Even though 72% of Americans support a government sponsored health care plan, the GOP, Lindsey Graham in this clip are totally opposed to government intervention bringing up the tired GOP talking point, it would be a bureaucratic nightmare. Going over the economic cliff would be one heullva bigger nightmare.

Before:

After:

As most know, or should, women weren’t allowed to vote back in 1912. Historically, women were regarded as chattels. Had limited legal recognition and rights.

Like everyone before them, women had to fight for the right to vote in the United States.

In the 1912 photo above we find suffragettes in Kansas Governor Walter Roscoe Stubb’s automobile, going after the vote in Topeka, Kansas. The women are identified as: (l to r) Laura Clay, President of Kentucky Equal Rights Association; Lucy B. Johnston; Sarah A. Thurston; Helen Eacker; and Stella H. Stubbs. They were all members of the Kansas Equal Suffrage Association. [Kansas Memory]

I’m convinced women are better at politics than men. They have more common sense. They have overwhelming power, too. Consider Lysistrata, a play written by Aristophanes and performed in 411 B.C. in Athens, Greece. Lysistrata convinces the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands as a means of forcing the men to negotiate a peace, a strategy however that inflames the battle between the sexes. The women wanted an end to the Peloponnesian War. [Wikipedia]

Withholding sex from men is a surefire way of making a political point.

Issues commonly associated with notions of women’s rights include, though are not limited to, the right: to bodily integrity and autonomy; to vote (universal suffrage); to hold public office; to work; to fair wages or equal pay; to own property; to education; to serve in the military or be conscripted; to enter into legal contracts; and to have marital, parental and religious rights. Women and their supporters have campaigned and in some places continue to campaign for the same rights as modern men.

Men have been stingy about recognizing that others, that is others than men, have rights, particularly rights like men hold. Men still are. Just this year Congress passed the Lily Ledbetter Act which grants women more equal rights in the workplace.

Those women in the car in the photo above were carrying on with a struggle for the right to vote that began in the United States in 1820. They did not win the right to vote until 1920, a hundred years later, when the 19th Amendment to the United States’ Constitution was ratified.

They didn’t win it easily. They had to get out and demonstrate and insist on it and, perhaps, used the lesson from Lysistrata. It is likely a lesson in today’s time that can be applied to win healthcare reform. If the wives of all the Senators and Congressman exercised the power of Lysistrata all the wrangling between Democrats and Republicans would come to a screeching halt. Congress would likely even be anxious to give up the river of corporate money that pours into their campaign coffers.

About 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. This is one person every three and a half seconds. Unfortunately, it is children who die most often. Yet there is plenty of food in the world for everyone.[Poverty.com]

AIDS kills over 2 million people a year, or about one person every 15 seconds.

Pneumonia and other forms of acute respiratory infection (ARI) kill more than 2 million children alone each year in poor countries.

Diarrheal diseases such as cholera and dysentery kill about 1.6 million people each year, almost all of them children. Diarrhea is most often a result of unclean water, unsafe sanitation, or poor hygiene. [Read more →]

Bill Maher on HBO. Some words of truth.

Governor Dean is right! He says the Senators, once they get in Washington, seem to think they are there to do what they think is in the Senator’s best interest. They forget (or ignore) those of us who live out here in the real world.

People of Nevada should send a message to Senators Harry Reid and John Ensign to get their act together and get this healthcare reform going. Else look for another job.

Let me make this point. IF the voters of Nevada allow the Nevada Senators to ignore them then the voters of Nevada will get what they deserve. Nothing! That is just the way it is folks. Like it or not.

Just watch the struggle in Iran to understand the value of voting.

Ed McMahon, who for nearly 30 years was Johnny Carson’s affable sidekick on “The Tonight Show,” introducing it with his ringing trademark call, “Heeeere’s Johnny!,” died on Tuesday in Los Angeles, NBC reported, citing his spokesman, Howard Bragman. Mr. McMahon was 86. [New York Times]

Another era gone into history. Mr. McMahon had bone cancer, among other ailments, The Associated Press reported.