This article, "Dispatches From The War On Women: Turning Pregnant Women Into Criminals"
http://www.care2.com/causes/dispatches-from-the-war-on-women-turning-pregnant-women-into-criminals.html#ixzz1vVNloZqq, cites an editorial in the Sunday New York Times, saying the editorial "... minced no words, breaking down the attacks on reproductive rights, access to health care, and challenges to equal pay laws and domestic violence protections. ... 'Whether this pattern of disturbing developments constitutes a war on women is a political argument. That women’s rights and health are casualties of Republican policy is indisputable.'”
http://www.care2.com/causes/dispatches-from-the-war-on-women-turning-pregnant-women-into-criminals.html
No matter how you slice it, there is nothing conservative about this strategy to repress, subjugate and 'second-class' females in the United States.
Even without the GOP policies that blast ever-widening chasms of disparity between the mega haves and the other 99 percent of Americans, it is beyond comprehension that any woman who can vote in this country would ever vote for any these modern-day Talibanesque Republicans.
Showing posts with label New York Times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York Times. Show all posts
Monday, May 21, 2012
Monday, December 26, 2011
Libertarian Freeloaders
New York Times article teaser: "The Goldwater Institute, a libertarian think tank, plays an outsize role in setting the agenda in Arizona and is helping set up similar litigation outfits elsewhere."
Would that the news media and politicians would deep six the "libertarian" label!
The only real "libertarians" in the U.S. live in a cave and never come out. Everyone else benefits every day from government benefits and services, including the roads they drive on, safe commercial flight, potable water, breathable air, and so much more that makes for healthy, convenient, sustainable living that taxes fund and is made possible by those "regulations" they hate so much. All these so-called libertarians really want is the freedom to do whatever heck they want without having to pay for it and without regard to the harm to any/everyone else.I'm way too conservative to want my taxes to fund these wanna-be freeloaders follies.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
What Would Ghandi Say?
New York Times columnist Charles Blow posts the link to his columns on Facebook the day before publication and invites his FB Friends to let him know what they think. So yesterday I read today's column, "Them That's Not Shall Lose" @ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06
Among the comments he got was this one:
"Mahatma Ghandi: 'A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.'"
That brought to mind the biblical passage in Matthew in which Jesus said, "Truly I say to you, Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my brothers, you have done it to me."
Another commentor was thinking along the same lines. She wrote:
"For the religious politicians see Matthew 25:41-46: 'Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, ...I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'"
And that brought to mind the Congressional debt-ceiling impass in which, from what I understand, Republicans are resolute about not ending government subsidies to highly profitable oil companies which benefit their obscenely rich executives, yet are demanding cuts in government assistance to "the least" among us.
Charles Blow included this quote in his column:
“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”
One of his FB Friends observed. "...which is true, again, in like 10 different ways - literally, every thing costs more - interest is higher, offers for loans are worse and more costly and you money isn't at work on the stock market while you are at work making more - a hundred dollars for a poor person equals 10,000 in real life - and it REALLY does - it is EXTREMELY expensive to be poor - extremely. say it again and again - tell it over and over ..."
That's true not only for the individual who is poor, it is true for a nation that grows poverty, that increasingly widens the gap between its rich and poor citizens, that reduces the buying power of its middle- and low-income groups, which the U.S. is doing a lot of these days.
It costs our country far more in financial and human capital and in national potential to not take care of its poor than it would if we did.
That just makes good truly conservative sense.
Among the comments he got was this one:
"Mahatma Ghandi: 'A nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.'"
That brought to mind the biblical passage in Matthew in which Jesus said, "Truly I say to you, Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my brothers, you have done it to me."
Another commentor was thinking along the same lines. She wrote:
"For the religious politicians see Matthew 25:41-46: 'Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, ...I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'"
And that brought to mind the Congressional debt-ceiling impass in which, from what I understand, Republicans are resolute about not ending government subsidies to highly profitable oil companies which benefit their obscenely rich executives, yet are demanding cuts in government assistance to "the least" among us.
Charles Blow included this quote in his column:
“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”
One of his FB Friends observed. "...which is true, again, in like 10 different ways - literally, every thing costs more - interest is higher, offers for loans are worse and more costly and you money isn't at work on the stock market while you are at work making more - a hundred dollars for a poor person equals 10,000 in real life - and it REALLY does - it is EXTREMELY expensive to be poor - extremely. say it again and again - tell it over and over ..."
That's true not only for the individual who is poor, it is true for a nation that grows poverty, that increasingly widens the gap between its rich and poor citizens, that reduces the buying power of its middle- and low-income groups, which the U.S. is doing a lot of these days.
It costs our country far more in financial and human capital and in national potential to not take care of its poor than it would if we did.
That just makes good truly conservative sense.
"For the religious politicians see Matthew 25:41-46: 'Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, ...I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'"
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Revolution
Recently defeated South Carolina Republican Representative Bob Inglis was interviewed a couple of days ago on National Public Radio in a piece headlined, “Republican Swamped By The GOP Wave.”
Contributing to Inglis’s electoral defeat was what has become the right-wing political career-ending position of daring to say he “believes in” climate change (apparently, although not said, as having some degree of human cause).
As an aside, use of the term “believe in” in this and similar contexts, sends my eyebrows skyward, as if one would “believe in” climate change as though it were some kind of religious ideology or deity.
Despite Congressman Inglis’s 93% conservative” voting record (yet not “conservative” enough for today’s South Carolina voters), I agreed with much of what he said on NPR.
He lamented the disappearance of the Republican Party of Teddy Roosevelt, whose platform as both a Republican and a Progressive of the Bull Moose Party, was conservation. I think that must have been the Republican Party of my parents, or at least my father, who thought the best light switch was one in the "off" position.
That concept of conservatism has been flipped on its head as today’s conservative archetype, instead of being frugal and thrifty, comprises the bigger-is-better, consume-and-throw-away crowd.
New York Times right-of-center columnist David Brooks snarked about the nation’s capital being awash last month with famously high-gas-mileage Priuses—Brooks’s stereotypical vehicle of Birkenstock-wearing, granola-eating, tree-hugging liberals—during The Daily Show host Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity.
So are “conservatives’” ideal vehicles gas-guzzling, super-sized SUVs and trucks? I think driving high-gas-mileage cars, eating healthfully and caring about trees are truly conservative virtues.
Also in the NPR segment, Inglis, in discussing the Tea Party, harked back to the French Revolution in which a populist movement turned the streets of Paris and other parts of France into rivers of blood—quite literally—with the wholesale purging of the nobility and privileged classes. (Inglis didn’t mention the rest of that story, in which the insurrection split into factions, attempted counter-revolution and countless pay-back executions (better hang tight to your heads, latter-day Robespierres), followed by the Reign of Terror years, which eventually produced Napoleon.)
Inglis’s reference to the French Revolution resonated with me as that bloody era in which innocents were indiscriminately killed off along with aristocrats and royalty has and continues to come to mind amidst the Tea Party rage that has morphed into elected officials with questionable qualifications and what might turn out to be anything but populist agendas.
Another nail in Inglis’s political coffin was veering off the conservative page by decrying faux assertions about President Obama religious faith, birth certificate and being a socialist/communist/fascist and the vicious attempt to destroy reputations and institutions.
I'm on Twitter @jerrianneh
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