SubscribeMay 9th, 2012
the task of saving humanity
Did you see Melinda Gates announce her world wide birth control initiative?
Should be uncontroversial? Well, in a world where women were just people that would be true, but that’s not the case.
Still, as long as the oncoming firestorm doesn’t deter her or the Gates Foundation from wading into this new contraception research, I don’t care if she doesn’t realize how much many of her Church leaders hate her very being.
There’s also a good article over at The Daily Beast about the whole thing.
Part of what Gates hopes to do is to re-create the former broad-based consensus behind global family planning, but in a way that’s focused on women’s needs rather than on demographics. “This is about empowering women to be educated and to make a choice that they want to make,” she says. “And if you look at what happens demographically because of that choice, you then get some of these outcomes that people were hoping to get worldwide.”
“focused on women’s needs” – oh that would be nice.
Here’s the other thing–the US government in its Republican form has very largely been responsible for allowing the shut down of a women’s health focus. The current Democratic form has done very little to shift that. Of course they may not be able to since they are fighting decades of misogynistic policy that has shaped the way Americans see each other, and value women. And of course there’s been the racist backlash against Obama, so he’s having to fight just to get Congressional permission to blow his nose. Not a good scenario. But imagine allowing Romney to run things? Gawd.
Money runs things now, and even pays people like Gingrich to stand up an pretend to be a presidential possibility, and money running things appears to be mostly down-side. So it’s nice to see the occasional uber-wealthy woman have concerns for material things like enacted social justice. Ratzy must be gnashing his teeth.
Needing a wealthy woman to fix a world-wide human issue is not democracy by a long shot but this is what we have now. Let the battle of the bank balances begin.
May 7th, 2012
pirate parties, the political kind
I just found out today there is a pirate party in Canada. A reason to rejoice. I would love it if it caught on world wide.
April 1st, 2012
politics is hilarious
well, as long as you aren’t prey to the particular prejudice in question – as millions of women in the US will be if the GOP get elected
compare the two messages
What ever else might be at stake, that’s a deciding factor right there.
I mean really, who campaigns against women?
(Oh well apart from those guys in Afghanistan.)
And the hilarity escalates:
Howler
Romney should so totally be an April Fool’s joke.
February 28th, 2012
Onion hilarity
I go over to Onion periodically. I go especially when the bitter frothy is getting over the knee in the river that is American politics. Here’s a wonderful bit on the American turnaround on African American stereotyping.
February 28th, 2012
good question
Here’s a paragraph from President Obama’s speech to the UAW that he made today.
But they’re still talking about you as if you’re some greedy special interest that needs to be beaten. Since when are hardworking men and women special interests? Since when is the idea that we look out for each other a bad thing? To borrow a line from our old friend Ted Kennedy: what is it about working men and women they find so offensive?
Good question don’t you think?
February 17th, 2012
the second control panel that was not about women’s reproductive rights
An interesting note on the 2 women on the 2nd panel:
The original witness list contained only one woman, Oklahoma Christian University senior vice president Allison Dabbs Garrett. A second woman, Calvin College medical director Dr Laura Champion, was added shortly before the hearing.
An interesting note on the larger Catholic community from the same article:
The policy has split Catholics, a key constituency for Obama to win a second term in office.
The head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, said this week that his group would launch both legislative and court challenges to the health care mandate. Yet there are also some Catholic groups and individuals who have come out in support of the president’s approach.
They were not there at Thursday’s hearing.
So who are those Catholic groups not invited to testify?
Catholic Health Association (Sister Carol Keehan, president), and Catholics United. Both are powerful organizations, representing many Catholic voices, and both support Obama’s compromise position. I expect the split in Catholic culture may well have some impact on the GOP vote count come November.
(note: did some net reading on Keehan…my, my, my, there are some Catholics not loving her_asking questions like why hasn’t she been excommunicated and why doesn’t she get her “cart” behind the “horse” where it belongs)
So not only is the control panel not representative with respect to gender (let alone the US political divide), it is not even representative with respect to religion, the very thing Issa says it is about. (as a bit of a snide – where are the Wiccans? The Buddhists? The Hindus? They are represented in the US citizenry you know. Some of them are even Republican.)
Grrrrrr.
Anyway, the women that made it to the second panel?
Dr. Allison Dabbs Garrett _ her testimony
Dr Laura Champion _ her testimony
Committee on Oversight & Government Reform
———
UPDATE
nice summary analysis here
a bit of it:
10. Watching my hard-earned tax dollars fund a religious rally on government property run by a person who doesn’t see the cruel irony of holding a hearing on “Lines Crossed: Separation of Church and State” and then only inviting true believers of two faiths to testify.
February 17th, 2012
“it’s all dudes” control panel
Do you find that depressing?
Me, I’m astounded at the lack of any apparent shame in their faces.
Here’s a vid you might find interesting.
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February 14th, 2012
subsidizing churches violates my “religious” belief
Here’s a fun one. I hear it claimed that atheism is a “religious” belief. Stupid since religious belief requires some sort of alternate level of reality where either the gods and their buddies live or the skandhas can exist until such time as they reconvene in a life form and atheism (literally no-god) sort of suggests there is no god (or buddies, or the alternative reality, although there’d have to be another level of reasoning there, but whatever). Anyway…
So here I am paying taxes and being forced by law to subsidize tax-exempt religious institutions which irritates my moral fibre one huge amount. It irritates me, in part, because I recognize, since there is no god, that these are social institutions for the benefit of members – like the German Club, or the Ukrainian Hall down to road. Are those social clubs tax exempt? Nope.
Since it is my atheism and its attendant beliefs that prompt me to be irritated by being forced to support social clubs built on fantasy to which I do not belong and which actively try to make my life more miserable, do those that think atheism a religion grant that their tax-free status is infringing my rights as a “religious” person?
So they’re going to quit taking public funds and free my dollars to go to organizations that do in fact do good – like Planned Parenthood, for example?
I don’t begrudge the church its efforts to re-engage the public in a debate about the morality of contraception. But I do wish it would keep specious claims about religious freedom out of it. Of course, the church’s opposition to contraception, among other articles of faith, is none of my business. Of course religious leaders have a right to speak and lobby against whatever they consider sinful. Of course they have a right to care more about the welfare of embryos than torture victims. But while the right to lobby is included in religious liberty, the right to lobby successfully is not. When the church fails to persuade Congress, the courts, or regulatory agencies to impose sectarian ideals on secular institutions, it fails to gain power but loses no liberty; the rest of us, however, might gain some.
Wonderful article over at The Atlantic.
via peardg
February 13th, 2012
Romney_”enough working digits to handle a pen”?
Here’s what congressional conservatives want from Romney:
Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States. This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared.
Frakkin ouch. Even I don’t think he’s that stupid and I don’t think much of his cerebral “muscle”.
The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate.
With a 75 disapproval rating? What planet is this guy from?