Rootz

rootz !

hi k!

pach!

There is a lot of information and research at this website…
Women Voices, Women Votes
http://www.wvwv.org/

according to the U.S. Census, 46% of all voting-age women are unmarried, and 55% of all women not registered to vote are unmarried. Fifteen million unmarried women were not registered to vote in 2004, and nearly 20 million unmarried women did not cast ballots on Election Day.

1. Register to vote
2. Get 5 women to register to vote
3. Take 5 friends to vote
4. Have your 5 friends get 5 friends to register to vote
5. Have your 5 friends take 5 friends to vote

Talk to your daycare worker, the grocery checker, the sales clerk and the drycleaners. Start a dialoge and engage them. Make them feel that voting is important and they can make a difference.

Excellent timing Pach, this subject was just taking off at the end of the other thread.

“Well, the biggest electoral strength of the Dems is single women.”

Repugs want the power to keep women “barefoot and pregnant” (at will), and therefore, subservient, and unequal. It’s as simple as that.

Think big, folks!

Think policy initiatives, not just GOTV.

1. Promote child care for working mothers
2. Emphasize that the Democrats believe gov’t should stay OUT of a woman’s personal reproductive decisions
3. Raise the minimum wage (I think this affects women as much as men)

Ghostman

What would the Carville of 1992–not the one who has been inhabiting the Beltway for the last decade and consuming countless cocktail weenies–say about this election?

It’s the war, stupid?

Maybe a Constitutional Amendment enshrining a right to privacy?

Single payer health care that includes coverage for birth control (including b/c pills and the morning after pill) and women’s wellness tests (age appropriate breast x-rays and yearly PAP/internal exams). Support for mandatory filling of legal prescriptions no matter what the pharmacist’s “moral values” are.

Many single women are also single moms. I’d like to see a program that encourages on-site daycare wherever possible.

PS – I’m a long-time lurker and have posted only a few times. Live in a very small town in the Willamette Valley in Oregon among lots of very conservative farmers.

National health care, at least for children?

Well, I suggested massive voter registration of women on the last post, but how to go about it? For poor women, maybe through social service agencies, but you’d have to be careful about not promoting a particular party. There needs to be a way to point out to them how much ground they’ve lost under the Republicans however. What about Head-Start for those with children? But if you can register to vote at a library, I don’t see why you couldn’t at a social service agency.

Perhaps look at the candidates we have running this year in our jurisdictions, look at their platforms, and figure out which parts would be most appealing to women. Raising the minimum wage is something every Democrat that I know about supports. Women like it, it appeals to the wealthy woman’s sense of fairness, and it sounds practical to low income women who would directly benefit.

I think this needs to be person to person

Communicating with Unmarried Women
Because they have fewer resources and belong to fewer social networks,
unmarried women tend to have less access to information about voting in general (e.g.,
how to register to vote) and to information about elections and candidates. They also
have fewer sources of information about government and politics. Only 19 percent of
unmarried women read a newspaper every day, compared to 29 percent of married
women, and only 29 percent of unmarried women watch national news on television
every day, compared to 32 percent of married women (NES).
Nearly half – 45 percent – of unmarried women say they spend no time on the
Internet in an average month, compared to 39 percent of the general public. Only fiftyeight
percent of unmarried women have access to the Internet, slightly lower than the
national average of 64 percent.

In the words of Jim Carville: “it’s the economy, stupid.” These are the days of wage stagnation, global outsourcing, and increased risks for indiviuals that was once absorbed by a larger community. The trade and fical deficit make the future look uncertain and scary. Bad econimies always affect single women more. They usually have fewer resources and are more likely to rely on safety net programs as they age.

I also think that global warming resonates with single women. I think they are turned off by the right’s commitment to ideology over facts.

Minimum wage affects more women than men, I’m guessing.

I’d suggest promoting policies that make it easier to get out of the struggling lower-middle class — i.e., help with college. If you’re a young woman out on your own and want to go back & finish that degree, you’ve got a real dilemma on your hands. If you’re working for just over minimum wage, you can’t afford tuition, but you’re still making too much to qualify for pell grants or stafford loans. And not many workplaces offer tuition assistance. You’re stuck in the pink-collar ghetto — if you could get that BA you’d have a little more mobility.

It makes me uncomfortable to say that women care about children, health, peace, libraries, arts. it’s very close to being sexist. But, women care about children, health, peace, libraries, arts.

And building on Alice Marshalls’ great comments about powerlessness in the previous thread, one of the things that contributes to that is the feeling that there is no one to listen.

It isn’t enough to register voters – registering isn’t all that hard anymore – you can do it by mail.

It’s making the connection. It’s giving people the bond. I know this will sound stupid, but it’s a simple analogy: it’s always more fun to watch the Oscars and to root for a nominee if you actually saw the movie.

And it’s a lot easier to get someone to the polls who has met the candidate, or even seen the candidate in person. No, it’s not possible for a candidate to meet and greet all of his or her potential constituents, but with candidates running for office at all levels, it should be possible for all the Democratic candidates from all those levels to fan out across an area in an organized way to meet as many people as possible.

When Bill Clinton was running for president in 1992, I read that he would be appearing at a community college on the outskirts of DC. It was summer, as I recall, and I took the day off from work, and drove almost 40 miles with my kids – who were 9 and almost-6 – to see him speak. There is nothing that compares to seeing a candidate in person: they become real in a way that does not come across in debates, in TV ads or radio commercials.

It’s all about the connection.

I also think that global warming resonates with single women. I think they are turned off by the right’s commitment to ideology over facts.

I’ve been handing out campaign literature at the local theater showing Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. The people who see it are Democrats, at least by the time they come out, but they don’t necessarily know the local congressional candidate’s name.

Pach — I agree with the proposal of National Health care for children. Defined as anyone under the age of 18. Working moms, and definitely single working moms worry about kid’s health, and worry about how to pay for it when something goes wrong. Not to mention the hassle of filling out insurance forms and under-insured forms and not insured forms for state assistance. And then there is always the stress of grappling with insurance companies who deny coverage when they should pay, so the adult in charge has to go through the almost-stroke-inducing headaches of that!!

A National Health program for minors would take a lot of financial stress and passed along administrative stress off of working moms.

Good call, Pach! I am certainly with you! What about it FirePups???!!??

Ga 16 — that’s not sexist, it’s the truth.

In the last thread, Alice Marshall raised the practical problems — where do you go to enroll women, and how do you get them to the polls? Where is your outreach? I don’t know the economic breakdown but I’ll assume here for the sake of discussion that many of these women are middle to lower-income, and as Alice mentioned, feelings of powerlessness can be endemic and hard to overcome.

Thinking locally, like Oilfieldguy does — if you were in charge of a particular precinct, what would YOU do?

Single women that I know with children worry about getting sick and losing their income. They worry about college funds. Single women that I know without children are committed aDemocratic activists. How to reach a voter block w/o identifying them with some condescending phrase is also important. Do you know any woman who did not cringe at the term “soccer mom”?

My partner mentioned favorable lending terms or perhaps tax incentives to promote women owned business and entrepreneurship?

I see this has already been said, but I’ll second both notions:
Universal health care and the minimum wage. These also address a complaint I’ve been reading a lot of people had (bizarrely, IMHO) about Y-Kos and Progressives/Dems in a broader sense, that we’ve abandoned labor/working-class/working poor issues in favor of “social issues”. If health care isn’t a concern of the working people, from working poor up through upper-middle class, I don’t know what is. I know almost no one who at some point in their lives hasn’t made a major life decision (where to live, work, whether or not to have kids) based in some degree on health insurance, including soem pretty affluent friends.

Oh yeah! For issues, Ghostman’s excellent list plus a reasonable start on health care, with moving out of Iraq also as part of a funding scheme instead of merely for its own sake. While I’m sure many single women are really against this misadventure per se, putting it in terms of a needless sacrifice of these bread-and-butter issues should play very well to this group in overcoming any reluctance.

For tactics, how about katymine’s? Something salon-based, too. I had a wonderful, fast-paced conversation with my hairdresser a few weeks ago, and I’ll bet with the right approach she’d be glad to use her shop—slightly older crowd, but still lots of single and married working women, and people who know other people—to help network.

Well, obviously equality issues, but more importantly, medical and pharmaceutical. Get all BC’s covered by insurance. Stop radical pharmacists from dictating who and what they serve. Address preventative medicines such as cancer screenings and the recent hpv/cervical cancer vaccine along with all the BS caught up around Plan B. Women’s health issues is a biggie in my book. It’s important for my wife, my mother, my sister, etc. The whole dicatiting what women can, or rather cannot, have access needs to stop. Allow the options.

And I don’t mean to get caught up into an abortion debate. Although important, it’s not the focus in my hypothetical strategy, nor should it in a real strat. Women’s health doesn’t solely revolve around abortion.

Personally, major medical and insurance policy reform is paramount in my book, not just to women. But to reach single women, hit those ever so important women’s issues.

And, are there differences in the needs/desires of single black women vs. single white women vs. single mexican women?

Ghostman

Jane at 19, yes, I should have labeled it, irony. However, all the men i know, thank the gods, are women, as they care about children, health, peace, libraries, and arts.
and animals. and trees.
and rivers. we floated the river today on big innertubes. bliss.

Ghostman brings up a point, are there differences in the needs/desires of single women of different racial/ethnic groups. Are there? I think the basic set is the same, just emphases are different. Everyone wants their neighborhood to be safe, their job to be secure and have some opportunity for advancement, their kids to have a shot at a decent education, and reason to hope for the future. It’s just that for women in some groups, some issues are more front of mind. Make sense?

Universal health care is big with women both single and married.

As one who would love an increased woman’s voter turnout. I would love more women in office. Absentee voting will be very helpful, especially for the busy mothers and shy voters imo. I only tried absentee voting once via walk in the registrars office a couple of weeks prior to the election . What a breeze. In terms of absentee ballots at home, how about self addressed stamped envelopes for both a request of a ballot as well as the actual ballot envelope. This eliminates the need for childcare or gasoline. Also as a former employer I always allowed for time and coverage for everyone to go vote on election day. Isn’t that the law in most places? If not those who have pull or ownership should start working on their employers for that now. If you help in gotv, please stop your candidates from using auto calling.

This PDF document has a lot of information on the issues and aspects of single women.
http://www.wvwv.org/docs/wvwv0…..search.pdf

Democrats need to champion workers’ rights and benefits, that’s how they reach and motivate the single women and those working low wage jobs. How many women work at Wal-Mart? Why aren’t Democrats giving them reasons to vote for them? The GOP certainly has no interest in helping the working class.

Democratic candidates are too concerned with impressing the media analysts and cocktail weenies in DC. They need to add back the populism, the way Jon Tester and Ned Lamont have been.

strawhat: my question up there truly is a question. I have no idea if there’s any difference in issues. Probably…..many issues cross racial/ethnic lines…I think…I guess.

Ghostman

Pach — I agree with the proposal of National Health care for children. Defined as anyone under the age of 18. Working moms, and definitely single working moms worry about kid’s health, and worry about how to pay for it when something goes wrong. Not to mention the hassle of filling out insurance forms and under-insured forms and not insured forms for state assistance. And then there is always the stress of grappling with insurance companies who deny coverage when they should pay, so the adult in charge has to go through the almost-stroke-inducing headaches of that!!

A National Health program for minors would take a lot of financial stress and passed along administrative stress off of working moms.

Good call, Pach! I am certainly with you! What about it FirePups???!!??

the practical problems – where do you go to enroll women, and how do you get them to the polls? Where is your outreach?

I have never done this kind of thing before (IHNDTKOTB), but seems to me that that’s where the early networking and talking things up among people who know people could help. Eventually, some resources get shaken loose. At the early stages, all that would be needed would be something to solve just one or a few people’s problems with finding out about registration or getting an hour and some transportation for a neighborhood meeting, or finding a venue to have that meeting. That’s what would keep those five-to-the-kth-power contact pyramids from dying out at the beginning, while those who know what they’re doing hopefully figure out how to build co-ordinating organizations.

As to specific demographic groups of women, this is part of the beauty of the salon strategy, n’est-ce pas?

Offer a “Motherhood Bill of Rights” entailing paying women a living wage to stay home and raise the family, or give women tax credits to put toward day care. The idea of a Motherhood Bill of Rights was suggested by Shellenberger and Nordhaus in their new book, “The Death of Environmentalism and the Birth of a New Aspirational Politics.” They were interviewed in In These Times by Adam Werbach.

I’d have to agree that health care and privacy (or more properly, abortion rights) are two big issues. A national health care initiative that has a chance of working would be a big winner, and not just with single women. There are something like 80 million uninsured or under-insured people out there.

You know….I’m always reading in the newspaper about these mothers with the Daddy that vamoosed…maybe some sort of national….hmmmm..national something…a free locater service to help the moms locate the dead-beat dads?

Ghostman

All mothers want the same things for their children: health, education and opportunity.

And those things benefit society as a whole, not just those with children.

It is important to address these issues from a global perspective – highlighting the benefit to society – otherwise you risk losing that segment of voters who are tired of “handouts” and that segment that hears “higher taxes” whenever the word “National” or “Universal” precedes any policy initiative.

Affordable college and vocational education should be a priority, and the criteria for determining eligibility for aid need to be re-examined. Anyone who has ever filled out a FAFSA form can tell you that when you are told the size of your “Expected Family Contribution,” your first reaction is “If I could contribute that much, I wouldn’t be looking for financial aid!”

I always thought that a guaranteed program of basic health care covering all children in the country would be almost impossible to oppose in the end. Then you go from there.

Um, didn’t the Repubs put a veterinarian in charge of women’s health issues at one point? Things like that should be repeated over and over and over.

Democrats need to make television commercials asking women what kind of world they want to live in. Do they want to live in a world where the government can tell them what they can and can’t do with their bodies? Point to Republican anti-rights initiatives on birth control and abortions. (BTW, I think the pro-choice movement should change its name to the pro-rights movement. That’s just my $.02.)

Do they want to live in a world where they can drink the water from the tap and trust that the food we buy is safe? (Point to mercury levels in tuna. And the Repugs think global warming is a theory.)

And what kind of a world do women want for their children? Do they want a world where people are taught to hate and divide themselves into groups? What if their child grows up to be gay? Do they want that baby to live in a world where people hate them before they even know them? Do they want their children to have a chance at a decent education? Health care? (And point to all the Republican roll backs in education and social programs.)

Vote for a future. For yourself. For your family.

Vote Democrat. It’s for all of us.

Health.

Education.

Security.

Well the Zyrtec is kicking in, and I am almost comatose. The cats are safely inside away from being coyote dinner and it is time to say goodnight.

Will be reading and catching up tomorrow. Bless you all.

I was sorely disappointed in Obama and could never support him now. Court the Evangelicals? The Dark Ages are threatening to descend once again. Who in their right mind would want the support of Evangelicals? Please, if you never read another book, read The End of Faith by Sam Harris. Religion is toxic to rational thought and behavior and even in its milder forms serves to give credibility to religious fanatics. There is a good reason why religion is the only remaining subject that is taboo. It cannot survive rational discourse.

I think we need to contemplate a whole radically different way to advertise these issues to voters (or in this case, to disillusioned women non-voters).

I’d like to see a series of commercials that work as brief, remedial civics lessons, on a variety of issues, some “women-centric” (e.g., abortion, universal healthcare, daycare, peace), others not-so-gender-focused (e.g., arbitrary detention without trial, freedom of the press, disclosure of undercover CIA operatives). I think these could be done very dramatically, with a strong emotional appeal (particularly as they should be told in the second person — “you” are the innocent prisoner, scared teen contemplating abortion, etc.).

The GOP does this routinely — most of their most effective ads go for the heart and/or the genitals — as liberals, we’ll have the added advantage of a message that appeals to the brain, as well.

prostratedragon says
July 1st, 2006 at 10:06 pm
I always thought that a guaranteed program of basic health care covering all children in the country would be almost impossible to oppose in the end. Then you go from there.
———————————————————-
You’d be surprised. Pediatric care isn’t cheap. Vaccines are expensive. And they’re always trying to get kids off of Medicaid. There are already arguments about “birthright citizenship”, and I think that that ties in to the whole health care problem. I get into fights with people about that sort of thing here (Houston) when they talk about “illegal immigrant babies” in our hospital nurseries. I remind people that, per the United States Constitution, they are American citizens.

Frank Probst @ #40 – Is that really true? If so, we should all just sing humm that until the year 2040.

cordelia @ 10:09 pm (#44) – It’s hard to believe anyone who is a successful politician would even countenance the idea. As someone mentioned in comments, it’s almost against their religion to vote Democratic. The things they’d have to do to seriously court those people on a religious basis are the things their base won’t let them do, and rightly so. Some of them will vote their pocketbooks if they see a reason to, and some will vote for other worldly reasons, but trying to out-holy the other side to those people is absurd.

I was suddenly a single mother with a 2-year-old, working, in a professional career, desperate every day for decent child care, and health care that I could afford and that made sense. That was the mid-eighties. There has been no progress, so far as I can see. I thought then that the next generation would have an easier journey, but I was wrong. There are a lot of us who are no longer on the frontlines in the sense that it is our child we are discussing, but we live in communities where younger women in the house across the street are fighting the same battles. Where is all that concern about children that politicians profess to have? Children don’t vote. Maybe they should.

TRex at 42, I am your fan. i like pro-rights. Perhaps it seems larger. yet choice is also such a positive, powerful word. so-called right to life is misogyny. we must demand life of rights. if only anti-abortionists were called upon to show their credentials: such as what have they done for children in need, or how much are they pledging to give to these fetuses once they pass the gate from ideology to person.

*** now, a big key on all these health care initiatives is cost. That’s where the R team will fight back. And they’ll bloviate about how this is “pie in the sky” policies that will raise our taxes and cause massive layoffs.

I THINK, the D team better study up on the details of the Mass. plan. This plan apparently is workable. The D team needs to be up to speed on its details. Admittedly, I’m not.

Ghostman

Health Care is a winning issue with the majority of the population- and dems own it- as they own education and social security. The problem has been that the elections are turning on national security- not a traditional dem issue- and people have been afraid up to now to change horses in mid stream. We are beginning to learn that we’re riding a horse that’s deaf, blind, lame- and DUMB- but dems are having trouble turning that into votes. Dems have to at least nuetralize the “terrorism” issue in order to change the focus to their issues of strength.

Frank Probst says:

Um, didn’t the Repubs put a veterinarian in charge of women’s health issues at one point? Things like that should be repeated over and over and over.

They certainly did, the schmoes. And you are right, it should be brought up both in season and out.

References:

Washington Post: One week ago, the Office of Women’s Health of the Food and Drug Administration sent an e-mail notice to women’s groups and others announcing the appointment of Norris Alderson as its new acting director.

An FDA veteran trained in animal husbandry who spent much of his career in the agency’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, Alderson quickly became the subject of active and largely negative comment on the Internet and elsewhere.

The Office of Women’s Health serves as a liaison with women’s health groups and as an advocate on women’s issues; critics said that a man with a primarily veterinary background could not properly fill the role.

The last director, Susan Wood, resigned last month to protest the agency’s unwillingness to make a decision on whether to make emergency contraception more easily available.

Planned Parenthood Federation: In a curious move today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) named two acting directors to the office of women’s health. This morning FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford appointed a man who has spent the majority of his career in the office of veterinary medicine to the position of acting director of the Office of Women’s Health. By this afternoon, Dr. Norris Alderson had been replaced with a Ms. Teresa Toigo. Ms. Toigo will replace Dr. Susan Wood, a key women’s health expert, who resigned on August 31 in protest of the FDA’s handling of the application to make Plan B emergency contraception (EC) available over the counter.

Greetings from another lurker.

This is something I have been thinking about.

I just moved to a new neighborhood. I have a number of neighbors who are single women. It seems these women have a sense of acting on what they know but they seem to doubt what they know.

This is one way Rove and his evil minions have been successful. They have been able to convince people they can’t trust themselves to know, to act on what they know and vote.

I have to admit this is the thing I hate about South Park too. It’s the celebration of stupid and makes fun of people who care or have an opinion.

Actually, children’s health care is not very expensive. Kids are, by and large, pretty healthy.

Personally, I think this ad would succeed in reaching many women:

“Hello. I’m Valerie Plame, and…”

Good night, folks. I’ll check in again in the morning. Keep it up! Great creativity going on.

http://apoeticjustice.blogspot…..kness.html

SCREECHING DAMNED DARKNESS!

http://apoeticjustice.blogspot…..iurge.html

DEMIURGE!

cordelia says
July 1st, 2006 at 10:09 pm
I was sorely disappointed in Obama and could never support him now. Court the Evangelicals? The Dark Ages are threatening to descend once again. Who in their right mind would want the support of Evangelicals? Please, if you never read another book, read The End of Faith by Sam Harris. Religion is toxic to rational thought and behavior and even in its milder forms serves to give credibility to religious fanatics. There is a good reason why religion is the only remaining subject that is taboo. It cannot survive rational discourse.
———————————————————-
I’m an athiest, but I tend to disagree. Religion can be (and often is) used to achieve some amazingly good things. The civil rights movement here in the US is a good example. Contrary to what you’d think from watching our born-again President, the Bible does NOT say, “Fuck the poor!” Jesus Christ would not be out eating cake and playing the guitar while thousands of his people were being flooded out of their homes. I think people should constantly point this out, especially to Evangelicals.

I think “pro-rights” is inarguable. It’s one of those things. Who wants to stand in the way of rights? We’ve got a Bill of ‘em! It’s part of our national vernacular as a Sacred Thing. We need to claim it, just like the GOP staked out “freedom”.

I think I need to read that Lakoff book.

jcricket, I’m for that, but here there are so many women with no front teeth because if they do get a Medical card, there’s not one dentist in town who will accept it. And that is a damn shame in the United States, that mothers who work hard have to lose their teeth.
So I’m for Universal Health Care. ALL of us.
Who dies early because of poor health? Poor people with less access to preventative health care. That has to stop. Al Qaeda doesn’t scare me as much as a clot.

TRex, you are the embodiment of what Lakoff says we need.

You guys just do not understand this politics stuff at all.
You are thinking waaaay tooo much to win an election.
Rove has captured everyones attention, like it or not, with fear.
Sad…of course. But really an effective tool.
Not an ideal. Not something warm and fuzzy.
A tool. That works. Everytime.
Until Dems get off their moral high horse and get nasty, they won’t win anything.
We don’t need talking points here guys.
We need brute, nasty force.
Wake up and smell the competition.

Development of a Virgin Voter pamphlet to assist new or infrequent voters. Step by step instructions on how to register, verify the polling place, obtaining a mail in ballot and technical instructions about voting in person.

If it was state specific, it could have voter registration form, websites and other information.

TRex, you are the embodiment of what Lakoff says we need.

How do you mean? I only have the most general idea of his theories. He is one of those writers I have been meaning to read forever, but I’m not sure where to start, and I’m already reading, like, six books.

That was less than one year ago. Ladies less than two weeks after Katrina Republicans appointed a veterinarian to oversee your special health needs. wwkdwt what would karl do with this?

interesting ideas …

1- I’d first off go for universal health care for custodial parents and all children – with current welfare policies, women are forced back onto work rolls at poverty wages but lose their medicare coverage for their kids all the same (when I was laid off several years ago, my only worry was not “how do we eat or pay the rent?” it was how do I fill my daughter’s at the time essential prescriptions and that panicked me to a degree that I cannot convey)

2- minimum wage increase to living wage – again, at least mandate this for single parents raising children as an investment in the next generation (we kick single moms off welfare but make them take jobs at $6 an hour instead of the living wage – when I was in NH, there was a study which showed that a mom with one kid needed a min. of $13 per hour to support herself and her kid, yet the average wage was under $8 and I at one point was ecstatic to get $8.75 for a temp job with 2 kids)

3- it would be awesome to provide some form of support to women so they could stay home or take part time work while their kids were say under 3 – again, an investment in the next generation and the single biggest issue for young mothers of all classes that I know

4- end the war – and end the involuntary overseas deployment of single moms (there are so many of them, they are often sent on long deployments since their office work, etc is seen as less stressful, and it is heartrending)

5- support for cohousing/affordable housing for single parents – there is still intense housing discrimination against single moms with kids (even though illegal) and so often singe moms end up in unsafe or marginal housing with their kids – enforcement of housing laws and tax rebates, etc for affordable housing aimed at single parents (ideally with child care on site and after-school programs, tutoring, etc avail on site – and maybe subsidized nutritious meals)

6- do something about schools – not sure what but I do not know a single public school parent who is happy with the education their child is getting – tax rebates and student loan forgiveness for high achieving teachers, etc.

beyond the issues, candidates who talk to single moms and single women rather than suburban soccer moms would be amazing – esp if they talked real like John Laesch did today.

Oft times I think the simplest approach is the most effective. And, I think TSF just hit a home run. Can you just imagine Ms. Plame saying, i.e. “Ladies, I know how hard it is to raise kids when the gov’t keeps getting in the way”….it speaks volumes on multiple levels. “Ladies, I know how child care costs are so high and you’re worried if you’ll keep your job thru no fault of your own”….oh, I could go on and on. Classic.

Ghostman

During the run up to the election in Cali with all of Arnold’s initiatives in which Arnold was handed his butt, the most effective ads were done by nurses and teachers – women. Not the usual heavy-handed crap we’ve come to expect.

So who would be most effective at reaching single women in a televised GOTV campaign? Oh I don’t know, how about single women? Just talking about health care, a living wage, and how voting Democratic is the best way to achieve those goals?

Al Qaeda doesn’t scare me as much as a clot.

That is beautiful…

DaveL & Ghostman—how about three women…The Dixie Chicks?

We don’t need no celebrities, just real people talkin’.

Frank Probst: they’re always trying to get kids off of Medicaid.

I don’t doubt you for a minute there, but really, who knew? If you don’t follow that type of news closely, and without either professional interest or vulnerable children perhaps you don’t, that’s the kind of news that you might not even hear, especially as I’m sure these efforts tend to be camouflaged as amendments to Trade-with-Vanuatu acts and the like.

What I have in mind, though, is a) an effort too loud to be missed by most people and b) not a program for “poor” children, but one for all children. I think, perhaps foolishly, that with careful framing of this idea it can be made to happen, and perhaps sooner than any other health care idea. You do bring up probably the biggest obstacle regarding children of paperless immigrants. Somehow side issues like that have to be incorporated into a strategy.

Still, in all seriousness and considering the venom that health care plans have tended to attract, does anyone have a better idea for a starting point in this area? Would guaranteed catastrophic care work better? Because I do think the [non-]voters we are talking about are very much interested in health care, and often have their lives badly affected by inability to get it.

Ghostman 52, you ever seen a child or anyone who has been on a vent for months? ICU care? Medicaid patient? That’s expensive, and we’re already paying for it. What we don’t pay for is preventative care for most people. If we did, we’d catch more diabetes and so on before it got to the kidney failure/blindness/etc. stage.
And I so wish we would. It is a tearing experience to take care of someone at the end of life who could have been OK (for lots longer) if only they’d had a diagnosis way earlier, and a glucometer, and enough test strips.

Okay, if I was Karl Rove and I wanted to get this message across to women, I would make a commercial with a woman lying peacefully in bed when a bunch of police kick the front door in. They roust her out of bed.

“Katherine Bleeker? Are you Katherine Bleeker?”

“Yes, I am.”

“You’re under arrest for the abortion of a viable embryo on December 16th of 2012. You have the right to remain silent…”

Another officer emerges from the bathroom, zipping birth control pills into a plastic evidence bag, “I’ve found contraceptives.”

“That’ll add another six years to your sentence. Unmarried woman in possession of birth control pills? You’re in a lot of trouble, Miss Bleeker…”

Is this the country you want? Vote Democrat. Our freedom is at stake.

Serious attention to the public school system. It’s an enormous failure of Democrats that we haven’t done better on this.

Fighting the credit card companies is probably good politics.

Tax-advantaged savings accounts, for college, retirement etc? I don’t know a damn thing about that kind of stuff.

Others have mentioned the health care, wage, and labor stuff.

I think we should get very very serious about fixing public education. What’s our answer to No Child Left Behind?

TRex, Meaning that you have the gift for framing, for the metaphor. (Never mind Lakoff’s simplistic psychology of the strict (rethugs) and nuturing (Dems) parents.) You seize the language, and that, i agree with Lakoff, is what we need. it’s the metaphor, stupid.

What’s our answer to No Child Left Behind?

We call it No Child Left Alive.

Well, be they ads by Plame, the Dixie Chicks, or just regular souls….it all works for me.

And TRex fully understands the Rovian mind. Another classic.

The Ghostman retireth. Nite.

Ghostman

fyi – I have a comment in moderation at 68 with my list – and I am very grateful to Frank P for the mention of medicaid and kids – been there and it is the worst experience ever.

Trex – I love your ad and think it would be effective with some groups but …

from what I see with young women (and my dtr is 20 and loves voting btw) is that abortion does not connect with them as an issue – while we talk about it all the time and it is essential to protect the right to … young single women who are not activist oriented don’t seem to think about it a lot as “an issue” – they’ve always had the right and cannot imagine it being gone – and even with all the uproar over it, it hasn’t gone away yet. I don’t think it will get them to the polls. Not saying I think that is wise, just reflecting what I hear.

I do think the HPV vaccine is a great potential issue – with so many women dealing with it at some point in their lives, the attempt to block the vaccine is a perfect example of the Rs blocking something good for women that they are likely to have experienced or know someone who has.

“Katherine Bleeker? Are you Katherine Bleeker?”

MTV, VH1, … , radio version …

breaking up my comment to see if I can bypass mods:

1- I’d first off go for universal health care for custodial parents and all children – with current welfare policies, women are forced back onto work rolls at poverty wages but lose their medicare coverage for their kids all the same (when I was laid off several years ago, my only worry was not “how do we eat or pay the rent?” it was how do I fill my daughter’s at the time essential prescriptions and that panicked me to a degree that I cannot convey)

2- minimum wage increase to living wage – again, at least mandate this for single parents raising children as an investment in the next generation (we kick single moms off welfare but make them take jobs at $6 an hour instead of the living wage – when I was in NH, there was a study which showed that a mom with one kid needed a min. of $13 per hour to support herself and her kid, yet the average wage was under $8 and I at one point was ecstatic to get $8.75 for a temp job with 2 kids)

3- it would be awesome to provide some form of support to women so they could stay home or take part time work while their kids were say under 3 – again, an investment in the next generation and the single biggest issue for young mothers of all classes that I know

part 2 –

4- end the war – and end the involuntary overseas deployment of single moms (there are so many of them, they are often sent on long deployments since their office work, etc is seen as less stressful, and it is heartrending)

5- support for cohousing/affordable housing for single parents – there is still intense housing discrimination against single moms with kids (even though illegal) and so often singe moms end up in unsafe or marginal housing with their kids – enforcement of housing laws and tax rebates, etc for affordable housing aimed at single parents (ideally with child care on site and after-school programs, tutoring, etc avail on site – and maybe subsidized nutritious meals)

6- do something about schools – not sure what but I do not know a single public school parent who is happy with the education their child is getting – tax rebates and student loan forgiveness for high achieving teachers, etc.

beyond the issues, candidates who talk to single moms and single women rather than suburban soccer moms would be amazing – esp if they talked real like John Laesch did today.

My dog came home with a limping back leg. i cannot locate anything out of place or in the paw when i examine her. She’s sweet, alert, but uncomfortable. she just wants constant attention. what should i do until she can see the vet in the morning? Sorry, everyone, but you’re all so warm and good, i think you’d help her if you could.

Michelle Bachelet is on CSpan – Chilean President
The first woman President in their history.

She told a story about the wearing sashs as part of the campaign, it became a hot selling item. Thousands of women showed up at her swearing in, they were asked why and told a reporter, we are now involved in our government. That is the out reach we need to do.

She made a promise that 1/2 of her administration will be women. She was the Chilean Secretary of Defense commanding troops!

I also thought it would be better now for women. I figured there would already be a platform for moms to have affordable health care for their children and access to affordable child care as well as the recognition that women’s health needs are different than a man’s needs. I would tie universal health care in with education, that as long as that “child” is a full time student, even in college, the child still have health care.

Moms want to not have to worry about paying for medicine or paying for food. I think it should tie in with Teddy’s “had enough”, asking the infamous question Are you better off now? Or perhaps, are your children better off?

Ga, I have seen a dog or two get a sprain. Keep an eye on it for swelling. It could be a bee-sting or a type of bite that hasn’t begun to swell. What kind of dog? How old?

Unless she is in urgent distress, then I should think that a vet visit will wait until in the morning. Emergency late night vet visits can be ruinously expensive.

My take is that we need to focus on access as much as, or more than, policy generation – lord knows the Dems can espouse ’til the cows march home as far as policy, yet I see the party faithful consistently pitching to constrained class demographics: upper-whatever, mostly. That’s some of America, but not much.

Find like minds in the workplace, as many commenters suggest – minimum wage is the issue. Likewise, find them at their or their children’s doctors offices – universal healthcare.

Access: Go outside the DSCC-approved haunts, to Women’s Resource Centers, locally, and similar social service agencies. In the rural US, county goverment is often the distributing body for state and federal aid in this regard.

More pointedly, people in need are people with demands, rightful and righteous ones, and they exist from one coast to the other; they are hungry for change, and empowerment is part of the process and quite literally built into such organizations.

Okay, preaching now. Mea culpa. It is, though, so close to home – mine, and yours.

I like your ad, TRex. It could be the Willie Horton of 2006.

siun—can you see your comment at 68?

Ga – what kind of dog? what size, age, etc?

(a great source of on the fly vet info and advice is the Pets discussion forum on Craigs list (not the local Pets sections which are dreadful) – they are tricky and very opinionated but some hyper knowledgeable dog folks there)

Our pup did the same and it was a … damn, can’t remember the name – but like a cartilege pull. Vet had us keep him as quiet as possible – crate if possible is good – and see what happened. Luckily he was ok but some do need surgery and its pricey.

Anyone know if any painkillers are safe for pups? I know ibuprofen is potentially deadly to them but not sure if you can use tylenol or aspirin (but folks on Craigs list would know!)

http://forums.chicago.craigslist.org/?forumID=26

I have given children’s tylenol to kitties, but I don’t know if it’s safe for dogs.

Thanks, TRex. The dog is young (2), a reddish, shepardish, fox-faceish beauty rescued from a crowded humane society. A neighbor claims she’s a dingo, but she has never eaten a baby. Everyone who meets her, exclaims she’s so beautiful, what is she?
Love your Futuristic scenario, by the way.

yep RGB … all better now!

and how are you?

Ga – shiba inu perhaps? they are such fox-like critters! very smart too

g’nite all, it’s been a fun day (mostly spent with you!)

siun, please report to us the London Sunday Times’ reply about YKos after you smack them.

(watching the Tours de France on background – I always forget how much I giggle at OLN’s commentator who consistently says smart stuff but calls it the Tour Day France.)

Ga 84, that happened to my dog. I took her to the vet because she refused to drink or eat the next day. He took her temp, it was high, and he gave her antibiotics.
She escaped out the front door and came limping home finally, and I thought she’d gotten hit by a car. Vet said probably so, but she also had an infection. Watch your dog for not eating/drinking.

as an older single woman, my biggest fear is losing my health insurance and not being able to afford medications… universal health care is HIGH on my list

I think for single moms, there ought to be some sort of opportunity grants for education/training with child care

Thanks Teddy … I’m warming up my attitude now to go draft the letter … should be fun.

I’m a single woman and I vote. No kids. Want to know what’s important to me?

1. equal wages for equal work
2. getting a good job that doesn’t require me to stand at a urinal cracking jokes (i.e. no way to get into the old boys club and believe me the glass ceiling is real!)
3. high cost of health insurance because I have none.
4. having my skills, experience, and education count as much as someone else’s youth and perky breasts (or youth and penis, or grey hair and penis too)
5. finding a way to have a family as a single woman (i.e. becoming a single mom if necessary) since the odds are against me getting married
6. Control of my bodily integrity and privacy (i.e. governement out of my womb!)

So, that’s pretty much about economics and equality with a touch of biology thrown in.

Here’s the big policy ideas.
1. Aggresive enforcement of anti-discrimination laws to close the wage gap and punish employers who discriminate based on sex and retaliate against people exercising their rights. (Did you know women can’t get punitive damages for discrimination?) Combine this enforcement with educating the public how women’s labor must be valued with money the same as men for the common good. Think anti-smoking and pro-seat belt public education campaigns.

2. A huge pro-woman version of the Peace Corp or Teach for America or CCC (only involving real money not volunteer wages being paid) that opens up doors for women to take real leadership roles, build networks, and circumvent the old boys clubs. SBA and all these other programs that supposedly help people start businesses are crap! If you’re not connected you’re out of luck.

3. Universal health care and family leave benefits including for people who are single and not parents! Why shouldn’t a single person claim an aging parent or sibling, or dear friend as a dependent. Enough discriminating and pay cuts for people who are single.

4. Good primary and secondary school systems and affordable child care for single moms. You shouldn’t have to sacrifice everything just to be a parent.

I agree with the ideas about better minimum wages too.

siun – Nice though I would double (at least)the minimum wage for all.

OnT refined plan for increased votes by all.

register voters
Once registered ask them if they would like to arrange (now) for an absentee ballot to be mailed to their home.
Hand them the request for absentee ballot to sign.
Mail the request form in for them.
Finally hand them a postage paid addressed envelope for returning ballots.
No need for child care or additional time or gasoline etc.

“two bit wingnut welfare policy suckup shop, non-stop” Wow. That’s a prose poem.

OT – Alice 13 In Oregon, we’re trying that at showings of “An Inconvenient Truth” as well. Material to read distributed before the film, while people are waiting for the movie to start, and when people come out, engaged and eager to do something. Good opportunity to pass out other materials, get folks on your candidate’s emailing list, solicit volunteers and associate your candidate with genuine concern about climate crisis. Working pretty well for you?

We’ve developed a handout that lists what people can do about climate crisis locally, plus a list of local, state-wide and national information resources. We hope people will stick this on their refrigerators with our candidate’s name attached.

On Topic – The beauty salon idea re: engaging single women is an interesting one. Science fiction writer Robert Heinlein described this decades ago as an effective information network in his novel about revolution on a lunar colony, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.” Heinlein’s sexism turned me off even when I was a kid reader, but I am fond of this novel about how to undertake a revolution. He really had a handle on tipping points.

My daughters are both single women and both have always been politically active. One has a master’s degree and a decent job in D.C. and one is a single mom still in school in the West. Paying for health care is a huge issue for both of them. Needed dental work is put off, as are preventive tests and exams. And they have some insurance coverage. Their friends without any insurance suffer through their toothaches. How politically engaged can you be if your teeth are hurting, you have no relief from a tormenting rash, you’ve got a prescription to help chronic migraines, but you can’t afford to fill it?

I think it’s deliberate policy to keep Americans so worried about finances, so marginally healthy, marginally nourished and so uneducated that they don’t have the time, the energy or the critical thinking skills to consider much beyond day-to-day survival.

It’s incredible that the United States doesn’t provide health care for its citizens or see that pregnant and nursing women have adequate nutrition or that new mothers have support and subsidized time at home with their infants, if they want it, to get their kids off to a good start in life.

Good places to reach single women are in literacy programs, GED classes, community college courses and college classes. So many single women and single mothers struggle for the education to make better lives for themselves. They have the will to be motivated voters.

Parks and playgrounds are also excellent places to reach single mothers. Ad hoc support groups develop there, providing a lot of room for networking.

It’s amazing how far simple encouragement can go in motivating women: You’re bright, you’re hardworking, you’re doing a great job as a parent. You count with me. And you can count as a voter.

tylenol and advil are NOT safe for dogs… aspirin only…

Thanks OldCoastie … I always forget so give nothing … but I also panic when I drop an ibup. tablet on the floor in case one of our managerie finds it.

Siun, I’m quite well thank you. Heading into three very long days that culminate in less than one hour of big booms and bangs. See you all on the 5th.

G’nite Teddy

I have had a sick pet before and it can be the most miserable, wrenching experience. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have a sick child.

Which brings us to the next commercial idea.

Completely black screen. Sound of a small child coughing and coughing.

White letters appear on screen:

2:32am.

Your daughter’s fever has reached 103.

You already owe $2,761 in emergency room bills.

You don’t have a family doctor because you can’t afford health insurance.

You’re due back at work in four and a half hours. Who will watch her if she can’t go to school?

You’re so afraid.

Who can you call?

A light switches on and a tired-looking mother comes to a bedside where a little girl is sleeping and lays down next to her.

“Mommy, I don’t feel good.”

“I know, baby, I’m sorry.”

Black screen.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Vote Democrat.

Health.

Education.

Security.

Siun, Thank you so much. Not a siba inu–but cross that with a german shep & a maybe a little golden retrvr. i did meet her mom–a street dog, arrested–and she was a scrawny shep. with some other mysterious ancestors.
Thank you, too, Margot. She did eat and drink a little–which is why i’m not calling the vet until morning.
I appreciate your responses.

but PHEW! one of MINE needs some Gas-X!

(also safe!)

Good night, Teddy.

Watch your dog for not eating/drinking.

That’s the golden rule, really. Kids and pets. If the appetite disappears, something’s up.

RGB – enjoy the booms and bangs!

and hurry back!

Ga – and all – I found that Craigslist group very useful and several vets and vet techs hang out there almost all the time so you often can get quick advice. They tend to be a touch over the top by my taste – but they can debate training issues in ways that really help and quick responses to med issues are reassuring.

earnest but kinda clueless / tone deaf Kevin Drum never seems to get it quite right, but he tries. case in point: his post on Ned v. Lieberschmuck.

JOE AND NED….

Generally speaking, I have nothing against Lieberman. Even his pro-war stance is OK. We’re a big tent, right? His sucking up to George Bush, however, is really offensive and completely gratuitous. That’s strike one.

Plus there’s this whole snide business about how “Kos and the liberal netroots have never backed a winning candidate.” It’s not really true, I know, but it would still be nice to see that canard die a clear and well-deserved death. So that’s strike two.

And then there’s the really lame ads Lieberman has been running. That’s strike three. And the fact that he’s as much as said he’d ditch the party and run as an independent if he loses. That’s strike four. And his vote for cloture during the debate on the bankruptcy bill. That’s strike five.

Remind me again. How many strikes before you’re out?

granted, in the comments thread Kevin comes out firmly in favor of Ned. The thread is an interesting hybrid of piling on the Joe’s-gotta-go bandwagon (can I get a strike fourteen?) and the usual concern trolls.

our politcal system is failing so badly that i think policy initiatives (no matter how wonderful) may not be enough… to my ear, it frequently sounds like pandering.

i want to hear what are they are going to do to support the self goverance of an informed electorate (aka – our own democratic institutions)… and stop using their position for personal gain (ambition, comfort, power, monetary).

but the question is policy initiatives…

single women are more likely to be stuggling economically and i’d think that single women are more likely to recognize and reject authoritarian / hierarchical power structures.

so…..
- universal health care
- universal excellent education (k-12 AND college)
- responsible stewardship of our children’s inheritance – our culture and our planet.
- a tax structure that supports and maintains the large middle class required for a functioning democracy… and creates incentives for sustainable, responsible policies (economic, environmental, global)
- an explicitly anti-imperialist and anti-hegemony AND pro internationalist foreign politicy.
- major cut in military buget (at least 50%). our defense does not require us to spend as much as the rest of the world combined on military. whatever happened to our peace dividend?

Young women need to see other young women who are appealing talking about politics, and talking about what issues affect them. if you have no political sophistication whatsoever, finding your way into politics, if it doesn’t come naturally, is very difficult. Could you stand watching the McLaughlin report if you didn’t know what they were talking about? Who would want to watch all those male blowhards if you didn’t have a thorough understanding of the issues in the first place? Not me.

I was blown away by the Larry King show with the 9 Democratic women senators. If we had a show like that on television once a week which had women legislators sitting around discussing the issues in a non-confrontational environment, we would draw huge numbers of female viewers. I’ve never read a survey on the subject, but i bet dollars to doughnuts that politically unsophisticated women find Chris Mathews even more repugnant that we do. Those women were so clearly smart, capable and sincere (well, with the exception of Feinstein on the last) that I think it would make a huge difference in turn out. It was like a welcoming mat for girls. Er, women.

In addition, we need to make it possible for mothers to go to school fulltime. If you have children, and must work to support yourself – going to school involves leaving your children not only for the 45-50 hours a week it takes to work full time and commute, but an additional 10 – 20 a week for classes. If it’s a worthwhile degree, you have at least 60 hours a week away from your children for a couple years. What responsible parent would behave in such a careless way? Parents must be able to work part time, and pay for a sufficient apartment for a family and go to school – there are no financial resources that make that reasonably achievable anymore. Change that – and you’d make a difference in your women’s lives.

this is a public service announcement: with more than a tinge of sadness, I must relay that Valley Girl has left us.

Great post, Pach –

This is the most important Democratic constituency — and it is neglected along with all the other pressing needs.

Having just gotten in from a Drinking Liberally pub crawl in honor of the first day of smoke free bars (yea!!!) and not having read the thread, here’s my two cents.

The most important question for the Democrats:

What does the Democratic Party Stand For?

When we can give potential supporters an answer to that, with three soundbites in ten seconds or less — we will become the dominant party.

As for reaching single women — how do we energize the single women peer to peer network?

Slick Magazines? Maybe — Cosmo and Elle and Glamour political consciousness raising and GOTV would be a huge deal; reproductive choice and decent wages would be part of it; but how do we mobilize a viral marketing campaign to reach the non voting single women?

Find the answer, and we win majority party status.

As for the other big question:

What does the Democratic Party Stand For?

Hope and Opportunity.

Government that is Fair, Honest, and Real.

This is the challenge — restoring Brand Democrat with simple soundbites that every field worker can recite, and we will succeed.

selise and lorelynn – read together so well.

Punaise … no!

can you say more?

But, and its a big but, the local candidate has to appeal to the local worker bee – like Lamont is doing in CT. The candidates have to be there for the voter to vote for. The majority of the current crop of legislators come across as big business fat cats, like Leiberwhat’shisname.

In addition to getting voters to vote, we must have decent candidates who show they do in fact have the backbone to stand up to make these changes.

why can’t they run on a prosecute the hell out of the other side platform ?

siun – yes, more to follow shortly.

punaise – That is just wrong. This very thread has her ame all over it. So sorry to hear this news.

Wow, punaise…late night at FDL won’t be the same without her.

TRex – btw commercial master :)

lorelynn – interesting … a while back, CNN had a weekly show on saturdays (I think) with 4 of their women reporters – they’d sit around and chat about the week’s news – asking each other questions … very friendly and sorta like one of the women’s talk show …

they assumed no background or knowledge but did that through the questions – so one of the reporters would say “you know, I really don’t understand economics” or whathaveyou so the viewer didn’t feel dumb since the reporters didn’t know either …

they also included personal thoughts or stories about what it was like covering a given story that week (like On the Story now)

now I don’t like CNN and don’t like several of the reporters who were on that show but it worked and was interesting.

Valley Girl has been a valued member of the FDL community for some time. She has been working as a moderator “behind the curtain”, and earlier this week it (the viciousness of trolls plus the occasional intemperate comment by a non-troll) finally got to her. The straw that back broke the camel’s back. She essentially said “f**k it, I’m outta here”.

I’m not trying to fan the fires of some melodrama, but her voice was valued here and it will be missed. The only reason I’m in a position to comment on this is that I was a participant in that Late Nite thread and saw it happen “live”.
After prompting an apology from the commenter (doesn’t matter who it was), I emailed her to ask if she was OK. Bottom line: she’s moving on. I’ll reprint some excerpts of her email (with her permission).

Speaking of universal health care, from Sunday’s SF Chronicle:

“Mayor Gavin Newsom’s plan to make San Francisco the first city in the nation to offer universal health care is, in reality, the dramatic expansion of a vision that existed long before he first ran for elective office.”

Article at: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/arti…..HEALTH.TMP

stunned …

lorelynn – i didn’t see that larry king, but it does sound great.

my impression that evening – and I didn’t follow it live all the way through – was that she was really burned out …

mods is such hard and often thankless work since you’re dealing with trolls,etc but also with impatient posters

but she will so be missed …

Valley Girl, in her own words, quoted by permission:

Please don’t let the community make ***** a scapegoat in this. That would be very unfair, and counterproductive. As I said, he was just there as one of the “straws”. Wrong words, wrong time. And it really isn’t about me either. Trust me.

The most productive thing that could happen for sake of FDL would be for people to have some kind of conversation about how other commenters, and moderators, and indeed Jane and Christy and the rest of those who write at FDL should be treated in the comments. I don’t
mean some set of rules that Jane and Christy are expected to enforce. God knows they have enough to do already. Rather, a discussion that focuses on the ways that commenters in the FDL community might behave to keep FDL the kind of place I and many others were drawn to a good while back.

I reacted as an individual who has tried to support FDL by moderating (for quite a long time) but had been pushed too far. The way I reacted and how I reacted is individual to me. People differ. Nonetheless, I am concerned for the sake of FDL about the increasingly nasty tone of late. Partly growing pains. What else, I don’t know.

I wished her well and said I hoped she would return some day.

Must admit I was a witness. Sorry she took that thread so personally. I cannot imagine the troll wear on wonderful mods though. Hope she gets a breather in and comes back home.

siun – I missed that show.

I think that women are more likely to be disturbed by the interview style most shows have adopted – y’know, this vaguely confrontational style designed to throw pols off guard. What Mathews and company seek to do is to trick someone into stumbling and saying something stupid – like if you gave Moe the spotlight to interview Larry and Shep. It’s more like interviewing as a contact sport.

Honestly, I think Dems should lease two hours of media time on a decent station every week, and have friendly panel shows. All the women senators on one show. The next week, the women of the black caucus. The following week, the women on the X committee – whatever committee is in the news. Stuff like that. Do the same thing for men. Have shows that have male Democrats on talking about what they’re up to. No attempt at balance – Democratic television and nobody’s sweetheart!!!!!!

It would certainly take the pressure off of pols to appear on the other shows. Once we stop showing up for Chris, his show loses legitimacy and he’ll be begging to get Dems back on. It’s one way we could reclaim the media.

what siun said…

and sad.

ValleyGirl, I will miss your gentle wit.

(and to some degree culpable – I saw the thread while it was still open and did not offer support – didn’t say anything.)

punaise – i’m so sorry not to have been more supportive of VG. i hope she comes back in some way that won’t burn her out. please, please let her know how much she means to us – especially those of us (like me) who never told her while we had the chance.

i will SO miss VG. i feel horrible….

For my part, I wish I had intervened on the spot, but as it turns out it was already too late. My oblique nudge to an apology somewhat later in the thread wasn’t very forceful. It wasn’t until the following Late Nite that I and others made a clear call to the commenter to try to make amends, which he did with sincerity.

Show single women that policy matters. Give us something to vote for. “We can do better” is crap. “Fight for you” is double crap.

How about:

1. When there is an order for child support, the $$ are direct deposited through the Social Securit Administration into the custodial parent’s checking account on the first of the month. The feds (not the state or county) collects the money from the paying parent by whatever method the state decides. Payment to the custodial parent is on time and independent of when the paying parent pays. Late fees could come into play.

2. Fees for household help are made deductable: housecleaning, yard care, etc. If a business can deduct the expenses of running the business, why can’t a person deduct the cost of running a home — if we are so family friendly?

3. Raise the goddam minimum wage to at least $10 an hour and then tie it to congressional wage increases. Whatever percentage increase they get, the same percentage increase in the minimum wage. And no crap about employer’s can’t afford it. If they can’t afford it, they shouldn’t be in business. Slavery was supposedly outlawed a while back.

4. No jobs performed for any governmental entity or any private entity contracting with a governmental agency can be performed outside the United States. This includes federal, state, and local jurisdictions. There would have to be some exceptions to this, but not many.

5. Add all children to Medicare.

6. Add everybody else to Medicare. Raise taxes to pay for it. (It will still cost everyone less than they are paying now in premiums, and maybe something will be done about the rise of TUBERCULOSIS for gawdsake! PS: Bird flu won’t know you have insurance as it rides in on the hosts of your neighbors who don’t.)

I could think of a bunch more. But people who’ve never had to live like a single woman should probably do some research. Single women have to be smart, no matter how stupid we are. We don’t have time to do a lot of things. One of the things we don’t have time to do is go vote for someone who really doesn’t want anything for us or from us but that vote.

punaise,
Thanks so much for the update, I have missed a lot of threads lately, so this is the first I had heard of it.
I completely concurr with your assessment of how valued Valley Girl is/was by this community. I hope she returns when she decides it is right for her. Until then imo it is our loss.

for the record, the commenter was under the mistaken impression that TRex was moderating, and the comment(s) in question were directed at him in a joking manner. No malice towards VG was intended, IMO.

I read the tone though missed the original inapropriate comment, until later on. So sorry. Her larger point on overall treatment of hosts and mods, well I have only been here a few months.

selise and all, I think she needs to chill out for a good while. I retain a glimmer of a hope that she’ll be back at some point.

I’ll be glad to send her one general email with well-wishers’ sentiments. From what she said, she won’t be lurking here to read any of this.

kirk murphy- You recently mentioned Mt. Tam. Have you heard of Steep Ravine near Stinson Beach?

I posted something that seems to have gotten lost. I’m pretty new here, but I’ve enjoyed Valley Girl too. I hope she will be able to come back. If I have commented in anyway that’s not right, I do apologize and hope someone sets me straight! It must be hard weeding trolls.

Coincidently the evening before VG had enough. I did take the time to share my appreciation for her thoughts and contributions in moderating. Hope she read that.

siun, just to add to your 11:40 about how challenging moderating is, FDL also does a great job of allowing/supporting legitimate dissent, as long as it is done with an appropriate “tone.”
punaise, has helped me out in this respect on more than one occasion.

punaise – i do hope VG does whatever she needs to do to take care of herself. thank you for being willing to pass along our thoughts (if you think it won’t make her feel worse).

it’s true that FDL has morphed with its phenomenal growth and success. back in the heady days leading up to the Libby idictment, this was a small place off the beaten path. threads didn’t regularly build to 200-plus comments. there was “time” for personal interaction amongst folks (no that that’s altogether fallen by the wayside). what sealed the deal for me personally was the support tendered after our cat was killed in the road. hardly the stuff of earth-shattering importance, but it hit home.

I can only imagine how taxing it is to be a moderator her these days, especially after all the attention brought by YKos. That, and the death of Jane’s mother seem to have been a clarion call to heartless/vicious trolls. so to all you moderators – thank you.

Mt. Tamalpais – the cascade trail, after winter rains!

If she needs to let it go. I understand that. Sure would hope she takes care of herself first. At some point input about tone and methods of fdl conversation would find sincere listeners. It didn’t take a day of discovering fdl to see how kind and warm she is.

Steep Ravine is a very special place. State run gated campground with private beach. Warm springs flow up in the sand at low tide. Register in advance by mail only.

Thanks for the update, punaise.

Might I add Big Basin State Park.

Suzane – Heard of it, is it in OR?

Suzanne-
Oh yeah: Big Basin, Castle Rock, Forest of the Nicene Marks (sp?), Big Sur….

Eureka Springs, AR – is Steep Ravine on the Dipsea Trail?

Big Basin State Park in the Santa Cruz mountains near Boulder Creek, CA. Has some fine trails.

(uhhh, Pach – sorry to have hijacked this thread…..)

Punaise … thank you for passing on word and please send her my best and my thank you for her work.

I’ve noticed recently several comments about a change in tone, etc and they have startled me. I still find FDL quite the nicest community online and it seems to be supportive to new readers – look at the Sat am threads.

I’ve mod’d at other places and troll fighting can be overwhelming … I can only imagine what it’s like for here – and hope that we have enough folks to share the burden.

The online world has always been a bit of the rough-and-tumble. And while FDl certainly eases that for newcomers and all of us, the heat of the debate is still here and I would not want to see it go. (but then I have had wonderful flame fests with people who became good friends after the battle)

I think people need to balance engaging passionately in the debate with understanding that this is still virtual and should not be taken too personally. There is always so much we do not know – that we would know if we were in the same room with someone or in their day-to-day life. Esp when you first get really involved online, it’s often hard to keep that balance. There’s an amazing ability to connect strongly with others in good online communities but that can be too heady if you don’t keep it in perspective. (IMHO)

punaise – not familiar with dipsea. From steep ravine one can look south and see the gg bridge, look north and see stinson beach

cnn.com:

Israel hits Palestinian prime minister’s office

An Israeli helicopter-fired missile hit the office of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya early Sunday, Palestinian sources said.

“so much trouble in the world”

I finally found some full coverage on the Israel/Palastine situation on the BBC channel. Horrible!

What draws so many of us me here is the civility of the discourse in the comments. What few of us recognize is the effort that goes into maintaining that civility.

Having seen just a little of what VG dealt with, the trolls can be viciously obscene. This was especially true just last week in the threads expressing our condolences to Jane about her mom.

I’d bet the mods spend as much time pulling regular’s comments out of moderation purgatory as they do dealing with trolls. Just imagine what the tradename of that little blue pill in the Rush Limpbaugh thread did to the spam filters.

I only saw the trail that was left on the thread in question and am saddened by the results. I also concur with Punaise that no harm was intended by the comments.

Having said all of that, we can honor VG’s long time participation in this community by heeding her words. Let me try to very, very loosely paraphrase…be excellent to each other.

siun – You are so good with words. What a fortunate daughter you have.

Increase the minimum wage, some kind of right to privacy campaign…

Any single women out there to help us out?

Punaise – take a look at the photos here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/5137926.stm

this is like hitting the white house

also, Israel was saying that they would hold Syria liable and the US backed that statement ( I have to find a link for that – heard it last night on the beeb)

some folks with experience at GGs suggested that Israel is attempting to clear Gaza with this attack – and given that the Palestinians will soon be out of food and the UN is protesting the Israeli blockage of humanitarian aid … it sure looks like forced displacement or a form of ethnic cleansing. The power plant will be out of commission for 6 months and that means no water, no ac, etc.

siun – all good points. it’s not for the faint of heart. it’s difficult to judge “tone” in typed words. I still find a strong sense of community here, the foundation of which is Jane and Christy’s welcoming embrace. I relish the back-n-forth, the legal beagles, the activism, the threads that unfold on multiple levels, the anguish and the hope, and of course the witty repartee.

that said, we’re maybe a tad quick to congratulate ourselves for the “take-downs” and the oh-so-clever moments of snark. heh heh. wouldn’t trade that for anything…

Eureka – thank you! My daughter is quite a treasure and will begin a course in journalism this fall … both my children are wordwise – my son is a quite good and published poet, and my daughter writes good hiphop and will now head into the world of music journalism …
very proud mom here!

“think I’ll pack it in
and buy a pick-up
take it down to LA”

in other words, good night all.

nite punaise be well

siun – A son also. You are familiar with handfuls. Music journalism sounds fantastic.
Those photos on BBC are so awful. I wonder if international pressure will arrive in time or at all. A million folks relocating. Who will take them?

…can I just say that me and my friends are STILL worried about the fact that voter fraud is not being addressed in a systematic way…can anyone still awake tell me where to find information saying that the same thing that happened in Ohio last election won’t happen again? It seems to me we need to address this problem before November or we will once again we watching the republicans steal the election right in front of our eyes.

The real Erin Brockovich is also a babe:

http://images.google.com/imgre…..l&sa=N

spiderpaws – I intend to help out in ‘08. In Ohio or where needed. I will only vote absentee as long as electronic machines are used in my area.

nodding … dtr 20, son 28 and living in the glorious land of Austin …dtr going to a very interesting school with working pros and internships and all sorts of good stuff.

I rely on the BBC – and listen each night as I head to sleep – not exactly relaxing but a habit from pre-internet radio days.

Also very good resource are the Mosaic programs which Link TV does – they are online and provide a half hour news roundup from a wide variety of ME sources (inc. Israel) simply translated, not censored or adjusted for US eyes.

http://www.linktv.org/mosaic/index.php3

and I always check Al Jazeera which I find a very solid source:
http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage

and if you have not seen the film about Al Jazeera – Control Room – it’s very very worthwhile.

finally, I depend daily on MFIs two blogs and the discussion there – linked in my name here.

Thanks for the pic siun.
I am so disappointed in Congress.
These pictures are like free recruiting for Osama and all the other extremists in the Middle East. They are telling everyone, “I told you so.”

OT, thanks for a typically great comment RBG at 12:23

John – so true.

We keep doing this – treat people dreadfully (see Iran under Shah, Latin and Central America – as you well know, etc) and then blame them when they react.

And the support and funding and arms sales to Israel … as Fisk points out, the Palestinians do notice that the helicopters are american made, the bullets are american made, the missiles are american made.

The beeb routinely has those little photo collections that often are particularly good quick views into things we are not shown here.

And their “have your say” often provides an interesting selection of people’s voices from around the world – both in the online comments and esp in their weekly call-in show which you can hear here:

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/no…..0702085050

btw, their internet radio services are amazing – and work even on flakey work laptops!

Thanks, JC—I remember how I cringed the first time you admonished someone about their “tone” but have come to appreciate how we need to maintain this little corner of the blogosphere that Jane has graciously offered us.

Must get some sleep. Good night all.

spiderpaws:

the brad blog is always on top of voter fraud and has stockpiles of information. additionally, there was the recent article in rolling stone. let me look for the links

Punaise—please tell Valley Girl she’ll be missed.
Thanks, VG, and please come back after a breather.

off to sleep here …

g’nite all!

Brad blog: http://www.bradblog.com/

Robert Kennedy’s Rolling Stone Article:
http://www.rollingstone.com/ne…..ion_stolen

LindaR, I think you are on target. Even smart women still have to struggle to stay in the game economically. If you get sick or take off work because of family, you’re behind the eightball if you can get a job again.

You’re right about the “household” expenses too. Why should business be able to write off the cost of doing business but people can’t write off the cost of selling their labor? And what about all the unpaid and unappreciated women’s labor at home? How can that be valued economically?

I agree about the outsourcing too. Only people working in foreign embassies who need to speak the local language should be outsourced. Otherwise, jobs should stay here.

spiderpaws: i think word is getting out about voter fraud. there is a lot we can do, as individuals, such as volunteering to be observers, etc. the repubs have tarnished voter fraud with wtih tin hat conspiracy labels and that is a hard label to overcome. the two sites i linked to are helping get out information to overcome that negative marketing.

speaking of voter fraud, absentee ballots leave a paper trail. i like the idea of registering to vote and at the same time being offered the opportunity to sign up to absentee. it would help counter those who might demur, saying their vote would not be counted anyway.

…Suzanne: thank you…I already vote absentee but will go to your links to see what else is happening…

Me ke aloha pumehana Valley Girl…

I do hope you’ll come back now and then and grace us with your wit and company.

keep it simple:

*health care for all (no complicated mumbo jumbo plans to choose from)

*restore our standing abroad with a sane foreign policy

*fix the deficit

*acknowledge and address global warming((Ask for sacrifice)
women know how to sacrifice(of course men do also. no man bashing here)

*separate church and state(puleese!)

*find an honest and fair way to vote in this country

*move to change our trash talk me me culture

I don’t have much to to add — so many good ideas have already been posted.

Money in your pocket:
–Increase the minimum wage, and tie it to the CPI
–Reinstate usury laws. Credit cards are ruining families,
–Regulate mortgages. Interest-only ARMS are strangling mortgage holders, and pushing home prices out of reach of new buyers.
–End the profit-grab in the student loan industry

Fix Health Care:
–Universal single payer for children
–Universal single payer for catastrophic care (kicking in at, say, more than $75,000 in twelve months)
–Universal single payer dental care
–Health Care Bill of Rights, including right to contraception from any pharmacist or any hospital

Security in the 21st century:
–Somebody should try to catch that Osama bin Laden guy
–Secure the freaking ports already
–Let Iraqis set a timetable for US troop withdrawal, but rather than pull out, populate those big new bases we built. Then go back to Afghanistan and finish what we started there.
–Elevate FEMA to an independent body sorta like the Fed or the Post Office. The head should serve a six-year term, or something.
–Give FEMA specific powers to fast-track vaccines and stockpile them
–Biometric IDs for all immigrants and visitors to this country
–Let illegal immigrants already here apply for short term visas, without requiring them to go back home, or requiring them to stay here. Then deport anybody who doesn’t fill out the paperwork and get the biometric ID.
–Rewrite FISA legislation to give the court jurisdiction over matters involving new technologies. Let the FISA court approve methods, not just specific warrants.
–Let Nat’l Guard & reserve troops convert over to regular military with credit for time served. Or at least give them similar benefits.
–Make military service more hospitable to women.

A healthy environment for our children:
–Clean air
–Clean water
–Safe food
–Nuclear power

Other people brought up voter fraud. Who doesn’t want to get this fixed?
Amendment on voting reform:
–Abolish electoral college (a great way to GOTV)
–Congress (not Ken Blackwell or Katherine Harris or Tom Delay) should regulate Congressional & presidential elections
–No more Delay-style redistricting
–Congress should have the power to regulate campaigns for Congress and the presidency

Obama is still “in the box.” Competing with Karl Rove and the Religious Right pundits on their own ball field is a lesson in futility. Salvation is in developing votes on the turf that they can’t win on – youth, single women, minorities. I agree that the Democrats need programs that appeal, but I wonder if this isn’t more the place where the blogosphere can have a real impact. The Internet is a hell of a lot closer to the non-voting cultures than the political rhetoric of the Democrats.

Good morning to all.

I’m sad but not surprised to hear of Valley Girl’s decision. It’s been sounding as if some of us were getting on her last nerve lately, and now that she’s worked to exhaustion and beyond for us, she’s hit the wall.

I’m so sorry this has happened.

Apparently I unknowingly contributed to her stress at one point recently — if I knew exactly what to apologize for, I would. Since I don’t, I’ll just say, “Please forgive me, Valley Girl. I wouldn’t have upset you for anything, had I known how to avoid it. Please befriend yourself in every possible way now, and heal. I’ll miss you here and hope for the day that you return to us.”

189 great ideas
190 i totally buy your take on things

I second that, squirrel hiller 192.

Quite the huge undertaking it all seems — but as Prairie Sunshine puts it, “One stone at a time moves the mountain.”

i want to vote for someone who has gotten into my shoes and walked around for a minute or two. if i were running for office i’d take a chunk out of my life and move to an impoverished area for 6 months. none of this rich guy pretending to feel my pain. come on down and see it from the inside. no “half a day for habitat for humanity.” ride a schwinn not a trek fuel(bushes 5000.00 bike or kerry’s equally expensive one(have to look up the brand). teach at a city school. run a childcare, eldercare center. help your neighbors get jobs or start a business. show me you care. women will love you. you will win.

somebody wake up the moderator. my 194 was impassioned.

YO, MOD!

How’s that, squirrel hiller? My before-tea bestes’.

many thanks, Lotus.

Hee.

There were a couple of organizations here in California Wine Country who, in ‘04, received lists of single, unregistered women from the DNC. The volunteers called the unregistered women, sent them voter reg. papers and kept up with them via e-mail and postcards. They developed pen-pal relationships and got them out to the polls on election day to vote for Kerry. Incidentally, because of work like this, Kerry won.

After reading Terri Jentz’s ” A Strange Kind of Paradise”, I would make the elimination of violence against women my top priority. Zero-tolerance, one-strike-and-you-are out, draconian justice applied to the male creeps who do this stuff to women would be a winner for us all.

Vaguely on the topic of single “women” voters, this bit from today’s Palm Beach Post gossip column (some scrolling-down req’d):

WANTS OUT WITH ONE STRIKE

Bestselling conservative firebrand writer Ann Coulter must think of herself as truly special.

In the latest twist in her battle against Supervisor of Elections Arthur Anderson over her alleged illegal voting in a town of Palm Beach election, Coulter’s $500-an-hour Miami lawyer has told Anderson’s office that she has applied to strike her Seabreeze Avenue address from records.

Anderson’s beef with the overly skinny lady is that Coulter may have cast her ballot in the wrong precinct because she registered at the address of her Realtor instead of her homestead. For four months now, Anderson’s been unsuccessfully trying to have Coulter verify her address.

Her attorney, former South Florida federal prosecutor Marcos Jimenez, didn’t return repeated calls. The Florida Statutes show very narrow reasons to have an address erased from records. Those include people in law enforcement, corrections, the judiciary, revenue collections and code enforcement. The law also provides hard-to-get exemptions for the victims of domestic violence or aggravated stalking.

Coulter isn’t married and isn’t known to have a beau. And Page Two couldn’t find tangible stalking reports, although her former agent claimed last year that Coulter had stalkers, including one who sent her roses daily.

One thing Jimenez does establish in a recent e-mail to Anderson’s office: Contrary to what Coulter has been clamoring in lectures and on TV when asked about the snafu, she does live in Palm Beach.

Putting a vet as head of women’s health, I remember very well. I was spitting mad. It really reveals the contempt shown for americans.
Anyone remember the CHEERS outrage in Florida? A proposed study of pesticides on infants & children that would pay families, give them a camcorder to record it, bib, tshirt. Boxer & Nelson had a press conference on cspan (Apr 2005?). It was absolutely disgusting, the CHEERS website was set up in such an adorable format & downplayed any possible harm to the kiddies.

she lives in palm beach? i thought she hung upside down in a damp cave somewhere. (damn. broke my pledge to give up trash talk.)

Well, hang on there, sh 203, it may be your very theory that she’s gonna argue to Theresa LePore’s successor.

Women are 51% of society. WE buy most of the goods and services out there, take care of most of the decision-making within famiilies, whether we’re married or not.
Let’s face it, appealing to women works. Why? Not becuase you’re pandering to us, but you’re finally including us. Adding a little more appeal to women certainly can’t hurt. We’ve But here’s the problem. Marketing to women generally, well, scuks. Everything for women has to be wrapped up in a lavendar and pink package, girlie-girl and cute. Forget that. We need to be appealed to as people first. People who deal with all the problems everyone else does and are, for the most part, the ones responsible for getting things done. The two parties, as with media and every thing else, makes decisions based on demographics and polls (yuck! ptooey! I hate demos and polls). It’s time to appeal to problems that affect MOST Americans. Economics, health, war, etc. A smart marketer, one who doesn’t pander or stretch the truth, could bring Dems out in droves – women and young people and old curmudgeons too.
Wwe are the party of American. We ran the Revolution, we won the wars (R’s alwyas screw their wars up – Dems have won thiers), we’ve always given the country a good eceonomy, andalways supported the programs that helped americans.
The only thing the R’s have given America is a lot of spin.

ot a bit. all you aspiring costume designers, take a look at that outfit julia roberts is wearing for erin brockovich. back interest, that outfit has back interest. if you remember the scene, she was running multitudes of copies off on the water board’s copier. most of the scene was shot with her back to the camera. whoever was the costume designer for that film did a great job not only for julia but all the characters.

204 you are tooo clever. must have had that morning cup ‘o tea.

Continuing my waywardness/morning browse of the papers, here’s another OT that isn’t so OT to American women. NYT Online has a Jonathan Mahler essay up this morning though it won’t reach print for another week:

The afternoon before the Supreme Court handed down its instantly historic ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, the Navy defense lawyer appointed to represent the man who has admitted to being Osama bin Laden’s driver, Salim Hamdan, told me he was reading a minority opinion written 60 years earlier, in the wake of World War II, by one of the court’s lesser-known justices, Wiley B. Rutledge. The case involved Tomoyuki Yamashita, a Japanese general who’d been convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death by a U.S. military tribunal, a verdict upheld by the court, 6-2, despite some glaring procedural deficiencies: among other things, the admission of hearsay evidence including propaganda films and unnamed witnesses. When Swift and I spoke, Supreme Court watchers had already deduced that Justice John Paul Stevens would be writing for the majority in Hamdan. Back in 1947, the 27-year-old Stevens was Rutledge’s clerk, so Swift was consulting Rutledge’s dissent in Yamashita for clues.

Swift read me stirring words from Rutledge’s opinion: “The immutable rights of the individual, including those secured by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, belong not alone to the members of those nations that excel on the battlefield or that subscribe to the democratic ideology. They belong to every person in the world, victor or vanquished, whatever may be his race, color or beliefs. They rise above any status of belligerency or outlawry.” Swift paused and then added, “I think tomorrow’s going to be a good day.”

And of course it was. With the assent of four of his colleagues, Stevens ruled that the military tribunals created by presidential order in November 2001 to try enemies captured in the war on terror violated the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice and were therefore illegal. Stevens, it would seem, had absorbed his mentor’s distaste for unbridled power. “He was finally able to vindicate those values that Rutledge championed,” says Allison Danner, who clerked for Justice Stevens in the late 1990’s.

So much of the conversation concerning the war on terror has focused on fear – for some, the fear of losing our freedoms, for all, the fear of another attack. It’s easy to overlook the counternarrative of hope, whether it’s Iraqi citizens braving violence to vote in free democratic elections, the declining confidence in bin Laden in a number of Muslim countries (according to a recent Pew Research Center poll) or our Supreme Court reminding us of the resilience of the principles upon which this country was built. “There are not many countries where a noncitizen with a fourth-grade education can sue the president,” says Neal Katyal, the Georgetown Law professor who argued Hamdan’s case before the Supreme Court. “That is our great gift to the world. We’re strong enough to say our system can handle it.”

. . .

Do we need to narrow the scope of certain liberties to defeat radical Islam? The majority opinion in Hamdan does not preclude this possibility, but it does prevent the president from acting unilaterally, while inviting – compelling, really – Congress to assume its own share of constitutional responsibility for the war on terror. Will Congress prove a more vigilant steward of our civil liberties? We cannot say. In the future, the balance of hope and fear will depend on many things, most notably whether we are attacked again. But we are at least assured of an admittedly overdue debate about the conduct of the war. Before Hamdan, that debate, such as it was, consisted of the executive branch telling us – or not telling us – how it was prosecuting the war and of the denunciations issued by the executive branch’s critics. We were told that after 9/11, everything had changed – or that nothing had changed. Now that our fear will be tempered by hope, the real conversation can begin.

Now that our fear will be tempered by hope, the real conversation can begin.

There you go: the key to success in ‘06, ‘08, and for all time. Conversation. The candidates — Lamont, Laesch, Edwards — and all who converse with their voters are going to beat those who yammer at us every time.

That’s what women want. And so do men.

Health Care for kids

Slogan-

Universal Child Care is PRO LIFE!

Bravo TANK, though the slogan might motivate the neo con GOTV. I think the thing that will involve more single women/moms is provide child care, at volunteer events, not to mention on election day. Not only offer rides to the poll, but child care. The practical matters of getting them involved seems to be the problem. Lack of time, money and sleep.

Pach:

Lot’s of policy issues above (most very good) but no narrative. Thinking big on this means connecting to women on a gut level.

The themes of the “common good” are where we should start. We need to develop the theme that government can work and can work for YOU if you elect the right people.

The GOP trashes government and feeds the body parts to greedy lobbyists. Reconnecting to the idea of a “people-focused” rather than “big-business focused” government might get some traction.

ot

not enough has gotten out about the hamden case, we need to inform the democrats and they need to make this an issue

the defendant wasn’t allowed to be present at the trial, his lawyer isn’t allowed to be present at the trial, the charges are unknown, hear say evidence is allowed.

the specifics need to be made clear why this was an important case and anyone that is opposed to the decision needs to be first educated and then embarrassed

I would like one of the authors here at firedoglake to do a post with everyday lanuage just what is going on with these “military tribunals”

for instance, laws are made up unilaterally and then people are charged with those crimes

we have to stop using terms like “habeous corpus” and use real terms that will raise the eyebrows and embarrass amyone that thinks this ruling was incorrect

kev, I don’t like the term “can be good”

muchn better, “government is good when it’s run by the people and for the people instead of by oorporations and for corporations”

a little long I suoppse

new threads

Naluwe in 102 has concerns that are important to me as well.

I’m a single woman with no children. The United States has not done enough to defend the freedom of women in America nor around the world for that matter.

If the democrats really want to reach single women, defend our freedom to make our own decisions about our lives, our health and our choices. Our freedom to retain our decision making power is important, it should not be a not a side issue.

Good Morning Firelambs,

good to be back with y’all after a few days away from the threads (which feel like weeks)

many, many excellent suggestions upthread – clearly some unaminmity WRT to Mimimum Wage Increase and Universal Health Care

ok,

so how to get them to the voting booth ?

seriously, a full day of work, maybe a stop at grocery store on the way home, probably bad traffic or a long commute – how do you motivate them to hit the precinct on that November night ?

Absentee ballot voting could prove more convienent for many, but really too late in this election cycle to put together an awareness campaign

So how ?

wrt to single parents – have always thought a multi lingual, pan media campaign focusing on the idea that they are voting for their children – a campaign emphasizing they are voting for those w/ no voice could prove effective

no health care

5 plus years of no increase in household income

abject failure of No Child Left Behind

decreasing opportunities for Higher Education

“Your Kids Need You To Vote – They Can’t”

blah, blah, blah

an effective campaign along those lines could also motivate dual parent households as well

TRex@109: Run that ad, with policies like ‘Health Care for Kids’ and the Dems win both the House and the Senate in 2006. Not even close. Bonus points for news releases by think tanks that compare the cost of War in Iraq to full health care for all children in USA. I don’t think they would be hopelessly different.

I see lots of great ideas here that appeal to women,but,there also needs to be an answer to the question of HOW you intend on bringing those ideas to fruition.You can talk all day about the need for universal health care for example,but HOW will you DO that?

This is where I think the political process loses people.To many it’s all talk to win the election and then nothing happens.Which takes people right back into feeling powerless again.Not to mention the feeling that they’ve been had,again.Which also feeds into why people don’t vote no matter how convenient you make it for them.

I’m not saying you have to present a 500 page policy/plan to people written in congress-ese to explain it,but you gotta let the voters in on your plan to actually DO whatever it is that’s needed to fix the problem or it will come off as pandering.

Another thing,in reading about the election thefts,absentee ballots seemed to get tossed just as easily as machine votes were messed with.The GOP had people out canvassing door to door offering to be helpful by mailing them for voters.When you have Sec of States who are also in charge of campaigns for specific candidates(why is this legal?),this crap is bound to keep happening over and over.

And please could someone send my regards to Valley Girl?She will be missed.I used to be a moderator for ivillage.com,back in the day,and I know what a headache the job is,unless you’ve done it,you have no idea the crap that has to be contended with.It’s a thankless task and it does burn a person out pretty quickly.Having to deal with low level nastiness wears on any soul,especially a soul with such compassion,honesty and dignity.

Are there any single woman who hold elected office? Can they be encoraged to take the lead in addressing the issues facing single woman? Can they show single woman that another single woman is there fighting for them?

And this would have to be a sincere effort, not a token gesture if it was to work.

I know I’m EPU’d, but just a couple of things.

I’m so sorry to hear about Valley Girl. Girl, if you read this, I just want you to know that I have so much respect for you. Kind, smart, funny, and caring. Your remark to Bat in the sorrow thread says it all. Thank you for all you did behind the curtain and in the front of the house here at FDL. I will miss you. I hope you return.

T. Rex, you need to start an ad agency or consulting firm for the Dems. Big time. People do not want to be preached to. Just Badabingbadabang and you hit the nail on the head with the ads you describe.

We already have all the issues that women are interested in on our side. Democrats have stood for choice, for a living wage, for healthcare, and education. Where has it gotten us?

It’s about how we package those ideas. The delivery system. It has to be strong, clear, fast, and witty, and yes – throw a bit of fear in for good measure. But as someone said above – it will be reality based fear. And it should be effective.

Single women won’t take the time and single women with children, do not have the time to listen to someone spewing statistics. No policy, no preachy wonk, no droning on about about health care and education and living wage. They need to be hit over the head with a fucking hammer, that’s all.

We have to do this or we fail. That’s the truth.

I think it’s essential to find a way to put whatever message is arrived at in terms that women can relate to directly. The GOP has made FEAR the keystone of their message, and pulled a lot of bait & switch. It’s time to call them on it.
Disclaimer. I am not a woman, and although I personally know a few, I don’t pretend to speak for any or all of them. That being said….

Education: They talk about no child being left behind – but where’s the money to fix the problems? Gone to tax cuts for the rich and an endless war in Iraq. They say we need excellence in teaching – but then they want to turn the classroom over to religious extremists. They say education is the key to the future – so where’s the money to support colleges and student loans? They say vouchers will give us choice – and then they turn education into shopping in the bargain bin while the rich go to the exclusive schools. It’s time to put public education back in the hands of people who believe in the public good.

Defense: They say we need a strong military – and we do. The world is full of bad people who want to do us harm. They say we need to support the troops – and we do. They are our children, and the troops put their lives on the line for us every day. They say we have to set an example for the rest of the world – and we do by the way we defend ourselves.
But, if we fight bad people the wrong way, we become feared and hated. If we truly support our troops, we need to give them the equipment, training, and numbers to do the job right. If we want to set an example for the world, torture and murder is not the way to do it.
When you make more enemies than friends, when troops suffer while private contractors grow rich, when our troops are seen as potential monsters by the world – that’s not making our country stronger. That’s making us weak.

Okay, that’s a couple of examples. They should illustrate what I’m trying to say. Comments?

Think big. Think policy initiatives, like the opposite of a “Federal Marriage Amendment,” something that would really energize single women and make them say, “THAT’s what I’m talking about!”

there is an essential contradiction here that belies a lack of understanding of how Rove works…. Rove doesn’t promote policy initiatives that are important to people, he creates hate and fear in his target audience sufficient to motivate them to go to the polls.

We already have the “single woman” vote — the answer to that is far greater GOTV efforts targeted at single women….not coming up with new policy initiatives.

If you want to ‘do a Rove’, attack the Republicans for being soft on terrorism — for allowing bin Laden to remain at large, for putting profits ahead of the American people’s safety. Attack, ATTACK, ATTACK the perceived strength of the GOP, and be relentless and merciless about it.

Trex @ 109: Impressive! The only thing I’d add, at the very end:

For all Americans

The Dems could fashion an entire ad campaign around the things that keep millions of Americans awake at night.

Health – an elderly man putting his wife into a nursing home because he can’t afford home care; a young adult going to work with the flu because he can’t afford time off with a wife and new baby.

Education – A family explaining to their son that they can’t afford to send him to college, parents worrying over the condition of the school their daughter attends.

Security – a family being evicted from their apartment with nowhere to go, a man losing the job he’s had for 18 years, a small-business owner declaring bankruptcy.

I can hear it now, “Your kids won’t need health care and education if they are dead.”

We own this issue, and we need to claim it. NOW.

punaise
I too watched as Valley Girl was put through that grinder the other morning, and I was speechless. I wrote nothing about it at the time, and, although it probably wouldn’t have changed the outcome, I regret not pounding ********. What was said was detestable.
I wish VG some peace and thoughtful time away, and hope we will be blessed with her presence in the future. Miss you already.

$3 gas–just talk about that–don’t let anyone change the subject–i.e.–Fed is raising interest rates because $3 gas is inflationary, or Iraq resulted in $3 gas, or the inconvenient truth is about $3 gas. Hell, Rove would turn flag burning into a $3 gas issue. Truth and logic lose to repetitive jingoism. G-d didn’t create $3 gas, Bush and the rubber stamp Republicans did.

Maybe it’s time to bring up the Equal Rights Amendment again and force the GOP to vote against it. The ERA actually came pretty close to passing last time, didn’t it?

I just read about the Valley Girl situation in the comments above, and I got to thinking. First, how weeding out the comments of trolls must be very debilitating. I’ve noticed the wonderful absence of troll comments in this blog and had not really given thought to the effort and costs of creating that atmosphere. Indeed, even the mild trollism one can find in, say, Kevin Drum’s blog, is a psychic burden: even when they’re polite, the mendaciousness of arguments advanced by trolls like American Hawk and Al exact a cost to read. I can only imagine the cost of reading genuinely nasty comments.

Then I got thinking about our troops in Iraq. There they are dealing not with injurious words but with people intent on killing them–and all too often succeeding. No wonder post-traumatic stress syndrome is so common.

And, finally, I thought about the enjoyment and employment of what we call snark. Upthread, in #14 punaise comments “earnest but kinda clueless / tone deaf Kevin Drum never seems to get it quite right, but he tries.” This instantly took me back to high school, where any comment, however favorable, about anyone uncool had to include some remarks about his or her lack of coolness. (I was an uncool kid, so I noticed.) In fact, I think highly of Kevin Drum, and the unsolicited and (in my view) unnecessary comments on what a dork he is struck me as destructive of a sense of community and Democratic bonding. One senses a big tent of Democrats, divided into small groups making catty remarks about those in other groups. Really, in light of our goals, is such snark worth it?

Those were my thoughts… (and you can see why I wasn’t one of the cool kids)

Paul Lukasiak is right — hit them in their strength, like this:

The Republicans have spent more than 300 billion dollars of your money in their occupation of Iraq. But they claim that we can’t afford to provide health care for all children.

What they mean is that they don’t want to.

Vote for real security. Vote Democratic.

The same formula can work for Social Security, and port and border security.

And then make sure that we have a real GOTV effort this November.

I don’t think Obama was saying “we should run for Rove’s base.” I think he was saying we shouldn’t concede it to him. God is not a registered Republican.

Frank # 60. I think people need to look at religion more honestly. Of course it has done some amazingly good things (though I think humans are absolutely capable of doing good things without a religious justification) but it is inescapable that religion has, through the centuries, been almost exclusively responsible for the maiming, killing, torturing, subjugating, etc., of untold millions. Can we say the same of any sane, proven scientific idea, discovery, premise? Religion in the 21str century is nothing less than a pathetic, perverse human weakness for easy answers, manipulated in its infancy to control the masses, which it has succeeded in doing to this very day. Please, if you have any intellectual curiosity, read The End of Faith. And the role that religion has played in subjugating and enslaving women makes it a very big issue for women all over the world.

There should be a way of framing this so the anti-abortion crowd is asked to put up or shut up: You can’t really expect a pregnant girl, looking forward to a lifetime of poverty, with no hope for anything better for her or her child not to choose an abortion, if she has the option.

So if they’re so concerned about the welfare of babies–as they claim–how about some effort to decrease the life-long penalties attached to unplanned children? Health insurance, support for education (from daycare to college), housing, jobs–they all touch on this. And the carryover effect to every American woman, mother or not–and men too–would be immense.

Of course, if anti-abortionistas’–i.e., the Republicans’–real agenda is to penalize sex, they’d do pretty much what they’re already doing.

Or to put it another way: Penalizing sex is part of the Republican agenda.
They call it “family values,” but it’s sexophobia on the public dime, every bit of it. And that is a huge women’s issue, single or not.

Why can’t we say this? Are we afraid that the kind of people whose knee-jerk reaction to an honest-to-God cancer vaccine was to get hysterical about imaginary promiscuity, might say something mean about our sex lives?
The GOP should be the ones on the defensive about this.

Leisure Guy, most of us found FDL in the first place via a link from another blog to a post with some trenchant analysis (re Plame in my case). Personally, a big reason why I stayed and made FDL my home page is that I am sick and tired of my party dancing to Karl Rove’s tune, rolling over on our backs and exposing our soft underbellies. FDL appeals to me because they most emphatically do not do that. If people on “our side” are helping Republicans win elections by the failure of their strategies and tactics, then dammit, push back against that. If the majority of Democrats in congress are failing to defend the constitution, then dammit, call them on it. We are at a historic opportunity for a sea change in American politics, and I don’t want to settle for a slim majority of a bunch of DINOs.

Lots of blogs are in the same space philosophically; what sets FDL apart in terms of its geometrically burgeoning popularity is the entertainment value. The frequency and dependability of posts, the tone, the humor, the snark, the intelligence of the comment section, and even the pictures make this site special.

Our hostesses and moderators have done a fantastic job nurturing the tenor of the commentariat, and they face a big challenge of maintaining the balance as comments grow and evolve. By and large they are meeting that challenge, but you can’t invite 70,000 people to come by and say what’s on their minds and expect to completely control what comes out.

agree that emphasis on registration and turnout.

access to health care and birth control. Financial security in terms of social security–guarantee it won’t go away–as well as securing health and care for parents; remember it is the women who end up caring for elderly parents.

naluwe:102
you’ve hit on a lot of valid points. talk about single women and next thing we’re talking about mothers. not all single women will be mothers.

we are worried about our security. we work twice as hard as men and get paid less…because spoken or not, men are considered breadwinners that need a living wage and women are still viewed in the workplace as supplimental income earners , though many are breadwinners.

there is very little security in the workplace and if you lose your job, it could be a very long time before you can find another in which time you could lose everything you have for worked for,including your home. so you go from a contributing member of society to poor in a matter of months. we have no second income producers to turn to try and eek by until we can secure a job. there aren’t a lot of companies offering benefits and we don’t have wives/husbands who can get a lesser paying job that covers medical or medical insurance expense.

in our later years, we are worried about security in our retirment years. we have no children who will some day grow up and be able to assist us if needed in our old age.

the real issue is the economy and health care for single women. the government has stripped the unions and there is no worker protection. we’ve gone back in time where the worker is treated like a donkey and beaten until it is dead with nary a glance back from the employer who will simply replace it with another donkey. the covenant between employer and worker (work hard, be loyal and we will allow you enough money to live a decent life and security in your old age in return) has been broken. and this issue affects everyone…men, women, single, married, families. when people cannot live a decent life, nothing else matters. why do people need to work 2-3 jobs per family to survive? i’m not talking about working for pin money. i’m talking about people who are just trying to keep the roof over their heads. we have no quality of life anymore..we’ve stood silently by while the government has given our lives away to the corporations and turned us into working machinery.

the other issue for women is privacy. we are not children who need to be directed. we will make our own decisions and want the government to stay out of our lives.

equal protection under the rule of law… assuming that rule of law still applies in America. Women are dogged in the court system, dogged in the beaucracy more than their male counterparts. Just stop ignoring a segment of the general population would be a great first step

Catching this thread late: I think the big issues for women are health care (our system is a debacle and extremely harmful in a personal way to many families); education (kids are spending a huge amount of time on standardized tests, poor schools are being closed, college is more unaffordable than ever), the war (I hear very few women who have anything supportive to say about our involvement in Iraq – it’s generally men who still try to tie Bin Laden with 9/11-); and the environment (to the extent that women are nurturers, we understand that our planet needs to be cared for rather than pillaged for profit).

My two cents is not to treat emotion like a four letter word. In 2004, Bush and crew used fear clearly and openly. It was despicable and based on lies, but instead of Dems acknowledging the emotion men and women were feeling and responding directly that Bush was a terrible choice if you were afraid, we treated fearful voters’ emotion as something craven and stupid and responded with convoluted intellectual arguments that left them feeling like Bush must be a better choice for them because at least he “got it” and understood them.

Women understand and value emotion. People on both sides vote for emotional reasons then justify their decision-making based on reason. People vote Democratic because they care about people, they care about liberty, they care about justice, and they don’t think working people should get the shaft from their own government. They are plenty of reasons for them to vote Democratic, but most respond viscerally to what the Democratic party is supposed to stand for first. That’s why authenticity and clear Dem VALUES are necessary before all the position papers are written. Framing works because it gets at the emotional core of an issue before it worries about the details and policy nuances.

Right now many of our Dem leaders are shaking in their shoes about being clear about our values. But even we in the progressive netroots often get lost in the minutiae of why the facts are on our side and lose sight of why our hearts should be leading the way.

We are the party of compassion. We care about the weak, the poor, the unlucky. We don’t think Social Darwinism is an acceptable or moral or even effective way to run our country’s economy.

We are the party of justice. We believe in our laws, and we believe no man should be above the law, including our President. We believe in fairness. We believe that each person should be treated the same, regardless of wealth, race, gender, or sexual orientation.

We are the party of liberty. We believe in our Constitution and will fight tooth and nail to see that our freedoms are preserved against all attempts at tyranny. We will look fear in the face and know that we can be afraid and yet still find the courage to risk safety for the freedom our forefathers and foremothers have given us.

We are the party of responsibility. We think it is our responsibility as moral beings to make sure that our fellow citizens have access to aid in the face of disaster, access to medical care when they are sick, access to shelter when they are homeless, and access to a good education when they are children so they can grow up to be the effective and creative citizens of tomorrow that will keep our nation strong.

Finally, we are the party of true moral values. We believe in love for our fellow man and support for our families. We believe in the freedom to find our own spiritual paths. We do not point out the splinter in our neighbor’s eye and ignore the plank in our own, and we do not live the noisome life of hypocrisy and corruption that many leaders on the Republican right seem to think passes for religion.

I teach a lot of single moms and from talking to them, what is underrepresented here is affordable and easily available child care. It makes working and getting an education so much easier. That would help a great deal. Also, employers are notoriously bad about stuff like sick days. Women with children get fired if they have to take off work with a sick kid–if they’re lucky enough to have access to daycare, no daycare will let sick kids stay there.

As far as unmarried single women, we would need to break this down by demographics–is there info on that? Young single women without children are busy building their careers or trying to make ends meet, depending on social class. I’d say workplace issues for all single women are paramount.

Don’t you dare fuck with mother nature you rethuglican pimps!

That is we, the conscious, sapient American citizens, knew in the late 1970’s the destruction of our environment was a growing problem. I heard a group of young women speaking a couple days ago very excitedly and positively about the urgency of Gore’s message in An Inconvenient Truth. Mother Nature? Duh!

We are the proverbial frogs slowly being cooked…we knew this thirty years ago! Fucking, Jesus H. Christ!

op99, I totally agree, which is why I wrote my comment to express my own thoughts…

LG, in my own clumsy way, I was just trying to express that I think it’s a mistake to be “too nice” to everyone on our own side when too many of them are unintentionally undercutting us.

IT’S UP TO THE WOMEN (as a slogan, followed by)

REGISTER!
VOTE!!
STOP THE ABUSE!!!

Retirement is a huge issue for older single women. How are they going to survive? Pointing out that the Republicans want to send us back to the days of elderly poverty being the just punishment for not getting rich.

Offering some sort of social security plan for stay-at-home mothers, so they would have benefits of their own, not just widow benefits. (One friend whose mother was wiped out in a divorce – told to get a job after 25 years out – suggested that working spouses be required to contribute to an at-home spouse’s SS, or else be required to completely financially support their ex-spouse’s retirement (Or sign their own SS benefits for the years in question to the spouse). I mean, if you think about it, a working husband/wife is supporting (paying) their spouse to stay home and care for the children.

If the Republicans want to go all Iraq, I would go Katrina. What good is a war on terror if you are deserted by the government and left destitute after a natural disaster? The November elections will be a year later, how many people still won’t have homes, will the debris be cleaned up?

Here’s a campaign ad line: When you voted for the Republicans last time, did they tell you the government wouldn’t be there, should disaster strike?

Totally agree that “too nice” (or “too angry” or “too snarky” or “too polite” or “too … anything”) is a bad idea–by definition, in fact. But I did think the comments on Kevin Drum were uncalled for and inappropriate, which is why I spoke up. “Clueless,” “tone deaf”, “never gets it quite right” — possibly some good advice hidden in there, but… In fact, Drum seems to me to engage the issues seriously and not to be the sort of Democrat (like Joe Klein) who rightly deserves condemnation. I just got the impression (perhaps mistaken) that Drum’s problem, in punaise’s view, is that he’s insufficiently cool. YMMV.

And, FWIW, I don’t think Kevin Drum is undercutting us in any way, unintentionally or not.

LG, I used to read Drum every day, now I never do, I guess there were too many choices out there more relevant to me. Whereas, Josh Marshall, who often gets lumped in the same category as Drum, I read every day, especially since he started the invaluable Muckraker (which I guess, strictly speaking, is not even him).

Howard Dean says that when corruption is the issue, run women candidates. Women shouldn’t be bashful about running as women. We want parity! We want more women in the Senate and the House! No more amendments to the Constitution until the Equal Rights amendment passes, and a right to vote passes.

Another point – low income women don’t get time off to vote. They either get fired for taking time off or, at the very least, lose money out of their paychecks. When your slim pink paycheck already doesn’t cover your living costs, losing even a penny of earnings is a nightmare.

And I don’t think it can be stressed enough that arrangements for caring for children have to be a part of everything. Either bring the little ones along or start a network of childcare volunteers, a big one, available during elections.

Frankly, to get that big turnout we want, I think making plans to accomodate the money and childcare concerns of single women are crucial. After all, why aren’t all these progressive women at the polls? It’s not because we don’t know better. It’s because we literally and materially can’t get there. Barefoot and pregnant isn’t just Dominionist ideology. It is a time tested highly successful method for preventing this leviatian progessive voting bloc from making it’s power felt.

It’s the kids and the poverty people. Help women overcome those obstacles long enough to get us to the polls, and you’ve got your numbers.

Pardon the multiple posts but, that said …

All the brainstorming I’m seeing about which issues will appeal to women is fine, but I wonder if it isn’t putting the cart before the horse.

Don’t policy makers desperately court whichever voting blocs they know are large and organized? Hispanics, evangelicals, yada yada.

So if we just get some massive infusion of single women to the polls and they vote straight Democratic tickets at the start … after that, won’t Moses come to the mountain?
At that point, won’t the powers-that-be start doing their own scrambling to figure out what this new monster voting bloc wants?

Issues for Single Women:

Single Payer Health Insurance
Insurance coverage of contraception
Reproductive Health/Justice: not just abortion rights, but also adoption, etc.
Childcare == not just cost and access, but quality. Many single women are also mothers.
Violence Against Women Act renewal — putting teeth into restraining orders. Violation of a restraining order = jail time
Housing Costs
Payday lending
Equality in lending/insurance, etc.
Pay equity

I know the ideal demographic group to go after.

Car Drivers. Count’em. There are MILLIONS of ‘em. Heck, you’re probably a car driver.

Car drivers use GAS. And they feel USED everytime they tank up. And they suspect that the gas companies are ripping them off, and that the Republicans care more about big oil companies than us. And a sizeable part of the population, including many right-wingers (this surprises me) think that we are in Iraq for the oil.

So we have our demographic. And we have our enemy. Just as Hitler had the Jews and Bush has the gays, we have the oil companies. That is a much less sympathetic group to target, if you ask me.

Just take all the usual rhetoric, lies, and smears that the Nazis and the Republicans have used against Jews and gays, respectively, and apply them to the oil companies, instead. And just as the Republicans are able to filter every single electoral issue through the prism of 9/11, we can filter every single issue, no matter how far removed, through the prism of oil.

Hurricanes? It’s the oil companies fighting global warming science. Iraq? Halliburton’s getting rich. K-street corruption? Oil companies are connected to it in some way at every phase.

Another idea -

Some site like Kos for pinpointing where the unregistered single female voters are state by state and county by county. I like the idea of organizing at the hairdressers or getting five friends to register five women, but it might not be enough to put a dent in the large numbers of women who appear to be unregistered.

The idea of absentee ballots and registration by mail sound very good – that addresses the problem of lack of money and childcare demands faced by single mothers.

What other places might we find large numbers of unregistered single women? Supermarkets? Thrift shops?

Also, didn’t it say in the opening post that single women are already the most consistently progressive voting bloc? I just mention that because as good as all the ideas are about how to pitch platforms to single women, it sounds like we already know the Republicans are hurting us even if we don’t have computer access or watch the evening news on t.v. Single women don’t have to learn second hand that our lives are worse under Republicans, we know it from direct experience.

ERA now.

Single-payer universal health care.

Out of Iraq now.

These are the easy ones.

Hi firepups -

I’ve been playing with my family…so much fun to see my 80 year-old father surprised at his birthday party – by old fiends, his sisters and brothers-in-law, his wife and children – and his employees – he’s still working in the business he founded almost fifty years ago!

Hope you all have been having a great weekend!

I’m just dippig in on the thread, and not trying to crash the moderators’ party…but if I could be assistance as moderator from time to time, I’m happy to volunteer.