Secret forced sterilizations in Uzbekistan

By GottaLaff

There are some things that are so difficult to read, so hard to process, that writing about them is painful. This is one of those things:

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan, April 25 (UPI) -- Many women in Uzbekistan are sterilized without their consent under a government order meant to reduce the number of poor people, human rights activists say.

A human rights campaigner who requested anonymity because of fear of detention said about 5,000 women have been sterilized without consent since February, The Sunday Times of London reported.

Doctors visit the homes of women and lie to get them to hospitals, where they then perform sterilization.

One young woman, 26, was told she had a fatal cyst. She had no symptoms. She was frightened into admitting herself to a local hospital, agreed to surgery, and then woke up to find she had been sterilized.

"I could not stop crying. They tricked me and treated me like an animal."

Mid Day Distraction

Like we didn't know this, am I right ladies?

PhotOh! Freaky Female Foxification

By GottaLaff

How foxed up is this? Paddy linked to a piece over at SFGate earlier that deserves more attention:

There's something creepy going on at Fox, and it's not just the skewed way they choose to report the news. When a woman gets a job on the "fair and balanced" news network, she gets "Foxified." No matter how she looks or how old she is when she signs her contract, these female contributors transform, appearing on our screens strangely clone-like, blonde and so heavily made up they all look around 40.

Here is one example of how ClusterFox Stepfords its female employees: Lis Wiehl. I seem to remember her first as a legal commentator during the O.J. Simpson trial, and then again during President Clinton's impeachment hearings. She was so pretty, someone who I would never expect to have to even consider toying with her already camera-ready appearance:

Then

After 9/11, she was hired by Fox News. The next time I saw her on TV, I only recognized her by her name in the byline.

Now

As Margot Magowan points out, this is not a slam against enhancing one's looks or choosing to work wherever or whenever one wants to. It goes way beyond that. Please go here to read her take and see more before/after photos.

And I still can't figure out why Lis felt it necessary to Fox around with her natural beauty. Beats the Fox outta me.

Video- President, Mrs Obama Speak In Honor of International Womens Day

Predictable Headlines Dep't.: GOP Lacks Female Candidates

By GottaLaff

Predictable Headlines Dep't. aka Dep't. of Gee, Really?

The NRCC added 14 new candidates to its "Young Guns" program and promoted 15 of its Young Guns to "Contender" status.

However, the Boston Phoenix notes that of the 14 added, one is a woman; of the 15 promoted, one is a woman.

"There are now four women in the program, out of 64 candidates. That's an even lower percentage than the current female makeup of Republican House members -- which is below 10%."

One out of 64. 1/64. 0.015625.

Nope. No surprise there.

VIDEO: First Lady Celebrates Women in the Military

By GottaLaff



The first lady is always a treat.

First Lady Michelle Obama invites women serving in the military to tea at the White House and recognizes their accomplishments as well as the inspiration they provide to women of all ages.

Afghanistan

By GottaLaff

Via RealityChex:

Afghan women in Kabul protest new marital rape law. Getty image.

New York Times: in Kabul, about 300 women protest a new law permitting, among other things, marital rape; male hecklers outnumber the women three-to-one.

CW: these brave women deserve inter-national support.

I'm aching inside.

First woman Solicitor General? Obama's top candidates are female

By GottaLaff

Your honor, I don't object!

Bloomberg reports that the first female deans of the Harvard and Stanford law schools — Elena Kagan and Kathleen Sullivan — “are the top candidates to serve” as Barack Obama’s Solicitor General. No woman has ever served in that position on a permanent basis. Kagan “became a top candidate for solicitor general after being passed over for deputy attorney general, a slot set to go to Washington lawyer David Ogden.” The Solicitor General is charged with litigating on behalf of the government before the Supreme Court and determining whether lower court decisions should be appealed.

Some background:
Elena Kagan:

She was a law clerk for Judge Abner Mikva on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the U.S. Supreme Court. In private practice, Kagan was an associate at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Williams & Connolly.

From 1995 to 1999, Dean Kagan served as Associate Counsel to U.S. President Bill Clinton and Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Counsel.

On June 17, 1999, President Clinton nominated Kagan to serve as a Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to replace James L. Buckley, who had taken senior status three years earlier. However, the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee declined to bring her nomination forward for a hearing.

[As Dean of Harvard Law School] she has been credited for bringing new vigor to her post and for employing a consensus-building leadership style. [...] Kagan is also credited with overcoming ideological disputes among the Law School faculty that had hindered new faculty appointments.

Kathleen Sullivan:

Born in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, Sullivan graduated from Cornell University in 1976, and graduated as a Marshall Scholar from Oxford in 1978. Sullivan then graduated from Harvard Law School in 1981, where her mentor Laurence Tribe called her "the most extraordinary student I had ever had."

Sullivan's expertise is in the area of constitutional law. She is the author of a leading text in the field,^[3] Constitutional Law, with the late Professor Gerald Gunther.

After law school, Sullivan worked for one year as a law clerk for Judge James L. Oakes on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.^[2] She also worked briefly as a constitutional litigator in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

A lesbian, Sullivan has filed amicus curiae briefs in many cases before the U.S. Supreme Court over the years dealing with gay rights,^[8] including Bowers v. Hardwick and Lawrence v. Texas

Female pioneer of cyberspace honoured

Just thought it would be nice to note a woman is recieving this honor. Honestly, when you think of the beginnings of computers et al, you think of the men, but it looks like one of us was pretty instrumental also. Take that Larry Summers.

A professor who invented a forerunner of the world wide web has been made a dame in the New Year Honours.

Wendy Hall created the "open hypermedia system" Microcosm with colleagues after joining the University of Southampton computer science group in 1984.

And in 1994 she became the university's first female professor of engineering.

Professor Hall, 56, was made a CBE in 2000 for services to science and technology and is considered one of the best computer scientists in the world.

Dishonorable McCain/Palin's economy: Spike in jobless rate for women is worst in more than 33 years

By GottaLaff

This is what our future looks like with Palin/Dishonorable Mccain:

A sharp monthly rise in unemployment for women could be a sign that the economic slowdown has begun to hit working women with a force not seen since the 2001 recession.

When the unemployment rate for women went from 4.6 percent in July to 5.3 percent in August, it was the largest one-month spike in the jobless rate for women in more than 33 years.

Black women were hit even harder, as their unemployment rate jumped 21 percent, from 7.5 percent in July to 9.1 percent in August.

Let's stop and think for a moment. Who would be the most hard hit here? Black women. Who would be the least likely to vote for Palin/McDishonorable? Black women. Who would be most likely to be disenfranchised...?

Among single mothers and women with families, unemployment climbed to 9.6 percent in August — the highest level in 15 years.

Barack Obama:

“John McCain doesn’t get it. He doesn’t know what’s going on in your lives. He is out-of-touch with the American people. Why else would he say the economy’s made great progress?” Obama asked.

Obama gets it.