

Sandra Bullock's Husband Suffers from Tiger Woods Syndrome: 4 Mistresses & Counting

Another day, another man sans integrity and honor is outed. A public shaming may or may not persuade the guys to change their ways, but it will certainly warn women against taking anything they say seriously.

Married to Sandra Bullock for almost 5 years, Jesse James has had 4 mistresses, and counting, for 3, and counting, of the almost 5 years:

. . . Crusading attorney Gloria Allred released a statement saying that she represents a fourth woman - “a beautiful model and business woman” - who had an “intimate” three-year affair. . She has proof of their relationship including hundreds of texts, e-mails and photos.


Posted by egalia at

Eric Cantor (R-VA) Blames Dems for Violence Against Dems

After Eric Cantor (R-VA) shamelessly blamed the Democrats for inciting violence against the Democrats, the petulant lawmaker then got defensive: Aw, so what. There was violence against me too!

Turns out, not so much:

"A bullet was shot through the window of my campaign office in Richmond this week, and I've received threatening e-mails," Cantor said. He refused to release details, however, saying it would only encourage more threats, and refused to take questions. Later Thursday, however, Richmond police said in a news release that the bullet had been fired into the air around 1 a.m. Tuesday. It finished its random arc back to earth at a sharp downward trajectory, breaking a window pane on the bottom floor of the two-story brick building where Cantor's campaign leases the top floor.

Posted by egalia at

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Health Reform Bill Will Hugely Expand Hyde Amendment's Impact (Video)

Here's another reason to repeal the draconian Hyde Amendment. With the health reform bill's addition of some 16 million to the Medicaid rolls, the impact of the Hyde Amendment will be 'hugely expanded.'

The wonderful Center for Reproductive Rights:

“The President’s decision to issue an executive order designed to assuage Representative Stupak and his cohorts is a betrayal of millions of women across this country and of his campaign promises. The order lends credibility to an already impossibly flawed policy that punishes and discriminates against poor women by denying them the full range of reproductive health services and their constitutional right. Current policy known as the Hyde Amendment was denounced by President Obama himself as a presidential candidate. . .

“It is unacceptable that a pro-choice President has put his imprimatur on a highly restrictive and unjust anti-choice measure. . It is tragic that, under a pro-choice administration and a Democratic majority in Congress, harmful anti-choice policy will be the price American women will pay for healthcare reform.”


Posted by egalia at

Hillary Clinton Photos of the Day


Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Pakistani Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi share some laughs. [via]

Posted by egalia at

Justice Ginsburg to Sen. Bunning (R-KY): 'I Am Alive'

A full year after Senator Jackass Bunning from Kentucky predicted that the High Court's legendary feminist Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would soon die, the woman signaled that she has not forgotten his contemptible words and fired back at him:

"I am pleased to report that, contrary to Sen. Bunning's prediction, I am alive and in good health."

. . Ginsburg hasn't missed a day of arguments since her diagnosis and has appeared as sharp as ever during oral arguments, sometimes dominating the questioning. In her comments, made to the Pro Bono Institute on March 19 but only recently posted on the Supreme Court's website, Ginsburg also weighed in on the recent controversy, fueled by Liz Cheney, questioning the loyalty of U.S. lawyers representing accused terrorists. . . read more

Posted by egalia at

Rep. Bart Stupak Gets Death Threats: Listen to Them (Video)

There sure are some vile people in the world. Don't listen unless you're in the mood to be reminded of just how very far we humans have to go.



Posted by egalia at

Bush Wipes Hand on Clinton's Shirt After Shaking Hands with Haitians

This is just strange. I haven't seen anything like it since George W. Bush wiped his glasses on that woman's shirt on the David Letterman show.



Think Progress: Bush has a well-known aversion to germs — and a tendency to use other people’s clothing to clean himself off. He infamously used a woman’s shirt to wipe off his glasses and reportedly had an aide give him “a big dollop of hand sanitizer” after shaking hands with Barack Obama. [via Mediaite]

Posted by egalia at

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Obama Signs Executive Order on Abortion

Obama signed his affirmation of the Hyde Amendment today. The White House downplayed the event. The media were not invited. It was a private party. There was a guest list.

The National Organization for Women (NOW) announced this week that it is implementing a campaign to repeal the Hyde Amendment.

Posted by egalia at

Democratic Lawmakers Get Death Threats Over Health Reform

Democratic lawmakers met with the Capitol police today to discuss the death threats and acts of vandalism that have occurred since the passage of the health reform bill. Some of the vandalism is pretty serious. The FBI is investigating "the discovery of a cut propane gas line at the Virginia home of Rep. Thomas Perriello’s (D-Va.) brother, whose address was targeted by tea party activists angry at the congressman’s vote for the health care bill."

"Any member who feels themselves at risk is getting attention from the proper authorities," Hoyer said. At least 10 Democratic lawmakers have complained of threats or other security concerns.

Those incidents have reportedly included death threats to Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter and to Rep. Bart Stupak, who struck a last-minute deal with the White House on abortion Sunday, hours before the House voted; vandalism of the district offices of Slaughter and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords; and a brick through the window of the a county Democratic Party headquarters in Wichita, Kansas. The FBI is reportedly investigating a severed gas line at the home of Rep. Tom Perriello's brother after tea partiers posted the brother's address online, believing it to be Rep. Perriello's.

Posted by egalia at

Canadians Fear Riots During Ann Coulter's Visit (Video)

Quote of the Day

"Since I’ve arrived in Canada, I’ve been denounced on the floor of Parliament — which, by the way, is on my bucket list — my posters have been banned, I’ve been accused of committing a crime in a speech that I have not yet given, I was banned by the student council, so welcome to Canada!”
-- Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter is complaining because one of her events at a Canadian University was cancelled due to fears that students would riot. Previously, Coulter told a Muslim girl to "take a camel" because Muslims shouldn't fly! The lecture was cancelled after more than 2,000 students showed up to protest her appearance. Unfortunately, this appears to mean that she will be coming back.

Ann Coulter Speech Cancelled in Ottawa

Posted by egalia at

Feminist Films: The Runaways (Trailer)

I'm looking forward to seeing this one. Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning star in this feminist true story from the 1970s, back when rock belonged to men: The story of musicians Joan Jett, Cherie Currie and Sandy West and their all-female rock band, The Runaways. Melissa Silverstein has the review.


Posted by egalia at

Dolly Parton Takes on Senator Bob Corker


Thank you, Dolly:

During an interview with radio station WAXO-1220AM (Kickin' Country) in Lewisburg, Tenn., Dolly took Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) to task over his refusal to regulate the nation's payday loan industry, which charges a whopping 400 percent interest rate to military families and unemployed workers for short-term loans when they're short of cash.

Dolly chided Corker for alleged "behind closed door" efforts to allow the high interest rates to continue.

"For a dad and a mom trying to raise some kids on a military paycheck, a 400 percent interest rate is not just dumb, it's un-American," said the superstar, adding that the U.S. Senate is currently looking at reducing the maximum rate charged for payday loans from 400 percent to 36 percent. "Growing up poor, I know the hardship and tragedy that money matters can cause to a family," she added.

Posted by egalia at

Lily Tomlin With Some Sick Vulture Health Insurance Industry Humor (Video)


via the Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP) blog:"Lily Tomlin provides us with a much needed break as she reminds us, in her own incomparable style, of the industry that Congress and the President have so richly rewarded."

"It is not going to be another 10 years or 50 years before we get real reform if this bill fails. The single payer movement is growing. We can organize and push for real reform. But we must stand strong and united on our principles. We must put single payer on the table. It won’t happen any other way."

Posted by egalia at

Poll: Who Sold Out Abortion Rights?

Jane Hamsher has a poll: Who is the Most to Blame for Selling Out Abortion Rights in the Health Care Bill?

Posted by egalia at

Nancy Pelosi: Most Powerful Woman in American History? (Video)

Diane Sawyer to Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "The Economist said that you are arguably the most powerful woman in American history. A Brown university professor has said you are certainly the most powerful Speaker in one hundred years." -- Nancy Pelosi's 70th birthday is Friday! If you are so inclined, join others in sending her roses (currently, it's up to 1,000 roses!).


All agree she gets credit for locking up this vote, one of the biggest since Medicare in the 1960s. And she's said to have done it with an epic blend of persuasion, muscle and will even when half the town said it couldn't be done.

Posted by egalia at

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Representing Women

Quote of the Day

"Speaking of violence against women, Dems, would you look in the effing mirror? New York's Hiram Monserrate and David Paterson? Scott Lee Cohen in Illinois? That these men and others like them could get as far as they did says the culture of the party is tone-deaf when it comes to abuse and its warning signs. The only way to detoxify politics of tolerance for violence is to have lots more women in office. If India can pass a law requiring Parliament to be one-third women, surely the Democratic Party can figure out how to achieve equal numbers of women here. Pro-choice women. Feminist women."

Currently, the United States is tied with Turkmenistan at #73 in the number of women elected to Congress.

Posted by egalia at

The Republican Roots of ObamaCare

Back in the heady days of the 1990s when vilifying single moms passed for a national welfare reform debate, I used to study abhorrent policy ideas over at a conservative non think tank called the Heritage Foundation. If it was good for privileged white guys who had wives at home, the Heritage Foundation gushed a glowing masculine stamp of approval.

If it was about wild womanly ideas like childcare and higher education subsidies for single and/or poor moms, the Heritage Foundation condemned poor women as irresponsible unfit moms who by their very nature attracted crime to the neighborhood and were pretty well the cause of all the social ills of society.

I knew there was a familiar foul smell about Obama's health reform plan:

Brad Delong:

It has been a long slog, since those days in the early 1990s when right-wing policy analysts proposed an individual mandate to purchase health coverage as a respectable, market-oriented, responsibility-based alternative to either government-provided health care (the nanny state) or mandated employer-provided health care (the boss state). In November, 2004, Republican Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts followed through on that conservative proposal, and in April, 2006 he signed into Massachusetts law a health reform plan based on it. . .

The conservative DNA of ObamaCare is hardly a secret. "The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan,” Frum wrote. “It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994."

Posted by egalia at

Monday, March 22, 2010

Famed Feminist Guerrilla Girls on Tour Coming to East Tennessee (UT-Knoxville)

The internationally famed and awesome Guerrilla Girls on Tour are headed to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Feminists and other people in the area are in for a real treat. The group's motto is "Changing the world, one sexist city at a time," and they are serious! I only wish they were coming to Nashville, or that I was free to head out to Knoxville. If you are the area, you are damn lucky. Don't blow your chance to see them!

University of Tennessee: Women’s Coordinating Council is pleased to announce the Guerrilla Girls On Tour, an internationally acclaimed anonymous theatre collective, performed on campus March 23, 2010 at 7pm in the University Center Auditorium. Guerrilla Girls On Tour will bring to campus a live performance that addresses the lack of opportunities for women and people of color and explores the combination of performance and visual art entitled Feminists Are Funny. . .

The 26-member troupe has toured through 35 US states and 7 countries bringing their brand of satirical performance art and activism against discrimination, sexism and racism to places like southern Georgia, Eastern Europe and South America.

Guerrilla Girls on Tour Blog
Guerrilla Girls on Tour. com

"No one characterizes the humor and humanity of the women's movement better than Guerrilla Girls On Tour!"
-- Gloria Steinem
Posted by egalia at

Gays, Blacks, Labor Join Massive Immigration Rally

Largely left out of the health insurance reform bill, an estimated hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their supporters marched on the National Mall in Washington D.C. yesterday to demand immigration reform.

The March for America included representatives from a diversity of organizations. Unions were represented. The Vice President of the AFL-CIO was there. African American leaders from groups such as the NAACP and the National Urban League were on hand. Activists from LGBT groups were there. Because if we're ever going to make real change in this country, we're going to have to unite on issues wherever we can.


Posted by egalia at

NOW: 'Health Care Reform Victory Comes with Tragic Setback for Women's Rights'

From restricting access to abortion care, to gender rating, to discrimination against immigrants, NOW President Terry O'Neill takes apart the health insurance reform bill:

As a longtime proponent of health care reform, I truly wish that the National Organization for Women could join in celebrating the historic passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It pains me to have to stand against what many see as a major achievement. But feminist, progressive principles are in direct conflict with many of the compromises built into and tacked onto this legislation. . . read more . . .
Posted by egalia at

Health Reform Passes, Now the Fight Goes to the Courts

The House passed the historic health insurance reform bill last night with a vote of 219 - 212 and without a single Republican vote.

Now the fight moves on to the campaign trail and to the courts:

The next chapter in the health care fight will play out not only in the midterm elections, but also in the courts. Attorneys general in three states — Virginia, Florida and South Carolina — have indicated they will file legal challenges to the measure, on the grounds that it violates the Constitution by requiring individuals to purchase insurance.

That's some gavel in Speaker Pelosi's hands! Goddess she looks good wielding it in the midst of a sea of men.

Health Reform Fights in the House

Posted by egalia at

Feminist Quote of the Day

"I hope the choice movement now decides to play hardball with Democrats, including the President, and insist that an all out effort to overturn the Hyde Amendment is required if Democratic office holders and candidates want our vote in 2012. I for one have decided that I simply will not vote for another elected official until Hyde is overturned and I hope others will do the same. There is no reason for prochoice voters to accept Democratic pussyfooting around on repealing Hyde."


Posted by egalia at

The Education of a President

Obviously, he has far to go, but Christine Brennan documents some progress:

Last year, the President did not fill out a women's NCAA bracket and didn't even mention that there was more than one tournament than the men's.

This year, he has done both.

Posted by egalia at

Sunday, March 21, 2010

NOW's Statement on Obama's Executive Order on Abortion

The National Organization for Women is incensed over Obama's Executive Order on Abortion . .

President Obama won the vote of anti choice Bart Stupak (and his block of 7) by issuing a deplorable Executive Order on Abortion ("ensuring enforcement and implementation of abortion restrictions in the patient protection and affordable care act"). The Executive Order on Abortion is meant to reassure the anti choice crowd that the Hyde Amendment is still the law of the land. It's meant to further stigmatize abortion and to make it clear that the health deform bill effectively mandates that middle class women must now join desperate poor women in paying for abortions out of pocket, or else.

It will surprise no one to hear that as a candidate Obama opposed the Hyde Amendment:

During the Presidential campaign, the Obama campaign provided the following statement on its position on the Hyde Amendment to RH Reality Check:

Obama does not support the Hyde amendment. He believes that the federal government should not use its dollars to intrude on a poor woman's decision whether to carry to term or to terminate her pregnancy and selectively withhold benefits because she seeks to exercise her right of reproductive choice in a manner the government disfavors (emphasis added).

NARAL is disappointed. NOW is righteously incensed. Here's NOW's statement on Obama's Executive Order on Abortion:

President Obama Breaks Faith with Women

The National Organization for Women is incensed that President Barack Obama agreed today to issue an executive order designed to appease a handful of anti-choice Democrats who have held up health care reform in an effort to restrict women's access to abortion. Through this order, the president has announced he will lend the weight of his office and the entire executive branch to the anti-abortion measures included in the Senate bill, which the House is now prepared to pass.

President Obama campaigned as a pro-choice president, but his actions today suggest that his commitment to reproductive health care is shaky at best. Contrary to language in the draft of the executive order and repeated assertions in the news, the Hyde Amendment is not settled law -- it is an illegitimate tack-on to an annual must-pass appropriations bill. NOW has a longstanding objection to Hyde and, in fact, was looking forward to working with this president and Congress to bring an end to these restrictions. We see now that we have our work cut out for us far beyond what we ever anticipated. The message we have received today is that it is acceptable to negotiate health care on the backs of women, and we couldn't disagree more.

Update: Jane Hamsher: White House Released Executive Order to Media Without Showing to Members of Pro-Choice Caucus

Posted by egalia at

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Obama Readies An Executive Order to Pacify Pro Life Democrats?

Update: House Democrats and the White House are working on the Executive Order, report 3 staff writers at the Washington Post. Update #2 Stupak says the deal is almost done, meaning the Executive Order is almost written. He expects to announce the deal later today.

President Obama is planning to emerge with an Executive Order to pacify or buy off Stupak and his band of anti choice Democrats, according to numerous reports from both the Right and the Left. Gawd help us.

Posted by egalia at

Stupak/Pelosi Abortion Deal is Off - for Now

Stupak has cancelled his press conference because the deal is off. Right-wingers say Stupak is "finished with Pelosi," at least for the moment:

House leaders have decided not to give Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) a vote on a strict ban on federal funding for abortion and will instead try to muster the 216 votes needed to send a health care overhaul to the president without his help, a Democratic aide confirmed. Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.), though, said Stupak's group is holding firm. . "There's still time and they still need votes," he said

Update: See Hamsher: Stupak Deal is Dead, Obama Executive Order on Abortion “On the Table”

Posted by egalia at
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