MOMocrats™

After Osama bin Laden's Death, Time to Restock the Emergency Kits?

Osama bin Laden is dead.  Do you know where your duct tape and canned foods are?

The man we've been tracking for a decade, and the reason so many American lives have been lost in Afghanistan and Iraq, has finally been taken out by Navy SEALS in a Pakistan mission worthy of a Tom Clancy nail-biter.

Cheering crowds celebrated the mission in Washington, D.C. and New York City after President Obama announced late Sunday night that the face of evil we've been chasing for a decade had been killed and buried at sea.

I'm sure that many of us thought this day would never come and that at some point we would read about bin Laden's death from old age in a cold, lonely cave somewhere in the mountains of Pakistan, a disappointing coda to America's anti-terror efforts.

Seeing news reports of the daring raid brings back vivid memories of the days immediately after the 9/11 attacks. None of us will ever forget what it was like to live through that fear, especially here in the shadow of the nation's capital when, for months, the constant hum of fighter jets in the sky became as common as the sounds of neighborhood kids playing outside my house on a warm spring day.

Five Reasons Debbie Wasserman Schultz Will Rock the DNC

Guys have been running the Democratic National Committee for the past two and a half decades. The last time a woman was in charge of the nationwide Democratic show, we hadn't yet heard Bill Clinton deny that he'd had a relationship with "that woman."

Takes you back, doesn't it?

That's all about to change as Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz stands ready to move into one of the most important roles in her party -- the chair of the Democratic National Committee. So what can we expect from her? Business as usual or is she going to show the Dems a path to electoral victory in 2012 they haven't thought about yet? As she takes the helm as the Democrat's chief fundraiser and strategist, it's fair to ask, especially if you're not from her home state of Florida, why Debbie? Here are just five good reasons we can assume that Wasserman Schultz is the perfect woman for the job:

GOP Budget Wars on Reproductive Health

What's happened to the whole Republican "the economy and jobs are our first priority" mantra from the 2010 elections? Eric Cantor can say it all he wants, but that isn't making it true. Instead of jobs, conservatives are once again focused on our lady parts. While I am sort of getting used to the new TSA pat downs, I have to draw the line when it comes to the government getting its hands on my privates.

The GOP is focusing on the budget, but not for creating jobs -- they are trying to impact substantive issues through bills that control spending, as they recently did in their (thankfully) failed attempt to redefine rape in the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act." It initially called for limiting the availability of Medicaid funds for abortion only to women who had been "forcibly" raped.

Since the original passage of the Hyde Amendment in 1976, no federal taxpayer funds have been available to cover the cost of abortions through Medicaid except in instances of rape, incest or if the life of the mother is in danger. The forcible rape exception, introduced by Representative Chris Smith (R-N.J.), didn't explicitly spell out in the bill what that meant, but a variety of organizations, including NOW and EMILY's List, believed it would exclude victims of statutory rape, date rape, rape victims who initially said "no" but weren't able to fend off their attackers, and women who feared for their lives unless they acquiesced to a rapist's demands.

The Shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the Language of Violence

Before the horrendous assassination attempt on Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the shooting of 20 people, leaving six of them dead, Giffords knew that she had been specially marked by by her opponents.  Tea Party conservatives wanted her out of office, even though she is a conservative Democrat, and weren't afraid to use thinly-veiled calls for violence against her to achieve their goal.

Her opponent in her 2010 Congressional race staged an event to "target" her by offering voters a chance to shoot an M16. Her Tucson office had been vandalized after her vote on the health care bill in March of last year, as had other Congressional offices.  And Sarah Palin advocated for getting her out of office -- her PAC site posting a map of the country with a graphic of the cross-hairs of a gun-sight on each of the offices she wanted her chosen candidates to win, one of those being Giffords'.  The Sarah Palin PAC site has taken down the map, but you can see it at her Facebook Fan Page.  Spokespeople for Palin now are claiming that the marks on the map were not intended to be cross-hairs -- you be the judge.  It would certainly be consistent with her continuing theme of calling on conservatives to "reload."

Palin certainly isn't the only extreme conservative who's felt that it's appropriate political gamesmanship to use slightly veiled language of violence to promote political agendas.

John Boehner & Compromise Go Together Like Bologna & Peanut Butter

It's November 3, 2010 or to borrow a gimmick from Keith Olbermann, it's the first day since our nation declared it was changing the change. Or should I say embracing the patented obstructionism of John Boehner's Republican party?

The wave of Republican candidates that swept into office last night was not a surprise based on the political drama of the last year. I knew there would be more red than blue on the cable news maps of America on election night. And I expected John Boehner to end up as Speaker of the House.

What I didn't expect was his ability to ratchet up the level of disingenuousness quite so much. When it became clear from the midterm results that the Democrats had squandered their 2008 moment of opportunity, Boehner took the stage. He said that he talked with President Obama about how "he [the President] will work with us."

Think It's OK to Stay Home for the Mid-Term Elections?

Think again.

H/T to Mike Kruger on Facebook.

Insurers Announce End of Child-Only Insurance Policies

If you think this week is a time for celebrating as the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act going into effect this week, think again.  For you skeptics (myself included!), today comes the announcement from several major insurers that they will drop certain policies that would cover children who have pre-existing conditions rather than comply with the new law and lose money for their shareholders.

Yeah, that's just the kind of country we apparently live in.  I'm waiting for the next shoe to drop in the not-entirely-unexpected insurance story I call, "Is Anyone Surprised?"

Read more about it:

Washington Post: Some Insurers Halt New Child-only Policies

Wall Street Journal: Some U.S. Health Insurers To Stop Selling Child-Policies

NPR: Health Insurers Skirt New Requirements

Forbes: Do Health Insurers Have a Moral Obligation to Sick Children?

Politics Daily: On 6-Month B-day of Health Law, Will Patient Protection Win it Some Love?

Image by Joanne aka PunditMom.

Want Change? Vote for a Mom!

For many, it's primary election season. It's hard to imagine that we're heading out to the polls again, but there you have it. If you have a chance, I'd like to ask you to vote for one of my favorite Mothers of Intention. I'm not going to call them "mama grizzlies" because, well, I'm not a fan of the term and I don't appreciate how Sarah Palin and her crowd are trying to usurp the idea of political motherhood from those of us who were in on the ground floor.

Anyway, here are three moms who deserve your vote. If you live anywhere in the shadow of the nation's capital, you should keep your eye on these women who were motivated by issues that impact their children and their families to take the bold step of running for political office to help make things better for everyone's children, even if that means taking a little less time for their own kids:

Sarah Palin, My Sarah Palin

I learned the hard way about two weeks ago, that when you have an idea, especially a good one, you'd better not sit on it too long because someone else will beat you to the punch.

As all writers, I keep a list of long-term post ideas. And on my list (really, I swear) was one about how Democratic women need a Sarah Palin of our own if we want to give our national political aspirations a good jump start! Not a Sarah Palin who isn't sure what newspapers she reads or the Sarah Palin who can't keep three key points in her head at a time, but the Sarah Palin who seems to excite the women of her political party beyond any logical explanation.

Unfortunately, Rebecca Traister and Anna Holmes beat me to the punch. Of course, because of who they are (Traister has a new book coming out that I can't wait to read and interview her about), they were able to get an op-ed placed in the New York Times entitled A Palin of Our Own.  But their point deserves a little more discussion.

Dear MSM, Mock Us and Ignore Us at Your Peril

The media love to mock women in the political world by using sexist terms that demean us and make us out to be something not worthy of serious consideration. We saw that time and time again during the 2008 presidential election as talking heads not-so-subtly suggested that Hillary Clinton was only a viable candidate for national office because we felt sorry for her after Bill cheated on her. And instead of focusing on Sarah Palin's qualifications, or lack thereof, as John McCain's running mate, the media focused on her looks and questioned whether a mother of five with young children still at home was up to playing with the big boys.

There's still plenty of that when it comes to powerful women -- one of the most recent examples is an article in the Washington Post about Elizabeth Warren, where they question whether she is a "zealot" because of her passion to help middle class families in these horrible economic times. When I see things like that, it's hard not to wonder whether a man in that position would have been described differently -- I'm betting a male counterpart would be described more positively as something like a "devoted advocate" rather than a "zealot," which has such a negative inference. (Not to mention the fact that the article was, yet again, another story about a politically powerful woman that got placed in the Style section. But that's another post for another day.)

Another increasingly common phenomenon I've been noticing is that some news outlets just act like we don't exist, implying through omission that it's just the big ol' menfolk who are out there trying to make change, with hardly a woman to be found!

The most recent outrageous example is a Politico article entitled, More Bloggers Throwing Hats in Ring.