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This is the global Feminist Blogs aggregator. It collects articles from many smaller community hubs within the Feminist Blogs network. For stories from particular places, groups, or other communities within our movement, check out some of these sites.

September 2009

Medicare for All Sit-Ins Begin – 17 Arrested at Aetna

Universal health care activists -- supporters of Medicare for All -- are moving into the deadly serious civil disobedience stage of the campaign. Beginning this week, sit-ins will be staged at health insurance offices across the country. Seventeen were arrested on Sept. 29th at a sit-in at Aetna in Midtown Manhattan. "They were charged with criminal trespass."

A Sit-in at Aetna: "Aetna Is the Real Death Panel": The 19 participants, wearing T-shirts with slogans that read "Medicare for All" and chanting "patients, not profits!" linked arms and sat down in the lobby of the Aetna building, prompting Aetna employees to step around them on their way into their offices, where insurance claim reviewers are busy looking for ways to deny people the lifesaving treatment that they need. A crowd of supporters picketing outside the building held signs that said "Aetna is the real death panel," and "Single payer now." Watch it!


Mobilization for Health Care for All is launching a national campaign of "Patients Not Profit" sit-ins at insurance company offices to demand an end to a system that profits by denying people care. We want the real "public option": Medicare for All, a single payer plan that cuts out the profit and puts patients first. . .

We hope that our actions will save the lives of some of the people who are being denied critical care by these death panels today. But we know we can save the lives of millions in the years to come by putting a spotlight on just why our system is broken and how urgently we need fundamental change. We will go to jail to demand that the insurance companies stop denying care to their members immediately, but our sacrifice will be a call to our entire nation to stand up to these death panels and demand real reform - Medicare for All - that finally ensures that every one of us gets the health care we need.

Sit-ins are being organized across the country. Visit Mobilization for Health Care for All and sign up to organize a sit-in in your town. / See: A Sit-in at Aetna: "Aetna Is the Real Death Panel" / Sixteen Arrested in NYC as Campaign for Single Payer Begins.

Democrat Alan Grayson Apologizes to the Dead for America’s Health Care (Video)

Don't faint. Here's a Democrat with a spine! In the video clip below Rep. Alan Grayson (FL) kicks ass with his response to GOP demands for an apology for his recent comments on "the GOP health care plan."

Republicans are outraged because Grayson announced on the House floor that the 2 components of the Republican health care plan are: 1) Don't Get Sick. 2) If You Get Sick, Die Quickly.

Naturally, the idea of dying quickly is all about not costing anyone any money. What would life in America be like if it wasn't always and forever all about the money?

We need more Democrats like Alan Grayson. Okay, he messed up with the use of "holocaust," but otherwise his argument is righteous, and he has passion, and he has a spine! And isn't it refreshing to hear a lawmaker talk about radical things like caring about people?

Apology to the Dead


Republican Health Care Plan: Die Quickly


Thank Grayson for being a Dem with a Spine!
Related: Grayson kicks ass on CNN's Situation Room

Leave Jim Cooper (D-TN) ALONE!

TN-05: Leave Jim Cooper ALLLOOONE! Says kos.

And Rachel Maddow. . .


Poor Jim Cooper. It's a left-wing conspiracy!

MyDD: Taking on Cooper
The Ed Show And Countdown Hit Cooper on Public Option
Slinkerwink: ACCOUNTABILITY NOW PAC GOES AFTER JIM COOPER!
Tom Humphrey: Cooper on Liberal Critics: They Don't Know Me

Michael Steele’s RNC tied to web site that promoted military coup against the President

by Pam Spaulding

Now how are the Republicans going to say that it's just a few nuts out there trolling against the POTUS?

Michael "MC" Steele shoots out press releases all day long (trust me, they land in my inbox then most I laugh at and then hit the delete button), but somehow I doubt anyone over at the RNC is tapping on the keyboard about this. (Media Matters):

Yesterday, Newsmax columnist John L. Perry brought up the possibility of a military coup against President Obama.  Most chilling, perhaps, was the fact that Perry seemed to offer tepid support for the idea.  “A coup is not an ideal option,” he acknowledged, “but Obama’s radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.”

...But more significant than a radical opinion piece is the fact that the Republican National Committee appears to provide financial support to the website that published it.  Indeed, the RNC has recently borrowed Newsmax’s email list (presumably for a fee) so Michael Steele could fear-monger about the Democrats’ “desire for socialist control over our lives.”

This is becoming an alarming pattern for Steele’s RNC.  As conservative blogger Jon Henke previously noted, the RNC has also rented an email list from World Net Daily, one of the main culprits behind conspiracy theories regarding Obama’s birth certificate.  When Henke emailed the RNC for comment, the RNC refused to distance itself from World Net Daily or comment on their relationship.

Pen-Elayne on the Web 2009-10-01 03:10:00

More Cool Pics

The White House has updated its Flickr stream again:



My favorite is the shot of the entire Cabinet - it actually looks more like America than I would imagine most previous Cabinets to look - but what really impressed me were all the photos taken by Pete Souza in Pittsburgh. Just looking at the mutual respect between our President and other countries' heads of state... I mean, it's enough to make you believe we're an actual part of the wider world again. (I also found it cool that there's at least one woman, Samantha Appleton, among the official WH photographers.)
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THE most DANGEROUS woman in the WORLD….?

Wow. When political targeting goes wrong, it goes really, really wrong. Just received this hilarious, poorly designed email from some politician named John Dennis who is trying to challenge Speaker Nancy Pelosi in my home district in California.

Personally, the underlined statements are the best. If you read them in a Dr. Evil voice, you can almost make the fear mongering from the GOP funny:

I'm the Republican candidate challenging the most dangerous woman in the United States - Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.

As Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi represents the greatest threat to restoring our nation's financial health and to continuing the great American experiment in liberty.

It's not only our nation's economic future that is at risk in the current debate over health care, it is the future of individual freedom.

Nancy Pelosi has called those of us who protest her scheme, "un-American."  What is "un-American" is to remain silent while she and her left-wing allies trample the Constitution in an attempt to increase the size and power of the Federal bureaucracy.

If you are a concerned American like me, you realize how important it is to have someone speak out against the Pelosi Agenda of expanding government control over every aspect of our personal lives.

We are going to take the fight right to Pelosi - That's why I need your help.

Jennifer, it's critical to have the support of people like you who care deeply about America and its future.

Sure, I care about America, buddy, but sheesh - could you have picked a WORSE person to receive this email? I only happened to work for Nancy Pelosi during college.

Good grief - is this really what conservatives are using to rally their base? Now that's scary.

Still scratching my head about how I could have possibly ended up on this email list. Maybe it was all that covert conservative organizing I did while growing up in the Haight-Ashbury?

<insert sarcasm here>

I also love how this guy talks about what is really at risk in the health care debate: the future of individual freedom.

(underline, underline, underline)

Hmm - so I guess that means he is pro-choice, right? Doubtful.

NY Times: On Paper Sons

The New York Times had an excellent article on the “paper son” phenomenon that hugely impacted Chinese American immigration into this country. Here’s an excerpt:

“When we think about illegal immigration, we think about Mexican immigrants, whereas in fact illegal immigration cuts across all immigrant groups,” said Erika Lee, the author of “At America’s Gate: Chinese Immigration During the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943.” The book traces how today’s national apparatus of immigration restriction was created and shaped by efforts to keep out Chinese workers and to counter the tactics they developed to overcome the barriers.

The current parallels are striking, said Professor Lee, who teaches history at the University of Minnesota. And though some descendants of paper sons do not make the connection, many others have become immigrant rights advocates in law, politics or museums like this one, which hopes to draw a national audience to its new Chinatown space, designed by Maya Lin.

“In the Chinese-American community, it has only been very recently that these types of histories have been made public,” Professor Lee said. “Even my own grandparents who came in as paper sons were very, very reluctant to talk about this.”

[...]

“To get into the U.S. under the laws back then, I had to pretend to be another person,” Mr. Hom wrote. His father had bought him immigration papers that included 32 pages of information he was to memorize in preparation for hours of interrogation at Ellis Island.

Such cheat sheets were part of an elaborate, self-perpetuating cycle of enforcement and evasion, historians say. The authorities kept ratcheting up their scrutiny and requirements for documents, feeding a lucrative network of fraud and official corruption as immigrants tried to show they were either merchants or native-born citizens, groups exempt from the exclusion laws.

Read the full article here: Immigration Stories, From Shadows to Spotlight

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Nat’l Review and Political Cesspool’s Derbyshire says women should not have the right to vote

by Pam Spaulding

Conservative writer John Derbyshire went on Alan Colmes’s radio show and showed his not-so-inner bigot and misogynist. I’ll just let him speak for himself. (Think Progress):

John Derbyshire, a British-American conservative author and columnist for the National Review, has written a new book titled We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism. The book contains a section called “The Case Against Female Suffrage.” Yesterday on his radio show, Alan Colmes asked Derbyshire to articulate his argument.

DERBYSHIRE: Among the hopes that I do not realistically nurse is the hope that female suffrage will be repealed. But I’ll say this – if it were to be, I wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep.

COLMES: We’d be a better country if women didn’t vote?

DERBYSHIRE: Probably. Don’t you think so?

COLMES: No, I do not think so whatsoever.

DERBYSHIRE: Come on Alan. Come clean here [laughing].

COLMES: We would be a better country? John Derbyshire making the statement, we would be a better country if women did not vote.

DERBYSHIRE: Yeah, probably.

Did I mention that Derbyshire has a wife, Rosie and two children, Dannie and Nellie? I wonder how those views go over in that household. He also said that he would like to repeal the 1964 Civil Rights Act because you “shouldn’t try to force people to be good.” Well, in spite of that law, we still see a ton of racism out there. Obviously you can’t force people to renounce their racism.

Bonus points! He has appeared as a guest on The Political Cesspool. Remember that? It’s the a white nationalist, white supremacist, conspiracy theorist, and extreme right-wing radio show broadcast hosted by none other than James Edwards, who called me a ”black lesbian pervert” for pointing out Hank Williams Jr’s racist ways.

From an earlier post about Edwards:And on the guest list of this proudly racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic radio show's site you'll find MSM talking heads like Bay and Pat Buchanan. Pat, btw, stands next to a beaming James Edwards on the site's photo page. Edwards is also photographed at an event with former KKK Grand Dragon/Wizard/WTF-ever David Duke, who has also been a guest on The Political Cesspool. The mission of the Cesspool dovetails nicely with the Klan's, by the way:

America would not be as prosperous, ruggedly individualistic, and a land of opportunity if the founding stock were not Europeans.

Since family is the foundation of any strong society, we are against feminism, abortion, and primitivism.

We wish to revive the White birthrate above replacement level fertility and beyond to grow the percentage of Whites in the world relative to other races.

We are cultural conservatives because we have certain morals to which we adhere. We are against homosexuality, vulgarity, loveless sex, and masochism.

Related:
* The Cesspool Overfloweth

“The Wisconsin Tourism Federation has changed its name, after being made aware that its acronym WTF had become crude internet slang.”

null
Per The Guardian:

… It seems that the federation was unaware of – or unconcerned by – the modern meaning of WTF until its acronym featured on a blog that compiles unfortunate corporate logos earlier this year.

Commenters wondered whether an expression of foul-mouthed astonishment was the best way of boosting tourism to a state that would not be an obvious choice for most holidaymakers.

The federation, a coalition of local trade bodies, has now amended its website to reflect the more anodyne name, which has been changed for the first time since it was founded in 1979.

The website also features the group’s new TFW logo, complete with squashed text to find room for the extra word “of”. …

See also. Via.

–Ann Bartow

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Christ, what a derbhole

by Amanda Marcotte

Pam’s already posted on John Derbyshire’s comments about repealing women’s suffrage, but I just have a couple of thoughts I have to add.  This is far from the first time that a conservative pundit has groused in public about women’s suffrage.  The most famous recent-ish incident was Ann Coulter making the same suggestion.  Someone should do a one page website and just keep track of all the times this meme surfaces in the mainstream media, as a reminder of how this sort of right wing extremism has a toehold in the mainstream, as a way to shame mainstream outlets that give these morons airtime.  Though I suppose it’s worth pointing out that Alan Colmes was the interviewer when Derbyshire spouted off about this, and he seems to have set out to expose Derbyshire as an extreme misogynist.  Which makes me wonder if he followed up by asking Derbyshire about his opinions on the prongability of young teenagers.

But The Derb wasn’t actually spouting off, to be perfectly fair.  The subject didn’t just come up by accident at all.  Colmes asked the question, because Derbyshire’s new book has an entire chapter making the case against female suffrage. With that information in mind, you’d think that Derbyshire might, when asked about it, have some kind of case against women’s suffrage.  But he doesn’t, it appears.  His “argument” is that a) women didn’t used to have the vote and b) anyway, they vote for Democrats.  I’m not entirely sure how he got an entire chapter out of that, because when pressed on point #1, he seemed not to have even given a moment’s consideration to the fact that “that’s how we used to do it” isn’t much of an argument at all, since it would mean we still have slavery but don’t have penicillin. 

But the real argument, if you can call it an argument, against women’s suffrage is that a majority of women don’t vote the way that The Derb wants them to.  In fact, this is always the argument that anti-suffragists (can you believe we still have them in 2009?) lean on.  Which demonstrates that while they’re implying that women are stupid, it’s the anti-suffragists who couldn’t find their own asses with both hands and a map.  If you think you can just repeal half the population’s right to vote because you don’t like the outcome, then why even bother with democracy in the first place?  Why give the voters two choice or more, if there’s only one right and acceptable choice for everyone?  Why not just do what they used to do in Iraq and pass out ballots with one choice, resulting in miraculous elections where Saddam Hussein got 100% of the vote? 

That’s why I suspect they aren’t even being serious so much as using this issue as a way to stir up hatred and resentment against women for being uppity and voting for who they want, instead of who they’re told to vote for.  The Republicans get a lot of dividends off sowing resentment against disobedient, independent women, from the abortion issue to the constant titillating stories about sexual women on “The O’Reilly Factor” to the scapegoating of prominent women like Hillary Clinton. 

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