What about Men’s Options to Raise Kids?

Do even our liberal legislators believe that raising kids is the sole province of women?

What about women who WANT to work after having children?

Whatever happened to the idea of universal pre-school, universal affordable day care?

On the one hand, yes, let’s recognize the unpaid labor of women in the home. On the other hand — why is our only solution to the problem to pay them to do that labor that no one else will do?

Democratic policy: Women = Mothers = Home.

How exactly is that different from patriarchal notions we’ve been fighting all along?

When the banks went under, it became about insurance instead of health care. Insurance products are nothing but arbitrage streams of cash to Wall Street. I was a health insurance executive for 10 years. Health insurance companies don’t make their money on the profit/loss ratio of paying out claims vs. taking in premiums. They make their money via financial arbitrage. The banks are essentially bankrupt, but we can’t see that becuase of the change in accounting rules. Insurance funnels money to banks. No one in power ever was concerned about actual health care. Getting health care is only a byproduct of health insurance.

Next up is a mandate for all citizens to purchase annuities, or at least thats on cass sunstein’s wish list, and the same argument mandating health insurance applies to mandating annuities. Very slippery slope here.

Sorry — women aren’t one-half of the population. They’re the majority.
51%.

One of these days, I sincerely hope, the fact that we are the majority of the population will be evident by our representation in politics, media and culture, work and business and every other sphere of life. Currently we only have about 17% representation in govt., are outnumbered by about 20:1 in media and culture, and make up only about 3% of business chief executives. Majority ruled by minority.

From what I understand, statisticians estimate that at the rate we’re going, parity will be achieved in about 500 years. Oh, frabjous day!

But I agree with your sense that the attack on women is being nicely played by Democrats in order to boost support for Obama. If women’s rights were anothing other than great bargaining chips, I’m sure he could make a speech on the subject, maybe after he finishes his cameo on that wonderfully misogynist show Entourage. Cynicism and scapegoating, great tools of political theater, and it’s always so easy to kick women around, even the best of men do it. This time around, I’m sure the women who have been kicked will vote for the man who’s “uncomfortable” with abortion but trusts women to make the right choice “in consultation with their partners, parents and pastors.” (Provided they’re not making the choice because they’re “feeling blue.”)

And then he’ll spend another four years silent on the issue of women.

I guess you weren’t around in 2008. The Sarah Palin is a c*nt t-shirts. The Hillary Clinton nutcracker doll. The comments about cleavage and ankles and women who can only host tea parties and how claws come out, how women make themselves feel better by attacking, the “voice in her head” New Republic cover, that awful horrible sound that is female laughter, how horrible it would be for the country to have to watch a female leader age, anything at all written by Maureen Dowd, a full fifty percent of everything spoken by Bill Maher or Keith Olbermann, on and on.

In 2008 misogyny was unleashed in this country and very few people spoke up about it at all. Like Howard Dean, they “didn’t see it.”

Melissa at Shakespeare’s Sister did a terrific job chronicling it all. Far too many others ignored it or “didn’t see it.” Or thought it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

It’s the Roe stick all over again. The reason women (and the men who respect them) must vote Democratic — because of Roe, Roe, Roe.

Of course it’s a real issue. And it’s also great theater.

All those women who weren’t sure they could support our sexist president (sweetie) and all those women who for good reason fear for their very autonomy will now vote for the president who will make his grand bargain that will cut Social Security and Medicare — and of course, what segment of the population is MOST dependent upon these, but women! So very less likely to have pension benefits or employer health care or retirement savings.

It’s like the capitalists selling the very rope by which they will be hung — except completely opposite. It’s creating the very surge of support from us by which we’ll be impoverished.

Back to the 1970s in more ways than one, when abortion was the battle ground and the single largest demographic living in poverty were elderly women.

Really: this war on women is a wonderful two-fer, for Dems and Republicans alike. No wonder we hear so much more about it than the economy.

Obama is the good ole boy who called a woman reporter “sweetie” and then “apologized” for it by saying he calls women “sweetie” all the time. Sure, it’s a small thing, but indicative. What professional man in his 40s hasn’t learned BY NOW that you don’t call women with whom you are interacting professionally “sweetie?” Believe me, women who are on the receiving end of this kind of offhand small and casual dismissal know exactly how they’re being put down and marginalized in a way they can’t protest without being told they’re over-dramatizing and need to get over it.

See also: (paraphrasing, exact quote not ready to hand) “I understand that periodically she gets down and need to make herself feel better by going on the attack, and then the claws come out.”

See also: (paraphrase) “she’s throwing the kitchen sink at me, she’s throwing the china, soon she’ll be throwing the whole buffet.”

See also the comment about not wanting women to get third trimester abortions just because they were feeling a little “blue.” A statement he had to walk back when this “constitutional scholar” had it pointed out to him that changing the mental health provisions for third trimester abortions would in fact be a rollback of Roe.

There’s no question at all that Obama has a woman problem.

The real question is why progressives refuse to look at that problem and why we still can’t discuss the vicious onslaught of misogyny that roiled progressive politics during the primaries and general election. Just one example: I’d really like never ever again to hear a progressive call a woman (even Sarah Palin) a c*nt and I’d like never ever again to hear that the proper punishment for a woman progressives disagree with is rape.

We also nominated and elected an inexperienced and untried president on the promise of hope and change when there was NO track record of him ever bringing any sort of hope and change to any constituency whatsoever.

Is that the system’s fault?

One suggestion: never ever support anyone who has NO track record to evaluate.

(Though in fact Obama did have a very disturbing track record, though few bothered to look. Paul Street and Adolph Reed and Ian Welsh all tried to warn about that track record, to no avail.)

How many small businesses failed because they could not get access to credit that would have helped them survive the cash flow problems created by the credit crunch and the recession?

How many families went under because the Obama admin allowed small business to be eviscerated?

This just stinks, whether or not it was taxpayer money. Clearly NY and DC’s priority is Wall Street. Or, as the NY Fed banker said: Wall Street IS Main Street for them.

The rest of us are not Too Big to Fail, we are Too Small to Count.

Gabby Giffords received the best medical care possible, all at taxpayer expense.

Many many Americans are shot, suffer traumatic brain injury in car accidents, have strokes or other organic brain disorders. And what happens to them? They get care which more than likely drives them into bankrupty, or they die.

Gabby Giffords, recipient of this care at taxpayer largesse, just voted to make sure even fewer Americans will get the care she got. How different is she, then, from Marie Antoinette cutting off bread to the people while she ate cake?

I don’t see any reason to cut her any slack for that. In fact, I see a lot of value in pointing out her hypocrisy.

Here’s the bumper sticker; Austerity = Great Depression

All he ever had to do was let the Bush tax cuts expire. And to do that he had to do: nothing. Nothing at all! Exactly what Obama excels at.

He could have had his Reaganesque moment by staring down Boehner and demanding he tear down that wall, er, pass a clean debt bill. And Wall Street would have forced Boehner’s hand, everyone knows that.

Imagine the tingle up Chris Matthews’ leg if Obama had just gone all manly like that. Instead now Matthews is calling for Bill Clinton to come back to the WH because at least he can explain things to people!

What a useless empty suit Obama is. Yes, a tool of Wall Street. But also a hollow hollow man.

Just wait till Grandma’s kicked out of the nursing home that Medicaid won’t pay for anymore and so moves in with Mom and Dad, who are trying to figure out how to save up enough to patch the holes in their retirement with those SS cuts and the end of pensions while they also also pay for two additional years of health insurance thanks to the increase in Medicare eligibility, while they’re also supporting their unemployed 20-something who’s carrying 100K in non-dischargeable student loan debt.

The powers that be want us dead. Dead or taking to the streets, and one way or the other, I think that’s how it’s going to go.

I just emailed my rep, Pelosi, and told her: no shared sacrifice. That if the Dems vote to cut any part of the safety net I will not only withhold votes and money, I will actively work for their defeat. I am not afraid of President Romney.

The poor and the middle class have been sacrificing for 30 years. I told Pelosi that she and Obama should be ashamed to be members of the party of FDR and telling average Americans to eat their peas when the wealthy are eating caviar in record proportion.

No austerity. No shared sacrifice. Not after the bankers received $23 trillion in bailouts.

So in less than 100 years, the Democratic party has gone from ” a chicken in every pot” to “eat your peas and like it.”

Hmmm…. I remember during the primaries of 2008 there was another candidate in the race and everyone from Nancy Pelosi to Chris Matthews to the entire blogosphere was demanding she get out of the race, that she had no chance to win, and she refused. At that time, she was excoriated for staying in the fight and not bowing to the “inevitable.” At the time, her refusal to give in was roundly criticed, with a whole lot of sexist comparisons to Lady Macbeth.

Never give in, never surrender, all we have to fear is fear itself, and now Obama: take only the easy course, never risk defeat.

Jeez. More and more in every way and every day I am so glad I never gave one dollar nor one vote to this hollow hollow man.

I believe this is why Wall Street hired Obama for the job and then sponsored his ad campaign. I always did wonder where that 90 some odd million dollars he had in the bank — before he even announced — came from. Not from the little people, not then. I also always wondered who plucked him from obsurity to give the 2004 keynote address.

But… Obama signalled as early as 2007 he was going after Social Security. Any paying any attention to the Iowa debates saw that.

It’s possible American voters won’t care about the economy when they vote in 2012 simply because there won’t be any economy left.