Tag Archives: Republican

~ my 2cents ...

let the madness of March commence …&some News


rain wind and more rain…more wind …

just another rant …

What worried me before the mid-term elections was the possibility that people who have no experience, civility, common sense or clarity may get on the floor of Congress and really ruin what used to be a great country if they “take back their country.” I guess you can plug in whatever that means for you though it sounds like an awful way to live if you are a minority on any level. Now, 7.5 yrs. later you would think, maybe people have experienced enough bs and now understand that elections have consequences. The true answer is no, not many constituents in red states have been laughing, listening or have learned  from what has occurred on the floor of Congress .

The grim reality is that a vote for Republicans is a vote against your own best interest people.

If you live under a Republican controlled state, you have to ask yourself what have Republicans really done for you lately especially if you have family friends who are Federal Employees…  co-workers Teachers, Cops, Emts, Firefighters. Honestly, i don’t get it. The Republican mission remains unchanged and is as clear as the nose on your face and what you are hearing right now is only about winning the primary, you cannot be telling me Republicans can or intend to do a 360 or 180 if they win. The mission of Republicans in congress has been to seek out and privatize public service jobs or destroy them while dismantling the ACA by any means necessary. Unfortunately, the “thing” (Women) they have chosen to use as a Political football reared its ugly head again, a need to shutdoen homeland security, EPA,Education. republicans hate immigration reform while the XXL pipeline got vetoed by POTUS, rumors are it may still get built anyway and that boggles my brain.

In 2010, Republican Governors told their constituents their focus was on JObs Jobs Jobs though as time passed it was clear the mission included eliminating unions, defunding education and every social service program available while eliminating Working Families at the same time. This was not just a rude awakening it was a slap in the face, which brought out that sleeping giant that gained speed and culminated into millions of folks fighting back voting POTUS back for a second term. Now, in this 2016 year, the 21st Century the Party of No wants to roll back the clock, stir blue collar workers into a froth with instantiated anger that they, their wives and neighbors will march into that voting booth and vote based on everything other than who really is qualified to be President of the United States . The results from the midterm elections should have been a warning shot; their votes will and have affected our children, our lives, and now a trump president could ruin our future for years to come.  Think of the possibilities, if voters put the Democratic Party back in charge.  There will still be differences of opinion but changing out the extreme and partisan Party for a Congress that might be willing to work together for the greater good, rids America of Citizens United, makes sure that equality in all its forms finally reigns and that income inequality gap starts to fall away. The choice is an obvious one to me as this group of Republican lawmakers on the local State and Federal level decidedly agreed to take an extreme hard right. The Political Party of no made the unseemly choice to sign a pledge to stick by Grover  Norquist! it hurts all Americans, supports Paul Ryan’s farst of a budget that will change Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security as we know it. We cannot afford to give power to Rep.Ryan and  McConnell power that has in my opinion been abused  misused far more than their constituents understand or accept.  Mr. McConnell’s famous statement, that his job, his only goal was and still is to make President Obama a one term President will go down in history, and not in a good way. President Barack Obama has done more for the middle class and poor on his own while in office than those running states, let alone a Congress that has been an obstacle on so many levels during his Great 2Terms in office

Voting is a Right NOT a Privilege ….

below is just one of many stories of brave people who took a stand for us, Annie took a stand for my right to vote … NOW, we all have to Stand Up ! We will NOT let them turn back the Voting Clock !

Annie Lee Cooper

–The Selma Times-Journal reports:Annie Lee Cooper, a civil rights hero, died Wednesday afternoon at Vaughan Regional Medical Center. She was 100 years old.

Cooper became known worldwide in 1965 for a confrontation with Sheriff James G. Clark.

Historian David J. Garrow tells the story in his book, “Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” which was released in the 1970s by Yale University Press.

According to Garrow’s documented version, Cooper had stood in line for hours outside the Dallas County Courthouse to register to vote. Clark ordered the 224-pound, 54-year-old African-American woman to go home. Cooper clamed he poked her in the back of the neck with either a billy club or a cattle prod. Cooper turned and delivered a right hook to the sheriff’s jaw. He dropped to the ground. — Read the whole story –> Annie Lee Cooper, civil rights legend, dies | The Selma Times?Journal

 

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Martin Luther King


 

 

*****

Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“I have a dream…to go to war?!”

Watch the Video | Send To A Friend   

Video is below …

http://act.bravenewfilms.org/go/472?akid=1417.1058794.hi707v&t=1

The Pentagon sank to a new low this week in their attempt to sell the Afghanistan War to the American people. At their Martin Luther King, Jr., Day observance, a Pentagon official actually claimed that if King were alive today, he might support the war.

This is simply not true.  http://act.bravenewfilms.org/go/472?akid=1417.1058794.hi707v&t=4  <<<As shown in our new video, Dr. King could not have been more clear in his 1967 speech denouncing the Vietnam War:

“A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just. …A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

More than 10,000 people died in the Afghanistan War last year alone. This year, the government plans to spend $107 billion on the war. We believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would repeat his admonition to U.S. policymakers on their responsibility:

“I speak as one who loves America…The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.”

Martin Luther King, Jr., was a national hero who called on us to have the moral courage to stop another war that wasn’t making us safer and that wasn’t worth the cost. Help us fight the Pentagon lies. Spread the truth by sharing this video with your family and friends.

Sincerely,

Derrick Crowe, Robert Greenwald

and the Brave New Foundation team

P.S. If you haven’t done so already, please join Rethink Afghanistan on Facebook and Twitter.

Donate today to help bring an end to this atrocious war that’s not making us any safer.  click on link below

http://bnf.actionkit.com/go/rethink/375?akid=1417.1058794.hi707v&t=9

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

New NMAAHC Exhibition ~~~ Permanent Collection


NMAAHC -- National Museum of African American History and Culture

“Through the African American Lens: Selections from the Permanent Collection” Opens May 8th
 
 
Photograph by Eliot Elisofon

Where: National Museum of American History, Level 2
14th and Constitition Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20001

When: Exhibition opens Friday, May 8th 2015

Hours: 10:00 AM to 5:30 PM

Metro: Take Orange, Blue, or Silver line and exit at Smithsonian Station or Federal Triangle Station

Admission is free!

African Americans have survived slavery, fought for their freedom in the Civil War, for the freedom of others in subsequent wars and created lives of meaning for themselves, their families and their country. Since its creation in 2003, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) has been collecting items—large and small—to tell the story of expanding America’s freedom from the African American perspective. The museum’s eighth exhibition, “Through the African American Lens: Selections from the Permanent Collection,” will showcase stories of trailblazers, innovators, visionaries and history makers who helped to shape this great nation. The exhibition will open May 8 in the NMAAHC Gallery at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

“Through the African American Lens” will use the museum’s collection to show how the African American story is quintessentially an American one. This exhibition was made possible in large part by more than two dozen families of well-known and lesser-known history makers who graciously donated their family treasures, establishing the building blocks of the museum’s collection.

Visitors will see approximately 140 collection items belonging to freedom fighters, unsung activists and servicemen, sports and entertainment legends and prominent artists and designers.

James Brown Suit

Among the artifacts on display will be the following:

  • Personal items belonging to Harriet Tubman
  • Prints from “The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture” by Jacob Lawrence (1986)
  • Uniform of a Pullman Porter worn by a member of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first African American labor union established in 1925
  • School desks from the Hope School, a Rosenwald school in South Carolina
  • Dining room table owned by Lucinda Todd that was used by Brown family and NAACP Legal Defense Fund during preparation for the Supreme Court Case, Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka
  • Dresses designed by renowned fashion designer, Ann Lowe
  • James Brown’s electric organ and red jumpsuit
  • Dresses worn by R&B musical group, En Vogue
  • Carl Lewis’ 1989 Santa Monica Track Club speed suit
  • Althea Gibson’s tennis racket

For more information, please read the press release.
~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Indiana and their New Reproductive Rights laws … that hurt Women


purvi

 

CREDIT: WNDU News Screenshot

A 33-year-old woman from Indiana faces decades in prison after she sought medical attention at a hospital as she was bleeding from a premature delivery. The case is just the latest example illustrating the real-world consequences of the harsh state laws that essentially criminalize pregnancy.

According to the charges being filed against her, Purvi Patel attempted to end her pregnancy last year by taking pills that she bought online from Hong Kong. The pills didn’t work, and Patel eventually delivered a premature baby at home. When she went to an emergency room to seek treatment after giving birth, the staff asked why she didn’t have an infant with her. She said her baby appeared to be dead, and she had wrapped it in a bag and placed it in a dumpster.

Now, Patel is being charged with both neglect and feticide, allegations that actually conflict with each other. She was initially charged with “neglect of a dependent” after prosecutors learned she left her baby in in a dumpster, a charge that won’t apply if the baby was already dead. But she’s now also being charged with “fetal murder of an unborn child” — a charge that an Indiana judge allowed to stand this week — for taking drugs that could have illegally ended her pregnancy.

As the Daily Beast’s Sally Kohn points out, the logic doesn’t exactly hold up. “The State of Indiana intends to convict and incarcerate Purvi Patel one way or another, whether the fetus she delivered was alive or not — never mind the fact that the facts necessary for filing the one charge (that the fetus have been alive) entirely contradict the facts necessary for filing the other (that the fetus have been dead) and vice versa,” Kohn writes.

On top of that, reproductive rights advocates and legal experts point out that Indiana’s “feticide” law was never intended to be applied to pregnant women themselves. It was originally written as a way to crack down on illegal abortion providers. Critics say Patel fits into a disturbing trend; similar “fetal homicide” laws are in place in at least 38 states, and they’re increasingly used to punish women who end up having miscarriages or stillbirths.

“Once again targeting a woman of color, prosecutors in Indiana are using this very sad situation to establish that intentional abortions as well as unintentional pregnancy losses should be punished as crimes,” Lynn Paltrow, the executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, which tracks these cases closely, said in a recent statement about Patel’s case. “In the U.S., as a matter of constitutional law and human decency, no woman should be arrested for the outcome of her pregnancy.”

Patel is the second woman to be prosecuted under Indiana’s feticide law. The state also pressed charges against Bei Bei Shuai, a Chinese immigrant who attempted suicide while pregnant and ended up delivering a baby that didn’t survive. Shaui was imprisoned for more than a year before a plea deal was reached in April, and her case sparked international outrage. More than 100,000 people signed onto a petition demanding Shuai’s release and pointing out that “it is wrong to have a set of separate and unequal laws for pregnant women.”

The laws that allow states to arrest pregnant women for allegedly harming their fetuses actually end up undermining public health. Major medical groups like the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists oppose “feticide” laws because they ultimately deter women from seeking the medical attention they need.

Harsh restrictions on abortion, as well as unreasonably broad definitions of “fetal homicide,” have created a society in which all pregnant women are transformed into potential suspects in the eyes of the law. And since miscarriage and abortion are relatively common pregnancy experiences — and research has proven that women are going to end their pregnancies whether or not it’s legal — that means we’re also approaching a society in which desperate women may be too terrified to ask for health treatment. For instance, if Patel had known that she was at risk for being charged with fetal homicide, would she have thought twice about going to the emergency room? Would she have joined the millions of women around the world who die from botched abortions and risky childbirth?

“We cannot afford to deter a woman from seeking reproductive health care,” the Indiana Religious Coalition for Reproductive Justice pointed out in a statement released this week. “Those of us who are Christian know that when Jesus responded to the hemorrhaging woman there was no place for aggressive interrogation and punishment. It was all for healing.”

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Virginia’s “ultrasound bill” a repost from 2012


Last week, I told you Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell was getting ready to sign the “ultrasound bill,” an atrocious proposal that would force all women considering abortions to get ultrasounds and require their doctors to ask if they’d like a picture.

Well, he signed it.

We didn’t stop the bill this time, but we did make sure the entire country knew exactly what was going down in Virginia.

There are still 450 other bills on birth control and abortion in state legislatures across the country. With a far-right faction of the GOP holding a majority in many of them, it’s unclear how many we can stop. But let me just say this: We need to be prepared to win in November.

As long as women’s rights are being attacked, we’re going to keep fighting back — in Congress and in the states.

Say that you’re ready to stand with Democrats as we stand up for women. Add your name today.

We’re taking on this fight both nationally and in the states. In Virginia, that meant helping to fund the state party’s rapid response communications team — they pushed back on the ultrasound legislation, supported the Democrats who opposed it, and publicized peaceful protests of it at the capitol. That work helped put this bill on the national radar.

Right now, New Hampshire, Florida, Arizona, Ohio, and many other states are considering similar legislation.

The Texas legislature is in the midst of a bitter fight to eliminate state support for a wide range of women’s health services. They’ve already eliminated two-thirds of their funding for women’s health, closing more than half of the state’s Planned Parenthood and other clinics. And now they’re voting to reject aid for the Medicaid Women’s Health Program. They claim they’re doing this to fight abortion, but what they’re actually doing is denying hundreds of thousands of women access to basic health care.

Clearly, this fight is about more than abortion and birth control.

I won’t stop speaking out across the country about a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions, and Democrats in the states won’t stop pushing back against these bills.

I hope you won’t stop fighting either.

Support the fight state by state and nationwide. Stand with the Democrats today:

http://my.democrats.org/Stand-for-Women

Thanks,

Debbie

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Chair
Democratic National Committee