Babble & Politics
Some of my muscles are feeling a little better. My ass and thigh muscles still hurt, then my trainer worked out my arms today…..so I bet I’ll be feeling them tomorrow. That is ok, my trainer spent most of the time laughing at me as I winced to move around…..lol
It was cool this morning, but you could feel it warming up. My browser weather add on is saying it is 87 degrees…suppose to hit 100 tomorrow, the record for this date is 95…not fun, without air. =(
I got some work done today, not as much as I needed to do. I may do some tonight, not sure. I have a bunch of pictures that I want to edit from the park we went to the other day. Either way, I do have to get some work taken care of this weekend since payroll will need to be ordered Monday night.
I kind of want to go downstairs and kind of don’t. Uphere is it a little warmer, but you get some sun and the fact that starting tomorrow we will be downstairs for the weekend due to the heat.
My mom called yesterday to chat and say hi. =) But then she had to rub in my face that she has lost more weight….meanie….lol
Clinton barbs resonate among working women
Gatta, of Rutgers, thinks one very positive thing to come from Clinton’s campaign is that working women saw that the kind of things they experience in the workplace — whether it is overtly sexist jokes or more subtle barbs — are also experienced even by a woman at the highest career levels.
“I think women related to Hillary on that, that in their own lives they’ve experienced different degrees of sexism,” she said.
Similarly, if a woman can rise as high in her career as Callan and still find her appearance being discussed, it resonates with working women who face similar issues in their own jobs, Gatta says.
The days when women were routinely called derogatory names or overtly denied promotions because of their gender are largely over, and women now enjoy more protection from discrimination in the workplace.
Still, Gatta thinks Clinton’s campaign highlighted the more subtle ways in which women are undermined in the workplace. For example, Clinton was often referred to by her first, rather than her last, name — the same thing that often happened to Carly Fiorina during her tumultuous tenure as head of Hewlett-Packard. Gatta, who has the same experience herself sometimes, thinks that can be a way of taking a woman less seriously.
**Maybe with this campaign younger women will finally start to be able to see that sexism still exists and it effects them. Many of this generation of women take it for grant how far we have come, but don’t seem to see that there is still so much farther we need to go for true equality.
Is media skewering badly behaved female stars?
But Negra said the coverage of women is more judgmental, casting wayward female celebrities as “cautionary tales.” She said coverage of female celebs is less likely to celebrate a troubled star’s triumphant comeback, the way Downey has been lauded for “Iron Man” or Owen Wilson has been shown returning to work after a reported suicide attempt.
“We seem to have a lot more fixed ideas about what women’s lives should be like than we do of men,” she said.
“When we use female celebrities this way, we see them failing and struggling, they serve as proof that for women the work-life balance is impossible. Can you have it all? The answer these stories give again and again is ‘absolutely not.”’
**More on sexism in the media and society. As far as I’m concerned people enjoy seeing women brought down. Because it enforces the culture that women shouldn’t want it all and shouldn’t put themselves higher then men. They aren’t suppose to be to have ambition or success….that is a “man’s” place. Heaven forbid if a woman doesn’t stay in the kitchen and make babies.
Now I sure in hell don’t care of the Paris Hiltons and Spears, they totally push feminism back. But the gossip feeding public loves to tear women down….they barely touched on men when they screw up.
Supreme Court Shoots Down D.C. Gun Ban
Writing for the 5-4 majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that the Constitution protects an individual’s right to keep and carry a gun. The decision will affect gun control laws across the country.
“We hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violated the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense.”
He addressed the “problem of handgun violence” by saying there are a “variety of tools” such as “measures regulating handguns” available. But he said that the “enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table,” which includes measures such as an “absolute prohibition of handguns.”
**This does not surprise me. Absolute prohibition of handguns never seem like it would hold up…..but they have stated that measure regulating handguns as a tool for the problem of violence.
Now I firmly believe in the right to own a REASONABLE gun/rifle. I do not believe in the right for everyone to own a frigging AK-47….that is nuts. That is not for self-defense and that is not of hunting. Unless you are a collector that has had a background check and mental evaluation….you shouldn’t own one. Which brings up something I do believe in, background checks with waiting periods, and mental evaluations (within reason…nothing way out there). Things within reason.
I also believe in gun education and handling. To me, there is no issue in families to raise their kids with guns if they teach responsible handling. And many families that grew up with them usually do. It has been the right of passage for many generations in families to teach the kids how to hunt.
It’s still too early to judge Roberts’s tenure, but it seems increasingly clear that liberals dodged a bullet when President Bush nominated him to be chief justice. Instead of siding with conservative extremists like Clarence Thomas, who are eager to press the limits of the so-called Constitution in Exile, resurrecting limits on federal power whenever possible, Roberts prefers narrow opinions that can attract support from the center. Liberals ought to applaud this instinct because, even if Barack Obama gets to appoint the next justice or two, it’s the only thing standing between them and a Court eager to roll back progressive reforms.
Why was Roberts successful in uniting the Court this year? Part of the reason, as Orin Kerr of George Washington University recently observed, is that he has done exactly what he said he would do in 2006: namely, convince moderate liberals and conservatives that unanimity is in their interest. In particular, Roberts has been more willing than his predecessor to assign plurality (rather than majority) opinions. In these cases, Roberts begins with the three center-right conservatives (himself, Anthony Kennedy, and Samuel Alito) and tries to attract liberal justices to a narrowly reasoned decision, while letting the hard-line conservatives (Thomas and Antonin Scalia) write separate, more extreme concurrences. In cases with no majority opinion, the narrowest opinion for the winning side has to be followed as if it were the majority opinion. Roberts has followed this strategy–finding a “sweet spot,” as Kerr puts it, by “aiming toward the middle”–in the recent 7-2 and 6-3 cases upholding lethal injections and voter ID requirements. In both cases, the Court issued a moderately conservative controlling opinion joined by one or two liberal justices, followed by more extreme concurrences by Scalia and Thomas. In general, Roberts was willing to trade a slight decline in fully unanimous opinions without dissenting votes (30 percent this term, as opposed to 38 percent last term) for a dramatic decline in polarized 5-4 splits. And a mark of his success is that he voted with the majority in 90 percent of the cases - more frequently than any other justice.
Roberts has also promoted unity by encouraging the Court to hear more business cases, in which the justices tend not to divide along ideological lines. Roberts told me that unanimity in less high-profile cases could promote “a culture and an ethos that says, ‘It’s good when we’re all together,’” and that’s exactly what the business cases–which represent about 45 percent of the court’s docket this year–have achieved.
**I love to read things about the Supreme Court. Even though a huge amount of everyday Americans don’t give them a second thought, they really do effect our everyday lives. And I really wish more people would care and really take more interest in it.
This article was interesting in that it seems that Roberts is trying more for the center then down partisan thinking. Which seems to give the impression that both sides will be given more thought. We will see.
