Women Lose Power at Google | Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women | Dominionism, Todd Akin & Paul Ryan

An 1886 base-relief figure of Dike Astraea in the Old Supreme Court Chamber at the Vermont State House.

Dice ((Dikê), the personification of justice in ancient Greece, was according to Hesiod, a daughter of Zeus and Themis, one of GlamTribale’s 12 goddesses. In the ancient world, women represented the moral force in judicial systems.

Wiki writes:

One of her epithets was Astraea, referring to her appearance as the constellation Virgo. According to Aratus’ account of the constellation’s origin, Dike lived upon Earth during the Golden and Silver ages, when there were no wars or diseases, men did not yet know how to sail, and men raised fine crops.^[7] They grew greedy, however, and Dike was sickened. She proclaimed:

Behold what manner of race the fathers of the Golden Age left behind them! Far meaner than themselves! but you will breed a viler progeny! Verily wars and cruel bloodshed shall be unto men and grievous woe shall be laid upon them.
—Aratus, Phaenomena 123

Dike left Earth for the sky, whence, as the constellation, she watched the despicable human race. After her departure, the human race declined into the Brazen Age, when diseases arose and they learned how to sail.

Since the 15th century, Lady Justice statues are often depiected wearing a blindfold, to connote objectivity and neutrality regardless of identity, money, power or weakness. Then again, she might be nearly nude, as depicted in this painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder “Justice as a Naked Woman with Sword and Scales”. Sometimes also referred to as “An Allegory of Justice”, the painting

Lucas Cranach the Elder was best known for his paintings of his close friend Martin Luther, founder of the Protestant Reformation.

Global Survey of Evangelical Protestant Leaders The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

In June 2011 we published the findings of Pew Researches study on evangelical beliefs worldwide. With the advent of Christianity, Lady Justice has moved to a place of obscurity in public life and most definitely in America. Truthfully, women never had significant power in America. Just ask Abigail Adams, wife of America’s second president John Adams.

Findings in the Pew survey of evangelical protestant leaders include:

• Most say that men should be the religious leaders in the marriage and family (79%) and the main financial providers for the family (53%). But most do not think that women must stay home and raise children (63%). And a solid majority favors allowing women to serve as pastors (75%).
• The global evangelical leaders are strongly inclined to participate in politics; 84% say religious leaders should express their views on political matters, and 56% say that to be a good evangelical, it is essential to take a public stand on social and political issues when they conflict with moral and biblical principles.

French Roast News

Forbes Female Powerhouses

Forbes Woman has released its 2012 list of the world’s 100 most powerful women. German chancellor Angela Merkel tops the list, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in second place. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff retains third place. Also in the top five were Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Jill Abramson, who became executive editor of The New York Times in September 2011.

Fewer Google Women

Senior women at Google are out of Larry Page’s inner circle, reports Claire Cain Miller in The New York Times.

Newly appointed Yahoo president Marissa Mayer, who ran Google’s most profitable search division for years was given a new assignment under Page that many cpnsidered a demotion. The new CEO shran his inner circle from 15 under Eric Schmidt to 11. Three of the four cutbacks were women.

Also removed from the L Team, for Larry Page, were Rachel Whetstone, who oversees communications, and Shona Brown, who oversaw business operations and now leads Google.org, the company’s philanthropic arm, a lower-profile job. Only one woman remains — Susan Wojcicki, who oversees advertising.

Some men were also reshuffled in the changes but were replaced by other men. Some commenters say that Page relates best to product engineers and women aren’t strongly represented there.

Todd Akin Update

American Vision is a Christian nonprofit whose mission if to “restore America to its biblical foundation”. The group’s research director Joel McDurmon writes about pressure from Republicans for Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin to drop out of the race “political gang rape”.

Akin did not drop out of his race against Claire and launched a new website called akin.org/still-standing that apologized for his mistake in using phony science to deny that 32,000 American women a year get pregnant from being raped. US News writes that the photo of a fetus in the womb has since been taken down.

The candidate announced this morning that he has raised $100,000 even though big money Republican donors are treating him like a pariah.

Dominionists like Akin — embracing fundamentalism of the most conservative kind — have a vision of America that is now the sum and substance of the Republican political platform. Addicting Info wrote an article earlier this year that sounds harsh and subjective and yet, the article rings very true to us as dominionism researchers.

Paul Ryan Abortion Record

In the aftermath of the Todd Akin brouhaha over “legitimate rape”, Paul Ryan found his own extreme record on women’s health issues under scrutiny. Ryan opposes abortion under any circumstances, with no exceptions. This most exteme position has earned the vice presidential candidate a 100 percent lifetime score from the National Right to Life, writes Bloomberg.

“He’s certainly a reliable pro-life vote,” Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League, said in a telephone interview. “Everyone in the pro-life movement is really excited about Paul Ryan’s vice presidential candidacy. We can expect a Romney administration to reverse many of the anti-life, pro-abortion policies that have been implemented by President Obama.”

Incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill launched a website listing Akin’s most extreme conservative record. Besides his now notorious claims about rape victims not becoming pregnant, Akin supports abandoning minimum wage restrictions for Americans and he refers federal student loan programs to stage III cancer.

Writing for Huff Po, Malika Saada Saar, Executive Director of Human Rights for Girls, cites CDC research that says 60.4% of female victims were first raped before age 18 and 25.% were raped before age 12. We can’t conclude that 85% of the females who become pregnant by rape each year are 18 or under. As the age of onset of fertility drops in the US, the math does take us to the probable conclusion that well over half of rape-related pregnancies are women 18 and under.

J’Adore

Nicole Kidman | Mario Testino | V Magazine September 2012 | ‘Truth or Dare’ AOC Private Studio

If Victoria’s Secret was smart, they would make 45-year-old Nicole Kidman an honorary Angel and contribute $25,000 to her favorite philanthropy. Kidman delivers a jaw-dropping ‘eyes wide open’ performance in Mario Testino’s fabulous editorial for V Magazine’s September Travel issue, and she wears Victoria’s Secret all the way. 

Elephants Are Matriarchal and Kind to Females in the Animal World | Stop the Republican Disgrace of Elephants

Anne here, wanting to share a few Daily French Roast thoughts on the history of America’s party animals. We all agree that Democrats can be genuine jackasses, but what Republicans have done to besmirch the matriarchal pedigree and social organizations of elephants demands a new party animal.

The now-famous Democratic donkey was first associated with Democrat Andrew Jackson’s 1828 presidential campaign. His opponents called him a jackass (a donkey), and Jackson decided to use the image of the strong-willed animal on his campaign posters. Later, cartoonist Thomas Nast used the Democratic donkey in newspaper cartoons and made the symbol famous.

Nast invented another famous symbol—the Republican elephant. In a cartoon that appeared in Harper’s Weekly in 1874, Nast drew a donkey clothed in lion’s skin, scaring away all the animals at the zoo. One of those animals, the elephant, was labeled “The Republican Vote.” That’s all it took for the elephant to become associated with the Republican Party.

Democrats today say the donkey is smart and brave, while Republicans say the elephant is strong and dignified. via FactMonster.com

Elephants for Real

Real life elephants are matriarchal and hardly a boys club with males making all the rules.  All young elephants live with the females until the male elephants reach adolescence. Until this age, he is completely in the care of females — not males, who are not even part of his social organization and have no say in how he is reared.

Truthfully, males and females don’t even live together.  Males aren’t out hunting, bringing home dinner for the little lady and kids. Males roam in bachelor herds until they grow older, leaving their boys club to travel alone, except for mating.

Unlike males, the female generations of elephants are known to be very close, grieving for each other when one dies. Elephants are considered to be compassionate, self-aware, and highly intelligent unlike the current Republican crowd.

I’m thinking that GoDaddy.com founder Bob Parsons must be a Republican. A quick Google search confirms that he is. Last September, I posted a link to Bob Parsons taking pleasure in shooting an elephant in Africa — just like Sarah Palin loved gunning down her caribou, in an act of “ethical hunting” she calls it. Presumably, Sarah knows what she’s talking about.

Protest was major against Parsons, who responded in typical Republican fashion that he was doing African farmers a favor in killing the endangered species. It is true that there is a collision between farmers and elephants in Africa.

I argued Parsons’ arrogance over shooting the elephants reflected both his belief in dominionism — that man is in charge of women, animals and all of nature , a cornerstone of Rick Santorum’s philosophy — and his stupidity in not understanding less violent, more female-centric ways of solving the elephant-African farmer problem.

A female mind — in this case Lucy King of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology is busy building bee fences in Africa.

Just placing a beehive on land can scare the wits out of most elephants. Scientists speculate that result — after all, there were no bees in the hives — is linked to the fact that the elephants remember painful past encounters with African honeybees and avoid the sights and smells associated with them.

On the one hand we have Republican guy, master of the universe Bob Parsons killing the elephant. On the other we have more progressive, female mind Lucy King scaring the elephants away with empty beehives.

It is exactly this kind of intelligence that today’s Republicans detest — and especially in a woman. Guns and vaginal ultrasounds are their best weapons for keeping herds in line. I beg Republicans to find a new animal to represent the insantity they are perpetuating on America and American women in particular. Elephants don’t deserve this dishonor.  Anne

Observing Cuttalossa Farm | Can Humans Find Peace By Studying Animal Behavior? | Beehives Save Elephant Deaths

Before Monotheism, Killing Dolphins Was a Capital Crime

Returning Ancient Greek ‘Person’ Status to Dolphins AOC Green Beings

In ancient Greece, dolphins were seen as messengers for the gods. And while there was no knowledge of the fact that dolphins have lived on Planet Earth for 38-50 million years by current estimates, the mammals were revered and awarded ‘person’ status. 

The clues to dolphins as ‘female’ are prolific in Greek and Roman art, and also in earlier Minoan artifacts. PBS ‘Frontline” reports in “A whale of a business: man & marine mammals : dolphins in ancient mythology”.

Without romanticizing the centuries preceding the dawn of Christianity for women or for nature, it seems that Judaism, Christianity and Aristotle emerged in a coalition of thought that celebrated man’s rational nature while condemning women’s emotional, irrational and natural state of being. 

Simultaneously, in moving to embrace a single God, there was little room for feminine principles, and that includes dolphins.

After all, man — the superior creature — was dominant not only over women, but over nature.

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, nature is the result of an orderly, hierarchical succession, where man is created separate from the land, seas, flora, and fauna. He is the boss, according to Genesis:

Farmers, Elephants & Bees

We’re all just walking each other home. ~ Ram Dass

Beehive Fences Keep African Elephants Away from Crops Wired Science July 12, 2011

Wired updates a 2009 story that caught our hearts — a woman’s idea of how to keep expanding elephant populations safe in their conflicts with Kenya’s farmers, whose crops are trampled by these wonderful creatures.

Elephants and Bees: Mother Nature Provides Possible Solution to Elephant Conservation in Africa AOC Green Beings

Just placing a beehive on land can scare the wits out of most elephants. Scientists speculate that result — after all, there were no bees in the hives — is linked to the fact that the elephants remember painful past encounters with African honeybees and avoid the sights and smells associated with them.

GoDaddy.com founder defends elephant-hunting video CNN

AOC will ask GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons to stop shooting elephants and instead support the work of Lucy King of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology by building bee fences in Africa.

Animals on Human Condition

Carversville, Cuttalossa Road, Cuttalossa Farm and a Peaceable Kingdom AOC Green Beings

Leaning casually against the fence, I had no idea that a vision of nearly epic importance was coming. Out of nowhere, the formation appeared … a simple, bucolic scene unfolded before my eyes that I will never forget.  I don’t remember who led the parade … probably one of the dogs, but they came two by two.

Unlike Noah’s Ark,  they were not matched pairs. The dog ambled along with the rooster. One of my precious Babydolls frolicked with a duck.

This Solebury barnyard menagerie of totally unrelated animals was paired in formation,  and everyone was getting along. 

Honestly, the goose’s bill was bobbing in the air, laughing away. The hens were cackling and the bog barked joyfully, creating an incomprehensibly silly sight.

The scene polarized me for several minutes, burning a vision of hope in my mind. It sounds so trite and overly simplistic to say this, but I remember thinking to myself: “If they can get along and have such a good time together … well, why can’t we humans do the same thing?”

These animals couldn’t be more different, but they had connected with each other, surmounting their differences to create a scene of unimaginable delight for themselves and the entire world.