Sunday, September 7, 2014

Taking Poetic License: The King (Scott Walker) Is Dead But The Queen (Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz) Is Alive


^^^ Two top Democrats: This morning Secretary Kerry is testifying before the Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign operations to discuss the State Department's budget. 

According to Politico, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz invoked strong language Wednesday to attack Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on women’s issues, saying the Republican “has given women the back of his hand.”

“Scott Walker has given women the back of his hand. I know that is stark. I know that is direct. But that is reality,” Wasserman Schultz said at a round-table discussion in Milwaukee, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The Florida Democratic representative continued, extending her comments to the GOP.
“What Republican tea party extremists like Scott Walker are doing is they are grabbing us by the hair and pulling us back. It is not going to happen on our watch,” Wasserman Schultz said.

According to the paper, Wasserman Schultz also criticized Walker for his stance on the minimum wage and abortion restrictions….

When I first heard that I laughed out loud and then the lyrics to one of my favorite Pink songs, The Kind Is Dead But The Queen Is Alive, ran through me head:

Rah rah rah,
Sis boom fuckin' blah
There's a party in your honour, but you won't be there whatever...


And then, of course, as the GOP swarmed and distorted the truth of what she said, actually trying to turn the tables on her and make her look anti-women, she walked it back ~ sort of and said, according to her statement as reported in the Miami Herald:

"I shouldn’t have used the words I used. But that shouldn't detract from the broader point that I was making that Scott Walker’s policies have been bad for Wisconsin women, whether it's mandating ultrasounds, repealing an equal pay law, or rejecting federal funding for preventative health care, Walker's record speaks for itself.  As for the issue of domestic violence, it's unacceptable that a majority of Congressional Republicans opposed this critical legislation, of which I was a proud cosponsor, after blocking its reauthorization for more than a year.”

I am not upset at the Congresswoman for her decision to re-assess the language she used, in fact, I suspect her strategy to take the ability of a GOP that can dish it out but can’t take it is exactly why she is a successful Congresswoman and the Chair of the DNC and I am not ~ she’s a smart woman.

I first saw the Congresswoman in a 2010 clip of a Fort Lauderdale, Florida Town Hall where she was talking to an audience filled with rabid GOP-ERS flipped out over the Affordable Health Care Act.

One rabid audience member, and I’m going on memory here, stood up and made some wild accusation about her being in favor of the Act because of her own cancer. She handled it calmly and professionally. She also peaked my curiosity so I Googled her.

I found out that the Congresswoman had BRCA1 and BRCA2 issues that put her at an increased risk for breast and ovarian cancers.  As a result, she had gone through a year of procedures, treatments and recovery AND she had hardly missed a day’s work for us while doing so.

I have been an admirer of her and her work ever since.

But, let’s not get caught up in the venomous party politics of the GOP ~ let’s be more constructive than and let’s take our lead from the Congresswoman and take a look at the broader point that she was making which really was, as I interpret it, a call out to women and those who love women to vote the entire GOP Neanderthal Party out of office in November based on their real #waronwomen policies.

Fortunately for you and me PoliticusUSA developed a  list of legislation to prove that the GOP war on women is real:

Conservatives like to pretend there is no war on women, so PoliticusUSA developed a running list of legislation to prove that there is indeed a war on women. The proof is in the policy, and policy trumps words.

Included in Hrafnkell Haraldsson’s monthly updates to the “Dirty Thirty”  (a list of egregious legislation proposed or passed) is a surreal list of legislation that proves the war on women is very real…

Let’s give a shout out to one of my personal favorites first ~ the GOP effort to nullify a woman’s constitutional right to privacy because party members cannot stand the Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision that said at least in the first trimester a woman’s private life is none of their business. There’s a good summary of that here.


Now, let’s take a look at some of the other areas of policy where the GOP is slowly working to disconnect the middle-class on down from any government services ~ disconnects that will hit women the hardest. 












We can support the Congresswoman and give Walker and his ilk the back of our hand by hearing her message and by voting accordingly.

Don't forget:


G.

There is so much more information to be found on the GOP #waronwomen ~ Here are a couple more links to some of my reading material if you'd like to know more:









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