Victoria Brownworth

I have been busy starting an independent publishing house for kid’s books and trying not to go crazy over what’s happening in the Gulf and what’s not happening in  Washington. Then this morning I get an email in which a friend asks:

Did you see the cover of Newsweek this week?  “St. Sarah” (Palin).  Scary as all get out.

I let out the same sigh I let out every time I get an over-wrought email or read an over-wrought post about Palin somewhere. But this one  does prompt me to respond and to think about the comment which came, as the “Oh no!!!!!! Sarah Palin–run for your lives!!!!” comments always do,  from someone who has center left politics. (And please don’t tell me there’s a left in America. There isn’t. There’s a center left, there’s a center, there’s a center right, there’s a right and there’s an extreme right. Alas, no extreme left. That handful of octogenerian Commies in Greenwich Village  still arguing Trotsky v. Stalin does not count. Seriously. When we get a left here like we had in the 1960s or like much of Europe still has, then we can talk leftists. Until then it’s center left definition for you.)

Here’s what I think about Sarah Palin. I don’t care about her. She’s pretty, she’s charismatic, she has great skin, she wears clothes beautifully. But I do not care about her or whether Inside Edition thinks she had a boob job because they can’t tell the difference between a form-fitting t-shirt and a suit jacket. I do not care who she supports or what she says about the Gulf. She’s marginal. She’s relevant only in as much as she is the prop to keep Obama from completely gutting his presidency. Without Sarah Palin, what would Obama do? He’d have to go back to hating Hillary. He’d have to find a new deflection from his own massive mis-steps.

That’s what I think about Palin. 

No one can hold Palin accountable for anything she says because really, she only answers to her fan base, which is large but also largely marginal, and the press which can’t decide if it loves or hates her but does know it likes her on magazine covers because she sells. Well.

So why the center left’s obsession with her? Sure a lot of people like her–she’s incredibly charismatic. but she has no real power. Why has anyone forgotten that? To paraphrase Gwen Stephani, she’s just a girl in the world. Obama is president. He has he power. Doesn’t use it for squat, but he does have it. 

So when I think about Palin, I think the focus on her from the center-left  Obama supporters  like moveon and the DSCC and Code Pink and people who laud themselves as progressives is all about getting our attention off Obama and saying, “No—look over there! THAT’S what’s scary.”

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has,appropriately, if belatedly, become the lead story in all news media. The scenes from the Gulf are heart-breaking, the stories increasingly disturbing and tragic.
 It’s understandable, then, that the issues of government accountability and the transparency promised and lauded by Candidate Obama, but ignored and dismissed by President Obama have been relegated specifically to the Obama Administration’s role in the oil spill and subsequent environmental disaster.
 But for Pennsylvania voters, there’s an issue that has been buried on the back pages, but which can be neither ignored nor dismissed.
 According to Joe Sestak, the Democratic candidate for the Senate and a current member of the House, he was offered a job by the Obama Administration through former President Bill Clinton to stay out of the Pennsylvania Senate race. The Administration backed Sen. Arlen Specter and did not want a primary fight.
 Sestak first raised the topic in an interview in late February where it seemed to fizzle and die–although he repeated the accusation as an example of how he was not a Washington insider when his numbers were in the single digits.
 But with his win against Specter, the story resurfaced. Democrats waved their hands as if it was just so much gnattery, Republicans said it was an example of the corruption of the Obama Administration and legal scholars on both sides squirmed at the harsh reality: there’s an actual federal code prohibiting just such quid pro quo actions.
 The squirminess transferred to the President himself when in a press conference two weeks ago–his first in ten months–a reporter went off the topic of the oil spill to ask about the Sestak story.
 Instead of being up front and transparent as he should have been from the outset, Obama said that a response would be “forthcoming” on the subject, which was, he said, being reviewed internally.
 Oh.
 The answer finally came on May 29–over two months after Sestak first made the claim. Yes, the offer had been made. But it was not improper and no big deal.
 Wrong.
 It doesn’t take an anti-Obama conservative to understand the law. Consider the response from a well-known legal expert who is not a conservative–law professor and constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley.
 Turley was stunned by the revelation and said so in a column mere hours after the White House finally released its months-in-coming “yeah, we offered him a job, so what?” response. 
  Turley noted: “It is remarkable how quickly Democrats have forgiven such abuses and condemned those who object as simply naive. This is precisely what moral relativists in politics want of voters: to treat all political corruption as a fixed reality of government.”
           Turley went on to say, “The White House is not allowed to trade government positions for political advantages. It is particularly abusive to hand out positions in the intelligence field–particularly with the continued intelligence failures of the last year. What makes this even more outrageous is that Sestak did not even qualify for the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board [the position offered to Sestak].”
 What Turley didn’t know when he wrote those words was that Sestak was not the only candidate to be offered a job to stay out of a primary.
 On June 2, Andrew Romanoff, who is challenging incumbent Sen. Michael Bennett in Colorado, said he had been offered one of three positions by Obama’s deputy Chief of Staff. Romanoff said he was told two high-ranking positions at USAID and the director’s position at the U.S. Trade and Development Agency “might be available to me were I not pursuing the Senate race.”
  Sestak should feel undersold: The U.S. Trade and Development Agency director’s position has a $55 million budget and a staff of 78 people. It also requires Senate confirmation.
            There have been numerous–and unanswered–questions about what job Sestak was really offered. Most insiders agree he was actually offered the job of Secretary of the Navy because the current SoN is considering leaving. Given the choices offered to Romanoff, it’s difficult to believe that Sestak would have been offered so much less.
 The Romanoff revelation only serves to raise more questions about the Sestak debacle. It also raises serious questions about what role the President has been playing in the primaries.
  For Pennsylvanians, the questions need answers. Sestak only made the offer public in an effort to raise his own numbers in the polls. But Sestak is a Democrat and if elected would answer to the current president–also a Democrat–as well as to the people of Pennsylvania. The Obama Administration was wrong and likely criminal in offering the job to Sestak.
 The blowback for Sestak is that he now looks even sleazier than he did during the primary. Sestak has a history of not answering questions. Pennsylvanians still want to know why he was forced to resign from the only job he ever had, the Navy. Sestak says what he said when pressed for details about Obama’s job offer: it’s not relevant.
 This surly attitude that both the Obama White House and our own candidate have toward voters is more than a little disconcerting. We expected it from the likes of Bush and Cheney, but this was supposed to be a new day in government and a new era of transparency. Sestak himself said his election was a “victory for democracy.” So why does it look so much like old-school Beltway politics as usual?
 The fact is, the right shouldn’t be leading the calls for an independent investigation of these quid pro quo offers–the Democrats should.
 Think about it for ten seconds–never mind who you supported in the Pennsylvania primary or who you might support in the Colorado primary. Who do you want to choose who runs or doesn’t? The President of the U.S. or the voters?
 This isn’t a monarchy. We choose our politicians by voting, not by presidential fiat. And it would seem that if any more such scandals are revealed about this White House, voters are going to choose someone else come 2012, no matter what Mr. Obama might have to say.

One thing I dislike about the blogosphere–left, center and right–is that people tend to write about things they know nothing about. An opinion is not a fact. Never was, never will be. The case of Joe Sestak v. Barack Obama is a clear case in point.

The so-called left blogosphere has been a big supporter of Joe Sestak, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania. (I say so-called left, because most never seem to get on Obama for all the things he does that when Bush did them, brought about screaming, recriminations, much gnashing of teeth and cries that it was the End of Democracy as We Know It. Now? Still torturing–oh well. Not our problem, since a Democrat is doing it.)

Why was the center left for Sestak? Because he wasn’t Arlen Specter, the incumbent senator who was a life-long Republican who turned Democrat a year before the primary.

No left-leaning Pennsylvanian was pro-Specter in their hearts, even though 47.5 percent of us voted for him in the primary. Those who voted for Specter just disliked Sestak more and we already knew who Specter was. And Specter was almost always good for Pennsylvania. 

That said, Sestak is the candidate now. So why is he trying to blow up his candidacy? Why is he fingering the President–who’s in his own party–as a behind-the-scenes demagogue who lies to the press and does shady quid pro quo deals?

Those of us who have watched and written about Sestak from home base for several years are pretty sure why–because the guy really doesn’t know what he’s doing. He loves the limelight (which he accused Specter of, but which he’s equally guilt of) and he really doesn’t much like to go to Congress and do his job. (Despite running as a Washington outsider, he has spent his entire adult life from the age of 23 working for the federal government–first as a Navy man for 31 years until he was forced to resign in 2005, then as a member of the House since 2007. That’s a Washington insider. Really.) He has the worst atttendance record of any member of the House who hasn’t been seriously ill.

So why would we want him in the Senate?

The meme in Pennsylvania was that he would bring something new to the table. But no one asked the compelling question: What?

Sestak ran on not being Specter. He did a good job of that. But now he’s out on his own, he can’t use Specter as his prop. So what does he do? He flames President Obama.

Way to go, Joe!

If the Obama Administration offered Sestak a job, as Sestak claims, to stay out of the primary, what was the rationale? More’s the point–what was the job?

As Pennsylvanians who are paying attention know, Sestak doesn’t like to answer questions. When asked repeatedly why he was forced to resign from the Navy, he literally waves his hand in the air and says it doesn’t matter. Really? It was your only job in your life except for your three absentee-filled years in the House. Why can’t your constituents and potential constituents know why you were forced to leave it? Not answering makes you look guilty of something to supporters as well as denigrators. So just give us the facts.

Ditto with this job issue which Sestak raised and then backed away from like a bad smell. An accusation of bribery against an administration that has pledged transparency isn’t nothing–no matter what the left blogosphere says. It doesn’t take a salivating Republican to see that there is something off here. But what it is? 

Non-Pennsylvanians and bloggers lauding Sestak for ”standing up to the man”—who in this case, let me remind everyone is Barack Obama–really need to get at least a little bit of a grip.

Sestak ain’t no outsider. He’s a career militarist whose support for both wars is well-known and well-documented. He was to the right of the newly Democratic Arlen Specter and he is to the right of Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, who the same people who are lauding Sestak are trying to crucify. (Being a fan of neither, I’m merely confused by this. Pick a stance and stick with it, people.)

We all get that this is an anti-incumbency year. But Sestak is an incumbent.  Why has everyone forgotten this?

Let’s say for the sake of the argument currently raging that Sestak was indeed offered a job by Bill Clinton (because as everyone knows, Barack Obama just adores Mr. Clinton and always has him do such secretive work for him) so that Sestak would stay out of the race. This would be the same Bill Clinton whom Sestak once worked for.

What was the reason for this? Why would Obama commit himself on paper to such a thing? Specter didn’t have anything on Obama and he could consider himself lucky to have the Democratic establishment, starting with Obama, support him.

But they did.  

That didn’t require forcing Sestak out of the race. Or offering him a job. So what’s the real story here–because both parties have made this a story and now the Republicans once again get to wag their fingers at the Democrats because of what is either a cover-up (when you refiuse to give the facts yet say they don’t matter, it looks and smells like a cover-up) or an act of the most extreme stupidity, it’s difficult to imagine that intellects of the caliber of both Obama and Clinton were involved in it.

Sestak has proven one thing in this tempest: He can’t be trusted. He kisses and tells just enough to make everyone wonder about the person he’s been necking with–in this case, Obama.

Someone is lying. Does it matter who it is? Yes. It matters because in the fifth most populous state, we deserve some answers from the person who wants to be our senator for the next six years.

As a Pennsylvanian who voted for Obama and has to consider voting for Sestak in November, I want to know what happened and why. I also want to know why the President felt the need to dissemble in a specifically legalistic fashion about this question when it came up in his press conference last week.

There is only a scandal because Sestak and Obama have together created one. If there was a real bribe, that’s fraud and a crime–Sestak is, after all, a paid government official. If there wasn’t, then Sestak is a liar and a cheat and why would any Pennsylvanian want to vote for him?

One person comes out of this smelling like a rose: Republican candidate Pat Toomey, who is running a clean campaign based on merit and not on smears. He has refused to say anything about this debacle–which gives him points in a state with two blue tips and a solid red center.

As I said before: Way to go, Joe!

Sestak and Obama need to clean this mess up now. The longer it festers, the longer Pennsylvanians have to turn to a different candidate. Or at least against Sestak.

As for the blogosphere: Get your facts straight before you minimize the damage that’s being done to both Obama’s and Sestak’s credibility in Pennsylvania–which is not just Philadelphia’s Democrats. While you are off on a different scandal and a different gambit months from now, Pennsylvanians will still have to vote in November–and live with the consequences.–VAB

The scenes from the Gulf are heart-breaking for anyone with a heart.

Alas, that seems not to include anyone from British Petroleum, Transoean or even the Obama Administration.

There are myriad questions to ask about who was and is to blame for the explosion that killed eleven and injured 17 and the subsequent oil spill that has sent nearly 100 million gallons of oil into the beautiful Gulf and is destroying everything in its murky path.

I’ve been seriously angered by the media coverage–or lack of same–of the Gulf oil spill which, on May 21, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar called the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.
TV is how the majority of Americans get their news. Plus, a video really is worth a thousand words. Would we have ever even known about Darfur, for example, without those TV images? 
 

So why has it taken 36 days for the TV coverage of this disaster to extend beyond  flyovers showing the breadth of the oil spill or close-ups of the oil invading the wetlands?

Start at the beginning.

 When the West Virginia mining disaster that killed 29 people happened in early April, every national news anchor was at the scene within 24 hours and stayed for days. Interviews were done with miners, families of miners and mining company executives. Viewers got to know how mining towns work, how miners and their families live, what drives communities based on the coal industry.

 The Obama Administration seemed to take its cue from the extended media coverage. President Obama even attended the memorial service held for the dead miners.

 Eleven people were killed in the Gulf oil rig explosion on April 20 and 17 others were seriously injured. In the first days after the explosion, there were searches for the missing and presumed dead riggers. That garnered some news attention, but not the media blitz of the mining disaster. There was no memorial service attended by the President. When that service was held May 24, neither the President nor Vice President were in attendance.  We only learned the names of the victims, their ages, and anything about their lives and their families on the day of the memorial.

Where was the media? We know as little now as we did on April 20 about what it is to be an oil rigger–widely considered to be one of the most dangerous jobs in the nation.
 

I remember quite distinctly ABC news anchor Diane Sawyer grilling mining execs about the WV tragedy. Where was the comparable reportage on the BP and Transocean execs responsible for the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history? Why the difference in coverage? She didn’t hit the Gulf until May 24–and then, only for a day.
 We’re not targeting Sawyer–other news anchors are equally to blame (Katie Couric went to the Gulf the same day Sawyer did, but stayed for two days)–but Sawyer does have the top newscast in the nation. She personally interviewed the families of so many miners. Why did it take her more than a month to speak to a single grieving family member of an oil rigger? The teams covering the Gulf disaster have mostly been third and fourth echelon reporters. Why?
 There are no ready answers, but news you’re not seeing is sometimes tantamount to a news coverup.

Yes, the Gulf oil spill is still a lead story on all national TV news outlets. But it’s the quality of that reporting that is in question. When oil washed up on a place where we used to spend Thanksgivings when we lived in the Gulf–Grande Isle–we thought our heart might just break.  And seeing the oil-coated pelicans and turtles. Ghastly.

What has been most horrifying, however, is seeing Pierre Cousteau, son of the noted Jacques Cousteau, diving in haz-mat gear and giving a play-by-play about what is happening beneath the surface of the water. If we think that this isn’t going to impact the nation and beyond for years to come, think again. When Louisiana’s Tea Party Gov. Bobby Jindal looks like an environmentalist compared with the Obama White House, something is amiss. 

 The cost to the nation from this oil spill is so extreme, it’s truly incalculable. Begin with the actual loss of life then move directly to the loss of ecosystems, the loss of fisheries, the loss of wetlands, the loss of an economy based on those things and you have not just an ecological disaster but a social, cultural and economic one as well. Whole communities along the Gulf rely on fishing, shrimping, trawling for oysters and crabs. It’s not just a way of life, it’s a matter of economic survival. And then there are the beach economies all along the Gulf where the oil slick and tar globs threaten to destroy yet another aspect of both the environment and the economy.
 

In the coming weeks the hurricanes and tropical storms will begin–hurricane season starts June 1–and when that happens, the oil will be tossed far and wide. There will be no containment–just a compounded disaster.

 The lies that have been told to America by BP, Transocean and our own government about what happened April 20 and what has happened since are so egregious, it’s breath-taking.

 So where is the investigative arm of the meida  in this disaster? 
 Their job is to bring us the story with immediacy and to investigate when and where it’s needed. No TV news outlet has done the job with the Gulf spill that it did with the mining disaster.

And if you think it only impacts those living in the Gulf, think again. When the seafood sources dry up, the entire national economy suffers. And that is only one small part of the story. If I can see it so clearly, Iwonder why the news anchors being paid millions can’t and why the President, who ran on his environmental credentials hasn’t been able to do more than just wag his finger sternly.

Today BP tries yet another attempt at capping the spill. We can all only pray that it works. But even if it does, the damage done thus far is simply beyond description. And one has to wonder at an Administration and a Congress so deaf to the concerns of those of us who love and value the Gulf.—VAB

As is true for millions of Pennsylvanians, I grew up with Arlen Specter. Other politicians have come and gone, but the one constant has been Arlen Specter, who has been in politics throughout my entire voting life and that of so many others. From his days on the Warren Commission where he helped craft the oft-maligned “single-bullet theory” of the Kennedy assassination to his days of chairing some of the most prestigious of the Senate’s committees, Specter has been a political force to be reckoned with. Some members of Congress spend many undistinguished and indistinguishable years in office. Specter was often in the limelight and just as often controversial.

Specter is the longest-serving politician in the history of the Pennsylvania, having served five terms in the Senate as well as having been Philadelphia’s District Attorney for two terms prior to running for Congress. On Election Day, Specter suffered his first–but final–electoral defeat in a 53-47 loss to Congressman Joe Sestak.

Monday morning quarter-backing, especially in Philadelphia, is easy. Why did Specter lose? The reasons aren’t difficult to enumerate: He was an incumbent in a virulently anti-incumbent season, he switched parties just a year prior to the primary and he was old.

That last is perhaps the least fair reason Specter lost the primary bid to retain his Senate seat. At 80, having survived cancer and a brain tumor and working out daily at the gym, Specter could readily run rings around most potential opponents in the literal sense of the term and campaigned harder and longer than Sestak.

But in politics, perception is everything. Compared to Sestak, who at 59 looks younger than he is, Specter looked (and with his expansive way of speaking often sounded) like an old man, which only served to underscore Sestak’s message that it was time for a new generation of leadership.

It was the politics, however, that got Specter in the end. Sestak has been a virtual unknown in the state, has one of the worst attendance records in the Congress, served a lackluster three years in the House after spending more than 30 as a career naval officer before being forced to resign in 2005. In no other season would this record win the primary over an incumbent with Specter’s credentials.

But Sestak didn’t run on his record or even on what he intended to do as a senator. There’s not a single advertisement in which Sestak says what he has done for the Commonwealth or what he plans to do in the future. What Sestak did–and did extremely well–was to run his campaign on not being Specter.

In ad after ad, Specter outlined what he had done in his many years as a senator and also what he intended to do in the future. President Obama stood behind Specter in ads and daily emails to supporters, as did the rest of the Democratic leadership in the state and in Philadelphia.

Their support wasn’t enough.

Since Specter changed parties in April 2009, he has had a stalwart liberal record, voting with Obama 97 percent of the time. He should have looked like the Democrat to choose. But he just couldn’t manage to project that image.

Specter wasn’t running against Sestak so much as he was attempting to draw a line through the parts of his career that a Democratic electorate might balk at. All Sestak had to do was repeatedly underscore who Specter used to be: a Republican. Or who he still was: a career politician.

Sestak painted a picture not of himself (that portrait is still vague and now will be painted by Republican opponent Pat Toomey who is already taking a page from Sestak’s book and portraying Sestak as the incumbent to beat) but of Specter as a political opportunist with no concern for anyone but himself.

Sestak tested the anti-incumbency mood of the populace and presented himself–someone who has spent more years as a Washington insider than even Specter–as a centrist version of a Tea Partier. In his acceptance speech, Sestak lauded his own victory as one “for democracy”–a victory against “the Establishment and even against Washington.”

That would be the same Establishment and Washington for whom Sestak has worked since he was 23, but this wasn’t a primary battle waged on facts, but on suspicion. Even with his new glowing record as a progressive handmaiden to President Obama (Specter is credited as having been one of the main stumpers for Obama’s health care reform plan and for the public option that many life-long Democrats denounced), Specter was viewed with suspicion and derision. Attacked by members of his former party and smeared by members of his new party, Specter could not maintain his early lead in the polls. Anti-incumbency fever was fueled by the party switch. Republicans already viewed Specter, who was always pro-choice, pro-gay rights and pro-stem cell research among other stances that kept him out of the Republican mainstream, as a traitor. They wanted him lose, viewing Sestak as an easy opponent to beat in November.

Democrats also viewed Specter with suspicion. It was difficult for many to believe that Specter’s party switch–despite his declaration that his former party had left him–was sincere. His voting record should have been the proof, but for those who saw Specter as a political opportunist, the fear that he would turn on the Democrats as he had on the Republicans remained strong.

Specter, along with Arkansas’ Sen. Blanche Lincoln, was the second Democratic Senate incumbent to lose a primary battle in the 2010 elections. The last time as many incumbents fell in a primary was 1980–the same year Specter won his first term to the Senate.

In the end, it was his own long and largely impressive tenure as Pennsylvania’s longest serving Senator that did Specter in. Specter was never one to shirk either duty or controversy. But it was his past as a good soldier for the Republicans, not his recent role as water bearer for Obama that 53 percent of Democrats saw when they went to the polls in the torrential rain on election day. Only 22 percent of Pennsylvania voters actually cast ballots May 18. Not enough to save the career of Pennsylvania’s political lion.

As time passes, the good Specter did for Pennsylvania and the consistency with which he voted on key progressive issues like choice will be remembered more than his seeming opportunism. But for now it looks like Specter, a man never at a loss for words, goes out with a whimper rather than the forceful bang he envisioned but which the electorate just would not give him.–VAB

Queers have issues with family. Many of us have been discarded, disowned or at the very least marginalized by our families of origin for being queer. Those P-FLAG families where everyone is all cozy with their kids’ queerness are still the exception, not the rule. That’s why there’s a special group just for them–because they are unique. If all parents still loved their children despite their differences, there wouldn’t need to be a support group.
 Lesbians have long worked to create alternative families for themselves. From women’s collectives to our own nuclear-style families replete with lesbian baby boom kids and wives, many of us realized that we wanted family and found a way to have it. If our own families of origin didn’t want us, we needed to create families that did and who loved us unconditionally the way our birth families should have done. 

 But lesbians also have another family–the family of what Simone de Beauvoir called the “second sex”–the gender underclass, women.
 It’s not easier to be a member of this family than it is of the families we were born into. But this family cannot be ignored because this family is us.  

 In her poem “From and Old House in America,”Adrienne Rich transposed John Donne’s famous line to read: “Any woman’s death diminishes me.” [1]

 That line has reverberated for me again and again throughout the years since I first read it and spoke it aloud as a college student. It is a line I believe all women must give real thought to and take to their hearts.

  In 2010 it’s impolitic to speak to the pre-feminist realities of our allegedly post-feminist world. Yet it is definitely neither anachronistic nor shrill to say that the gender class of women must stand in solidarity over their shared oppression/repression. We have to fight the isolation that patriarchy uses to separate us from each other. When one woman dies due to gender bias, we are all less. Truly. Rich was so right.

 Imagine the impact from the loss of 60 million women. That is the number that Pulitzer Prize winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn estimate have been lost to the genocide of women worldwide in recent years. Sixty million members of the family of women. Gone. [2]

 Kristof and WuDunn aren’t hardcore rabid feminist ideologues. But they are crusading journalists and political scientists. Kristof was credited with bringing the genocide in Darfur to light through his columns in the New York Times for which he won a Pulitzer. He is also credited with detailing the horror of the rape crisis in the DRC–Democratic Republic of Congo–and how incalculably brutal gang rape has become the primary tool in the war there.

 In their book “Half the Sky,” Kristof and WuDunn are adamant: Women and girls are being “disappeared” as surely as if there were a worldwide junta stalking them.  

 But it isn’t just in war-torn nations that this genocide against women is unfolding. In China and India, where sex-selection abortion has become de rigeur [3], the ratio of female to male births has diminished to almost 800 females to every 1,000 males. In China, where there is still a fairly strict one-child population control policy, it is almost always a female fetus that is aborted. [4]            

 How is this not genocide?

 Cultural, social and religious elements add to the annihilation of women and girls. Quite simply, girls are being discriminated against to death. As Kristof and WuDunn delineate in their research, the global pattern of putting boys first and girls last has had an obliterating effect on the female gender.

 Girls are given less food, they are deprived of vaccinations, medical care, education. They are subject to female genital mutilation. They are married off as children and forced into early childbirth, which kills a phenomenal number of women. (Kristof and WuDunn note that childbirth is still the most dangerous thing a woman can do. They note, for example, that more women died in childbirth during World War I than men died fighting the war itself. When one considers that millions were killed during that war, the comparison becomes yet more harrowing.)

 Women and girls are also subject to gender bias murder. Honor killing is rampant in over 50 countries, primarily in the Middle East and Africa where Islam is both the religion and the law.[5] Thousands of women and girls are killed each year by male family members for “crimes” ranging from being seen with a man who was not a family member to being out in public without a male family escort to being a lesbian. Sharia law, which even the U.K. is considering allowing for Muslims, dictates Draconian restrictions on women. Women who disobey these rules can be killed as a matter of that law. And there is no punishment for their murders.

 Sex trafficking and domestic slavery are also killing women and girls at frightening rates. In India, Anti-Slavery International estimates that ten percent of girls are sold into domestic slavery by the age of five. Sex trafficking has become pandemic throughout Asia, Russia, the Eastern bloc and Central and South America.             

 Domestic and sex slaves have even been sold to families in the U.S. It takes only five hours to travel from New York City to Haiti to “buy” a young girl for domestic and/or sex slavery and bring her back to the U.S. It takes even less time to go from Brownsville, Texas and buy a girl from Mexico for the same purposes.

 All these horrors mean one thing: Women have to be our own family. We have to protect each other and save each other. We have to help girls survive their childhoods so that they have the opportunity to become adults and make their own choices. We have to campaign against the so-called “cultural” practices of honor killing and acid burnings and female genital mutilation and call them what they are: genocide against women.

 As we in the U.S. contemplate issues like marriage equality and, as lesbians, being able to have and keep our own children, we must remember that not very far away–a few hours by plane from almost anywhere–girls are being sold. We must remember that there are an estimated ten times as many slaves today as there were at the height of the slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries and that the majority of those slaves are women and girls.[7]

 As we build our lesbian families, irrespective of our families of origin or of oppressive straight society, we cannot forget our other family, the family of women. We can change and save lives so easily–as easily as going online and contributing to micro-loans for women to give them independence or mentoring a girl recovering from sex slavery or simply telling other women about this genocide.
 We *are* family. And as such, we must hold each other tight against those who would do us ineffable harm.
 
To make a difference:  
 globalgiving.org
the girl effect.org (be sure to pass on the amazing two minute video)
www.care.org/getinvolved/girleffect/

One of the most important national elections is less than a month away, the Pennsylvania gubernatorial primary. Yet the most recent polls show that 35 percent of Republican voters and 47 percent of Democratic voters remain undecided.

In the Republican race there are two candidates: State Attorney General Tom Corbett, who is polling at 58 percent and State Rep. Sam Rohrer, polling at 7 percent.

In the Democratic race there are four candidates: Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato, Montgomery County Commissioner and former U.S. Representative Joe Hoeffel, Auditor General Jack Wagner and State Rep. Anthony Williams. 

 The most recent polls put Onorato in the lead with 20 percent, Hoeffel with 15 percent, Wagner with 13 percent and Williams with five percent.

 There are 4.5 million registered Democrats in Pennsylvania (51.2 percent), 3.3 million registered Republicans (37 percent) and 1.1 million (11.8 percent) voters registered with other party affiliations, such as the Green, Libertarian and Socialist parties or simply as Independents. 
 

Philadelphia and Allegheny counties are both Democratic strongholds (Philadelphia: 75 percent Democrat, Allegheny: 60 percent Democrat), while the central and northern parts of the state, often referred to as the “Pennsyltucky” portion of the state, are very conservative and vote almost exclusively Republican.

 The highly concentrated and populous counties of the Philadelphia suburbs–Chester, Montgomery, Delaware and Bucks–have been traditional Republican strongholds. In the past several national elections, however, many of these suburban areas have been trending independent or Democrat.

 A key factor in the gubernatorial (and Senate) race, though, will be the usual wild card of Pennsylvania politics: The Pennsltuckians tend to vote more regularly than do Philadelphians. Which may be why in every poll taken, Tom Corbett beats any Democrat by a commanding 20 percent.

 One of the issues for Philadelphians with regard to gubernatorial races is the hate-hate relationship Harrisburg has with Philly. For generations the attitude of Harrisburg toward the state’s most populous urban center has been extremely negative. Therefore it is not a Philadelphian’s political paranoia to presume that after eight years with a Democratic governor from Philadelphia, the rest of the state might rebel and vote Republican just to take back the office.
 Rendell has spent much of his eight years in Harrisburg fighting with the Republican-led and utterly controlled State legislature–never more definingly than during last summer’s three-month budget impasse which devastated Philadelphia social service agencies.

 For Pennsylvania progressives, Hoeffel is the clear and really only choice, but with the top three Democrats so close in the polls, the vote will likely come down to region and ad money–Onorato has Allegheny county sewn up and he also has the most money in the election till. Williams has local support (and for all the wrong patronage implied reasons), but is the weakest of the four candidates. 
 

Without a solid Democratic contender, Tom Corbett will likely win come November. And Republican governors have not been good for Philadelphia. Thus how–and how many–Philadelphians vote May 18 is pivotal to the November election.
 

Until recently, Corbett seemed innocuous enough. Unlike fellow Republican candidate Sam Rohrer, who is running mostly on an anti-abortion, anti-gay platform, Corbett has projected a “moderate” Republican image. He supports the death penalty for capital cases. He’s been strong on statewide corruption and secured a personal victory at the end of March with the conviction of former Democratic House Leader Mike Veon.
 But then Corbett went Tea Party and signed onto lawsuits being filed by 21 other states calling the new national health care reform bill unconstitutional. With that move–in a state with the one of the top ten poorest big cities in the country and the second largest percentage of people over 60–Corbett took a giant step to the extreme right, which sets him as far off the political grid as Rohrer. 
 Among the Democrats, Joe Hoeffel is by far the most progressive–he is the only Democrat running who is pro-choice and supports same-sex marriage. His platform is solid on jobs, health care, education, the environment (the Marcellus Shale drilling will be a pivotal environmental issue in PA in the next two years), affordable housing and the elderly. He is also the only Democratic candidate who understands Washington, which is essential for PA’s governor. Ed Rendell is a Washington insider and it has definitely helped Pennsylvania.

 Jack Wagner is the most conservative entrant, with a platform that looks a lot like Sam Rohrer’s, which for a Democrat is not good. Dan Onorato and Anthony Williams have conservative problems as well, and Williams has some seriously bewildering views on education that have made my hair stand on end. (Someone needs to educate gubernatorial candidates about education. School vouchers are an extremist Republican idea that have garnered traction among conservative Democrats for reasons that are pretty inexplicable.) School vouchers equal two things: segregation and bad education. Williams is focusing a lot of his attention on vouchers. Which tells me he knows nothing about the educational needs of either Philadelphia or the state.

 Dan Onorato is not the worst candidate we could end up with of the four contenders, but as an Allegheny county standard bearer, his concern for Philadelphia would be slim and none. He has a good record with regard to jobs, housing and education, but on social issues–and this would impact Philadelphia–he is highly conservative.
 Getting out the vote come May 18 is pivotal for all Pennsylvanians. Even though he’s from Montgomery county, of all the candidates in either party, Hoeffle has the most to offer Philadelphians. Each candidate has a website, however, so be sure to go to the polls informed about your candidate before you press those buttons.