Women Excluded From Stimulus Negotiations

Incredibly, the joint House/Senate conference committee ironing out the differences between the House and Senate versions of the stimulus contains no women! You can complain about this by sending an email to Nancy Pelosi here and one to Harry Reid here. Harry Reid's contact form only takes email from Nevada residents, so say you live on S. Carson St. in Carson City, zip code 89702. He is the Senate Majority Leader, he should take emails from everyone. Spineless weenie that he is. Grrrrr.

The Moderate Voice: No Female Senators or Representatives from Congress are on Stimulus Bill Conference Committee

You have got to be kidding me:

Senate Democratic leadership has announced who will be serving on the conference committee to iron out differences in the House and Senate versions of the stimulus bill.

* Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
* Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont.
* Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii
* Finance Committee Ranking Member Charles Grassley, R-Iowa
* Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Thad Cochran, R-Miss.

Both Finance and Appropriations were heavily involved in the creation of the Senate version, with each committee holding markups on their portions.

And for the House:

* Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey, D-Wis.
* Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.
* Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif.
* Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Jerry Lewis, R-Calif.
* Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Dave Camp, R-Mich.

This is what it means to not have a critical mass, to have less than 25% of your constituency represented. Only 17% of all congressional members are female. And so, with five from the Senate (5% of the Senate) and 5 from the House (just over 1%), what chance do women get to be selected for these critical reconciliation meetings?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only woman currently serving on the Supreme Court, and only the second woman ever appointed to the Supreme Court, has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

She is one of my favorite Supreme Court Justices, the only one currently serving to have had a significant impact on American jurisprudence before her appointment. She argued the first six sex discrimination cases ever heard by the all-male Court, and won five of them. She was the chief litigator for the ACLU's Women's Rights Project. It was her idea to bring sex discrimination cases where the injured party was male and cases where the discrimination hurt the family. The most famous example of this approach is the case where a widower received a smaller Social Security benefit than a widow. This the Supreme Court could see as disrimination, and a precedent was set that has benefitted all victims of sex discrimination (most of them female) ever since.

Best wishes to Justice Ginsburg in her second cancer battle. She intends to be on the bench when the Court resumes in three weeks.

NPR: Justice Ginsburg Undergoes Cancer Surgery

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only woman currently serving on the nation's highest court, underwent surgery Thursday for removal of a cancerous tumor from her pancreas.

[]

Ginsburg's pancreatic cancer was discovered early, in the course of a routine annual screening, but medical literature says even in this circumstance, a patient's five-year survival chances range from 10 to 30 percent.

[]

The five-year survival rate is 5 percent, with most patients living less than a year. Doctors say this poor survival rate is due in significant part to the fact that cancers of the pancreas are discovered late, when the cancer is very advanced.

Because Ginsburg previously underwent radiation treatment after her colon surgery, she likely will not be able to have radiation treatment a second time. Chemotherapy has not proved to be curative for pancreatic cancer.

Make Me Puke

Oink, a male chauvinist pig goes to the White House. This is your brain on dope. Or testerone.

HuffPo: Larry Summers: Director Of National Economic Council, Top Adviser To Obama

ABC News reports that Obama has tapped Larry Summers to be his top economic adviser.

Can you imagine Obama naming as his top economic adviser someone who said in an address to an academic conference that blacks might have innate differences that explain their failure to attain high positions in the sciences and engineering? And that when asked to explain his racist remarks, this supposed intellectual stated this was a legitimate hypothesis? That he was just trying to be provocative? And complained about political correctness?

That person would not be named economic adviser, I posit, but a man who said those things about women has.

I want some of my money back, Barack.

Disgraceful

Alternet: Raped in the Military? You May Have to Pay for Your Own Forensic Exam Kit
This outrage gives "supporting the troops" a whole new meaning.

TRICARE, the United States Department of Defense Military Health System that covers active duty members, will only pay for rape kits if the victim is seen in a military or a VA facility.

But the Pentagon acknowledges that 80 percent of military rapes are never reported. And that 80 percent who go off-base to protect their anonymity (and/or their careers) are on their own. If a soldier is on leave, or is five-hours from the nearest VA, or if a soldier is simply delivered to the nearest hospital by the local ambulance driver, their rape kits are not covered under TRICARE. Neither are other forensic exams that might be used in domestic violence situations.

Front-line treatment shouldn't be conditional on where a rape occurs or where the nearest treatment is available. This is not only a parity issue, but a further obstacle to treatment and justice.

Women in the military are twice as likely to be raped as their civilian counterparts. In fact, "women serving in the U.S. military today are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq," Congresswoman Jane Harman, D-Calif., told the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs in May.

The Real John McCain is Anti-Choice

73% of female pro-choice McCain supporters in battleground states do not know McCain's position on abortion. 1 in 4 believe he is pro-choice.

In the Senate, John McCain has cast 119 votes on abortion and other reproductive-rights issues. 115 of the votes were anti-choice.

New Obama Ad: McCain Needs Education on Women's Issues

Lilly Ledbetter rocks. She narrates the ad:

"I worked at this plant for 20 years before I learned the truth. I'd been paid 40% less than men doing the same work. John McCain opposed a law to give women equal pay for equal work. And he dismissed the wage gap, saying women just need education and training. I had the same skills as the men at my plant. My family needed that money. On the economy, it's John McCain who needs an education."

You Won't See This On Brain-Dead Cable TV

Joe Biden & Hillary Clinton webcast on women's issues. Well worth the 32 minutes:

Women Aren't Fools

"Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving."
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Sarah Palin's no feminist. Over 100,000 women agree:

Women Against Sarah Palin

This Will Make Some Wingnut Heads Explode

LATimes: Guatemalan women kick aside constraints in the U.S.
Soccer, a frowned on activity in their home country, becomes a passion.

Women from countries where women are denied opportunities, given the chance, love to play soccer! And many of the women in this article are undocumented workers, a group the right loves to revile.

Watch the slideshow "Eager to play futbol" on the left sidebar of the article. It's awesome.

What the Corporate Media Isn't Telling You About John McCain

HuffPo: President Bush licks frosting off of his thumb after holding up a birthday cake for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., left, upon his arrival at Luke Air Force Base in Glendale, Az., Monday, Aug. 29, 2005. McCain turned 69 Monday.
dday at Hullabaloo: McCain's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good Very Bad Week

To summarize dday's excellent and very long post (read the whole thing at the link above):

1. Washington Post writes long story about his bad temper

2. "Forgotten Places" tour takes him

a. to an all-white crowd in civil rights landmark Selma, where he praises a ferry constructed with an earmark (he's against those, except when he's for them), and then

b. to Youngstown, Ohio where he praises free trade in front of a plant that closed earlier during George W. Clusterfuck's presidency, and said he didn't know what to do about the dumping of cheap foreign goods. And then he went to New Orleans.

c. New Orleans, the place McBush ignored on McCain's 69th birthday. While Smirky McAmericanCityDrowner was presenting McCain with a cake, it apparently didn't occur to John McLame to say, President Bush, turn on the TV! New Orleans is drowning! We should do something about that. Emptily, McCain now promises that no such thing will ever happen on his watch. Right.

Then his buddy and endorser the Reverend John Hagee (who can be seen on your local religious channel begging for money to support his lavish lifestyle; he's a Christian like John Gotti is a businessman) says once again that Katrina was God's punishment for a New Orleans gay pride parade. McHypocrite sputters "It's nonsense" like a guilty child eight times when asked about that.

Then McLyingSackofShit, Mr. We'll Never Let This Happen Again, says he didn't know if the Ninth Ward of New Orleans should be rebuilt. Like if one of his mansions got destroyed he wouldn't insist the feds rebuild it.

d. And lastly, the Forgotten Places tour went to Alabama, where the McCain campaign used PRISON LABOR to set up the hall. Prison labor.

Go, read the whole post, there's so much more, his mad dashes to the right on tax policy (he was against Bush's tax cuts for the millionaires, now he, multi-millionaire, embraces them), etc.

And don't forget McCain's position on equal pay for women. He's for it, he says. He just doesn't think there should be any legal remedy to enforce it. He is against the equal pay bill (which Senate Republicans defeated) and incredibly said the real problem is that women don't have enough job skills. We're just not equal enough to get equal pay yet. Fucker.

The Real Enemy of Women Soldiers

Women serving in the U.S. military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq.

Congresswoman Jane Harman, Op-Ed, LATimes:
Rapists in the ranks
Sexual assaults are frequent, and frequently ignored, in the armed services.

hat tip to Suburban Guerrilla

'[W]hen you pick on Hillary, you pick on all women.'

Don't you just want to kiss this woman for going off on Tucker Carlson and giving MSNBC hell for their treatment of Hillary?

Anecdotal evidence suggests that MSNBC hosts are already feeling the fallout.

To wit: On Tuesday morning, Tucker Carlson, the host of MSNBC’s talk show Tucker, was standing in line at the Palisades Recreation Center in Washington, D.C., waiting to vote in D.C.’s presidential primary. According to a source with knowledge of the situation, a middle-aged woman, standing in line in front of Mr. Carlson, recognized the on-air anchor and began berating Mr. Carlson about MSNBC’s coverage of Hillary Clinton.

According to the source, the irate Washingtonian told Mr. Carlson something to the effect that “when you pick on Hillary, you pick on all women.”

Later the uncomfortable conversation continued outside the voting hub. When reached on Tuesday afternoon at his MSNBC offices in the District, Mr. Carlson declined to comment.

This would be the same Tucker Carlson who was never disciplined in any way by MSNBC after saying this about Hillary Clinton on air:

"I have often said, when she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs."

I hope MSNBC realizes that when Tucker Carlson comes on television, I and many other women (and men) voluntarily change the channel.

Robin Morgan's Manifesto for Hillary

Robin Morgan's 1970 classic.

Goodbye To All That (#2) by Robin Morgan

Reportedly Chelsea Clinton has circulated this article to friends and supporters via email. I received it from my Hillary-supporting sister. I feel guilty when I read this article. I'm a good feminist. I should support Hillary. But the article doesn't address my main issue with Hillary: She voted for the war. Yeah, the media sucks. Yeah, she's being treated in a very sexist way. Yeah, Obama is young and less experienced. But with all her experience, she gave George W. Bush the authority to go to war. I can't get over that.

Goodbye to the toxic viciousness . . .

Carl Bernstein's disgust at Hillary’s “thick ankles.” Nixon-trickster Roger Stone’s new Hillary-hating 527 group, “Citizens United Not Timid” (check the capital letters). John McCain answering “How do we beat the bitch?" with “Excellent question!” Would he have dared reply similarly to “How do we beat the black bastard?” For shame.

Goodbye to the HRC nutcracker with metal spikes between splayed thighs. If it was a tap-dancing blackface doll, we would be righteously outraged—and they would not be selling it in airports. Shame.

Goodbye to the most intimately violent T-shirts in election history, including one with the murderous slogan “If Only Hillary had married O.J. Instead!” Shame.

Goodbye to Comedy Central’s “Southpark” featuring a storyline in which terrorists secrete a bomb in HRC’s vagina. I refuse to wrench my brain down into the gutter far enough to find a race-based comparison. For shame.

Goodbye to the sick, malicious idea that this is funny. This is not “Clinton hating,” not “Hillary hating.” This is sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about race, as KKK poison. Hell, PETA would go ballistic if such vomitous spew were directed at animals. Where is our sense of outrage—as citizens, voters, Americans?

P.R.I.C.K.S.

How fucking stupid can Republicans be? You want to mobilize women voters against your 18th century views? Start an anti-Hillary 527 group (Swiftboat-style) and call it "Citizens United Not Timid". Yes, that acronym is CUNT.

The group is headed by Roger Stone, an excreble excuse for a human being, who started out working for Richard Nixon's CREEP. He lost his respectable jobs when he got outed as a family values hypocrite who was advertising for group sex and visiting sex clubs with his wife. Love those family values.

I had an old lawyer call me a cunt once, during a telephone call where we were arguing about some discovery issue. He was one of those old disheveled white guys sitting in a one-room office keeping his crooked shingle by the skin of his teeth. I didn't saying anything to him when he said it, but in my head I was furious. And after that call I wouldn't give him an inch, on anything. No continuances, no courtesies, nothing. He was dead to me and I enjoyed my revenge (a dish best enjoyed cold.) He paid a lot more for that case than he would had he been merely civil.

That's the way this CUNT group strikes me. Hillary's not my candidate, and tactics like this make me WANT to vote for her, just to send your sexist pig asses to Canada, or hell, or wherever the scumbag Republicans go when the Dems take over in January. Can't happen soon enough.

Here's my 527 group:

Prevalence of Republican Idiocy Confounds Knowledgeable Skeptics = P.R.I.C.K.S.

After all, how fucking stupid can they be?

Christ Matthews: Sexist History

wikipedia
Another lengthy recounting of Chris Matthews' long, sad history of dissing Hillary Clinton, and by extension, all women:

Media Matters for America: MSNBC's Chris Matthews problem

An excerpt (go to original for links):

Matthews has referred to Clinton as "She devil." He has repeatedly likened Clinton to "Nurse Ratched," referring to the "scheming, manipulative" character in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest who "asserts arbitrary control simply because she can." He has called her "Madame Defarge." And he has described male politicians who have endorsed Clinton as "castratos in the eunuch chorus."

Matthews has compared Clinton to a "strip-teaser" and questioned whether she is "a convincing mom." He refers to Clinton's "cold eyes" and the "cold look" she supposedly gives people; he says she speaks in a "scolding manner" and is "going to tell us what to do."

Matthews frequently obsesses over Clinton's "clapping" -- which he describes as "Chinese." He describes Clinton's laugh as a "cackle" -- which led to the Politico's Mike Allen telling him, "Chris, first of all, 'cackle' is a very sexist term." (Worth remembering: When John McCain was asked by a GOP voter referring to Clinton, "How do we beat the bitch?" Allen reacted by wondering, "What voter in general hasn't thought that?" So Allen isn't exactly hypersensitive to people describing Clinton in sexist terms.)

Anson Dorrance/North Carolina Sexual Harassment Case Settled

The case settled for $385,000, apologies and improved sexual harassment policies. While that looks like a lot of money, I doubt plaintiff Melissa Jennings will see very much. The case was originally filed in 1998, and with summary judgments and appeals to the Supreme Court, the settlement funds probably will go to pay her attorneys for their 10 years of work. (After further reading, I find that the AP story reports that the settlement is mostly attorney fees.)



Charlotte Observer: Player, UNC settle suit; coach apologizes

A sexual harassment lawsuit against University of North Carolina women's soccer coach Anson Dorrance has been settled, with the university agreeing to pay former player Melissa Jennings $385,000 and Dorrance issuing an apology to all of his players for inappropriate discussions about sex.

The deal also requires the university to conduct a comprehensive review of its sexual harassment policies and procedures, according to a copy of the settlement obtained by The News & Observer. The settlement was approved by members of the UNC Board of Governors last week.

It was the second and final monetary settlement in the protracted lawsuit, which has been an embarrassing and expensive chapter for the university and its star soccer coach. In 2004, the other plaintiff, Debbie Keller -- a two-time national player of the year -- settled out of court for $70,000 and a requirement that Dorrance attend sensitivity training for eight years.

[]

Dorrance's apology letter, contained in the settlement, said between August 1996 and June 1998, he participated with his players in group discussions of team members' sexual activities and relationships with men.

"I understand that my participation in those discussions was inappropriate and unacceptable," his letter said. "I apologize to Ms. Jennings and her family, as well as all other members of the soccer team."

Dorrance and the university had long argued that the sexual discussions were merely locker room banter. But last year Judge M. Blane Michael wrote in the 4th Circuit Court majority opinion that Dorrance's conduct "went far behind simple teasing and qualified as sexual harassment."

The settlement provides for a full review and revision of UNC's sexual harassment policies by Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a former Olympic swimmer who is now a Florida Coastal School of Law assistant professor specializing in women's equity in sports.

USAToady: Dorrance, former player settle sexual harassment suit

The Daily Tar Heel: UNC settles sexual harassment suit

Winston-Salem Journal: UNC soccer coach, former player settle sexual harassment suit

The More Things Change....

Not much has changed.
Civil engineering faculty in 1930 (MIT Museum photo)

Are you surprised?

Boston Globe: Tenure at MIT still largely a male domain

Just one out of 25 faculty members granted tenure this year at MIT is female, a gender imbalance that appears to contrast with the university's decade-old effort to boost the status of women.

Women have been achieving tenure at a lower rater than men at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the past 10 years, according to an MIT analysis of junior faculty. Of the tenured faculty, 16 percent are women, up from 10.5 percent a decade ago, but still too big a gap, several professors said.

The point was brought home recently when the school's in-house newspaper published a portrait gallery of the faculty members granted tenure this year; among the sea of male faces was the lone woman.

"The old boys club? That's alive and well."

Christine Grant, former women's athletic director, University of Iowa

Quote from Vivian Acosta, professor emerita at New York's Brooklyn College, who had to file a Title IX complaint against Brooklyn College in 1992 to get the law enforced there. Unfortunately, not much has changed since then, except the numbers of women's coaches of women's teams continue to fall. This LA Times article says that 40% of the coaches of NCAA women's teams are female; that means 60% of the coaches are male. The numbers of men running athletic departments continues to remain very high, and women make up less than 2% of the coaches of men's sports. So now less than 25% of coaching jobs are held by women. That's a disgrace.

LATimes: Number of female coaches in women's sports shrinks to all-time low
Officials in athletics say there is no one simple reason, but most add that sexism is part of it.

Anucha Browne Sanders and Sudden Fame

NYTimes: Browne Sanders Is an Inspiration After Winning a Lawsuit

This heightened public profile has become its own trial for Browne Sanders, a fiercely private woman who is used to blending into the back row of a basketball team picture or a corporate group photograph.

[]

In conversations with others who have been thrust by circumstance into the public eye, Browne Sanders has sought answers to one of the few questions left unanswered during her three-week trial: How can she be a symbol without sacrificing her personal life?

“You wonder what the reason is that you were identified as the person to go through this,” she said last month in Midtown Manhattan at a lunch interview conducted in the presence of one of her lawyers, Karen Cacace.

Her conclusion? Perhaps, she ventured, it was to validate the substance of her life while slightly altering the course of it toward public advocacy.

“I was talking to Coach Stringer,” Browne Sanders said, referring to C. Vivian Stringer, whose Rutgers women’s basketball players were the subject of racist and sexist remarks by the radio host Don Imus. “She was saying how much work remains to be done. She kept driving home the point that there is so much unfinished business.”

New Court Filings in Anucha Browne Sanders Case

MSNBC illustrated their story with this picture.
Anucha Browne Sander's lawyers filed her response to the defendant's motion to dismiss her case (routine in civil cases) and those papers were unsealed by the court yesterday. This case remains a doozy. Browne Sanders attorneys say Isiah Thomas told a cheerleader to go to the referees' lockerroom and "make them happy"; that guard Stephon Marbury had sex with a Garden employee, who said she felt she could not say no because of who he was; and that Stephon Marbury called Browne Sanders a "black bitch". He admits calling her a bitch.

I think it's interesting how Browne Sanders attorneys' portray Isiah Thomas telling the cheerleader to go to the refs lockerroom and "make them happy". The cheerleader interpreted the statement as "go in there and flirt with them." I think you could just as easily presume that he meant, go in there and have sex with them. I wonder if they will argue it that way, or stick with the cheerleader's interpretation.

MSG is going to call Browne Sanders a liar because she filed false tax returns. When MSG asked for her tax returns in discovery, her lawyers must have discovered her two major falsehoods. One, she wrote off expenses on a consulting business. Either the consulting business did not exist, or it was prohibited by her MSG contract and would have voided the contract. Whichever it was, her lawyers filed corrected tax returns retracting the deductions and paying the taxes. They also corrected her claim of charitable deductions that she hadn't made. Essentially, she cheated on her taxes.

I ran into this problem a lot in civil cases. People don't realize that when you file a lawsuit, you open up your life to examination. And nobody like paying their hard-earned money to the government. My clients tended to be more working class, so the big problem I ran into was clients who had worked under the table. I would say to them, if you want the court system to enforce the law, you have to expect to comply with the law in all respects. People of means don't work under the table, but they have their own way of cheating the government. And open themselves up to the accusation of being liars, because essentially they lied to the government on their tax returns.

Politicians do this too. The richest man running for President right now is the Mittwit, Mitt Romney. In the three years before he decided to run for Massachusetts governor, he took a homestead exemption on his taxes for his home in Utah. It saved him $148,800 on his taxes. A multi-millionaire lied on his taxes to save $54,600 a year. He blamed it on his tax preparer, too, and the voters of Massachusetts forgave him. We'll see whether this really hurts Browne Sanders at trial.

WNBC.com (AP): Former Exec.: Isiah Thomas Urged Cheerleader To Flirt With Refs

NYDailyNews: Garden of sin in suit
Fired executive's filing tells of sleazy doings by Isiah and Marbury

The sordid allegations include:

* Thomas allegedly urged Knicks cheerleader Petra Pope to cozy up to the refs before a game against the Nets in 2004.

"What she told me was that Isiah asked her to go into the referees' locker room and make them happy," Browne Sanders testified. "I asked her to tell me what that meant and she said, 'Well, he wanted me to flirt with the referees.'"

She said Pope told her she reluctantly did as she was asked.

* In November 2005 a member of Browne Sanders' staff told her and another female Garden executive that she had sex with Marbury in a car after a boozed-filled night at a "gentleman's club."

The woman said Marbury textmessaged her a few day later saying, "I want some more of that," according to court documents.

The woman told her bosses the sex was consensual. But she also said "she did not believe she could say no because of who Marbury is," according to the court documents.

* Browne Sanders claims Marbury called her a "black b----" after she complained that the star guard's cousin - who also was employed by the Knicks - had been making graphic sexual comments to her staff.

But Knicks brass said in a statement that the suit filed by the team's former senior vice president for marketing and business operations was "riddled with fabrications."

[]

At one point the Garden was ready to make the case go away with cash, according to court papers. But when Browne Sanders' lawyers asked for $6million in 2005, Garden Chairman Jim Dolan called it "ridiculous" and nixed the payout, the papers said.

Earlier that year, Browne Sanders was given a $75,000 raise and her annual salary jumped to $250,000. She said she was told she was doing a terrific job and, with the Garden's backing, was named to the Sports Business Journal's list of top professionals.

The Post's article lays out MSG's defense:

NYPost: FOUL ON STEPHON
KNICK STAR SLAPPED IN MSG SEX SUIT

In a statement, an MSG spokesman said, "This lawsuit, just like Anucha's four years of phony tax returns, is riddled with fabrications from a fired and disgruntled former employee who was let go for poor performance and manipulating subordinates for personal gain."

"The public should know and the jury will learn that Anucha will make up stories and twist facts to pursue her real goal: money," the spokesman said.

A lawyer for Sanders called MSG's statement "a desperate attempt to mislead the public."

The documents released yesterday also show that Sanders, whose salary reached $300,000, had cashed in on nearly $80,000 in bogus tax deductions while she was on the team.

She scurried to cover her tracks last year by filing new tax returns for 2003 and 2004 - but only after a federal judge in her sex-harassment suit ordered her to share copies with MSG.

In her original tax forms, Sanders claimed she ran a "direct marketing" business out of her home from 2001 to 2004 - an unauthorized moonlighting gig that would have violated her contract with the Knicks.

Sanders wrote off nearly $20,000 in annual travel, meals and other expenses for a business she now claims she never operated - blaming her former tax preparer for the alleged fraud, which also involved padding her contributions to charity by tens of thousands of dollars a year.

Sanders has accused the married coach Isiah Thomas of repeatedly propositioning her for sex, then calling her a "bitch" and "ho" when she rejected his advances.