I Stand With Ilhan

Via Pharyngula.  Pass it on.

Ibram X. Kendi
It goes without saying that #IStandWithIlhanOmar. And anyone who does not stands with Congresswoman Omar stands with Islamophobia, with racism, with politicians deploying lies to inflame racial and religious terror in the country. There is no middle ground in the struggle against bigotry. The sideline is behind the lines of bigots. The bigots have cast themselves as striving against bigotry, while they have cast those striving against bigotry as the bigots. The bigots have cast themselves as the victims and cast the victims as the bigots. But nothing new there: that is the history of bigotry. Congresswoman Omar is not perfect. I’m not. I’ve expressed bigotry. Confessed my mistakes. None of us are perfect. But many of us act as if we are. What are we striving against, and for? Her record makes clear she is striving against bigotry, striving for a world of equity. Finally, it is a fact that Congresswoman Omar was not talking about 9/11 in the way Trump cast her. But bigots hate the truth as much as they hate people.

Impeach the Motherfucker; Fuck the Pearl-Clutchers

Erick Loomis at LGM:

We need more Rashida Tlaibs in Congress. Impeach the Motherfucker should be a central Democratic Party slogan. Let the pearl-clutchers cry in a corner. The future is not with them.

And from Stephen Robinson at Wonkette:

It's possible that in the future, historians won't even bother referring to the 45th president by his birth name but will just call him "that motherfucker."

The Real Democratic Base

Here's how much real Democratic candidates don't need Trump voters.

Zandar:

Why did Ralph Northam win Virginia's gubernatorial last night by nearly ten points?  Black, Asian, and Latinx voters, and especially black women.

SNIP

It wasn't women who gave Ralph Northam the win, it was women of color who gave him the win. Among white voters, who still made up two-thirds of voters last night, Gillespie had a cake walk and won going away.

Enough black voters turned out to not only stop Gillespie cold, but to pick up the seats they needed in order to, along with Northam's win and Democrat Justin Fairfax's win as the state's new black Lt. Governor, take control of the state's House of Delegates in a 50-50 split by picking up a whopping 16 seats.

Northam has about an 8.5% win.  That's pretty much the exact margin black women gave him overall.  Without black women, this is a tie race.  With them, Northam won easily.

Oh, and with Dems winning the Washington State Senate special election and New Jersey's gubernatorial race, that's three states last night that went from split to Democratic control.

Maine too voted to expand Medicaid.  Overwhelmingly.

Thanks, Donny!

The lesson is when black voters show up, Democrats win and win BIG. We know this. What I don't know why we're trying to worry about winning back white men who voted for Republicans by a 27 point margin.  Get more black votes out.  Fight voter suppression.  Jesus, it's not multi-variable calculus, guys.

Republicans know this lesson well and have been trying to disenfranchise black voters for decades exactly because they know black voters win election for Dems because we vote for Dems. Duh.

Why some Democrats still yet don't understand this, I'll never know.

Religious Liberty and the Bishop

It's about power.  It's always been about power.  It's always been about the kind of faux power that is the only kind the truly weak can ever acquire: power by demonizing the other and labeling them as sub-human.

Women, minorities, gays, non-conformists of all stripes: Other, and therefore su-human.

Ophelia Benson in Free Inquiry:

... James Conley, bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska, who does indeed have a Facebook page on which he shares the columns he writes for the Southern Nebraska Register. He published a column on the Hobby Lobby ruling and what he takes to be its implications on July 11. SNIP

What the bishop seems to want is not religious liberty but religious power and authority. He wants to impose his religion’s rules and taboos on all of us, including people who don’t share his religion.

If Only None Defended It

ummagumma.co:

           

Now This Is What I Call A Job-Creator

Spends years doing research and testing on his own time and his own dime - no government contract, no venture capitalist.

Years during which he is ridiculed and shunned because of the nature of his research.

Invents a machine that creates a product that literally saves thousands of lives every year.

A machine that creates jobs in poor communities.

A machine that is affordable by poor people in those communities, because our job creator refuses to exploit it to make himself rich.

Read it, and feel your heart grow two sizes, too.

How many lives have you saved today, Jamie Fucking Dimon?

AynRandy Just Can't Stop Thinking About All Those Sluts Fucking for Free

If you think women shouldn't have more kids, how about giving them free birth control?  And free abortions? And free vasectomies for their partners?

Because that's not the point, is it?

Sam Youngman at the Herald:

During a Lexington luncheon Thursday, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul discussed the possibility of cutting government benefits for unwed mothers who have multiple children, though the potential Republican candidate for president in 2016 didn't directly endorse such a policy.

During a question-and-answer period following his remarks at a Commerce Lexington luncheon, Paul responded to a question about workforce development by including a warning about unwed young mothers doomed to poverty.

Although he said the job of preventing unplanned or unwanted pregnancies should be left to communities and families, Paul left open the possibility of a role for government.

"Maybe we have to say 'enough's enough, you shouldn't be having kids after a certain amount,'" Paul told the business group at one point.

Yep, starving their children will teach those whores the right lesson.

As Mike Huckabee so recently illustrated, the real problem here is that repug men simply cannot deal with female sexuality.

Digby:

I'll bet that this that gets to the nub of the problem a lot of these conservative men don't want to think about. Their wives don't want to have a lot of sex with their husbands, and their wives are good women. Therefore, women who want to have sex are dirty sluts. They must be. Otherwise the fact that no one wants to have sex with the Mike Huckabees of the world (at least unless they are paid to do so) might just reflect badly on the men rather than the women.

After all, if a man can't even be bothered to figure out how birth control works, I'm going to guess he hasn't spent a lot of time figuring out how a woman's sexual response works either.

I sincerely hope for her sake that Mrs. Tribble-Toupeed One is fucking the brains out of the pool boy.

QOTD

Via Divine Irony:

"When I was about 20 years old, I met an old pastor’s wife who told me that when she was young and had her first child, she didn’t believe in striking children, although spanking kids with a switch pulled from a tree was standard punishment at the time. But one day, when her son was four or five, he did something that she felt warranted a spanking–the first in his life. She told him that he would have to go outside himself and find a switch for her to hit him with.

The boy was gone a long time. And when he came back in, he was crying. He said to her, “Mama, I couldn’t find a switch, but here’s a rock that you can throw at me.”

All of a sudden the mother understood how the situation felt from the child’s point of view: that if my mother wants to hurt me, then it makes no difference what she does it with; she might as well do it with a stone.

And the mother took the boy into her lap and they both cried. Then she laid the rock on a shelf in the kitchen to remind herself forever: never violence. And that is something I think everyone should keep in mind. Because if violence begins in the nursery one can raise children into violence.”

 - Astrid Lindgren, author of Pippi Longstocking, 1978 Peace Prize Acceptance Speech  (via notablelove)

Celebrate Ada Lovelace Day

PZ Myers:

You’re supposed to celebrate the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and math today. Some of you women out there will be doing science today, some of you will read about it, and some of you will be doing like I’m doing: teaching it to women (and men!). At the very least, try to tell a girl that she can grow up to be anything she wants — and that includes being a mathematician, an engineer, or a scientist.

If you can't think of any other reason, do it because every time you celebrate female achievement in male-dominated fields, a misogynist loses his erection.

Women's Health Worsening, and Worst of All in Kentucky

Except for West Virginia, of course, the state where women's health is getting worse the most is Kentucky.  

But don't worry!  Now that we have religious FREEEDUMBS and an invisible sky wizard keeping us safe, it's all good!

Kevin Drum:

I don't have access to the original article, but Bill Gardner, a psychologist who studies the mental health service system for children, links today to a map of female mortality published this month in Health Affairs. It turns out that male mortality mostly improved or stayed the same from the mid-90s to the mid-aughts, but female mortality increased in 43 percent of all counties:

The counties are mapped below: red means that female mortality worsened. You can see a strong regional pattern: just about every county showed had worsened female mortality in several southern states, while no county showed such decline in New England. There are many questions about what explains this pattern. For example, did healthier women migrate out of the south from 1992 to 2006? Nevertheless, the map depicts a shocking pattern of female hardship, primarily in the southeast and midwest.

When I look at the graph, however, I am concerned not just about the women, but also about their children. The mental and physical health of mothers is a key determinant in children’s growth and development. What the map shows is that America has regions of communities with high concentrations of women experiencing substantial hardship. When women are not able to maintain their own health, how well can they nurture their children?

Here's the map:

When We Had To Look War in the Face

I missed this on Friday, but it's more than powerful enough to carry over to today.

 

As we face Permanent War by Drone in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and who the fuck knows where else, this is a reminder of what war is really like, from the last time Americans experienced war at home.

 

Read it.

Biden 2016

'Cause he's got the lady vote all wrapped up.

Joe Biden: Ladies Man

Love or hate him, Vice President Joe Biden has an old-style, retail-politician way of pressing the flesh -- especially when it comes to wooing women voters. On Friday, Biden spoke with an African American woman at a local restaurant in Ohio. "My name is Gorgeous." The vice president responded: "Hello, Gorgeous." Here are more photos of Biden charming his biggest fans.

We don't have the words to express how much we love Old Handsome Joe Biden.

Olympics Sanity: What She Said

Seriously, guys: the next time you're tempted to make disparaging comments about a woman's appearance, stop, pull a copy of this out of your wallet, read it, and think again.

Annie-Rose Strasser at Think Progress:

Being able to lift 267 pounds is only one of the things that makes 18 year-old British Olympic weightlifter Zoe Smith tough. She can also swat down sexist Twitter trolls like they’re flies.

While Smith was preparing to set an Olympic record for Great Britain in the clean-and-jerk event, men (and some women) on Twitter were busy saying she wasn’t attractive enough, or that she was manly, or that there was something wrong with her body because she was so muscular.

So Smith took to her blog to respond:

[We] don’t lift weights in order to look hot, especially for the likes of men like that. What makes them think that we even WANT them to find us attractive? If you do, thanks very much, we’re flattered. But if you don’t, why do you really need to voice this opinion in the first place, and what makes you think we actually give a toss that you, personally, do not find us attractive? What do you want us to do? Shall we stop weightlifting, amend our diet in order to completely get rid of our ‘manly’ muscles, and become housewives in the sheer hope that one day you will look more favourably upon us and we might actually have a shot with you?! Cause you are clearly the kindest, most attractive type of man to grace the earth with your presence.

Oh but wait, you aren’t. This may be shocking to you, but we actually would rather be attractive to people who aren’t closed-minded and ignorant. Crazy, eh?! We, as any women with an ounce of self-confidence would, prefer our men to be confident enough in themselves to not feel emasculated by the fact that we aren’t weak and feeble.

Cell Tissue More Human Than Women

"The only reason they keep Qumari women alive is to make more Qumari men."
--- C.J. Cregg, West Wing episode "The Women of Qumar."

It hasn't changed. Not in 5,000 years. Women are not really human. They are just mechanisms for creating more men. Which is why the current "anti-contraception" hysteria among the repugs is not about contraception, abortion or even non-marital sex. It's about enshrining in law and society that a clump of cells is more human than any woman.

And it's working.

Digby on "Murderous Birthing Vessels":

War on women? Why do you say that?

March 14, 2012 marks the one-year anniversary of Bei Bei Shuai’s unprecedented and inhumane incarceration for having experienced such a profound sense of depression while pregnant that she attempted to kill herself.

Ms. Shuai was arrested, charged, and has been held without bail based on the claim that Indiana’s murder statute (death penalty or 45-years-to-life) and attempted feticide statute (up to 20-years) may be used to punish pregnant women who cannot guarantee a healthy birth outcome.

We hope that you will sign the grassroots Change.org petition to the Marion County Prosecutor telling him to drop the charges. The petition, in short, says: Unless it is your intention to make clear that in Indiana the “Pro-Life” position is “Pro-Life-Sentences-For Pregnant-Women” position, we urge to you drop all charges and Free Bei Bei Shuai now.

When I use the unpleasant term "birthing vessels" this is what I'm talking about --- this woman is only valued for the fact of her pregnancy. It's directly out of Handmaid's Tale.

Katha Pollitt wrote about this case in The Nation:

In December 2010 Shuai was running a Chinese restaurant in Indianapolis with her boyfriend, Zhiliang Guan, by whom she was eight months pregnant. Just before Christmas, he informed her that he was married and had another family, to which he was returning. When Shuai begged him to stay, he threw money at her and left her weeping on her knees in a parking lot. Despairing, she took rat poison and wrote a letter in Mandarin saying she was killing herself and would “take this baby with me to Hades”; friends got her to the hospital just in time to save her life. Eight days later her baby, Angel, was delivered by Caesarean section and died of a cerebral hemorrhage within four days. Three months later, the newly elected prosecutor, Terry Curry—a Democrat—brought charges, claiming that the rat poison that almost killed Shuai had killed her baby. If convicted, she faces forty-five to sixty-five years in prison.

Pollit goes on to point out that suicide attempts are unfortunately fairly common among pregnant women. I don't know if this prosecutor has heard, but pregnancy affects women's hormones, which can often result in personality and mood changes. It's completely horrifying to criminalize this sort of behavior and as Pollit points out, the medical profession worries greatly that this will result in women failing to seek help or be honest with their doctors. It's a recipe for disaster.

But it seems to be a very popular recipe:

Unfortunately, punishing women for their behavior during pregnancy is becoming more and more common, fueled by the passage of “unborn victims of violence” laws in at least thirty-eight states declaring the fetus (or, in twenty of those states, even the embryo or fertilized egg) a separate victim in cases of homicide. In most instances these laws were intended to protect pregnant women from violence, especially from abusive partners, not to apply to the women themselves. But that is not what has happened, as the antiabortion forces have gained power. “The prosecution’s legal arguments are exactly based on legal arguments behind the personhood measures now moving through the states,” Lynn Paltrow, executive director of NAPW, told me by phone. “They treat the fetus as completely separate within the pregnant woman. How can you be separate and within?”

That's the ultimate question, isn't it? And yet, we are rapidly becoming a society that not only values the potential person within, but values it more than the full realized person who contains it.

Pro-choicers have focused on the dangers fetal personhood measures present to abortion rights. That danger is real: they’re part of the antiabortion strategy to build up the legal status of the fetus as a person in so many parts of the law that when the Supreme Court finally revisits Roe v. Wade, a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy will look like a bizarre exception. But these laws pose broader dangers to women, because they hold pregnant women liable for any conduct during pregnancy that a local prosecutor suspects caused a bad outcome—and bear in mind that every year 15-20 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage, 1 percent end in stillbirth and another 19,000 end in neonatal death. Under these laws, hundreds of pregnant women have been arrested, often on only tenuous evidence that their actions, including drug use, harmed their fetuses. In Alabama sixty women have faced such charges.

I've always felt that, at least for some, the intention of these fetal personhood laws was to make women responsible for "being bad" during the only time their lives matter --- pregnancy. And I never thought it was just about abortion. I've heard too many people making judgments and casting aspersions on even mundane aspects of pregnant women's behavior (like eating sweets or refusing to stop working) not to know that the impulse runs deep. For some people, a woman is never less human than when she's pregnant, which is bizarre indeed.

Read Pollitt's entire piece. And then go sign this petition. I don't know that it will do much good, but the war on women is getting some attention, so perhaps the time is ripe.

It's everywhere.

The Colorado House just passed a "first degree homicide of the unborn child" bill, which punishes pregnant women, not their abusers.

In Tennessee, if women won't behave themselves, the state will make sure everybody knows who they are so the bitches can be shot down in the street like they deserve.

Here's a reminder from - where else? - Arizona that you don't have to have a penis to be a misogynist.

In light of which, this Alaska bill merely requiring the sluts to get a permission slip from their rapist seems mild.

Another Barrier Falls

*

From the Navy News Service:

Five "Tigertails" of Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron One Two Five (VAW-125), embarked aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) as part of Carrier Air Wing Seventeen (CVW-17), flew an historic flight on Jan. 25 when they participated in the Navy's first all-female E-2C Hawkeye combat mission.

Carrier Aircraft Plane Commander Lt. Cmdr. Tara Refo, Mission Commander Lt. Cmdr. Brandy Jackson, Second Pilot Lt. Ashley Ruic, Air Control Officer Lt. Nydia Driver, and Radar Operator Lt. j. g. Ashley Ellison flew an E-2C Hawkeye- the Navy's all-weather, carrier-based tactical battle management airborne early warning and command and control aircraft. The aircraft was also manned up by multiple female maintainers including Aviation Machinist's Mate 3rd Class LaTasha Lawrence, Aviation Machinist's Mate 1st Class Farzana Lively, Aviation Structural Mechanic (Equipment) 2nd Class Ana Wilson, Aviation Structural Mechanic Airman Denise Birchfield, and Aviation Machinist's Mate 3rd Class Racheal Watson who ensured the safe launch and recovery.

"I have only had the opportunity to fly with one other female pilot," Ruic said. "It is nice to be a part of history, not just because we are females, but because we are also close friends. It was a unique experience."

Ellison added, "We got the mission accomplished and had fun at the same time. It was a flight I will never forget."

"Since April 2011, when Ellison checked on board as the fifth female in the squadron, we have been attempting to organize the all-female combat mission flight. Due to operational constraints, it had not been possible until now," stated Jackson, the squadron's operations officer.

The Tigertails are one of twelve active-duty VAW squadrons in the Navy. Eleven are carrier-based, but as Driver explained, VAW-125 is the only fleet Hawkeye squadron with enough females to fill a complete flight crew.

*Air Control Officer Lt. Nydia Williams, left, Radar Operator Lt. j.g. Ashley Ellison, Plane Commander Lt. Cmdr. Tara Refo, Pilot Lt. Ashley Ruic, and Mission Commander Lt. Cmdr. Brandy Jackson, all assigned to Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron (VAW) 125, pose for a photo before flying the first all-female-crewed combat mission in an E-2C Hawkeye aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70). Carl Vinson and Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 17 are deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class James R. Evans/Released)

Nobel Peace Prize Winners Who Actually Achieved Peace

These three women have earned the Nobel Peace Prize the hard way: by working for it in the most hostile of environments. In any year, any one of them would blow other contenders of any sex out of the water.

So the Nobel fucking Prize Committee can just shove its dick back in its pants and stop condescending to human beings who outclass them by a mile.

The New York "Treating Women Like Retarded Children for 153 Years" Times:

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2011 was awarded on Friday to three campaigning women from Africa and the Arab world in acknowledgment of their nonviolent role in promoting peace, democracy and gender equality. The winners were Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf — Africa’s first elected female president — her compatriot, peace activist Leymah Gbowee and Tawakul Karman of Yemen, a pro-democracy campaigner.

They were the first women to win the prize since Kenya’s Wangari Maathai, who died last month, was named as the laureate in 2004.

Most of the recipients in the award’s 110-year history have been men and Friday’s decision seemed designed to give impetus to the cause for women’s rights around the world.

“We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society,” said the citation read by Thorbjorn Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister who heads the Oslo-based Nobel committee that chooses the winner of the $1.5 million prize.

In a subsequent interview, he described the prize as “a very important signal to women all over the world.”

That signal reads: No matter what you accomplish, if you are a woman your achievements will always be labeled "symbolic" and secondary to the "real" achievements of men.

Click here to see pictures and read the accomplishments of these amazing women.

How Much Do Repugs Hate Women? Outlawing Abortion is Just the Beginning

How do you know repug forced-birth fanaticism has nothing to do with concern for blastocysts?

Because the repug War Against Women goes far, far beyond merely outlawing abortion.

Katha Pollitt at The Nation:

Remember “shared sacrifice”? Like the rain, the budget cuts were supposed to fall on all alike. But somehow men seem to be ending up with more than their share of umbrellas, and women are getting soaked. Attacks on reproductive healthcare are openly aimed at women and have gotten a lot of attention—like the House vote to defund Planned Parenthood and eliminate the Title X family planning program, which has fortunately been blocked in the Senate. Less visible are the ways federal, state and local government cutbacks, touted as neutral and necessary belt-tightening, will fall disproportionately on women.

The cuts will affect women in three ways. Partly as a legacy of private sector discrimination, a huge proportion of working women are employed by government or government contractors, and they tend to work in the very areas slated for the most drastic slashes—education, healthcare, social services, libraries, legal aid, secretarial and other office work. Moreover, because they are more likely to be poor, old and caring for children or relatives, women are the major recipients of social services. Thus, when a senior center is closed down, not only is the elderly person deprived of care likely to be female, the staffer who prepared her lunch or organized her group activities is probably a woman too—and so is the relative who now must take up the slack. When Head Start and childcare slots are eliminated—the Continuing Resolution for fiscal year 2011 proposed by the House axes 368,000 of them—tens of thousands of teachers and aides, almost all female, lose their jobs, and so do many mothers who rely on them. Add massive proposed cuts in the Women, Infants and Children feeding program and the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant, and the abolition of the Women’s Educational Equity program (which monitors schools’ compliance with Title IX), and it’s almost as if there was some kind of concerted plan to undo forty years of progress for women—and, especially, to make sure poor women stay poor.

Read the whole thing.

Have you talked to your Democratic neighbors today?

Eleanor Roosevelt Would Kick Your Ass, Mr. President

Not for failing to promote women's participation in government, but for throwing the working people of this nation to the Wall Street wolves.



Full transcript here.

Women in America: Slightly Less Worse Off

This isn't so much a report on women as a collection of statistics about women. A true report on women would have as its opening and largest section a hair-on-fire description of the current rethuglican/DINO War on Women.

Nevertheless, the first comprehensive statistics in half a century are important. Page One Kentucky:

Today the White House released the first comprehensive report on the status of American women in nearly 50 years.

“This collection of data from across the federal government offers the most comprehensive look at women in America since the 1960s,” Acting Deputy Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank said. “With this report, this administration can more effectively manage programs that support women and girls and America’s families, and foster the growth of the U.S. economy.”

It’s truly an interesting look at statistical data concerning women.

Some highlights from the report:

* Women have not only caught up with men in college attendance but younger women are now more likely than younger men to have a college or a graduate degree. Women are also working more and the number of women and men in the labor force has nearly equalized in recent years. As women’s work has increased, their earnings constitute a growing share of family income.
* Gains in education and labor force involvement have not yet translated into wage and income equity. At all levels of education, women earned about 75 percent of what their male counterparts earned in 2009. In part because of these lower earnings and in part because unmarried and divorced women are the most likely to have responsibility for raising and supporting their children, women are more likely to be in poverty than men. These economic inequities are even more acute for women of color.
* Women live longer than men but are more likely to face certain health problems, such as mobility impairments, arthritis, asthma, depression, and obesity. Women also engage in lower levels of physical activity. Women are less likely than men to suffer from heart disease or diabetes. One out of seven women age 18-64 has no usual source of health care. The share of women in that age range without health insurance has also increased.
* Women are less likely than in the past to be the target of violent crimes, including homicide. But women are victims of certain crimes, such as intimate partner violence and stalking, at higher rates than men.

Click here to visit the White House data on women site or here (Warning: External PDF Link) to review the full report.

Be sure to check out each section of the report. Tons of info on families and income, education, employment, health, crime and violence.

Real Women's Work

Laura Flanders in The Nation:

So it's “the year of the women" in the media again. But again, it's only some.

All about money media are all about the women of the GOP. It's news, right, when Republican women are running for office and winning primaries, it seems, because, well it's supposed to irk feminists and progressives, and it's new.

Except novelty can't be the only argument, because there's another year of the women underway and that's getting almost no play. Seen any banner headlines about the Year of Women in Labor? I thought not.

Seen any banner headlines about the Year of Women in Labor? I thought not.

Not only did women become the majority of the workforce in the US in the past year, they also became the majority of the unionized workforce. The head of SEIU stepped down, and the election to replace him was between two women—and the one who won, Mary Kay Henry, was a leader of the LGBT "Lavender Caucus."

The new AFL-CIO leader has as his second-in-command recent GRITtv guest Liz Shuler, not only the first woman secretary-treasurer of the largest labor federation in the country, but its youngest in history as well. And with the formation of the National Nurses Union, tough healthcare advocates like Rose Ann DeMoro have moved to expand their presence on the national stage—after leading the fight for healthcare reform and keeping up the pressure for single-payer.

With unions pouring support into primary challenges for centrist Democrats, you'd think the media would've noticed this storyline as well. If Nikki Haley is a new face for the Republican Party, certainly Mary Kay Henry is a new face for organized labor. So if novelty's not the reason for the love for the new generation of Bushwomen, what is?