War on Women - or Humanity?

What the hell is going through the heads of the GOP candidates and leaders, if only from a political standpoint. You only want the votes of women who are against the right to control their own bodies? (And I don't just mean on the right to end an unwanted pregnancy.)

View the devastation:

Willard Mitt Romney is the so-called "moderate" in the GOP Presidential race, but it's time the press woke up to his wildly extremist positions:

How easily it rolls off his tongue: "Planned Parenthood -- gonna get rid of that." First off, it's a private organization, so he's going to "get rid of that?" Second, the use of "that" indicates how far he's distanced from Planned Parenthood -- and the huge amount of good it does for women who don't get health services in other ways. And, finally, there's that good it does; Willard willing to dismiss it/cut it without a second thought? Who the hell's life is he trying to make better as President? No one but himself (and his fellow 1-percenters)?

Willard has veered so far into extremism that he won't even stand by his positions from the previous Presidential race:

And how testy that guy gets when challenged. Is this the guy who's finger should be on the nuclear trigger?

The fact is that the Affordable Care Act is already working. So what this election is really all about, as George Lakoff so insightfully puts it, is a radical Conservative revision of this nation:

The Santorum Strategy is not just about Santorum. It is about pounding the most radical conservative ideas into the public mind by constant repetition during the Republican presidential campaign, whether by Santorum himself, by Gingrich or Ron Paul, by an intimidated Romney, or by the Republican House majority. The Republican presidential campaign is about a lot more than the campaign for the presidency. It is about guaranteeing a radical conservative future for America.

...

Liberals tend to underestimate the importance of public discourse and its effect on the brains of our citizens. All thought is physical. You think with your brain. You have no alternative. Brain circuitry strengthens with repeated activation. And language, far from being neutral, activates complex brain circuitry that is rooted in conservative and liberal moral systems. Conservative language, even when argued against, activates and strengthens conservative brain circuitry. This is extremely important for so-called "independents," who actually have both conservative and liberal moral systems in their brains and can shift back and forth. The more they hear conservative language over the next eight months, the more their conservative brain circuitry will be strengthened.

...

The radical conservative discourse of the Republican presidential race has the same purpose, and conservative Republicans are luring Democrats into making the same mistakes. Santorum, the purest radical conservative, is the best example. From the perspective of conservative moral values, he is making sense and arguing logically, making his moral values clear and coming across as straightforward and authentic, as Reagan did.

Lakoff goes on to describe the differences between the Progressive moral worldview and the Conservative one. It's very much worth reading as a whole, particularly when he shows how the Democrats may be missing the point and, even if they win the Presidency this year, may lose other office elections and the overall, long-term war. And he lays out the Conservative "logic" that leads to the decimation of critical governmental programs and safeguards that actually help Americans:

Here's how that logic goes.

• The strict father determines what happens in the family, including reproduction. Thus reproduction is the province of male authority.
• The strict father does not condone moral weakness and self-indulgence without moral consequences. Sex without reproductive consequences is thus seen as immoral.
• If the nation supports birth control for unmarried women, then the nation supports immoral behavior.
• The conservative stress on individual responsibility means that you and no one else should have to pay for your birth control -- not your employer, your HMO, or the taxpayers.
• Having to pay for your birth control also has a metaphorical religious value -- paying for your sins.
• This is a classical slippery slope narrative. If no one else should have to pay for your birth control, the next step is that no one else should have to pay for any of your health care.
• And the step after that is that no one else should be forced to pay for anyone else. This is, everything should be privatized -- no public education, safety nets, parks, or any public institutions or services.

It's war. On who is a great question -- because it isn't just women, no matter how much they are the target at the moment. If these GOoPers get in, kiss all the advances from the Affordable Care Act goodbye.

It's shaping up to be the most pivotal election of our era.

A Wise Choice

The latest attempt to mischaracterize Barack Obama isn't twisting his works to try and make Democrats believe that he somehow worships Ronald Reagan. It's not the earlier meme they attempted on Wednesday that Obama has somehow morphed into "the establishment candidate."

It's more insidious still.

The Clintons floated the idea, in hopes that it might catch on, that the Obama supporters, rather than the candidate himself, are a "cult."

Okay, where's the Kool-Aid?

But while it's true that his support is strongest with the young (you know, idealists with unformed minds easily led into cults) and that his speeches move people in ways they have not been moved by a politician in forty years (unlike Clinton's self-aggrandizing...and now money-pitch speeches), he's actually a guy who's thought things through and has smart plans, a guy with a 60-page "Blueprint for America".

Andrew Sullivan nailed it today in "The Unemotional Case For Obama":

A meme is developing is that support for Obama is all emotion, fantasy, hysteria, etc. There's no question that the emotions behind Obama are powerful. And any fool can see why. His oratory does what oratory should. He is the greatest public speaker in American life since Reagan. And the shame and demoralization of the Bush-Cheney years - when we launched a war with reckless indifference to planning it, when we tortured prisoners and called it "enhanced interrogation", when we saw a government rendered so utterly useless that a hurricane made the US look like the third world, when conservatives added $32 trillion to the debt of the next generation, when a president made sophomoric jokes about not finding weapons of mass destruction he leveraged American global credibility on ... if you don't feel emotions in wanting to put this disgrace of an administration behind us, then you are not being rational.

But the strongest case for Obama is not emotional; it is as coolly rational as he is. I tried to express it in my "Goodbye To All That" essay. On the most critical issues we face - Iraq, the war against Jihadism, healthcare, and the economy - he makes more sense as a president than Clinton. And when you watch the knee-jerk opposition to him, I think it is actually more emotional and less rational than the support for him. Fear is more emotional than hope.

He finishes off on the experience issue, the more spiteful Hillary stuff, but he closes with a video that a friend of mine forwarded separately to me, so I thought I'd embed it here. It definitely challenged my own assholish assumptions when I started watching it, but in a funny way it's a metaphor for the entire Obama campaign, that if he wins it'll be by excelling, because he had to, because the tie never goes to the challenger. You really have to prove it, against all odds, and earn the respect by acquitting yourself wonderfully:



So if this is the type of involved citizen Obama is imploring us all to me, I'd say there's reason for hope.

There's also an undeniable emotional element to each American citizen's relationship to her or his President. With Bush it's curdled, but with FDR it was very special, even with Reagan for those who supported him, even our own mental bargain with Bill Clinton. The most powerful emotion in a citizen is when the intellect is won over and the eye just completes it.

Like with this woman who saw Obama in Seattle today:

Although I was somewhat lukewarm on Obama and I certainly do NOT believe the only way America can experience "change" is by moving the "older woman" out of the way to make room for "something young and new," I gotta say, Obama pretty much said everything I wanted to hear. Now, this is scary and I don't believe a lot that comes out of a politician's mouth. But Obama is certainly a shot in the arm.

I was about to fall asleep before he started speaking. I was already worn out. Can I say that I didn't sit down for a solitary second the whole time he was speaking? From what he said about healthcare and Iraq, to education and yes, all that fanfare about "believe" and "hope" and the whole sack of cats, he made it sound real, do-able, and there is an effect he has that rings genuine to me. My hands are sore from clapping...

...I'm sure that several of Clinton's supporters can eviscerate me and ask me what Obama did - Obama, who I gave a chance to see live and in person - that Clinton can't do - a candidate who I haven't yet seen in person and will probably not have a chance to.

Well let me tell you this, and I'm putting my neck on the chopping block by doing so, I know: I went to see Obama, but I ended up seeing a president. He IS a shot in the arm. He IS something new. With all respect to Clinton, I do feel that you are a part of the past. I'm sorry, it is just going to come with the territory. Now, if she gets the nomination, I will be singing her praises and I will be casting my vote dutifully in November for noneother than our beloved Democrat.

Jus' sayin. Obama has "President" written all over him. My tongue's not wagging out, I don't have Obamamania; I'm just a woman who's done some research and I think this guy can take 'em on.

McCain's toast.

The Obama campaign is letting all Democrats, especially you "super delegates" out there, that this has already become conventional wisdom.

Don't screw it up.