Need voter ID quickly? Buy a gun.

So says Sarah Silverman: (NSFW)



via Steve Bates.

The war on women, past and future

Thank you, madam, for helping women make their own reproductive choices.

Dr. Jean Pakter, a former health official who made New York City a national model for providing safe, legal abortions and led an innovative effort to educate women about the benefits of birth control, prenatal nutrition and breast-feeding, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. She was 101.

And yet, there is a lack of understanding about reproductive control as a right and some people will never give up trying to stuff women back into a fairy tale make-believe pseudo 1950s life style, where men were men, women were in awe, and minorities knew their place. Times they are a changin' guys.  Finding out that women are humans like men and have feelings comes as a shock to some....

It's not normal

And really fucked up.

Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly explains: (my bold)

But there's another detail that the Post article didn't mention, and which is summarily ignored by the political establishment: we're dealing with a procedural dynamic that has never existed in American history. There's never been a time in U.S. history in which a Senate minority caucus could simply stop the majority from bringing all bills and/or mildly controversial nominees to the floor for a vote.

I'm not trying to pick on Bacon and Kane here, but the piece makes the current dynamic -- every vote gets a filibuster, and it's up to an easily-divided Democratic caucus to overcome this hurdle -- seem customary and normal, as this is just the way the American government has always operated.

It's not. Without a hint of debate, the rules have changed, and mandatory supermajorities on everything have become routine. Matt Yglesias recently noted, "This is a very new 'tradition' in American governance, it goes against everyone's common understanding of how democratic procedures are supposed to work, and there's very little reason to believe that the results will be beneficial in the long run."

Quickly and quietly, the political establishment came to accept that 60-vote minimums on everything of significance are customary. It's become something everyone simply "knows," despite the fact that this is a fairly radical departure from American norms.

If the nation is comfortable with this dramatic departure from the way the system was designed to function, fine. But let's not pretend this is normal.

Do you think we can get the Democrats to stop being such wusses and actually show some muscle? Stop kowtowing to the Republican power structure? We got a mandate last election, we need to use it. Dammit.

More of Schlozman's handiwork

Showing what a loyal Bushie is supposed to do:

"Bradley J. Schlozman is systematically attempting to purge all Civil Rights appellate attorneys hired under Democratic administrations," the lawyer wrote, saying that he appeared to be "targeting minority women lawyers" in the section and was replacing them with "white, invariably Christian men." The lawyer also alleged that "Schlozman told one recently hired attorney that it was his intention to drive these attorneys out of the Appellate Section so that he could replace them with 'good Americans.'"

The anonymous complaint named three female, minority lawyers whom Schlozman had transferred out of the appellate section (of African-American, Jewish, and Chinese ethnicity, respectively) for no apparent reason. And in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this week in response to questions from senators, the Justice Department confirmed that all three had been transferred out by Schlozman -- and then transferred back in after Schlozman had left the Division.

What is a Good American? One that wears a little American flag on his lapel? Is not a minority nor a woman? Christian and white? .... saaaaayyyy... just what kind of last name IS Schlozman, anyway?