I’ve had my differences with some of the things Obama has done in office, especially in civil liberties. But the invitation his campaign extended to Republicans to launch their War on Women ™ ought to rank as one of his greatest achievements. It’s penetrating now even to the lowest-information American just how fanatical, and misogynist, and ignorant, and authoritarian, the current crop of Republicans is. And no amount of finger-pointing by Dems would have conveyed this with an ounce as much impact as the Republicans themselves trumpeting who, and what, they are.
That this happened before an election in which, in a normal year with a struggling economy, Republicans would be in good shape to seize all three branches of government, is a public service that ought to get Obama’s face on Rushmore. The people now driving the Republican bus have always been scarifying, intolerant zealots, but now a lot more people know it. I hope they continue to stand, noisily, for what they believe in, despite the temporary damage to thinking people’s sanity it entails. The more noise, the bigger the repudiation in November.
I was once in a bar in Turlock, California…quite a “Dive”, kind of like the bar scene in Star Wars…you Progressives would have loved it… All “poor”…men…women…whites…blacks…hispanics…after buying a round for all, I got the entire bar to chant USA, USA, USA, USA, USA, USA,…God I love this country!
Well…maybe more than one round…but still…quite a diverse crew…you Progressives do favor diversity, don’t you?
What does this have to do with anything?
Isn’t trolling supposed to involve saying something that is liable to upset somebody?
UR not doin it rite!
This is no troll, it’s a salesman from Ellipsis Amalgamated.
Hello Joe,
Loved your comments over on the Sandra Fluke boyfriend thread!!
Thanks.
“WAR!”
lol, wtf?
especially the burrito comment, and the tinfoil covered house exchange
“the tinfoil covered house exchange”
Well it’s not!
you do realize that drink and song are the secret ingredients for making more poor people and minorities?
#wingnutNightmares
I keep hoping against hope that Santorum pulls it off now–can you imagine how that would drive women voters to the polls? Romney will stop making offensive noises as soon as he can wrap up the nom, but Ricky can’t help himself, he’ll keep flogging the wrong themes all the way to the general.
We should be so lucky.
On another note…how can Jesus Christ simultaneously be the most radical left-winger AND the most radical right-winger in history? How does that happen?
Cognitive dissonance.
Jesus is like play-doh. Easily malleable into whatever form suits your particular need. He can be whatever you wish.
Dude, when you’re the Trinity, occupying more than one position on the political spectrum is nuthin.
Final comment…insomnia sucks!!
Ah…this explains the above.
And we agree – I’ve been awake since 4 AM, and not willingly.
Yeah, compulsive typing doesn’t cure it either.
I’m puzzled where all this is coming from. It does appear to be coordinated on the state level (see VA and IN) but why?? I see the ALEC sponsored desire to destroy the unions for freedom to exploit and pollute, but what is the impetus behind the war on women?
I don’t think it’s really a war against women. It’s a war against modernity. But at the moment, there’s a lot of fighting on the Uterine Front.
would you call that in-fighting?
My sense is that the GOP candidates’ competition to out-crazy the GOP competition is going into runaway mode. Against preventing violence against women. That should bring the ladies back to the GOP, shouldn’t it.
I agree. I was looking forward to seeing Mitt tear into Santorum over his comments in Puerto Rico and wow did he ever miss an opportunity.
And I understand that Mitt wants to be severely conservative and doesn’t want to come right out and say “Spanish is a wonderful language and all our lives are enriched by it.” but he also could have simply torn Santorum apart with regard to ignorance of US law.
I was waiting for Santorum to rip Romney apart: “Romney supports Spanish as an official language in the US …”
yes, NH already signed off on that iirc. Maybe you’re correct about this. But it’s happening on the state level across the board, just like the anti-teacher and anti-union and voter ID legislation and what you’re suggesting is more an uplanned going off the rails, which is what I thought at first but now I’m thinking it’s connected with the rest of what ALEC is pushing on the state level. Why?
It’s a backlash against the ACA contraception-coverage regs. That really was a BFD, something that has been a central fight for the feminist movement for a couple of decades.
It is part and parcel of making the usa a third world nation, to the benefit of the .1%, maybe that’s the underlying impetus.
It certainly appears so. Take a peek at the Great ALEC Laundry List of Loathsome Local Legislation.
Thank you for the link. As I said, am beginning to think this war on women is coming from ALEC
The impetus is the Affordable Care Act, and the advance it represents for women’s rights.
Interesting to me to watch Biden & Obama both give speeches simultaneously yeserday. They both did a grand job of campaign “GAME ON!”. I’d almost forgotten how good Biden can be in front of a good old working class crowd.
Boxer’s video, A Woman’s Voice is mesmerizing and since Rush & Fox friends & of course the Komen debacle are helpfully still digging the WarAgainstWomen grave for the Repub’s it is somehow quite enjoyable watching the small minded boys having their words and actions being stomped on by mothers and grandmothers.
I love that part of the Dem’s spine seems to be coming as a response to women’s issues; I love hearing the roar of the oldtimers like Jane & Gloria as they stomp to the mic and join hands with younger generations; and it was good to hear Obama reference “Woman Power” yesterday.
I don’t think this was a master plan to trap the Republicans. I think the administration is just on the right side of the issue, and they played their cards well.
The debt ceiling “negotiations” were 11-dimensional chess. This? This is just Obama being what he’s always been – a very good counterpuncher.
Yeah, most “inside accounts” don’t seem to indicate this was all planned.
My opinion. It’s a GOP unforced error. Comes with allowing a fat racist misogynist to be the ideological pilonidal cyst of the party.
Yeah.
The unforced error started well before Limbaugh, though. Remember Foster Freiss talking about holding an aspirin between your knees? The Republicans jumped all over the contraceptive coverage rule.
Biggest political miscalculation since, what? Schiavo? They actually thought they had a winner – and so did quite a few older, male Democrats, especially Catholic ones, on the pundit circuit.
Biggest political miscalculation since, what? Schiavo?
That’s what I compare it to in my own mind. It makes me wonder if there’s some Hurricane Katrina analog coming along to make the Repubs look even worse.
Already has been. Gov. John Kasich’s refusal to take federal aid after a tornadoes destroyed parts of several Ohio towns.
That is indeed a Bush-Katrina-like dumb handling of a disaster – what has the political fallout from it been like?
No evidence other than talking with a Congressional source who thinks it was an intentional trap the Republicans happily walked into and snapped shut. I’ll defer to her; she would be a lot closer to knowing the back story than I am.
That would have to go a long way back, though, because the contraception-coverage policy was part of the original ACA, and the preliminary regs were announced in the summer of 2011. It’s not like they dropped the February 2012 announcement out of the blue – it was a long time coming.
If they really did set this whole thing up, we need to give the administration a lot more credit for strategery than they’ve been getting from even their biggest admirers.
Booman Tribune ~ Casual Thought
You’re suggesting this was all planned by the Obama campaign? If so they have played a blinder. Do you have any evidence to support this thesis?
My suspicious is that team Obama got lucky. It’s not his style to provoke confrontation. However when the provocation came it was easy to adopt a moderate centrist tone on the side of reason which made the GOPERS look crazy – and probably drove them even more crazy.
((Now, how do we keep this going until November..?))
The missus disagrees with you. She finds it frightening and stressful that so many people are so willing to openly attack women. She also fears that all this talk will only embolden those who are anti-woman to attack her sex further and continue to restrict her ability to do anything other than be a stay-at-home mom.
That’s a fair concern. My perspective comes from growing up in the South during desegregation. The white backlash against civil rights activism was ferocious, and for many people (most of them black) personally unpleasant. However, at the end of the day the stigmatized class – in this case African Americans – came out far ahead of where they’d been, and while bigotry remains, it’s now understood far more widely that it’s not appropriate to express such bigotry openly.
The current situation with women is not an exact analogy, of course. But it’s close enough that at the end of the day I think the advances in societal understanding of women’s rights and roles will be worth the temporary empowerment of misogynist assholes.