Martha McSally: The anti-feminist (video)

 

Even feminists own recipe boxes.
Even feminists own recipe boxes.

Republican Congressional candidate Col. Martha McSally says she has been “fighting for women’s rights and women’s equality [her] whole life.”

McSally is well known as the first woman combat pilot and the Air Force officer who fought against a government rule requiring US service women to wear Arab garb when they leave the base. Does this make her a champion for women’s rights?

Let’s look beyond these headlines to answer that question. More on McSally’s stances on choice, women’s health, equal pay, and the War on Women.

Choice

Although McSally bristles when called a “cookie cutter” Republican candidate, her stances on women’s issues are in lock-step with Congressional War on Women stalwarts like Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan and fellow Arizonan Jeff Flake, who is running on the Republican ticket for US Senate against Dr. Richard Carmona.

McSally’s website says she believes in “the sanctity of every human life”. This right-wing code for saying that she agrees with the Republican Party’s anti-abortion platform. Ironically, small-government McSally believes that the government should dictate when American women have children. Not supporting a woman’s right to make decisions governing her own body is a deal breaker for many women.

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The Economist endorses President Obama

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The conservative British financial rag The Economist has endorsed President Obama for a second term. It's not because they are grateful that the president righted an economy that was falling into the abyss of another Great Depression when he took office, or that the supposedly ‘Anti-Business’ Obama Is the Best President For Corporate Profits Since 1900. Oh, no. The Economist whines mightily that the Obama adiministration "bashes" big business rather than "butters them up" by telling them that they are the "masters of the universe," lord and master over all.

It is because The Economist says the Tea-Publican Party is batshit crazy insane and should not be in charge of the economy — they are in "the
cloud-cuckoo-land of thinking."  Which one?:

FOUR years ago, The Economist endorsed Barack
Obama for the White House with enthusiasm. So did millions of voters.
Next week Americans will trudge to the polls far less hopefully. So (in
spirit at least) will this London-based newspaper. Having endured a
miserably negative campaign, the world’s most powerful country now has a
much more difficult decision to make than it faced four years ago.

* * *

[E]lections are about choosing somebody to run a country. And this choice
turns on two questions: how good a president has Mr. Obama been,
especially on the main issues of the economy and foreign policy? And can
America really trust the ever-changing Mitt Romney to do a better job?
On that basis, the Democrat narrowly deserves to be re-elected.

Mr. Obama’s first term has been patchy. On the economy, the most
powerful argument in his favour is simply that he stopped it all being a
lot worse. America was in a downward economic spiral when he took over,
with its banks and carmakers in deep trouble and unemployment rising at
the rate of 800,000 a month. His responses—an aggressive stimulus,
bailing out General Motors and Chrysler, putting the banks through a
sensible stress test and forcing them to raise capital (so that they are
now in much better shape than their European peers)—helped avert a
Depression
. That is a hard message to sell on the doorstep when growth
is sluggish and jobs scarce; but it will win Mr. Obama some plaudits from
history, and it does from us too
.

Two other things count, on balance, in his favour. One is foreign
policy, where he was also left with a daunting inheritance. Mr. Obama has
refocused George Bush’s “war on terror” more squarely on terrorists,
killing Osama bin Laden, stepping up drone strikes (perhaps too
liberally, see article)
and retreating from Iraq and Afghanistan (in both cases too quickly for
our taste). After a shaky start with China, American diplomacy has made
a necessary “pivot” towards Asia. . .

* * *

The other qualified achievement is health reform. Even to a newspaper
with no love for big government, the fact that over 40m people had no
health coverage in a country as rich as America was a scandal
. . .

* * *

Mr. Obama’s shortcomings have left ample room for a pragmatic Republican,
especially one who could balance the books and overhaul government.
Such a candidate briefly flickered across television screens in the
first presidential debate. This newspaper would vote for that Mitt
Romney, just as it would for the Romney who ran Democratic Massachusetts
in a bipartisan way (even pioneering the blueprint for Obamacare). The problem is that there are a lot of Romneys and they have committed themselves to a lot of dangerous things.

“Inside Tucson Business” is wary of Ally Miller

by David Safier Near as I can tell, Inside Tucson Business stopped short of an endorsement in the District One Pima County Supe race. The endorsement editorial said Ally Miller should win based on the party makeup of the district, but Democrat Nancy Young Wright is making a last-minute surge portraying herself as the more … Read more

WaPo editorial: Romney’s campaign insults voters

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The editorial board of the Washington Post has already endorsed President Obama for a second term. Today in an editorial opinion they criticize Willard "Mittens" Romney for his "Big Lie" GOPropanda campaign — it demonstrates contempt for the electorate. Why would anyone vote for someone who treats them with contempt? Romney’s campaign insults voters:

THROUGH ALL THE flip-flops, there has been one consistency in the
campaign of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney: a contempt for
the electorate
.

How else to explain his refusal to disclose essential information? Defying recent bipartisan tradition, he failed to release the names of his bundlers — the high rollers who collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations. He never provided sufficient tax returns to show voters how he became rich.

How, other than an assumption that voters are too dim to remember
what Mr. Romney has said across the years and months, to account for his
breathtaking ideological shifts?
He was a friend of immigrants, then a
scourge of immigrants, then again a friend. He was a Kissingerian
foreign policy realist, then a McCain-like hawk, then a purveyor of
peace. He pioneered Obamacare, he detested Obamacare, then he found
elements in it to cherish. Assault weapons were bad, then good. Abortion
was okay, then bad. Climate change was an urgent problem; then, not so
much. Hurricane cleanup was a job for the states, until it was once again a job for the feds.

The same presumption of gullibility has infused his misleading commercials (see: Jeep jobs to China)
and his refusal to lay out an agenda. Mr. Romney promised to replace
the Affordable Care Act but never said with what. He promised an
alternative to President Obama’s lifeline to young undocumented
immigrants but never deigned to describe it.

And then there has been his chronic, baldly dishonest defense of mathematically impossible budget proposals.
He promised to cut income tax rates without exploding the deficit or
tilting the tax code toward the rich — but he refused to say how he
could bring that off. When challenged, he cited “studies” that he
maintained proved him right. But the studies were a mix of rhetoric,
unrealistic growth projections and more serious economics that actually
proved him wrong.

If you want to live like a Republican, vote Democrat

Posted  by AzBlueMeanie: Maybe those pompous assholes at The Economist in London should spend more time reading about American history, they might actually "edify" themselves about the true nature of the American economy. The Boston Globe today lays it out for them with easy to read charts in Economic data show more growth under Democrats: … Read more