But Now They Only Block The Sun...

Yesterday, McTurtle read his carefully crafted "both sides" response to Trump's racism to the press: "From the president, to the speaker to freshmen members of the House, all of us have a responsibility to elevate the public discourse. Our words do matter. We all know politics is a combat sport, but it’s about time we lowered the temperature all across the board."

You leave 'em laughing when you go... don't give yourself away.

Ole Kellyanne, though, didn't take him up on it, going on Fox News to spout her canned lies about AOC, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib. How does this stain on humanity look at herself in the mirror when she wakes up? "What the president is doing is, we are tired... sick and tired... of many people in this country. Forget these four. They represent a dark underbelly of people in this country of people who are not respecting our troops, are not giving them the resources and the respect that they deserve."

I don't know how closely Kellyanne worked with Jason Miller, a top Trump campaign staffer. After all, he was the top communications official on the campaign, so he must have responded-- when Kellyanne, a fully-owned subsidiary of the Mercer family, so when they were still backing Cruz and before they donated her (and Bannon) to Trump-- to this kind of stuff during the campaign:



But however close they got eventually, we all have to worry when she figured out how representative he always was of a dark underbelly. After all, as Caleb Ecarma reported for Mediaite yesterday, Miller testified "he hired numerous prostitutes and visited 'hand job' massage parlors as recently as a few months ago."

Miller made the admission while testifying on May 30 in Washington D.C. in connection to his lawsuit against the digital media company Gizmodo-- a case that is being litigated in Southern Florida’s District Court. Despite Miller’s counsel calling for a protective order to make the deposition confidential, a redacted version was made public on July 11.

The suit accuses Gizmodo of defaming Miller with a story citing an allegation he slipped an “abortion pill” to a Florida strip club dancer he impregnated. The story was based on a sealed court filing. Miller denies the allegation and claims the story is untrue. The lawsuit also names individual defendants Katherine Krueger, a reporter for Gizmodo’s political site Splinter, and Will Menaker, the host of the popular leftist podcast Chapo Trap House. (Menaker was dropped from the suit in the weeks after the deposition).

In a written transcript of the deposition obtained by Mediaite, Miller describes the occasions he paid women for sex since 2001. Soliciting prostitution was, and still is, a crime in the cities where Miller admitted to hiring escorts.

Miller said his most recent visit to a “happy ending” massage parlor came as recently as “a couple of months ago.” He said he recalled having sex with an escort as recently as the spring of 2017-- just a few months after quitting the Trump transition team, where he served as chief spokesman. Trump had named Miller communications director in his new administration, but Miller resigned from the job before the inauguration amid allegations of an affair. He went on to join CNN, where he worked as a commentator in the spring of 2017.

The May deposition details Miller’s multiple extramarital affairs, including his sexual relationships with two subordinates during the 2016 presidential campaign. His relationship with one of these women, former Trump campaign advisor A.J. Delgado, has been public knowledge since late 2016. But Miller provided new information on a second affair with Catherine Frazier, who worked as a press secretary for Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign during Miller’s time leading the candidate’s communications operation. The affairs occurred while his wife, Kelly Miller, was pregnant and the two were not legally separated.

...“It’s not something I’m particularly proud of,” he said after being asked to mention which parlors he visited. “I don’t remember the names.”

He continued by detailing his encounters with what he called escorts: “In 2015, and then I believe again in 2017, I had sex with an escort.” Miller said the fall 2015 and spring 2017 incidents took place in D.C., with the 2017 encounter occurring after Miller’s wife, in the words of Gizmodo’s attorney, “had your daughter” and “after you and your wife decided to try and make things work.”

He then admitted to visiting a massage parlor “a couple of months ago” in New York.

“I’ve obviously made some serious mistakes in my marriage, and we had gotten things back to a really good place,” Miller said. “There wasn’t any of that in-- I remember in 2018. We got things back to a-- a good place-- and I screwed up again this spring.”

Despite significant protest from Miller’s legal counsel, Shane Vogt-- famous for representing Hulk Hogan in the lawsuit that took down Gawker-- Gizmodo’s attorney Bolger cornered Miller into revealing the specifics about his dalliances.

“The question is how much did you pay to have sex with an escort in the spring of 2017?” Bolger asked.

“I think it was something like $2[00] or $300, somewhere in the range,” Miller replied, explaining he “just Googled” for escort services and “initially set up a-- like a massage appointment and then we just went from there.”

Miller’s candid admissions teed up a hard swing from Gizmodo’s legal counsel: “You just testified that you had sex with an escort in the spring of 2017. Other than-- is that the last time you have been unfaithful to your wife?”

“Other than the massage parlor trip? Yes,” he replied.

Bolger’s questioning then turned to Miller’s attendance at strip clubs. The defamation suit is based on an allegation-- which Miller denies-- pertaining to his relationship with a Florida dancer. Miller was able to rattle off the names of numerous Sunshine State gentleman’s clubs he has visited, including Thee Dollhouse and 2001 Odyssey in Tampa; the Diamond Club in Orlando; Scarlett’s outside Miami; Rachel’s in Winter Park and Rachel’s in Orlando. Miller also said he went to Flash Dancers in New York in 2016.

Still, Miller insisted his affinity for strip clubs is behind him, stating, “I’m trying to be a better person, and that’s not something that I do anymore.” Most importantly, he denied having a relationship with any strippers.

He went on to note that then-top Trump campaign advisor Jared Kushner “rightfully chewed me out for some poor decision making” after he went to the Sapphire strip club in Las Vegas late in the 2016 election with members of the media and Trump campaign staffers, including Delgado and Jessica Ditto, who currently works as the White House deputy communications director.

As for Miller’s previously undisclosed affair with Cruz campaign staffer Catherine Frazier, he said the relationship began at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner in April 2016 and lasted until roughly late August of that year-- all while his wife was pregnant with their second child, who was born in January 2017.

While direct mentions of Frazier, who now works for GOP strategist Jeff Roe’s consulting firm Axiom Strategies, were redacted from the public record, sources familiar with their relationship and who have seen the transcript, confirmed Frazier was the Cruz staffer involved with Miller. Frazier, who sources said was also married at the time, has not tweeted in more than two weeks; her disappearance from the social media site where she is normally active occurred a day after the first part of Miller’s deposition became public.

...Since declining the White House job, Miller’s career has been turbulent. He left his job as a CNN contributor in September amid what he called “false and defamatory accusations being made” against him. Splinter’s “abortion pill” story was released that month.

In May, Miller left his job at Teneo, a corporate advisory firm, after going on a wild Twitter tirade repeatedly calling Rep. Jerry Nadler a “fat fuck” and telling him to “take a long walk off a short pier.”

Despite this constant stream of controversies, Miller has kept up appearances of being in President Donald Trump’s orbit. As the 2020 election approaches, Miller has repeatedly given interviews to publications, such as the New York Times, Politico, and the Washington Post, discussing the president’s 2020 strategy and attacking Democratic presidential candidates. He has publicly advertised his connections to the campaign, telling Vanity Fair in March “spoke with” Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale “this morning” while describing the president’s strategy to target voters.

Where have all the flowers gone... long time ago?

Gay Identity Politics-- McKinsey Pete

Monday, I responded to a tweet about some random guy primarying Jan Schakowsky (D-IL): "Jan Schakowsky is one of the best members of Congress & is one of the few who has NOT failed us." Notice what I didn't say: Jan Schawkowsky is one of the best female members of Congress" or even "Jan Schawkowsky is one of the best Jewish members of Congress"-- although she is both. But doesn't it sound better that she's just flat out one of the best members of Congress? You know where I learned that? Listening to Joni Mitchell explode when a reviewer would refer to her as the world's greatest female songwriter. From her reaction, you might think the reviewer had written that she has no songwriting ability at all. In her world, her rivals were always Bob Dylan and Neil Young and she sees herself as the best songwriter in the world. It wasn't uncommon to see Joni work on a song for longer than it took Neil to write and record an entire album.

If you read DWT much, you probably know how much I hate identity politics. Picking a candidate for any reason other than their qualifications sickens me and makes me worry for the health of a Democratic Party that is riven with leaders who are all about aggressively choosing people based on extraneous characteristics, even if it means winding up with less qualified-- or even unqualified-- people in positions. Many of my friends disagree with me on this'd I've been through the pros and cons countless times. Monday morning, a weak L.A. Times reporter, Janet Hook, wrote that McKinsey Pete is inspiring pride among gay voters.

I'm a gay voter and I don't feel a twinge of pride in that. I'm glad an openly gay person can run for office but...





My "but" is different than the but Hook wrote about. But but is that he's a crap candidate who spent much of his life in the closet, developing an ability to lie and deceive-- which is what people in the closet do-- and then fit in perfectly with the world's biggest-- and worst-- consulting firm, McKinsey, which trains its robots to lie flawlessly and without blinking. Hook says the but for gay voters is that they fear he can't win. Thank God for small favors!

Win or lose in the 2020 presidential race, Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., is energizing LGBTQ Americans. With his surprisingly strong run for the Democratic presidential nomination, he is helping a long-marginalized community advance in political stature and pride in a way some compare to the effect Barack Obama’s presidency had on African Americans.

“Mayor Pete Buttigieg is transforming America’s perception of LGBTQ people,” said Annise Parker, president of the Victory Fund, an LGBTQ political group that endorsed Buttigieg in June, the first time it had endorsed a presidential candidate.

Buttigieg does not put his sexual orientation at the center of his campaign, but he is not hiding it either. In recent weeks, as his campaign gained prominence, he has made high-profile appearances before predominantly gay audiences.

When he traveled to Provincetown for a campaign event and fundraiser Friday, Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten, received a hero’s welcome from a town that, after the 2010 census, had the highest proportion of same-sex couples in the country.

It was a long way from Iowa, where Buttigieg was heckled by antigay activists this year. In P-town, as the city is known, a popular eatery painted a welcome message to the Buttigiegs in its window. An art gallery displayed an enormous portrait of Buttigieg. He met with students attending a local summer camp for LGBTQ youths. Throngs gathered during a morning stroll through town.

“It felt like our own little parade,” Buttigieg said at an afternoon event where hundreds in the hall-- and hundreds more in the overflow crowd outside-- waved “PETETOWN’’ signs. “It reminds me of what it is to be in a place that celebrates inclusion, that celebrates belonging.”

Buttigieg and his husband have become the most high-profile gay male couple in America. Images of the pair kissing at campaign events have been broadcast across the country. They have appeared together on the cover of Time magazine.

Asked about potential backlash, Buttigieg cites his experience coming out as gay in the conservative state of Indiana in 2015 just before running for reelection as South Bend mayor.

“I came out not knowing what the consequences would be and, in the end, got reelected with 80% of the vote,” he told reporters in Provincetown. “You have to give people a chance to show they can move beyond prejudice.”

But that could be a risky political bet in a campaign against President Trump. Many of Trump’s supporters are among the 31% of Americans who oppose gay marriage, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center poll, and even some of Buttigieg’s admirers question whether the country will accept a gay man as president.

“Homophobia is a very real thing; however, it is not as visible as racism,” said Damian Archer, a gay African American man at Buttigieg’s Friday rally who is undecided about which candidate to support in 2020.

Rufus Gifford, a gay former Obama administration official, who admires Buttigieg but has not committed to him or any other candidate, says: “I do worry with the stakes as high as they are, I ask myself every day: Is the U.S. ready to elect an openly gay president? I still question it. I’m scared to death we’ll reelect Donald Trump.”

Still, the response to Buttigieg’s candidacy is a remarkable sign of one of the fastest shifts in public attitudes ever measured in the U.S.: the growth in acceptance of homosexuality to the point that, at least among Democratic primary voters, Buttigieg’s orientation has ended up a political asset, not a liability.

Some 61% of Americans support same-sex marriage-- double the share in 2004, when only 31% did, according to the Pew Research Center.

Even within the Democratic Party, in 2008, none of the leading presidential candidates supported gay marriage. The ban on gays serving openly in the military ended only in 2011. It was just four years ago, 2015, that the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage could not be banned by states.

“I heard a woman from Alabama call Pete Buttigieg wholesome,” said Richard Holt, a board member of the Victory Fund. “I never thought I’d hear a Bible Belt mother refer to a gay guy as wholesome.”

Buttigieg often appears with his husband. With an active social media presence, Chasten Buttigieg has gained outsize celebrity and embraced the “candidate’s spouse” role with humor and style.

When the pair emerged from a black SUV for a June Victory Fund event in Brooklyn, attendees seemed almost as excited to see the spouse as the candidate.

The event, like the Provincetown visit, was a respite for Buttigieg, who has been battered by criticism for his handling of racial tensions in South Bend after a black man was shot by a white policeman. The fund’s endorsement had been scheduled for earlier in June but was postponed when Buttigieg returned to South Bend to cope with the crisis.

It was rescheduled to a propitious day-- the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, a landmark in the history of the LGBTQ rights movement that occurred after police raided a gay bar in New York City.

“We haven’t seen equality come to the land, not by a long shot, but think about what it means that 50 years after Stonewall, we could be gathered in a room with a top-tier candidate for the American presidency and be in a room with his husband,” Buttigieg said to cheers.

Buttigieg rose implausibly fast in the party’s big 2020 presidential field in part because he is gay. That fact helped him stand out from the pack and garner media attention, and drew a big infusion of early campaign donations from the LGBTQ community. He went on to raisean impressive $24.8 million in the second quarter, more than any of his rivals have announced so far.

Los Angeles political consultant David Wolf said Buttigieg has received significant fundraising support from Hollywood’s LGBTQ community, including TV producer Ryan Murphy and prominent agents Bryan Lourd and Kevin Huvane.

Buttigieg added to his coffers Friday at the Provincetown fundraiser organized by Bryan Rafanelli, a major Democratic donor who also hosted a Buttigieg event this year at Fenway Park in Boston.

For many Democrats-- gay and straight-- Buttigieg’s biggest liability is not his sexuality, but that he is too young, too inexperienced or not liberal enough.

“I’m still concerned about his ability to beat Trump,” said Mitchell Katine, a Houston lawyer who helped win a landmark 2003 Supreme Court ruling that decriminalized gay sex. “I want him to be in the running and continue this education process. But he’ll have to convince me he can beat Trump.”

Antigay sentiment is still a powerful force. There are only 20 states where LGBTQ people are protected against discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations. Just 46% of Republicans say they are open to electing a gay president, an April Quinnipiac University poll found.

Nor does Buttigieg have a monopoly on LGBTQ voters. Former Vice President Joe Biden earned the allegiance of many with his 2012 endorsement of gay marriage-- getting out in front of Obama on the issue. Sen. Kamala Harris of California enjoys strong support in San Francisco’s gay community.

A group of 47 LGBTQ activists and elected officials announced their endorsements of Harris last weekend ahead of her participation in the city’s Pride parade.

A June poll of LGBTQ voters by Whitman Insight Strategies and BuzzFeed News found a noteworthy gender gap. Buttigieg was the top choice among Democratic gay men, with 27% saying they were likely to support him.

Among lesbians, however, Buttigieg was fifth choice, with just 13% saying they’d likely support him, behind Harris, Biden and Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Some lesbians are torn between their interest in Buttigieg and a desire to elect a female president. But Kate Wise, a gay woman from Cleveland who was in New York for the World Pride celebration, said she was all in for Buttigieg from the minute he announced.

“We landed a bro on the top of the pile,” Wise said. But she added, “He would be my guy even if he was not gay.”

Whether he wins the party nomination and goes on to the White House, gay activists hope Buttigieg will help inspire other LGBTQ candidates running up and down the ballot.

“He can have coattails,” Holt said. “We have to have representatives at all levels.”

Harvey Milk was an incredible person who I spent great deal of time with when he was on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. When I arrived in San Francisco, penniless, he staked me the darkroom equipment I used to set up a photography business and later became his campaign photographer. Many of the unacknowledged photos you see of him were pictures I took. (The Times of Harvey Milk film credits me for my pictures by the rest are just routinely stolen. Sorry for the tangent.) I remember once sitting with Harvey in the back of his photo shop on Castro Street. He had a mail sack filled with letters from all over the country. I remember one from a kid in Kansas or Nebraska. My eyes still well up with tears, around 4 decades later, when I think about it. This kid read about Harvey's election and it made him revaluate his own self-worth and to rescind his decision to commit suicide. Harvey was an inspiring figure. It wasn't just because he was the first openly gay person to win elective office; it was because of who he was. That's not who McKinsey Pete is.

Both Sides-- But Not The Joni Mitchell Version

The Wall Street Journal ran an OpEd by Robert Gates Friday evening, To End the Shutdown, Try Thinking Big on Immigration. It almost doesn't matter what his "big idea" is since his presentation is so utterly flawed. "Both parties are to blame for this embarrassing impasse," he wrote. Really? Both parties. Pin a pin in that. We'll come back to it. First I want to make sure you know who Robert Gates is. Since 2012 he's been a principal in the Silicon Valley-based neocon consulting firm RiceHadleyGates LLC, with Condoleeza Rice and Stephen Hadley. ("We offer advice based on extensive experience in the international arena. We work with companies to develop and implement their international strategic plans and help them expand in major emerging markets, including in Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas. The advice they offered Trump was to hire Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, which worked out badly for everyone concerned.) He also serves as chancellor at the college of William and Mary (his alma mater), on the board of Stabucks and as president of the Boy Scouts of America.

Before all that, Gates was a CIA intelligence analyst who worked his way up to director, despite his terrible reputation for corruption and his role in the Iran-Contra scandal. George W. Bush appointed him Secretary of Defense in 2006 and Obama made the foolish decision to keep him on.

His OpEd is a typical "both sides" concoction, part of a false national narrative. The government shut-down was not caused by "both" parties. It was caused by Trump as a way of forcing Congress to give him money for a useless vanity wall. Remember what Gates seems to have forgotten-- it was Trump who unilaterally ended DACA, took the Dreamers hostage, shut down the government, took 800,000 workers paychecks and the nation's safety hostage and is now magnanimously offering to give those back as part of a phony compromise if his blackmail is successful and the Democrats agree to fund his monument.

Congress should impeach him tomorrow instead. Gates' bullshit lies-- or maybe he's lost his mind-- is premised, in his own words, on the idea that "Few politicians in Washington-- Republican or Democrat, in Congress or the White House-- consider the best interest of the country a priority. The fight is all about politics, partisanship and power. To win the day, both sides are willing to upend the lives of 800,000 government employees and their families-- and countless others who depend on the spending of those families for their own livelihoods."

That's flat-out false. Did Gates miss this classic piece of film? Does this sound like "both sides" to you?



About a decade ago-- a little more-- I visited Myanmar. It was kind of surreal going to a fully functioning fascist state in the 21st Century. (There are more of them now, come to think of it.) In Yangon, the capital, the top tourist attraction, indisputably, is the Shwedagon Pagoda. That's me, in the picture below, walking around the complex back then. Notice one of my feet is bare. That was the result of a compromise I made with the ticket seller. He demanded I remove my shoes-- fine-- and my socks. I didn't want to take off my socks and wind up with some exotic foot disease. So I argued with him forever. We finally reached a "compromise." Both shoes, of course. But just one sock. When the Nazis put the Jews in concentration camps, were "both sides" wrong? Someone should ask Robert Gates sometime. 

The Women's March Is Crucially Important, And... And But...

I don't go in for identity politics at all. Voting for someone because they were born a woman, gay, of any particular religion, Asian or black, for example, is not my cup pf tea. Nor is voting for someone who is a veteran, a scientist, a doctor or part of any age group. Take women. Women make up 51% of the population but just 22% of the Senate and 19% of the House. That's outrageous. And that's why when when two candidates-- one man and one woman-- are equally good, I'll vote for the woman. But, not all women candidates are good candidates or good political leaders. Some are absolutely horrible in fact. Look at the House. Arguably, the very best member of the House is Pramila Jayapal, a woman elected from Seattle. Katherine Clark (D-MA), Judy Chu (D-CA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and Yvette Clarke (D-NY) have fantastic voting records too. And you want to find incredible leadership and courageousness in Congress? Look no further than Elizabeth Warren in the Senate and Barbara Lee in the House. Bad news though. The absolute rotgut worst Democrat in the House is a woman: Kyrsten Sinema, the head of the Blue Dogs who represents a nice blue district in the Phoenix area. And she isn't the only Democratic woman who is so horrible that no one who believes in Democratic values should support her. Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL), Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL), and Jacky Rosen (NV) have amassed voting records that no one but Paul Ryan and EMILY's List could possibly like. In the Senate, the worst Democrat is Heidi Heitkamp-- yes, my friends, even worse than Joe Manchin. And who voted to throw the DREAMers under the bus-- or in this case onto a bus headed for Mexico or El Salvador-- Friday night? Heitkamp and Claire McCaskill (as well as Manchin and Joe Donnelly).

Among candidates for Congress this cycle, people such as Nina Ahmad (D-PA), Katie Porter (D-CA), Jenny Marshall (D-NC), Lisa Brown (D-WA), Jess King (D-PA), Antoinette Sedillo Lopez (D-NM)... are simply the best people running for Congress. It's stupid to call them the best woman candidate when they are just the best candidate, period. I remember how Joni Mitchell used to curse critics at reviewers who called her the "best woman songwriter." You can't imagine how offended she was by that. She was the best songwriter-- end of story. How about that? Those candidates are not the best women candidates; they are the best candidates. Period. You could say Nina Ahmad is the best woman candidate born in Dacca and, technically, you'd be correct. It makes more sense to say she's the best candidate running for Congress. Someone might want to argue with you-- maybe, say, proponents of Randy Bryce or Marie Newman, who might say one of them is better-- so fine, make the argument... but it's not about anyone's plumbing.

Another awesome congressional candidate, a woman, running in the Houston area, is Dayna Steele. She's amazing and would make a fantastic member of Congress with a unique and much-needed perspective. Yesterday she emailed he supporters about the woman's march: "One year ago, I marched with my husband and youngest son in downtown Houston. Expecting to see maybe 500 people, I was stunned to find over 30,000 women, men, and children. That scene repeated itself all over the world, where people gathered to take a stand.  When the march was over my young son asked 'What good will this do? What will you do moving forward?' After much thought and counsel, I decided to run for Congress. Today, with the government shut down because folks like Brian Babin won't do their job, I’m marching again with my husband and youngest son, this time as a candidate for the 36th district of Texas. If you support women’s rights, equal rights, healthcare for all, quality public education, DACA, CHIP, and making people‘s lives better, I’m asking you to support our campaign today." Support her here.



"Activists," wrote Michelle Price and Anita Snow, "are returning to the streets a year after a million people rallied worldwide at marches for female empowerment, hoping to create an enduring political movement that will elect more women to government office... A rally Sunday in Las Vegas will launch an effort to register 1 million voters and target swing states in the midterm elections. The 2017 rally in Washington, D.C., and hundreds of similar marches created solidarity for those denouncing President Donald Trump’s views on abortion, immigration, LGBT rights and more. Afterward, a wave of women decided to run for elected office and the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct became a cultural phenomenon. 'We made a lot of noise,' said Elaine Wynn, an organizer. 'But now how do we translate that noise into something concrete or fulfilling?' Linda Sarsour, one of the four organizers of last year’s Washington march, said Las Vegas was slotted for a major rally because it’s a strategic swing state that gave Hillary Clinton a narrow win in the presidential election and will have one of the most competitive Senate races in 2018. Democrats believe they have a good chance of winning the seat held by embattled Republican Sen. Dean Heller and weakening the GOP’s hold on the chamber."

Too bad [male] puppetmasters Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer handpicked one of the worst Democrats in the House, Jacky Rosen, as the Democratic candidate for that Senate seat. I'd vote for a pool of puke on the street before voting for Jacky Rosen. And the DCCC just endorsed a garbage candidate for Rosen's seat in the House, an incredibly wealthy, Mafia-connected socialite-- and Pelosi crony-- Susie Lee. If you want horrible-- albeit horrible without a penis-- you've got two to support right there in Las Vegas. And then you can feel like you've been cheated next year when they start voting like Heitkamp and McCaskill.

Instead, we should be putting our energy into electing great candidates-- many of whom are women-- who are shunned by corrupted slime like Reid and Schumer and the DCCC. Another Blue Dog in the House who is beyond horrible is Chicagoland walking garbage pile Dan Lipinski. He joined Paul Ryan to speak at the counter-rally against Choice on Friday. And his opponent is not just better than he is; his opponent is fantastic and someone who will make Congress a better place. Oh, and she happens be a woman: Marie Newman. Robin Marty, writing for Right Wing Watch wrote about that anti-Choice movement's rally and the horror of what's behind it. This is a lot more salient than electing crap candidates in Las Vegas.

When tens of thousands of abortion-rights opponents gather in Washington, D.C., this week to protest the 45th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, many will be lobbying the Trump administration and Congress on measures that they hope will chip away at and ultimately lead to the repeal of Roe. But a smaller group of activists are taking a much more direct approach to their efforts to stop legal abortion. Quietly, the anti-choice “rescue” movement has been trying out new tactics to test the limits of the FACE Act, the 1994 law that stopped them from physically blocking the entrances of abortion clinics in order to deny women access.

“Rescues” or abortion clinic sit-ins, are nothing new to the anti-abortion movement. In 1991, as many as 500 protesters a day gathered in front of abortion clinics in Wichita, Kansas, blocking patients from entering the buildings. The anti-abortion “rescue” movement was at its height then, with thousands gathering at national events to shut down clinics, while dedicated local activists focused on regular daily or weekly “rescues” that involved barricading elevators, blocking the vehicles of abortion providers, even locking themselves to buildings, cement blocks or cars so they couldn’t be removed from the premises.

The FACE Act put an end to almost all of those tactics. Signed into law in 1994 by Democratic President Bill Clinton, FACE (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances) made it a federal crime to physically obstruct a clinic entrance or use force, threat of force or intimidation against anyone attempting to provide or procure an abortion, or to intentionally damage or destroy the property of a reproductive health services facility. (FACE’s rules also applied to anyone trying to block access to a place of worship.)

The FACE Act brought a quick end to the rescue movement as it existed in its heyday, ending the ability of anti-choice activists to physically prevent women from accessing abortion. But the strength of the law depends on how aggressively the federal government is willing to enforce it. In the five years that the FACE Act was in effect under President Clinton, the administration used it to file charges in 46 criminal or civil cases. During the two-term presidency of Republican George W. Bush, on the other hand, the Department of Justice had a 75 percent drop in criminal FACE Act violation charges, and filed just one civil case in eight years. Aggressive enforcement began again with the election of Democratic President Barack Obama, whose administration prosecuted 11 criminal and nine civil FACE Act violations in his first term alone.

With another Republican president in the White House-- one who anti-abortion groups worked zealously to get elected once they accepted the fact that he would be their inevitable nominee-- it is still unclear how aggressively the Department of Justice will enforce the FACE Act. Last year, the Trump Justice Department showed that it was willing to prosecute the most flagrant FACE violations after the radical anti-choice group Operation Save America attempted an old-school clinic blockade in Louisville, Kentucky. Police arrested 11 anti-abortion activists associated with Operation Save Americain May after they sat and directly blocked the front doors of the only abortion clinic in the state. Ten of the activists were ultimately charged with civil FACE Act violations, and a temporary restraining order was issued to keep them from the clinic property when they returned for a national event two months later. A full trial on the charges will occur this spring.

Whether the Trump administration will pursue less clear-cut cases remains to be seen. In response, anti-abortion activists appear to be nibbling around the edges of the law, trying out new strategies to test how far the Justice Department will allow them to go.

...More anti-abortion activist groups are staging marches and protest events like this outside abortion clinic doors to thwart patients from obtaining legal abortion care. If a patient approaching a clinic for medical care is confronted with a sea of thousands of protesters, that can hardly be seen as anything other than intimidation of a person attempting to access an abortion. Yet these marches, because they are currently being organized in a permissible way in public thoroughfares, often come with the assistance and tacit support of local government and law enforcement agencies.

While the Trump administration is in power, it remains very unlikely that we will see many activists charged with FACE Act violations-- that is, unless we see more blatant Operation Save America-style clinic-door blockades like we saw in the spring of 2016. But as for, more tentative steps into potential FACE violations pacifist clinic trespasses, city-issued and permitted mass marches and similar tactics-- it is safe to expect these to multiply, especially as federal authorities stick their heads in the sand and local law enforcement provide little more than wrist slaps in response.

And considering that this was how the original rescue movement grew from local nuisance to a national threat to access, that could be the most alarming development of all.

This is Dan Lipinksi's world. Last Thursday, when the Republicans brought up the enabling legislation for another of their ugly and vicious anti-Choice bills, the so-called Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, only two "Democrats" voted with the Republicans to allow the bill to move forward, vile Blue Dogs Dan Lipinski and Collin Peterson. The DCCC will never quit Dan or Collin. But supporting Marie Newman and helping her replace Lipinski is a far more effective way to bring about real change than backing Reid's, Schumer's and the DCCC's godawful women candidates in Nevada. We're not asking you to support Marie Newman because she's a woman-- although I'm happy she is and that's a crucial part of who she is-- but because she is the best candidate and because will make Congress a better place because of what she's got between her ears. If you click the ActBlue congressional thermometer on the right, you'll find Marie Newman... and a whole slew of awesome women candidates-- and awesome male candidates. These are the people we should be supporting if we want a better country, not Jacky Rosen, not Kyrsten Sinema and not Susie Lee.

The choice couldn't be more clear

Anatomy Of A Trump Supporter

Who are these fellow Americans of ours who still support Trump? Are they really all addicted to prescription drugs? Are they all racists? Are they all just terminally stupid? I don't know many personally-- I admit it-- and the ones I do know are indeed incredibly stupid and willfully ignorant, racist and addicted to prescription drugs. But I was interested enough in knowing there are other Trump supporters out there who aren't that I read a piece by David Smith in The Guardian based on interviews with 9 Trumpists last week at the noisy little Nazi rally in Phoenix. (Yeah, I know-- Señor Trumpanzee claimed there were 15,000, but that was the Bernie rally in the same building a year ago; Trump's pathetic little rally, according to the Phoenix Fire Department, drew less than 4,200, many of whom left after Trump started boring them with his pointless and endless attacks on CNN.)

The first person they interviewed was a crackpot Arizona state senator, Sylvia Allen, a Mormon from Snowflake (really) who advocates making church attendance in the U.S. mandatory (really). She told The Guardian "Trump is a breath of fresh air. He’s totally not a political person. He’s a businessman: he’s anti-left, he’s anti-PC, he’s anti-stupid. He just wants to go in and make the best deal for Americans that he can." I don't know what drugs she takes or how seriously addicted she is but...

Of course he’s not racist. That’s a label people want to put on someone when they don’t agree how to solve a problem. You don’t see the issue, so you attack. That’s the way the left has operated in our country very effectively.

Both sides were wrong in Charlottesville. Everyone has a right to peacefully protest under the first amendment but this was a form of domestic terrorism: the left started it and the white supremacists helped it explode. Trump was trying to say Nazism and Marxism are on the same spectrum: they want to control how you think, how you live.

I support a border wall. We absolutely have the right as a society to protect our safety as a country. We also need to reform our legal immigration process.

Middle America, the middle class, the blue-collar workers, the small-business owners like hearing from our president, but the media in our country is leftist. They can’t get the real story. The media has lost all integrity: they’re a disgrace. They’ve sold their souls for political gain. People want a president who is not politically correct, who will say it like it is and will not do it because he wants to get elected.

Sylvia Allen is 70 and may have gotten too much sun over the decades. Jillian Henry is a 19 year old biology student who drove four and a half hours from California to attend the Phoenix rally. She admits she voted for Trump because "he was the best candidate running. I agreed with him on border protection and didn’t want someone being investigated by the FBI sitting in our president’s seat [meaning Hillary, presumably]. He’s doing pretty good so far. Healthcare is Congress’s fault mainly, because they can’t decide what they want and need to figure it out. I don’t think he’s a racist. I think if they’re calling him a racist, they may be racist. The border wall is a good plan. We need to protect America. If we’re not safe, why should we be OK with that? I think he is right to criticise the media and fake news. There are big problems with the media stirring up things that are not there and fake interpretations all around. The thing with tweeting is it’s a great way to keep the people involved. People didn’t have a problem with Roosevelt doing it on the radio and they shouldn’t have a problem with Trump doing it on Twitter."

The next one was another 70 year old, Patricia Morgan, and another crackpot. She came all the way from Brooklyn for the Nazi rally. She sure seems like a nut and very much wants the country to move backwards. Real sad case: "I don’t think he’s a racist. I think if they’re calling him a racist, they may be racist.

The border wall is a good plan. We need to protect America. If we’re not safe, why should we be OK with that? I think he is right to criticise the media and fake news. There are big problems with the media stirring up things that are not there and fake interpretations all around. The thing with tweeting is it’s a great way to keep the people involved. People didn’t have a problem with Roosevelt doing it on the radio and they shouldn’t have a problem with Trump doing it on Twitter."

She thinks McCain should switch parties and become a Democrat. She also buys into the "both sides" idea Trump pushes to his true believers and into the nonsense about how not a racist he is and has always not been. "He used to," she asserted,"get awards from some of the black organisations because he would go in and help them." And she loves the circus atmosphere Trump uses to entertain and give some verve to the shabby lives of imbeciles like her: "The media are very prejudiced against him. I don’t think the media are fair: they have their own agenda. It’s good when he tweets and tells us what’s going on."



What about the men? Oh, there were men too, don't worry. Bob Neilssen a former 63 year old realtor "lost everything but the car when the housing market crashed and his wife, now 76, fell ill with Alzheimer’s. He now cares for her and sleeps on an air mattress at the home of a 94-year-old friend who also lost his wife to Alzheimer’s; both men live off Social Security. Apparently neither has the brain capacity to realize they would die in the street of starvation if the Republicans got there way. In his world, Trump's not a racist and "both sides " were to blame for Charlottesville. Where do you think he got this? "The KKK had the legal right to express their opposition and they got a permit and everything would have been fine except that counter-protesters came with baseball bats and rocks. It’s not the KKK that started it. If they’d just let them kick around in the streets, that would have been it. Paid protesters started it and the media does not want that narrative to be told."

I voted for him because it was an obvious choice. Hillary Clinton had decades of foul play and illegal acts, and she was attached to Bill Clinton, who had decades of foul play and illegal acts. I’ve got nothing good to say about either of them.

The American people are sick and tired of a namby-pamby politician who is politically correct. Want a businessman who can make decisions. Best leave if it hurts your feelings. I want Trump to continue to call it like it is. I would vote for him if he quit the Republicans and started his own party.

I think Trump is doing as well as he possibly can considering all the foot-dragging and whining and non-belief in his election, with the media doing all it can to delegitimise him. The stock market has confidence in him and unemployment has plummeted.

I agree with him about a border wall. Immigration needs to be under control. We have to know and approve who’s going in and who’s coming out. If you have no border, you have no country. We don’t have a problem with Canada.

I want [Arizona senators] Jeff Flake and John McCain gone as soon as we have the next vote. Both are anti-Trump and are trying to sabotage Trump at all costs. I’ve been disappointed with McCain for decades. I admire his military service but being a good soldier does not make you a good politician. This vote on healthcare was just a slap in the face to Trump.

The media has been distorting the truth for decades. They’re so leftwing. If you said the glass was half full, they’d call you a Nazi and say it’s half empty. Now they don’t make sense any more and CNN is fake news. This Russia thing is made up: they don’t have a shred of evidence after a year.

As you can see from the polling question above, a majority of Americans disapprove of the way Trump handled Charlottesville-- 53-36%. But among self-described Trump voters, approval is huge... 78% and only 14% are in synch with American values and most Americans. This is classic, from a 46 year old white guy The Guardian interviewed in Phoenix: "Trump is absolutely not a racist. I tend to agree with what he said about Charlottesville." And here was his misinformed version of what happened there: "If I recall correctly, one side has a permit to be there legally while the other tore a statue down illegally." And this is pretty typical-- and uninformed-- among Trumpists too: "He’s a businessman and the economy needed him."

Another Trump supporter was Brad Pontious, 66, who lost the right hemisphere of his brain to Agent Orange during the Vietnam war. He became a quality engineer for Boeing and was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2008, had a stroke in 2013, uses a wheelchair and lives with his wife, April, 50. He sounds like all the rest of them: "I voted for him because I was tired of politicians. He spoke to me on a personal level, not a political level... I don’t believe he’s racist."



And the last guy, a 19 year old student, 50% black, 50% Japanese, 100% confused: "I voted for him because of diversity. He actually practices diversity unlike liberals, who don’t practice diversity. Obama had this whole country thinking about skin colour. Trump doesn’t look at skin colour. He doesn’t label anyone who’s non-white a minority, just people. Skin colour is colour, not culture. His cabinet is nothing to do with skin colour: they’re right for the job."

Both sides in Charlottesville are bad. He’s absolutely right. The Antifa [anti-fascist groups] are the equivalent of the KKK and both were responsible. Antifa is the KKK, just without the history. The Confederate flag is not racist: only 5% of slave owners had the Confederate flag; the US flag is more racist. Do you think I’d be that stupid to vote for an actual racist to be in office?

CNN and MSNBC are complete bullshit. They label the Antifa as peaceful protesters.

Thirty other countries have a wall to protect against illegal immigration but is the only one that gets called racist.

My dad and family are all Democratic except my grandfather. They’ve tried to change my mind but it doesn’t make sense to me what they say.

A tweet this weekend from the penultimate Trumpist

The RNC felt compelled to make it clear that-- no matter what Trump and his die-hard lunatics like the ones interviewed by The Guardian think-- the Republican Party condemns Nazis and the KKK, underscoring "the level of concern within the party over Trump’s comments on the protests and the impact they could have on the party heading into the 2018 midterm election."

The resolution passed unanimously. It reads: "the racist beliefs of Nazis, the KKK, white supremacists and other like-minded groups are completely inconsistent with the Republican Party’s platform" and "the view that the color of one’s skin determines or should determine one’s standing, rights, opportunities, or duties to others is not consistent with the philosophy of the Republican Party... The racist beliefs of the Nazis, the KKK, white supremacists and others are repulsive, evil, and have no fruitful place in the United States." Trump supporters don't care what the RNC thinks, says or resolves. As long as Trump sends purposeful mixed messages on racism and the alt-right and keeps doing things like pardoning Joe Arpaio, they'll keep loving him-- "they" meaning the ignorant, prescription drug addicted racist base.

Women In The Age Of Trump

-by Helen Klein

An article in last Sunday’s NY Times Week in Review raised my hackles and led to the writing of this piece. Since When is Being a Woman a Liberal Cause? was penned by Susan Chira, a senior correspondent and editor on gender issues.

As a baby boomer, I am old enough to have seen first-hand the dramatic changes that have taken place for women in this country. Mid-Twentieth Century, women were second-class citizens and did not have equal rights. During my 13 years in public school in New York City (K-12) I was never allowed to wear pants. This changed a year or two after I graduated. There were no girls’ sports teams at my high school, only boys’ teams. In my physics class, there were three girls out of about 40 students. In 1969, when my boyfriend entered medical school, there were three women out of the 100 in his class. Howie and I went to the same undergraduate college, State University of New York at Stony Brook. He had the option of joining the swimming team; I'm a better swimmer than he is but all I and all other women were offered was-- wait for it-- water ballet!

This article looks at who gets to define what it means to be pro-women. The conservative women interviewed give little acknowledgement or credit to the courageous women who fought tooth and nail for women’s rights, rights these women take for granted, rights that have given them the opportunities they have had and lives they now lead.

The left has staked its claim…Now the same groups that organized the march are proposing a general strike-- “a day without a woman”-- to show that women continue to oppose him (Trump) and that the world would be lost without them.

The leaders of these protests argue that women’s causes-- abortion, contraception, economic equality, immigration, criminal justice-- essentially demand liberal solutions.

That leaves conservative women-- those who support the President and those who don’t-- out. Their opponents claim to represent the best interests of an entire gender, one that happens to be theirs.

The article goes on to share objections to this stance by various women. Four women’s comments are noted below and responded to later in this piece.

Cleta Mitchell, a partner at the law firm Foley and Lardner who has long been active in conservative politics, finds nothing but hypocrisy on the part of women who claim to speak on her behalf. “These women don’t represent me or anyone I know.” For years, conservative women have wrestled with the very idea of feminism. “Conservative women say ‘don’t put me in the feminism bloc’ because somehow it’s emblematic of a whole set of liberal issues that may have nothing to do with promoting women,” Mrs. Mitchell said.

Mary Matalin, the veteran Republican strategist who switched her party affiliation to Libertarian last spring, believes any attempt to brand the Republican Party as anti-women will fail. “The critical fallacy in the liberal logic of identity politics is that-- demonstrably-- ‘groups’ don’t think homogeneously; they don’t behave homogeneously.”

“I guess I am not someone who thinks in terms of gender,” said Sharon Fraser Toborg, 48. (She) resents that her choice to stay home despite Ivy League and graduate degrees still draws condescension from many women. She did not back Trump in the primaries, but preferred him in the end to Mrs. Clinton. “I’m someone who thinks in terms of capabilities, so to me how many men or women are in a particular president’s cabinet, I don’t keep score.”

Lani Candelora, 39, wrote to The Times in response to a question about who was, or was not, attending the marches. “It might come as a shock to the New York Times, but many American women are feeling hope and joy in the change of administration…We believe our families will have financial relief, that we’ll have a better chance of everyone finding gainful employment, that we’ll have affordable health insurance again for our families, that our religion will no longer be shunned and persecuted by the presidential administration, that the phony selfish feminism promoted by the women’s march is not continuously projected onto millions of other women who strongly disagree.”

Well. Let’s take a deep breath and look at these statements.

Cleta Mitchell: You are a lawyer. Have you ever looked at the history of women in law? If not, you certainly should. It would be important for you to take into account history and facts before claiming liberal women don’t represent you. You would not be where you are without them. I find the hypocrisy in you, not liberal women.

From Wikipedia: History of women in law school:

Women were not allowed in most law schools during the late 1800s and early 1900s…The difficulty of entry of women in to the legal profession was further aggravated by the fact that federal courts did not allow women to be admitted as lawyers… The federal courts were subsequently opened to women in 1878 due to a successful campaign by Belva Ann Lockwood… The elite law schools remained closed to women for a while after. Pushed by the suffragist movement for women, Harvard Law School started considering admitting women in 1899 but without success.

World War I encouraged the movement toward admitting women to law schools, and in 1918, Fordham Law School and Yale Law School started admitting women. Northeastern University School of Law started admitting women in 1923. Harvard Law School did not admit women until 1950. In 1966, Notre Dame Law School started admitting women.

Despite these advances, “in 1963, women comprised only 2.7 percent of the profession. In the academic year 1969-70, only 6.35 percent of the degree candidates in law school were women.”

A prevalent attitude has been mentioned several times by Hillary Clinton, who recalled that she had been accepted at Harvard Law School in 1969 but had been repelled by a professor who told her at a student recruitment party, “We don’t need any more women at Harvard.” (She went to Yale Law School instead.)

Attendance at women’s law schools did, however, improve significantly in the next 10-year period. “In 1968, 3,704 women of the 62,000 law students were women; by 1979, there were 37, 534 women out of 117,279 students in approved schools,” although still represented in larger proportions in less elite law schools.

These changes for women were attributable to the feminist movement in the 1950s and 1960’s, of which I was proud to be part of. It should be said that many young men were also very supportive of inclusiveness. The protests against the war in Vietnam and the draft were critical in bringing young people of both sexes together.

Mary Matalin: Of course groups don’t think or behave homogeneously. Not that insightful of you, really. Unless you look at the Republican Party and their current voting record. They stick together like glue, regardless of the issue. No independent thoughts expressed other than in a knee jerk fashion and certainly no meaningful actions taken. More contrasting opinions (and votes) and less homogeneity would be welcome but unlikely. It is unnecessary for you to cast women’s rights with a liberal brush and lump it with other liberal causes-- by doing so, you are guilty of your own accusation of homogeneity.

Historically, with any movement involving progressive causes, the minority eventually becomes the majority. This has nothing to do with the “liberal” label; it is about decency and common sense. Just look at how far LGBTQ rights have come in twenty years. At this time, women who care about and support women’s rights happen to be in the majority. Lucky for all of us, not just some of us.

You, Mary Matalin, have had a very public and successful career in politics. Without the feminist movement in the 1950s and 1960s, you would be absolutely nowhere. No career whatsoever. Appreciate what you have, and why you have it.

And as for Republicans being against women, we will see, won’t we? So far it does not look good. Sorry to say, many Republicans have long been against issues of equality and now they are in charge. Mike Pence, for one, will have great influence in the upcoming years. He has a history of homophobia, which does not bode well for gay rights. If you have not, you should read Cosmopolitan’s article from October 4, 2016, All of Mike Pence’s Awful Positions on Women’s Rights.

Do you want your daughter to have access to birth control? Get an abortion if she needs one? Express her opinion in Congress without being told to shut up? Belittled professionally because of her looks or being harassed at work? It is easy to be against abortion until the circumstances of life hit you in the face. If it is ever outlawed, the procedure would continue to take place anyway in a back room under horrible conditions, as it did in the past, and those with money would fly abroad, of conservative or liberal persuasion notwithstanding.

Politicians are the most hypocritical of all, with a disconnect between their personal and public lives. Surely with your experience in the field, you know this. Just look at Strom Thurmond, a blatantly racist Senator who filibustered against the Civil Rights Act-- after he died, it turned out he had a mixed race daughter, whom he actually treated fairly well. Mark Foley, House representative, and Larry Craig, Senator, voted against gay rights but were eventually exposed to be gay.

Sharon Fraser Toborg: So you went to Ivy League schools and have a graduate degree. How likely would that have been prior to the 1960’s when all those feminists stirred up inclusiveness for women? Unless you went to an elite women’s college like Smith, but I doubt it. Where did you go? Now your daughter (if you have one) could go to any school she gets in to and become a doctor, lawyer or politician; back in the 1960s, not so. You should thank those “liberals” for these opportunities.

Let’s look at when the Ivy League schools become coed. These institutions barred women until very late in the game. Women my age know this as we lived it; younger women do not seem to be aware.

• Yale- 1969
• Princeton- 1969
• Cornell- technically 1872, but as a practical matter 1970
• Brown- 1971
• Dartmouth- 1972
• Duke University- 1972
• Harvard- 1977
• Haverford College- 1980
• Columbia- 1981

Over the years since the 1970s, the statistics have changed dramatically. Now there are generally equal amounts of men and women attending most colleges, e.g., Brown 51% female, 49% male; Princeton 49.3% female, 50.7% male.

How fortunate is Mrs. Toborg not to have to think about gender. That is only because “we’ve come a long way, baby!” She says she doesn’t keep score about how many men and women are in a President’s cabinet. Perhaps she should review the history of women in the cabinet. Prior to the nineteenth amendment in 1920, no women were allowed to hold a cabinet position. The first woman to serve in the Cabinet was Frances Perkins in 1933. It was quite a slow slog for a long time but it picked up, you guessed it, in the 1970s.

Years President Number of women in cabinet

1933...  F. D. Roosevelt.....  1
1953...  D. Eisenhower......  1
1975...  G. Ford...............   1
1977-79 J. Carter.............   4
1983-87 R. Reagan..........   3
1989-92 G. H. W. Bush.....   3
1993-97 W. Clinton..........   5
2001-06 G. W. Bush.........   6
2009-15 B. Obama...........   8
2017  D. T. Trump............   2

We have gone downhill in women’s representation with the recent President. This does not bode well for women.

Let’s also look at the statistics for women in Congress. For more than a hundred years since our country was established, there were zero women in Congress. The first woman to serve in Congress, in the House, was Jeannette Rankin in 1915.

Range of Women in Congress (House and Senate combined) for various years

1917-1928...    1-5
1929-1948...    8-11
1949-1968...    10-20
1969-1988...    11-26
1989-2008...    31-92
2009-2015...    93-104

As of 2015, women hold 20% of the seats in the Senate (20 seats) and 19.3% of the House (84 of 435).

Lani Candelora: Ms. Candelora’s “hope and joy” with the new administration suggests she lives in alt reality. Perhaps she does not read the “real” news and holds onto the slogan “Make America Great Again” as the premise for her optimistic beliefs. She does not say on what basis financial relief for families and affordable health insurance are forthcoming or why she views her religion (not specified) as being persecuted. Her thought that everyone will have a better chance for gainful employment is a nice fantasy but misguided at best. It seems Ms. Candelora is in for a huge disappointment in many regards. She, as a woman of the 21st century, clearly has no awareness that she has benefitted enormously from “the phony selfish feminism promoted by this women’s march.”

In conclusion, the women in this article who are conservative and unsupportive are riding the crest of all of the outspoken and courageous women who obtained the rights that they now enjoy. Are these women so unaware of how these rights came about? Fighting for women’s rights, all civil rights, has always been a “liberal” cause and to think differently is a denial of history. It should not be forgotten that it is due to tremendous political battles and persistence that these causes eventually become mainstream. These women are way too complacent and as we have heard many times, complacency is the enemy of democracy. They have what they have today because of “liberal” women, not in spite of them. What you have can be taken away.

As Joni Mitchell sang, "Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone."