Come Sail Away: Our Top 3 Take-Aways from the 2012 Election

So there has been over 24 hours of sobbing, crowing, whining, gloating, and finger-pointing.  And that was just on Facebook.  Now that we have a bit of distance from the emotion of the night, what are our top take-aways from the election?  We will each give you our top 3.



Emily:

1. Women Matter -

My Blue Heaven

It was a very good night for we YBGP ladies.

It's so hard to pick the best memes, there are so many.  But since both Mandi and I are spent this morning from a loooong live-blog day, memes it is.  And hopefully they will capture a bit of the feeling.


1. Yay.

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

Mandi talked about Gabby Douglas and the kerfuffle about her hair.  I'm listening to Game Change (I know, it's old, but it's taken me a long time to be willing to revisit the serious anger I developed over the 2008 campaign), and spending a lot of time thinking about how everybody from the Democratic Establishment to the press to Bill Clinton treated Hillary in the 2008 campaign.  And it's not like people were nice to Michelle Obama in that campaign.

Basically, I'm thinking a lot about the expectations we have for women in public life.

Here are some of the things that drive me to think about this topic.

Girly Questions

So I have this list of things that I've been thinking about using for post ideas.  But I mostly just want to share them and ask some girly questions.  So here goes:

• Here, we are arguing whether women get to have abortions or use birth control.  In China, they are arguing whether to continue forcing women to have abortions (even as late-term as 7-months) as they enforce their historically anti-girl one-child policy.  Either way, the mostly-male governments would really, really like to be able to tell women what to do.  The good news is that China has undermined its own progress by short-sightedly messing with its gender dynamics and age dynamics.  123 boys to 100 girls under age 4.  How's that going to work out for you in 20 years, guys?  One thing about democracy: you end up talking about things a whole lot before you do them.  But which argument is more anti-girl?  Why do governments spend so much time trying to control reproduction?  Is there a better way to have this conversation?

That which you do to the least of my brethren...

There has been a recent, and, to me, fascinating back and forth between American nuns and Rome about how much Catholics should emphasize care for the poor in the public discourse, as opposed to focusing on being anti-birth control, anti-gay marriage, anti-ordination of women, and anti-abortion.

Now, I'm not Catholic.  So I'm treading oh so lightly here.  But I simply do not get a Pope saying that nuns should focus less on the poor.  That is really, really strange to me.  And because of the history of the Catholic Church with women and with American Catholics, generally... I can't help but wonder if this is a smack down of a group of uppity American women.

That's Not Funny

Yep.  Hours after reading it.  Still mad.

Girl Talk

So this graphic and study have been making the rounds for awhile now, and I've been meaning to talk about them.

WOW and Komen

So there was this article in TPM this morning, about how the Race for the Cure is experiencing significant reductions in participants from last year's numbers.  This is largely attributed to what I can only call an incredibly misguided political move Komen made, then unmade, this year to defund its Planned Parenthood cancer screenings (primarily for lower-income and often uninsured women).

And I'm of two minds on the development.