I watched the story building for several days. I was thinking, there is no way that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie would be involved in something as stupid, as petty, and as blatantly disrespectful to the constituents of New Jersey as intentionally gridlocking a city. I was wrong.
The mystery of who closed two lanes onto the George Washington Bridge — turning the borough of Fort Lee, N.J., into a parking lot for four days in September — exploded into a full-bore political scandal for Gov. Chris Christie on Wednesday. Emails and texts revealed that a top aide had ordered the closings to punish the town’s mayor after he did not endorse the governor for re-election. (more…)
The GOP has shown me the light. Women just can’t be trusted with their own reproductive rights. If we let women chose, they may choose to get an education. They may choose to join the work force. They may or may not choose to stay home. We can’t have all that choice. We need to decide what’s best for women.
Following up on an earlier item, here was the witness table at the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, as discussion about contraception access and health care got underway.
You’ll notice, of course, that all of the witnesses are men. What you can’t tell from the photo is that the second panel will feature four more men, and the combined total of the nine witnesses will include no women, no experts on contraception, no experts on health care, and no experts who might say something Republicans disagree with.
As ThinkProgress noted, this proved to be a bit too much for some of the Democratic woman on the committee. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) asked a sensible question under the circumstances: “Where are the women? When I look at this panel, I don’t see one, single woman representing the tens of millions of women across the country who want and need coverage for basic preventive health care services.”
As the farce hearing progressed, nearly all of the Democratic women on the committee left the room in protest.
There is one Republican woman on the committee, Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (R-N.Y.), who has not expressed concerns about the one-sided nature of the hearing.
Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who rejected the one witness Democrats asked to participate, claimed this morning that the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State and a progressive voice, had been invited to participate, and would have provided balance to the hearing (balance, in this case, would mean nine conservatives and one liberal). (more…)
Why do we need women on this panel? Seriously, shouldn’t it be the other way around? The panel should be 100% women. Men should have no say. NONE. A women’s husband, lover, significant one should only be included in the conversation if the woman wants to include him. That’s my two cents. What’s yours?
Update: This is Sandra Fluke. She clearly hits the nail on the head.
In high school, you knew that there were some teachers who were going to call on almost every student in the room and therefore you had to be ready. These debates are exactly the same thing. You have to be ready. Rick Perry simply is not ready. I don’t know if he can remember what he’s been told. It is mind boggling how awful he has been in these debates.
So, you’re on Fox news and you getting softball questions about foreign policy. These are questions that you have been thinking about for the last six months. If you haven’t thought about these questions, why are you running for president? Rick Perry gets a softball question about what to do if a terrorist organization gets a hold of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. This is a nightmare scenario that the intelligence community has been talking about for over a decade. This is easy.
First, the right answer – If a terrorist organization gets a hold of a nuclear weapon, we have to approach the problem from multiple different areas. First of all, I’m on the phone with the director of the CIA and the director of National Intelligence. What do they know and what are our options? Secondly, I’m on the phone with the current president of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari. What does he know? While I’m on the phone with him, we are coordinating a conference call with the presidents/Prime Ministers of Britain, France, Germany, India and we’re patching in the NATO commander. There will be several more calls over the next several hours. We need to have a strong, muscular coordinated response that secures the nuclear weapon or destroys it. It is clear that there are some factions within the Pakistani army and the Pakistani special intelligence forces that sympathize with the Taliban/Al Qaeda. We want Pakistan to know that they’re a sovereign country, but we also want them to know that we are going to take a strong and aggressive approach to this problem. There’ll be no negotiating with terrorists. The terrorists who have taken this nuclear weapon will be hunted down and captured or killed. We’ve proven that we have the capability and capacity to do this in Yemen (Anwar al-Awlaki) and with Osama bin Laden.
This is the right answer. This is the answer that plays well both with the Republican and Democratic audience.
What Rick Perry said was the wrong answer. What is he talking about regarding F-16 sales to India? I find it interesting that he mentions that the Obama administration did not sell F-16s to India but somehow he forgets to mention that the Obama administration has negotiated the sale of F-35s, one of our most sophisticated jets. How is the selling F-16 fighters to India going to do anything to secure a loose nuclear weapon in Pakistan? What you saw was Rick Perry in panic mode. Basically, his mind pulled up what ever he could remember about Pakistan. Admiral Mullen said something about a terrorist group. He remembered this and spewed it on stage. He remembered something about fighter jet sales to India. He said whatever came to his mind (unfortunately, nothing that came to his mind) and answered the question anyway. Fail!
