It starts now. She is going to clean his fucking clock. There will be nothing left of him when she’s done. I don’t know what she’s on, I really don’t, but I want some of it. She’s like twice my age, and I crawl home from my office job every night with barely enough energy to… Continue reading “Forward, now”
Category: Full Frontal Feminism
Federal judge destroys Daleiden’s claims of wrongdoing by abortion group
When Judge William Orrick slapped a restraining order on David Daleiden’s Center for Medical Progress last week, the ruling was far more devastating to Daleiden than had been previously reported. In his 42-page ruling, Judge Orrick said this: Having reviewed the records or transcripts in full and in context, I find that no NAF attendee admitted… Continue reading “Federal judge destroys Daleiden’s claims of wrongdoing by abortion group”
Expectations of the monster
Melissa McEwan hits this out of the park:
At The Daily Banter, Chez Pazienza wrote about the caricature we have come to regard as the authentic Hillary Clinton:
Hillary Clinton’s reputation is largely the result of a quarter century of visceral GOP hatred.
With the exception of maybe Barack Obama, whom they’ve irrationally loathed with the fire of a thousands suns, it’s tough to name anyone conservatives have more vigorously derided throughout the years than Hillary Clinton.
…[Hillary] has always been cast as an arrogant bitch, a soulless bête noire, an irredeemably corrupt and fundamentally dishonest political hustler. From the very beginning of her time in the national political limelight, she was vilified for refusing to simply sit back and be an ornament on the White House Christmas tree, as she was apparently supposed to.
…She’s a lying liar and a cheating cheat. She’s a political Cthulu who drives men to madness by sheer force of her inhuman will and absolute malevolence. This is the caricature version of Hillary Clinton the right has carefully cultivated and hammered into the national consciousness for decades now. And if you’re a liberal who believes these things about Clinton — if you see her as anything other than a liberal Democrat who’s guilty of nothing more than being a politician with faults and with a plethora of enemies like every other on this planet, including Bernie Sanders — you’ve proven that the protracted smear campaign against this woman has worked. You prove that the GOP won a long time ago.
There are reasons you may choose not to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but one would hope they’re policy issues rather than problems with her personality — because the “personality” that’s been sold to the American electorate is largely manufactured, and not by Clinton herself (another facet of the smear: that she’s a phony). The reality is that Clinton was one of the most liberal members of the Senate during her time there, ranking within ten points of progressive messiah Bernie Sanders and her history as a crusader for progressive causes is precisely what so motivated the GOP to destroy her in the first place.
This decades-long, relentless campaign to create a supervillain, led by the GOP and abetted by the media, is so insidious and ubiquitous that we don’t even see it. We are merely left, at best, with a vague sense that there’s something about Hillary Clinton we just can’t trust.
The bitterest irony is that actually seeing Hillary Clinton, watching her in a live interview or a debate, where she isn’t so easily turned into a funhouse mirror image of herself through selective editing and suggestive voiceover, can be jarring to people primed to expect to see The Monster.
And they reach for the explanation with which the villanizers have preemptively provided them: She’s a fake. She can’t be trusted. She’s a cynical opportunist.
If you tune in with expectations of The Monster, and instead find a reasonably pleasant politician who is advocating policy more progressive than you’d anticipated, the ready-made resolution for this shocking discordance is that it’s evidence of Hillary’s cunning villainy.
That must be the explanation. Because the alternative, that Clinton has been demonized so thoroughly with heinous misogyny that her authentic humanity is truly unrecognizable, is unfathomably cruel.
Go read the whole damned thing.
This isn’t the last time
Scientists have been predicting it all along: As the climate changes dramatically, we’re going to see diseases where we’ve never seen them before, where people have no antibodies. I for one would like to grab those “pro life” climate deniers by the shoulders and shake some sense into them: “See what you’ve done?”
Before last fall, medical reports of babies born with brain damage and unusually small heads — a condition known as microcephaly — were so uncommon in Brazil that only about 150 cases were registered each year in the entire country. Now Brazilian officials are investigating thousands of them, and they contend that the mosquito-borne Zika virus is the cause.
Virus specialists are racing to understand the connection, if any, between Zika and the rash of microcephaly cases in Brazil, an undertaking that international officials warn could take six months or more.
But whatever the cause, “There is no doubt that Brazil is experiencing a significant increase in microcephaly,” said an official for Brazil’s Health Ministry who was not authorized to speak publicly. “We wouldn’t have declared this situation a health emergency if this increase had not been detected.”
The Zika epidemic has spread much faster than science’s understanding of it. Researchers here believe that the virus made the leap from Polynesia to Brazil during the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament. Since then, as many as 1.5 million people in Brazil are believed to have been infected, and the virus has spread to more than 20 countries and territories in the Americas.
Right now, the epidemic is happening in a country where women don’t have access to either birth control or abortion. Nor do they live in a society that can support the special care needed for these families. I don’t think any country is set up to deal with this. It is a nightmare.
The green-eyed monster
Maybe it’s because I dated an Irish politician that I would never dream of taking one at their word. And it’s clear to me that Joe Biden is still trying to sandbag Hillary Clinton, hoping the Dems come running to him to save the day. You know why? He hates raising money and campaigning, so he just wants to be crowned by acclamation:
Washington (CNN)Vice President Joe Biden offered effusive praise for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders Monday, lauding Hillary Clinton’s chief rival for doing a “heck of a job” on the campaign trail and praising Sanders for offering an authentic voice on income inequality.
And while Biden said Democrats had a slate of “great candidates” running for president, he suggested Clinton was a newcomer to issues like the growing gap between rich and poor.
Really, Joe? Forty years of advocacy for women and children on issues like income stability, pay and benefits means she’s a newcomer to income inequality? (Says the anti-abortion senator from MBNA.)
“Bernie is speaking to a yearning that is deep and real. And he has credibility on it,” Biden said during an interview with CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger.
“It’s relatively new for Hillary to talk about that,” Biden continued, acknowledging that Clinton has “come forward with some really thoughtful approaches to deal with the issue” of income inequality.
“Hillary’s focus has been other things up to now, and that’s been Bernie’s — no one questions Bernie’s authenticity on those issues,” he said.
Oh, Jesus Christ. Here we go with the code words. Look how blatantly this blarney-peddling politician paints Clinton as inauthentic. He does everything but put his hand to his mouth and whisper, “But don’t say you heard it from me.”
Kiss my Polish ass, Joe.
Carrie Fisher smackdown
Carrie Fisher is being criticized for not aging well now that people are seeing her in the new “Star Wars” movie. And she’s answering her critics. The actress has had it with unsolicited comments about how her looks have changed between the early “Star Wars” films of the ’70s and ’80s and the new “Force Awakens”… Continue reading “Carrie Fisher smackdown”
Likable
Sady Doyle with a remarkable essay on liking Hillary Clinton.
I think this is the big divide with male progressives re: Clinton. They “don’t like her.” She’s “sneaky.” Etc.
Most women (at least, women in the political world) know how much she isn’t allowed to say, isn’t even allowed to be. It makes a difference.
Anyway, if you want to understand, it’s a good piece.
(Also: This one, too.)
80 books no woman should read
I really like this article. As a female writer, I am still thoroughly flabbergasted at the notion that there is “manly” writing (i.e. “worthy” writing) and the lesser “womens” writing. I think there is good writing, and bad writing, and I’m not always reluctant to read the bad stuff if it has zing.
And it has always been a personal rule of mine to never, ever date a man who speaks highly of Charles Bukowski. (Because, you know, he’s so manly, goddamn it.)
There are good and great books on the Esquire list, though even Moby-Dick, which I love, reminds me that a book without women is often said to be about humanity but a book with women in the foreground is a woman’s book.
And that list would have you learn about women from James M. Cain and Philip Roth, who just aren’t the experts you should go to, not when the great oeuvres of Doris Lessing and Louise Erdrich and Elena Ferrante exist. I look over at my hero shelf and see Philip Levine, Rainer Maria Rilke, Virginia Woolf, Shunryu Suzuki, Adrienne Rich, Pablo Neruda, Subcomandante Marcos, Eduardo Galeano, Li Young Lee, Gary Snyder, James Baldwin, Annie Dillard, Barry Lopez.
These books are, if they are instructions at all, instructions in extending our identities out into the world, human and nonhuman, in imagination as a great act of empathy that lifts you out of yourself, not locks you down into your gender.
Instruments of oppression
One of the things we’re not allowed to talk about is that we could deal with global warming simply by encouraging people to limit themselves to two children. (I think you all know why.)
But look what we’re doing to rape victims in other countries:
This isn’t a situation where Congress has prevented the administration from acting. In fact, the solution is shockingly simple. The text of the Helms amendment only states that no U.S. foreign assistance money “may be used to pay for the performance of abortions as a method of family planning.” Atwood says that “most legal scholars who have looked at this issue say it’s a wildly exaggerated interpretation of that law” to apply it to cases of rape, incest or life endangerment. Obama could simply issue an executive order clarifying that the law has exceptions—the same exceptions that already exist domestically—or he could publicly direct the head of the USAID to start writing the exceptions into its contracts.
In August, 81 Democrats in Congress wrote urging Obama to take this step. A group of 28 senators followed suit in October with a strongly worded letter about women raped in conflict. “We cannot be bystanders to such gross violations of the human dignity of these women and girls,” the letter read. “If the U.S. does not work to increase access to reproductive healthcare for vulnerable populations, particularly safe abortion services, there will be negative, long-term consequences.” And in November, Hillary Clinton was asked about the issue at an Iowa town hall. She didn’t commit to revising the interpretation of Helms if she were elected president, but said, “I do think we have to take a look at this for conflict zones.”
So far, though, the Obama administration has been unwilling to change the policy. Until that happens, women who are raped and become pregnant in developing countries and conflict zones are often unable to get a safe abortion. To understand what this means for a rape victim, how U.S. policy can warp an entire country’s health system and the course of a woman’s life, the best place to begin is Kenya.
Leadership!
Imagine, on a college campus! He should be ashamed:
COLUMBIA – MU’s Interim Chancellor Hank Foley annouced his decision Monday not to restore the refer and follow privileges that allow abortions to be performed in Columbia’s facility.
Following the decision, the Department of Health will take away its abortion license leaving the St. Louis Planned Parenthood the only facility in the state where abortion can be performed.
Coordinator for Mizzou for Planned Parenthood Jordan Hoyt said the organization sent Chancellor Foley more than 2,500 signatures and approximately 1,700 emails asking him to support Planned Parenthood.
“If we lose those privileges, the Missouri will become a one-provider state for abortion services leaving our St. Louis health center as the only remaining provider,” Hoyt said.
On the bright side, it will make it so much easier for the next right-wing nutjob to shoot up only one site!