reproductive rights

Yeah, that'll show him!

John McCain is in favor of forced pregnancy, but these women would rather vote for him than Obama.

John McCain's healthcare plan is "let the market handle it" (like it has been handling it so far), but these women would rather vote for him than Obama.

John McCain is obsessed with fighting wars and extending the war of choice on Iraq, but these women would rather vote for him than Obama.

Why? Because they seem to feel that Hillary Clinton is somehow entitled to the nomination, despite the fact that she didn't get the votes.

What's dangerous for the Democratic Party is that, for many women, the eye of the storm has moved beyond Hillary or anything she does at this point. The offense has turned personal. They are now in their own orbit, having abandoned popular Democratic Websites that reveled in crude anti-Hillary outpourings -- and established new ones on which they trade stories of the Obama people's nastiness. . The women talk of being taken for granted by a party leadership that never spoke out on some of the outrageous Hillary bashing -- and despite the close race, joined the early rush to crown Obama. . .

"Many of us feel slighted," said Lynn Eyrich Harvey, 76, from Los Gatos, Calif. "We feel that years of supporting the party is unimportant, that we are to sit down and shut up -- but be sure to vote Democratic in November." Passions can change, one supposes, but the women I hear from do not see the rampant sexism, particularly toward older women, as isolated gaffes but as a systemic dismissal of them -- an enormous voting bloc that has been reliably Democratic.

"How Obama's campaign has treated Hillary will not be forgotten," Janet Rogers, 55, who runs a Bed and Breakfast in Medina, Ohio, wrote me. "I will vote for McCain if Hillary is not the nominee. My husband and friends all feel the same way."

[via TGW]

How did Obama's campaign treat Hillary? She was the one always attacking him, remember?

It was her election to lose -- she had all the advantages early on -- and she lost it. She ran a lousy campaign, reinvented herself every week, and used political rhetoric of the tone and slant that fits perfectly with Karl Rove politics. A lot of Democrats have been looking at Hillary and just saying "ugh, no more."

If things were reversed, and the African American male candidate were the establishment politician defending the DLC's control of the Party, and the woman were the new face who spoke about politics with an entirely different tone and who inspired people into believing that change really is possible, then I'm quite sure the woman would win.

Clinton is a Clinton. Clinton has baggage. But what's worse, her political style, her campaign, her rhetoric all are rooted in the 90s, and sound way too much like more of the same than many would like.

You want to vote for John McCain? Knock yourself out. And think about the Supreme Court you are leaving to your daughters and granddaughters. Think about the fraying social safety net under yet another term of thrashing. Think about the Global Gage Rule and how it's being applied at home. Think about our failing schools. Think about perpetual war. Think about the nail in the coffin of progressive values you are driving in with a vote for McCain. All because your candidate did not win.

More women will run. Women will win. This is not going to change.

But in what kind of America? Change has to happen now, or we are setting this country back even more.

The Senate has passed a bill that contains language to repeal the global gag rule.

So what's next for the global gag rule? It's now headed to a House-Senate "conference committee," where a few members from each chamber will work out differences between each chamber’s version of the bill. Then the Senate and House must approve the final compromise version, which will be sent to the president.

Even though we won this key vote on the global gag rule, President Bush has already threatened to veto any bill that includes a pro-choice provision, including this one.

Now you can help rally support for that language to survive to the final bill.

Of course, the problem of governments' claiming they own women's wombs is well represented within US borders, too.

That is the unfortunate moral of the many stories recapped in a must-read by Violet at Reclusive Leftist:

Here’s an interesting change. After all these stories of women being prosecuted or threatened with legal action for pressing rape charges, today we have a story of a woman being prosecuted for not pressing rape charges.

You all remember that back in 2005, a 17-year-old girl was actually prosecuted for reporting her rape. Not only prosecuted but convicted of a crime — and all because the state decided it couldn’t prove the case against her attackers.

And with the Duke case, as you all know, every sexist twit this side of the Andromeda galaxy took to the intertubes to demand that the victim in that case also be prosecuted, again for the “crime” of reporting a crime that the state decided it couldn’t prove.

And in the De Anza case, a teenage girl who was gang-raped by a sports team was publicly castigated for, again, reporting a crime that the state decided it couldn’t prove.

Anybody see a pattern?

So I look at this:

AP - Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney took aim at Democratic rivals on Sunday, calling them all unprepared to lead the country and comparing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's economic plan to that of Socialist Karl Marx.

Gotta love the Karl Marx mention, even though I doubt 90% of Americans even know who Karl Marx was. But what's really laughable is that Clinton's health plan could be called anything like socialism. When pretty much all politicians looking at the healthcare decline in this country (if they even admit that it's in decline) call for solutions that pretty much ignore the fact that insurance companies are at the center of the problem, it's truly a joke to be pulling out the Marx card.

But then we all know Mitt Romney is a joke.

Via :

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the plan will give poor Brazilians "the same right that the wealthy have to plan the number of children they want."

Brazil already hands out free condoms and birth control pills at government-run pharmacies. But many poor people in Latin America's largest country don't go to those pharmacies, so Silva's administration decided to offer the pills at drastically reduced prices at private drug stores, said Health Minister Jose Gomes Temporao.

The price for a year's supply of birth control pills under the new program would be $2.40, and anyone — rich or poor — can buy the pills by simply showing a government-issued identification card that almost all Brazilians carry.

Not America. Need you ask?