Monday Evening Reads: Bill Clinton’s Advice, Romney and Rubio, George Zimmerman, and Stupid Republicans

Posted: April 23, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, 2012 primaries, Crime, SDB Evening News Reads, Team Obama, U.S. Politics, War on Women | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

Good Evening! It hasn’t been a particularly busy news day, but I have a few updates for you tonight.

According to Politico, the Obama campaign is changing it’s attacks on Mitt Romney based on some suggestions from Bill Clinton. The original approach was to paint Romney as a man without a moral or ideological “core.” Clinton, according to Politico argued that it would be better to focus on

Romney’s description of himself as a “severe conservative,” to deny him any chance to tack back to the center, according to three Democrats close to the situation.

“[Clinton] said he thought Romney’s positions on the issues would ultimately be the best way to attack him,” said a Democrat briefed on the details of an amiable Nov. 9 meeting in Clinton’s Harlem office that included Axelrod, Democratic National Committee Executive Director Patrick Gaspard and Obama campaign manager Jim Messina.

“That’s what we are doing, but it doesn’t mean we can’t and shouldn’t do the etch-a-sketch, flip-flop moments when they occur and we will,” added the operative — who says Obama’s campaign likely would have emphasized Romney’s conservative tilt once the primary was over, anyway.

But Clinton’s advice, buttressed by Benenson’s polling, has clearly gained traction internally since the end of Romney’s four-month primary ordeal.

Well, I can’t imagine a more expert political consultant than Bill Clinton, can you?

A new report from the Pew Hispanic Center shows that the number of illegal immigrants coming from Mexico has been falling because of the lack of jobs in the U.S. NY Daily News:

Roughly 6.1 million unauthorized Mexican immigrants were living in the U.S. last year, down from a peak of nearly 7 million in 2007, according to the Pew Hispanic Center study released Monday. It was the biggest sustained drop in modern history, believed to be surpassed in scale only by losses in the Mexican-born U.S. population during the Great Depression.

Much of the drop in illegal immigrants is due to the persistently weak U.S. economy, which has shrunk construction and service-sector jobs attractive to Mexican workers following the housing bust. But increased deportations, heightened U.S. patrols and violence along the border also have played a role, as well as demographic changes, such as Mexico’s declining birth rate.

In all, the Mexican-born population in the U.S. last year — legal and illegal — fell to 12 million, marking an end to an immigration boom dating back to the 1970s, when foreign-born residents from Mexico stood at 760,000. The 2007 peak was 12.6 million.

The New York and Pennsylvania primaries will be held tomorrow, but there isn’t much excitement about them anymore. Other states voting tomorrow are Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island.

In Pennsylvania, Romney was campaigning with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

Without overshadowing Romney, Rubio on Monday hammered home the former Massachusetts governor’s position on Iran and helped Romney attack President Barack Obama’s energy policy.

In a brief question-and-answer session with reporters, Romney said he’d consider Rubio’s immigration proposal to find a way to allow young people who came to the country illegally as children to stay here if they’re in school or the military.

It sounds like the Obama campaign should get busy pinning Romney down on the cruel immigration policy he has been pushing throughout the primaries.

Romney also tried to appeal to younger voters by joining Obama in backing a bill to prevent doubling of student loan interest rates.

ASTON, Pa. — As the White House ramps up its push to woo young voters by urging Congress to head off a scheduled increase in student loan interest rates, GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney struck back Monday, throwing his support behind an extension of the current rates at a campaign event outside Philadelphia.

The former Massachusetts governor made the announcement at a press availability with U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, the first joint appearance of Romney and the Florida Republican whose name is often floated as a top choice for his running mate.

“There’s one thing that I wanted to mention, that I forgot to mention at the very beginning, and that was that particularly with the number of college graduates that can’t find work or that can only find work well beneath their skill level, I fully support the effort to extend the low interest rate on student loans,” Romney said at the end of a seven-minute joint news conference with Rubio.

I have a few updates on the Trayvon Martin case. At one minute after midnight, George Zimmerman was let out of jail after posting bail. He will be going to a undisclosed location, reportedly outside of Florida.

Wherever George Zimmerman went after he was released on bond from a Florida jail, a sensitive GPS device will pinpoint his location for authorities and alert them if he drifts even a few feet away from where he is allowed.

Zimmerman, who is charged with second-degree murder in the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, went into hiding Monday as he awaits trial. He must pay an $8-a-day fee to use the device, which is generally used to track people charged in domestic violence cases.

George Zimmerman leaves Seminole County Jail with unidentified man

According to the WaPo,

Local LA Bail Bonds companies whose clients have worn the same device used to pinpoint Zimmerman said it is highly sensitive and can send messages to authorities in real-time….

Seminole County Sheriff’s officials are offering few details on how Zimmerman will be specifically monitored, other than to say the device he is wearing has the same 24/7 capabilities it uses to track accused domestic violence offenders. Zimmerman may be residing outside of Florida for safety reasons.

The monitoring program has been in use since 2003 in Seminole and provides “real-time monitoring of an offender’s movements and is capable of monitoring anywhere in the U.S.,” according to a sheriff’s office news release.

Later this morning, Sanford, FL police chief Bill Lee, who has been on leave with pay, submitted his final resignation; but the move was rejected by the Sanford city commissioners at a hastily-called meeting.

Earlier Monday, the city announced in a statement that a separation agreement had been reached with Lee to resign. If it was approved by the City Commission, it would have taken effect at midnight.

But by a 3-2 vote, the commission opted not to accept the proposed deal, which would have permanently dismissed Lee from the job and given him a severance package. Two commissioners had questioned the fairness of Lee losing his job, while Mayor Jeff Triplett said he preferred to wait possibly several months for the results of an investigation into Lee and his department….

Benjamin Crump, a lawyer for Martin’s family, criticized the commission for not letting Lee step down.

“Sanford residents deserve quality leadership in law enforcement who will handle investigations fairly for all people,” he said. “If Chief Bill Lee recognized that his resignation would help start the healing process in Sanford, city leadership should have accepted it in an effort to move the city forward.”

Sanford City Manager Norton N. Bonaparte had supported the resignation.

Benjamin Crump also criticized George Zimmerman and his defense attorneys over a photo of Zimmerman’s head with two small cuts with blood coming out of them.

An attorney for Trayvon Martin’s family believes their son’s shooter is lying about injuries he sustained the night he killed the unarmed 17-year-old.

“If this is any indication of what’s to come, then the lying has already begun,” attorney Ben Crump told reporters on Sunday, while promoting a documentary at the Florida Film Festival on another case….

“When you look at those pictures and you see those two little cuts on his head, that is not consistent with your head being pounded into the pavement,” said Crump. “Objective evidence, evidence we can see and touch, is more important than whatever George Zimmerman says because we have to remember Trayvon Martin isn’t here to tell us his version of what happened.”

Crump pointed to the 911 call where someone is heard screaming before the fatal gunshot.

Democrats in Congress have been pushing for reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, but Texas Sen. John Cornyn says that Democrats are just trying to ‘score cheap political points.’ with their efforts to renew the bill.

Republicans oppose the current reauthorization bill because it would allow battered undocumented immigrants to claim temporary visas, and expand protections to same sex couples and Native American tribes.

All eight Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted against renewing the law and Democrats were quick to denounce them, linking their opposition to the bill to the so-called “war on women.”

“The law was enacted to protect and serve the interests of crime victims, not to help a political party fire up its base,” Cornyn continue. “Moreover, to argue that a minor policy disagreement indicates a lack of sensitivity toward battered women is simply beyond the pale.”

In Missouri, a Republican woman who is running for the senate against current Sen. Claire McCaskill says she is “not sure” what the Violence Against Women Act is.

Former State Treasurer Sarah Steelman, a Republican now hoping to unseat Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), said recently that she was unfamiliar with the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), the landmark anti-domestic violence legislation whose re-authorization is now stalled in the Senate….

A video released today by the Missouri Democratic Party shows a man asking Steelman about VAWA at a campaign event. Steelman replies, “I’m not sure what that is because I’m not serving right now.” He asks again, “you haven’t really heard about it?” And she confirms, “no, not really.”

The John Edwards trial has been getting a lot of attention today too. Chris Cillizza calls it a “final public flogging.”

What stories have you been following today?

Ya Think? The impact of Republican Extremism

Posted: April 21, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 elections, 2012 presidential campaign, 2012 primaries, abortion rights, American Gun Fetish, Tea Party activists, The Bonus Class, The Right Wing, U.S. Politics, Voter Ignorance, War on Women, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights, worker rights | Tags: | 23 Comments

The amazingly, huge gender gap and the obvious lack of support by Hispanic Americans for Romney and other Republicans is troubling the party’s establishment. Republicans have also lost the vote of young people who don’t understand why state officials are obsessed with every one’s personal sex life.  Republicans have been denying the party has escalated their attempts to eradicate women’s constitutional rights to abortion but the number of laws introduced by states in the last two years has been monumental.  They have moved to directly attacking other women’s preventative health services like birth control access and funding of Planned Parenthood.   They’ve passed laws that allow law enforcement to stop folks on the street based on no other reason than they might possibly “look” illegal and demand proof of citizenship.  They’ve chipped away at labor bargaining rights, citizen voting access, and science education by supporting bogus religious-based claims on climate change and evolution. They’ve tried everything possible to deny basic civil rights to GLBT Americans by passing laws that use a purely religious definition of marriage and parenthood.

In the last two years, there’s been a surge in legislation that seems squarely aimed at inserting religious dogma into law and enacting privatization schemes for prisons, schools, and all levels of public services.  There’s also been noticeable defunding of public education and public health access.   They’ve insisted they’ve been focused on the economy.  However, even there, the sole focus appears to be taxing poor people, providing tax breaks to the rich and corporations, and decimating public services at all levels of government.  The nation’s infrastructure has never been in worse shape.  It’s at the point where it’s not only dangerous but it threatens our commercial competitiveness.  Our transportation, telecommunications and power infrastructures are antiquated and falling apart.

So, now they are scrambling to get back to an “economic” message to ramrod right wing panderer Willard Romney into the White House.  They think we’re all stupid and we’re going to forget two years of legislation aimed at driving us back into the dark ages.

Here’s a snippet of a NYT article that catches the party elite grumbling about state efforts to turn the country into something that resembles a theocratic, corporate state.  Considering they’ve gotten in bed with these reactionaries to win elections in the past, they really shouldn’t grumble now that the party’s been purged of all but the most extreme.

But this year, with the nation heading into the heart of a presidential race and voters consumed by the country’s economic woes, much of the debate in statehouses has centered on social issues.

Tennessee enacted a law this month intended to protect teachers who question the theory of evolution. Arizona moved to ban nearly all abortions after 20 weeks, and Mississippi imposed regulations that could close the state’s only abortion clinic. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin signed a law allowing the state’s public schools to teach about abstinence instead of contraception.

The recent flurry of socially conservative legislation, on issues ranging from expanding gun rights to placing new restrictions on abortion, comes as Republicans at the national level are eager to refocus attention on economic issues.

Some Republican strategists and officials, reluctant to be identified because they do not want to publicly antagonize the party’s base, fear that the attention these divisive social issues are receiving at the state level could harm the party’s chances in November, when its hopes of winning back the White House will most likely rest with independent voters in a handful of swing states.

One seasoned strategist called the problem potentially huge.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bitter Knitters Unite!

Posted: March 27, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, 2012 primaries, abortion rights, Civil Liberties, fetus fetishists, Health care reform, Human Rights, legislation, Planned Parenthood, PLUB Pro-Life-Until-Birth, religious extremists, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, Republican politics, War on Women, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights | 37 Comments

Okay, for all you knitters out there—this one’s for you.  And it’s a Doozie.

A new group has formed in response to the unapologetic Republican Crusade Against Women: The Snatchel Project with the goal of sending all howling male members of congress their very own hand-knitted uterus or vagina because:

If they have their own, they can leave ours alone!

I love the humor of these women!

And look at the variety!

Still, there are many deniers of the ongoing Holy Crusade.  Yesterday, I mentioned a piece in The Hill by one conservative writer Sabrina Schaeffer, who scoffed at the very notion of a War on Women beyond a false narrative hatched in devious Democratic minds.  Another woman writer joined the chorus in the Wall Street Journal, a Mary Eberstadt, who mused whether the Sexual Revolution Had Been Good for Women, answering with a firm ‘No.’   What a surprise.  Ms. Eberstadt presumably explodes four myths in her own mind ala the Phyllis Schlafly tradition—women are restless, unhappy and dissatisfied ever since the Pill changed the world and sex was severed from procreation.

I’m sure this point of view makes Rick Santorum swoon with absolute pleasure. Or whatever the Rick Santorums of the world do when they experience joy. To think you could convince women, any woman to voluntarily march herself back to the Middle Ages is quite incredible. A monumental feat.  No wonder Mr. Sanctimonious refuses to give up!

But I do sense a certain retreat by the zealots, who seem to squirm mightily under the harsh glare of public scrutiny.  Here is the letter recently published in the Daily News Sun by Arizona Rep Debbie Lesko defending her bill [HB 2526], where an employer of conscience can insist a woman prove that she is using contraception for ‘nonsexual’ purposes because otherwise said employer would be religiously offended:

My legislation to protect our First Amendment rights does one thing and one thing alone: It allows an employer to opt out of the current government mandate that forces them to include the morning after pill and contraceptives in their employee’s insurance benefits, if and only if, the employer has a religious objection.  The current mandate, which has been highlighted by the Obama administration’s actions, forces employers to include the morning after pill and contraceptives in their insurance benefits even if it violates the employer’s religious beliefs.

Employers should not be forced by the government to do something against their religious beliefs.  That violates their First Amendment rights.

My legislation does not authorize employers to ask or know about their employee’s contraceptive use, and it does not authorize employers to fire anyone for that use.

The Catholic Church and other faith-based organizations support my legislation.  Under it, employers like St. Vincent De Paul, a Catholic-based charity, would be able to opt out of the mandate.  Since the legislation was written with the help of a national legal organization that fights for religious freedoms, I believe it will withstand legal tests.

Ironically, most of the controversy surrounding my legislation revolves around language already in Arizona law for 10 years — language that I did not even introduce.  Current law allows a woman who works for a church that has opted out of the mandate to have the medicine paid for if the woman uses it for a purpose other than birth control. The insurance company, not the employer, knows that information. The key is that I didn’t introduce that language in my bill. It is already in law and it will still be in law whether my legislation passes or not.

I am not Catholic, and I do not have a moral objection to the use of contraceptives, but I do respect the right of those religious employers that do.

Since I am a woman, I would never create legislation that takes away women’s rights. Women who work for religious employers will still be able to obtain medication somewhere else.  Since Walmart sells it for $9/month, the cost may even be cheaper than the insurance co-pay itself.

If the government wasn’t forcing religious employers to do something against their religious beliefs, I wouldn’t be talking about this issue.  But protecting our First Amendment right to freedom of religion is one of the most important things we can do.  If we lose that, America’s future is truly lost.

It is unfortunate that some in the media are repeating distortions and untruths brought about by the opposition.  I wish they would have called me or the lawyers that wrote it so they could report the truth.  I guess that wouldn’t make a juicy story. Thank you to the media that are publishing my side of the story.

House Majority Whip Debbie Lesko is the State Representative for LD 9.

Ooooo.  A wee bit defensive aren’t we, Ms. Lesko?  All about First Amendment Rights?  Really?  What about the rights of the employee?  Why should any employer have the right to demand a doctor’s note, giving a woman permission to take any medication, contraceptive or otherwise?  And just because you Ms. Lesko are against abortion [note the mention of the morning after pill] does not give you the right to impose your religious beliefs on your constituents, nor does an employer have the right to know anything about my medical history, which would be necessary in this twisted piece of legislation.

This is not a theocracy.  At least not yet.

And why mention the Catholics since you’re not a Catholic yourself?  Unless you know what we know: The Catholic Bishops and Religious Right have made an odd couple’s Holy Alliance to rid the world of witches [otherwise known as Fallen Women, wanton sluts and/or the Daughters of Eve].

Note one other thing.  As with so many others in this Cult of Procreation, Ms. Lesko points a crooked finger, blames distortions on the press, untruths hatched by the opposition.  Rather than taking a long, hard gaze in the mirror.

Mirror, mirror on the wall.  Who’s the worst liar of them all?

I have a suggestion for the knitter’s group.  I wouldn’t limit these handcrafted items to men only.  It’s clear that a number of women need a back up set of anatomically-correct body parts with the scripted note suggested by Government Free VJJs:

Get You Pre-Historic Laws Out of My Uterus!

Better yet, here’s one of your own.

Check out the site.  It will make you smile.  And Lordy, we need all the smiles we can get right now.  Btw, the site provides patterns for your work of art, be it knitted, crocheted or made of fabric.  And though the site invites you to hand deliver the items to your representatives, they are quite happy to have a volunteer do the honors.  Think of these items arriving in the office of your favorite Congressperson, the item unwrapped and then the expression of . . . well, I‘ll leave it to your imagination.

Let the knitting begin!  And remember, these women weren’t polite either:

Have They No Decency?

Posted: March 25, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 primaries, abortion rights, birth control, Civil Liberties, Democratic Politics, Feminists, fetus fetishists, Hillary Clinton, Human Rights, Planned Parenthood, PLUB Pro-Life-Until-Birth, Religious Conscience, religious extremists, Republican politics, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights | 15 Comments

Women across the US, even the world have reacted to the steady Republican assault on women’s reproductive rights.  There’s no end to the craziness. For the GOP’s ‘official’ stance?  They categorically deny a ‘War on Women.’  Rush Limbaugh went so far to say that the ‘feminazi’s’ don’t really care about his comments on Sandra Fluke.  They merely want to make a stink and attack him and his wildly successful radio show.

A conspiracy against the Premier Ditto Head.  Poor baby.

Strangely enough, I agree with the GOP argument.  This is not a War.  It’s a Holy Crusade to chip away, dismantle and destroy all vestiges of gains made by women since the Griswold and subsequent Row v Wade decisions.  Glenn Beck’s vicious attacks on Margaret Sanger make perfect sense now.  Defame and kill the root, the mother of Planned Parenthood, and you bring down the whole tree, destroying the fruits of Sanger’s effort: universal birth control, sexual education [the earlier the better] and freedom for women to control their own lives and destinies.

Make no mistake, this Crusade has been making headway, which has emboldened the zealots in making increasingly outlandish suggestions and demands.

Terri Proud, an Arizona state representative is a fine example.

Most of us have read about Arizona’s proposed HB2625, a bill that would give employers ‘of conscience’ the right to insist a woman obtain a written doctor’s note, proving she’s using birth control for non-sexual reasons. Otherwise, she could be fired.  But wait!  There’s more.  Arizona’s HB2036 would make sweeping changes to abortion, outlawing abortion after 20 weeks based on . . . fetal pain.  Representative Proud, obviously caught up in self-righteous fever, answered a constituent’s request that she vote down HB2036 thusly:

Personally I’d like to make a law that mandates a woman watch an abortion being performed prior to having a “surgical procedure”. If it’s not a life it shouldn’t matter, if it doesn’t harm a woman then she shouldn’t care, and don’t we want more transparency and education in the medical profession anyway? We demand it everywhere else. Until the dead child can tell me that she/he does not feel any pain – I have no intentions of clearing the conscience of the living – I will be voting YES.

So, in addition to requesting that note from your doctor, if you do get pregnant [you wanton slut] and want an abortion– only before the 20-week deadline, of course–Representative Proud would, in her withered zealot’s heart, demand you watch someone else’s abortion.  How perfectly twisted.  And I so-o-o love the arrogance of this reply.  Representative Proud has no intentions of clearing the conscience of the living.  La-de-dah. God is on the premises!

Who are these people?  More importantly, who do these people think they are?

Well, for one thing they’re cowards.  Because when Proud was called out on this response, she claimed it was a Democratic Gotcha Game.

Remember, these were her words, her email but somehow this is a ‘gotcha’ moment.  Sound familiar?  Poor old Rush smells a set up, too, even though it was his three-day, on-air excoriation of Sandra Fluke that initiated the media firestorm and subsequent advertising retreat.

The Grand Inquisitors morph into sniveling crybabies once exposed to the light.

The list of offensive anti-women assaults just keep coming.  Alan Dick [appropriate surname], a state representative of Alaska has suggested ‘paternal permission’ for abortion approval.  Reportedly, he has stated:

If I thought that the man’s signature was required … in order for a woman to have an abortion, I’d have a little more peace about it.

Obviously a woman cannot make this decision on her own.  She needs the signature of the impregnator to make it official so Representative Dick can have peace of mind. Might get a bit dicey if said impregnation was the result of rape or incest.  A similar bill was proposed [and shot down] in Ohio in 2009. A paternal permission rule would make non-permission abortions a crime.

Pennsylvania entered the fray recently.  Governor Tom Corbett signed an abortion ultrasound mandate and said as long as it was on the ‘exterior’ as opposed to the ‘interior,’ he was right as rain with the bill.  As for insisting that women watch?  “You just have to close your eyes,” he quipped with a smile.   Pennsylvania’s bill requires doctors to perform the ultrasound, offer patients two copies of the image and describe the fetal heartbeat in detail before performing a requested abortion.  Which is still legal, btw.

As maddening as these particular examples are, the far more serious overview comes from the Guttmacher Institute:

Over the course of 2011, legislators in all 50 states introduced more than 1,100 provisions related to reproductive health and rights. At the end of it all, states had adopted 135 new reproductive health provisions—a dramatic increase from the 89 enacted in 2010 and the 77 enacted in 2009.1 Fully 92 of the enacted provisions seek to restrict abortion, shattering the previous record of 34 abortion restrictions enacted in 2005. A striking 68% of the reproductive health provisions from 2011 are abortion restrictions, compared with only 26% the year before.

Several states adopted relatively new types of abortion restrictions in 2011. Five states (Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas and Oklahoma) followed Nebraska’s lead from the year before and enacted legislation banning abortion at 20 weeks from fertilization (which is equivalent to 22 weeks from the woman’s last menstrual period), based on the spurious assertion that a fetus can feel pain at that point in gestation. And for the first time, seven states (Arizona, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Tennessee)—all largely rural states with large, scarcely populated areas—prohibited the use of telemedicine for medication abortion, requiring instead that the physician prescribing the medication be in the same room as the patient. Telemedicine is increasingly looked to as a way to provide access to health care, especially in underserved rural areas.

The chart below gives you a chilling visual on what’s been going on:

Despite the evidence, there are conservative writers insisting that the War/Crusade Against Women has been hatched by nefarious Democrats.  Another devious conspiracy!

Sabrina Schaeffer for instance wrote that the ‘war on women’ narrative is risky business for the Democrats because Republicans managed to close the gender gap in 2010, the first time in 20 years.  Ms. Schaeffer might take another look.  The most recent recent polls indicate Democrats opening a 15-point lead with likely female voters.  Schaeffer wrote:

But the effort by the White House to position Republicans as openly hostile to women is not only absurd, but also doomed to be a failed strategy. President Obama and Democrats have tried to create a caricature of conservatives in which opposition to the Health and Human Services “contraception mandate” means Republicans are trying to take away women’s birth control and reverse gender roles 50 years.

While this may play to their feminist base, it’s destined to fail with female voters at large. Contrary to what groups like NOW suggest, women today are not interested in playing identity politics; . . .

I agree on one point.  Women are not interested in playing identity politics on issues we thought resolved two generations ago. However, unless Rick Santorum is secretly a Democrat, I see neither evidence that he was forced into his rigid Morality Police posture [that would be on your knees] nor that he was set up for a gotcha moment.  Nor do I see any proof that the other ‘go along to get along’ candidates had a gun at their heads while taking equally outrageous positions. Only Ron Paul has deferred [for the moment] on the major communal female bashing.

Then there were those grand, unforgettable moments: Congressman Issa’s panel convened to discuss contraception, a panel devoid of women; the Blunt Amendment; the witch hunts on Planned Parenthood.

Sorry, these wounds were self-inflicted, clear cannon blasts to the foot.

That’s not ignoring how the Democrats have happily, even giddily taken full advantage of the GOP’s gender tone deafness.  It’s been a gift since the Administration was, in fact, losing support among women [the Stupak Amendment, weaseling on Plan B availability for young girls, tossing Elizabeth Warren under the bus, etc.].  Women have ‘suddenly’ become attractive entities with an election looming. Quelle surprise!  Yet the Republicans are doing the heavy lifting for the WH, voluntarily hemorrhaging female votes with their nonstop fixation on our sexual parts and what we do with them.

The ‘why’ of this furor remains a mystery.  Yes, the GOP seems to be pandering to the religious right in all their insane glory.  Some commenters have suggested [and this has absolutely crossed my mind], the GOP wants to blow the election.  Or perhaps, they’re inciting the attacks to appeal to those men who resent autonomous women, who dream of the good ole days, the sepia-tinged era of Leave It To Beaver, where Mother dusted the house in high heels, pearls and matching sweater sets.  And Dad, of course, was the font of undisputed wisdom.  One blogger suggested this might be the Republicans’ idea of a jobs program—put women back in the kitchen, thereby opening the job market to unemployed men.

Whatever the Republican reasoning, it appears to be backfiring.  But the election season is young [it just seems pointless and endless].  Still, if I hear one more story on transvaginal probing, zygote personhood or paternal permission slips, I might take out a full-page ad in the NYT, reading:

Have you no decency, Gentleman.  At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

Or anything remotely resembling sanity!

Lousyana Republicans Vote

Posted: March 24, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 primaries | Tags: , , | 30 Comments

The difference between Northern and Southern Louisiana is like night and day. The Gulf Coast portion of the state is full of Cajuns, Creoles, and a gumbo of Catholic orders.  It’s a very live and let live kinda place.  The North is rural and very Baptist.  The KKK is still active up there. That’s not to say that it’s the only part of the state where people get representatives that are racist, sexist, and backward.  Take this jerk who is actually a Romney supporter from the White Flight area of Mandeville.  No, I mean it!  Take him!  Please!!

State Rep. Tim Burns of Mandeville, who, in 2008, justified his support for a slate of immigration bills by suggesting that undocumented immigrants had made Walmart unsafe for women:

They’re frustrated by the inability to go to Walmart at night, they’re scared to go to Walmart at night…You weren’t sure you were in this country. Not trying to profile people, but it just seemed like people were concerned, that they were…ah…I’m not trying to say any people there were being rude, or disrespectful or anything, but I could see how somebody, a housewife, could be intimidated to go there.

Walmart actually has pretty tight security, but Burns’ point was that a certain group of people were by definition both suspicious and intimidating. It’s positions and statements like these that help explain why Latinos are fleeing the Republican primary; just 14 percent of Latino voters say they would support Romney against President Obama in November.

Burns is also an avid opponent of abortion, to the extent that, in 2006, he sponsored a bill that would make the procedure punishable by one year in prison and/or a $10,000 fine. He made exceptions for rape and incest—sort of. Rape victims would need to prove within five days of the rape that they had not been pregnant prior to the crime; the rape must be reported to the police within seven days; and the abortion must be reported within 13 days. In cases of incest, victims would be required to file a police report prior to receiving an abortion (a move that would be severely complicated by the fact that the state also requires parental consent). State Rep. Joe Harrison, whose endorsement was also trumpeted by the Romney campaign on Thursday, introduced a 2011 bill that “would make it a crime to transport or shelter an illegal immigrant, or to help them stay here in the US”—similar to the law that was eventually passed in Alabama.

Northern Lousiana means Rick Santorum voters .  We’ve been seeing Santorum videos for some time.  Here’s a sample that I’m sure you’re going to find a bit bizarre.

This is an open thread but I will post the primary votes as we get them.  Polls close at 8 pm CST.  It’s the bayou and cities vs. the cotton, white flight, and drill baby drill parts of the state.

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