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Caturday Heroines

Posted: June 30, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , |30 Comments

1950’s Jean Patchett

Morning, news junkies! Okay so not a cat picture, but Jean Patchett qualifies as pretty darn feline in my books… heh. Also, I can’t get this pic to post because it’s copyrighted, but here’s a photo of Hemingway and Patchett in tow with kitties.

Well that’s it in the way of an intro for today. Let’s get right to the links.

First up… by now I’m sure you’ve all read quite a few of the “Hillary makes history” items in the headlines lately, so I won’t reinvent that news wheel. But, in case you missed it…here’s a neat profile on Hillary Rodham Clinton at makers.com, entitled “The Lesson of ‘Hillarycare'”. Includes several video interview clips of Hillary reflecting on her life. Snippet from the write-up:

Wellesley College seniors had never before chosen a commencement speaker from their own ranks when Hillary Rodham stepped to the podium on the last day of May in 1969. Education, she said, must grant “the courage to be whole” and permit people to live “in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence.” The speech received national attention and marked Rodham as a leading light for the young women of her generation.

By now, it’s safe to say that the early promise has been borne out; had Hillary Rodham Clinton “merely” attended Yale Law, served on the staff of the Senate Watergate Committee, become a respected children’s rights advocate, been the first female partner at her law firm, been a mother, and served as First Lady of Arkansas, we would think of her as a leader. And yet she has by now spent two additional decades at the very heart of the national consciousness—as a sometimes-embattled First Lady, as a distinguished senator from New York, as a groundbreaking 2008 Presidential candidate, and now as the 67th Secretary of State. Clinton has outlasted the smears to top Gallup’s “most admired woman in America” a record 16 times since 1993. “The courage to be whole,” indeed.

Next, from the New Yorker’s Amy Davidson… Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Hero:

I am glad that John Roberts, the Chief Justice, voted to uphold almost all of the Affordable Care Act. But the stance of humble gratitude toward Roberts that’s been assumed by many in the past day is beginning to be a bit much. This is especially true since the real hero of the day is Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

On the front page of the late edition of the Times Friday morning, there were four stories on the Supreme Court decision. One talked about Roberts’s “exquisite delicacy,” and how he “considers himself the custodian of the Supreme Court’s prestige, authority and legitimacy.” Ginsburg’s name didn’t appear before the jump in any of them; she only ever appeared in one, seventeen paragraphs in. Her picture and surname were in the infographic—all the Justices were there. There were four pull-quotes: two from Roberts, and two from the joint dissent from Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Anthony Kennedy.

And yet Ginsburg wrote what would have been the dissent—and a strong one—if Roberts had voted with the four conservatives to throw out the entire health-care law.

Read the rest. It’s worth the click and it’s news you won’t find out from the Dewey Defeats Truman newsrooms of America!

Historiann on Nora Ephron…. I highly recommend clicking on the first link in her post, which I’ve linked here too for your convenience:

Now I will really miss her.

From the New York Times obit:

The producer Scott Rudin recalled that less than two weeks before her death, he had a long phone session with her from the hospital while she was undergoing treatment, going over notes for a pilot she was writing for a TV series about a bank compliance officer. Afterward she told him, “If I could just get a hairdresser in here, we could have a meeting.”

Ms. Ephron’s collection “I Remember Nothing” concludes with two lists, one of things she says she won’t miss and one of things she will. Among the “won’t miss” items are dry skin, Clarence Thomas, the sound of the vacuum cleaner, and panels on “Women in Film.” The other list, of the things she will miss, begins with “my kids” and “Nick” and ends this way:

“Taking a bath

Coming over the bridge to Manhattan

Pie.”

And, on that note. I’m gonna go draw a nice soothing bath and bake something yummy this Saturday. You know what to do in the comments, Sky Dancers… Have a lovely weekend!

30 Comments on “Caturday Heroines”

  1. Mona (aka Wonk the Vote) says:
    June 30, 2012 at 8:04 am

    Reblogged this on Let Them Listen.

  2. ecocatwoman says:
    June 30, 2012 at 8:46 am

    Thanks for the roundup, Mona. I have to share this wonderful & delightful interview with Nora Ephron from 2006 that was rebroadcast yesterday at On Point: http://onpoint.wbur.org/2006/08/14/nora-ephron-on-aging

    I’ve never been a Hemingway fan, but my favorite spot in Key West is his home there and ALL OF THE CATS. They are polydactyls (extra toes) and they are in the house, on the grounds, simply everywhere. It’s paradise for the cats and the cat-lovers alike. These cats are descendants of Hemingway’s own cats (but most are spayed/neutered, leaving only a few to continue the bloodline). http://www.hemingwayhome.com/cats/

    • Mona (aka Wonk the Vote) says:
      June 30, 2012 at 1:21 pm

      Oh yes, I remember that interview sorta — maybe I’d read her blog something similar on Huffpo! Thanks for sharing, Connie. Listening to her on the NPR link now… it’s unfathomable that she’s not right here talking right now…

  3. RalphB says:
    June 30, 2012 at 8:58 am

    On the day of the court’s ruling, I read Justice Ginsburg’s opinion and it was absolutely awesome. Brilliant and she managed to skewer Scalia at the same time. She is most certainly a hero!

    • bostonboomer says:
      June 30, 2012 at 9:18 am

      I love Davidson’s piece on Ginsburg.

      She wrote that Roberts’s analysis was “rigid,” “crabbed,” and “stunningly retrogressive,” that it “finds no home in the text of the Constitution or our decisions” and made “scant sense.” There was also a mesmerizing dissection of the broccoli question. (Adam Gopnik has more on that, and Alex Ross has her favorite records.) Roberts’s view of the Commerce Clause, she wrote,

      harks back to the era in which the Court routinely thwarted Congress’ efforts to regulate the national economy in the interest of those who labor to sustain it…. It is a reading that should not have staying power.

      “Staying power” is something that Ginsburg has. As Jeffrey Toobin says in this week’s Political Scene podcast, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seventy-nine. She is about five feet tall, eighty pounds, she has had every disease known to humanity. She is as tough as nails.”

      • RalphB says:
        June 30, 2012 at 9:47 am

        🙂 She certainly puts the dunce cap on “brilliant mind” Fat Nino.

      • RalphB says:
        June 30, 2012 at 9:54 am

        This may be highly likely.

        Credit, again, is due; just not bedazzlement. There was talk, after the decision, that Roberts had “saved” the President and “rescued” the court’s liberals, and one can reckon it that way. Again, at this point we don’t know what decided his vote. But must we assume that Roberts was the one who came to the aid of judicial damsels in distress and their trusty squire, Stephen Breyer? Or did he find himself eyeball to eyeball with the senior woman on the court, and blink? Maybe Ginsburg is the one who saved Roberts.

  4. Beata says:
    June 30, 2012 at 9:46 am

    Ruth Bader Ginsburg is amazing. I can think of only one person who could rightfully take Ginsburg’s place some day: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

    Charlie Rose had an excellent tribute to Nora Ephron on his PBS show last night. She will be missed.

    There is so much we can learn from these women.

    • RalphB says:
      June 30, 2012 at 9:50 am

      I love the idea of Hillary on the Supreme Court. The last real politician there was Earl Warren and he sure didn’t do so bad 🙂

    • Mona (aka Wonk the Vote) says:
      June 30, 2012 at 1:06 pm

      I’m still torn… she’d make an excellent choice for a Supreme, but I think we need Hillary’s voice out and about. She’s grown into such an international treasure.

      There is so much we can learn from these women.

      Exactly. Shero Studies 101 is never dismissed 😉

  5. RalphB says:
    June 30, 2012 at 10:09 am

    Princess Dumbass of the North Woods could have made this statement but it was Willard.

    Mitt Romney: Students Should Get ‘As Much Education As They Can Afford’

    Truly shocking, Mitt Romney has moved on from chastising America for copying him to more important things, like the fact that education is expensive for a reason: so that only people who can afford it are permitted to get it. So true! While in Virginia on Friday, Romney said that while America may be “the land of opportunity for every single person,” when it comes down to it there is not quiiiiiiite enough opportunity to go around, and education is great, but a person should really only get “as much education as they can afford and with their time they’re able to get,” which is a weird, as well as an evil, sentence.

    • ecocatwoman says:
      June 30, 2012 at 10:27 am

      Makes perfect sense. Education is for the aristocrat (preferably males only), not for the unwashed masses. It’s obviously not about educating the most mentally gifted, talented or highly intelligent unless, of course, he has the money to pay for it. Everyone Willard knows already knows that poor people don’t have children who are gifted, talented or smart – why should the job creators donate their money (via taxes) for something wasteful like attempting to educate the uneducatable?

      • Mona (aka Wonk the Vote) says:
        July 1, 2012 at 2:56 pm

        I was just thinking about Mitt’s dumbass comments on education… and what a contrast they are to the Hillary bio in the links up top…i.e. her speech at Wellesley, and education granting the courage to be whole and allowing people to live in relation to one another… Hillary is talking about inclusion on so many levels there. Mitt is basically saying the opposite–he’s preaching the chorus of exclusivity.

    • dakinikat says:
      June 30, 2012 at 1:40 pm

      She was on Fox News ‘analyzing’ the SCOTUS ruling. All she kept doing was repeating “we can’t put our faith in any one person” to every single question. How’s that for expert knowledge? I kept wanting to change the channel but it was like looking at a train wreck in a pink shirt. I kept thinking how putting vapid women on TV new is just shameful. It reflects poorly on all women. Can’t they at least pull in a woman that’s gone to law school or something? Oops … that would be Michelle Bachmann … let me rephrase that to a REAL law school.

      • RalphB says:
        June 30, 2012 at 2:45 pm

        Those two are really bad representatives of women. Of course, the men they have on don’t represent most men that well either.

    • Mona (aka Wonk the Vote) says:
      June 30, 2012 at 2:11 pm

      Yes, and when a student tries to make money to “afford” her SIBLING’S education, because their parents abandoned them and the older sibling has to actually go to college, some powertrippin’ judge throws said student into jail for truancy. GREAT IDEA, Mittens!

  6. RalphB says:
    June 30, 2012 at 11:34 am

    Some funny from Matt Taibbi…

    Thomas Friedman’s New State of Grace

  7. RalphB says:
    June 30, 2012 at 1:19 pm

    Oops 🙂

    Texas college hacks drone in front of DHS

    There are a lot of cool things you can do with $1,000, but scientists at an Austin, Texas college have come across one that is often overlooked: for less than a grand, how’d you like to hijack a drone?

    A group of researchers led by Professor Todd Humphreys from the University of Texas at Austin Radionavigation Laboratory recently succeeded in raising the eyebrows of the US government. With just around $1,000 in parts, Humphreys’ team took control of an unmanned aerial vehicle owned by the college, all in front of the US Department of Homeland Security.

    After being challenged by his lab, the DHS dared Humphreys’ crew to hack into a drone and take command. Much to their chagrin, they did exactly that.

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