BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

by Amy Siskind It's not been a particularly good press week for two well known misogynists: Rick Warren and Larry Summers. Both men were early selections of President Obama. If we are to judge our president by whom he surrounds himself with, then what do Obama's selections of Warren and Summers tell us? That Obama's version of diversity does not include gay and women's rights. And in fact, the selection of Warren and Summers will likely be a continual source of salt on the wound of inequality. President Obama's Inauguration was presided over by Rick Warren. Although Warren is perhaps best known for his opposition to gay rights, he also believes that women are second class citizens. Specifically, Warren's Saddleback Church has encouraged battered wives to stay in their abusive relationships. Hundreds of viewers wrote on our blog about their personal experiences at the hand of Rick Warren's church. Saddleback Church's advice to abused wives: "she...

Before digesting the below, take a couple minutes to read Chaim's great post on "Obamacare" - Here. by Bronwyn's Harbor At the top of PBS’s latest Bill Moyers Journal , Moyers chose clips of the “usual suspects” opposed to Obama’s health care proposal - a Republican legislator shouting “socialism,” Glenn Beck, Michael Steele, and Bill Kristol, who worked to “drive a stake through” the heart of health care reform in 1993 and 2009. The problem with the GOP’s stock opposition language is that it inaccurately describes what’s really wrong with Obama’s plan, which enriches the profit-motivated private sector and strengthens its controls over policies, at the expense of average Americans forced to sign up. The real reason insurance companies brought back “Harry & Louise” ads: Obama’s plan rewards private health insurance companies with expanded enrollments but little reward for the Americans “mandated” (forced) to buy these plans. (See Paul Krugman’s blog post, “ Why m...

A manifesto of the Rebellion of defecting Democrats against the Party Elites: TO AMERICA: Having been subjected to a series of institutionalized violations, the violated have the privilege, in the name of Self Preservation, and a sacred Duty, for the Future, to suspend the partisan ties that bind, which had long linked them a confederacy of scoundrels, and to disregard rote appeals for Unity, issued on terms not beneficial to those mishandled and thus intended to eliminate all Consequences of said abuse, thereby issuing also a carte blanche for continued humiliation. Rather than capitulate to harmful and useless loyalties, we cleave yet to the spirit of just rebellion, that every missionary relationship, Coalition, and Institution so codified must not seek its own corporeal solvency, but must constantly uphold in earnest the welfare of its members and the values thereof; and when found in ongoing defiance of its mission, for short term gain and long term catastrophe, in ignorance of it...

By Wency Leung An ex-husband is challenging a Canadian Supreme Court judgment that has been heralded as a major boost in the global cause for Jewish women's stronger religious divorce rights. The woman in the case doesn't think he has a chance. After nearly two decades of legal battles over her right to a religious divorce, Stephanie Bruker, 59, thought she'd finally settled a case that has been heralded as a breakthrough for other observant Jewish women who have become "agunah," or "chained," and unable to remarry after seeking a divorce. In December, in a landmark ruling for the intersection of civil and religious law, the Supreme Court of Canada ordered Bruker's ex-husband to pay $47,500 in damages for the years he denied giving her a religious divorce, called a "get," after swearing to do so as part of a civil divorce agreement. But in a last-ditch effort, Bruker's ex-husband is asking the Supreme Court to rehear the case, according...