Listen Up Dems: Repressive Societies Prioritize Controlling Women's Reproduction

Anne of Carversville has tracked the Republican War on Women in-depth since 2007. The assault on women has gained huge momentum under Trump, and this 2007 essay written by Steven Conn, now the W.E Smith Professor of History at Miami University, is more relevant today than ever. 

Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rep. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico lit a bonfire among Democrats when he said earlier in August that abortion rights shouldn't be a "litmus test" for Democrats. 

Abortion rights activists including myself erupted, imploring leaders like Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund, to remain defiant with the Democratic Party. Richards couldn’t be clearer on how wrong she thinks Luján is, telling Politico. “It’s a shocking sort of misunderstanding of actually where the country is … which is overwhelmingly supportive of abortion rights and also, who are the ground troops that kind of fuel the election of candidates.” 

“Fundamentally, perhaps [what] he’s missing is, people can distinguish between their own personal feelings and what they believe government or politicians should do. And people even in some of the most conservative areas of the country who may themselves personally say, ‘I would never choose to have an abortion,’ or, ‘That’s not something that’s right for me,’ also, absolutely do not believe politicians should be making decisions about pregnancy for women,” Richards argues. “I think he’s totally wrong and I’ll use every opportunity to convince him of that.”

The truth is that Trump and conservative Republicans are coming at women's body autonomy with a torch -- the same torches that burned in Charlottesville. The alt-right believes that women's essential purpose is to breed. The white supremacists want white babies and they are poised to insist Handmaiden style that they -- THE MEN -- have control over women's bodies. It's positively disgusting to understand that in the aftermath of Hillary's defeat, Democratic men want to bring the Blue Dog Southern Democrats back into the party -- when they would be far more conservative today than 50 years ago. 

Eric Bolling Suspended At Fox News With Claims That He Sent C#ck Shots To Fox Women

Fox News' Eric Bolling

Birds of a feather do flock together. Yet another white male is taking a tumble at Fox News for sexual harassment, with Fox's suspension of yet another Fox personality who acts like god, when the subject is women. To be reasonable here, 'The Specialist's' co-host Eric Bolling's c#ck photo was sent to multiple women colleagues at Fox News Channel and sister network Fox Business several years ago, not last week. 

The intended recipients and others in and out of Fox -- a total of 14 people -- confirmed the story, which broke on Friday, written by HuffPost's Yashar Ali. While an investigation is conducted, Bolling is suspended from his broadcasts. 

We've written before about Bolling, a former commodities trader, working at Fox News and Fox Business since 2007, arriving from CNBC. Ali writes that Bolling regularly made sexist comments on-air. He got our attention in September 2014 while discussing the first woman fighter pilot from the United Arab Emirates leading a bombing of the Islamic State. 

Bolling asked on air if instead of speaking of “boots on the ground” in a military sense, it would be more appropriate to say “boobs on the ground.” The crass host apologized the next day, saying that his wife gave him “a look” when he arrived home. Presumably, Bolling slept in the guest bedroom this weekend. 

In a note of irony, Eric Bolling engaged in a major Twitter war in 2014 with disgraced former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner, himself involved in a major texting scandal.  “He is a sick human being, to continue to do this time and time again, continue to get caught, saying he’s not going to do it again, gets caught again," Bolling pontificated. 

Transcendence Research Documents Awe, Empathy & Wonder Beyond Self Focus

"Transcendence is a fundamental part of the human experience. Since the dawn of our species, people have been losing themselves in ritualistic prayer, song, and dance. Even so, for a long time, the prevailing consensus in psychology was that such experiences were pathological rather than natural. Freud believed that “oceanic feelings of oneness” were neurotic memories of the womb and the signs of a deranged mind," writes Emily Esfahani Smith for New York Magazine. 

Carl Jung believed exactly the opposite of Freud, which is just one more reason behind their competitive rivalry. Jung knew what University of Pennsylvania psychologist David Yaden confirms in a new review of research on transcendence. in the Review of General Psychology, “The Varieties of Self-Transcendent Experience,” defines these states as transient moments when people feel lifted above the hustle and bustle of daily life, their sense of self fades away, and they feel connected to something bigger. In such states, people typically report feelings of awe and rapture; of time stopping; and of feeling a sense of unity with other people, nature, God, or the universe.