R U A 77 PERCENTER?

Last Tuesday, April 26, was a special day for women. However, it does not bring great joy for progress in equality. Rather it designates how far into 2006 an average woman must work to equal what a man earned in 2005.

For about a decade women have earned only 77 cents for every dollar paid to men. It has been worse. The Sixties found them earning only 59 cents for every dollar paid to men. It was believed that they would catch up as more women entered the work force.

Evelyn Murphy, economist and former lite gov of Massachusetts has authored a book, Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men – and What to do About it.

Over the years reasons given for women being paid less, she reveals, are: they are not as educated; they dropped out of workforce when they had children; they didn’t need the money since they were married.

She claims the reasons are facetious. The difference in pay is not because women take time off to have and raise children because the wage gap figure measures only those women who work full time for a year.

Murphy thinks the argument that women earn less is because they take time off to start a family is “an incredibly lame argument”.

So is the idea that women are less educated or less trained since now there are training facilities that encourage women to participate.

Murphy argues that government cannot help. “We passed the laws that make discrimination illegal. I’ve realized that CEO’s have the power to eliminate this problem.”

She thinks they and other organizations/businesses need to check their payrolls for systematic underpayment of women in every job category.

Women must also get involved. One way they can check on where their salaries stand is to go to Murphy’s website and use the wage-gap calculator to find if there are differences in their area between what they and men are getting for doing the same job:
http://www.wageproject.org

And women also must take a good look at themselves. Are they dressing for “fashion” [that is to please men] or for their profession and the situation they are working in?


Nearly every day on any news program, one can see a group of workers coming down the steps of their building. Men, wearing comfortable flat shoes, step confidently down to the sidewalk.

But always there is that one woman [or sometimes more than one] who goes to the side and clings to the railing as she tries to maintain balance in heels that one day will injure or even kill her. But, they will argue, heels make their legs look attractive.

Perhaps it is time women showed competency and confidence in the workplace and limit their sexy attire to bars, church functions and social occasions. Certainly so if they want to be taken seriously as professionals and paid as professionals.
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I’M THE GREAT DECIDER

Oh yay-yus, I’m the great Decider [ye haw]
Deciding for earthlings en masse [ye haw]
I feed their fears and delight in their tears,
They trust me and I kick their ass.
-- with apologies to The Platters/Freddie Mercury

Gloryoski! The once and future king has spoken. OK Republicans, “Can you hear him now?” He came into office announcing that he was the Great Uniter and you know what happened then.

Is this your leader that you revere and admire? Do you hold your country in such low esteem that you would continue to let this person rule over it while ignoring Congress, The Constitution and us lesser critters.

April 26th will mark the day where Bush has 1000 days left in office. 1000 days to be the great decider. 1000 days to decide what country he will use our children’s lives to invade next.

Actually, he has decided that we won’t even have time to think about such things because we will be kept busy with the coming election and with floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and the rising cost of gas.

Oh yay-yus, I’m the great decider [ye haw]
Deciding what science can be [ye haw]
What supports my claims and serves my aims
Is all I’ll allow you to see.
- ibid

Now we are faced with another fake-out as spring cleaning at the White House proceeds Bush style. Old faces in the other slots as cronies move in or up. But the change will only be cosmetic; the punishing, destructive policies will continue.

No one should be complacent or pleased at what they call the demotion of Karl Rove. It just appears to take him out of government, thus making him less of a target for the Special Council or any future investigations.

Oh yay-yus, I’m the great decider [ye haw]
I decide for you what is best [ye haw]
My long reign of error begat oodles of terror
My incompetence meets every test.
- ibid

I hear the voices coming from God
Giving arrogant ME, absolute power over air, land
and sea.
- ibid

YEE HAW!
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LAUGHING LAST

Ever since Bush started running for president the partisans on the left have mocked and made fun of him as malaprops spring from his lips like thorns on roses. The late night humor mills turned out a barrage of material sure to bring laughter and derision.

Cartoonists had a field day. One showed an unattractive facsimile of Bush with the caption, “Somewhere a village is missing its idiot”. He really did do such dumb things and mangled the English language so badly that nearly everyone laughed – but not everyone laughed at him; many laughed with him.

The scared little bunny look, when he was told America was under attack and then chose to finish the goat story was a classic. Another was landing on a carrier deck supporting a pelvic package that was obviously fudged up. The only question was whose sox were used and how many.

It proved to be a minor distraction that was hooted at by the left but the right took the media soaring to the heights with the proclamation that the war in Iraq was over. The point missed was that he never packed the package again and Carl had his game plan well in hand. Indulge the left with humor and keep the media on the “right” message.

Whether it was a formal or informal meeting with the White House Press Corps, jokes were the soup de jour. Bush used them to dodge questions and keep the reporters thinking they were really getting answers instead of smoke blown up their collective asses [ Helen Thomas being one of the exceptions – she always knew shit from Shineola].

He set them up from the beginning with nicknames and playing good-‘ol-boy dumb. Talk about low expectations! Whatever anything bad happened, one could be sure the media would blame it on The Dick or Rummy. W. was just such a nice guy to have a beer with.

And so it went for his years in the White House where the often occurring Bush faux pas were collected, put on web sites and circulated amid frantic laughter. It buoyed the spirits of all who could not imagine that anyone would vote him back for a second term.

But vote him back they did even with a disastrous war, scandals, mistakes and repeated examples of incompetence. Through it all, Bush maintained that he was committed to continuing along the same, mistaken path and, until very recently, pulled an admiring media along it with him as the left fumed and the Press Corps laughed.

Now with his poll numbers in the toilet and a not so compliant media, Rove sends Bush out to fool the people once again, going from town to town, ostensibly taking the “hard” questions from his “nastiest” critics.

And, of course, the left is laughing its ass off at his antics. Air America plays his show over and over to blast him. But to the uncommitted voter and to his base he is making points. They feel he is being beaten up by bullies unfairly but is handling it like a prince. He makes jokes; he fractures his sentences and gives uninformative answers, all the time playing the questioners like a pro.

He interrupts with a quip to knock them off their question. He makes a big deal of telling the crowd to “hear the man out” thus showing his magnanimity and fairness. He keeps the audience watching his act but unaware of his real purpose.

Although a majority of Americans give Bush low polls on most issues, the same majority do NOT want him impeached or censored. This means he and the GOP may have the last laugh. Bush gets away Scot-free because he plays the idiot card so convincingly that the left has bought into it as reality. Danger, danger, Will Robinson, complacency is the hob goblin of disaster.
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NATIVE AMERICAN WISDOM

Talk about American values and human rights and what would Jesus do? –check out President Cecilia Fire Thunder of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation located in the state of South Dakota.
http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096409864

S.D. House Bill 1215, now in the legislature, will outlaw all abortions unless the woman will die if she does not have it. In other words, to prove you must have an abortion, you must die.



If you are raped, or if there are physical/health problems with you or development problems with the fetus, or if you are unable to support or care for a child, fergetaboutit! – No other reason except death is acceptable.

Former nurse and healthcare giver, Fire Thunder, is spitting in the face of a state body made up mostly of white males who “would make such a stupid law against women. I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.”

Sadly, other women in N.D. who are not Indian, will not be allowed by the state officials to come to the reservation to seek the treatment they are denied by their government officials.

Would that every state in this land had a “Woman’s World” where the idiotic, selfserving, punitive laws made by political males and their fembots could be declared off limits, and a woman in charge with the courage and good sense of Cecilia.

http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/004.htm

"The best solution to abortion is to make sure that women have access to contraceptives, have access to family planning options, and that information needs to be out there at all times where all women of childbearing age have that information and use it."

She continues: "We just want to make sure that something is done for women who make that decision. All we can do is provide that to them, no questions asked. It's their choice. It's between her and God and that unborn baby. And I honor that."

And we at GenderGappers honor her and hope she becomes an example to the women of her state and the rest of this country. This important health care for women can be practiced at Pine Ridge because it is under federal jurisdiction, not state.

Pine Ridge is still protected by Roe v. Wade – at least until the new Bush/Bible belters Court drown it in the waters of political expediency.

Want a preview of what it may be like in your state when all abortion is criminal? Check out the upcoming article in the New York Times Magazine by Jack Hitt
the criminalization of abortion in El Salvador.
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