Friday Morning Reads
Posted: September 7, 2012 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Jared Bernstein, misogyny, Paul Ryan, Sandra Fluke, serial liar, YOYO 58 Comments
Good Morning!
Sandra Fluke gave a wonderful speech to the DNC on Wednesday. The young woman rose to prominence after being denied an opportunity to be the only women speaking to a Issa congressional panel on the coverage of birth control in all insurance programs. She was savagely attacked by the right wing press then and now. Here are some horrible tweets that show exactly how awful women in the spotlight are treated by the right.
Let’s get one thing straight first: Contrary to what Limbaugh said, just because a woman wants to have easier access to contraceptives does not make her a slut or a prostitute.
But in order to promote a radical agenda that would deny women access to something so basic as birth control, conservatives took to Twitter after Fluke’s speech to, once again, repeat the disgusting falsehood that she wants the government to “pay” for her social life and to bash her for “whining” about it on a national stage.
Here’s a sampling of tweets that Think Progress spotted:
Sandra Fluke: I am woman, hear me whine.
— Todd Kincannon (@ToddKincannon) September 6, 2012
Shorter @sandrafluke #DNC speech: Me me me me me me. Free free free free B(irth) C(ontrol).Eeeeevil GOP.
— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) September 6, 2012
Don’t lecture conservative women about empowerment while demanding that we pay for what goes on in your bedroom #DNC2012
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) September 6, 2012
I wonder if she has “Birth Control Martyr” business cards.
— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) September 6, 2012
I hope someone was passing out free condoms tonight, otherwise Sandra Fluke might be in trouble tomorrow.
— Michael Berry (@MichaelBerrySho) September 5, 2012
Sandra wants taxpayers to pay for her tanning appointments.
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) September 6, 2012
So, there’s a new “fish” story from Paul Ryan out and about the web. First, we heard that Ryan lied about his marathon running feats. Now, we’re hearing a story about Mountain Climbing. Lies seem to come easy to Romney and Ryan, as BB pointed out. This one is really interesting. How many fourteeners has Ryan really climbed?
Craig Gilbert, of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, wrote the original story, back in 2009, about Ryan’s mountain-climbing record. He has now written an update and amplification of exactly what Ryan told him then. Here are relevant parts from the original interview:
Ryan: “My mom was very outdoorsy … We spent our summers doing backpacking trips in the (Colorado) back-country, you know, Snowmass Lake, Capital Peak, spent all our summers doing that … went all over White River National Forest, just the whole Elk range. I mean I’ve climbed every fourteener in that range and the three around there … So I got into climbing fourteeners when I was 12, with my brother, Stan. My mom got us into that.”
Question: “How many fourteeners have you climbed? Or how many times?”Ryan: “38. I think that’s my last count.”
Question: “Those are just climbing peaks that are 14,000 feet?”
Ryan: “I’ve done it 38 times. … I’ve done 38, but I think the number of unique peaks is something like twenty… no, no it’s like thirty or something like that. I counted it up a year or two ago.”
Question: “Most of those in Colorado?”
Ryan: “All of them are in Colorado. So I think I’ve climbed like 28 (peaks), and I’ve done it 38 times, because I’ve done a number of them a few times. So I was, you know, kind of into that stuff.”
So, now folks that are real fourteeners are weighing in on the possibility of that actually being true. According to folks that know what they are doing, it’s likely another Ryan Whopper. So, is Ryan a serial peddler of fish stories or has all that reading of Ayn Rand prevented him from processing reality?
I loved Jared Bernstein’s post on yoyo economics and politics. It’s a theme that both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton spoke about at the DNC. The idea of YOYO (your’re on your own) vs. We’re in This all Together is a good way to put the election this year.
Protecting the rights of individuals has always been a core American value. Yet in recent years the emphasis on individualism has been pushed to the point where, like the diners in hell, we’re starving. This political and social philosophy is hurting our nation, endangering our future and that of our children, and, paradoxically, making it harder for individuals to get a fair shot at the American dream.
This extreme individualism dominates the way we talk about the most important aspects of our economic lives, those that reside in the intersection of our living standards, our government, and the future opportunities for ourselves and our children. The message, sometimes implicit but often explicit, is, You’re on your own. Its acronym, YOYO, provides a useful shorthand to summarize this destructive approach to governing.
The concept of YOYO, as used in this book, isn’t all that complicated. It’s the prevailing vision of how our country should be governed. As such, it embodies a set of values, and at the core of the YOYO value system is hyper-individualism: the notion that whatever the challenges we face as a nation, the best way to solve them is for people to fend for themselves. Over the past few decades, this harmful vision has generated a set of policies with that hyper-individualistic gene throughout their DNA.
The YOYO crowd—the politicians, lobbyists, and economists actively promoting this vision—has stepped up its efforts to advance its policies in recent years, but hyper-individualism is not a new phenomenon. Chapter 1 documents archaeological evidence of YOYO thinking and policies from the early 1900s, along with their fingerprint: a sharp increase in the inequality of income, wealth, and opportunity. The most recent incarnation can be found in the ideas generated by the administration of George W. Bush, but the YOYO infrastructure—the personnel with a vested interest in the continued dominance of these policies—will not leave the building with Bush. Unless, that is, we recognize the damage being done and make some major changes.
One central goal of the YOYO movement is to continue and even accelerate the trend toward shifting economic risks from the government and the nation’s corporations onto individuals and their families. You can see this intention beneath the surface of almost every recent conservative initiative: Social Security privatization, personal accounts for health care (the so-called Health Savings Accounts), attacks on labor market regulations, and the perpetual crusade to slash the government’s revenue through regressive tax cuts—a strategy explicitly tagged as “starving the beast”—and block the government from playing a useful role in our economic lives. You can even see this go-it-alone principle in our stance toward our supposed international allies.
While this fast-moving reassignment of economic risk would be bad news in any period, it’s particularly harmful today. As the new century unfolds, we face prodigious economic challenges, many of which have helped to generate both greater inequalities and a higher degree of economic insecurity in our lives. But the dominant vision has failed to develop a hopeful, positive narrative about how these challenges can be met in such a way as to uplift the majority.
If you’d like to read the full text of President Obama’s acceptance speech last night it is reprinted here in full.
If you reject the notion that this nation’s promise is reserved for the few, your voice must be heard in this election.
If you reject the notion that our government is forever beholden to the highest bidder, you need to stand up in this election.
If you believe that new plants and factories can dot our landscape; that new energy can power our future; that new schools can provide ladders of opportunity to this nation of dreamers; if you believe in a country where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules, then I need you to vote this November.
America, I never said this journey would be easy, and I won’t promise that now. Yes, our path is harder – but it leads to a better place. Yes our road is longer – but we travel it together. We don’t turn back. We leave no one behind. We pull each other up. We draw strength from our victories, and we learn from our mistakes, but we keep our eyes fixed on that distant horizon, knowing that Providence is with us, and that we are surely blessed to be citizens of the greatest nation on Earth.
The election theme music is Bruce Springstein’s “We Take Care of Our Own”. Quite a contrast to the Throw yo Momma from the Trian, isn’t it? I love this song because it was written partially about Hurricane Katrina.
“From the shotgun shack to the Super Dome …”
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
The “crime” of Sandra Fluke is that as a private citizen she stood up for the right to have contraceptives included in healthcare costs that should never have been “argued” in the first place. A woman’s body is a woman’s body and she should never be placed in a position that would find her essentially “begging” to maintain that coverage.
But she has been labeled, mocked, and villified by the men and women of the Right Wing for her efforts to present a complete picture of what that entails. It is truly shocking that this could happen to someone merely because she has offered another dimension for the need of a woman to exercise her rights as a citizen, a woman, and as a consumer.
I have witnessed a torrent of hate filled postings surrounding her. Rather than address the rampant sexism and misogyny that erupted from the filthy mouth of Rush Limbaugh, these partisan posters have excused his behavior out of shameful partisanship and marked it with a “stamp of approval” which is unconsionable.
What does this say about us as a nation? We have witnessed applause for the death penalty, the booing of a gay soldier, the acceptance of letting uninsured sick people die, the villification of woman’s rights, and the racism involved in seeking a “birth certificate” as proof of legitimacy.
Yet just this week alone “outrage” was produced over some unknown CA legislator who compared the GOP to Goebbels propaganda. Something, I might add, not too far from the mark.
If Sandra Fluke is not safe from these character assassinations then who is? The plan is to “destroy” her and it may very well succeed if other women who wish to speak out are silenced in this fashion with their dignity and right to speak out are threatened in this way.
It’s disgusting the way these right wingers have attacked Sandra Fluke. I’m not even sure why they’ve focused on her. There were many women who spoke about reproductive rights at the DNC. Maybe they just follow orders from Rush Limbaugh. I can’t help but wonder if Michelle Malkin uses birth control. Ann Coulter is probably past menopause.
These are the same wide eyed people who are asking “what war on women?”
We’re just knee deep in hypocrisy when it comes to these loons.
Honestly, I really fear for this nation.
Boy, 12, and three friends aged 13 gang raped 14-year-old girl over three days http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2199632/Boy-12-friends-aged-13-accused-gang-raping-14-year-old-girl-days–stopped-catch-bus-school.html
Shots fired inside Illinois high school, 2 students in custody http://huff.to/TrA6mY
This may sound mean on my part but I have to wonder if Ann Coulter has a sex life at all and if that might be part of her problem with Sandra Fluke. Same with Malkin. And if they do have relationships with men, wouldn’t they have to take second place in that relationship – like all good conservative Christian women?
That One Shade of Gray cartoon — If that was mainstream behavior, women would be a lot healthier. Everyone else, too.
Just a reminder that when Hillary Rosen criticized Ann Romney for “never having had to work a day of her life” the Right demanded her scalp.
Just goes to show how feigned outrage can be produced when it suits their side.
Thanks for the great roundup, Dak.
The FBI is now involved in the investigation into the supposed theft of Mitt Romney’s tax returns.
Romney’s carpet-bombing ad campaign
So I guess he’s giving up on Michigan and Wisconsin? I really don’t think he has a chance in New Hampshire. Maybe he feels like he has to carry one of his “home states.”
Is Romney really going to give up Wisconsin? That makes his path to 270 a lot harder and essentially hands Obama about 247 electoral votes virtually uncontested.
Gotta be lots of missing strategery there someplace.
I don’t know. They weren’t listed on the carpet-bombing list
August jobs report lower than expected
The jobs number reflects the loss of 7,000 government jobs, which the Republicans don’t consider important.
http://bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
Well you know how they feel about government jobs/workers. They’d outsource or sell off and privatize everything that is currently owned by U.S. Citizens. Ain’t gonna happen!!!!!
Because the rich Rs, not government workers, really run the country?
It may take two tax cuts to fix that problem. 🙂
RMoney’s Convention bounce is fading quickly,even in the (R)ASSmussen
Rasmussen (Friday) 3-Day Tracking
1500 LV 3.0
Obama 45
RMoney 46
Romney +1
I cannot understand why these polls show virtually no difference. Who are they polling? How can Romney be that high?
This particular poll is a 7 day rolling average. After the convention Romney went to +4, but he’s steadily fallen back. The Gallup poll, which I trust much more, hasn’t updated it’s 3-day rolling average this morning. As of yesterday the Gallup 3-day had Obama +1. I’m anxious to see today’s Gallup.
Excuse me….I got the average backwards. Gallup is 7 day rolling average Rasmussen is 3 day.
The Republicans have spent 3 decades now ruining public education. It is beginning to show.
These national polls are meaningless anyway. The only thing that matters is electoral votes. Even Ben Smith admits that Romney has an even more difficult path to victory now than before the conventions.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/obama-rolls-out-of-convention
You got the question right. It all depends on the polling sample. How white is it and how male are the main questions I always have about that. Does it match the electorate for the 2008 election or for 2010?
I agree BB, National polls really don’t matter, except that it gives you the pulse of the nation as a whole. I enjoy watching the process of people making up their minds.
Medicaid has a stimulative effect on the economy.
http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/medicaid-it-has-a-stimulus-effect/
Well, duh! headpalm
But I am glad to see this point covered. Not holding my breath that facts will influence policy if we are so ill-fated to end up with Vulture/Voucher.
About civility and wingnut fauxrage, I agree with Bob Cesca.
Republicans Cry About Lack of “Civility” at Dem Convention
Great commentary. Thanks for sharing!!
A 16-year-old girl named Alyssa Douglas sent out a tweet advocating assassination of President Obama.
Her twitter account has been removed. I wonder if she’s heard from the Secret Service/FBI yet?
Sheesh … what kind of parents does she have?
Hopefully she has the kind who will confiscate her communication devices, permanently.
And I can’t help but laugh just imagining what would have happened to this young woman in the world I grew up in. She wouldn’t have made it until sunset without a spanking. In a way she reminds me of those boys on the school bus who bullied, berated and humilated the senior citizen bus monitor. They have absolutely no respect for authority or fear of consequence. In my childhood, the first conseqence would have been the nuns would have spanked you with the paddle or a ruler. Then a note or a phone call would have alerted your parents or grandparents and you would get it twice over when you got home. It was abuse, but it worked. These folks long for the “good old days”, they might want to begin with their own children.
Spanking a 16-year-old? That would be totally inappropriate. I’m against spanking in all cases, but spanking past puberty? That could lead to very serious sexual and psychological problems. This young woman obviously has parents who haven’t brought her up right. If they’re angry, it would probably only be because she embarrassed them. She had to learn her hatred at home or at school. It’s not genetic.
Judge Tells Sexually Abused Woman, “When You Blame Others, You Give Up Your Power To Change” http://colm.es/QmJaUb
I agree BB, I’m not trying to soft peddle corporal punishment, it’s just the irony that this young woman’s hatred likely came from the sort of parents who long for the “good old days”. Most of those who long for those days didn’t live in those days. In those days corporal punishment was THE preferred method of punishment at home and at school. The Sisters of Mercy at the elementary school I attended K-8 and the HS I attended had corporal punishment down to a fine art, I got a paddling in the 7th grade. I was caught smoking behind the grotto while I was supposed to be at mass. I got it again when I got home. Most of us who got the first paddle from the good sisters, didn’t get the second one. 🙂
I read that DAK, Again, the response from that judge is a perfect example of the “good old days” retrograde mindset of the right. That judges comment would have been a common admonition when I was a young woman. If you were raped or manhandled in those days, it was just assumed that you had done something to bring it on yourself. The Judge owes the young woman an apology and if censure against the judge is possible, it should happen.
Beata: This is for you:
Financial Times @FinancialTimes
Podcast – FT Arts: Woody Guthrie remembered http://on.ft.com/P89qVO
Marco Rubio, “Faith,” and the Coming Religious Wars
http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/11738-marco-rubio-faith-and-the-coming-religious-wars
Greg Sargent @ThePlumLineGS
Five questions David Gregory should ask Romney on Meet this weekend (but won’t): http://wapo.st/RjFtUu via @jbplainblog
The Audubon Society @audubonsociety
Tests confirm tar balls found on two Louisiana beaches after hurricane Isaac came from the 2010 BP spill http://ow.ly/dxTlE
Why am I not surprised?
A friend of mine from California wrote this for HuffPo.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sherry-davis/a-survivor-responds-gop_b_1858518.html
Wow. Your friend is a courageous woman. Thanks for sharing her story with us and thank her for sharing it with the world.
Wow, amazing story of bravery … thank her for sharing this powerful tale.
Sherry’s story made me cry. She is a very brave woman, and I hope speaking out will help her get past the pain.
What a strong, courageous, and resilient woman!
Front pages of newspapers from swing states. Appears positive for Obama.
Obama’s Message Breaks Through In Swing State Newspapers
It always amazes me to compare the audience in the two conventions. One is made up of angry white people that all look the same, dress the same, and look like they want you out of their way. The other has the faces of our melting point. Some times I think this is all it takes to turn tides. It sure will in the future. My children are racially mixed and it appears my grandchildren may be even more racially mixed. That’s the future of america. Continuing diversity and wonderful differences!
Click to access report08292012.pdf
All those angry white people that are voting republican are losing a zero sum game.
Either the Republican party will completely retool, and lose their teahadist types, or it will disappear as a national force in the next decade. I’m grateful for the diversity for a lot of reasons.
Haha. The 2 cities in TX ranked in the bottom 25 for diversity have majority hispanic populations, so it’s non-white non-diversity. 🙂
UPDATE: 100,000 People Tell CNN To Fire Contributor For Sexist Comments | Over 100,000 people have signed onto a petition calling on CNN to fire Erick Erickson, the contributor who dubbed the largely female lineup at the Democratic Convention ‘the Vagina Monoglogues.’ According to Nita Chaudhary, co-founder of Ultraviolet, which launched the petition, it sailed past 100,000 signatures this morning, and is still steadily growing.
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/09/07/814801/erickson-sexist-petition-grows/
More on that Judge:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/09/07/809861/judge-to-woman-sexually-assaulted-by-cop-when-you-blame-others-you-give-up-your-power-to-change/
Worst person in the world …
Oh, riiiiight. It was her fault for being born female.
Scum.
It’s taken me all day to read the good links on Skydancing because of work. But here are two links.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/07/ann-romney-gay-marriage-contraception_n_1865430.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/09/07/fake-news-gets-people-to-agree-anything-is-true%E2%80%94except-clint-eastwoods-speech/
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/09/07/ohio-secretary-of-state-apologizes-for-trying-to-stifle-early-voting/