Barack Obama – Page 4

By now, you’ve likely heard of the most recent allegations regarding U.S. soldiers’ abuse of Iraqi prisoners: they include rape and other sexual assault, of both female and male detainees, and there may be photographs of the assaults among those which Obama has recently decided not to release. You can read the details here — it probably goes without saying that they’re immensely disturbing.

It’s hard to know what to say to this. I’ve spent the last day trying to figure it out, to come up with something intelligent. Instead, all I can muster is seething rage, crushing sadness, and unbearable shame. I’ve never been a patriot. Honestly, I don’t even understand patriotism. And I’ve certainly been ashamed of my country before. But this is certainly a new low. As a rape survivor myself, particularly.

I think that Jennifer Pozner hit the nail pretty much right on the head in under 140 characters on Twitter. Rape is a part of war. And U.S. soldiers have been raping the “enemy” ever since the U.S. military was established. It’s one of the many reasons I oppose war. That doesn’t surprise me, though it doesn’t lessen my rage, sadness or shame.

What is shocking (if not surprising), and only magnifies that rage and shame, is the fact that all of these abuses were seemingly sanctioned by our government. The soldiers who committed other abuses at Abu Ghraib claimed that they were following orders. While that in no way absolves them, seeing the government’s stance on torture, we also have little reason to doubt them. And I see little reason to believe that these rapes and sexual assaults were somehow vastly different. What’s shocking is that in the 21st century, the U.S. government is condoning and possibly even promoting rape as a war tactic.

Of course, the Obama administration is trying to deny that the photos exist. The automatic response to that is, the only way we’ll ever know is if you just release them like you promised. At the same time, Mark Leon Goldberg makes an excellent point that these victims have rights. And it is indeed pretty damn difficult to justify releasing photographs of rape and sexual assault to the public without the victims’ consent.

So I don’t know where to go from there, on any of this. I guess I’ll just open up the floor to all of you.

ETA: Ashley has some good and difficult thoughts over at the SAFER blog.

Higher Ground, Not Common Ground

by Merle Hoffman in On the Issues Magazine.

As a person who feels that war should be the strategy of last resort, I still like to read military history. I find myself going back to the wisdom of Sun Tzu who wrote in “The Art of War” in the 6th century BC: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.”

As feminists who fight battles against those who would deny women’s freedom and equality, we know the mettle of our enemies. They are relentless, committed beyond secular principles, willing to look at things in the very long term, absolutely sure of their righteousness and totally determined.

They have one solid line, which they define and defend. Those who stand on their side are with the angels; those who stand on the other are misguided, at best, and sinners, at worst.

One battle or many do not determine who will ultimately triumph in any war. From the civil war in the U.S., the suffragist struggle for the vote, the ongoing battle for reproductive rights and all other revolutionary movements in the world, history shows that nothing is achieved once and for all.

Movements are not static, formal things — freedom and justice are generational struggles that are passed down and through the ages. The movement for women’s liberation is a Protean force that contracts, expands and expresses itself, directly and, at times, in camouflage, depending on the current theater of struggle.

The strength of the movement is that it can shape-shift—situationally compromise, accept new technologies, ways of communicating and influence– all in service of a vision. The vision itself remains universal — beyond cultures and national boundaries.

Feminists may need to practice realpolitik to get the “least bad” candidate elected and the needed bills vetoed or passed. The ideologist asks the question: “Is it good for women?” The politician asks: “Is this the best we can do for women now?” The visionary holds to a higher standard, and takes the longer view.

Because strategies and tactics change in response to the political and historical moment, those who view feminism’s existence purely in terms of realpolitik sometimes wonder if the movement still exists – and, if so, to what end.

For instance, the present public discussion of the need for “common ground” in the abortion debate is a reflection of the Obama Administration’s attempted conciliation or reconciliation between adversarial parties. So far, the discussion has talked about reducing the need for abortion.
___________________________________
Read the rest here.

Sonia Sotomayor nominated for the Supreme Court

Sonia Sotomayor

This morning, Obama announced his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. The nomination’s notable for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that Sotomayor would be the first Latin@ to sit on the high bench, the first woman of color — and only the third woman, after O’Connor and Ginsburg. Sotomayor grew up in the housing projects of the South Bronx, was raised by a single mother after the death of her father, is a diabetic, a Catholic, and is divorced with no children. Obama described her life as an “extraordinary journey,” talking about how she graduated at the top of her class from Princeton and then Yale Law School.

You might be wondering why I rattled off a laundry list of her life experiences, or what you might call identity categories. Two reasons: first, her career has been batted around for years by feuding Democrats and Republicans because she’s a woman of color. Once she made the short list for an Obama nomination, the rumors and sniping started up again. What she doesn’t have any kids? Not only that, but some people think she’s fat. Or are even spuriously linking her weight to her diabetes.

Get ready for a whole season of this kind of thing as her nomination is challenged. And it surely will be, in part because Sotomayor herself finds that (shockingly!) her own life experiences may lend her particular kinds of wisdom and insight. I rather agree with this quote of hers, and it’s already become a lightning-rod for conservative criticism:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

Conclusion: 91% of ConservativeHQ Readers are Idiots.

Richard Viguerie is the supposed “founding father” of conservative strategy in the United States and the chairman of the website ConservativeHQ. He also runs an annoying email list to which I have somehow become subscribed. I usually delete his emails without opening them, but today, the headline caught my eye:

91% of Conservatives Believe Obama is a Socialist, Marxist, Communist or Fascist.

Apparently, 91% of conservatives don’t understand that words mean things. And they wonder why they’re increasingly irrelevant.

In Chicago this weekend?

This should be interesting. H/t Veronica:

NN Salon Chicago: Pushing a Progressive Agenda in the Obama Administration

Click here to RSVP for the event.

With a Democratic president, House and Senate, we have a historic opportunity for progressive change. But how do liberals and progressives make sure their voice is heard? This panel will discuss constructive ways of pushing a progressive agenda and holding our elected officials’ feet to the fire.

Panelists include:
Veronica Arreola, Viva La Feminista
Greg Palast, BBC, author of Armed Madhouse
Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland, Before The Storm
Matthew Filipowicz, Huffington Post, Headzup.tv
Ed Yohnka, ACLU-IL, Director of Communications And Public Policy

Saturday, May 16, 8 p.m. (doors at 6 p.m.)
No Exit Cafe
6970 North Glenwood, Chicago

Admission is free. Dinner and drinks available for purchase.

A Drinking Liberally cocktail hour to follow the event.

Click here to RSVP for the event.

Be sure to join us later this summer in Chicago for the National Council of La Raza conference from July 23 – 28, 2009. Netroots Nation’s Executive Director, Raven Brooks, will be joining Kety Esquivel, Jill Victoria Garvey, Nezua and Amaury Nora for a panel titled “Get the Buzz on Exciting New Media Techniques.” Conference registration is open now.

Why care about actual babies when dolls are so much cuter?

Glad to see that pro-lifers still aren’t troubling themselves with actual babies:

Yes, that’s Alan Keyes pushing a Cabbage Patch doll in a Spongebob Squarepants stroller. Because what better way to show your dedication to life than to push around some rag dolls?

In fact, the policies that Obama promotes do more to decrease the abortion rate than anything far-right “pro-life” groups offer. While protestors at Notre Dame push around Cabbage Patch dolls, it’s pro-choice advocates who actually push for things like contraception access and comprehensive sex ed (which decrease the need for abortion in the first place) and social services like universal health care, aid to women with dependent children, early childhood education and affordable childcare (which make it more feasible for women to make the choice to give birth, and which actually help children once they’re out of the womb). Despite how Notre Dame protestors are framing it, it’s not actually about Catholics vs. non-Catholics; it’s about social conservatives vs. social liberals.

As Hendrik Hertzberg so aptly puts it:

Notre Dame planned from the start to confer an honorary doctorate on Obama, as it has done for eight of his predecessors, beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt. This only heightened the dudgeon of the American Catholic right. The loudest protests have been orchestrated by the Cardinal Newman Society, founded in 1993 and unconnected with the Newman Centers for Catholic students, which are a familiar sight on hundreds of campuses. The group describes itself as dedicated to strengthening “Catholic identity” at Catholic colleges and universities, “many” of which—including Notre Dame, apparently, the Gipper notwithstanding—embrace “a mistaken notion of academic freedom.” It claims to have collected three hundred and fifty thousand names on a Web petition demanding that Notre Dame rescind its invitation and “halt this travesty immediately.” Pat Buchanan chimed in, accusing Notre Dame of saying that Obama’s alleged “support for policies and programs that bring death to more than a million unborn children every year is no disqualification to being honored by a university dedicated to Our Lady who carried to term the Son of God.” And the protests are not just a fringe phenomenon. Sixty-eight American bishops—one of whom suggested that Notre Dame change its name to Northwestern Indiana Humanist University—have voiced their displeasure.

But Obama is not such an easy target. One of his first acts as President was to cancel the so-called “global gag rule,” which denied funds to overseas family-planning organizations that also offer abortion services, or even information about abortion. But because the main focus of such organizations is contraception, cutting off their funding almost certainly resulted in more (and more dangerous) abortions, not fewer (and safer) ones. The President also reversed his predecessor’s ban on funding for embryonic stem-cell research, but specified that the embryos must come from fertility clinics that would otherwise discard them. At his most recent press conference, he rejected the idea “that this is simply an issue about women’s freedom and that there’s no other considerations.” And he noted that his domestic-policy staff “is working with groups both in the pro-choice camp and in the pro-life camp to see if we can arrive at some consensus” on ways to reduce the unwanted pregnancies that are abortion’s invariable precondition.

In any case, the controversy about Obama’s Notre Dame appearance is less about him than about divisions within the American Catholic community. Church teaching holds that abortion, even in cases of rape or incest, is an “intrinsic evil.” Contraception is an “intrinsic evil,” too (as is torture). But a Pew poll prompted by the Notre Dame flap found that more Catholics would keep abortion legal in all or most cases than would ban or restrict it, and a Gallup study found practically no difference between Catholics and non-Catholics on embryonic stem-cell research, which is “morally acceptable” to around sixty per cent of both groups. It is significant that sixty-eight bishops have protested Notre Dame’s invitation, but just as significant that hundreds have not. The real division is between social conservatives, on the one hand, and social moderates and liberals, on the other, not between Catholics and non-Catholics. But that doesn’t make it any less deep, and Obama’s approach—practical, nonideological, “pro-choice” but hardly pro-abortion—is more likely than any of the alternatives to keep it relatively civil.

The downside of the Obama budget

He slashed abstinence-only education, which is fantastic, but unfortunately did not strike governmental restrictions on abortion as hoped. The Center for Reproductive Rights has more:

The Hyde Amendment bans federal funding for abortion in the Medicaid program except under extremely limited circumstances. The President’s budget abandons the millions of women who rely on Medicaid and other federal programs for health services, including federal employees and their spouses and dependents, women served by Indian Health Service, women in the Peace Corps and in federal prisons. It appears to clear the way for the District of Columbia to use its public funds for abortion.

“At a time in our nation’s history when Americans at every income level are losing their jobs and their health benefits, guaranteeing access to affordable, quality healthcare, including reproductive healthcare, is imperative,” stated Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, responding to the abortion funding restrictions maintained in the budget. “For millions of women, federal programs are their only means of getting healthcare. Abortion is the only medically necessary health service excluded from Medicaid coverage. Failure to provide that service—a service that only women need—is discrimination.”

Northup continued, “President Obama made clear during the election that he opposes the Hyde Amendment. And for good reason—over a third of women who rely on Medicaid and are seeking an abortion have been prevented from exercising their constitutional right to an abortion. Hyde unjustly impedes women’s access to timely, quality healthcare and disproportionately harms those women who already face significant barriers to obtaining services. Sound public health policy means protecting the wellbeing of all women.”

The Center is calling on Congress to step up and eliminate all restrictions on abortion funding, which would demonstrate much needed U.S. leadership and commitment to the human rights principles at the heart of reproductive rights – dignity, equality, and the ability to make reproductive decisions freely, without coercion or discrimination.

Contact your Congressperson and urge them to eliminate restrictions on abortion funding.

Buh-bye, abstinence-only education

Good news: President Obama has eliminated abstinence-only education funding in his 2010 budget. Joe at Amplify Your Voice writes:

Not only are all of the abstinence-only funds eliminated, but $173 million dollars will now be going to teen pregnancy prevention programs around the country that don’t have to adhere to the ridiculous standards that were there before.

While we can celebrate this news for now, we aren’t quite out of the woods yet. A door is still open for Congress to sneak these funds back in if we don’t put enough pressure on them.

Of the $110 million that are going to state-based teen pregnancy prevention programs, 75% are going to “evidence-based” programs, while 25% are going “new models” which aren’t explicitly defined. The danger here is that Congress might still try to slip abstinence-only programs into the budget during the appropriations process. David Obey, the Democratic chair of the Appropriations Committee, has tried to increase funding for abstinence-only programs in the past, and we need to make sure that he and his colleagues don’t allow this to happen now.

He’s right that we should stay vigilant on this one, but it is great news. Now drop a note to your Congressperson and tell them to make sure inaccurate, dangerous abstinence-only ed stays in the trash bin where it belongs.