Obama orders hospital visitation rights for gays, lesbians

About fracking time.

Washington (CNN) – President Barack Obama has told the Department of Health and Human Services to establish a rule that would not allow hospitals to deny visitation privileges to gay and lesbian partners.

The president's memo Thursday notes that "There are few moments in our lives that call for great compassion and companionship that when a loved one is admitted to the hospital ... Yet every day, all across America, patients are denied the kindnesses and caring of a loved one at their sides ... "

Gay and lesbian Americans are "uniquely affected" by the relatives-only policy at hospitals, Obama said, adding that they "are often barred from the bedsides of the partners with whom they may have spent decades of their lives - unable to be there for the person they love, and unable to act as a legal surrogate if their partner is incapacitated."

Obama requested that the regulation should make clear that any hospital receiving Medicare and Medicaid funding, which mean the vast majority of U.S. hospitals, to allow patients to decide who can visit them and prohibit discrimination based on a variety of characteristics, including sexual orientation and gender identity.

TV violence vs. women up 120% (400% against teen girls)

By GottaLaff

Some progress, huh? What ever happened to "You've come a long way, baby"?

The Parents Television Council reports that women and girls are victimized more often and more brutally in television programming than ever before. The study, "Women in Peril: A Look at TV's Disturbing New Storyline Trend," reads in part:

"Incidents of violence against women and teenage girls are increasing on television at rates that far exceed the overall increases in violence on television. Violence, irrespective of gender, on television increased only 2% from 2004 to 2009, while incidents of violence against women increased 120% during that same period."

The report also says, "Although female victims were primarily of adult age, collectively, there was a 400% increase in the depiction of teen girls as victims across all networks from 2004 to 2009."

The reports can be found at www.parentstv.org

If your family casually watches brutality and accepts it is as "entertaining," then you are part of the problem.

What is the situation in your home? Are you allowing women and girls to be "virtually" beaten, raped and threatened in your family room? Are sex acts and violence taking place in front of a vulnerable audience of ... your own children?

Gee, at least today women can kill themselves with cigarettes just like their male counterparts. Pfft, what are we complaining about? We're nearly equal to the men folk now! Who needs to be victimized when we have all that and more?

'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Foe Patrick Murphy Turns Up the Heat

By GottaLaff

Go Patrick Murphy! How refreshing, how very novel in fact, to see a member of Congress with a spine, decency, and commitment:

Rep. Patrick Murphy has two pieces of advice for his fellow congressmen: Do what's right, not just what's political. Oh, and don't cross him.

Wait... don't just do what's political? He might think about distributing a Berlitz "How to Speak Do What's Right" to his fellow lawmakers.

As for not crossing him, nobody needs a manual for that.

The Pennsylvania Democrat is currently trying to whip up support for H.R. 1283, which would repeal "don't ask, don't tell," and he's working hard on getting the 218 votes it'll need to pass the House. [...] "... I think some folks in Congress are afraid of keeping their own seats, and that's affecting the change that we all know needs to happen in our country," says Murphy. [...] [H]e's going ahead with pushing for an end to "don't ask" because "we need congressmen and congresswomen and legislators to stand by the courage of their conviction and not worry about the political cycle or when the election is."

Lo ciento, pero no comprendo "stand by the courage of their conviction". Que es?

Murphy is also giving his fellow lawmakers a warning.

Mmm, I love a man with a big warning...

"When they look me in the eye and say, 'I'm going to vote for this when it comes up for a vote,' no matter if they get hit from the left or the right in their own congressional districts, whether they're a Democrat or Republican, I'm going to hold them to their word," Murphy said. "And if they lie to me, it's not going to end well for them. I'm the chair of Red to Blue, so if they're a Republican, I'll go get Democrats that run against them. If they're Democrats, I'm going to have some not-nice words to say to them."

The vanishing Republican voter

By GottaLaff

How's that inequality working for you and your 1987105 houses, J Sid?

In a must-read New York Times Magazine piece, former Bush speechwriter David Frum sounds the sirens for the Republican party.

"My fellow conservatives and Republicans have tended not to worry very much about the widening of income inequalities. As long as there exists equality of opportunity -- as long as everybody's income is rising -- who cares if some people get rich faster than others? Societies that try too hard to enforce equality deny important freedoms and inhibit wealth-creating enterprise. Individuals who worry overmuch about inequality can succumb to life-distorting envy and resentment."

"All true! But something else is true, too: As America becomes more unequal, it also becomes less Republican. The trends we have dismissed are ending by devouring us."

Obama, as usual, is in touch with the American people. McCain/Palin, on the other hand, are not. They seem to have failed to notice this:

As long as all Americans were becoming better off, few cared that some Americans were becoming better off than others. But since 2000, something has changed. Incomes at the middle have ceased to rise. The mood of the country has soured. Conservatives who disregard the mood of unease may forfeit their power to defend the more open and productive American economy they did so much to build. [...]

With wealth comes diversity — and what is inequality but diversity in monetary form?

The Big Question:

When asked, “Are you better off than you were five years ago?” only 41 percent of middle-class Americans say yes, the worst result since pollsters started asking the question half a century ago.

It’s this pervasive economic unease that is capsizing the Republican Party, even as Americans have arrived in recent months at a somewhat more optimistic assessment of the progress of the Iraq war.

Remember-- Republicans create their own reality:

IN SHORT, the trend to inequality is real, it is large and it is transforming American society and the American electoral map. Yet the conservative response to this trend verges somewhere between the obsolete and the irrelevant.

Conservatives need to stop denying reality. The stagnation of the incomes of middle-class Americans is a fact. And only by acknowledging facts can we respond effectively to the genuine difficulties of voters in the middle.

And then there's the trust factor:

Republicans have been badly hurt in upper America by the collapse of their onetime reputation for integrity and competence. Upper Americans live in a world in which things work. The packages arrive overnight. The car doors clink seamlessly shut. The prevailing Republican view — “of course government always fails, what do you expect it to do?” — is not what this slice of America expects to hear from the people asking to be entrusted with the government.

Finally, Frum's advice:

Equality in itself never can be or should be a conservative goal. But inequality taken to extremes can overwhelm conservative ideals of self-reliance, limited government and national unity. It can delegitimize commerce and business and invite destructive protectionism and overregulation. Inequality, in short, is a conservative issue too. We must develop a positive agenda that integrates the right kind of egalitarianism with our conservative principles of liberty. If we neglect this task and this opportunity, we won’t lose just the northern Virginia suburbs. We will lose America.

There you go. A former Bush speechwriter's p.o.v. Your turn.