Stay the course!

Oh my, I'm not sure these people understand the terms "Winning," "war" or "women."  In fact, I don't think they know what "on" means either.

But they're Democrats

Linda Greenhouse compares last week's Sandra Fluke "kerfuffle" with Lucy Ledbetter's tale from four years ago, who became a darling of the Obama campaign and a Democratic congressional cause.  But she suggests Democrats be careful not to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by overplaying what looks like a strong hand.

If you think my concern is unfounded, here’s a little experiment. Go to YouTube and listen to Loretta Lynn sing “The Pill.” The song was a country music hit for her back in 1975, a feminist anthem in its message if not in its rustic imagery:

“You wined me and dined me when I was your girl
Promised if I’d be your wife you’d show me the world
But all I’ve seen of this old world is a bed and a doctor bill
I’m tearing down your brooder house ‘cause now I’ve got the pill.” 

Listen to the song, and don’t miss the line: “This incubator is overused because you’ve kept it filled.” Listen, and ask yourself whether this song would get air time on a commercial station today. I wouldn’t bet on it.

She's got a point.

I can has control of your body, gals

At one point did the notion that denying health benefits to women would be a winning political strategy for the Republican party?

Let’s take a look at Thursday, February 16, 2012, the day Washington fell into a time-warp.

• On Capitol Hill, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) held hearings on contraception and religious freedom that produced the now-famous picture of a table full of men called to weigh in on access to contraceptives. Democrats wanted a woman — a Georgetown law student with a friend who lost an ovary because the university doesn’t cover birth control — to say her piece at the hearing, but Issa wouldn’t let her on the panel. He said she wasn’t “appropriate or qualified” to discuss the topic at hand.
Jaws dropped in the women’s rights community.

“She didn’t have the right credentials?” NOW President Terry O’Neill scoffed. “I’m thinking to myself, ‘Buddy, you and your little panel over there don’t have the right anatomy to talk about birth control.’”
• Politico published a story about a right wing firestorm that had been burning for days: Did the young women who attended this year’s CPAC wear skirts that were too short?

[...]

• Foster Friess, the billionaire backer of Rick Santorum’s campaign, became an instant celebrity when he went on Andrea Mitchell’s MSNBC show and said, “Back in my day, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.”

 Then there's the state legislature in Virginia who just passed a law legalizing rape against women who want to have an abortion.

Dahlia Lithwick puts paid to the new Virginia law that requires women seeking to exercise their constitutional right to an abortion to have a probe stuck up in them so that they will be shamed like the sluts they are before God and the various meddling members of the House Of Delegates who believe that a woman's place is in all those movies they watch for five minutres (or less) in their hotel rooms at the annual god-botherer's convention in Atlantic City. Anyway, Lithwick comes up with a real gem amid the muck:

Virginia Democrat Del. David Englin, who opposes the bill, has said Gilbert's statement "is in line with previous Republican comments on the issue," recalling one conversation with a GOP lawmaker who told him that women had already made the decision to be "vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant." (I confirmed with Englin that this quote was accurate.)

Yes, and anyone who has had their earlobes pierced already has made the decision that, one day, the law would require them to have a tenpenny nail driven into their eye.

 Like, I said, I don't know when they decided that this would be a winning political argument, but I encourage their war on sex and naughty parts.