Same-sex marriage passes in Washington state.
The Pentagon moves women closer to combat today.
How bad the jobs picture really is for young people.
CPAC runs into trouble with those pesky co-sponsorships again.
A little background on the War on Birth Control.
10 states will be freed from No Child Left Behind today.
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State by state, we are rolling back the cloud of bigotry and discrimination that is so pervasive in America today. Every American citizen has the right to a legal marriage. There is no legal or moral authority for lawmakers to openly discriminate against a certain segment of law abiding citizens just because of who they are. Now we need President Obama to "evolve" faster and publicly back a national effort to promote marriage equality and the rights of every American. http://www.sunstateactivist.org
I guess today there's a private fundraiser for Obama from LGBT donors. What are the chances there'd be any talk about the Uniting American Families Act?
TRMS: Wed Feb 8th: THE MEN WHO STARE AT ZYGOTES
Instead of asking 'why does the beltway media think a "war on contraception" is a campaign asset?' The question you should have asked is: 'Why is the Obama administration so pathologically hardwired to always compromise away a winning position.....?"
You said it yourself, the numbers that show the entire country, no matter their denomination, is heavily, massively in favour of this provision. The whole country is on the administration's side yet all it takes is for the Republicans to call Obama a few names and a couple days later Axelrod is on MSNBC to tell the country the they're now "looking at it again and looking at compromises". To what and to what end? Just so Republicans don't call him names anymore? This is the instance when that play will finally work, years later....?
You're great at holding Republicans to account for the things they do, Rachel, but you yourself seem pathologically hardwired (or editorially pressured) to only focus your not inconsiderable analytical skills in one direction. Why is that? I'm sure you will say "that's not true" but last night would have been the opportunity to prove it on this subject.
"Republicans oppose Obama. Again" is not really news anymore, is it.....?
I completely agree! I'm sooooo ticked off that Obama is compromising away the rights of women when he has the support of the population and the constitution. In fact, in half the states those religious schools & hospitals are NOT EXEMPT NOW from providing contraceptive coverage, so Obama's compromise will allow them to take that away from thousands of women. Way to play directly into the hands of the religious right! President Obama, quit giving them everything they want and LISTEN to the people who elected you, or you won't get a second term.
I am a woman, I am a US citizen, I am a voter, and my rights should be protected in the Consitution and the Bill of Rights over the rights of NON-CITIZEN religious organizations. It provides me the right to freely choose my religion, or no religion at all. It states that the government will not be run by a religious organization, nor will it have a state run/dictated religion. The Catholic church (or any other church) is not a CITIZEN of the US and the Pope is NOT a CITIZEN of the US, so why should we allow them to dictate policies that affect the constitutional rights of US CITIZENS? There are members of the Catholic church who are US citizens, and I uphold their right as a citizen to choose their religion and to make their own medical choices, but their right is NOT MORE IMPORTANT THAN MINE! If you do not believe in contraception, then you have the right to not use it. I am tired of celebate men trying to dictate what is best for women's healthcare. Our country is sliding down a slipery slope when we allow religious beliefs to supercede individual constitutional rights and large employers to discriminate against their employees because they are hiding behind the veil of religion. If this exception is granted by Obama, then he should have demanded that all women at those religious institutions get raises so they can pay for it themselves.
It's time to remove healthcare from the extremely flawed system that ties it to employment. Every citizen needs healthcare, and should be able to individually purchase it at competitive prices just like we do with car insurance.
I'd also like to mention that Santorum scares the crap out of me. He obviously does not believe women to be equal or full US citizens. Just listen to his comments about women in combat, and women making their own choices about their own healthcare & contraception. It wants to take this country back to 1812. If Santorum wants the Catholic church to rule his country, then he should consider denouncing his US citizenship and moving to Vatican city.
OK now that Obama's comprimise is public, I give him credit for finding a way for women employed by religious institutions to still have free contraceptive care. But it is still a comprimise that places the rights of organizations, employers, and institutions over the rights of individual citizens. I think religion needs to stick with providing places of worship and get out of the BUSINESS of being schools, hospitals, universities, and large employers. If your primary focus is to be a business, you should have to comply with ALL employment laws, anti-discrimination laws, business laws, and pay taxes like every other business with NO exemptions, and then and only then, be allowed to have the secondary purpose of spreading your religion.
Reminds me of Rick Perry are all the tea party nutz...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/08/john-kasich-state-of-the-state-ohio-governor_n_1262734.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false
He also referred to God as a lobbyist for the mentally ill, disabled, and poor
If you do not get some of the opposition on board, the risk remains of losing a majority in congress and have the whole issue spring its ugly head again. This is especially true if the democrat voters get complacent as they did in the last election. It is too easy to get people who use emotional rather than logical reasoning to react in a knee-jerk manner. The other benefit of trying for compromise is to get the GOOP on record. We always see the vocal opposition like the speaker on record, but a vote allows the public to see the sheep following blindly, as well. I think the religious right really hopes that when they back off of contraception as an issue, the public will not pay as much attention to abortion.
Just a question: Could an employee of a catholic affiliated group sue that organization for sexual discrimination if their health care does not cover aspects of the HHS law?
I am so proud to be a resident of Washington State. Our governor's announcement on this issue was wonderful, a truly universal statement regarding the advancement of human rights and her personal journey to reach that place.
Regardless our gender orientation, we are all oriented in the same direction. We are human.
Next, DOMA!
TRMS should have a rule that a guest should not put the viewers to sleep. Tim Pawlenty tried so hard to be funny last night and it just didn't work. Mrs. Bigglesworth?! The interview was totally sleep-inducing. Being interesting and funny is not in Pawlenty's DNA. Come to think of it, it's not in Romney's either.
CONGRATULATIONS to Washington State!
Ms. Maddow must be slipping. Two things from last night show.
1. When Asst. Secretary from the Defense said the discussion on how the Giants deserved a parade in NY and the troops evidently do not is the wrong focus, Ms. Maddow said, "I didn't say anything about the Giants." Oh? She had a whole segment the previous night with this exact theme!
2. Ms. Maddow told Gov. Pawlenty that "people are turning to him (meaning your guy, your side) when they hear bad things about the other guys and that just seems like a cynical and shaky path forward." Yet this is exactly what Ms. Maddow does night after night. In essence, let's show how bad the republicans are so people will like the Democrats and President Obama more. When was the last show devoted to solely, or even mainly, to showing the good work the Democrats or President Obama is doing for the country. There hasn't been one that I've seen. This is because the sole focus is to point out all the flaws and unpopular things about the conservatives/Republicans...."seems like a cynical and shaky path forward."
IMHO
(Need validation of the point? Just scroll down and look at the topics of the stories here...how many are telling you what the Democrats or the President is doing good versus focusing on the negatives of the other side? Hmmm.)
So glad Washington finally got going on this! Makes me proud to live here!
I would like to fully understand how the prop 8 ruling might affect the naysayers on this law.
This story is frying something hard, inside my brain this morning. This part REALLY chaps my hide:
Replacing History With Fiction in Arizona
Gary Younge
February 8, 2012 | This article appeared in the February 27, 2012 edition of The Nation.
http://www.thenation.com/article/166140/replacing-history-fiction-arizona
FREIRE BANNED?!!!! In the US? OMG. I don't know if I should just be outraged, or outraged and full of irony at the same time.
Freire banned... If you've read that book, it is all about "critical consciousness," and democratic empowerment through education, in classrooms, but also OUTSIDE of classrooms, like in the fields, factories, or even (gasp) online.
Here's one of my bits on Freire, on the last part (online side):
The Spirit of Paulo Freire in Blogland: Struggling for a Knowledge-Log Revolution: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/the_spirit_of_paulo_freire.html
Someone was even kind enough to translate it into Portuguese, which, given where Freire was from, is especially flattering! http://jarbas.wordpress.com/035-paulo-freire-na-blogolandia/
Anyway, I am still sputtering. What a bucket of cold water to start your morning!
See also this bit:
Oh dear, I am LOL. See, I hadn't read my 2004 warblog research in a while. SMALL FRAKKING WORLD.
So I was reading through the article, and I came across a citation embedded in it: (Femia 2003).
So I was like, "NO WAY!"
Will, is this you? Did I cite you in my research back in 2004? The archival link is broken, but that isn't unusual. But it's at MSNBC, and its about technology.
Karma? Do our paths virtually cross for a reason?! Or are we just tripping over each other because we both have worked in broadcast media and technology?
Wow! Cool! Yeah, I'm not sure how much of that is even archived anymore. That URL structure is our old publishing system.
Way back in 2002 we switched our opinions section to focus on blogs - a new thing back then. Weblog Central was basically our Opinions page. I wrote a blog about blogs call Blogspotting.
Hard to believe there was a time when someone might need help finding blogs on the internet. HA!
Oh yeah, I remember. I also started a "marginalized" cyberculture column at CNN.com during that time. I proposed it in 2002, and had a way in with the launch of a new Headline News site, with a top-down mandate that we would get to be trendier and more colloquial than the other original CNN.com stories on the site.
BUT I still had to get my stories past The Row (main CNN copyeditors-- they edit all original Wires CNN reporting).
I used to get some of the most INANE questions when my stories came back. (An archive of my columns is here, if you want to see what little fluffy things they were, compared to the wonky scholarship where I cited you, when you were citing Joshua Kucera's war blog from Iraq: http://www.serendipit-e.com/boeseportfolio/cnncom_column_archive/ )
Their MO was that I was "allowed" to use words like "podcasting" or "blogs," but only barely. The first time in early 2002, when pieces got sent back to me, I was told I could only use the terms (too coloquial) if I could find a person with sufficient enough "authority" to use and definitively define the term BEFORE I allowed to talk about such things in a little 800-word column. My own knowledge of and use of blogs and scholarship in online communities was not enough (even with a PhD).
Otherwise, the words were not deemed to sufficiently "exist" enough to be visible in the CNN universe. In 2002 at least. Then in 2003, while I was covering the war for Headline News doing the things that led you to write that story (building warblogs for independent journalists in Iraq), CNN was busy firing Kevin Sites for the blog he started on his own.
Just think, that was just a few short years before they officially brought out their "blog babes" to come in on Wolf Blitzer's show and read blogs aloud on TV off a big screen, while circling the bits they were reading with an electronic pen.
You know what the most ironic thing about those columns was? I actually got CITED by scholars and authors for those little things. Even got into Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near book and in other scholarly sources, more than my "official" scholarship is cited. LOL.
If President Obama has not been wildly successful, he at least has not stooped to reactionary sensationalist tactics attacking the majority of the country. With little good-faith cooperation from the right, and ongoing speeches saying how they could do it better, without proof or any suggestions but cutting taxes on the wealthy and cutting regulations on businesses which have not proven they are moral enough to be unregulated, they do naught but criticize. When and if the candidates on the right begin to identify honest ideas that will return and or maintain basic fairness in their proposals, an honest debate can begin. The left may not be perfect but they are not spewing poison.
Again the United States is decades behind the advanced nations of the world like Canada. Canadian female officers have been killed in action in Afghanistan as early as 2006. Canada has had female fighter pilots in action as early as 2007 as well. Riel "Guns" Erickson, of Cold Lake Alberta, was the first female fighter pilot in North America to intercept a Russian bomber impinging on NORAD air space.
This is in addition to having marriage equality (same sex marriage) nationwide since 2005. LGBT serving openly in the Canadian military since 1992. Universal single payer health care (allowing ALL Canadians to have whatever health care their physician says they need within Canada with no out of pocket cost) since 1966.
Regarding the contraception issue, are they going to gripe about anti polygamy laws now too, since those laws affect a Mormon's religious right to have more than one wife at a time?
Mitt Romney's grandfather ran away to Mexico because his religious right to have 5 wives was made illegal in the US, even though it was a religious issue and a matter of conscience. Things that some people consider "religious issues" are subject to laws all the time.
If the Catholic Church wanted to pay its employees less than the minimum wage, would the minimum wage law not apply to them too? If the Catholic Church wanted it's employees to work in an unsafe workplace, would workplace safety laws not apply to them too? The Church is subject to any laws and policies that apply to everyone.
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Amazed at the progress we are making in Washington State! The Eastern section of the state is extremely conservative, so imagine my surprise when I saw this video of a Republican lawmaker from Walla Walla from the debate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbmbdWK6338&feature=share
Progress!
If the policy to provide contraceptive/reproductive health services within insurance policies they has been followed by some religious institutions for their employees - universities, hospitals, social service providers, why is it an issue for groups such as the Catholic bishops now? Why wouldn't all such institutions NOT carry out the ruling all this time?
The article by Nick Baumann in Mother Jones is great background, but so is his previous one "Most of Obama's "Controversial" Birth Control Rule Was Law During the Bush Years". http://motherjones.com/print/161451 Baumann tells us about an EEOC ruling in 2000 that "companies that provided prescription drugs to their employees but didn't provide birth control were in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act." The ruling has been upheld in federal court. It's a really informative article that needs to be talked about.
Thanks, Annie for sharing Maureen Walsh's moving testimony before our legislature this week.
oops - omit the "they" in the first line before has been. thought I'd caught it in edit.
Are you all aware of this I got as an add on facebook today. Didn't mind the poll but then they want you to sign up which means they can start calling you among other things.
http://www.facebook.com/ajax/emu/end.php?eid=AQKDzkjMjQyTwSEzghYe9Z1USQsHVjVY1oj6Sde7GWKw32ix14ZR4TlAr6lPAD4-fWg0bmxPJU0b5aZmQhScFCfIjt3B9Khub6SEUuec6AgQ9m652Ws3MVct8RynDnfQ8Ix3cTj4uNgwkcQJsms8J1agBCRMHpXvrPeJpR1HjlncijfT5QYbHjTek9cw9HaBkOUcOtY63wFWTJY24skjQY4Fuw2VCP2hjlertP9EDwzn-yBpMdfu2jqdWXYuH1WBFofaqONe_OOgFTXAAkbCAHik8kv_CjfvOdaplB5Kyg-nNldOvPGMq36pRJqM0Gwv2WXejpluSqHQAIWUrTlno-Vshku_i-ZBOw2srkj4iF4XxjTKOJNBDraPoy-XxFLWG55x1rGhpUa8TOxBg6XYsNRUcTl_5H41n_QDr845Olf4FvWcmVUheGLJ4i6JPfaKv3Bd74EwsZ9QA6gbv_IyNAkJuubKg_rPOikD6IQbMM1c7yP-74jomokKCT-b8cVSo0hvXJv9r2_sOOjNXcyXfPCuzqO4_cKp0rhxA-r1jLSx5y-0-zOEcxH4edUuNCbI-Z02cpWtwBEhqKf2ua4aTvq2j6w2jeSgXOSWJOoGJanMijZZkBC7uunsNq1J6UnxbfmSLggCkoDdjDpnhZEnViVb4f3FQtWYCtje_Q2ruUy2VkE2ayk10pSc1JqGh9Gte8qVQqL32sBh87oO-LW0kZz4llyAFz67QNtxCRmxCfbsoQAmIxG-NUr41kNw0tPMhXJwnKkhH_i1VWoEIOPNoOoMsra8IW86ev3Wv0cTMetYUvb_nGSjeOfMLunJjKFxN7I-klTTM8XWiG9Kj4M4aop_NwMRLwhiW5BAFsyVtvJeZ0aKFmiz8z7yC8Jm6rsRJomv0K49X7HsWHCATI6qivKGIDu2cZtSeIr916Rs8DIu0jWKEYscxRB4iua59DmTK_KQJhhmYMcUo-ExXDLeUoDA&f=0&ui=6003887545671-id_4f3422b9da9d97634665681&en=1&a=0&sig=87620