Politics

All about women and politics

Heroine of the Week: Rep.Tammy Baldwin

November 9, 2012
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Heroine of the Week: Rep.Tammy Baldwin

Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, who on Tuesday was elected Wisconsin’s first female senator and the first openly gay candidate elected to the Senate, F.Y.I., is this week’s heroine of the week. After Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson offered to explain the federal budget to her saying, ”Hopefully I can sit down and lay out for her my best understanding of the federal budget because they’re simply the facts,” Baldwin made it clear she didn’t need any help with math. Baldwin told the Huffington Post, “I was a double major in college in mathematics and political science, and I served for six years on the House Budget Committee in my first six years in the House. And I am very confident that when proposals come before the U.S. Senate, I will be able to evaluate them as to how they benefit or harm middle-class Wisconsinites.” Thanks but no thanks Senator Johnson. Baldwin’s got this covered.    

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Elizabeth Warren Wins!

November 6, 2012
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Elizabeth Warren Wins!

Massachusetts will send its first woman Senator to Washington in January. Elizabeth Warren defeated Senator Scott Brown tonight. It’s still early but it’s a good night so far for women: Senator Claire McCaskill defeated Todd Akin who made headlines with his comments about legitimate rape and pregnancy. Joe Donnelly beat Richard Mourdock in the Indiana Senate race. Mourdock made news when he talked about pregnancy resulting from rape. New Hampshire elected Maggie Hassan as the only pro-choice female governor. Powerhouses Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Debbie Stabenow and Amy Klobuchar were all reelected.         More to come…  

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On Tuesday, Remember the Ladies

November 4, 2012
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On Tuesday, Remember the Ladies

My aunt died Friday, less than two weeks after learning she had cancer. In between her diagnosis and her passing, she voted. Born just a few years after the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, my aunt never took her voting rights for granted. She was always involved in politics – as the wife of a politician, as a mother raising six civic-minded children, with her up-to-the-minute, well-informed political views. For years, she greeted newcomers to her town with voter registration cards. On Tuesday, I will cast my ballot in her honor and I ask that all of you ladies get to the polls in honor of the women who came before us. A woman’s right to vote was hard won. Starting with the Seneca Falls Convention on July 19, 1848, many, many women organized, protested, collaborated, and yes, fought for equal rights. We know the names Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Alice Paul. We should also remember women like Lucy Burns, Dorla Lewis and Alice Cosu who on November 14, 1917 were jailed and badly beaten by wardens at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia, after they picketed the White House. These women made incredible sacrifices so that other women [...]

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Ignorant Legislator of the Week: John Koster

November 1, 2012
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Ignorant Legislator of the Week: John Koster

And we have a winner. This week’s Ignorant Legislator of the Week is county councilman John Koster, a a Republican candidate for U.S. Congress in Washington.  When asked  his views on abortion, Koster said, “When a mother’s life is in danger … I’m not going to make that decision,” and, ”Incest is so rare, I mean, it’s so rare. But the rape thing, you know, I know a woman who was raped and kept her child, gave it up for adoption. She doesn’t regret it. In fact, she is a big pro-life proponent.” He continued, ”But on the rape thing, it’s like, how does putting more violence onto a woman’s body and taking the life of an innocent child that’s a consequence of this crime, how does that make it better?” The rape thing? Does he mean rape? And why, oh why, is another member of the GOP who will never get pregnant from rape, talking about it? Listen for yourself.  

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Guest Post: Women’s Voices, 11 Things We Learned from the 2012 Campaigns

October 31, 2012
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Guest Post: Women’s Voices, 11 Things We Learned from the 2012 Campaigns

I follow issues women face in public speaking, a topic that often gets a curious “Huh?” from people who think there wouldn’t be enough to say to field a blog on the topic in 2012. But when it comes to this year’s U.S. presidential campaigns there’s plenty to observe. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I need to quote from a 1988 book about campaign rhetoric–Kathleen Hall Jamieson‘s Eloquence in an Electronic Age: The Transformation of Political Speechmaking –to sum up the 2012 campaign and women’s voices. Jamieson wrote “History has many themes. One of them is that women should be silent.” In a year alternately called the “year of the woman” and the “war on women,” a year in which we had a female presidential candidate and a record 181 women are running for either the House of Representatives or the Senate, women’s voices have been silenced repeatedly. I know, I know, you’re yelling as loud as you can at that television screen. But here are 11 things I think we’ve learned about how to discount, interrupt or silence women’s voices during the campaign: This has been a campaign in which women have been spoken of more than they have been [...]

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The Role of Women in the 2012 Election

October 29, 2012
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The Role of Women in the 2012 Election

As we near Election Day, we took a look back at the role women have played in the 2012 Presidential race, and a look forward at the role they will play on November 6. Read "Women and the 2012 Election" by Hello Ladies at Britely!

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You Don’t Own Me: A Message from Women Who Vote

October 25, 2012
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Ignorant Legislator of the Week: Richard Mourdock

October 24, 2012
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Ignorant Legislator of the Week: Richard Mourdock

When we started the Ignorant Legislator of the Week award we didn’t expect it to be a frequent feature. However, another legislator, who will never be pregnant, has weighed in on pregnancy, abortion and rape. In a debate last night, Indiana State Treasurer and Republican nominee for U.S. Senate Richard Mourdock was asked about his views regarding abortion and rape. According to the Associated Press he said, “I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And, I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” According to his campaign website,  Mourdock “is unapologetically pro-life and will work to stop federal funding for abortion.”  It will be interesting to see if he apologizes for his comments when his campaign donations slow down.   Related articles Richard Mourdock under fire for rape remarks GOP Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock Thinks Rape is, ‘Something God Intended’ Ind. GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock: Pregnancy from rape can be ‘something that God intended to happen’ – @washingtonpost

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What Romney Didn’t Say Most Troubling for Working Women

October 21, 2012
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What Romney Didn’t Say Most Troubling for Working Women

Source: google.com via Hello_Ladies on Pinterest   More telling than Governor Mitt Romney’s inaccurate “binders full of women” comment during the presidential debate last week, were his comments about workplace flexibility, and, the comments he didn’t make. When asked by voter Katherine Fenton how he planned to rectify the inequalities in the workplace, Romney said, “I recognized that if you’re going to have women in the workforce that sometimes you need to be more flexible. My chief of staff, for instance, had two kids that were still in school. She said, I can’t be here until 7 or 8 o’clock at night. I need to be able to get home at 5 o’clock so I can be there for making dinner for my kids and being with them when they get home from school. So we said fine. Let’s have a flexible schedule so you can have hours that work for you.” In saying that, Romney most likely meant to portray himself as someone who understands the plight of working mothers. But instead he perpetuated an outdated attitude about the workforce, and women’s role in it. It’s not a matter of “if” we’re going to have women in the workforce, we [...]

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Ignorant Legislator of the Week: State Rep. Roger Rivard

October 11, 2012
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Ignorant Legislator of the Week: State Rep. Roger Rivard

No sooner do we honor a Heroine of the Week, we need to issue an Ignorant Legislator of the Week award too. This week’s recipient is Wisconsin State Representative Roger Rivard. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, during an interview with the Chetek Alert newspaper back in December, Rep. Rivard made a comment that “some girls rape easy.” Rivard is up for reelection and the comment has resurfaced. In an effort to clarify what he meant and explain that the statement was “taken out of context,” the state legislator told the Sentinel he was referring to advice his father had given him and further explained  what his father had told him,  ”What the whole genesis of it was, it was advice to me, telling me, ‘If you’re going to go down that road, you may have consensual sex that night and then the next morning it may be rape.’ So the way he said it was, ‘Just remember, Roger, some girls, they rape so easy. It may be rape the next morning.’” According to the Sentinel, Rivard sent the paper a statement following the discussion that read, ”Sexual assault is a crime that unfortunately is misunderstood and my comments have the potential [...]

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