woman

Ninety years ago, a young man named Harry T. Burn, at the insistence of his mother to “ be a good boy ,” changed his vote from “nay” to “yea,” and the generations-long struggle for women’s suffrage was at last won. It is easy to catalog the progress of the last nine decades. Women can vote, own property, earn a paycheck and keep the money in their own bank accounts, go to college and play sports there, and yes, run for and hold elected office. Three of the last four Secretaries of State have been women. The Speaker of the House is a woman.

Why did President Obama choose to appear on The View ? The answer is simple. The View’s audience is 79% female and Obama has a women problem. Obama’s approval among women voters has plunged from 59% to 45% during his term in office. Here’s a shocker: just one-third of white women approve of the president. In fairness to President Obama, his policies and lackadaisical focus on women’s issues only partially explain this nosedive with women.

Whoops, did I say “grizzly mammas?” Well, there’s nothing plural about this show. It’s “Momma Grizzly.” If Sarah Palin’s new web video is about a stampede of new conservative female candidates, try to find one in the piece. If the video is about female empowerment, there’s little doubt as to who’s on the power trip (or the Momma Bear). As Digby writes: She is not a serious politician. She is a political celebrity/entrepreneur, collecting money from her fans to fund herself and sell her brand.

WASHINGTON — The White House is quietly choreographing every aspect of Elena Kagan’s march toward a lifetime term on the Supreme Court. From working to dampen the impact of revelations about her stint in the Clinton White House to going out of their way to trumpet praise from conservative backers, members of President Barack Obama’s team are using every available tool to burnish Kagan’s image. Take the public release of tens of thousands of pages of files from Kagan’s time as an aide to former President Bill Clinton.

All the buzz about the primary results in California, and across the country, tonight are about how this may yet be the “year of the woman,” but one thing comes across loud and clear from California: this is certainly the year of the corporations. As of June 8, the Republican nominee for Senate is Carly Fiorina whose name is synonymous with Hewlett Packard. And, in the governor’s corner is Meg Whitman, Madame E-Bay.

Over the last several days the reviews for Sex and the City 2 have been rolling in, and not surprisingly they have been scathing with a side of mean. I stopped reading them when I saw the word “leathery” describe the women’s skin. I actually think that people really get off on beating up on this film, and I can’t decide whether it’s because a gay man has made a pretty gay film that is for women, or because the film is for and about women that’s going to make a ton of money and no one gives a shit if a single straight guy goes and sees it.

Today on “Hardball,” Jack Conway charged that Ron Paul wanted to do away with the Civil Rights Act. In fact, Rand Paul’s words to the Courier-Journal, in their editorial board interview, were even more extreme than the paper’s editorial reveal. The interview that reveals Rand Paul’s views on civil rights was done in April. People have linked to the editorial, but the transcript has not been circulated. Conway’s charge today on “Hardball” sent me searching.

The following is most definitely NOT a transcript of President Obama’s monologue before the White House Correspondents Dinner Saturday night… Do we have any folks from Arizona here? Let me see your papers. *** Where’s Carl Levin? Carl. Who do you think you are…..Rahm? I guess I’ve got to teach you what I tell my kids. The “s” word’s a bad word. You just can’t go around using it in public. Use different words.

Whatever money you have given Planned Parenthood, NOW, and NARAL has gone for naught. All you have to do is ask where were these women’s groups during the health care fight, when they got beat by a minority in Congress led by one man? As for the Democratic Party, the majority who has always told us they support women’s rights were played like fiddles. The so called progressives and “pro-choice caucus” in Congress rendered silent by the few. Speaker Pelosi… well, she served up Rep. Bart Stupak as the hero of health care.

Hyper-partisan, painfully ignorant, pathologically dishonest, chronically unethical, intellectually unconscious, and jaw-droppingly stupid. And those are her better qualities. Sarah Palin is so soulless that she traded away her credibility on the one issue on which she had any authority: her personal story about raising a child with special needs. That was it, the full sum of her sliver of sincerity. And she gave it up to offer political cover to an equally soulless ally. In other words, she is the perfect embodiment of what her party has become.