The War on Women is Real

I see many people on Twitter and elsewhere pretending the War on Women is a joke made up by "hysterical" Dems. But there are real things going on in government that are aimed at controlling and limiting women for years to come. No one should close their eyes. No one should think these guys (and some women) in the GOP are kidding around or that they "don't really mean it." They do. This is not a joke.Other politicians take them at their word and we should too.

This is not a game and we Democrats are not "hysterical" if we fight back every way we can.

Need a reminder of what the War on Women is all about?

GOP = Cavalcade of Misogynist Derpitude

The Republican misogynist cavalcade of ignorance continues. The guys really are ignorant cretins, and the women in the party who go along with the talking points are worse!

For instance, we have Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America who recently said in an interview:

The question before us now is how are the Democrats going to handle that issue, how are they going to appeal to women? Is it going to be the Sandra Fluke sort of message that women are only interested in free birth control or free stuff at that. The question is what message works and it is a message of victim-hood, that you need free stuff from the government to be able to be productive in society? Is this just about the idea that really all it takes to win a woman's vote is free birth control which, by the way, we know that WalMart offers it for $9 a month. I often think I'd like to say to Sandra Fluke that if you'd just had less beer in college, I think you probably could afford the birth control you wanted.

Yeah, that's the kind of stupidity you get when women take their talking points from misogynist men like Rush Limbaugh.

And that brings me to Ann "I Love You Women" Romney, who tried to give an interview in Iowa the other day but instead merely stonewalled on every question pertaining to women's issues:

Anchor David Nelson: "Do you believe that employer-provided health insurance should be required to cover birth control?"

Ann Romney: "Again, you're asking me questions that are not about what this election is going to be about. This election is going to be about the economy and jobs."

Anchor David Nelson: "Well, a Pew Research poll shows those issues are very important to women, ranking them either "important" or "very important."

Ann Romney: "You know, but I personally believe, and this is what I'm hearing from women all across the country that they are going to look for the guy that's going to pull them out of the weeds and get them job security and a brighter future for their children. That's the message.

No, ANN, we are not just "looking for some guy to pull us out of the weeds." Women are not a bunch of swooning weak moochers looking for white knight (or a white horse) to ride up and tell us how to save ourselves. We'd rather have a President who sees women as his equals who can make their own decisions. We don't need a bunch of theocrat daddies who want to go back to the "saint in the kitchen - slut in the bedroom" school of family life.



Ohio Congressman Buchy Never Considered What Women Want

An anti-abortion crusading Ohio Republican lawmaker, state Rep. Jim Buchy, was unable to deliver an intelligent answer to a reporter who asked him why a woman would actually want to get an abortion.

“What do you think makes a woman want to have an abortion?,” an Al Jazeera reporter asks Buchy, as this video from last night’s Rachel Maddow Show depicts.


“Well, there’s probably a lot of — I’m not a woman so I’m thinking, if I’m a woman, why would I want to get — some of it has to do with economics. A lot has to do with economics. I don’t know, I have never — It’s a question I have never thought about,” responds Rep. Buchy.
“It’s a question I have never thought about.”

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TPM: Rep. Joe Walsh, D-IL Attacks Sandra Fluke

So at the Democratic Convention Wednesday night their first prime time speaker was Sandra Fluke — Fluke, Fluke, whatever her name is.

Think about this: a 31-32 year old law student who’s been a student for life, who gets up there in front of a national audience and tells the American people, “I want America to pay for my contraceptives.” You’re kidding me. Go get a job. Go get a job Sandra Fluke.

This is what, I was offended. We’ve got Americans who are struggling. We’ve got parents in this country who are struggling to buy sneakers that their kids can wear to school that just started. We’ve got parents up and down my district who are barely keeping their house. And, and, and, we have to be confronted by a woman, the Democratic Party this is what they stand for. Their going to put a woman in front of us who is complaining that the country — you, me and you — won’t pay the 9 dollars per month to pay for her contraceptives.

How crazy is this? In a way it’s not her fault, because we teach people this stuff. You go back to fairness, we teach young people this. Don’t worry, government will take care of you. You’re having trouble with your student loans? Don’t worry, government will be there for you.

We are raising the Sandra Flukes of the world. We’re raising Americans who don’t know how to take care of themselves, who feel entitled. This a woman who feels entitled that we all should pay for her contraceptives. This is what we are teaching Americans? That was embarrassing. That was embarrassing.

Congressman's Brain Explodes Over Contraception

Contraception - what a concept! No one in the United States has ever practiced contraception, right? Only selfish women benefit from it, not the noble men of our land who all want six or seven children that they have to support for 18 years plus college and beyond. No one benefits except . . .

No, I can't go on with that. Here's the story: when new rules that insurance companies must cover contraception were enacted today, a Congressman said some really stupid bu!!sh*t. Put this in the "you-can't-make-this-stuff-up file. Why would anyone in their right mind say something so bizarre? Oh . . . never mind . . .

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From Huffington Post

Criticizing President Barack Obama's health care reform law on Wednesday, Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) likened the requirement that private insurance plans provide contraception coverage to two of the most devastating attacks on American soil.

"I know in your mind, you can think of the times America was attacked," he said at a press conference on Capitol Hill. "One is Dec. 7, that's Pearl Harbor Day. The other is Sept. 11, and that's the day the terrorists attacked. I want you to remember Aug. 1, 2012, the attack on our religious freedom. That is a day that will live in infamy, along with those other dates."

Wednesday marked the first day private insurers must include birth control coverage without charging a co-pay in their plans, per requirements in the Affordable Care Act. The change will affect most women on private health plans, with some exceptions. More than a dozen Republican members of the House of Representatives, mostly freshmen, held a press conference to blast the law for what they said were violations of religious freedom.

SC Gov. Nikki Haley's Embarrassing Press Tour

Governor Nikki Haley from South Carolina is on an almost shameless press tour for her her book Can't Is Not An Option about growing up as an Indian American in a small southern town. And along the way, she is still trying to campaign a bit for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Is she helping him? Not too much.

She told ABC News on April 2nd that she would not serve as Vice President if Romney asked her to run, and that's probably a good thing. I'm not sure why he would ask her anyway, since her endorsement early on in the Primary season failed to deliver her state, which was taken by Newt Gingrich by 13 percentage points. And there's not much evidence that she would help deliver any other Southern states, either, although she might have diversity appeal as an Indian-American governor in the same generation as Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. The problem with both Haley and Jindal is that they do not represent their ethnic community all that well, and what should be seen as a great plus for diversity in the Republican Party is just an embarrassment.

For instance, remember when Jindal said we don't need scientific stuff like volcano monitors, but then volcanoes shut down airports in Alaska, not to mention all of Europe? And he turned down $90 million in stimulus money on conservative principal, then begged Obama for help when the Gulf oil spill happened? Why would Nikki Haley want to be compared to him for any reason, even ethnicity?

Unfortunately, Nikki Haley is about the same type of Governor, with the same propensity to flip-flop, or the "do as I say, not as I do." She may enjoy turning down Medicaid for poor people, but just wait till a hurricane threatens Charleston and the resort areas along the SC Coast, and she will have her hand out for federal disaster relief, you can bet on that.

One subject she won't be discussing on the road is her family's scandal with the IRS. Her parents are being accused of raising funds for her gubernatorial campaign through their non-profit Sikh Temple. That's a political no-no. The Palmetto Public Record reports:

According to documents obtained by Palmetto Public Record, the Internal Revenue Service has been investigating since March 2011 whether the Sikh Religious Society of South Carolina illegally supported a political candidate during Haley’s campaign for governor, violating the organization’s tax-exempt status.
As a registered nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, the Sikh temple is “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for elective public office.” According to the IRS, even written statements of position in favor of a candidate “clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity” and may result in revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.
But documents which appear to be the temple’s own newsletters clearly advocate for Haley’s election, asking (and later thanking) members for their political and financial support. The organization also seems to have held a September 2010 fundraiser for Haley’s gubernatorial campaign, with four of the five organizers listed on the temple’s board of trustees.

And that's only part the family's problems. There is the mystery revolving around a large bank loan the Randhawa family took out to help finance a new Sikh Temple. Contractors were never paid, and the temple was never completed, but at the same time Nikki Haley was elected Governor and her family built a huge new lake house. The The Palmetto Public Record reports:

In 2009, the Sikh Society of South Carolina took out a $750,000 loan from BB&T Bank with the help of bank president Mike Brenan. The purpose of the loan was to build a new temple on the Sikh Society’s land in Chapin, but for some reason the contractors never got paid. At least five lawsuits have been filed against the Sikh Society since 2010, alleging that the group bilked contractors out of nearly $130,000.Meanwhile, the new temple sits half-complete off Broad River Road as weeds take over the abandoned construction site.
In order to recoup their money, the contractors have asked a judge to foreclose on the temple and sell the land, leaving the Sikh Society without a place to worship.
So what happened to the money? Did it “disappear” into the Randhawa family’s million-dollar waterfront home on Lake Murray, or (as our sources have speculated) did some of it go into the governor’s campaign account? Whatever happened to the money, we do know what happened to Brenan: Gov. Nikki Haley appointed him to the state Board of Education.

Yesterday, Haley appeared on ABC's The View, which was...interesting...



Video Via The Frisky  

Sympathetic conservative Elizabeth Hasselbeck tried to prompt some kind of logic out of Gov. Haley, but Haley flip-flopped aimlessly, first making the bizarre statement that "Women don't care about contraception," then telling an incredulous Joy Behar, "We don't have to have a government mandate telling us when we have to have it and when we don't." Duh, that makes perfect sense, and yet that's exactly what Romney and Santorum and a host of gargoyles like Rick Perry want to do by getting rid of funding for Planned Parenthood. Gov. Haley Meets the Etch-A-Sketch by defending the indefensible. It's sort of easy to see why she and Romney are sympatico.

Amanda Marcotte writing for Slate points out that such a comment may display another trait in common with Romney - a sense of entitlement and disconnect from ordinary people.

Haley may just be looking at this issue with blinkers, and when she says "women," she means "women like me," i.e., conservative. It is true that conservative women are less supportive than women as a whole of attempts to make contraception access easier. That's because the war on women is just as much about class as it is about gender....For women for whom $50 or $100 a month isn't very much money, this sort of thing probably doesn't matter. In fact, for many conservatives, it's clear that they believe protected sex is a luxury that should only be available, like fine champagne or HBO subscriptions, to those who can afford it.

Haley also appeared on Stephen Colbert's Comedy Central show where she made an even stranger comment, via Huffington Post:

Governor Nikki Haley (R) said she wears heels as "ammunition" in the tough political climate of South Carolina.
"It's a blood sport," Haley said Tuesday on The Colbert Report. "I wear heels and it's not for a fashion statement, it's ammunition."
"You keep them sharpened?" host Stephen Colbert asked.
"I do. It's for kicking," Haley replied.

She better keep them sharpened, for sure.