Maybe we should just be glad he doesn’t call women bitches and hos, like his buddy Jay-Z.

(via Corrente)

"Today, NARAL Pro-Choice America PAC is proud to endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president. Sen. Obama has been a strong advocate for a woman's right to choose throughout his career in public office. He steadfastly supports and defends a woman's right to make the most personal, private decisions regarding her reproductive health without interference from government or politicians.

"Sen. Obama has been a leader on this issue in the United States Senate. Since joining the Senate in 2005, he has worked to unite Americans on both side of this debate behind commonsense, common-ground ways to prevent unintended pregnancy. Sen. Obama supports legislation to provide our teens with comprehensive sex education, prevent pharmacies from denying women access to their legal birth-control prescriptions, and increase access to family-planning services.

Ellen Malcolm of EMILY's List was not pleased. She released the following statement today:

"I think it is tremendously disrespectful to Sen. Clinton - who held up the nomination of a FDA commissioner in order to force approval of Plan B and who spoke so eloquently during the Supreme Court nomination about the importance of protecting Roe vs. Wade - to not give her the courtesy to finish the final three weeks of the primary process. It certainly must be disconcerting for elected leaders who stand up for reproductive rights and expect the choice community will stand with them."

Though Malcolm has been hitting this theme pretty hard lately, I have a hard time seeing NARAL's endorsement as a betrayal. It looks to me like they simply came to terms with the delegate count.

NARAL president Nancy Keenan took pains to note Clinton's excellent record on choice:

"Americans have been fortunate to have two fully pro-choice candidates in the race for the Democratic nomination. But only one can go forward to the general election. It is truly historic for us to have these two outstanding candidates in the race."

Unlike EMILY's List, NARAL has no stated commitment to supporting female pro-choice politicians. As Keenan says, Clinton and Obama both have phenomenal records on this issue. If NARAL truly believed Obama to be the superior candidate on choice, they could have made this endorsement months ago. (Such a move would have been far more damaging to Clinton.) I do have to ask, though, why NARAL chose to endorse now rather than, say, after one of the candidate has officially dropped out?

I wonder if NARAL is going to lose donor support over this move. I've gotta believe that a lot of NARAL's core donors are Clinton supporters. Also, is this a bad move in general because it's likely to be spun, in the media, as a "catfight" between pro-choice organizations? Other groups, such as the National Women's Political Caucus, have chastised NARAL's endorsement because they "believe that this announcement at this time will divide the choice community at a time when we need to stand united." Similar themes are popping up in this comment thread over at Blog for Choice.

Thoughts, y'all? (Please, please keep it civil. Both Clinton and Obama supporters are participants in this blog community. Be kind.)

Monica Wade was born and raised in Oakland, CA. She is now the Office Manager of Justice Now and is also the founder and director of Tender Care, transitional housing for those who need and want to be in a safe and healthy environment. She was incarcerated for 10 years of her life and knows what goes on behind prison walls and the torture and pain people go through.

Once a person is released, then what? What if they’ve been there 25 years? Then what? Children are all up and grown; rest of the family is dead or married. Where do they go? And how do they support themselves?

Once you’re incarcerated and you get out, things change. The people that you know have changed. The job fields have changed. So you’re dealing with all these changes all around, and you, personally, are changed.

You have to have a Plan A, Plan B and Plan C. You have to be able to take care of yourself. When you’re starting all over from scratch, that takes money. It costs to live.

And that’s where transitional housing comes in. I started Tender Care as support for people coming back to their community. “Community-based” jails and prisons are not the answer. The answer is to provide people with what they are lacking, whether it be a place to stay, a skill, or just a caring hand.
I’ve been around re-entry for over 40 years of my life. I can tell my clients, “I’ve been in your shoes before”. But we need more support for transitional housing that is community-run. All the programs that we offer at Tender Care are by organizations run by ex -felons that have made a difference in the community. We have our own solutions.

I love this thing.

They're raising awareness about some of the reprehensible positions Schlafly has taken with regard to women's place in society. They picketed the chancellor's home. And they're instructing students:

If you are opposed to Washington University’s decision to award Schlafly an honorary doctorate please join us by SILENTLY STANDING and TURNING YOUR BACK when Schlafly is granted her degree.

That was among the actions suggested in comments here! Commencement is in two days, and I hope there's footage of the protest...

AngryBlackBitch has more.

“Anna sold many of her belongings to help Frederick purchase the train tickets for his escape. She also sewed the sailor uniform he wore as a disguise and accumulated the necessary items for starting a household.”

Jay Cost at Real Clear Politics has a spreadsheet showing how Hillary could end the primary season with the lead in the popular vote. The three key contests are West Virginia, Kentucky, and Puerto Rico. The spreadsheet is interactive, so you can play with the numbers to test various results.

Last night Hillary out-performed the prediction for West Virginia, taking 41% of the vote (which also had higher turnout than predicted) for a net of 147,328 votes.

If she goes on to perform as predicted in Kentucky and Puerto Rico, she’ll end this race with an easy majority in the total popular vote. That’s assuming you count Florida, though you can leave Michigan out.

And yet the media has collectively decided that the race is over, nothing to see here, move along. It’s astonishing. It’s the most blatant example of journalistic manipulation I’ve ever seen.

Consider if Hillary and Obama’s situations were reversed. Can you really imagine the national media ignoring the guy like this? Ignoring the fact that the two candidates are neck and neck, that the guy has just won a primary in a swing state by more than 40%, that 17 million people across the country have voted for him? Can you imagine the media simply yawning and saying, “geez, when is this chump gonna drop out?”

I know that most of you are probably thinking, "Why did you decide to endorse Obama, and why are you doing it now?" ...

Further, I believe Sen. Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee. He leads in pledged delegates, superdelegates, the popular vote, and cash-on-hand. As a former elected official, I know that having the three "m's" of a campaign - money, message and manpower (or womanpower!) - are how we win elections. Sen. Obama will be our next president....

Finally, NARAL Pro-Choice America, as the political leader of the pro-choice movement, felt it was time to take a leadership role. We have been so fortunate to have two fully pro-choice candidates running for the Democratic nomination and to that end, we've consistently praised both Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama for their leadership in standing up for women's reproductive rights. We continue to look forward to working with them in the future. But, for the sake of the reproductive-rights movement, we need to put any perceived differences behind us, and get to work putting Sen. Obama in the White House. We want to let women know that, no doubt about it, we have trust and confidence in Obama's ability and willingness to fight for a woman's right to choose. He's already proven himself in that regard.

NARAL President Nancy Keenan explains why the organization chose Obama out of the two strong pro-choice Democratic candidates.

UPDATE: The responses are already coming in. EMILY’s List president Ellen R. Malcolm says in a press release:

“I think it is tremendously disrespectful to Sen. Clinton - who held up the nomination of a FDA commissioner in order to force approval of Plan B and who spoke so eloquently during the Supreme Court nomination about the importance of protecting Roe vs. Wade - to not give her the courtesy to finish the final three weeks of the primary process. It certainly must be disconcerting for elected leaders who stand up for reproductive rights and expect the choice community will stand with them.”

What do you all think?

The final DVD of Season 4 of The Wire is scheduled to arrive at my apartment on Thursday. After that, I’ll be waiting around for Season 5 to come out before I can NetFlix it. In the meantime, I need something else to keep me occupied. My other TV addiction is LOST, and I still re-watch the first two seasons of The West Wing with some regularity. So anything in that vein is great. I decidedly do not like anything Science Fiction or Fantasy-like — I know this is going to make you all hate me, but I can’t stand Buffy or Battlestar Gallactica. I’m leaning towards The Office or 30 Rock, as those seem to be good, light summer watching. Comedies are good — Curb Your Enthusiasm is an old favorite — but I really can’t stand shows like Everybody Loves Raymond or Monk.

But I am wide open to suggestions. What do you all watch and love?

"They were cheerleading in the dugout like a bunch of softball girls," Figueroa said. "I'm a professional, just like anybody else. I take huge offense to that. If that's what a last-place team needs to do to fire themselves up, so be it. I think you need to show a little bit more class, a little bit more professionalism. They won tonight, but again, in the long run, they are who they are."

Figueroa couldn't pinpoint the culprits, but suggested the serenading peaked during the third inning, when the Nats loaded the bases and he forced in a run by walking Nick Johnson.

"Don't care," Figueroa said about learning the names of the perpetrators. "Truly unprofessional. "That's why they are who they are."

Figueroa (2-3) didn't help his cause. He loaded the bases in the third by plunking Ryan Zimmerman, then forced in a run by walking Johnson as the Nats tied the score at 2.

An inning later, ... Figueroa committed a costly throwing error. After knocking down Felipe Lopez's comebacker with two runners in scoring position, Figueroa recovered the ball and seemingly had Rob Mackowiak nailed at the plate. But Figueroa's throw went well wide of catcher Brian Schneider as Washington again tied the score, this time at 3.

"I couldn't see anything," said Figueroa, who is expected to be skipped this weekend at Yankee Stadium. "The combination of spinning quickly and the wind blowing in my face, my eyes were blurry and I just tried to throw the ball softly, so I hoped that Schneider could get to it. I need to take my time. I panicked, thinking I knocked it down and I had a chance to get this guy out at home. I wanted to stop the bleeding right there but made it worse." ...

"At times it seemed like every pitch wouldn't work," Figueroa said. "I literally tried to throw balls down the middle just to let them hit it. When they did, they fouled off six or seven pitches in a row."

Har har.

The bar owner claims there’s nothing racist about the shirt, and that it was Obama’s ears and hairline that reminded him of a monkey, not the colour of his skin. But, it’s sad that the url of the story even calls it a “controversy”. It’s not controversial: that t-shirt is flat-out racist.

Black men and women have been historically labelled as sub-humans and apes in order to disenfranchise them of their rights. The pseudo-scientific conclusion that likened Africans with monkeys was used as justification for White supremacy and slavery. Any t-shirt that would parallel Obama with a monkey exists in that historically racist treatment of Africans and African Americans. The intent of the t-shirt maker is irrelevant; any label of Obama as an ape pokes fun at a Black man for looking (and thus being) less than human.

The maker of the t-shirt deserves to be protested, as does anyone who buys and wears the shirt. Just yesterday, the Washington Post had an “expose” on the racism faced by Obama supporters. Is it really a surprise that America is still racist when not only can a man make t-shirts that call Obama a monkey, but they can sell out within a matter of days?

Starting next year across the country, rape victims too afraid or too ashamed to go to police can undergo an emergency-room forensic rape exam, and the evidence gathered will be kept on file in a sealed envelope in case they decide to press charges.

The new federal requirement that states pay for "Jane Doe rape kits" is aimed at removing one of the biggest obstacles to prosecuting rape cases: Some women are so traumatized they don't come forward until it is too late to collect hair, semen or other samples.

Some hospitals already offer anonymous rape kits, but most states refuse to cover the cost of the exam (approximately $800) unless the survivor files a police report.

Beginning in 2009, states will have to pay for Jane Doe rape kits to continue receiving funding under the federal Violence Against Women Act, which provides tax dollars for women's shelters and law enforcement training. States will decide how many locations will offer anonymous rape exams and how long the evidence should be kept.

Awesome.

Thanks to Thomas for the link.

Last month the NY Times reported that the Defense Department fed talking points to former generals who appeared on cable news. Now the DoD has released a lot of those talking points to the public. Alyssa Rosenberg went through the documents, and found that a number of them instruct the generals to trumpet all the awesome stuff the U.S. military is doing for women in Iraq and Afghanistan -- painting people like Donald Rumsfeld as some sort of savior for downtrodden women all over the world, and conveniently downplaying things like sexual assault by U.S. soldiers.

The talking points actually included this awful story:

Except for this one, from September 23, 2004: "Sally's children were taken away from her more than six months ago. Her husband beat her. Her brother threatened her life while holding a gun to her head. Her own father contracted her deal with a $5,000 reward. Sally, an Iraqi translator, lost everything by working to help Americans rebuild Iraq. Still, she feels her service with Americans is the right thing for her country. ‘I lost everything I have, but I have gained so much,' Sally said. ‘If I had to do it over again I would. I help the Americans help my people.'"

Rosenberg writes,

The anecdote is meant to be an illustration of how much Iraqis love their American liberators; but given how Iraqi translators have been abandoned by the Americans they helped, it's a grotesquely ironic PR ploy.

Almost five years after the Defense Department promoted Sally's story, domestic violence in Iraq is skyrocketing, female illiteracy rates are 10 times higher than they were in the 1980s, and in the past few months more than 40 women--and in two cases their children--have been murdered for defying dress codes. I wonder if Sally still feels like working for Americans was worth it.

After it became clear there were no WMD in Iraq, the Bush administration began using things like women's rights as a reason for its violent occupation of another country. And now that this war has dragged on for five years -- and women's rights in Iraq and Afghanistan have clearly deteriorated, not improved -- it's all the more infuriating to look back and see how military spokespeople (even though they weren't identified as such) used women to justify the war.

For more on the state of women's rights in Iraq -- not filtered through DoD talking points -- check out Women for Women's 2008 Iraq report (PDF). (via)

Everything old is new again.

Please bear the following facts in mind.

If you and your family are trying to escape the Chinese government’s coercive population control policies — if, for example, you are a man, and your wife has been forced into an abortion by threats or violence from the government, and even if you, yourself, have been threatened with government-forced sterilization; or if you are a woman, and you have been forced into an abortion by the government, but you don’t want to be forced to live apart from your life partner — if, that is, either you or your life partner has been held down, under threat of violence, and had your reproductive organs cut into, against your will, by order of the State, and it’s perfectly likely to happen to you again if you go on living in China — well, then, I’m sorry, but that just isn’t a good enough reason for the United States government to consider you and your family Officially Persecuted by the Chinese government, and thus not enough for them to get out of your way and leave you alone to live your life peacefully within the borders that the U.S. government claims the right to fortify. They are especially unlikely to consider your persecution important enough to merit asylum if the Chinese government, as part of those same population control policies, refuses to write down a legal record of your marriage to the man or woman that you wed years ago and have lived with ever since. In fact a panel of comfortable American judges will sneer down at you, from their politico-moral high ground, that legal marriage reflects a sanctity and long-term commitment that other forms of cohabitation simply do not. Your actual, real-life marriage doesn’t count, because the government that is persecuting you won’t recognize it. Your suffering and the violation of your body, or your spouse’s body, by a violent government, don’t matter to this government, because it won’t count them as real persecution. So instead of leaving you alone, this government will roust you up out of your new home, and march you out at bayonet-point, and ship you out of the country, back to the tormentors in China who you risked everything to escape.

If you are a woman from the Republic of Guinea, and, when you were a child, you were held down and had your clitoris cut out with a knife, without anesthesia, and if, after being forced to suffer this painful and traumatizing mutilation of your body, you make a deliberate decision to get out of the country, perhaps because it hurt you, and perhaps because the effects still hurt you, and perhaps because you didn’t want it and now you just can’t stand to live in the place where it was done to you, and perhaps because you don’t want your daughters to be forced into the same thing — well, I’m sorry, but according to the United States Department of Homeland Security and the United States Department of Justice [sic], that just isn’t a good enough reason to consider you Officially Persecuted in Guinea, and thus not enough reason for them to get out of your way and leave you alone to live your life peacefully within the borders that the U.S. government claims the right to fortify. Because, hey, you’re damaged goods now and you don’t have any clitorises left for them to cut out. Your suffering and the violation of your body, by certain violent members of your community, don’t matter to them, because it won’t count them as real persecution. So instead of leaving you alone, this government will roust you up out of your new home, and march you out at bayonet-point, and ship you out of the country, back to the tormentors in Guinea who you risked everything to escape.

If you and your family are from Iraq, and, because of the crushing poverty and the tremendous danger to your life and limb which you face — due to the United States government’s own war and bombing and occupation in Iraq; or due to threats from the government-backed and freelance ethnic-cleansing death squads, which have flourished under that occupation; or due to the crossfire in the endless battles between the United States government’s occupying forces and Iraqi insurgents — if, because of all that, you are one of the 2.5 million Iraqis who have fled the country in order to try to find a new home (either temporarily or permanently) where you can live your life free of fear and starvation and unspeakable daily violence, and now you find yourself stuck — like 2.4 million of your fellow Iraqis — in some hellhole refugee camp or urban ghetto in neighboring countries like Syria or Jordan, where conditions are awful, where you are surrounded by suffering, where you cannot legally work for pay and have little or nothing to do other than take hand-outs and fill out paperwork for UNHCR, while you watch your life savings drain away in the effort to keep yourself alive for a few more months while you wait, and wait, and wait, and if you don’t happen to be one of the 500 people per year who are eligible for Special Immigration Visas in return for collaborating with the U.S. government’s occupying forces in Iraq, and you don’t happen to be one of the quota of only a few thousand Iraqi refugees that the U.S. government has agreed to accept each year — well, then, I’m sorry, but according the United States government that just isn’t a good enough reason to get out of your way and leave you alone to travel to the United States and live your life peacefully within the borders that the United States government claims the right to fortify. Your suffering, and the danger to your life or the lives of your loved ones, by any one of the countless armies and armed factions rampaging through Iraq, don’t matter enough to them for them to reconsider their immigration quota policy. So this government will keep you penned up in your hellhole ghetto, where you can die for all they care, or, if you somehow get to America, this government will march you out at bayonet-point, and ship you out of the country, back to the ghetto conditions or to the tormentors in Iraq who you risked everything to escape.

This is life, such as it is, under government immigration controls. It is life as it always will be, as long as politicians and bureaucrats have the power to pick and choose whose reasons for wanting to cross an arbitrary line on a map are good enough, and whose are not.

But it is criminal that there is even one single refugee in this world who cannot immediately find asylum and a chance to make a new life and a new home for herself in a new country.

It is inexcusable that, in the name of the ethno-political system of international apartheid, the governments of the world continue to collaborate in violence against women, in forced starvation, and in ethnic cleansing, by forcing peaceful women and men into refugee ghettoes or, worse, by forcing peaceful women and men back into the maws of the very governments or violent factions who intend to devour them.

It is obscene that a bunch of politicians and unaccountable bureaucrats from the United Nations or the U.S. government would be invested with the power to sit in judgment, from their comfortable offices, on the most marginalized, the most exploited, and the most oppressed people in the world, so that they put all their conventional prejudices and political blinders to work in picking and choosing whose suffering should count as real, in the eyes of the governments of the world, or whose suffering, if acknowledged as real by the government, is important enough to let them into a tiny quota that the government will allow to cross an arbitrary line on a map.

The S.S. St. Louis still sails the seas today, a ghost ship with ghost passengers, without rest and without safe harbor. It will haunt the world forever, as long as this system of international apartheid is enforced.

And all for what? To avoid the voluntary co-mingling of people from different countries? To ensure that the people of the world hear only one language, live and work with people of only one nationality, remain segregated, either by penning them up in their government-appointed place or else by making sure you can monitor all their movements according to a government-created system of passbooks and minders? The idea would be laughable if not for all the ghosts—the ghosts of millions upon millions of real, living, irreplaceable and unique individual people, who were turned back, ruined, persecuted, mutilated, tortured, starved, and murdered for the sake of that idea.

There is another way. A way in which the living can finally live, and the dead can finally rest, in peace. But that other can only become a reality when people are free to move from one place to another, and their reasons, their suffering, and their lives cannot be measured and found wanting by entitled strangers with the power to turn them back and force them back to the tormenters that they risked everything to escape. It can, that is to say, only become a reality with the immediate, unconditional, and complete abolition of all government border controls, and with universal amnesty for all currently undocumented immigrants.

There’s no room for compromise or moderation in the politics of immigration when real people’s bodies and real people’s lives are hanging in the balance. As they are all over the world today.

See also:

• The Collateral Repair Project is a grassroots project providing direct aid to Iraqi civilians who live as refugees within Iraq and in surrounding countries.
• Rad Geek @ feministe (2005-02-02): Free Rodi Alvarado and all political prisoners!
• Rad Geek, comments on feministe (2006-05-19): When Immigration Goes Hard-Line
• GT 2008-01-31: Bordercrats Against Joy and Plenty
• GT 2007-12-17: International apartheid in Roswell
• GT 2007-11-12: Sin Fronteras

… the next time somebody tries to tell you that men have to deal with just as many unhealthy stereotypes about their appearances as women do … just walk them over to the magazine aisle.

As’ad, a professor at CSU Stanislaus and a visiting professor at UC Berkeley, blogs about the radical left and the situation in Lebanon and the dangers in blindly supporting Hizbullah:

I believe that the radical left, or the revolutionary left, should be careful in evaluating the situation. I see that the Lebanese Communist Party has for all purposes conflated its position with that of Hizbullah–at least during this crisis. The radical left should keep a distance from an organization (i.e. Hizbullah) with which it does not share an ideology–a religious fundamentalist one at that. Today, I kept thinking of the leader of the Iranian Communist Party who sang the praises of Khumayni only to be forced to appear on TV (after the revolution) and make Stalinist-style “confessions”. He later was executed as were other communists.

[Hat Tip: Farfahinne]

Hey folks, just a note to say that posting may be slow today. I have a flu/cold that's kicking my ass, despite all the Sudafed I'm forcing myself to take. (Any tips for getting better sooner would be much appreciated. I'm a garlic-clove-eating person myself, but it's not working.)

In the meantime, enjoy the picture above - a little something I like to call "shoe graveyard." It's what Andrew and I came home to on Monday night after a long dinner. Monty has never been much of a shoe-eating dog, but it seems he got it all out of his system at once. I had to say goodbye to some of my favorite shoes, but the cute-guilty look on Monty's face was almost worth it. Almost.

Lynsay Skiba is the Reigle Human Rights Fellow at Justice Now. She is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), where she focused her studies on human rights law.

Many people who are pregnant inside California’s women’s prisons experience some form of mistreatment on a daily basis: they are deprived of basic information about their pregnancy; they lack access to responsive and consistent medical and mental health care; they endure degrading treatment at the hands of some prison staff; they lack control over important lifestyle choices impacting pregnancy such as diet and physical activity; and they are forced to cope with the prospect of being separated form their newborn shortly after birth, in some cases permanently.

Driving this mistreatment is the prison system’s apathetic and punishment-driven approach toward people in prison and their medical and mental health needs. What this means is that while people in women’s prisons who do not experience physical or mental problems during their pregnancies may receive treatment and experience medical outcomes that are unremarkable by accepted medical standards, those who have physical complications, mental health problems, or who choose to challenge their treatment are vulnerable to serious consequences, including death.

Using a participatory model of human rights documentation, Justice Now partners with those most impacted by these issues – people inside the two state prisons that house pregnant people – to expose pregnancy-related abuses through an international human rights framework. Together we have found that these prisons consistently violate the human rights to family, information, health, bodily integrity, dignified treatment, life, and the right to be free from cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

I’m a high schooler who’s recently become interested in feminist/LGBT issues, and since I won’t have anything to do this summer I figured I’d spend the time reading some books on the topic. Can you recommend anything? I’m interested in historical things (I’m probably going to try to read The Second Sex, at least,) but I’d also really love to find some good recent books.

Help a girl out.

In other news, you can now find out who’s stalking you on Facebook. Or maybe not. Anyway, you can type a period into the search box and get a drop-down list of five names that mean… something. First person on my list is someone whose profile I stalk the hell out of out, but #2 is someone who I don’t think I’ve ever searched for — although I did peruse through her photos when they came up on the Feed and I was bored during finals, so who knows. Long story short: It’s a mystery, and I suspect some sort of fluke. But if it really is the people who search you the most, then I’m glad to know that at least some of my stalking is mutual.

And am I the only one who wastes several dozen hours every week playing Scrabulous? Best/worst finals distraction ever.

A Shaker notes that John McCain will appear on SNL this weekend and then posts some vids showing his previous appearances. But, this one is the real knee slapper.

Huckabee edition. The first set of data is from last night's election in West Virginia; the second from that state's nominating convention, held in February.

Anyway, for now I guess I’ll just look at the little embedded objects and fantasize about what Hillary might be saying.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3: