So what are the political interests of Women in America?
 

conversation spawned from here

For me, right now, economics is pretty big. Not that I get a vote or anything. But the econimics I'm struggling with relate to the policies of our Republican State Governor. Federally-speaking, I'm cool. ish. I have more local fish to fry.

You?

Careful. By the time spin doctors are done, you will be accused of being the Budda. It is politically incorrect to be a fat man.

The political interests of Women in America are the same as the political interests of Men in America. Ever notice the way conservatives try to split up the country instead of uniting it for the common good? Class warfare? Christians against everyone else? Men against women? I get fed up with it.

It's not just the righties that try to create artificial divides, to be fair. That's how you get votes on either side. The real question is the legitimacy of the argument about why there's a split.

I agree with the Democrats that Republican policy - not just the fringe, anymore, but the Party, almost all elected Republicans at the national level and in the states - is openly hostile to women's rights, to equality, and to just about every feminist principle. I think - especially given the 20-point gap between Romney and Obama among women - that women have realized this, and that they feel like things that they thought were settled a long time ago - like the right to contraception and the right to privacy - are under attack.

Sam, Sam, that is what the Democratic Party is doing. Conservatives qua conservatives care naught for such things, and if you or Ibbie knew any conservatives you'd know as much -- but Obama waves the bloody shirt for class warfare about every third word. I was fed up with him before he was in the Oval Office, and nothing he's done since has ameliorated that one bit. The America he wants is not the America the rest of us deserve, and he should be sent packing.

Yeah. Right on, UG! Way to put me in my place for saying that... its not just the right that does what sam says they do?

If you wanna lump me in with what you disagree with, fine. But don't expect your pretentious shit about conservatism having the inherent high ground to go unchallenged. go find the thread where I asked you to explain how the Republicans support freedom and you still haven't.

EDIT: http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=26971&p=803951

See, there you go again - trying to fit every question into the same wrong answer. Why are you so terrified of Obama? He seems to be the monster hiding forever under your bed or in the dark of your subconscious closet. Cowboy up and install a nightlite or something for god's sake.

I will grant that Democrats too are guilty of diversionary tactics. But the ones who are truely blatent about it are members of the ever more far right.

Ib is correct about Republicans becoming increasingly hostile to "women's" issues. What is even more discouraging is the lack of recognition that the issues under attack impact us all. If the government undertakes the destruction of the rights of one segment of the population, it undermines the rights of everyone.

When Romney first announced his candidacy, I took a dim view of his Mormon background and everyone here pooh-poohed me and posted stuff like "Mormons are people, too." Sure they are - extremely misguided ones. Here's a little on Romney's family backgound:

Can anyone wonder at Romney's attitude about women's rights? The inequality of the sexes is one of the foundations of Mormon belief and anyone who doesn't think so has never attended a meeting of the Women's Relief Society. The issue of women's rights has actually united two groups - fundamentalist Christians and the Mormons. Republicans play to these extremists in the hopes of large PAC contributions and they are getting them.

God help us all.

This isn't direct but the fact that public sector jobs are highly represented by women isn't good for Republicans either.

You mean the ones we have been consistently losing since 2007, PH?

I think Romney's an ivory-tower clueless hack, who may or may not care about women's rights depending on the weather that day, but honestly, I don't think this part of his history has much to do with anything. His grandparents were monogamous, his parents were monogamous. I don't know about you, but I never even met any of my great-grandparents. Given the time they lived in, I'd guess that most of those relatives of mine were racists, for example, but that doesn't mean I'm a racist.

Mad Men mentioned a Romney two weeks ago. I lolled.



http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/74726.html

What Clod says is fair.
My Grandmother was an openly racist woman.
Both my parents hold views I consider racist.
I have questioned myself about racist tendencies in terms of soul-searching.
My family has come a long way baby.

On the flip side, Romney is still part of what I believe to be a sexist religion.

The jobs that would be completely gone with Paul Ryan's budget, which Romney claims to support. Also, a large mount of lost jobs since 2008 have been public sector jobs under Republican state governments.

I don't see those statistics helping Romney.

I didn't bring up Romney nor R's state govt's. In fact, I didn't blame anyone.
I just stated a fact as evidenced below. Something far different than the last three recessions.

Yes, I'll agree that Clod has a point. But I would also suggest that family dysfunction has a way of being handed down through the generations. It may change forms, but its hard to get rid of completely.

Racism is a great example. Even today the US continues to experience societal problems that stem from the legacy of slavery, and people's attitudes continue to be shaped by this unpleasant and immoral part of our history.

My family is from the South and everyone else in the family except black sheep me continues to live in the Southern States. When I return there for visits I get to have wierd insider/outsider experiences. None in my family history that I am aware of were slave owners. We were small farmers in the Kentucky mountains who sometimes made a little moonshine for extra cash and yet -

When I walk down the streets of Richmond, Kentucky with one of my cousins and encounter an African American walking in the opposite direction, that person will step down into the gutter and let us have the sidewalk to ourselves. I don't think my cousin even notices such incidents, but I do and I feel ashamed. When I go to Huntsville, Alabama so great is the segregation that the only African Americans I'll see the entire time are the ones getting off and on the plane with me. My late Aunt would refer to them as "those people" and refuse to go to certain stores and certain parts of town and never felt the need to give me a reason for this.

An African American friend of mine who grew up in South Carolina has raised her sons to have impecable manners because "you never know when a town is looking for a good hanging" and "you don't want to give them a reason to pick your sons out."

So just how far have really come?

I didn't claim that you blamed anyone. To get voters, politicians need to create the perception that they are good or the other person/party is bad.

If women highly represent public sector jobs and Republicans have been calling out for smaller government (on all levels), therefore cutting public sector jobs, Democrats have a easy argument to create the perception that Republican policies are bad for women.

http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/si...cWorkforce.pdf

I answer rightly, and the two of you, Sam (old enough to know better) and Ibbie (not) belong under the dunce cap for answering wrongly. History vindicates me, not you. It doesn't matter what the two of you believe if the reality is different from your beliefs, does it?

Let the record state that the only one mentioning "fear" was Sam. I do not fear Obama, I mistrust Obama. I was intelligent and well informed enough to vote against Obama the first chance I got, and I shall be similarly gifted the second chance, and the history of Obama's Administration shows how right I was and am. We have Obamacare, voted in by a Congress that believes government-issue health care is health care -- or purports to; I don't bother. We have Stimulus et Sequelae: are we not still down two million jobs? Has not the entire national debt been quadrupled until somebody can get in to repudiate it before it gets spent? That's how you get inflation, you know: doesn't the debtor entity also print the money? If that is done, will not a larger number of dollars be pursuing an unchanged or even declining amount of goods and services? Isn't Best Buy closing a bunch of stores as we speak? Those are jobs gone a-glimmering. Foreign policy? Aheh-heh. We are lucky, these years: nobody who can attack us and accomplish more than a pinprick or a bit of sabotage really wants to.

Half the electorate wasn't as intelligent as I am. For one reason or another, it never is anyway. Saw some guy with a moron sticker on his back bumper the other day: Obama campaign logo and "I Still Believe." That yokel's out on the public roads...

Urbane, I just love pulling your tail. And however old you may be, you're old enough to worry about your pension as your sig line ever reminds us, so you're old enough to know better yourself.

The twists and turns of your logic ever confounds me. You seem incapable of grasping the simplest laws of cause and effect or learning the lessons from even the most recent history. You are as ephemeral as a mayfly and your pronouncements have about as much weight.

If government sponsored health care is as worthless as you would have us believe, the people of Canada, the UK, etc., etc, as well as those here on medicare/medicaid should be dying off like flies. They are not. The ones who die or who suffer needlessly due to lack of medical care are the uninsured who have no access to medical care of any kind. Infant mortality rates in the United States are shameful. We rank something like 34th among nations - below even countries like Cuba and Croatia. This is what happens when you deny prenatal care to women who lack health insurance.

We have a government that refuses to take any action what-so-ever in regard to job creation or moving us out of recession. At least Obama gave us the stimulus bills. The Republican dominated House refused to act on ANYTHING. Their response to the current economic situation was to "just say no" - placing tea party idealogy over the good of the people of this nation. The Republicans refused to work with Obama - not the other way around.

The national debt has climbed in large part due to the tax breaks given to the wealthy in the Bush era. They used this money to buy themselves yachts and send new jobs off to China, not here - one more reason that job creation here in the US has been lagging. Cause and effect, UG. Cause and effect. What makes you think that another round of tax cuts for the wealthy won't have the very same outcome?

Two hundred of the wealthiest people in the US paid nothing in taxes in 2010, yet the richest among us still demand ever more concessions. Soon the government will be using tax dollars to PAY them instead of the other way around. In some cases this is already happening. So just who is it really who demands government "handouts"? On what grounds do you support the unashamed greed of billionaires?

Half the electorate has become an uninformed rabble. They blindly follow leaders who care only for their own advancement and the country be damned. You may call that "intelligence." I call it a tragedy for our Republic which is rapidly degenerating into a plutocracy.

And when that happens, where will your pension be then?

I'll ask again. Are social issues utterly meaningless? Why should the public care more about Best Buy and the debt than the right to privacy, the right to equality under the law, the right to marry, the right to not have others' religious laws forced upon you?

Why do you claim to support freedom and libertarianism, and still manage to rationalize or justify your support of the party of Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann and Bob McDonnell and Jan Brewer?

Right now to me, many of them are tertiary at best. They are nowhere near the most important thing.
I certainly will not be basing my decision upon whom to vote on social issues.
I am far more concerned about feeding and supporting my kids.
I'm aware that my perspective is FAR different than yours Ibs and thats OK with me.
I think I can understand where you are coming from, can you mine?
I'm not so sure based upon your age, but I do realize that you are much more intelligent and traveled than than most your age.

Social issues are MAJOR for me. But then I've had the experience of falling through the looking glass and having my understanding of life in the US go through a major paradigm shift.

Classic, if you're concerned about your kids, aren't you concerned about education which falls under the catagory of "social issues"? And doesn't your one son have a disability? :confused:

classic, I was mostly asking UG, because of his relentlessly "libertarian" views. I can definitely see where you're coming from, even if i disagree with you on what would be best for the country economically. I can understand why you would find economic issues important. But I can't understand how someone like UG can call themselves libertarian, and then support a party with a platform like the Republican party.

I know Ibs, just thought I'd give you a more rational answer before the poetic insanity. :)

Education costs money which I don't have any of without a job = economics.
I am very close to them not going to school next year for economic reasons.
Worrying about whether gays can marry (I don't care) or abortion (against it myself),
Who can or can't own a gun ... immigration (they haven't done shit in decades - what makes you think they will now?),
ageism, gambling, smoking, bullying...
I'm not saying they aren't issues of importance, but they are not even on my radar at this point.

out of curiosity Classic, you're 'against abortion', does that mean you don't believe women should have the right to abortion, or just that you personally are against abortion?

Wait, what? Classic and UG are WOMEN? Who knew? :lol:

Only my personal belief. Not political.

Completely false. Cite. Some things never change...:rolleyes:

Gotcha :)

Not really. I believe as science advances further it will become much the same argument as climate change.

As long as we continue to attack "Stay at home Moms" and associate them with Hitler we should be able to get Obamy re-elected....

I'm a stay-at-home mom. I don't feel attacked.

:thumb: Great. You are among the alone! Many disagree....

Which is why there's a 17-point gap between Romney and Obama when it comes to women!

...Oops, wait, that's 17 points FOR Obama. Nice try though merc.

:lol2: Guess we'll see...

Got a link to that poll? Those out today do NOT show that at all.

What do today's show? I don't have any link, but 17 was, if i recall correctly, the number I heard on TV earlier today. I could be off by a few points, but I've seen polls shown in the past couple weeks showing double-digit gaps between obama and romney when it comes to the lady-vote.

Who freaking cares.... the only Poll that counts is the one that kicks his stupid ass out of office. All the rest are speculation.

Depends upon which ones you agree with.
Some have O ahead by a few - another has R ahead by a couple. :eyebrow:

Overall, or among women, classic?

Great Sign Line!

Here's from today, via Kos:
(I recommend checking it out on the site, the formatting is dumb copied)

Here is the only thing important...
Popular votes do not elect presidents, just ask Al Gore.

Good thing that Women are not the majority of the vote!