George W. Bush wants healthcare workers (including anyone, even a receptionist booking appointments) to be able to deny you healthcare based upon their religious/moral/ethical beliefs. Not on your need or legally protected right but their beliefs. I (and the readers of this blog) am well aware that states already provide for this in the case of pharmacists, doctors and nurses. Now the Bushman wants to extend this to any employee of a healthcare company and not require the individual to declare their objection prior to hiring/scheduling/working.

My real point here is with everything this healthcare system already does to deny healthcare to those who need it, why is our government working to provide new ways to disenfranchise those who need it? But when the Republican candidtate doesn’t believe that pregnancy is really dangerous, are any of us really surprised?

Let me qualify all of this to say that I am an Edwards supporter. His “Two Americas” theme resonated with me so deeply on so many levels that in my head I amended it to “Many Americas.” We are a country of many different classes, races, cultures and sexes/orientation. All of these vying for a piece of the fabled American pie only to be disappointed with the measly little crumbs of patronizing lip service.

I became politically aware with Ronald Reagan, Abortion Rights, AIDS, Lyndon LaRouche and Immigrant Amnesty in Southern California. I was 13 in 1980 in a private Catholic school, a bit of a rebel and watching my family unit disintegrate in divorce. I watched my mom work three jobs while my dad went to Hawaii on vacation. I watched fear of and hate for people who were different and dying become accepted and expected. I cast my first vote in a presidential campaign in 1988 for Michael Dukakis (really against GHWB) and spent the next four years horrified by things like the Savings and Loan Scandal, the first Gulf War and the invasion of Panama. While I am not a member of the Democratic Party, I have never voted for a Republican. I have always been an issues voter and they land in two categories – my right to dominion over my body and the protection of civil rights.

Now, reading that paragraph most people would come to the conclusion that I would be a supporter of Clinton. Nope. She voted to give The Idiot the authorization for preemptive strike and never admitted personal culpability. I don’t trust her to not hold on to the expanded powers of the presidency that were manufactured by the current administration. IMO she is too much of a centrist (like her husband) to really bring the fight to the right (beyond pointing the finger of conspiracy) and too beholden to corporate interests to want to. The fact that she is a woman never made it into my mind as a factor either for or against her – I simply didn’t think it mattered. I wasn’t surprised that it became a huge crutch for the MSM and the right-wing noise machine to exploit. I was disappointed to hear the same “stories” perpetuated on the left – “the nag,” “the cleavage,” “the husband.” It wasn’t until today, hearing her concession speech that I realized how much I care about a female becoming president of the United States someday.

Lines like this got me in the gut as it was designed to do:

To all those women in their 80s and their 90s born before women could vote who cast their votes for our campaign. I’ve told you before about Florence Steen of South Dakota, who was 88 years old, and insisted that her daughter bring an absentee ballot to her hospice bedside. Her daughter and a friend put an American flag behind her bed and helped her fill out the ballot. She passed away soon after, and under state law, her ballot didn’t count. But her daughter later told a reporter, “My dad’s an ornery old cowboy, and he didn’t like it when he heard mom’s vote wouldn’t be counted. I don’t think he had voted in 20 years. But he voted in place of my mom.”

Bob and I got to talking about it. It is embarrassing and shameful that the US has not had a female or minority executive (pres or veep) when you can point to a lot of other countries who have beat “our great democracy” to both the race and/or gender barriers. I am not going to make a lot of gender-based arguments about why a female would be a good/better/best choice. Frankly, I don’t think the sex of a candidate matters. However, I do believe that a lot of qualified, talented and ambitious women have been overlooked and flat-out discouraged because of their sex. It will take the concerted effort of women across the country to raise additional well qualified, female candidates, again and again until one finally manages to win the nomination and the office. This country needs to grow up and stop thinking like a straight adolescent with his first Playboy® magazine. I am not sure how long this is going to take but I am willing to believe it can happen in my lifetime.

As for the BS about voting for McCain…

First, read this from Tbogg and if you are a supporter of Clinton, you are not going to easily vote for a man who can do that. If you care at all about controlling your reproductive rights (male or female) you will not vote for a man who has this kind of record. If you care about healthcare, veterans’ rights, the economy and Iraq you are not going to toss your support for Clinton out the window for a man whose record and intent is diametrically opposed to your former candidate. So, time to grow up and suck it up, boys and girls. We can still make history here and start the long, difficult clean up after this tragic 8 year frat party.

UPDATE: Don’t just take my word for it! Go see Christy!

Karaoke singer attacked after starting song
Woman punches man on stage
By HECTOR CASTRO
P-I REPORTER

It could have been the Coldplay song “Yellow” that upset the patron of a Wallingford neighborhood bar. Or perhaps it was the karaoke singer who belted it out.

Employees at Changes, on North 45th Street, said they don’t know, but the ensuing melee just past 1 a.m. Thursday was one unlike anything seen at the bar before.

As soon as the man on stage started singing about the stars in his best Chris Martin impersonation, the woman reportedly said: “Oh, no, not that song. I can’t stand that song!”

Witnesses said her distaste for Coldplay quickly took a violent turn, and she leaped at the would-be crooner, shouting expletives and telling him that his singing “sucked,” while expressing the same opinion of the song, according to a Seattle police report.

She pushed the man and punched him, all in an effort to stop his singing.

Other patrons went to the singer’s aid and hauled the 21-year-old woman outside.

“It took three or four of us to hold her down,” said Robert Willmette, one of the bartenders at Changes.

The woman, Willmette said, “went crazy” when she got outside, punching him twice in the face, and throwing blows at the others gathered around her.

But the person who drew most of the music critic’s ire was an off-duty Seattle police officer. The off-duty officer identified herself as a cop, gave her badge number and had another patron call 911 to request help for an officer.

The response was fast and overwhelming, with both patrol officers and Gang Unit detectives converging on the normally tame neighborhood bar.

“They blocked the whole street off,” Willmette said.

According to the police report, the woman’s rage only grew when the uniformed officers arrived.

The officers took the woman, whom Willmette described as “a little hippie girl,” to the ground, but she was still able to head butt the off-duty officer several times before she was handcuffed.

After treatment for injuries she suffered in the scuffle, the woman was booked into the King County Jail for investigation of assault. She was also held on a warrant issued for a previous theft charge.

The off-duty officer also went to the hospital, for treatment of several cuts, scrapes and bruises.

Later Thursday morning, bar employees were shaking their heads over the woman’s bizarre behavior.

According to the night bartender’s notes, she had just one drink — a single shot of Jägermeister.

She didn’t appear to be one of the regulars who flock to the bar for its karaoke nights on Sundays and Wednesdays.

Most are regulars who come for the pleasure of the singing, and the police are rarely needed.

“She was just crazy,” Willmette said.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/327017_karaoke10.html

Cecelia Fire Thunder, a former nurse who is the first female president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, said it was “an eye-opener” when legislators approved a law that prohibits abortion in nearly all cases, even when the pregnancy is the product of a rape or incest. The only exception is to save the mother’s life.

“An Indian reservation is a sovereign nation and we’re going to take it as far as we can to exercise our sovereignty,” said Fire Thunder, whose Pine Ridge Reservation encompasses 2.7 million acres in southwestern South Dakota. “As Indian women, we fight many battles. This is just another battle we have to fight.”

Because federally recognized tribes are not, in many cases, required to abide by state law, a clinic could operate lawfully at Pine Ridge even with a ban in place, said South Dakota Attorney General Larry Long.

This would be a good time to write a letter to the editor of the Times. And the Washington State Pharmacy Association.

I’m just sayin.

Dear Target Guest;

Sincerely,
Jennifer Hanson
Target Executive Offices

I’ve got commentary, but mostly, it’s sputtering.

In the book, Santorum makes the case that abortion puts the liberty rights of the mother before those of her child, just as the rights of slave owners were put before those of slaves.

“This was tried once before in America,” Santorum writes. “But unlike abortion today, in most states even the slaveholder did not have the unlimited right to kill his slave.”(after all wanton destruction of valuable property was/is considered a crime )

So now, being pro-choice means I am pro slavery? Children are equivalent to antebellum slaves? Actually, this Pennsylvania Senator of dubious mental health has it all wrong. Taking my reproductive choice away makes me and all women the slaves in a conservative Christian America. But, of course, this is a convenient reference to Dred Scott v. Sandford that made people in the north and in the territories fear that the courts and the Constitution would be used to force a state to accept slavery within its borders. The Right uses this decision to fan the flames of hatred for the courts and the supremacy of Roe over state level legislation.

Choice does not mean that every woman has to have an abortion. Lots of women choose to bring their pregnancy to term. Some of those women risk their lives doing it. But they choose to do it. Have a child, don’t have a child – I don’t care. All I care is whether you have the choice.

Congress knows that the 25 million American men of marriageable age refuse to marry and take on the risk and responsibility of raising children precisely because of the draconian provisions in legislation like VAWA. They understand precisely how such legislation makes marriage a hostile environment for any man, and they know that this left 21 million potential wives and single mothers alone at the altar, quintupling our illegitimacy rate to two-out-of-every-five childbirths. They know that a father whose family is destroyed by a divorce which was encouraged and is supported by such programs is twice as likely to die of heart disease and cancer, three times as likely to die of diabetes or an accident, four times as likely to die of respiratory disease or to commit suicide or to be murdered, and five times as likely to die of cirrhosis, than he was before his children were taken from him in the name of a cause whose terms have yet to be defined.

Apparently, the Christian Party has a few reservations about legislation that allows federal funds to be spent on hotlines, shelters and legal aid for victims of abuse. It seems that they also have a problem with Jews and blacks and apparently anyone who disagrees with them. They even have a page where you can sign on to have the 19th Amendment repealed. I believe they qualify for the wingnut-whackjob discount.

In light of the hoped for renewal of this act, I would also like to bring to light the continuing outrage that is happening in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Hundreds of maquiladora workers have been killed and neither the government nor the corporations have instituted any type of patrols or security to help protect these women. Ideally, one would like to see a killer apprehended and punished but in the meantime how about some secure transportation for the workers to and from the plants. That isn’t too much to ask, is it Alcoa, DuPont? What about it GE (of course, with investors like these in a 700MW power plant what do you care about 340 women dying)? With the millions you are making by paying lower than market wages while providing minimal health benefits, don’t you think you can afford to ensure that your workers at least make it home alive by putting in place corporate security escorts or demanding that the government increase the number of police rather than a lot of fancy sounding reviews and programs? That’s what I thought.