Obama: 'Hillary and I..'

Quote of the Day

"Hillary and I -- we’ve spent the last three and a half years cleaning up after other folks’ messes. (Applause.) And by the way, we’ve got them -- we’re starting to get them pretty cleaned up. (Applause.) The war in Iraq is over. (Applause.) We’re transitioning in Afghanistan. We’ve got the strongest allies we’ve ever seen. And al Qaeda is on the ropes. (Applause.) So we’ve done what we said we’d do."

 -- Barack Obama, 2012

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Pope Attacks American Nuns

Kristof is not the only one who is betting on the nuns:

We Are All Nuns 

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New Ad: Obama Is The Cool President (Video)

 
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NOW: Newsweek Glamorizes Women's Submission

 So now submission is a feminist dream?


The caption says: "The Fantasy Life of Working Women | Why Surrender is a Feminist Dream." . . . It's hard to tell what's more offensive. The haute couture style of the cover photo, which presents the blindfolding of a woman as elegant and refined. Or the accompanying article, which uses the popularity of the book "Fifty Shades of Gray" -- which Katie Roiphe describes as the "skinny-vanilla-latte version of sadomasochism" -- to speculate that women are not comfortable with power and might even find it boring.  

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Can We Give Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant A Womb Transplant?

Gov. Phil Bryant is proud of making major strides toward the goal of totally eradicating abortion rights in the good old boy state of Mississippi:

 Days after he signed a law that would effectively shut down his state’s only remaining abortion-performing clinic, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant accused Democrats of having one mission in life: “to abort children.” “The hypocrisy of the left that now tried to kill this bill, that says that I should have never signed it, the true hypocrisy is that their one mission in life is to abort children, is to kill children in the womb,” Bryant told conservative radio host Tony Perk
ins on Tuesday...

The recently-signed bill to crack down on Mississippi abortion providers is one of the most stringent to be passed by a state. It requires all doctors who perform abortions to be certified in obstetrics and gynecology and have admitting privileges at a local hospital.

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Secret Service Should Hire Women

Quote of the Day

"I can't help but wonder if there were more women who had been part of this detail (in Colombia) if this would have ever happened."

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine)

 Collins to Secret Service: Add women agents  

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Wisconsin's Planned Parenthood Suspends Non-Surgical Abortions Thanks to Rabid Republicans

Governor Scott Walker has signed a bill designed to send abortion doctors who offer non surgical abortions to prison. Consequently, Wisconsin Planned Parenthood now offers only surgical abortions. Gawd, I can't wait til Walker's ass is recalled on June 5th:

The Coercive and Web Cam Abortion Prevention Act, which was signed by Republican Governor Scott Walker earlier this month, imposes criminal penalties, including a possible prison sentence, for physicians who violate the law. . . "The added risks of felony penalties for physicians who provide medication abortion are unnecessary and intended to threaten a physician's ability to provide women with medication abortion," Huyck said in a statement from the family planning and reproductive health organization on Friday. Liberal Politics Feminist News Gender

Fired Secret Service Agent: I Was Really Checking Sarah Palin Out

Fired for his role in the prostitution scandal in Colombia, Secret Service Creep David Chaney guarded Sarah Palin back in 2008. On his Facebook page, the Creep bragged about leering at her: 

In a photo posted on his public Facebook page in January 2009, Chaney is seen standing behind Palin, wearing dark glasses and what appears be a wedding ring. Under the photo, Chaney posted a comment that said, "I was really checking her out, if you know what I mean?" 

That drew a strong response from Palin on Thursday night. "This agent who was kind of ridiculous there in posting pictures and comments about checking someone out," Palin said on Fox News. "Check this out, bodyguard. You're fired! And I hope his wife sends him to the doghouse." 


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Mitt Romney and Tom Corbett: Too Extreme for Women

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Stark Introduces Bill to Recognize Low-Income Mothers' Care for Their Young Children as Work

If passed, this bill would serve as a paid maternity leave act and go a long way toward raising this country's abysmal infant mortality rate. The USA is one of only 4 nations in the world too poor or too miserly to mandate paid maternity leave. Our unpaid Family Leave Act is simply a bad joke. For those who live paycheck to paycheck, TANF is and has always been the only Family Leave Act in town.

If raising children is ever to be regarded as critically important work in this family-unfriendly  nation, the work must be compensated and that would certainly include social security credits for the women (and some men) willing to perform the vitally essential work:  

WASHINGTON -- Today, Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) introduced the Women's Option to Raise Kids Act (WORK Act), H.R. 4379, which would recognize that all parents who stay home to raise young children are, in fact, doing important and legitimate work. Original cosponsors of the WORK Act include Reps. John Lewis (D-GA), Gwen Moore (D-WI), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Jim McDermott (D-WA), Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), Janice Schakowsky (D-IL), Rosa DeLauro (D-CA), Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), and Laura Richardson (D-CA). 

 Rep. Stark: "Mitt Romney was for ObamaCare before he was against it. Then, he was for forcing low-income mothers into the workforce before he decided 'all moms are working moms'."

"I think we should take Mr. Romney at his most recent word and change our federal laws to recognize the importance and legitimacy of raising young children. That's why I've introduced the WORK Act to provide low-income parents the option of staying home to raise young children without being pushed into poverty." 

Why we need the WORK Act: Current law does not count low-income stay-at-home parents who are raising young children as meeting the necessary Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) work requirement. Current law also bans states from counting these individuals toward that state's work participation rate, which can result in financial penalties if not met. This effectively bars low-income parents who choose to stay home to raise their young children from access to the financial support of TANF. 

As reported by the New York Times and others, the TANF program has been particularly unresponsive during the economic downturn (see this chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities). Today, TANF is only serving 27% of families living in poverty, compared to 68% when the program was enacted to great acclaim in 1996. The result is that more children are being pushed deeper into poverty and destitution. Congress needs to start fixing this problem to ensure that low-income families have access to needed assistance. The WORK Act is an important step in that direction. 

What the WORK Act does: The WORK Act would amend TANF law to recognize the critical job of raising children age three or younger as work. Under the legislation, low-income parents could work, receive job training, search for work, or raise their children until they are school-aged without fear of losing TANF support and being pushed deeper into poverty. This is the same option that wealthy families, such as the Romneys, enjoy.

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Silly Phyllis Schlafly: Feminist Is A Bad Word

 Phyllis Schlafly is as nutty as ever. Here she advises a captive audience of cadets not to date feminists because we are 'bad' and we want to abolish wifedom as we know it. (via Crooks and Liars)




 
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Romney: Mothers Should Be Required To Work Outside Home, Except My Wife (Video)

Turns out Mitt Romney's definition of "work" varies according to the class status of a mom and the children she cares for. When Mitt Romney's wife stays home with the kids, she deserves praise for doing the hardest work in the world. When ordinary moms (who have no hope of snaring a multimillionaire husband) stay home with the kids, they are lazy slackards who need to get jobs so they can have a little "dignity of work". What a self-absorbed hypocrite:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

While I was governor, 85% of the people on a form of welfare assistance in my state, had no work requirement. And I wanted to increase the work requirement. I said, for instance, that even if you have a child two years of age, you need to go to work. And people said, well that’s heartless. And I said no, no, I’m willing to spend more giving day care to allow those parents to go back to work. It will cost the state more, providing that day care. But I want the individuals to have the dignity of work.

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Tennessee Idiot Lawmakers Define Hand-Holding As 'Gateway Sexual Activity'

Gawd. You read that right. Tennessee's idiot GOP wannabe-tyrant lawmakers are at it again. If lawmakers have their way, the state's children will soon be instructed that holding hands is, ahem, a dreadful "gateway sexual activity."

Banning Valentine's Day is surely on the wannabe-tyrants' agenda. Leave it to these mostly old white male lawmakers to make the expression of sweet affection into something similar to illegal drugs.

Teachers caught holding hands can be sued. I know some freaking lawmakers who need to be sued for pushing their extreme negative right-wing worldview on a whole lot of people who are just trying to have a nice life. Good luck with that in a GOP wannabe-tyrant controlled state.


Just how many freaking stupid laws do we really need anyway? In the so-called land of the free?

Tennessee senators approved an update to the state's abstinence-based sex education law that includes warnings against "gateway sexual activity." In a new family life instructions bill, holding hands and kissing could be considered gateways to sex. . . The bill prohibits teachers from demonstrating gateway sexual activity. . If an instructor goes beyond the curriculum, the bill gives parents more legal rights, stating, "The parent or legal guardian shall have a cause of action against the instructor or organization for actual damages."


Truth Wins Out: Holding Hands Is Gateway Drug To Nookie, Tennessee Senate Warns - Just when you thought Tennessee lawmakers were taking a few weeks off from being the strangest, most sexually hung-up lawmakers in the land, they decided to come back with a vengeance..

Think Progress: Tennessee Senate Approves Bill To Warn Students That Hand-Holding Is A ‘Gateway Sexual Activity’

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GOP VA House Speaker To Lowly Woman: 'I Guess I'm Not Speaking in Little Enough Words For You' (Video)

William J. Howell. It's time to retire this arrogant sexist fool:


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Buffett Rule Gaining Momentum (Video)

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Occupy Tactical Briefing #28.

We are a global network of culture jammers and creatives working to change the way information flows, the way corporations wield power, and the way meaning is produced in our society.

Jammers pack your tents, phone your friends, get your affinity groups together and prepare to put your ass on the line for a worldwide people’s uprising starting May 1.

Tactical Briefing #25: Showdown in Chicago.

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Maureen Dowd: With Women Under Attack, Hillary's Serene Toughness has Strong Appeal

Times have changed. Nowadays, even fickle Maureen Dowd thinks Hillary is cool:

State of Cool

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Georgia Passes “Women as Livestock” Bill

Margaret Atwood warned us in The Handmaid's Tale:

Commonly referred to as the “fetal pain bill” by Georgian Republicans and as the “women as livestock bill” by everyone else, HB 954 garnered national attention this month when state Rep. Terry England (R-Auburn) compared pregnant women carrying stillborn fetuses to the cows and pigs on his farm. According to Rep. England and his warped thought process, if farmers have to “deliver calves, dead or alive,” then a woman carrying a dead fetus, or one not expected to survive, should have to carry it to term.

The bill as first proposed outlawed all abortions after 20 weeks under all circumstances. After negotiations with the Senate, the House passed a revised HB 954 that makes an exemption for “medically futile” pregnancies or those in which the woman’s life or health is threatened.

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George Zimmerman to Be Charged in Trayvon Martin's Death

It's been a long time coming:

The special prosecutor in the Trayvon Martin case will announce criminal charges against George Zimmerman about 6 p.m. ET Wednesday, a law enforcement official told NBC News.

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Ashley Judd Slams Misogynistic Media

Ashley Judd pushes back against the misogynistic assault on her and on all women:

That women are joining in the ongoing disassembling of my appearance is salient. Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it. This abnormal obsession with women’s faces and bodies has become so normal that we (I include myself at times—I absolutely fall for it still) have internalized patriarchy almost seamlessly. We are unable at times to identify ourselves as our own denigrating abusers, or as abusing other girls and women.

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Punishing Poor Women & Children In the Miserly USA

While poorer nations have welfare programs that actually lift families out of poverty, the U.S. can't or won't.

As the text of the nation's cavemanesque welfare laws attests, this cowboy nation excels at punishing women who bear or raise children without a man:

The poor people who were dropped from cash assistance here, mostly single mothers, talk with surprising openness about the desperate, and sometimes illegal, ways they make ends meet. They have sold food stamps, sold blood, skipped meals, shoplifted, doubled up with friends, scavenged trash bins for bottles and cans and returned to relationships with violent partners — all with children in tow...

“My take on it was the states would push people off and not let them back on, and that’s just what they did,” said Peter B. Edelman, a law professor at Georgetown University who resigned from the Clinton administration to protest the law. “It’s been even worse than I thought it would be.”

[T]he number of very poor families appears to be growing. Pamela Loprest and Austin Nichols, researchers at the Urban Institute, found that one in four low-income single mothers nationwide — about 1.5 million — are jobless and without cash aid. That is twice the rate the researchers found under the old welfare law. More than 40 percent remain that way for more than a year, and many have mental or physical disabilities, sick children or problems with domestic violence.

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Elle Magazine: At the Pinnacle of Hillary Clinton's Career

People can't stop talking about Hillary 2016:

Secretary of State Clinton has won over her harshest critics and become so popular that some Democrats are envisioning a future in which she replaces Joe Biden as vice president on the 2012 ticket and then—dare they imagine it—takes the top job in 2016.

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Scott Walker Repeals Wisconsin Equal Pay Law

Way to make certain the women come out and Vote to RECALL Scott WALKER ON JUNE 5!

A Wisconsin law that made it easier for victims of wage discrimination to have their day in court was repealed on Thursday, after Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) quietly signed the bill.

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‘Texts From Hillary’

Texts from Hillary

via ‘Texts From Hillary’ Sensation Sweeps The Nation

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Actress Parker Overall Running for Corker's Tennessee Senate Seat

Why does she want Corker's seat?

“It was the Blunt amendment that put me over the top,” she said. “That’s where they were going to decide if they would give me medical care or give me birth control depending on how they morally believed.”

The Blunt amendment was proposed earlier this year to be added to a highway funding bill. In her speech at the Jackson Day dinner, Overall asked, “Why is my womb attached to a transportation bill?”


“I’m a good Democrat and there doesn’t seem to be one around,” she added. “I’m going for broke.”


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Mississippi Lawmakers May Force State’s Only Abortion Clinic to Close

Mississippi lawmakers are one step closer to shutting down the state's sole abortion clinic:

There is only one abortion clinic in the state, and the owner, Diane Derzis, has said the bill’s requirements could force it to shut down. “It looks dire for them,” said Leola Reis, vice president for external affairs for Planned Parenthood Southeast.

Bill dooms only Miss. abortion clinic

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GOP Compares War on Women to Insect Problem

Taking their gender problem to new lows, the GOP compares their war on women to an insect problem:

Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, dismissed Democratic allegations of a GOP “war on women” Thursday by saying the claim has as much credibility as an assertion that the GOP is waging war on caterpillars.

“If the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars, and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we’d have problems with caterpillars,” Mr. Priebus told Bloomberg Television in an interview to air this weekend. “It’s a fiction.”

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Masters of Sexism at Augusta National Golf Club Troubled by IBM Female CEO

The longstanding tradition of discrimination against women has run into a problem at the famously sexist Augusta golf club:

Well, well. The boys at Augusta National Golf Club -- members and sponsors alike -- are in a big bind. Nine years after I led an unsuccessful effort by the National Council of Women's Organizations to open membership in the club to women, the "woman problem" is back.

This time it involves Virginia Rometty, the first female chief executive of IBM. IBM is a major sponsor of Augusta National's Masters Golf Tournament, and up to now its CEOs have always been given membership in the club. But none has ever been a woman. So what happens now -- will Augusta National open its doors to women? Or will IBM pull its sponsorship and force its other executives to resign their club memberships?

These are the only two real choices. . . . If this were about race discrimination and a black (male) CEO, IBM surely wouldn't be in the mix, and no other national sponsor would go near this club. But it's only the girls -- and sex discrimination is just not as serious. Or is it? We're listening for IBM's answer.

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Google's Augmented-Reality Glasses (Video)

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