It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, September 19, 2022
Melinda French Gates calls out 'great problem' of DC politics: 'There are too many men with seats of power still'
Sarah Jackson
Sat, September 17, 2022
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation co-chair Melinda Gates.Denis Balibouse/Reuters
Melinda French Gates is calling out the lack of comprehensive paid family medical leave in the US.
Electing more women and people of color would help fix this, she told Fortune, saying, "There are too many men with seats of power still on Capitol Hill in the United States."
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently found the world won't reach gender equality until at least 2108, three generations later than previously projected.
Melinda French Gates knows the US lags behind other countries in paid family medical leave, and she says electing more women and people of color would help close that gap.
"We are the only industrialized country that doesn't have a robust paid family medical leave policy, and that just shouldn't be," the billionaire philanthropist said in an interview with Fortune this week. "But you have to be frank: There are too many men with seats of power still on Capitol Hill in the United States."
Though there's a record number of women in the 117th Congress, they still make up just 28% of it, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service. And though this Congress is the most racially and ethnically diverse in history, people of color make up roughly 25% of the Senate and House of Representatives, holding 136 of the 535 seats according to the report.
"A lot of times, we think we think we're going to get there on gender equality—that we might move the needle a little bit," French Gates told Fortune. When it comes to female representation in government, "We kick up a percentage point or two, and we think, 'Okay, we're on our way to empowerment.'"
"We don't finance women's campaigns the way we finance men's," she said in the interview. "That's a great problem."
US-backed Syrian forces free women in 3-week raid of IS camp Children gather outside their tents, at al-Hol camp, which houses families of members of the Islamic State group, in Hasakeh province, Syria, May 1, 2021. U.S.-backed Syrian fighters said Saturday, Sept. 17, 2022, they have concluded a 24-day sweep at operation at a sprawling camp in northeast Syria housing tens of thousands of women and children linked to the Islamic State group.
(AP Photo/Baderkhan Ahmad, File) BASSEM MROUE Sat, September 17, 2022
BEIRUT (AP) — U.S.-backed Syrian fighters said Saturday they have concluded a 24-day sweep at a sprawling camp in northeast Syria housing tens of thousands of women and children linked to the Islamic State group.
Dozens of extremists were detained and weapons were confiscated in the operation at al-Hol camp, which began on Aug. 25, the U.S.-backed forces said. The U.S.-backed force said two of its fighters were killed in clashes with extremists inside the camp during the operation.
IS sleeper cells preparing a new generation of militants — boys and girls being fed extremist ideology to eventually try and set up a second so-called Islamic State caliphate — were also uncovered, the statement by the Internal Security Forces said. It added that the operation was assisted by the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces as well as members of the U.S.-led coalition.
The operation at al-Hol in the northeastern province of Hassakeh also led to the release of two Yazidi girls taken from Iraq as sex slaves years ago and four non-Yazidi women, who had been chained and subjected to torture.
“The operation was launched following the increasing crimes of killing and torture committed by ISIS cells against the camp residents,” said the statement from the U.S.-backed forces, using another acronym for the Islamic State group. It added that since the beginning of the year, the extremists have killed 44 camp residents and humanitarian workers.
The statement also said that 226 people, including 36 women, were detained in al-Hol — widely seen as a breeding ground for the IS.
Some 50,000 Syrians and Iraqis are crowded into tents in the fenced-in camp. Nearly 20,000 of them are children; most of the rest are women, wives and widows of IS fighters.
In a separate, heavily guarded section of the camp known as the annex are an additional 2,000 women from 57 other countries — they are considered the most die-hard IS supporters — along with their children, numbering about 8,000.
“ISIS has depended mainly on women and children, as real resources related directly to the ISIS leaders, to maintain the ISIS extremist ideology and spread it in the camp,” the statement said.
The camp was initially used to house the families of IS fighters in late 2018 as U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces recaptured territory in eastern Syria from the militants. In March 2019, they seized the last IS-held villages, ending the “caliphate” that the group had declared over large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014.
The United States and other nations have struggled to repatriate the families, but have had only very limited success.
‘Shootings, Stabbings, Rapes, Carjackings.’ Trump Brings Roadshow to Ohio, Trashes America
Peter Wade Sat, September 17, 2022 Election 2022 Trump - Credit: AP
If you ask the former president, America is in ruins. “We no longer have a border. Our country is being invaded. It’s an invasion by millions of illegal aliens,” Donald Trump said at his Saturday night rally, using the Great Replacement Theory’s racist “invasion” language, favored by violentwhite nationalists. “The economy is crashing. Your 401(k) is collapsing,” Trump told the crowd. “Shooting, stabbings, rapes, carjackings are skyrocketing.”
Trump delivered his speech, which started 45 minutes late, byspewing hate to an enthusiastic crowd in Youngstown, Ohio. Trump is in the state to campaign for Senate candidate J.D. Vance, who he endorsed and whose campaign recently required an urgent cash bailout. “J.D. is kissing my ass,” Trump said. “He wants my support so bad!”
But, per usual, Trump spent more time talking about himself and positioning himself as a victim of an “unhinged persecution” than building up the candidates he is there to support. He complained that Jan. 6 witnesses are compelled to turn on him. “They take good people and they say, ‘You’re going to jail for 10 years … unless you say something bad about Trump. In which case you won’t have to go to jail,'” he said. And Trump whined that he left a “very luxurious and enjoyable life” to enter politics.
Trump later pulled out another of his favorite talking points, painting himself as the victim of government spying. “They spied on my campaign. And nobody wants to do anything about it. Can you imagine if I spied on the campaign of — forget Biden — how about Obama’s campaign? Can you imagine what [the penalty] would be? Maybe it would be death. They’d bring back the death penalty,” Trump said. Later, Trump endorsed punishing drug dealers and human traffickers with the death penalty.
The former president also complained that Biden released crude from the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve to reduce gas prices, claiming it is used “only for war” and apparently forgetting that he himself once tapped into the strategic reserve for the exact same reason.
“I don’t know if we’ve had a more radicalized or dangerous time in our country,” Trump said. Returning to his argument that America is falling apart, the former president zealously recited the details of gruesome crimes allegedly committed by immigrants. The hate continued when Trump mocked trans women in sports.
Before Trump’s speech, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) helped warm the crowd up and declared him the “one true leader” of the GOP. “The future under Republicans… loyally follows the one true leader of the Republican Party and you know who that is,” she said before injecting election fraud lies. “He’s the one we elected in 2016 and the one we re-elected in 2020, who won the election.” Fresh off appearing to kick a climate activist on video (she denies this), Greene scoffed at Democrats’ concerns about climate change. “We know that cheap gas won’t last,” she told the crowd. “You want to know why? Democrats worship the climate. We worship God.”
Trump bashed the Green New Deal as well, calling it “destructive” and “bullshit.” “I can’t think of a word that describes it better,” he said.
Also in the pre-Trump lineup: GOP congressional candidate J.R. Majewski, who has bragged that he was at the “base of the Capitol building” on Jan. 6 but claims he “committed no crimes” and “broke no police barriers.” Majewski in his speech said “my pronouns are patriot ass kicker” and promised to “turn that Green New Deal brown, like the turd it is.”
MyPillow Guy Mike Lindell made an appearance in the afternoon where he claimed he “prayed” for then-Democratic Senate candidates Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff to win their elections in Jan. 2021 because if a Republican had won one of those seats, “most people in the country” would not believe his and Trump’s absurd claims that widespread “election crime” was taking place in the U.S.
“We are a nation in decline,” Trump said toward the conclusion of the rally. As he spoke, dramatic classical strings music swelled in the background (yes, seriously), giving the moment a cinematic propaganda feel.
COPS OUT OF CONTROL Intervening bystander in Karen Garner arrest recognized as only one who 'did the right thing'
DISARM, DEFUND, DISBAND Sady Swanson, Fort Collins Coloradoan Sun, September 18, 2022
On June 26, 2020 — the day 73-year-old Karen Garner was forcibly arrested by Loveland police officers — Reidesel Mendoza was “the sole person that did the right thing.”
Mendoza had stopped his car to confront the officers arresting Garner because "the way they were handling that situation was not the right way," he said in an interview Saturday, after receiving a citizenship award for his actions that day.
"I tried to do what was right," Mendoza said.
Garner — who has dementia — was accused of leaving Walmart that day without paying for $13.88 worth of merchandise, but staff stopper her and retrieved the items before she left. Garner was walking home when officer Austin Hopp stopped her. About 30 seconds after Hopp got out of his car, he forced Garner to the ground and tried to arrest her.
Another officer — Daria Jalali — arrived shortly after to help Hopp restrain Garner. Sgt. Philip Metzler arrived after the two officers got Garner in one of their patrol cars.
Mendoza saw how the officers were treating Garner and decided he needed to intervene.
“Do you have to use that much aggression,” Mendoza could be heard saying to Hopp in Hopp’s body camera footage, released to the public by an attorney who represented Garner's family in a civil lawsuit filed against the city.
Hopp then told him to “get out of here, this is not your business,” and further explained, “this is what happens when you fight the police.”
Later, in a conversation between Mendoza and Metzler on the scene captured on Metzler's body camera footage, Mendoza said, ““when you see a person walking and the next thing you see is a cop throwing them to the ground without her using force or nothing, what’s going to be your reaction?”
“I’m not sure but usually I would think that the police have a reason to arrest her,” Metzler replied, and repeatedly told Mendoza he didn’t have all the information so he can’t judge the officers’ actions.
“You may think you’re defending her but she’s the one that committed a crime,” Metzler said in the body camera footage.
“Everybody has the right to speak up,” Mendoza said after being presented the award. “... If you see something that is not right, you have the right to speak. That can change someone else’s life.”
The award was presented in part by the Community Trust Commission, which was formed by the Loveland city council to aide in rebuilding trust with the community and its police department.
Interim Loveland Police Chief Eric Stewart applauded Mendoza's courage in stepping up that day, and said the public plays in key role in successful policing, referencing one of Robert Peel's — who he said is considered the father of modern policing — principles: "The public are the police and the police are the public."
"Clearly we can’t police without the public. We certainly didn’t do a great job that day,” Stewart said. "... I'm sorry we let you down that day."
Loveland Mayor Jacki Marsh thanked Mendoza for overcoming fear to do the right thing in intervening, something not everyone would do in a similar situation.
“You have my heartfelt appreciation and admiration," Marsh said to Mendoza. "... I cannot thank you enough, for in that horrible day, you were the ray of hope, the ray of sunshine for Karen Garner. You were the sole person that did the right thing that day.”
Republicans have spent the past months proving a point I've been trying to make: Repealing Roe was never about federalism and state's rights. It has always been, and always will be, about taking away women's bodily autonomy.
I am not surprisedthat it didn't take long for anti-abortion extremists to show their true colors and push for even more restrictions on abortion rights, as well as some outrageous proposals for "solutions" to an inevitable wave of unwanted pregnancies because of Roe being overturned.
Sen. Lindsey Graham is one of the more prominent Republicans who seems to have missed the "it's about federalism, we're pro-states" nonsense the GOP was pushing when they got rid of the constitutional right to an abortion this summer. As an unmarried, childless male, the South Carolina senator decided to push for a federal 15-week abortion ban and further erode the rights of women in states where they still have agency over their bodies, states like Colorado (where a woman's fundamental right to abortion was reaffirmed statutorily post-Dobbs), and California (where access to abortion was expanded after Roe fell).
In 2022, women's bodies are not where Republicans want to wage political war.
The Democrats rallying on abortion
Because it's a midterm, predictions would normally be that the president’s party is almost guaranteed to lose seats. President Obama had historic midterm losses in 2010, while PresidentTrump lost the House to Democrats in the 2018 midterms. The trend runs back to before World War II.
Abortion-rights supporters cheer as the proposed Kansas constitutional amendment fails on Aug. 2, 2022.
But instead of a referendum on the economy, it seems like access to reproductive healthcare is top of mind since the Dobbs decision, with women turning out in unprecedented numbers to register to vote. For instance, in Pennsylvania 62% of new female voters registered as Democrats (15% registered as Republican). In Kansas, 70% of newly registered women voters signed up as Democrats. In Wisconsin, women have out-registered men by almost 10%, with Democrats making up 52.36% of all of those newly registered voters (16.59% of new voters registered as Republicans.) In Michigan, women are out-registering men by 8.1 percentage points as new voters and Democrats are out-registering Republicans by 18 percentage points. Louisiana, Florida and Texas are seeing similar phenomena.
And voter registration isn't the only good thing happening for Democrats worried about abortion rights receding even more. In Ohio, a judge just temporarily blocked that state's six-week abortion ban, saying it violated "Ohio’s Equal Protection and Benefit Clause," and restored the previous limit of 20 weeks while the case proceeds.
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In Michigan, a state judge recently ruled that a 91-year-old law that banned abortion violated the state constitution. In Kansas, voters upheld the right to abortion after state legislators proposed an amendment to the state constitution that would have repealed the right to an abortion in the deeply red state, even though that right was affirmed in a state Supreme Court ruling in 2019. And in New York Democrat Pat Ryan, who made abortion rights a cornerstone of his campaign, recently beat out a Republican candidate in a special election for control of the state's 19th congressional district.
No tangible action by Republicans to help women
So what are the humanitarian solutions Republicans have come up with to help women and girls facing unwanted pregnancies:expecting raped children to give birth, building more baby drop boxes for unwanted newborns?
It's as insulting as it is pathetic and sad. Everyone knows that regular polling over the years has consistently shown that Americans support abortion care. Yasmin Radjy, Executive Director of the progressive political group Swing Left, told me that "In terms of where voters are, Republicans and Independents agree with Democrats that women should have the right to safe and legal abortion. 77% of Americans agree on that point."
June 24, 2022: Abortion rights demonstrators march through the streets to protest the Supreme Court's decision in the Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health case in Detroit, Michigan. The Court's decision in the Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health case overturns the landmark 50-year-old Roe v Wade case, removing a federal right to an abortion.
So it's mind-boggling that Republican lawmakers pushed through with these unpopular policies, against the wishes of voters. The need to access abortion care cuts across party lines and abortion bans were never going to be good politics. And they did all this without having a set plan to support the people they decided to force into parenthood.
But not everyone in the GOP is putting their head in the sand. In a bid to save their November campaigns other Republicans are scrambling to scrub their websites of hardline anti-abortion rhetoric because, well, it was a bad idea in the first place.
But it's too late. Americans know who's to blame for this human rights monstrosity and they're going to take them to task come November.
Extreme factions of the GOP have misread Americans. Come November, it's all about abortion rights.
Carli Pierson, a New York licensed attorney, is an opinion writer with USA TODAY, and a member of the USA TODAY Editorial Board. Follow her on Twitter: @CarliPiersonEsq.
I was a Kansas doctor for 20 years. Abortion can be complex, but it’s always personal
Gemunu Amarasinghe/Associated Press file photo
Dan Murphy Sun, September 18, 2022
Twenty years as a family doctor in Johnson County gave me a close-up view of the abortion discussion as it grew more and more intense.
I learned firsthand that an unexpected pregnancy is a shock. Even worse is unexpected bad news during a much-wanted pregnancy.
One of my patients faced both challenges. As soon as she knew that she was pregnant, she decided to place her child for adoption. Two weeks before her due date, she realized that the baby wasn’t moving. Her baby’s heart had suddenly stopped beating. Her baby had died.
She chose to induce labor that evening, delivering a perfect-looking baby boy who would never know life. Technically, I had performed an abortion.
Later that year, another young woman gave birth to a healthy baby boy she planned to keep. Her grandmother, her only support, asked me privately why the system had made it so hard for the new mom to have the abortion she really wanted. I had no answer.
That new mom was 11 years old. She wasn’t mature enough to choose adoption or abortion. But she was suddenly a mother.
The Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling in June suddenly limited women’s options.
A record number of Kansans went to the polls six weeks later to preserve reproductive freedom. They voted overwhelmingly to maintain choice for the people of Kansas. Voters in the 3rd District spoke out by a 2-1 margin in favor of choice.
At the same time, Republicans in Congress have introduced a federal bill to restrict abortion access in all states. They would impose even more restrictions than the current Kansas law we voted to preserve in August. Their extreme anti-choice supporters say they are working to ban abortions nationally without exception. So, now we must decide whether we want elected officials who will stand firm for reproductive rights on the national level.
Some anti-choice candidates are now scrambling to decide whether federal politicians or state politicians should make the decision. They all believe that women shouldn’t make their own choices. They insist that government should control women’s choices and women’s bodies.
The November election will demand that we decide again about abortion access because the Dobbs decision took away federal protection for women’s rights. So, what should we believe?
I ask you to believe in the wisdom of women themselves to choose appropriately. Not once in 20 years of medicine did I ever recommend abortion. It was my place to explain the options. It was the woman’s place to choose the option best for her and her family. That is the fundamental basis of our individual constitutional rights.
The Nov. 8 general election requires us to choose: Whom do we trust? The choice is exceptionally clear.
I will vote for candidates whose past actions match their current positions on abortion access. I will vote for candidates who recognize that women are capable of determining their own futures. I will vote for candidates who reject government control over women’s bodies — either at the state or federal level.
Please do the same.
Dan Murphy has lived and worked in Johnson County for 45 years. He recently retired after practicing family medicine in Merriam for nearly 20 years.
