International Women's Day

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Remarks to the U.N. 4th World Conference on Women Plenary Session

delivered 5 September 1995, Beijing, China

There are some who question the reason for this conference. Let them listen to the voices of women in their homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces. There are some who wonder whether the lives of women and girls matter to economic and political progress around the globe. Let them look at the women gathered here and at Huairou -- the homemakers and nurses, the teachers and lawyers, the policymakers and women who run their own businesses. It is conferences like this that compel governments and peoples everywhere to listen, look, and face the world’s most pressing problems. Wasn’t it after all -- after the women’s conference in Nairobi ten years ago that the world focused for the first time on the crisis of domestic violence?

Full Speech Here

H/T to American Rehtoric

Sexism

"There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women."
-- Madeleine Albright, Former U.S. Secretary of State

The Reality About Legitimacy

The A-List Blogger Boyz have their collective knickers in a twist about that nasty, mean, spiteful Hillary Clinton refusing to withdraw gracefully from the campaign and allow The Precious to be coronated. Oh, the damage she does by not conceding! How dare she harsh our mellow! The sheer selfishness of her behavior! Nay, the immorality of forcing a destructive battle on the party who needs to unite behind The Golden One and glide to victory on promises of bipartisan love! And ponies for everyone, natch...

Among the punditocracy (among whom I place the A-List bloggers), Golden Boy Barry's legitimacy is presumed, that he simply must be the most adored, most preferred candidate of them all. The count of the pledged delegates is a sacred relic within the cult, the objective symbol of The Precious' status. This is repeated constantly despite clear patterns in the votes to spell out his weak points and as though there are not structural advantages in voting procedures that over emphasize his popularity.

The converse is also a matter of unshakeable belief, that Hillary enjoys no legitimacy, that she is presumptively an illegitimate candidate, and that there is something inherently good in trying to defeat her. What Nevada, the Florida Primary, Super Tuesday and yesterday's smashing victories in Ohio and Texas demonstrate is that Hillary Clinton has broad, deep and diverse support among Democrats, and that she is seen by them as a worthy and legitimate candidate for President. This is important because the animus against her among the leftist blogs and many party elites is that she cannot rally support, that she is not a popular choice candidate. In fact, she is the strongly preferred choice of millions of Democrats. Because her legitimacy cannot be acknowledged, the phenomenon of her really kicking ass and winning big time must be diminished, rather in the same way as Grover Norquist wanted to reduce the Federal government and for much the same objective.

Hence, the fetishization of the pledged delgate count among the punditocracy. The super delegates must vote the way the majority have voted, they protest. This is the express will of the people and must be bowed to. But, is it? The delegate count is not unequivocally legitimate, and this casts an increasing pall of illegitimacy on Obama. There are three significant points where the pledged delegate counts are not obviously the will of the people.

ONE: Open vs. closed contests. Just which people are being counted? For a very long time, Obama's margin of victory was among Independents, not Democrats. He has run the notorious "Democrat for a Day" operation in at least three states (California, Florida, Nevada), explicitly urging Republicans to switch parties simply to vote against Hillary. To the degree that his support does not come from the party, his delegate count is suspect. What would contests look like rebalanced to show only Democratic support?

TWO: Caucus vs. Primary. This, to me, is a far more pernicious and delegitimizing situation than open primaries, because the structure of a caucus has two anti-democratic effects.

First, it reduces popular participation by being limited in time and place (there are far fewer caucus locations than polling places) and by removing the secret ballot. The time issue is two-edged. First, the participant must be available at the appointed time, which is unfavorable to shift workers. It also requires you to be available for a significant amount of time, usually several hours. This is a great burden on people who work, who have caretaker duties, and/or who are physically unable to attend, such as my mother. As for the secret ballot, that has been shown over and over to be essential to free exercise of political preference. Peer pressure is difficult to resist. It is interesting that Hillary won the New Mexico caucus where the votes themselves were cast secretly. Every caucus contest has come replete with reports of Obama supporters bullying and threatening Hillary supporters. The Texas caucuses may result in criminal charges.

The second effect is to exaggerate small differences of support and slight margins of victory, as well as allow a far smaller number of voters to be represented per delegate. A vote margin as small as three people may create a 50/50 split or a 70/30 in terms of delegate allocation. One-tenth the turn-out in a caucus state may earn the same number of convention delegates as in a primary state.

With both Washington State and Texas, we saw the difference between holding a primary and a caucus, using the same pool of voters. In WA, Obama won both, but with a significantly smaller margin in the primary than in the caucus. In TX, Hillary won the primary handily, but may be edged out in the caucus, which is composed of a sub-set of all primary voters. The pairing of these two states demonstrates that it is entirely possible Obama would not have won some of those caucuses (Iowa would probably have gone by a tiny margin to Hillary in a straight vote, and Nevada would have gone to her even more than it did). In short, the contests where the process itself is more democratic, Hillary has gained more support. The allocation of delegates is inconsistent and exaggerated. The disparity between delegate counts would be far less if all states had been primaries, even if Obama had won all the states he currently holds.

THREE: Michigan and Florida being excluded from the counts. The Florida and Michigan delegates are not being seated because they would allow Hillary to win. Period. Unlike the first two issues, which are structural, this one is political. In a pathetic attempt to stack the primary season for John Edwards, the DNC shoved these two, must-win states out in the cold, probably figuring they would fall in line and support the eventual nominee and all damage could be fixed before the convention. Michigan is a self-inflicted wound for The Precious. He took his name off the ballot to try to deligitimize Hillary, and the strategy backfired on him. In Florida, he ran campaign ads and came off a power-house victory in South Carolina, only to be thoroughly snubbed by the voters of a state the Democrats must win in November (hmm, I'm sensing a pattern here) . While a formal argument might be offered that Michigan shouldn't be seated because of the ballot - though it was Barry's choice to do so and it was done for strategic reasons - there is no reason to refuse to seat Florida at this point except to prevent a count of Hillary's true support.

Something I have not seen discussed much in the blogosphere, in great part because voters who support Hillary are not seen as having cast legitimate votes, is that Florida knows it is the king-maker in this convention, and it damn well is not going to revote. In this game of chicken, Howard Dean loses. "The rules" aren't going to count for squat when Florida demands to be seated. If Obama's forces refuse to seat Florida for the sole purpose of denying Hillary delegates, he will lose Florida in the general, and probably Michigan, too, and there goes the election. To try to wrangle a win out of a convention that does not seat Florida and Michigan is to lose massive amounts of legitimacy. Do you think my mother-in-law and all her senior female friends who turned out en masse to vote for Hillary in Florida are going to vote for Obama after he denies FL a voice at the convention?

The pledged delegate count is not invalid or without merit, but it is far less definitive in the eyes of rank-and-file Democratic voters - the ones who have been favoring Hillary in big state primary contests - and they are not going to regard it as fully legitimate. The Blogger Boyz and the rest of the media whores know this, which is another reason they howl loudly to drown out the contesting perspectives.

And, here is the real rub. The contest is basically tied and Golden Boy Barry, despite his overwhelming money advantage and all the positive media attention money can't buy, couldn't close the deal yesterday and will not get to the magic number of 2,025 delegates before the convention. Hillary is behind him only because two big states are not being counted for her. I add she can't get to 2025 by the convention, either, but she has as strong (if not a stronger) argument to make to the convention - my wins are where we need to win in November, and my wins are up front and broad based, more like the national electorate than my competitor has won. My point is that what the rank and file Democrat thinks is legitimate may not be measured in the delegate count, and that the way in which Hillary and her committed supporters are treated is what will determine the final outcome.

Obama cannot win without Florida and Michigan, and they don't want him. He is going to have to compromise, else he will lose all legitimacy. And that's the cold, hard reality.



Anglachel's Journal
Anglachel

Molly Ivors

Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia

Twocents By Molly Ivors

I would like to tell you a story about a woman, one which may, perhaps, be instructive to some of the “get out of the way, grandma; you're blocking progress” folks out there.

Once upon a time, there was a young woman who was pretty good at school. She read when she was three, and when she started school, her teachers didn't know what to do with her. Shyness and bookishness kept her modest: she didn't see “smart” as something worthwhile. To her, it was like having dark hair or big eyes: just a thing that was. School continued like that through graduation, but she bobbled a bit in college. Still, she got her degree summa cum laude and went on to grad school. There, she did everything right: won awards, became assistant to the chair, edited a journal. She finished her dissertation more or less on time (a rarity in her field) and went on to a lectureship in which she intentionally sought out harder subjects to increase her familiarity with them.

But life interfered, as it often does, although somehow always with greater reprecussions for women. Her mother was diagnosed with cancer while she worked on her dissertation, and her sister died of a preventable but serious illness (Hepatitis C). After the death of her sister, she determined that she did not want to be over a thousand miles from home when her mother's health started to fail, so she headed home with her spouse, a brilliant and funny man she'd met in grad school, and her young daughter. She took a job teaching at a high school for the benefits, and adjuncted at a local community college. Her spouse also adjuncted there.

She wasn't too surprised when he was offered a tenure-track position first: no one had more respect for his intellectual gifts than she. Of course, he was ABD at the time, and she had completed her degree, but this was a community college and that sort of thing didn't really matter so much. She continued to adjunct and get part-time administrative jobs to keep the family afloat, and had two more beautiful children without the benefit of maternity leave or family leave—that sort of thing just isn't available to part-time employees.

It was a couple of years later that she learned how things really worked, however. She had an impressive CV and years of experience. She had friends and a strong application. She gave a good interview and was told, confidentially, that she was the first choice of the hiring committee, a female friend was second, and a third colleague, a young man who was very popular with the students (as in, sleeping with at least one) was the third. She went to interview with the dean, who she knew socialized with the male candidate, but was confident, even when he told her he didn't have anything much to ask her and essentially made her run her own interview. The interview with the academic vice-president was similarly bemusing, but again, she knew her position was strong.

It was the several days of waiting afterward that started to fluster her, until finally the news came down: the dean had re-ranked the candidates in reverse order to throw the job to his drinking buddy, and the VP—who also frequented the same bar—had accepted his recommendation. (Not to be left out: the re-ranking may also have been to thumb his nose at the administration of the department, all of whom had confidence in the female candidates, but were cautious at best about the male candidate and had tossed him as a bone to some hesitant committee members.) The female candidates, upon being twitted, went through the appropriate channels, but were told two things by the wan Affirmative Action officer charged with protecting the college: that they had no business knowing the rankings of the committee, and that unless the dean had made some remark about their breasts, there was no way to prove sexism.

It was a disturbing lesson, an embittering lesson. I tell it here not to garner sympathy, but because one of feminism's main tools has been to share experiences to reveal they systemic processes at work in the workplace. I daresay many women, maybe even most, have some story like it to tell. We keep them quiet, generally, because the accusation of sour grapes is always quick on their heels, ready to belittle and dismiss very real experiences with prejudice.

And so we who look at this primary season as another example of systemic prejudice often have reasons for doing so. Dismiss them as personal or petty if you like, but don't pretend that we are emotional and you the disinterested arbiters of what is and is not fair game. I have been accused of everything from willful stupidity to “vaginal solidarity” over these last weeks. It's insulting and demeaning, and intended to be so, as much as major opinion pieces on how dumb girls are and how Hillary should just climb on the Obandwagon.

Indeed, it seems that Senator Obama will be the candidate, not because of (or in spite of) my vagina, but because of his ground game. I respect that. But I also ask respect for my position, for my experiences. Win with grace, not with sneers at old ladies who have repeatedly been told that it wasn't their turn yet, only to be told that sorry, their turn has passed by. That's about as alienating as you can get. I don't think his followers are shallow—at least not most of them—but many are rudely dismissive and do not seem to know whose framing they're adopting.

Just my two cents.

BUSTED

Man on the Street - Better Than Barack

Jack

Go, Texas!

For the Love

For the love of a tree, she went out on a limb
For the love of the sea, she rocked the boat
For the love of the earth, she dug deeper

For the love of the community, she mended fences
For the love of the stars, she let her light shine
For the love of spirit, she nurtured her soul

For the love of a good time, she sowed seeds of happiness
For the love of the Goddess, she drew down the moon

For the love of nature, she made compost
For the love of a good meal, she gave thanks
'For the love of family she reconciled differences

For the love of creativity, she entertained new possibilities
For the love of her enemies, she suspended judgment
For the love of herself, she acknowledged her worth
and the world was richer for her.

Flip Flop on Experience

What's in Your Lunch Bucket?

What's in my Lunch Bucket? Well, for starters, I've packed a huge Hillary salad, made with big chunks of Intelligence, Compassion and Very Hard Work. I've sprinkled in lots of Support, including Letters to the Editor and Common Delegates, along with Blog Posts, Emails Touting Experience, Truthfulness, and Willingness to Face Adversity by Never Giving Up, no matter how hard it gets.

Rather than MSM croutons, I've opted for lots of Change with Experience that Counts. I also have a huge flowing bottle of Positive Thought and Energy, ready to be uncorked. I've packed my very best silver, favorite vintage china place setting and a wonderful antique linen napkin, as nothing less will do for such a Class Act.

I intend to partake of my lunch bucket contents for as long as it takes to convince Americans that either Democratic candidate will bring change. And I'm not so keen on reaching across the aisle to Republicans. They are the ones that got us into this mess in the first place. I don't need another Uniter, either. The last one was quite enough, thank you. It's the Strength, Integrity and Ability to Lead that make my Lunch Bucket special and I'm sticking with it come Hell or High Water.

I'm not voting for Hillary Rodham Clinton because she's a woman - I'm voting for her because I am.

What's in your Lunch Bucket?

Bitch is the New Black

This Cowboy is all Hat, no Cattle

The Real Deal

Feminists for Clinton

We are women who support Hillary Clinton for the presidency of the United States. We do so because we believe that she will be the best president for the entire country. And as feminists, we also believe that Clinton is the best choice for attending to issues of special importance to women.

We write to you now because it’s time for feminists to say that Senator Obama has no monopoly on inspiration. We are among the millions of women and men who have been moved to action by her. Six months ago, some of us were committed to her candidacy, some of us weren’t, but by now we all find ourselves passionately supporting her. Brains, grace under pressure, ideas, and the skill to make them real: we call that inspiring. The restoration of good government after eight years of devastation, a decent foreign policy with ties to world leaders repaired, withdrawal from Iraq and universal health care: we call that exciting. And the record to prove that she can and will stand up to the swift-boating that will come any Democratic nominee’s way: we call that absolutely necessary.

Clinton’s enormous contributions as Senator, public servant, spokesperson for better family policies and the needs of hard-pressed women and children are widely known and recognized—even by her opponent. Her powerful, inspiring advocacy of the human rights of women at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 was heralded around the world as a stunning departure from the normal anodyne role of First Lady. Corporate special interests managed to defeat the health care program she advocated in 1994., and her own leadership opened the plan to attack. But she kept on fighting, acknowledging her mistakes, and in ensuing years she succeeded in winning expanded coverage for children. Now she has crafted the only sensible and truly universal health care proposal before the voters.

On the Iraq war, many of us believe she made a major mistake in voting for Joint Resolution 114 in 2002—along with the 28 other Democratic senators, including John Edwards and John Kerry. But we also note that her current opponent, when asked about that resolution in 2004, responded that he did not know how he would have voted had he been in Congress then. We do not know either. But we do know that at the time, his opposition to the war carried no risks and indeed, promised to pay big dividends in his liberal Democratic district.

This One's for All the Girls

Obama's Thinking is So Last Century

MSNBC ANCHORS CAUGHT DISCUSSING SEXIST REMARKS by OBAMA himself...--------------------------------------

read more | digg story

Obama plays the gender card

Ok, now I see where Michelle gets her attitude from.

Say What?? You have to think about it?

Sexism is alive and florishing in the United States. Shame on you.

Happy Valentine's Day

The Towering Solons of Abortion
By Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas—South Dakota is so rarely found on the leading edge of the far out, the wiggy, the California-esque. But it has now staked its claim. First to Outlaw Abortion This Century. The state legislature of South Dakota, in all its wisdom and majesty, a legislature comprised of sons and daughters of the soil from Aberdeen to Zell, have usurped the right of the women of that state to decide whether or not to bear the child of an unwanted pregnancy. They will decide. Women will do what they decide.

These towering solons, representing citizens from the great cosmopolitan centers of Rapid City and Sioux Falls to the bosky dells near Yankton, are noted for their sagacity and understanding. When you think “enlightenment,” the first thing that comes to your mind is “the South Dakota Legislature,” right?

As well it might. The purpose of the law is to force a decision from the United States Supreme Court, where the appointments of John Roberts and Sam Alito have now shored up the anti-choice forces.

The South Dakota Legislature has made it a crime for a doctor to perform an abortion under any circumstances except to save the life of the mother. There are no exceptions for rape, incest or to preserve the health of the mother. Should this strike you as hard cheese, State Sen. Bill Napoli, R-Rapid City, explains how rape and incest could be exceptions under the “life” clause. Napoli believes most abortions are performed for “convenience,” but he told “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” about how he thinks a “real-life example” of the exception could be invoked:

“A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl, could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.”

Please stop and reread the paragraph above. See? Clearly Napoli’s exception would not apply to the South Dakota woman also interviewed by the NewsHour. “Michelle” is in her 20s, has a low-paying job and two children. And says she simply cannot afford a third. She drove five hours to the state’s only abortion clinic.

“It was difficult when I found out I was pregnant. I was saddened because I knew that I’d probably have to make this decision. Like I said, I have two children, so I look into their eyes and I love them. It’s been difficult, you know, it’s not easy. And I don’t think it’s, you know, ever easy on a woman, but we need that choice.”

But who is she to make that choice when Bill Napoli can make it for her? He explains: “When I was growing up here in the wild west, if a young man got a girl pregnant out of wedlock, they got married, and the whole darned neighborhood was involved in that wedding. I mean, you just didn’t allow that sort of thing to happen, you know? I mean, they wanted that child to be brought up in a home with two parents, you know, that whole story. And so I happen to believe that can happen again. ... I don’t think we’re so far beyond that, that we can’t go back to that.”

I find this so profound I am considering putting Sen. Napoli in charge of all moral, ethical and medical decisions made by women. Certainly lucky for the women of South Dakota that he’s there, and perhaps that’s what we all need—a man to make decisions for us in case we should decide to do something serious just for our own convenience.

Look at some of the incompetent women we have running around in this country—Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright, now there are a couple of girls in need of guidance from the South Dakota legislature. Female doctors, lawyers, airplane pilots, engineers and, for that matter, female members of the South Dakota Legislature—who could ever trust them with an important decision?

In South Dakota, pharmacists can refuse to fill a prescription for contraceptives should it trouble their conscience, and some groups who worked on the anti-abortion bill believe contraception also needs to be outlawed. Good plan. After that, we’ll reconsider women’s property rights, civil right and voting rights.

For years, the women’s movement has been going around asking, “Who decides?” as though that were the issue. Well, here’s the answer. Bill Napoli decides, and if you’re not happy with that arrangement, well, you’d better be prepared to do something about it.

www.creators.com