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Misty watercolor memories…..

Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards’ Statement on Abortion Ban in New High-Risk Insurance Pools

“Based on the Obama administration’s statement, we are deeply disappointed that the administration has voluntarily and unnecessarily decided to impose limits on private funds used to purchase health insurance coverage for abortion care in the new high-risk insurance pools…

“The very women who need to purchase private health insurance in the new high-risk pools are likely to be more vulnerable to medically complicated pregnancies. It is truly harmful to these women that the administration may impose limits on how they use their own private dollars, limiting their health care options at a time when they need them most. This decision has no basis in the law and flies in the face of the intent of the high-risk pools that were meant to meet the medical needs of some of the most vulnerable women in this country.”

….of the way we were.

Bless her heart, Cecile is upset. No wonder. After what she did to get Obama elected! Handing over the Planned Parenthood mailing list, even allowing an email campaign to spread what she knew were falsehoods—but it was worth it to elect Obama. Wasn’t it, Cecile?

God, I’m so sick of these clowns. All of these clowns.

I just spent a few minutes getting up to speed on the latest from the TriboList archives, and I wish I hadn’t. Not because there’s anything so bad there; it’s just people shooting the shit. What’s depressing is the delusional view from inside the pro-Obama tribe.

Witness this bit from Kevin Drum during the discussion on how to deal with the Jeremiah Wright business:

Kevin Drum, then of Washington Monthly, also disagreed with Ackerman’s strategy. “I think it’s worth keeping in mind that Obama is trying (or says he’s trying) to run a campaign that avoids precisely the kind of thing Spencer is talking about, and turning this into a gutter brawl would probably hurt the Obama brand pretty strongly. After all, why vote for him if it turns out he’s not going change the way politics works?”

Notice the caveat: “or says he’s trying.” Anybody who was really paying attention to the Obama campaign knew perfectly well that it was every bit as muddy an operation as you’ll find anywhere in politics. Obama would go out and give a speech about how “there’s no place for that kind of thing” while his operatives would furiously push every smear against Hillary they could scrounge up. They did it again with Palin. Rather than just opposing Palin and McCain on policy (and god knows there was enough there for that), they orchestrated a huge character-assassinating sexist mudfest, including the above-referenced Planned Parenthood email campaign.

Now here’s the funny thing: all these people who carried on like this did it in the belief that somehow it would be worth it. That somehow, Obama would be different. Think about that. Nothing about him or his campaign was in any way, shape, or form different from politics as usual. Nothing about the pro-Obama tribalism and uncritical reportage was in any way, shape, or form different from punditry as usual. So how did these people fool themselves into thinking this swamp of muck was somehow going to sprout kittens and rainbows?

Meanwhile, we have the example of Breitbart to show us how profoundly and hatefully dishonest the rightwing media is. That’s nothing new, of course. Years ago I remember being amazed when NewsMax edited a Hillary Clinton speech to make it look like she was endorsing Soviet-style communism. The Sherrod video is more of the same.

The left isn’t nearly that far gone yet, but if you lived through 2008 on the Hillary team, you know what I’m going to say next. Let’s see, who was it who doctored that video in Indiana to make it look like a Clinton adviser used the N-word? Who was it who spread the story that Hillary had called for Obama’s death? And jesus, I’m not even going to get into the Palin stuff.

People will say, oh you can’t compare the two, but here’s the thing: it’s all mud. It’s all fucking mud and mire. Our whole political discourse. Just mud and tribalism and hatefulness and secret lists and inside-the-beltway fart-breathing and meanwhile, millions are out of work and lives are being broken. Ain’t no kittens and rainbows gonna come out of this mess.

I have written a number of posts about the attempt to eliminate the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.  In my view, President Obama and Congress should simply have defunded enforcement of the policy and, thus, effectively ended it while the far more more difficult elimination of the law unfolded slowly though Congress.  That, of course, did not happen.  Obama was perfectly happy to drag out the process.  And, therefore, Obama allowed Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to announce a one-year “ thorough, objective, and systematic assessment of the impact of such a policy change.”  In my view, this was an obvious delaying tactic.  If there was truly a need for the Pentagon to have a review before implementing changes, it would have been far better to pass legislation that would go into effect immediately but mandate a one-year review before the actual changes went into effect.

On the other hand, the cynical side of me thought that these delaying tactics were just a smoke screen and that Gate and the Pentagon were trying to find a way to keep the policy in place.  Yesterday’s reports of the questionnaire sent to 400,000 service members makes this seem more likely.

Of course the questionnaire is biased.  With all of its resources and time, the Pentagon should have been able to create an unbiased one.  The answer to why it didn’t could be confirmation that the Pentagon doesn’t want the policy to change.  In other words, Gates’ “assessment of the impact of such a policy change” could be that the change would have too much of an impact and, therefore, shouldn’t be done.

Leaving aside the bias, the real question about the questionnaire (and the one-year review itself) is what will the Pentagon do with the results?  There are questions about “room, berth or field tent.”  There are questions about “bathroom facilities with open bay shower.”  There is a question asking whether the service member would move from his or her military housing if a gay or lesbian member moved into the same housing with a same-sex partner.  There is even a question about shopping in a commissary.

Well, what will the Pentagon do with this information?  The first possibility, of course, could be that it decides that the existing policy cannot be changed at all.  The second possibility is that it will implement different facilities for gays and lesbians.  (Essentially “Separate but Equal” in the eyes of the Pentagon.  They couldn’t be that stupid, could they?)  But that seems unworkable.  For example, I assume that the military now has separate bath facilities for men and women.  (Am I right on that?)  How would that work out for separate facilities for gays and lesbians?  Wouldn’t there have to be four separate bath facilities?  (One bath facility for straight males.  One for gay males.  One for straight females.  One for lesbians.  That would work out well on a submarine, wouldn’t it.)  And why the questions about military housing and commissaries?  Even the Pentagon wouldn’t want to have separate facilities of those types, would it?

(What the Pentagon will do with the answers to the question about “room, berth or field tent” has problems similar to the bath facilities.  But it seems to me that the basic question is whether you allow the soldiers to choose who they share a room or tent with or whether you mandate sleeping arrangements.  If people are satisfied with how the current policy works for males and females, it will continue to work after “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is repealed.)

My point is that there has never been any legitimate reason for the one-year review and, in particular, there is no legitimate reason for the questionnaire.  Just repeal the law.  Everything will be fine.

You may have read this terrible op-ed by Kathleen Parker, a Washington Post opinion columnist, published a couple of days ago. It was burning up my Twitter feed all day. In it, Kathleen Parker argues that Barack Obama is our first female president. Yes, that is what she said. And she proceeds to make a terrible case that can be summed up as such: Obama is a terrible president because he is not manly enough. He is acting like a woman, and losing political points because of it.

I was annoyed enough that I couldn’t even formulate a coherent response for two days. Fortunately, some bloggers I know and love, such as Rachel Sklar and Mary C. Curtis, did a pretty good job of vocalizing why this column was so disgusting.

Now, I will try to add something of my own.

Parker’s case for Obama being “female” is as follows: he has a testosterone shortage, he “displays many tropes of femaleness,” and that he is like all women, who “tend to be coalition builders rather than mavericks (with the occasional rogue exception). While men seek ways to measure themselves against others, for reasons requiring no elaboration, women form circles and talk it out.” She also adds that Obama is “is a chatterbox who makes Alan Alda look like Genghis Khan,” and that his speech on the oil spill “featured 13 percent passive-voice constructions.”

I think the reason I didn’t write about this before was just because I didn’t know where to start. I mean: there are so many problems! Kathleen Parker would say that this is because I am a female who is passive and meek and likes to “talk it out” rather than issue a straight-up takedown of someone. So now I will try to list just all the big glaring things she is WRONG about:

1) The overarching message that being a president is a role reserved only for men

2) The notion that there are a strict set of traits that are inherently female and inherently male

3) The idea that stepping out of traditional gender roles always has negative consequences

4) That Kathleen Parker is given a platform from which to broadcast her opinions, something few people are given, and she chooses to use it perpetuating 1950s-style gender stereotypes that we should have done away with by 2010

5) The minor aside that this is a poorly written piece filled with bad metaphors, hollow statements, very little research, broad generalizations, and almost no facts.

7) Her admission of the fact that, yes, women are often faced with sexism when running for political office, and her attitude that women should just man up if they want to make it in politics. Perhaps the only decent sentence in this entire piece is as follows:

Women, inarguably, still are punished for failing to adhere to gender norms by acting “too masculine” or “not feminine enough.”

But Parker then proceeds to ruin it by talking about how the only way to be a good politician is to be more “masculine.”

What mystifies me is that presumably serious publications such as the Washington Post give people like Kathleen Parker a platform from which to voice this kind of terrible crap, and then PEOPLE BELIEVE THEM. I have already seen plenty of white dudes read this and chuckle and scratch their heads as if actually considering it seriously. It is because of stuff like this that women continue to face struggles in being elected to office: at every possible opportunity, people like Kathleen Parker question whether women can make effective political leaders and posit that political leadership requires inherently “masculine” traits. She makes broad generalizations about how all women act, and then claims that these “feminine” traits are negative and are not suited for politics. Those damn females! They talk so much and they use passive voice constructions! Clearly this is why they cannot be president!

As an aside, Parker was recently offered a gig co-hosting a new CNN show with none other than the disgraced criminal and former governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer. This is where I shake my head and wonder what is going on with our media.

On July 1, 2008, the Los Angeles Times reported, with suitably raised eyebrows, that Candidate Obama had expressed his intention to continue the Bush Administration’s faith-based initiatives.

This is what I wrote:

God almighty. How much clearer can it get? Coming on top of the FISA immunity thing, the campaign finance reversal, and the trial balloon about keeping Gates on as Secretary of Defense, it’s a miracle of nature that the possums can’t see what this guy is about. If he started showing up at press conferences wearing a flight suit, do you think they’d get it then? (Answering self: no; see insanity, mass.)

None of this is a surprise to PUMAs, who have been sounding the alarm since before they were PUMAs. I stand by what I said here, which is pretty much what I’ve been saying for months: Obama represents the metastasization of the Republican cancer to the Democratic Party. That’s why we’re fighting him. How many Republican parties do we need in this country, anyway?

Emphasis added.

Apparently the answer to my rhetorical question was that we needed two Republican parties, because that’s sure as hell what we got. As lambert points out so elegantly today.

So, what’s new with the Super Feminist in the White House? Ah, yes: he’s announcing the creation of the President’s Fatherhood and Mentoring Initiative. It sounds nice, doesn’t it? I mean, what could be wrong with that?

Plenty.

The father’s rights movement in this country is ground zero for anti-feminism. The radiation levels are off the charts. And if you think that Obama’s initiative has nothing to do with those clowns, think again:

Obama’s special interest in fatherhood has been a boon for groups that support fathers and have been working for years without much attention. “His leadership and using the bully pulpit has been important,” said Roland Warren, president of the National Fatherhood Initiative, which was founded in 1994 and recently contracted with the federal government to produce public service announcements promoting fatherhood.

The National Fatherhood Initiative was founded by Wade Horn, a right-wing Republican who pushes “abstinence education.” The organization’s website is an ode to patriarchy, insisting that daddies are magic whose presence in the home makes everything better. A blue-tinged photo of a sad little girl is accompanied by a caption declaring that “Children in father-absent homes are five times more likely to be poor.” Gosh, could that be because women are underpaid and undersupported? Could the wage gap have something do with that? Could there possibly be some connection to the fact that men monopolize our society’s resources?

In the world of the National Fatherhood Initiative, these questions are never asked. A single woman can’t make enough money? Of course not — you need to marry a male breadwinner! The father of your children is an abusive creep? Don’t get divorced; you need his money! He beats you senseless? Oh, you really better not get divorced. Also, it’s your fault. Keep him home and happy, since happily married daddies don’t ever beat their wives and kids! Divorced already and the creep won’t pay child support? Well of course not, you stupid woman — you’ve undermined his manly authority!

You think I’m exaggerating; you think these fatherhood types just want to cultivate nice, nurturing daddies, à la Sweden. But they don’t. In the real world of courts and custody and child support and welfare, the fathers rights activists are all about restoring patriarchal authority. They have shown themselves time and time again to be enemies of women and feminism. It’s patriarchy with a soft-focus feel-good propaganda coating.

I urge you to delve into the extensive Liz Library, an online compendium of research maintained by attorney Liz Kates, an expert in family law and the father’s rights movement. One article I’ve had bookmarked for years is this response to Wade Horn’s “The Importance of Being Father.” It’s a long piece, but I want you to at least read this first bit, so you can see how a feminist deconstructs propaganda:

HORN: “Despite conventional wisdom, which has held — and in many quarters still does — that children do not pay a price when fathers are absent from their lives, research data depict a much different reality. Violent criminals are overwhelmingly males who grew up without fathers, including 60 percent of America’s rapists, 72 percent of adolescent murderers and 70 percent of long term prison inmates. Children living in a father-absent home are also more likely to be suspended or expelled from school, or to drop out; require treatment for an emotional or behavioral problem; commit suicide as adolescents; and be victims of child abuse or neglect.”

LIZ: Let’s stop right here. Research on widowed homes, and research which has been done on divorced mother-headed homes which are financially comfortable and unstressed indicates that there is virtually no difference in child rearing outcomes between these children and children raised in intact homes with a mother and father present.

Moreover, the research does not indicate that these percentages of violent criminals, et al. grew up through their entire childhoods (as implied) sans a father in the household, but rather, that they grew up in homes in which that father was absent for some period of their childhood. So right in the first paragraph, you perpetuate two blatant misrepresentations. Your argument, Wade, also misleads in another way: the overwhelming MOST of single mother households do NOT exhibit these childrearing problems.

If children tend to pay any price at all when the father is absent, that price is largely in their standard of living. It’s financial. But growing up poor in and of itself also does not necessitate a bad child rearing outcome. The actual causes of negative child rearing problems correlating with the disparate and nonhomogeneous classification of “fatherless homes” (or “single mother households”) are disguised and distorted by statistics which lump into that category, not only demographic groups which do NOT exhibit these bad child-rearing outcomes, but also all those homes which are “fatherless” precisely because of the very same factors which down the road affected the children. These factors include: adultery, wife and child abuse; addictions to alcohol, sex, and drugs, other personality dysfunctions; conflict, and plain old abandonment, financial irresponsibility and failure to support (emotionally or financially.) The other primary and telling difference between “fatherless homes” which do and do not have problems is the relative financial stability, educational level, and comfort of the mother.

It is true that a disproportionate number of violent criminals have been shown to have hailed from homes where the biological father was indeed absent at some point, but this ignores that he also was present at some point, and during those periods preceding his abandonment of the family, or the family’s flight from him, often left the legacy of his criminality, addiction, abuse, and/or character flaws, as well as his genes. There is a generational dysfunction that is usually ignored by these studies. The absent dad of that violent criminal might have been merely alcoholic, rather than a criminal himself, but he was unlikely to have been an absent Ward Cleaver.

Logic. It’s a beautiful thing.

Priceless:

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I could do without the Palin gag at the end, though it made me laugh. What would be amazing would be a connect-the-dots realization of the role sexism played in getting us saddled with this fricking President Frodo, but I suppose that’s too much to ask.

Britain’s financial class is very concerned about average people and their pensions. So concerned in fact, that they’re criticising US President Barack Obama for “excessively” criticising BP. Wait, what? That’s the message of this article in the Telegraph. And before I begin to criticise it, I should point out that I do not have a [...]

I’m already feeling very uneasy about the Elena Kagan nomination.  First, she wasn’t the nominee I wanted since I was hoping that Obama would nominate a liberal.  On the surface, of course, Kagan is anything but a liberal.  Yes, she does appear to support abortion rights and probably she is a supporter of women’s rights.  But most think that she is not a huge supporter of civil rights and is willing to give up civil liberties when “terrorists” are involved.

And, so, the only absolute positive is that she is a woman.  That’s great!  It would have been devastating if Obama had chosen a man and, yet, two of the supposed four finalists were men.

Most commentators lament her lack of a “record.”  And, so, it’s hard to know what she feels about most issues.  Maybe Obama knows that she is more liberal than she has appeared to be.  But, I would have a hard time now categorizing her in broad terms as anything other than in the center or slightly left of center.  That is far less than what I wanted.  Obama has (again) opted to try to appease the conservatives.  He has (again) shied away from a fight.

But has he really avoided a fight?  The thing that has made me most uneasy is that, because of the lack of a record, many questions will be asked for which we don’t know how she will answer.  Already, many groups are calling on their supporters to contact their senators to urge them to ask certain questions during the hearings.  For instance, NARAL wants to make sure that questions are asked about Kagan’s abortion rights views and Americans United wants questions asked about her views on church-state separation.  It seems to me that some of the questioning is almost guaranteed to open up huge debates by the parties, news media, and American populace.  That’s not bad—I, for instance, would certainly like to know whether she’s the centrist that she seems or is more right or more left.

The kicker would appear to be her sexual orientation.  The Gay Rights section of change.org has a blog about this.  Both supporters and opponents of gay rights want to know what she has to say.  Right-wingers want to know her answer so they can continue their bigotry in arguing that no gay or lesbian should ever have such an important position.  (Does anyone really think that the right-wingers will be satisfied with any answer she gives?)  And even though many LGBT advocates want no questions asked about her sexual orientation, there are others who do want questions asked.  For instance, the change.org blog writes:

I, and many other LGBT advocates, have definitely found ourselves longing for Kagan to make an announcement, because in the world of identity politics I guess the thought of an openly lesbian Supreme Court justice sounds so enticing that we have ignored the fact that it really is absolutely none of our business.  And it sure as hell is not the business of any anti-gay force that will use it to block her nomination.

Even though the White House already issued a stern (and bizarre) statement weeks ago that she is straight, when Kagan faces questions for the first time it seems like a mathematical certainty that she will be directly asked if she is a lesbian. Though I find it disheartening that she will have to face a question like this that truly does not have anything to do with the job she is being nominated for, I am admittedly eager to hear her response. Whether it is something to the effect of “Yes I am… next question,” “No I am not… next question,” or if she takes the road that C.J. Cregg from the West Wing took by saying “it is none of your business,” I hope it puts the issue to rest, so we can get back to worrying if she is progressive enough to step into the shoes of Justice John Paul Stevens.

If it is true that there is “a mathematical certainty that she will be directly asked if she is a lesbian,” the result of that questioning—no matter how she answers—will almost certainly lead to huge debate throughout the country.  And that debate, combined with the debate on the answers she gives to many of the views on which we currently have no idea, will put Obama in the position he has repeatedly tried to avoid.  He will be forced to spend great effort defending his nominee.  In other words, he will have to spend as much effort on the Kagan nomination as he would have had to spend if he nominated a liberal in the first place.

However this all plays out, we should remember that the Obama Supreme Court will be far less liberal than it was with Justice Stevens.  Many commentators, even conservative ones, are saying that Kagan will ultimately be confirmed.  I don’t see any reason to be that optimistic.  But, if she is confirmed, the best we liberals can hope for is that Obama is right that she is “a persuasive leader who could attract the swing vote of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.”  I wouldn’t hold my breath on that.

As I suspected, although he has said some positive things, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has never had his heart into repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”  His “review” of the procedures has been a delaying tactic that really isn’t necessary.  If he and the Obama administration were to do it right, they would repeal the law first with an effective date that would give time to change the procedures.  (Yes, full-blown repeal will require time for the expected Congressional fighting, but there are other measures that can achieve the same result in a much quicker time.)

Now, Gates has shown his true colors.  He sent a letter to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton stating that he doesn’t want Congress to take any action on repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” until the Pentagon’s “working group” on the issue has completed its work to determine the impact a repeal would have on the U.S. Armed Forces. Citing the need for a “a thorough, objective, and systematic assessment of the impact of such a policy change,” Gates wrote, “I strongly oppose any legislation that seeks to change this policy prior to the completion of this vital assessment process.”

There is no need for this delay.  One thing it does do is to stop momentum for getting a change done.  One of the co-sponsors of the bill that is currently proceeding is Senator Mark Udall of Colorado.  He responded to the letter by saying, “There is no reason why Congress shouldn’t pass legislation this year that would time the repeal to follow the conclusion of the study.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has also shown her support for repeal, saying that Congress should “immediately place a moratorium on dismissals under this policy until the review has been completed and Congress has acted.”

The White House restated President Obama’s support for repeal, but concurred with the delaying tactics by saying, “The President’s commitment to repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is unequivocal. This is not a question of if, but how. That’s why we’ve said that the implementation of any congressional repeal will be delayed until the DOD study of how best to implement that repeal is completed. The President is committed to getting this done both soon and right.”

If Obama wants to get repeal done “soon,” he should not allow these completely unnecessary delays to continue.  The letter from Gates to Skelton makes it tougher for moderates to move for quick action.  Obama should reject the letter and take action that shows he really is for quick repeal.