September 24, 2019

My 6-month old granddaughter died of SIDS 10 years ago. The trauma was unspeakable...

But my daughter has been hooked into the anti-vaxxer movement and is now a crusader whose devotion to this cause is, sadly, fanatic. She is a local spokeswoman for the cause. The things she states as fact about California's efforts to vaccinate kids would curl your hair.

There is nothing I can do -- nothing. I try to talk about our family medical history -- which I can recite back for a century, before routine childhood vaccinations. No, no -- it's all due to vaccinations. (Part of that history involves one of my grandmother's sisters, who tragically never raised a living child. All her babies were born live, apparently healthy, and all died in infancy. There were no vaccines involved -- her generation was born in the 1880s for gods' sake.) The latest thing she threw at me, two days ago, was that she thinks I blame her for her child's death.

Grieving mothers are being victimized, and in their pain they go to war against science and against others.

September 21, 2019

I hope to see all of them speak up in the next few days. If they don't hang together in the face of

...Trump, they will surely hang separately.

Trump's MO is to pick off opponents one at a time -- that is how he got to be nominee in the first place. No one should delude themselves that Trump will not come for them if they fail to speak out -- all that will happen is that there will be no one left to speak for them.

Senator Harris is just the first one to recognize this in its fullness.

September 17, 2019

Time to share and update my Tulsi bookmarks again. Links for those who wish to know more

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100211695834

In addition, there is a Hawaiian journalist who has been doing some deep digging on Tulsi's background, and one of our Hawaii DUers has posted those links.

That young lady is not all that she seems, by a long shot. She was groomed from childhood to be the public face of a very undemocratic philosophy.

Here it is, from Mahina, with many additional links

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100211667912

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This new one from the OP, so it's in my files
https://www.civilbeat.org/2019/09/why-is-tulsi-gabbard-paying-this-obscure-consultant-big-bucks/

September 15, 2019

The "gaffes" are a longstanding LAZY journalistic meme. The meme goes back decades.

Oooh, Joe's a gaffe machine, how can he run in (pick a year, any year). Okay?

It's on a par with "But her emails." Actually it is lower than that.

Here's a litmus test for you: if Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell are chewing it over with their panels of talking heads With Great Concern, just discount it entirely.

September 13, 2019

It might depend on your age. Second-wave feminists were tough Athena-women succeeding ...

...in a man's world, and the battle-advice they gave the rest of us really had that flavor. How well I remember it. "Find a mentor" -- really? How is that even done? "You can do it all/you can have it all" -- Pardon me, but what a crock of shit that was for most of us.

And of course, never show weakness in the business or academic world.

They spoke a different language than I was brought up with. Feminism felt so right, so just, but I wanted to be a mother and raise children at home, and when I was thrust untimely into the work-world with a BA and 2 toddlers to support I looked around my town and ended up as a secretary. Every day I felt like a failure, at home for not being there for my kids and at work for not knowing how to get beyond where I was.

But my musings aside: No, it was not safe to share our stories. It was not safe to have difficulties with child care. It was not okay to take time off work to care for a sick child. It was not okay to get phone calls at work for any reason (and there were no cell phones).

I thought my problems were because I was so low on the totem pole that people had no respect for me and my job, and if only... And then I ran into (almost literally) a young physician tearing out of the day care center, and was told by the caregivers that she had the exact same problems at the clinic where she was employed that I had at the university where I worked. Our mutual problem was being female and being mothers, not who had achieved more academically or who had better focus on a career.

Hillary Clinton is my age. She was shaped in that era: young, idealistic, ambitious. A skilled lawyer. For various reasons she early on became the favorite piñata of the RW hate-machine. But talk about persisting! Talk about being a unicorn... She was criticized for being too harsh, criticized for being too soft, attacked for being the wrong woman. But what a pioneer.

To have this many women all at once running for POTUS, and this many among the top 10 is amazing enough. But to hear them share their personal stories as women and not try to elide them as something generic to be non-threatening to a male audience just blew me away.

September 13, 2019

Women presidential candidates have hit critical mass when they can tell their woman-stories...

...without fear of seeming weak (i.e. unmanly).

It hit me last night. Amy Klobuchar talked about giving birth to a baby who had to stay in the NICU while she was forced to leave the hospital 24 hours after giving birth, and ultimately went to the legislature to get that rule changed. Elizabeth Warren talked about wanting to be a teacher from earliest childhood as "I lined up my dollies and taught school. I was firm but fair."

These are specifically woman-stories. Hillary could not tell hers -- nor could so many other women who entered political life before her. Hillary had to appear strong the way a man would because she was alone on that stage without a sisterhood around her.

My heart just swelled when it hit me. Did you notice? Did you see?

September 9, 2019

I find myself agreeing with the exerpts from what Bernie said. Mostly. He displays ignorance about

...what is going on in America right now -- and what has been building for over 30 years.

Access to the full range of women's necessary health care has been broken in the US. As before the passage of Roe vs Wade, it is now limited to those who can afford it and who can afford to travel to obtain it.

In addition, for a long time there was something called "the Global Gag Order," which withheld funding from any overseas health organization that so much as mentioned the word abortion or referred women to agencies that would provide it. That included war zones where many women were and are raped as a weapon of war.

Now the Global Gag Order has come home to America -- the GOP is in process of enforcing it here.

So, Senator Sanders has not been paying attention to what a lot of men think is just a "women's issue." He's playing catch-up. Big surprise.

Aside from that, I don't quite understand the frothing outrage here over what he said. Or at least the parts quoted here in more than one thread. He did not say that "brown and black" people need to practice birth control, nor did he even hint at eugenics. He did not say that an i dividual who is poor -- of any color, in any country -- has a bigger carbon footprint than the average American, just that the grand total of population is a problem for the Earth. I agree with that. It is a problem.

Bernie said that "poor people" need to have access to family planning services. Well duh. They don't currently, and they do need it. Also he referred to "over half the population" needing such services -- well, that would comprise all women, seeing as how we are over half the numerical population in every country (with the exception of India and China, where a generation of girls failed to be born at all). Again duh. Bernie is saying all women need these services, regardless, and we do.

I'm going by what was quoted here, mind you, and my response is as a feminist and lifelong supporter of Planned Parenthood.