Posts Tagged ‘women’
Church of England refuses to allow female bishops – again!
The Church of England’s governing body blocked a move…to permit women to serve as bishops in a vote so close it failed to settle the question of female leadership and likely condemned the institution to years more debate on the issue.
The General Synod’s daylong debate ended with the rejection of a compromise that was intended to unify the faithful despite differing views on whether women should be allowed in the hierarchy. But backers failed to gain the necessary majority by six votes.
“There is no victory in the coming days,” said Rev. Angus MacLeay. “It is a train crash.”
The defeat was a setback for Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who retires at the end of December, and his successor, Bishop Justin Welby. Both had strongly endorsed a proposed compromise that would have respected the decision of those who objected to the ordination of women bishops.
Instead of ending decades of debate on the issue in the church, the narrow defeat opens the church, which has around 80 million members worldwide, to further years of internal discussions. It also forms an uncomfortable backdrop to the start of Welby’s leadership. He is due to be enthroned in March.
Read ‘em and weep – if you believe in saving organized religion.
Here we have an official state religion in the industrial, educated, enlightened West – and they can’t find it in their hearts to move to equal rights in governance and leadership for women and men.
Phaugh!.
Election proves once again women are smarter than men
If only women voted, President Obama would be on track for a landslide re-election, equaling or exceeding his margin of victory over John McCain in 2008. Mr. Obama would be an overwhelming favorite in Ohio, Florida, Virginia and most every other place that is conventionally considered a swing state. The only question would be whether he could forge ahead into traditionally red states, like Georgia, Montana and Arizona.
If only men voted, Mr. Obama would be biding his time until a crushing defeat at the hands of Mitt Romney, who might win by a similar margin to the one Ronald Reagan realized over Jimmy Carter in 1980. Only California, Illinois, Hawaii and a few states in the Northeast could be considered safely Democratic. Every other state would lean red, or would at least be a toss-up.
Although polls disagree on the exact magnitude of the gender gap…the consensus of surveys points to a large one this year — rivaling the biggest from past elections.
The gender gap is nothing new in American politics. Since 1972, when exit polling became widespread, men and women split their votes in three elections: 1996, 2000, and 2004. They came close to doing so on several other occasions. In 2008, for example, Mr. Obama won resoundingly among women, beating Mr. McCain by 13 points, but only won by a single point among men.
The biggest gender gap to date in the exit polls came in 2000, when Al Gore won by 11 points among women, but George W. Bush won by 9 points among men — a 20-point difference. The numbers this year look very close to that…
And look what we got? Another war based on lies and corruption.
The gender gap has been growing over time. It was nearly absent, for instance, in 1972 and 1976, the first two years that the exit polls tested it.
But after the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, reproductive rights became a greater focus in presidential elections — particularly under Ronald Reagan in 1980, who was more willing to campaign on the issue of abortion than most of his predecessors. The gender gap jumped to 17 points that year, with men much more likely to vote for Mr. Reagan…
Presidential candidates have faced increasing pressure to align with the bases of their parties on social issues. Mr. Obama reversed his previous position to support same-sex marriage this year. Mr. Romney has long since abandoned a number of moderate stances he took on social issues as governor of Massachusetts, when he said he supported abortion rights. So long as the ideological gap between the parties grows, the gender gap may grow as well.
More so than most articles on the topic, Nate Silver addresses rational behavior by women, irrational reactions by men – based on bigotry and ignorance. I realize this is colored by demographics and economic bands; but, another factor is the Republican Party’s policy of demonstrating as much contempt for women as they have for non-whites.
They apparently think no one notices. Especially women.
Romney’s empty “binders full of women”
Facebook page an overnight sensation with almost 300,000 likes by Wednesday morning
Mitt Romney showed up Tuesday night talking about “binders full of women” being brought to him when he was governor. Sounds kind of kinky and certainly not something you want to be touting.
The phrase was part of Romney’s answer to a question from an audience member at the second presidential debate about how he would “rectify the inequalities in the workplace.” Referring to when he took over as Massachusetts governor, he said, “I had the chance to pull together a Cabinet, and all the applicants seemed to be men,” he said. “I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks?’ and they brought us whole binders full of women.”
The “binders” moment went viral immediately on Twitter, spawning @RomneysBinders and @womaninabinder Twitter handles. As of Wednesday morning, almost 300,000 people had supported a Facebook page about what a politically dumb statement it was. Romney may soon say it was “inelegant” phrasing or he didn’t finish his statement or some other excuse, but the comment shows why voters, especially women, don’t trust him and don’t believe he has their back…
In fairness, “binders” was most likely a slip of the tongue. But Romney said it in an effort to obfuscate and pivot from the issue at hand: equality for women. He avoided the real question, and that, and his remark, spoke volumes.
Even as a slip of the tongue, this odd phrase betrays Romney’s true lack of understanding, knowledge and comfort level on women’s equality.
I’m hard-pressed to understand why anyone trusts Romney. The man is a soft plastic-politician, ready to change his form and substance depending not only according to the crowd he’s talking down to; but, the year, season, and wind direction seem to have substantive effect, too.
As the Republican Party moved further and further to the Right, so did he. That is – in the primaries needed to get him the nomination. Then, he pirouettes to the center and expects the most gullible electorate in the Western world to accept his word — pressing trust beyond belief.
I hope I’m not wrong. I hope I’m not overestimating American voters.
Elizabeth Warren on anti-woman issues raised by Republicans
If I still lived in Massachusetts, I would be voting for Elizabeth Warren. I wouldn’t have voted for Scott Brown in the first place, because I’m not foolish enough to believe any of the campaign promises made by Republicans. Even so-called moderates.
I raise my questions about Democrats to Democrats; but, this is a question simply that addresses all women, all Americans. The Party-formerly-known-as-Republican has chosen to bring back questions resolved in the 20th Century to satisfy the 19th Century ideology they now serve. I cannot support politics whose only direction is backwards.
Sex matters – Guys recognize cars and women recognize birds best
Women are better than men at recognizing living things and men are better than women at recognizing vehicles.
That is the unanticipated result of an analysis Vanderbilt psychologists performed on data from a series of visual recognition tasks collected in the process of developing a new standard test for expertise in object recognition.
“These results aren’t definitive, but they are consistent with the following story,” said Isabel Gauthier. “Everyone is born with a general ability to recognize objects and the capability to get really good at it. Nearly everyone becomes expert at recognizing faces, because of their importance for social interactions. Most people also develop expertise for recognizing other types of objects due to their jobs, hobbies or interests. Our culture influences which categories we become interested in, which explains the differences between men and women…”
“Our motivation was to assess the role that expertise plays in object recognition with a new test that includes many different categories, so we weren’t looking for this result,” said Professor of Psychology Isabel Gauthier. She directs the lab where post-doctoral fellow Rankin McGugin conducted the study.
“This isn’t the first time that sex differences have been found in perceptual tasks. For example, previous studies have shown that men have an advantage in mental rotation tasks. In fact, a recent study looking only at car recognition found that men were better than women but attributed this to the male advantage in mental rotation. Our finding that women are better than men at recognizing objects in other categories suggests that this explanation is incorrect…”
It took the multi-category analysis to reveal that face recognition abilities are correlated to the ability to recognize different object categories for men and women. For example, men who are better at recognizing vehicles also tend to be better at recognizing faces, while women who are better at recognizing living things tend to be better at recognizing faces…
I’m left without an opinion. I haven’t spent any time on the topic because in general I’ve had to confront teaching an individual a particular skill, bit of knowledge, technique. My focus has always been on utilizing existing understanding, countering incorrect – orten ideologically-derived – comprehension.
Now, my curiosity is piqued.
Romney tells millionaire donors what he really thinks of ordinary Americans who support President Obama
During a private fundraiser earlier this year, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told a small group of wealthy contributors what he truly thinks of all the voters who support President Barack Obama. He dismissed these Americans as freeloaders who pay no taxes, who don’t assume responsibility for their lives, and who think government should take care of them. Fielding a question from a donor about how he could triumph in November, Romney replied:
There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.
Romney went on: [M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives…
Here is Romney expressing his disdain for Americans who back the president…
Romney told the contributors that women are open to supporting me, but that we are having a much harder time with Hispanic voters, and if the Hispanic voting bloc becomes as committed to the Democrats as the African American voting block has in the past, why, we’re in trouble as a party and, I think, as a nation…
To assure the donors that he and his campaign knew what they were doing, Romney boasted about the consultants he had retained, emphasizing that several had worked for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
I have a very good team of extraordinarily experienced, highly successful consultants, a couple of people in particular who have done races around the world. I didn’t realize it. These guys in the US—the Karl Rove equivalents—they do races all over the world: in Armenia, in Africa, in Israel. I mean, they work for Bibi Netanyahu in his race. So they do these races and they see which ads work, and which processes work best, and we have ideas about what we do over the course of the campaign.
You can RTFA for more of the disgusting details. Class warfare is alive and well in the party-formerly-known-as-Republican. It’s always been there and it’s becoming more extreme as the party itself becomes more extreme, dedicated exclusively to corporate power and all that has meant historically.
Romney’s flunkies haven’t been able to deny any of this. It is available on video after all. These aren’t audio recordings. They’re publicly available online. In living color. In 50 shades of greenbacks.
NATO air strike kills eight women in Laghman Province
Bodies of some of the women killed in the air strike – on the way to hospital morgue
At least eight women have died in a NATO air strike in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Laghman, local officials say…NATO has conceded that between five and eight civilians died as it targeted insurgents, and offered condolences.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai “strongly condemned” the deaths and has sent officials to the area to investigate…
Major Adam Wojack, a spokesman for the Isaf international forces, said between five and eight civilians could have been killed, and said an investigation was under way…
He told the BBC that a group of some 45 insurgents had been targeted by an ISAF unit, and many had been killed…
At least seven women were also reported to have been injured. Provincial health director Latif Qayumi said some of them injured were girls aged as young as 10.
The Laghman governor’s office said a number of civilians had gone to the mountains to collect wood and nuts from a forest in the Noarlam Saib valley, a common practice in the area…
In August, UN figures suggested the number of civilians killed and injured in the first half of 2012 had fallen 15% on the same period of 2011…Analysts said increased sensitivity on both sides about the impact of civilian deaths had led to more carefully targeted attacks.
In his statement, President Hamid Karzai expressed his “sorrow” over the incident, saying he “strongly condemns the airstrike by Nato forces which resulted in the deaths of eight women”.
I’m a supporter of risking technology in battle instead of human beings. The context of war and the politics that obviously have failed – leading to war – are a separate group of questions.
Regardless, the use of airborne technology demands information on the ground surpassing whatever it was that was used to justify this air strike. This wasn’t a latency problem lasting a few seconds at the speed of radio communications. This was someone making a decision based on inadequate data about civilians and Taliban in the same wooded area.
Either the rules of engagement must be ratcheted down to a level allowing for humanity – or information gathering has to improve. Results like this are unacceptable by any standard.
Record number of women nominated in Congressional races
Democrats and Republicans have nominated women as candidates in a record 181 U.S. Senate and House races that will be decided in November’s general election, the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University said on Thursday.
The number of women nominated for U.S. House seats surged to 163 for the November election, breaking the previous record of 141 in 2004, the Center said.
The parties nominated 18 women for U.S. Senate seats, compared with the 2004 record of 14.
Debbie Walsh, the Center’s director, said the increase in nominations for congressional seat was the biggest since 1992, which was dubbed the “Year of the Woman…Many of the same factors are in play: the crucial first election after reapportionment and redistricting, news events underscoring the need for women’s voices in policymaking, and a presidential election year generating political excitement.”
About 70 percent of the women were nominated by the Democratic Party.
Gee. Anyone surprised by the difference between parties?
The secret weapon behind England’s bridge team triumph
There was dedication, heroic endurance and dazzling skill, not to mention fierce rivalry and even drugs testing…And in the end there was a victory for England, secured by a secret weapon which had apparently irritated the French.
But this was not the Olympics: it was the bridge world’s equivalent. And the secret weapon was not new technology, but a dab of lavender oil.
Last week the six members of the England women’s bridge team won gold medals for the game at the World Mind Sports Games…
Heather Dhondy, Nicola Smith, Nevena Senior, Sally Brock, Fiona Brown and Susan Stockdale
They had spent countless hours training, and admitted seeing a sports psychiatrist to reinforce their will to win.
They worked on diet and fitness to get through 13 single-set games and four two-day matches in a fortnight – although they were probably not as fit as the Indonesian team which was sent to an Army-style boot camp prior to last year’s world championship.
For the first time, however, the women have let slip what may be the secret of world domination at bridge…“We dab ourselves with drops of lavender oil before every match,” said Mrs Dhondy, of Hendon, north London. “It is supposed to calm the nerves and improve concentration – and it sometimes annoys our opponents…”
This was confirmed in June, when the English beat a strong French team on their way to winning the 2012 European Championships.
Mrs Smith, of Chelsea, south west London, said: “Although I kept it quiet, I speak French…“So I knew that one of their team was saying: ‘Something smells of toilet cleaner. It’s disgusting.’
“I don’t know for sure if it put them off, but the moment she started complaining about the smell, I knew we had the upper hand.”
Aromotherapy is an interesting medical study. I never thought of it as part of sports training – especially when Western sports are so often sponsored by trendy food and drink and deodorant companies.
I can see it coming. Perfume and cologne sponsorship for Olympic teams. Smell faster. be faster!
Holler at your Congress-critter to support Bernie Sanders' bill to 
