HEY! Republican Candidates Shut Up Already!

Pious Bigots

My eldest daughter, 37, mother of three, a doula and aspiring midwife told me today that she is literally sick to her stomach over the attack on women’s health issues by the Republicans.  To hear them attack Planned Parenthood as if it were the destruction of the world as we know it, is mind-boggling and to single out women’s health for attack is, yes, sickening.  Any woman who supports these bigots is doing a disservice to all women.

But, we know what they are really up to—use women’s rights as a social wedge so they can continue the policies that will make them and their “money men” richer and more powerful.

I hope and pray that they can’t pull this off again!!  This political strategy  gave up a second Bush term and the crazies that were elected in the 2010 midterms.

Come on middle class conservative voters, you are being used by your political party to vote against your own economic interests. Morality is personal and each person is responsible for their own—don’t let republican politicians fool you—for them it’s about power for the wealthy and the corporations.  And that’s all.

Bullies Are Usually Chicken!

Governor Chris Christie is a very rude and sarcastic man, using his “bully”pulpit to talk down to people.  But, he doesn’t have the guts to sign the gay marriage bill just passed by the NJ State Legislature.  He is going to put civil rights up for a referendum!  His job as governor is to make tough decisions and his religion should not get in the way of his supporting civil rights for all his constituents.

A panel of MEN at a GOP hearing regarding contraception for women! The Chairman of the Committee, Darrell Issa, would not allow women to testify—-he is definitely both a bully and a chicken.

President Obama Don’t Back Down

Stand with women and the constitution against religious pressure.

Whose Conscience?  NYT   Linda Greenhouse

In the escalating conflict over the new federal requirement that employers include contraception coverage without a co-pay in the insurance plans they make available to their employees, opposition from the Catholic church and its allies is making headway with a powerfully appealing claim: that when conscience and government policy collide, conscience must prevail.

While the policy grounds are fully persuasive – the ability to prevent or space pregnancy being an essential part of women’s health care, one that shouldn’t be withheld simply because a woman’s employer is church-affiliated – the purpose of this column is to examine the conscience claim itself, directly, to see whether it holds up.

An obvious starting point is with the 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women who, just like other American women, have exercised their own consciences and availed themselves of birth control at some point during their reproductive lives. So it’s important to be clear that the conscientious objection to the regulation comes from an institution rather than from those whose consciences it purports to represent. (Catholic women actually have a higher rate of abortion than other American women, but I’ll stick to birth control for now.) While most Catholics dissent in the privacy of their bedrooms from the church’s position, some are pushing back in public. The organization Catholics for Choice, whose magazine is pointedly entitled Conscience, is calling on its supporters to “tell our local media that the bishops are out of touch with the lived reality of the Catholic people” and “do not speak for us on this decision.”

Privatization…Opportunists Taking Advantage Of Taxpayers With The Government’s Blessing

Taxpayers spend years paying to institute needed government programs, then the government privatizes these programs, enabling private business to make money on the backs of the taxpayers.

The Privatization Trap by Mike Lonczal of Salon

Privatizing the government is one of the most active projects of the early 21st century.

Everything we once expected the government to do — from education to regulatory rule-writing to military operations to healthcare services to prison management — it now does less of, preferring to support markets in which these services are done through independent, profit-maximizing agents. Tools such as contracting out, vouchering and the selling-off of state assets have been used to remake the government during our market-worshipping era.

Rather than solving problems with government, privatization often amplifies those issues to new extremes. Instead of unleashing market innovation, it often introduces new parasitic partners into the decision-making process. Instead of providing a check on the power of the government, it allows the state to circumvent constitutional and democratic accountability measures by merging with the private sector.

Privatization replaces the democratic role of citizens finding solutions to collective problems and transforms it into consumers trucking and bargaining in a marketplace. Finding solutions in a public space emphasizes accountability, voice, transparency, rules and claims through reasoning that goes beyond the self.

Then Don’t Take The Money!

Babies? Our Decision!

Rulings on Contraception Draw Battle Lines at Catholic Universities—Denise Brady   NYT  January 29, 2012

This month the Obama administration, citing the medical case for birth control, made a politically charged decision that the new health care law requires insurance plans at Catholic institutions to cover birth control without co-payments for employees, and that may be extended to students. But Catholic organizations are resisting the rule, saying it would force them to violate their beliefs and finance behavior that betrays Catholic teachings.

Despite Catholic teachings, surveys have found that 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women, as in the general population, have used contraceptives.

During his lecture, Archbishop Dolan criticized people who postponed conception with “chemicals and latex,” calling them part of the “culture of death…”

It’s hard to believe that men are still telling women what to do with their bodies.  If Catholic Universities do not want to comply with the law, then they should relinquish federal funding.

Mr. Romney All Twisted Up

Can we really trust someone who has been on both sides of almost every important issue to be “leader of the free world?”

Romney’s Top Five Flip Flops

The Flat Tax

Massachussetts Health Care

Women’s Choice

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

Constitutional Amendment Defining Life

Romney’s Top Three Bald Faced Lies 

Obama Has Made the Economy Worse

Obama Has Made the United States Less Safe

Massachussetts Health Care Law Is NOT Like Obama’s  Affordable Care Act

The 21st Century…” All Of The Above”

US ENERGY INDEPENDENCE IS ON ITS WAY!?  Listen to this link…

On Point: America’s big energy makeover.

American Energy. President Obama says we’re going to become an energy power again. Is he right? And how clean can the energy be?

In this Oct. 27, 2011 photo, a wind turbine is seen at the First Wind project in Sheffield, Vt. Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin wants the state to get 90 percent of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2050, largely eliminating the state’s reliance on fossil fuels. (AP)

It was energy boomtown talk in the State of the Union address the other night. The President, lit up like Jed Clampett in the Beverly Hillbillies, talking about American-made energy. Black gold. Texas tea. And nearly everything else on the energy menu. Every fossil fuel but coal. Natural gas. Fracking all over. New offshore oil drilling. Wind, solar, green tech, clean tech.

“All of the above!” said the President, talking about the USA as a rip-snorting energy powerhouse again. Yes, this is politics. But that’s not all.

-Tom Ashbrook

Common Sense and Nerves Of Steel

“…teamwork of America’s Armed Forces. At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together.

The state of our Union is getting stronger. And we’ve come too far to turn back now. As long as I’m President, I will work with anyone in this chamber to build on this momentum. But I intend to fight obstruction with action, and I will oppose any effort to return to the very same policies that brought on this economic crisis in the first place.

No, we will not go back to an economy weakened by outsourcing, bad debt, and phony financial profits.

On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Some even said we should let it die. With a million jobs at stake, I refused to let that happen.

My message is simple. It’s time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas, and start rewarding companies that create jobs right here in America. Send me these tax reforms, and I’ll sign them right away.

Of course, the easiest way to save money is to waste less energy. So here’s another proposal: Help manufacturers eliminate energy waste in their factories and give businesses incentives to upgrade their buildings. Their energy bills will be $100 billion lower over the next decade, and America will have less pollution, more manufacturing, and more jobs for construction workers who need them. Send me a bill that creates these jobs.

Tax reform should follow the Buffett rule: If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes. And my Republican friend Tom Coburn is right: Washington should stop subsidizing millionaires.

Now, you can call this class warfare all you want. But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense…”

As President Obama was giving his common sense State of the Union speech he knew that his decision to send in Navy Seals to rescue prisoners taken by Somali pirates had been successful.  Nerves of Steel!