is a ridiculous joke
This article originally appeared on AlterNet. It has been corrected since it first published.
On Wednesday, a group of GOP lawmakers led by Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R Washington) unveiled a package of bills directed at improving the economic circumstances of American women. The intended goal of the legislation which includes tax credits for childcare and a bill that prevents retaliation against employees who ask about equal pay is to demonstrate that the Republican Party does in fact care about women s rights. As Representative Mike Coffman (R Colorado)saidat the press conference announcing the bill package, he s proud to stand by his colleagues in a warforwomen. Unfortunately for Coffman and the rest of the House GOP leadership, their legislation is actually just a laughably belated, transparent, last ditch effort to attract female voters before the midterm elections in November.
Republicans certainly need to improve their messaging towards women; as theWashington Postpointed out, Mitt Romney lost the female vote to President Obama by 11 percentage points in 2012 and pollsconsistentlyshow thapatagonia outlet store locatort respondents trust Democrats over Republicans to handle issues that directly affect women. But this package of bills is too little, too late from a party that has worked to systematically dismantle women s rights to health care, reproductive choices and fair pay. There are too many examples to count, but here are four of the most egregious Republican attacks on women and reasons that no one could take their newfound interest in gender equality seriously.
1. Blocking Access to Contraception
GOP leaders have puzzling ideas about why women choose to use contraception. Instead of seeing birth control as a medication that helps women avoid pregnancies they don t want and can t afford, and make their own long term life decisions, Republicans view contraception as a license to have crazy amounts of sex and abuse federal finances to kill unborn children. (Because God forbid that anyone would want to have sex without the explicit purpose of having a kid.)
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee caused a mini firestorm back in January when he first tried to flip the GOP war on women rhetoric on its head. At the Republican National Committee s winter meeting, hetold the audience, If Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescriptipatagonia store atlantaon each month for birth control, because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, so be it.
Huckabee is hardly the first conservative to imply that women who use contraception are somehow morally patagonia tour companies reviewsdepraved (Rush Limbaugh memorablycalledhealth activist Sandra Fluke a slut for advocating for contraception coverage)patagonia down jacket review. But this misguided, profoundly misogynistic thinking about birth control has real consequences. The most recent example is the Supreme Court s devastating ruling in the Hobby Lobby case, which struck down the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act, allowing employers to claim religious exemptions for providing certain contraceptives for their female employees. Earlier this month, Senate Republicansblocked a billaimed at restoring free contraception for women who get their health insurance from companies with relbest fly fishing in patagoniaigious objections. Because in a perfect GOP world, employers should be able to regulate female sexuality and access to healthcare according to their own moral grounds.
2. Demolishing Women s Right to Choose
If Republicans hate contraception, don t even get them started on abortion. But really don t. Conservatives (particularly middle aged male ones) have made more sexist, anti scientific and plain offensive statements on this topic than any other. There was theoutrageous commentby Missouri Republican senate candidate Todd Akin about how victims of legitimate rape very rarely get pregnant and Maine representative Lawrence Lockman srepugnant suggestionthat if abortion is legal, rape should be too. The president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti abortion group that hosts boot camps on how politicians should discuss abortion,recently advisedRepublican leaders to keep their public remarks on the subject as brief as possible. As shebest fly fishing in patagonia3 told officials at the spring RNC meeting, Two sentences is really the goal. Then stop talkinpatagonia better sweater jacket in pineappleg.
Beyond the gaffes and complete disregard for women s federally mandated right to decide whether or not they want to bear and raise a child, GOP lawmakers have waged astate by state warto eliminate women s access to the procedure. From imposingunfeasibly strict regulationson abortion clinics torequiring women to have an ultrasoundbefore they have an abortion, Republican officials have repeatedly made it clear that their beliefs about abortion are more important than those of the women affected by such legislation. In case their tendency to privilege the right of the fetus over that of the woman carrying it wasn t clear enough, the 2012 GOP party platform has a passage that reads, We assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unpatagonia trail running shoes reviewborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.
3. Voting Against Equal Pay for Women
It is the height of irony that the new package proposed by McMorris Rodgers et. al. includes a bill that prevents retaliation against employees who inquire about equal pay. This has been a core part of the Democratic economic agenda since at least last year, when House Democrats unveiled their own agenda called When Women Succeed, America Succeeds. Republicans have consistently voted against fair pay measures, most recently in April when theyblockedDemocrat s third attempt in recent years to pass wage equality legislation. The Paycheck Fairness Act would have made it illegal for employers to retaliate against workers who talk about their salaries with their coworkers and required the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to collect pay information from employers.
Conveniently ignoring the persistent wage gap (women earn 77 cents for every dollar that men earn), conservative lawmakershave long arguedthat such a bill is irrelevant since gender based discrimination is already illegal. Back in April, Representative Lynn Jenkins (R Kansas) went so far as to say that this type of legislation is condescending towards women. Yet now, it seems, they are changing their tune and adopting a cornerstone of the Democratic economic agenda as their own.
4. Compounding the Burden on Working Moms
Several other key parts of the bill package are direct rip offs of Democratic legislation and focus on issues that the GOP has long seen fit to ignore. These include tax credits for childcare and a bill that allows employees to trade overtime pay for paid family leave and sick leave. House Democrats have already proposed these ideas (though they recommendedmandatorysick and family leave), as well as paid maternity leave and a wealth of other legislation aimed at accommodating working mothers. Republican leadership has not brought those bills to the floor for a vote.
For a party that is supposedly so interested in family values, the GOP has demonstrated an appalling lack of concern for the difficulties faced by working moms. Fromeliminating Head Start fundingtocutting federal funding for childcareprograms, Republicans have repeatedly asserted that women s access to employment is superseded by family responsibilties.
Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann Kerascot
Kerascot s lovely, delicate pen and watercolor art all intricate botanicals, big eyes and flowing hair gives this fairy story a depatagonia discount code partyceptively pretty finish. You find out quickly, however, that these are the heartless and heedless fairies of folk legend, not the sentimental sprites beloved by the Victorians and Disney fans. A host of tiny hominid creatures must learn to survive in the forest after fleeing their former home a little girl who lies dead in the woods. The main character, Aurora, tries to organize the group into a community, but most of her cohort is too capricious, lazy and selfish to participate for long. There s no real moral to this story, which is refreshing in itself, beyond the perpetual lessons that life is hard and you have to be careful whom you trust. Never has ugly truth been given a prettier face.
Climate Changed: A Personal Journey Through the Science by Philippe Squarzoni
Squarzoni is a French cartoonist who makes nonfiction graphic novels about contemporary issues and politics. While finishing up a book about France under Jacques Chirac, he realized that when it came to environmental policy, he didn t know what he was talking about. Climate Changed is the result of his efforts to understand what has been happening to the planetpatagonia everlong review republic wireless, a striking combination of memoir and data that ruminates on a notoriously elusive, difficult and even imponderable subject. He uses his own unreachable past as a way to grasp the imminent transformation of the Earth. The result is both enlightening and unexpectedly moving.
Here by Richard McGuire
A six page version of this innovative work by a regular contributor to the New Yorker first appeared in RAW magazine 25 years ago. Each two page spread depicts a single place, sometimes occupied by a corner of a room, over the course of 4 billion years. The oldest image is a blur of pink and purple gases; others depict hazmat suited explorers from 300 years in the future. Inset images show the changing debest fly fishing in patagonia1cor and inhabitants of the house throughout its existence: family photos, quarrels, kids in Halloween costumes, a woman reading a book, a cat walking across the floor. The cumulative effect is serene and ravishing, an intimation of the immensity of time and the wonder embodied in the humblest things.
Kill My Mother by Jules Feiffer
The legendary Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist delivers his debut graphic novel at 85, a deliriously over the top blend of classic movie noir and melodrama that roams from chiaroscuro Bay City to Hollywood to a USO gig in the Pacific theater of World War II. There are disguises, musical numbers and plenty of gunfights, but the drawing is the main attraction. Nobody convey s bodies in motion more thrillingly than Feiffer, whether they re dancing, running or duking it out. The kid has promise.
The Motherless Oven by Rob Davis
This is a weird one, but in the nervy surreal wbest fly fishing in patagonia2ay that word playful novels like A Clockwork Orange or Ulysses are weird. The main character, a teenage schoolboy named Scarper Lee, lives in a world where it rains knives and people make their own parents, contraptions that can be anything from a tiny figurine stashable in a pocket to biomorphic boiler like entities that seem to have escaped from Dr. Seuss nightmares. Their homes are crammed with gadgets they call gods and instead of TV they watch a hulu hoop size wheel of repeating images that changes with the day of the week. They also know their own death day, and Scarper s is coming up fast. Maybe that s why he runs off with the new girl at school, a real troublemaker, and the obscurely dysfunctional Castro, whosebest fly fishing in patagonia0 mother is a cageful of talking parakeets. A solid towline of teenage angst holds this manically inventive vision together, and proves that some graphic novels can rival the text only kind at their own game. In the ninth issue, the theme is silence, and the results are magnificent and full of surprises. The comics, each told in images only, range from atmospheric to trippy to jokey to melancholy to epic to creepy. But the two page illustrations are even more powerful, even if it s not always easy to see how they pertain to the overall concept of silence. Well, except perhaps for the fact that so many of them left me utterly dumbstruck patagonia messenger bag tutorialwith visual delight.
