Scary Republicans Part 1 - comparing pregnancy from rape to having a child out of wedlock

As the Republicans gather in Florida for their Convention, they are all madly trying to make it sound as though they really aren't as bad as Todd Akin, the Missouri senate candidate whose assertion that you can't get pregnant from "legitimate rape" hit the headlines last week.

Scarily, they don't seem to realise that they are just as bad, if not worse.

Here we have, from the Huffington Post, a video of Tom Smith, a Republican Senate candidate from Pennsylvania, who dug a huge hole for himself when he compared pregnancy resulting from rape to having a child out of wedlock. That's right. You shouldn't actually have to say that a horrible traumatic violation is not even in the same land mass as a consensual loving relationship, but these people make it really important that we do. I wrote the other day that there is insufficient protection for US mothers in this situation from further abuse as rapists seek access to the children conceived as a result of their crime.

What worries me is that the nasty, ill-informed language of US politics will become more entrenched over here. Maybe not by many mainstream politicians yet, but unless we stand up to against these kinds of comments every time they're made, then all sorts of other kinds of hatred spring up. We need our leaders to state the bleedin' obvious in a very calm and matter of fact way. It's strange in a way that it's taken until now for a US President to unequivocally support same sex marriage - and it's to Obama's credit that he was willing to take the political risk to do so. While it's very worrying that we have the sort of politics in the US that requires the President of the US to state unequivocally that rape is rape, it's vital that he does so. Nobody else will.

If Romney and Ryan win in November, hard won rights will be under severe threat. It certainly won't be very pleasant to be LGBT and/or female. This is a crucial time to stand up for liberal values.

Update - and there's more. Check here for Scary Republicans part 2.

All sorts of lovely reasons to vote Republican

An oldie but a goodie.

Please don't get the idea that Mitt Romney is a moderate.....

A Facebook friend of mine last night summed up my feelings about the Republican caucuses in Iowa perfectly when he said:

Looking forward to finding out what flat earth, anti-woman, homophobic, creationist, global warming denier the Republicans vote for in #Iowa

Truth is, any of this bunch is enough to give any self respecting liberal, anyone who cares about equality, the absolute creeps.

The most radical of them favours same sex civil unions, but would still implement a constitutional ban on abortion. He only got 1%.

A quarter of the Republican voters of Iowa voted for a man, Rick Santorum, who doesn't think abortion should be allowed in any circumstances and wants the US Constitution to bar same sex marriage. In contrast, the so called moderate, Mitt Romney who polled just 8 votes more, only thinks that the Federal Government should not recognise same sex marriage and states can decide for themselves whether they can ban abortion. Bearing in mind that most Americans don't travel much outside their home state, that could make life very difficult for women who find themselves unexpectedly, or dangerously, pregnant.

Every single Republican would repeal Obama's healthcare reforms, which stopped insurance companies denying cover to sick people and ensured that the poorest had some access to health care. I literally don't understand how anyone can defend denying medical treatment to someone on the grounds that they can't pay for it.

We can't be sure, until November 6th, that the guy the Republicans choose (and it will be a guy, I think, given Michele Bachmann's thankfully poor performance in Iowa) will lose to Obama.  Any of them would be an awful prospect as President. Even if the nominee is not officially part of the Tea Party, he'll be advocating pretty much their agenda.

As far as the GOP contest goes, we'll have to wait to see whether Santorum's surge in Iowa will have an effect on the New Hampshire vote next week. He's pretty much in the margin of error of oblivion there at the moment with around 3% in the polls while Romney's lead is widening. The former Massachusetts governor is polling somewhere between 35 and 40%. Just over a month ago, he had Newt Gingrich giving him a run for his money. However with the latest poll showing that 16% of voters are still to make up their minds, if Santorum can get enough of the anti Romney vote behind him to give his campaign momentum, it would put him in a good position as the primaries head to the more socially conservative states.

The challenge for the Obama Campaign is to get their message across - at the moment they are trumpeting 5 major achievements: Putting Americans back to work (challenge of that one is to make people feel he's on their side as the economy continues to falter), making college affordable, reforming Wall Street, repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell and the biggie, affordable healthcare. He needs to come up with a positive vision for his second term while making sure that the grassroots organisation that won him the last election is in place. If people going to vote for him, they need to be registered and the sooner that happens the better.

I suppose we should spare a thought for the friend of mine who put a bet on Rick Santorum winning Iowa and who lost out by 8 votes. He clearly read the runes correctly.

If we are lucky, though, the Iowa contest will have seen the end of Rick Perry, who changed his position on abortion after undergoing what he described as a "transformation" after watching a DVD   watching his poll rating sink. He's suspended his campaign after winning just 5% of the vote.

Anyway, one contest down, just another 45 weeks of excitement to go........

BBC misogyny is so 2011

You would expect, wouldn't you, that a public service broadcaster with a deserved reputation for quality as the BBC has, would be very careful to make sure that it didn't discriminate against any one group of people.

Unfortunately not. This year, the Corporation has fired off one insult after another at women and seems to be enjoying it.

The Corporation is more than happy to put together all or mostly male panels to discuss the issues of the day. Question Time is the biggest offender, but other current affairs programmes are as bad. How often have I watched Politics Scotland and not seen one female voice on it?

And what does it matter? Well, actually it does. Take, for example, the offensive and appalling way in which Chairman of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee Ian Davidson treated SNP MP Eilidh Whiteford. I'd say that the women across parties that I spoke to were almost all on Eilidh Whiteford's side, as I was. The boys, however, were allowed to brush it all off as inconsequential.

I wrote earlier this year about my complaint to the Corporation over the way its reporters spoke about Miriam Gonzalez Durantez during our Conference this year. More than three months on and after a follow up, no response has been received.

To add insult to injury, the shortlist for BBC Sports Personality of the Year was 100% male, cos women just don't do sport do they?  I mean, I don't even know that much about sport and I managed to suggest a good few names. Our own Jo Swinson, along with some other MPs, protested and the BBC was sniffy in its response.  Apparently allowing a virtually all male cast of newspaper sports editors, along with lads' mags such as Nuts and Zoo is fine by them.

And then yesterday, not having learned anything, BBC Magazine publishes its faces of 2011 - the women. They couldn't even think of an actual woman for December, so they picked Edinburgh Zoo's new panda Tian Tian, or Sweetie. Now, heaven knows I love that panda. She is gorgeous and I'm looking forward to seeing her snuggly little face again next week. Her place in that list, though, is completely inappropriate. I accept the list is women who have made the news rather than achieved highly, but even so, being human should be a pre-requisite.

Why pick the panda when in December you could have had Mona Eltahawy, the fearless and feisty journalist who's been reporting on Egypt's troubles for much of the year. At the end of November, she was beaten and sexually assaulted by the security forces there, an experience she wrote movingly and angrily about in the Guardian.  The Times' Caitlin Moran, who recently won the Galaxy Book of the Year for her brilliant How to be a Woman,  could also have featured there.

In October, rather than pick a Spanish Duchess who got married, why not choose one of the Nobel Peace Prize winners, Tawakul Karman, who has put herself at great risk to champion the cause of women's rights in Yemen?

And why no mention for Elisabeth Sladen, the actress who played the character so many girls of my generation wanted to be: Sarah Jane Smith in Doctor Who?

You would also think that Angela Merkel would figure somewhere in that list. She is, after all, one of the key leaders in the Eurozone.

I was, however, pleased to see Gabrielle Giffords in the BBC's list. The Arizona Congresswoman's remarkable recovery after taking a bullet through the brain has been one of the most inspirational stories of the year. Sarah Burton, too, for designing Kate Middleton's wedding dress, showcased the Alexander MacQueen label to perfection and deserves her place.

But there's no place for either woman who wrote the stories behind two of the biggest films of the year, the final instalment of the Harry Potter series and Breaking Dawn Part 1.

Nor our excellent sporting champions like gymnast Tweddle, swimmer Rebecca Adlington or triathlete Chrissie Wellington.

But why does all this even matter anyway?

Sure, we have relatively decent rights for women in this country, but there are those who would limit maternity leave and employment protection given half a chance. We see from around the world what happens when we're not vigilant in advancing the feminist cause. Many of us were shocked to see Egyptian security forces viciously beat a female protestor the other week in footage. Well, that was nothing compared to what, according to yesterday's New York Times, they  had in store for some for other women.  It's pretty obvious that these women's rights were violated - but we need to get to the stage where the violations don't happen in the first place.

But that's Egypt, not even a democracy. Nothing to do with us. Let's have a look at the USA then. This is a place where women are arrested for murdering their babies if they miscarry.  And there seems to be even more pandering to the religious right than usual in the race to be the Republican Presidential candidate as Digby's Hullabaloo wrote yesterday. It made me feel a bit queasy to see a report in the Daily Fail about a young girl who chose not to have chemotherapy when she was pregnant and who died when her baby was a few days old. These are heartbreaking choices, but it worries me that women who make the other choice risk disapproval and public censure. The pressure on women in the Bible Belt of the USA in that circumstance must be immense and I wouldn't like to think that women were pressured into choosing certain death for themselves.

We need to be talking much more openly about things like the effect of the free availability of internet porn on the behaviour of young men and their expectations from a sexual relationship. The potential for the sexual and violent abuse of young girls is clear.

Many girls and women spend too much time obsessing over their size and shape because a misogynist, male dominated media implies that finding a life partner is all that matters, and you have no chance of doing that if you don't conform to what they say is beautiful.

It's about time women were given their rightful, equal place in BBC coverage. Their misogyny is so last year. Let's hope that 2012 is the year when they start to wake up to the realities of life.

How the US Republicans get it so, so wrong

I am not going to have a lot of spare time this week, so blogging will be very light. I can't, however, ignore the fact that I'm waking up this morning to a former US President, who in my opinion did so much to make the world a more dangerous place, justifiying the use of torture.

He comes from a party who spent an enormous amount of time and energy poring through civil law suits until they found a piece of ammunition in Bill Clinton's private life to use against him. I remember watching with bemused horror as I watched the farcical process of impeachment, which was doomed to failure, that they enacted.

Yet that same party will turn a blind eye when one of their number unashamedly flouts the bounds of decency and claims that it saves lives. This from the man who ordered the campaign which claimed the lives of thousands of Iraqi civilians and failed to act to curb Israel from its persecution of the Palestinians. The images of homeless and injured children on our televisions do much more to put US and British lives at risk.

I don't believe torture is ever acceptable, whatever the circumstances, and waterboarding, simulating drowning, is most definitely torture. It sickens me that its use can be justified by someone who led the land of the free.

I really think Bush should face some sort of judicial process because of his actions. I have absolutely no confidence that that will ever happen.

And let's just remember that a sizable part of the group of Republicans elected to Congress last week have even more skewed priorities than those in 1994.  These people don't even think their own people should have healthcare. It shows how important an Obama victory in 2012 is.