By Krystal Ball, on Fri Apr 6, 2012 at 11:30 AM ET
Yesterday, in my appearance on Martin Bashir’s MSNBC show, Bashir Live (See Clip below), I lost it a bit over Reince Priebus’ comparison of the War on Women to a War on Caterpillars. In my spluttering rant, I listed evidence of the many ways in which the War on Women is very much real and very much a product of the GOP working with shadow organizations like Americans United for Life (AUL). Below are a SMALL and not nearly comprehensive sample of the provisions being introduced nationwide which are designed to shame women and dictate to them what they can and can’t do. Please email additional examples to me at kmb.uva@gmail.com.
900 anti-choice provisions introduced so far in 2012
War on Planned Parenthood
***Please note that only 97% of what Planned Parenthood does is preventative health care or providing birth control and other contraception which DECREASES the need for abortions. One in five American women have relied on Planned Parenthood for services.
In 2011 – 7 states passed bills defunding or limiting funding to Planned Parenthood (IN, KS, NC, NH, WI, TN, TX)
In 2012 – 8 states are considering legislation to defund or limit funding to Planned Parenthood (AZ, IA, MI, NE, NH, OH, OK, PA)
Congressional Republicans nearly shut down the government last year trying to defund Planned Parenthood
Congressional Republicans launched a bogus investigation of Planned Parenthood last summer based on equally bogus Americans United for Life “research” and gave Susan G. Komen for the Cure an excuse to discontinue their partnership with the organization
In Texas, Governor Perry decided he would rather low-income women go without preventative health care than have them receive it from Planned Parenthood.
Transvaginal Probes
Legislators in 13 stateshave introduced 22 bills seeking to mandate that a woman obtain an ultrasound procedure before having an abortion. Of these, 7 states are pursuing the staterape vaginal probe variety.
Insurance Coverage
Legislators in 11 states(AL, IN, KS, MI, NE, OK, OR, SC, TX, UT and WV) have introduced 18 measures that would restrict abortion coverage under all private health insurance plans.
Legislators in 23 states(AL, AR, FL, GA, ID, IN, IA, KS, KY, MI, MT, NE, NJ, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, TX, UT, VA and WV) introduced 49 measures that apply to exchange coverage.
Georgia legislator Rep Terry England compares women to cows and pigs on his farm in support of bill forcing women to carry even unviable fetuses to term.
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett justifies forced ultrasound bill by telling women to “just close your eyes.”
There is a price to invoking race too frequently. It goes something like this: allege bias and racial motivations often enough, and the case gets old. Then, when the time comes when there is a genuinely ugly racial moment, and the claim needs to be made, it seems more shopworn than moving.
I have seen this equation play out countless times in Alabama, and I thought of it as the outcry builds over the shooting of an unarmed black child in Florida named Trayvon Martin. The details remain vague but there is at least an outline of what occurred. A neighborhood resident notices a black teenager who seems out of place to him; without reason or provocation, and contrary to the instructions of the police dispatcher he called, the man apparently follows the teenager. At some point, the two encounter each other and the episode ends horrifically. A 17 year old with no history of violence, and nothing in his past to suggest he would resort to violence, is shot dead. The shooter was allowed to leave without being arrested and without even being subjected to an alcohol or drug test.
The shooter had a bloody nose and it suggests that his meeting with Martin turned into an altercation. But the case seems an almost perfect storm of bad, flawed intentions: one man’s suspicions of a kid who looked neither menacing nor suspicious; a police department’s insensitive decision to let the shooter walk away from the scene of a death; the local prosecutor’s failure to see probable cause to convene a grand jury; and a state deadly force law that might have been written for the jungle and not the confines of a community. It is morally clear enough that, yes, the Justice Department ought to be preparing an assault on the law as well as an investigation of the shooting.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: The Other Trayvon Martin Tragedy
For as long as I can remember in politics, Democrats have always taken it on the chin from Republicans about not being pro-business or not being concerned about small business issues.
An event this week in Washington D.C. proved otherwise. I had the opportunity to join a delegation of about 25 business leaders (Republicans, Democrats, and Independents) from my hometown of Kansas City, Mo. This group consisted of CEO’s, small business leaders, entrepreneurs, and elected officials. It had the clientele of a Chamber of Commerce event. The only thing was we were at the White House meeting with senior officials from the administration to share business ideas, work together on solving problems, and identify ways that the federal government could help or get out of the way to make Kansas City, Mo. grow and thrive.
Interactive dialogue between the group and the chief economist for the U.S. Department of Commerce, deputy secretary of education, President Obama’s top advisors, and the assistant secretary for administration at the Department of Health and Human Services all took place in D.C. Shocking right? Not really, but that is what many political pundits and opposition to the president would like you to believe.
The fact that the White House and the administration is reaching out and bringing individuals into the policy making process is positive. Being part of the process and reaching out to the business community, whether large or small, should stand above the political rhetoric filling up our heads these days. All of the relative and salient points made at this meeting will go into a report for President Obama.
Read the rest of… Jason Grill: Democrats and Small Business
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Apr 5, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Life advice at 11:30pm on a Monday when no one has asked for it.
Wishing I knew more answers at this point in life but glad I have so many left to try to figure out.
It’s nice to go through life feeling you have the answers to most everything important question and that those answers need not be questioned.
It’s secure and seductive.
And there are parts of life that aren’t complicated and where plain truths are all we need to know—and simply stick to them.
But life, to me, is a mystery and we can only see through a glass, darkly for now. But we should, in my view, look and think and imagine anyway.
If I hold all the same opinions at age 50 that I had at age 25, I can’t help but feel that I haven’t asked enough of myself. And if I hold the same opinions at age 75 I held at 25,
I’m afraid I’ll feel I learned nothing in this life. And maybe even insulted God by not paying closer attention.
Does this mean go buy some self-help books or CDs? If you want. Maybe take a course. Or talk to a friend who you haven’t met yet because they are too different and may challenge your beliefs.
Or do what I’m doing now, watch and listen to The Who’s “The Seeker”. And pretend you are being deep when you are really just relaxing and unwinding. And maybe preparing to imagine something new.
Whatever you choose. I do recommend being a seeker. It’s not as scary as it seems. Each day is as mysterious as it is predictable. You can come up with rambling Facebook posts. And, best of all, the music is awesome! ; )
At the risk of reading tea leaves from two justices, the ever pivotal Anthony Kennedy and the magisterial but cautious John Roberts, the game seems up on the health insurance mandate.
In casual parlance, they seemed to get it—the “it” being that a government with the power to compel a consumer to enter a market is as omnipotent economically as it wants to be. That government is not only theoretically free to pursue a range of things it won’t do, from making Prius purchasing, Iphone carrying, broccoli eaters of all of us—but, as Kennedy especially seemed to intuit, its also capable of doing something more realistic and more substantial, which is collapsing the zone of economic autonomy to almost nothing, in the name of making the economy look the way government thinks it should.
David Brooks, in his latest column in the NY Times, puts the mandate in the familiar context of the Obama Administration’s penchant for centralized bureaucracies, and he is certainly right about that. Given its druthers, and more votes in Congress, the president would have almost certainly followed that trend into a full scale public option that would have arguably refashioned healthcare delivery along the lines of the fraying, cost-exploding model that is Medicare. For good measure, this White House would have done the same with cap-and-trade and the market for carbon emissions, and they have certainly run the same play in the context of the Dodd-Frank reform by carving out an aggressive new regulator for consumer financial products.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: The Mandate’s Very Bad Day
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Apr 4, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Much ado about nothing.
This entire episode with Jason Russell (founder of Invisible Children) crusading to make international criminal Joseph Kony famous…has been misunderstood and blown way out of proportion.
At first I, too, was stunned to read that Mr Russell was discovered near San Diego running naked in the streets, shouting nonsensically, pacing, slapping the sidewalk and interfering with traffic.
But I kept reading.
Russell is a graduate of USC (University of Southern California).
I attended USC for over a year back in the early 80’s before returning home to Louisville (and Bellarmine College).
The kind of behavior exhibited by Mr Russell was NOT abnormal for many USC students and now seems perfectly sensible to me once it has been place in its proper context.
Sure, trying to make Joseph Kony famous can make anyone a little crazy. But trying to survive the social, cultural, economic and academic pressures at USC will lead even the strong among us to regularly meltdown publicly in the Southern California area.
Jason Russell wasn’t mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted from the success of having millions of supporters cheering him to capture the world’s most infamous criminal.
He was probably merely having a flashback from his freshman hazing at USC.
They’ve seen the polling – they can read the writing on the wall. Demographics are destiny: young people overwhelmingly (2:1) support gay marriage. Middle-aged people (45-65) and mixed; seniors against.
So the process of generational replacement over the next decade will just continue moving the center further and further left on this issue. (The last issue I can remember with a generational split this stark is polling on interracial marriage around the time of Loving v. Virginia – ’67-68.) Clearly, Republicans are wise to begin what will be a long retreat from their rhetoric around this issue.
And as POLITICO notes this morning, some smart Republicans are also beginning to take the longer view on immigration. Alienating young people and Latinos in a country that will be increasingly dominated by them in coming decades is a huge political loser.
Unfortunately for Republicans, small symbolic steps won’t enough to sway many folks this fall. Undoing the damage from this year’s nasty primary (and the forces that led to it) is a multi-cycle proposition.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Apr 3, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Which part of speech best characterizes you?
A video by Grammar Rock got me thinking, each part of speech has a certain personality– verbs, nouns, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections.
I would like to say I’m most like a verb—a person of action and activity.
I don’t want to be a preposition. They are sneaky trying to go over, under and around things. You can’t trust ’em.
Maybe I’m most like an conjunction today. I try to bring people together to do more than they can do separately.
OK, really I just want to post the video of Conjunction Junction. It was my favorite song by Grammar Rock. And is still pretty cool all these years later.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Apr 3, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
Sports can bring people together. It can divide us, too.
In sports we find heroes to admire and role models who are coping with the game they play so well… in similar ways we find ourselves coping with life. But unlike us they show courage, confidence, and skill….we want to have these too. But don’t.
So we watch and try to learn. And cheer. And talk trash. And cry on the inside (and sometimes the outside too) when our team fails.
And when they win ….on a night like last night….we swell up with great pride.
Because sports also symbolizes factions, groups, and even states.
The “team” we cheer for identifies us. They represent us. When our sports team wins, we win. When our sports team is superior, we somehow feel superior. When they fail, we feel their pain and question ourselves.
They–our athletes–remind us we are not alone but part of something bigger— something more important. A community that ties us together and reinforces our worth– in some vague way. And not just our worth….but our worth among “our people.” Our tribe.
Sports is at once inherently frivolous and yet unquestionably profound. On the one hand, so arbitrary; and on the other hand, so primitive and instinctive.
We humans seem to need conflict and great causes and great battles. Athletic competition has served as a substitute for war. A tool for diplomacy during Cold War detente. And an avocation and form of entertainment during peacetime.
And last night…sports has provided about as much fun as a 4.4 million people can have sitting down. And make those same people feel a good deal prouder of about their state. And a little bit prouder of ourselves. For tonight, at least. And maybe tomorrow, too.
And you thought it was just a silly game with a ball….
Yesterday, in my appearance on Martin Bashir’s MSNBC show, Bashir Live (See Clip below), I lost it a bit over Reince Priebus’ comparison of the War on Women to a War on Caterpillars. In my spluttering rant, I listed evidence of the many ways in which the War on Women is very much real and very much a product of the GOP working with shadow organizations like Americans United for Life (AUL). Below are a SMALL and not nearly comprehensive sample of the provisions being introduced nationwide which are designed to shame women and dictate to them what they can and can’t do. Please email additional examples to me at kmb.uva@gmail.com.
They’ve seen the polling – they can read the writing on the wall. Demographics are destiny: young people overwhelmingly (2:1) support gay marriage. Middle-aged people (45-65) and mixed; seniors against.