Tuesday Reads

Posted: February 8, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, Egypt, Foreign Affairs, Middle East, morning reads, Patriot Act, U.S. Politics, Violence against women, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 73 Comments

Good Morning! It looks like New England will dodge a bullet this week. There was talk of another storm on Wednesday, but now we are only expecting 2-4 inches of snow tomorrow. That is manageable and won’t prevent me from getting to work on Wednesday, thank goodness. But the lower plains states are going to get more snow later this week, I hear. That storm isn’t headed my way though. What a relief!

Still, The Boston Globe reports that roofs are still collapsing around New England.

Problems with roofs overloaded by heavy layers of snow continued today around the region, as public safety officials raced to sagging or collapsed structures reported in Boston, Bellingham, Littleton, Dedham, and Norwood. Meanwhile, a relatively small storm for this unusually snowy season was expected to dump up to 3 inches on some areas of the state.

A roof collapse was reported at 1:45 p.m. at the Unity Tabernacle of Holiness Church, a storefront church at 2 Greendale Road in Mattapan, the Boston Fire Department said. Firefighters found the roof had partially collapsed. No one was in the building at the time; no one was injured, and a building inspector was summoned to examine the scene, the department said in an official tweet.

In Bellingham, the corrugated metal roof of the Popular Precast Products building at 26 North Main St. collapsed this morning from the heavy snow, and one wall caved in; the entire building will have to be demolished, Building Inspector Stuart LeClaire said.

The owner had been inside just before the collapse, but heard the walls cracking and made it out in time, LeClaire said.

That’s just the beginning of a long list. I hope my back porch roof holds up. It already leaks. I can’t get out in the back yard to pull the snow down, because there are several feet of snow on the ground.

The Washington Post has a report on President Obama’s speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce {gag}.

“We can, and we must, work together,” Obama told an audience at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, his most overt effort yet to mend ties with the nation’s business community. “Whatever differences we may have, I know that all of us share a deep, abiding belief in this country, a belief in our people, a belief in the principles that have made America’s economy the envy of the world.”

His administration will “help lay the foundation for you to grow and innovate,” Obama said, vowing new investment in infrastructure and education and a focus on removing “barriers that make it harder for you to compete – from the tax code to the regulatory system.”

But even as he vowed to push hard on initiatives ranging from trade deals to corporate tax reform, Obama challenged business leaders to ramp up their hiring, bring jobs back from overseas and quit sitting on such large stockpiles of cash.

Bla, bla, bla. He might as well be talking to a brick wall. What a loser.

NPR’s Talk of the Nation had an interesting segment on football today. The guest was Buzz Bissinger of The Daily Beast, who wrote a post explaining why football is inherently violent. He argues that there is no way to take the violence out of the game–then it would no longer be football. If we’re really concerned about the concussions, arthritis, and other serious side effects, we should ban football entirely. Bissinger:

Violence is not only embedded in football; it is the very celebration of it. It is why we like it. Take it away, continue efforts to curtail the savagery, and the game will be nothing, regardless of age or skill.

Much has been reported, especially by The New York Times, about the potential dangers of head injuries in the game. I know the reporter who has done virtually all the stories, Alan Schwarz, and to say he is assiduous is ridiculous understatement. His work has truly been exemplary. But after what seems like a million stories, it may be time for the Times to move on. The overall point has been hammered to bits.

The game doesn’t simply cause injury. It is injury. It is an occupational hazard that, yes, can turn into tragedy. The inherent danger can never be strained out, except at the margins. Nor should it be.

I have to agree. I admit that I like watching football, but I wouldn’t be heartbroken if it were banned. But that will never happen, at least at the professional level. But when I was listening to the discussion on NPR, it occurred me that there is never this kind of concern about on-the-job injuries and hazards in blue-color work.

No one suggests that coal mining should be banned because the work cuts miners’ lives short. Construction workers take risks too, and so do people in many other jobs. I worked as a secretary for years, and I now have terrible arthritis in my hands and fingers. I’m sure typing for so many years contributed to that.

It’s just another example of the ways in which some people seen as more important than others. If someone chooses to play football–or baseball or basketball–they should know the risks and possible consequences. But there is risk in everything in life. There is no way to remove all risk. That kind of thinking about terrorism is what got us where we are now–broke and with very few rights left.

Congress is about to pull a fast one, by voting to reauthorize the Patriot Act in the House today. From the EFF

Tell your Congressperson to vote NO on the USA PATRIOT Act in tomorrow’s vote! The PATRIOT reauthorization bill being fast-tracked to the House floor contains NO reforms to the law, and will be voted upon with NO debate and NO opportunity for amendments to add oversight and accountability. Help stop this sneak attack on your civil liberties: there are only hours left to visit our Action Center and tell your Representative to vote “NO” on H.R. 514, the PATRIOT extension bill.

In late 2009, when PATRIOT reauthorization was originally being considered by Congress, many important PATRIOT reform measures were proposed and debated, and a bill filled with powerful new checks and balances was reported favorably out of the House Judiciary Committee. But, as Congress ran up against the renewal deadline, it decided that there was not enough time to fully consider those reforms. So, in February 2010, Congress instead extended the “sunsetting” sections of the law until the end of this February, with a promise to fully consider the issues before the next deadline.

But Congress is breaking its promise to consider reforms to the PATRIOT Act. In a legislative sneak attack, the new Republican leadership in the House is trying push Representatives to rubber-stamp another PATRIOT renewal. The House leaders just announced on Friday that they’ll be “suspending the rules” so that a bill introduced by Rep. Sensenbrenner to extend the expiring PATRIOT provisions until December 8, 2011 will go to the House floor for a vote TOMORROW, without any debate and without any opportunity for anyone to offer amendments to improve the bill.

Please call or fax your congressperson.

The following story is shocking and heartbreaking, and concerns rape and cruel death of a young girl; if you don’t think you can handle it, feel free to skip over the section of the post. But I think this is an important story, so I’m going to share it even though it’s hard for me to even think about.

From BBC News:

Four people including a Muslim cleric have been arrested in Bangladesh in connection with the death of 14-year-old girl who was publicly lashed.

The teenager was accused of having an affair with a married man, police say, and the punishment was given under Islamic Sharia law.

Henna Begum

An affair? She was 14. He was 40. She was raped, and then she was publicly flogged. BBC News:

The family members of the married man [Henna’s cousin, age 40] also allegedly beat the girl up a day before the village court passed the sentence in the district of Shariatpur.

Hena Begum died after being taken to hospital “Her family members said she was admitted to a hospital after the incident and she died six days later. The village elders also asked the girl’s father to pay a fine of about 50,000 Taka (£430; $700),” district superintendent of police, AKM Shahidur Rahman, told the BBC.

He said it had not been established yet whether she died because of the punishment she received or another reason.

Another reason? WTF?! Universe, give me strength! BTW, these Sharia law punishments have been outlawed in Bangladesh. You’d think the district superintendent could have stopped the beatings and floggings instead of waiting until Henna was dead to “investigate.”

People in Bangladesh are asking the same question:

The High Court yesterday ordered district officials in Shariatpur to explain why they failed to protect 14-year-old rape victim Hena from being whipped to death as per a fatwa on Monday.

The deputy commissioner, the superintendent of police of Shariatpur and the thana nirbahi officer of Naria upazila — where the incident took place–will have to report to the HC in 15 days how it happened although the court (HC) had eight months ago declared fatwa illegal and a punishable offence.

In a suo moto rule, the HC directed them also to report what steps they have taken in this regard.

An HC bench comprised of Justice AHM Shamsuddin Chowdhury Manik and Justice Sheikh Md Zakir Hossain issued the rule following press reports on the killing of Hena.

I’ll end with just a few links on the situation in Egypt.

At the Socialist Worker, there is a statement from “radical Egyptian socialists.”

From the World Socialist Website: Imperialism and Egypt’s “democratic transition”

From Siun at FDL: Concessions Meaningless Say Tahrir Protesters: “We Want a New System”

Slate: UN: 300 Dead in Egyptian Protests

The NYT Lede Blog has “the latest updates” from Egypt

What are you reading and blogging about today?

The Latest “Culture of Life” Bill Would Allow Hospitals to Let Women Die

Posted: February 5, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: U.S. Politics, Violence against women, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , | 5 Comments

Talking Points Memo has the details:

The bill, known currently as H.R. 358 or the “Protect Life Act,” would amend the 2010 health care reform law that would modify the way Obamacare deals with abortion coverage. Much of its language is modeled on the so-called Stupak Amendment, an anti-abortion provision pro-life Democrats attempted to insert into the reform law during the health care debate last year. But critics say a new language inserted into the bill just this week would go far beyond Stupak, allowing hospitals that receive federal funds but are opposed to abortions to turn away women in need of emergency pregnancy termination to save their lives.

Read the rest of this entry »

More Insanity and Lies from US Christian Extremists

Posted: February 4, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Reproductive Rights, Surreality, The Media SUCKS, We are so F'd, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , | 18 Comments

The new year seems to have instilled a new level of craziness in our homegrown Christian Extremists.  Think that all that stuff you see over in under-developed nations couldn’t be brought over here?  Think it’s only radical Islam that wants to stick women in an Iron Age world?  Well, think again. Watch the video and be appalled.

Anti-Choice Fanatic Lila Rose says that  ‘Abortions Should Be Done in the Public Square’.

We’ll get back to Lila in La La Land in a bit.

First,some people have nothing better to do than to biblecheck the President’s knowledge on the “The Bible.” If it wasn’t embarrassing enough to have to watch the President of the world’s oldest pluralistic society make a speech so he can prove he’s not a “Muslim”, Fox Nation has to choose which version of the Bible he’s supposed to use to pledge allegiance.  Evidently, the only true Bible for Fox Nation is the King James version which has been shown to have severe translation and other problems.

Obama was  quoting from the New International Version, while Fox Nation was pointing to the King James Version to “debunk” him.

This would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic.

Most likely, they won’t bother to correct their story, and their goal will be accomplished: the readers that trust them will remember the time Obama “misquoted” the Bible, some more people will question the authenticity of Obama’s faith, and the smear machine will move on.

Exactly what is the point of having the President of our entire nation disenfranchise many of us through a “national prayer breakfast” any way?

While the president thankfully steers clear of “Christian nation” rhetoric there was simply too much of Obama the Christian yesterday.

Come to think of it, the National Prayer Breakfast often has this effect on politicians. Senator Joseph Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, sprinkled so many references to the gospels at the 48th National Prayer Breakfast in 2000 that he made George W. Bush look like a desk officer for Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Obama may earnestly believe that Republican Senator Tom Coburn is his “brother in Christ.” But such a sentiment sounds odd coming from a president who once reminded his Turkish hosts that ours is not “a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation,” but “a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”

Such a nation, one would hope, would be led by a person who understands that this type of rhetoric can be deeply troubling to those who don’t believe in Christ. Just as it may offend those Christians who believe that Christ’s teachings tend to become distorted when they are mouthed by the worldly powers that be.

This comes after learning the politically significant and influential “Family” has caused Uganda to create laws that murder its GLBT citizens. David Kato was forced to return to a country that is leading a reign of terror on its GLBT minorities in a manner directly traceable to the narrow beliefs and traditions of extremist Christians in the US.  The Family makes the Muslim Brotherhood look tame by comparison.

In early 2010, as policy adviser to the UK’s all-party group on HIV and AIDS, I organised Mugisha’s visit to the Westminster parliament to meet the then foreign office minister and openly gay legislator, Chris Bryant. It was, for Mugisha, a vision of what politics could be like.

“At this moment [in Uganda] it would be political suicide for a [member of parliament] to come out and support lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people,” he marvelled.

Six months later, back in Uganda, the national newspaper, Rolling Stone (unrelated to the US magazine of the same name), splashed a story across its front page, outing Uganda’s “top one hundred homos”. The piece gave names and addresses of gay men – amongst them Mugisha and Kato, whose faces were pictured in the paper. On the front page a banner read, “Hang them!”

The lives of both men were in danger but instead of hiding, they fought back. Kato successfully took the newspaper to court winning the paltry sum of 1.5 million Ugandan shillings (650 US dollars) for invasion of privacy and a permanent injunction preventing Rolling Stone from running a similar story again.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for Uganda to swiftly investigate the murder of  Kato.  This call was reiterated just recently by President Obama.  The Senate should investigate the role of US religious extremists in the murder.

“The Family”–also known as “the Fellowship”– is a powerful and covert sect of American Christian evangelical politicians and ministers who seek a decidedly anti-gay extreme Christian agenda both at home and abroad, and through its words put this hammer in the hands of all potentially intolerant Ugandans.

Enabled by President Lt. Gen. Yoweri Kaguta Musevani and his wife Janet Kataha, Ugandan parlimentarian David Bahati, (who in 2009 said, “Homosexuality it is not a human right,”) last year introduced a “kill the gays” bill which remains under active consideration. All are believed to be members of Ugandas’ Christian right wing “Family,” according to Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, a tour de force exposé of “The Fellowship,” published in 2008.

Sharlet has appeared on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, as well as on National Public Radio to discuss the shadowy “Family” sect that has included well-known evangelical minister Rick Warren, who delivered the invocational prayer at President Barack Obama’s inauguration in January 2009, much to the chagrin of LGBT activists.

Sharlet has authored a second book on the Family, entitled C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy, considered a deeper exploration of related sex scandals of Family-backed Republican politicians in Washington, D.C. It provides additional revelations about The Family’s role in the Ugandan government’s anti-gay reactions, which have brought rebukes from the Ugandan Supreme Court, but have also elicited a refusal by Rick Warren to condemn the Ugandan ”kill the gays” proposed legislation, along with a dubious claim that Warren had “nothing to do” with the anti-gay bill.

New York Times best-selling author Frank Schaeffer writes in “Evangelicals Implicated When Ugandan Gay Rights Activist Was Beaten to Death,” that the ”story of the Ugandan legislation to kill gays for being gay was intertwined with the Family and also with representatives of the wider “respectable” American Evangelical community. According to many pressreports, the genesis of the antihomosexual Ugandan bill may be traced to a three-day seminar in Kampala in March 2009 called “Exposing the Truth Behind Homosexuality and the Homosexual Agenda.” This seminar was led by Evangelical leader and hero to the Religious Right Scott Lively. He is best known for his Holocaust revisionist book  The Pink Swastika, which claims homosexuals founded the Nazi party and were responsible for death camp atrocities.”

“According to sources who attended the conference (and who were later widely quoted in the press), Lively told his Kampala audience, “I know more about this [homosexuality] than almost anyone in the world. The gay movement is an evil institution. The goal of the gay movement is to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.” The results of the seminar were dramatic. “The community has become very hostile now,” Frank Mugisha, executive director of Sexual Minorities Uganda, said in an interview. “We have to watch our backs very much more than before because the community thinks if the Ugandan government is not passing the law, they will deal with [gay] people on their own.”

They’re busy here too.  Some Iowans are on a crusade against GLBT families. Just when you think it’s safe to be a human in a developed nation, religious extremists bring out their burning crosses and witch hunts all over again.

Fox News via Bill Reilly has also been pushing Lila Rose’s heavily edited and misleading film showing that Planned Parenthood “provides advice to sex traffickers of minority youth”.  This is the latest right wing attempt to ensnare nonprofits serving the poor with lies and heavily edited video tape.   This tape is unbelievably being shown on FOX News as a credible source. New Jersey Governor Christie has promised to veto funding for Planned Parenthood now based on this highly edited and misleading document.

When the anti-abortion rights propagandists at Live Action began releasing their Planned Parenthood smear videos earlier this week, we explained that their claim that Planned Parenthood was covering-up “child sex trafficking” was clearly a lie.

That’s because way back on January 18, Planned Parenthood’s president wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder about the incidents and requested an FBI investigation into the possibility that “an individual or individuals are engaged in activities that violate several federal criminal statutes relating to sex trafficking involving minors.”

So Planned Parenthood obviously wasn’t covering up anything; they were fulfilling their obligation to keep children safe.

We also warned that media should be skeptical about the heavily edited video footage released by Live Action.

As it turns out, we were right to raise concerns.

Yesterday, Live Action released a video that it claimed showed a Richmond, Virginia, Planned Parenthood’s supposed “willingness to aid and abet sexual exploitation of minors.”

This comes on top of the attempt by Speaker of the House John Boehner and  U.S. House of Representatives to redefine rape to further remove access to abortions by poor and disabled women. Here’s that and some more news on Men with Minds stuck in the Middle Ages from young women’s website The Frisky.

  • Leave it to Kristen Schaal at “The Daily Show” to give the best assessment of Republicans’ attempts to redefine rape in the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act. “Rape with benefits” and “rape-ish” are sooo becoming part of my vocabulary. Thankfully, the phrase “forcible rape” has been cut from the bill. [The Daily What via The Daily Show, Washington Post]
  • Former Oklahoma State Senator Herb Rozell suggested a pregnant woman who was nominated to the State Board of Education would be “worthless” because she would give birth during the legislative session and be totally obsessed with diapers or something. Rozell has been condemned by OK’s Governor Mary Fallin and other lawmakers, including two who said, “In this day and age, to have that type of attitude about a woman’s ability to serve is offensive, discriminatory and just wrong.” [Tulsa Beacon]

Here’s some interesting analysis on HR#3 and how the language got dropped by the CSM.  Thankfully, the GOP backed down.  Here’s some of the remaining horrors of the bill that our Democratic President shouldn’t sign if passed.

“I would caution against saying this is a victory, because the other provisions in H.R. 3 are so bad,” says Ted Miller, communications director for NARAL Pro-Choice America.

In addition to banning federal funding for abortion, the bill would eliminate tax breaks for health insurance premiums on policies that cover abortion-related expenses. It would also prevent women from paying for an abortion out of a health savings account.

A separate piece of legislation, H.R. 358 – the Protect Life Act, sponsored by Rep. Joe Pitts (R) of Pennsylvania – also seeks to bar use of federal funds for abortion under the new health-care law but is less far-reaching than Congressman Smith’s bill. Still, abortion-rights advocates are equally concerned about its provisions. On Wednesday, NARAL Pro-Choice America highlighted a new version of Congressman Pitts’ bill that they said would allow hospitals to refuse to provide an abortion to a pregnant woman even if her life was in danger.

In the last Congress, Pitts and former Rep. Bart Stupak (D) of Michigan succeeded in inserting a ban on federal funding for abortion in the House version of health reform legislation, but it was not included in the final version signed by President Obama. The day after the bill-signing, Mr. Obama signed an executive order aimed at ensuring the new law would maintain a ban on federal funding of abortions.

However, there are Democratic co-sponsors of that bill.  Micheal Whitney at FDL has a good run down of which Dems we should work actively against.  The DCCC invested $3.3 million dollars getting these jerks re-elected.

A look at the DCCC’s contributions to and on behalf of the 10 Democratic co-sponsors of HR3 show the committee spent a whopping $3,379,322.85 to keep these members in office – in 2010 alone. The list includes: Dan Boren [OK-2], Jerry Costello [IL-12], Mark Critz [PA-12], Joe Donnelly [IN-2], Daniel Lipinski [IL-3], Collin Peterson [MN-7], Nick Rahall [WV-3], Mike Ross [AR-4], and Heath Shuler [NC-11]. And God knows how many Blue Dogs that lost in 2010 and who were supported by the DCCC would have co-sponsored this bill.

Madamab has a Feminist Friday post up called ‘Feminist Friday: “Jekyll” and Hyde’ that thoroughly covers the depths of horror displayed in this bill.   Then, try this one on for size from an article from our neighbors to the north.  The “culture of life” clearly does not extend to living breathing children in many extremist sects.

Water torture of babies is one way some members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day instil fear of authority, a former member testified Wednesday.

“It’s quite common,” Carolyn Blackmore Jessop told the constitutional reference case to determine whether Canada’s polygamy law is valid.

“They spank the baby and when it cries, they hold the baby face up under the tap with running water. When they stop crying, they spank it again and the cycle is repeated until they are exhausted.”

It’s typically done by fathers and it’s called “breaking in.”

Jessop, who is from Arizona, testified about the practice during her testimony in B.C. Supreme Court.

Outside the courthouse, Jessop said water torture is common enough that there doesn’t seem any shame attached to the practice.

In her cousin’s baby book, there’s a handwritten note by her mother noting that when her daughter was 18 months old, she was becoming quite a handful and, as a result, was being held under the tap on a regular basis.

In court, Jessop said water torture was one of the reasons that she gave for gaining sole custody of her children after she left the group in 2003. She said her ex-husband, Merril Jessop, used it on “a lot” of his 54 children including her own.

“Merril was very abusive,” she said.

Think Europe is safer?  Well, try this cute one from LGF: Catholic Church Issues Guide on How to Convert Witches from the UK.

According to a new booklet from the Catholic Truth Society — the U.K. publishers for the Holy See — the faithful can convert Wiccans by following a few simple steps. The pamphlet, titled “Wicca and Witchcraft: Understanding the Dangers,” suggests that Catholics spark up conversations with these unbelievers about shared concerns such as the environment, The Telegraph reports.

And if you bump into a witch in a bar or coffee shop, the book adds, it’s important to recognize that “Wiccans are on a genuine spiritual quest,” providing “the starting point for dialog that may lead to their conversion.”

Why we continue to worry about religious extremists abroad when there are serious threats to our freedoms from religious extremists here in our own country continues to amaze me.   One bomb can only kill so many people.  Removal of religious freedoms and promotion of severe propaganda as fact by the media is a for more clear and present danger.  Why are we worried about Egyptian politics when we clearly have people in our own country who want to defy the U.S. Constitution and place us in an extremist Christian theocracy?

Friday Reads

Posted: February 4, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Feminists, Festivities, fetus fetishists, Food, morning reads, Reproductive Rights, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Good Morning and Happy Lunar New Year

The Egyptian revolution continues to be the top story around the world. We will continue to run live blog updates to give you the latest reliable news sources on the subject.  There’s a few stories on the economy that I’d like to share this morning beyond that topic.

First, Happy Lunar New Year!!

2011 is the Year of the Metal Rabbit.

Chinese astrologer Alvin Ang of Bazi Destiny foresees “the global situation may be affected by serious political change and global calamities.”

Hong Kong-based feng shui master Joseph Wong gives a different take. “This coming year everything will be better than last year,” he told CNN’s Pauline Chiou. “They will see business go upwards mostly, but take care with the shares and stocks. There will be some fluctuations in August and September.”

Fed Chair Ben Bernanke gave a speech at the National Press Club yesterday that indicated continuing concern about the ability of the current recovery to sustain any reasonable decrease in the unemployment rate.  He also indicated the need for a long term plan to deal with the Federal deficit.  There were a few mentions of the continuing need for QE and statements that the monetary policy to date had worked given the recovery of the equity markets.  He did sound a bit more upbeat than the last time we heard from him and while he acted like the recovery was slower than any one would wish, he did state that he felt it was becoming ‘self-sustaining’.

Here’s some analysis on our unemployment vis a vis the Bernanke Statements from The Economist.

The Fed’s forecast range for the unemployment rate in 2012 is 7.7% to 8.2%, and the Congressional Budget Office  forecasts an unemployment rate of 8.4% (this forecast dates to after the announcement of QE2, but isn’t meaningfully different from its forecasts from the summer of 2010). This would suggest that with QE2 in place, American unemployment is likely to be between 6% and 7% in 2012. That’s not full employment, but it’s pretty close. You can argue that more needs to be done (indeed, I think the Fed itself could do more). But it is worth noting that the Fed has put the American economy on a substantially better recovery path than it faced before (Scott Sumner would say it has returned the economy to the path off which it previously led it).A big risk is that the Fed will back away from its policy too quickly, thinking all is going well and worrying premptively about inflation. As Karl Smith says, today’s speech is somewhat reassuring on that front.

The NYT had an op ed up on Trade indicating that Republicans are trying to remove some provisions that now help workers retrain should they lose their jobs to overseas locations.  It’s worth reading just to see how truly Dickensian the Republicans seem to be these days.

Most Republican lawmakers claim they are pro-trade. Their principled position is evidently no match for parochialism and politics. Last month, a conflict over imported sleeping bags between a company in Alabama and a rival in Kentucky led Senate Republicans to block the extension of the Generalized System of Preferences, or G.S.P., which has granted preferential access to some $20 billion worth of imports from developing countries.

Now Senator Jon Kyl and his colleagues in the Finance Committee are threatening to block the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which provides income and training for American workers whose employers can’t compete with rising imports. It is due to expire on Feb. 12, and Mr. Kyl and company are refusing to extend it unless the White House promises to advance the long-pending trade deal with Colombia.

Speaking of Dickensian Republican policy, the GOP dropped the ‘forcible rape’ language from HR3.  The Hyde Amendment has long entertained the idiocy of letting one loud and obnoxious group of zealots deny Federal  funding of their personal pet peeve while the rest of us continue to fund all kinds of abominable projects. Tops on my opt out list  are renditions for torture and bail outs of Investment banks.  But, American Fetus Fetishists get special treatment.  At least this attempt at narrowing rape definitions is gone now.

House Republicans plan to sidestep a charged debate over the distinction between “forcible rape” and “rape” by altering the language of a bill banning taxpayer subsidies for abortions.

The provision in question, written as an exemption from the ban for women who become pregnant as a result of “forcible rape,” touched off a firestorm of criticism from women’s groups, and it gained enough attention to become the subject of a satirical segment on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”

But a spokesman for the bill’s author, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), says the modifier “forcible” will be dropped so that the exemption covers all forms of rape, as well as cases of incest and the endangerment of the life of the mother.“The word forcible will be replaced with the original language from the Hyde Amendment,” Smith spokesman Jeff Sagnip told POLITICO, referring to the long-standing ban on direct use of taxpayer dollars for abortion services.

A real Democratic congress and president would’ve gotten rid of this stupid provision by now. However, here is something that if true will make me do the Snoopy dance.

The Obama administration is examining whether the new health care law can be used to require insurance plans to offer contraceptives and other family planning services to women free of charge.

Such a requirement could remove cost as a barrier to birth control, a longtime goal of advocates for women’s rights and experts on women’s health. But it is likely to reignite debate over the federal role in health care, especially reproductive health, at a time when Republicans in Congress have vowed to repeal the law or dismantle it piece by piece. It is also raising objections from the Roman Catholic Church and is expected to generate a robust debate about privacy.

The law says insurers must cover “preventive health services” and cannot charge for them. The administration has asked a panel of outside experts to help identify the specific preventive services that must be covered for women.

Administration officials said they expected the list to include contraception and family planning because a large body of scientific evidence showed the effectiveness of those services. But the officials said they preferred to have the panel of independent experts make the initial recommendations so the public would see them as based on science, not politics.

Many obstetricians, gynecologists, pediatricians and public health experts have called for coverage of family planning services, including contraceptives, without co-payments, deductibles or other cost-sharing requirements.

Will the Cult of the Angry Sky God get the ultimate veto on this too?

Well, back to the exercise equipment folks!  Bloomberg.com says ‘American Waistlines Expand Fastest Among Rich Nations’,

Americans grew fatter at a faster pace than residents of any other wealthy nation since 1980, during a period when obesity worldwide nearly doubled, researchers found.

Almost 10 percent of the world’s population was obese in 2008, according to studies published today by the medical journal The Lancet. The percentage of people with uncontrolled hypertension, or high blood pressure, fell, with high-income countries showing a larger drop. Cholesterol levels declined in North America, Australia and Europe, but increased in East and Southeast Asia as well as the Pacific region, researchers said.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Happy New Year!!!

Late Night Drift: Women of Egypt

Posted: January 30, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Egypt, Foreign Affairs, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , | 32 Comments

CAIRO, EGYPT - JANUARY 29: Egyptian woman shout out during a demonstration against President Hosni Mubarek in Tahrir Square January 29, 2011 in Cairo, Egypt. Unrest continued in the Egyptian captial as President Mubarek said he would form a new government but remain in power.

The Daughters of Hatshepsut take to the Street.

There seems to be a narrative in some fairly strange places that the women of Egypt are not behind a move to democracy and that they will suffer if Mubarak is removed.  I thought I’d share some photos and stories on the role of  Women in Egypt’s struggle for democracy.

From Slate:Women Are a Substantial Part of Egyptian Protests

An unprecedented number of Egyptian women participated in Tuesday’s anti-government protests. Ghada Shahbandar, an activist with the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, estimated the crowd downtown to be 20 percent female. Other estimates were as high as 50 percent. In past protests, the female presence would rarely rise to 10 percent. Protests have a reputation for being dangerous for Egyptian women, whose common struggle as objects of sexual harassment is exacerbated in the congested, male-dominated crowd. Police hasten to fence in the demonstrators, and fleeing leads to violence. And women, whose needs are not reflected in the policies of official opposition groups who normally organize protests, have little reason to take the risk.

One of the protest organizers is a woman: Political activist Esraa Abdel Fattah, whose 15-day detention in 2008 for her activism made her a symbol of resistance. But Abdel Fattah’s position at the helm of the movement did not previously mean a large female presence. In 2008 Abdel Fattah tried to mobilize all of Egypt around labor conditions in El-Mahalla El-Kubra, north of Cairo. The male workers in the industrial town constituted the majority of the original protesters, and subsequent protests organized by the movement likewise failed to draw as large of a female crowd as seen on Tuesday.

Whoever is running this narrative can’t possibly be watching what’s going on unless they’re spending a huge amount of time on Faux News waiting for a pronouncement from Snowflake Snookie.


Women on the front lines in Egypt

Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy has emerged as one of the most prominent representatives of the movement on Western news media. Yesterday, she successfully got CNN to change their headline from “CHAOS IN EGYPT” to “UPRISING IN EGYPT.

Eltahawy, whose Twitter feed has been essential reading for those following the events in Egypt, has been circulating a link to a Facebook album filled with inspiring pictures of women on the front lines of the protests. (Le Monde has a similar gallery for the protests in Tunisia.)

Why is it important to draw attention to this phenomenon? Because we know it’s in the The West’s playbook to exploit concern for women’s rights to justify its imperial ambitions. That’s one of the many ways that the war in Afghanistan was sold to the public, from the CIA’s Wikileaked cable on manipulating public opinion in Europe to the propagandistic cover of Time magazine depicting a woman disfigured by the Taliban.

Culture warriors have cynically co-opted feminist rhetoric to push for bans on the Islamic veil throughout Europe, despite evidence that such prohibitions might actually make women more isolated and less safe. In 2009, Switzerland actually banned the construction of minarets, supposedly in response to feminist concerns.

I would not be at all surprised to hear US leaders, media pundits, and even some liberals defend the Mubarak regime by underscoring the potential threat of newly-empowered Islamists to impose restrictions on women’s rights in Egypt.This possibility certainly exists, but we should not pretend that the United States is sincere about these concerns, nor should we ignore the tens of thousands of Egyptian women taking to the streets to demand change.

“Bravest girl in Egypt”

Mona Eltahawy to CNN: Call Egypt an Uprising

Do these sound like women that are going to be put behind some kind of  iron veil?    I’m not buying the narrative that a nation that produced Cleopatra and Hatshepsut is going to suddenly find itself promoting the Muslim Version of the Hand Maid’s Tale.

What is behind this sense of false chivalry?

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