Moms are the survivalists, Dads are the risk takers.

Published: Sunday, May 12, 2013, 2:17 p.m.

...Fidelity Investments released (click here) a study showing that mothers have far more substantive discussions about money than fathers do when talking about estate planning or wills, health and elder care topics, and the ability to cover living expenses in retirement.

Turns out moms are also a little easier to talk to. Sixty-four percent of mothers surveyed said it wasn't hard to start a conversation with their adult children about savings and investments, compared with 54 percent of fathers. 

Ahead of Mother's Day, many companies are releasing surveys about the financial roles of moms.

One reason women are talking more about money, Fidelity said, is because they tend to be the family treasurer. Nearly 60 percent of working mothers say they also manage their household budget, according to a survey released earlier this year by Working Mother magazine and Chase Card Services....

...Meanwhile, Insure.com has issued its annual Mother's Day Index, which values the responsibilities of a stay-at-home mom at $59,862 this year, down from $60,182 in 2012. 

The online site uses various household duties such as being a cook, driver, housekeeper and party planner to calculate the salary using occupational wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics....

Why are they teachers rather than engineers?

There were a projected 3.7 million (click here) full-time-equivalent (FTE) elementary and secondary school teachers in fall 2011. This number has risen 7 percent since 2001. The 2011 projected number of FTE teachers includes 3.3 million public school teachers and 0.4 million private school teachers.

I think it is easy to see where some of the income inequality exists. If women dominate in some professions such as teachers and nurses, there 'equal pay for equal work' takes on a lesser dynamic because they are primarily competing against other women. So, it is safe to say women dominated professions are paid less than men dominated professions. They equal responsibility in parenting and supporting their own households, but, because they are in a female dominated profession their incomes have profound and sustained inequality.

Demographic Characteristics

• Among full-time and part-time public school teachers in 2007–08, some 76 percent of public school teachers were female, 44 percent were under age 40, and 52 percent had a master’s or higher degree. Compared with public school teachers, a lower percentage of private school teachers were female (74 percent), were under age 40 (39 percent), and had a master’s or higher degree (38 percent).
• In addition, among both males and females, 83 percent of public school teachers were White, 7 percent each were Black or Hispanic, 1 percent each were Asian or of two or more races, and less than one percent each were Pacific Islander or American Indian/Alaska Native in 2007–08....

When States and Cities move against unions, cut budgets and replace public schools with charter schools they are moving against women.

 

The stagnant number of women gun owners is just simple population growth.

There is not new interest in guns by women. I'll go as so far as to state, women's participation is reliant on men's participation. They are involved with their partner's interest.

Most women support strengthening gun laws, compared with fewer than half of men.

By Elahe Izadi

Updated: April 14, 2013 | 2:30 p.m.
April 12, 2013 | 7:25 a.m.

While gun-control legislation (click here) is a politically risky vote for red-state Democrats, it’s also an issue that could hurt the GOP’s efforts to attract female voters.

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that 65 percent of women favor stronger gun laws, compared to 44 percent of men. That’s consistent with previous polling; a recent Quinnipiac University poll showed 61 percent of women and 45 percent of men in favor stricter gun laws.

Richard Feldman, the Independent Firearms Association president and a former NRA lobbyist, said that the gender gap on gun laws is a long-standing one, and that much of it has to do with who owns guns.

“The gender gap is real, but when you look at the gun owners and the non-gun-owners, that differential is going to drop substantially,” he said.

Although gun ownership among women has increased over the previous decades, men are still three times more likely to own guns than women, according to a March Pew Center survey. And opinions on the effectiveness of gun laws vary greatly depending on whether you own a gun or if there is one in your house. According to the Pew survey, 66 percent of people who live in gun-free homes say stricter gun laws would reduce mass-shooting casualties; only 35 percent of people in gun-owning households agreed....

Moms take the train, subway and bus.

Sunday, December 09, 2012 - 12:01 AM

By Alex Goldmark

Women (click here) are more likely to ride public transportation to work than men. Men are more likely to drive to work.

The latest data from the American Community Survey of the U.S.  Census show: Of the people who take public transportation to work, 50.5 percent are women and 49.5 percent are male. That might not seem like a difference worth mentioning until you consider the workforce overall.

The American adult workforce is mostly male, and by a decent amount: 53 percent male to 47 percent female.

One theory is that type of occupation is correlated with gender, and women are more likely to be in mid-level jobs (so earning less, and looking to spend less on commuting) in offices, which tend to be more likely to be in city centers serviced by transit.

Interestingly, men are slightly more likely to carpool than women in the U.S. and women are slightly more likely drive to work alone relative to the general population of workers.

For solo drivers nationally it's 52.6 percent male (slightly less than their 53 percent share of the workforce).

For carpoolers it's 54.7 percent (a touch more than their 53 percent of the workforce.) Meaning it's men who tend to carpool more than women among those who drive. But just by a hair.

It's transit where the gender gap spikes.

The gap is especially wide in cities where transit is more readily available than it is nationally....

The investments we make in public transportation support women and their households far more often than they do men. When considering impacts on public transportation there has to be particular focus on women.

Eric Jaffe

February 1, 2012

If we bothered to anthropomophize (click here) the problems of pubic transit, we'd probably consider them equal opportunity haters. Cars Crowd, fare rise, service dwindles for one and all.

But it turns out our public transportation services might harbor a bit of a gender bias against women. That's the argument put forth by Gendered Innovations, a Stanford University project devoted to gender analysis, in a new line of study called "Transportation: Reconceptualizing Data Collection."

By reexamining transportation data, the researchers at Gendered Innovations believe they've uncovered evidence that women ride transit systems much more often than typical numbers suggest. The researchers contend that regular transit surveys obscure the number of trips caregivers (particularly parents or, more likely, mothers) take; that serial trips, which women make more often than men, aren't sufficiently defined; and that aggregated ridership figures, particularly by race, create incomplete pictures of the riding public.

These true numbers, the researchers conclude, should encourage metro transit systems to redesign facilities to accommodate the transport needs of women....

Homeownership Rates

From 1990 through 2010 the percentage of women owning their own homes has fluctuated. The highest percentage of family home ownership by women with no spouse present was in 2006. From 2007 on this group did not do as well. 2007 was the beginning of the collapse of the housing bubble. They have not recovered to their pre-crash level.

Nonfamily households where one person resides have more women owning homes than men. That is consistent across the decade with little effect by economic hardship as families experienced. "Other" households have the same phenomena with women out performing men. Oddly interesting since women earn less.

But, it obvious that single parent families with female heads of households have a more difficult time when economic conditions are adverse. It could be said single female households are exclusively hit the hardest when economic conditions are adverse. Marrieds are not effected because there is a man in the house. Single male households are not effected either. So, the disparity in income by single female households is profound and insures greater economic instability of these families.

 This table is from U.S. Census Bureau (click here)

I am proud of you, Harry. You are not corrupt. Very nice.

This graph was complied after 2009.

Pay disparities are discrimination. Gender discrimination.

When women are not receiving equal pay for equal work, the USA Treasury is losing its tax base.

Top lawyer decries unequal pay for women (click here)

Bob Egelko

Updated 8:07 pm, Friday, May 10, 2013

Fifty years after Congress banned sex discrimination in wages, it's inexcusable that women - including women at the highest levels of the legal profession - are still paid less than men for the same work, the American Bar Association's fifth female president told a San Francisco audience Friday.

"Same job, same responsibilities, unequal pay," Laurel Bellows said in a speech to the Commonwealth Club. "It's totally outrageous. ... You lose talent, you lose perspective, you end up with that bland, all-white-guy community."

Women make 77 cents for every dollar paid to men, a disparity that has been unchanged for more than a decade, according to the latest report by the National Women's Law Center. Analysts disagree on how much of the difference is due to choice of occupation, family responsibilities and other personal factors and how much is due to discrimination....

But alas when the cost of living is no different for a man than a woman where does she turn to make up the difference? To one of the most draconian lending practices in the country.

By Matt Canham
May 12, 2013
Washington

Fearing new regulations (click here) in the aftermath of the financial crisis, payday lenders decided to make a major play for the support of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. They contributed more than $126,000 to his campaign as the Nevada Democrat attempted to beat back a tea party challenge, hoping that the man who controls the Senate agenda would protect their interests.

Their gambit didn’t stop the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Reid supported....

Now listen Harry, you aren't going to have these donations next election. You need to replace them now.

Does Mitt Romney Support Equal Pay for Women? (click here)
By Caroline Esser
April 11, 2012

Apparently, the upcoming recall election is not enough controversy for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Last Thursday he decided to step it up a notch by also repealing the 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act in Wisconsin.

And since Mitt Romney has recently expressed his support for Walker—at a GOP dinner in Pewaukee, Romney called Walker a “hero”—the conversation on equal pay has shifted from the governor to the presidential candidate. Immediately following the repeal, President Barack Obama’s campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith emphasized Walker and Romney’s friendship and pointedly asked: “Does Romney think women should have the ability to take their bosses to court to get the same pay as their male coworkers? Or does he stand with Governor Walker against this?”

Initially, it did not seem that the Romney campaign cared to answer. But that changed this morning when Huffington Post journalist Sam Stein asked during a conference call whether Romney supports the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the first bill signed into law by President Obama. The Romney aide’s answer: “Sam, we’ll get back to you on that.”...

See, when the law that supports equal pay for equal work is repealed there is no basis to sue the boss. It astounds me when women act against their own best interests. Walker should have been thrown out of office on the basis of gender discrimination alone. Go figure.

Women's Reproductive Rights.

Judge Criticizes Obama Administration as It Appeals Contraception Decision (click here)

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

A federal judge on Tuesday angrily accused the Obama administration of hurting poor and minority women by seeking to restrict their access to morning-after contraceptive pills.

Lawyers for the Justice Department appeared before Judge Edward R. Korman in an effort to delay his previous order that the drug be made available to girls of all ages without a prescription. The department announced last week that it planned to appeal the ruling.

Judge Korman, of United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, said he would decide this week whether to freeze implementation of his order while the appeal proceeds. But for the second time in a month, he used his perch on the bench to lecture the Food and Drug Administration and President Obama for their efforts to restrict access to the drug by very young women.

“The poor, the young and African-Americans are going to be put in the position of not having access to this drug,” he said,  according to The Associated Press....

WHO NEEDS CONTRACEPTIVES? (click here)

• There are 62 million U.S. women in their childbearing years (15–44). Those who are sexually active and do not want to become pregnant, but could become pregnant if they and their partners fail to use a contraceptive method, are at risk of unintended pregnancy.

• Forty-three million women of childbearing age (69%) are at risk of unintended pregnancy.

• Thirty-one percent of women of reproductive age do not need a contraceptive method because they are infertile; are pregnant, postpartum or trying to become pregnant; have never had intercourse; or are not sexually active.

• Couples who do not use any method of contraception have an approximately 85% chance of experiencing a pregnancy over the course of a year.

• The typical U.S. woman wants only two children. To achieve this goal, she must use contraceptives for roughly three decades.

WHO USES CONTRACEPTIVES?

• More than 99% of women aged 15–44 who have ever had sexual intercourse have used at least one contraceptive method.

• The proportion of all women of reproductive age who are currently using a contraceptive method increased from 56% in 1982 to 64% in 1995. It declined to 62% in 2002 and remained at that level in 2006–2008.

• Among women who are at risk of unintended pregnancy, 89% are currently using contraceptives.

• About one in 10 women at risk of unintended pregnancy are currently not using any contraceptive method. The proportion is highest among 15–19-year-olds (19%) and lowest among women aged 40–44 (8%).

• Eighty-four percent of black women who are at risk of unintended pregnancy currently use a contraceptive method, compared with 91% of their Hispanic and white peers, and 92% of Asian women....

Scheduling parenthood.

Ms. TUCKER: ...there's two teenagers (click here) by myself in an urban area, raising them. And I've had that situation where, you know, the job I really wanted to keep, I couldn't keep it because we had, you know, times where I had to be places I didn't have a sitter.

MARTIN: Constant - so, sort of constant lack of control over your schedule...

Ms. TUCKER: Yeah.

MARTIN: ...unplanned overtime, too hard to wheel it around, make arrangements, never discussed.

Ms. TUCKER: Never discussed.

Ms. IVEY: Yeah. Absolutely. I do agree with her. In our case, I know that when my husband was with a private law firm some years ago and I was home, he was free to work as much as he wanted, and he did. He worked a lot of hours. It was kind of crazy. But when he wanted to do something extra, which was teach, he did it on Friday nights because then he didn't have to worry about if he needed to go back to the law firm for something. He had all weekend to do it.

MARTIN: But, you know, when you say he was free to work as much as he wanted to work, you know, I would wonder whether he would agree with your language there. Would you say he was free to work as much as he wanted to, or did he have to work as much as he had to?...

I love the shoes.

She is amazing.

Democratic Reps. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois (click here) and Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii on Sunday blasted the military's handling of sexual assault cases, calling the system broken and in desperate need of fixing.

Duckworth, a lieutenant colonel in the Illinois Army National Guard, said on CNN's "State of the Union" that “the military has shown it is not capable of fixing this problem."

Gabbard and Duckworth said they were shocked over the case of an Air Force commander overturning the 2009 conviction of an Air Force captain found guilty of aggravated sexual assault by a jury.

“A commander should not have the power to overturn a jury’s verdict," said Gabbard, who is in the Hawaii Army National Guard....

Duckworth called it a "betrayal of trust," and said that the Uniform Code of Military Justice is not sufficient for sexual assault crimes in the military.

This year nearly 100,000 women will become mothers of handicapped children. But. By choice?

My First Lesson in Motherhood

By Elixabeth Fitzsimons

Published: May 13, 2007

...I pictured myself boarding the plane (click here) with some faceless replacement child and then explaining to friends and family that she wasn’t Natalie, that we had left Natalie in China because she was too damaged, that the deal had been a healthy baby and she wasn’t.

How would I face myself? How would I ever forget? I would always wonder what happened to Natalie.

I knew this was my test, my life’s worth distilled into a moment. I was shaking my head “No” before they finished explaining. We didn’t want another baby, I told them. We wanted our baby, the one sleeping right over there. “She’s our daughter,” I said. “We love her.”

Matt, who had been sitting on the bed, lifted his glasses, and, wiping the tears from his eyes, nodded in agreement.

Yet we had a long, fraught night ahead, wondering how we would possibly cope. I called my mother in tears and told her the news.

There was a long pause. “Oh, honey.”

I sobbed.

She waited until I’d caught my breath. “It would be O.K. if you came home without her.”

“Why are you saying that?”

“I just wanted to absolve you. What do you want to do?”

“I want to take my baby and get out of here,” I said.

“Good,” my mother said. “Then that’s what you should do.”

In the morning, bleary-eyed and aching, we decided we would be happy with our decision. And we did feel happy. We told ourselves that excellent medical care might mitigate some of her worst afflictions. It was the best we could hope for.

But within two days of returning to San Diego — before we had even been able to take her to the pediatrician — things took yet another alarming turn.

While eating dinner in her highchair, Natalie had a seizure — her head fell forward then snapped back, her eyes rolled and her legs and arms shot out ramrod straight. I pulled her from the highchair, handed her to Matt and called 911.

When the paramedics arrived, Natalie was alert and stable, but then she suffered a second seizure in the emergency room. We told the doctors what we had learned in China, and they ordered a CT scan of her brain.

Hours later, one of the emergency room doctors pulled up a chair and said gravely, “You must know something is wrong with her brain, right?”

We stared at her. Something was wrong with her brain, too, in addition to everything else?

“Well,” she told us, “Natalie’s brain is atrophic.”...

When? We continue piece meal assemblies of women't rights.

The Equal Rights Amendment (click here)

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

Women have the right to their own lives with the rights and privileges of the USA Constitution. When are rights going to be insured to all women?

“Parents are worried about finding a job or keeping the job they have and they shouldn’t have to worry about affording quality child care,” said Vice President Biden when announcing new Recovery funding for the Child Care and Development Fund.


Child Care and Development Fund (click here)

The $2 billion in Recovery Act funds for the Child Care and Development Fund will allow states across the country to support child care services for more families whose children require care while they are working, seeking employment or receiving job training or education. The funds will be used by states to provide vouchers to families for child care or to provide access to care through contracts with child care centers. Recovery Act dollars will support a wide range of child care providers, including child care centers and home-based programs....

The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) (click here) made available $5.2 billion to States, Territories, and Tribes in Fiscal Year (FY) 2012. CCDF is authorized by the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act and Section 418 of the Social Security Act. CCDF assists low-income families in obtaining child care so they can work or attend training/education. The program also improves the quality of child care, and promotes coordination among early childhood development and after school programs....

It's Sunday Night

It is safe to say, women's issues are also mothers' issues.

You worked two jobs, 
To keep a roof above our heads, 
You chose, 
A life for me, no you never gave up, 
I admire you, 
For the strength you’ve instilled in me, 
You were so young, 
You were just my age, when you had me mom, 
You were so brave. 
There was nothing gonna stop or get in our way. 
And I know you will always be there for me. 

So when you’re lost and you’re tired, 
When you’re broken in two, 
Let my love take you higher, 
Cause I, I still turn to you. 
I still turn to you, 
I still turn to you. 

It was ’94, the year that everything started to change, 
From before, 
You had to be a woman, 
You were forced to change your ways, 
To change your ways 

Then you founded the lord, 
You gave your life to him, 
And you could not ignore, 
the love he had you, 
and I wanted more of your heart. 

So when you’re lost and you’re tired, 
When you’re broken in two, 
Let my love take you higher, 
Cause I, I still turn to you. 
I still turn to you, 
I still turn to you. 

I don’t know what to do if you left me, 
So please don’t go away, 
Everything that you are is who I am, 
Who I am today. 
So when you’re lost and you’re tired, 
When you’re broken in two, 
Let my love take you higher, 
Cause I, I still turn to you. 
I still turn to you, 
I still turn to you. 

To you, to you, to you. 
I Still Turn to you. 
To you, to you, to you. 
Cause I, I turn to you.

This is government over reach! The Republicans don't want to register guns, they just want to register people.

The immigration reform measure that the Senate began debating this week would also create a national biometric database of American adults, according to Wired....


...The bill mandates a “photo tool,” or a massive federal database to be maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. It would contain names, ages, Social Security numbers, and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or state-issued photo ID. Employers would have to look up every employee in the database upon hiring them. The clause calling for the database is meant to curb hiring of undocumented workers....

It is out of the question. The cost alone is prohibitive and human beings are not CHATTEL.

Link to Wired: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/05/immigration-reform-dossiers/

It is ridiculous. It is a human rights violation to turn a living breathing person into a computer image for the pure purpose of government tracking. It is out of the question. There will be abuses. Not only that, but, computers are far from perfect. People will be victimized.

Republican legislators are not competent practitioners of this democracy. 

I'll have to add this to the list of documents to read daily until it is complete. Evidently, the Republicans are unable to read.

Pursuant to Title III (click here) of the Omnibus Diplomatic and Antiterrorism Act of 1986, 22 U.S.C. § 4831 et seq., (the “Act”), Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton convened an Accountability Review Board (ARB) for Benghazi to examine the facts and circumstances surrounding the September 11-12, 2012, killings of four U.S. government personnel, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, John Christopher Stevens, in Benghazi, Libya. A series of attacks on September 11-12, 2012 involving arson, small-arms and machine-gun fire, and use of rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), grenades and mortars, focused on two U.S. facilities in Benghazi, as well as U.S. personnel en route between the two facilities. In addition, the attacks severely wounded two U.S. personnel, injured three Libyan contract guards and resulted in the destruction and abandonment of both facilities – the U.S. Special Mission compound (SMC) and Annex....


FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

1. The attacks in Benghazi were security-related, resulting in the deaths of four U.S. personnel after terrorists attacked two separate U.S. government facilities – the Special Mission compound (SMC) and the Annex....

2. Systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place....


Overriding Factors
This is not to say, however, that there are no lessons to be learned. A recurring theme throughout the Board’s work was one also touched upon by the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam ARBs in 1999. Simply put, in the months leading up to September 11, 2012, security in Benghazi was not recognized and implemented as a “shared responsibility” in Washington, resulting in stove-piped discussions and decisions on policy and security....

3. Notwithstanding the proper implementation of security systems and procedures and remarkable heroism shown by American personnel, those systems themselves and the Libyan response fell short in the face of a series of attacks that began with the sudden penetration of the Special Mission compound by dozens of armed attackers....

4. The Board found that intelligence provided no immediate, specific tactical warning of the September 11 attacks. Known gaps existed in the intelligence community’s understanding of extremist militias in Libya and the potential threat they posed to U.S. interests, although some threats were known to exist....

5. The Board found that certain senior State Department officials within two bureaus in critical positions of authority and responsibility in Washington demonstrated a lack of proactive leadership and management ability...

Should be interesting.

So, let me get this right.

This picture is for real by the way. This was the shady-eyed Issa at the Congressional hearings the other day.

GOP Benghazi Hearings a Partisan Disgrace (click here)

By Brent Budowsky

Perhaps during his next partisan exploitation of the tragic death of Americans at Benghazi, Libya, in political hearings paid for by American taxpayers, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) can replay then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warning him, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and other Republicans that their efforts to cut diplomatic security spending will endanger American lives....

The facts are clear, right? The Benghazi CIA operation was attacked on September 11, 2012 after the other demonstrations in the Middle East had begun, including an attack in Cairo whereby the wall of the consulate was being climbed. If I remember correctly the Egypt response in Cairo was lethargic at best. So, there was a lot of movement on September 11, 2013 in the Middle East.

This somewhat lethargic government response was due to new governments in several of these countries, including Libya. The USA had taken a very aggressive role along with NATO to stop Gaddafi's attack on the people of Benghazi. We, as allies, saved many many lives in Benghazi. Due to our vested interest in having a benevolent government in Tripoli the USA was actively involved with diplomatic missions, not just in Benghazi, but throughout the region.

I am not going to repeat the TRUTH about Benghazi as there has been an extensive investigation by a Blue Ribbon Panel of the incident.

Mr. Thomas Pickering, a former USA diplomat, has reported about the Panel and stated it was done with precision and there was no doubt what occurred.

..."They (click here) had found things that needed to be fixed and that the three major 

programs they were putting in place were designed to immediately find answers to those problems," he said.

The report released by the ARB in December, recommended that four State Department officials immediately step down from their jobs. Pickering said that he believes all of their recommendations were fully carried out....

The Panel's recommendations were taken seriously. The one single aspect of the investigation not looked into by the Panel was the Talking Points Memo. It is understandable this was not the focus of the Panel because it was inconsequential to the outcomes in Benghazi or where the failures occurred. Openly, Mr. Pickering stated the events on the ground in Tripoli of which Mr. Hicks testified were examined and already a part of the report. Evidently, Mr. Hicks was one of the folks that stepped down to be reassigned to a desk job as a result of the Blue Ribbon Panel. Obviously. That brings into question more and more the incompetency of Issa's Revenge. The Issa Hearings are more the tail waging the dog.

So, now the House Republicans are seeking the 'scandal' surrounding the Talking Points Memo. The US House is saying there were 12 revisions and Secretary Clinton lied to the American people.

Now as to the issue of the 12 revisions, that is a fact. But, that was a fact before the Issa Hearing.  Now, as to the point to demanding the lies of Secretary Clinton in regard to the Talking Points Memo be accountable. Evidently, knowledge of the personal supervision by Secretary Clinton of the composition of the Talking Points Memo is in demand. Why? Politics.

Much to her disgrace Secretary Clinton was setting herself up for a runaway election in 2016 she stated she is not seeking to run in. Well for god sake then why personally supervise the memo and cause corruption of the Secretary's image in the first place?

Jeeze, Hillary, you just lie like hell because you won't even admit your ego is sincerely driven by a Presidential Campaign. I mean she needs to get over herself.

Poor Mr. Issa he just can't cope with competency. He is so blastedly incompetent that was so evident at the hearings he held there is simply no way he will be successful in his presidential campaign at all. 

Supposedly, the real motivation behind the Issa Smear Campaign is based in lying to the American people in the Talking Points Memo and to honor the families that demand the truth. You know, the families have received a great deal of respect by having the country assemble a panel to investigate. Just because the outcome of the panel did not demand the stepping down of the Secretary of State doesn't mean the dead weren't honored. It doesn't mean there wasn't justice. It doesn't mean the USA is not seeking those responsible to be tried and held in punishment for their crimes.

I don't really see the sense in victimizing the families and the country further by obsessing over talking points on a Sunday talk show. It has no brevity to the policies of the USA. The demands for accountability of whom wrote the 12 revisions carries no brevity. It would be a different paradigm if there was a war that resulted in light of the Benghazi attacks and there were lies woven into the national dialogue to facilitate the new dedication of USA assets and deaths of soldiers. That didn't happen here.

That is what is being orchestrated now by the Republicans. If one recalls post September 11, 2001 the Bush/Cheney Administration carried out huge deceptions to the people of the USA to carry out an illegal war in Iraq. This mess by Issa is retribution. It is suppose to exonerate the lies of Republicans in previous administrations. There is nothing here of any consequence that even comes close to the the atrocities of Bush/Cheney.

I see no reason why President Obama and his administration needs to cooperate any further. I strongly recommend the REAL focus for Mr. Issa's hearings be dedicated to the rolling out of the recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Panel. I see the involvement of a President in such a disastrous hearing as completely irrelevant to the business of the USA. 

The Issa Hearings were a complete waste of money and time. He is playing politics more so than any 12 revised memos or the words of Ambassador Rice. Darryl Issa needs to be held for ethics violations and the nation needs to move forward to be sure all the recommendations of the Panel are deployed and enforced. 

It would be far more interesting to talk about the recommendations of the Panel, but, somehow that focus evades the competency of the American Press. Ratings would really suck if they actually read the recommendations and investigated their implementation. Gee, what a shame.

There is nothing more to investigate. Secretary Clinton was dedicated beyond any understanding by the American people or the appreciation of Republicans she actively worked with in the Senate. All this mess is the Republicans problem and not that of the American people or their government.

It is not as though conservative PACs were being honest, either.

POSTED 06.19.2012 ON DIRIGO BLUE

In a letter regarding his 501(c)(3) organization Crossroads GPS, (click here) the Obama for President called on Karl Rove to disclose the names of the donors ....

In a letter regarding his 501(c)(3) organization Crossroads GPS, the Obama for President called on Karl Rove to disclose the names of the donors to his group. Rove claims that Crossroads GPS is an educational group, and not involved in campaigning, and so exempt from disclosure laws.

The Obama campaign also sent a letter to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) asking them to expedite their ruling on the matter. The campaign’s lawyers cite a recent Appeals Court decision, Real Truth About Obama v. FEC, in their argument. The lawyers also reiterated the ruling in Citizens United that “preserved Congress’ authority to disclosure of organizations involved in electioneering activities

Crossroads GPS letter (click here)

...The case against in the law for enforcement against Crossroads has been pending before FEC since 2010....This is no longer a question of whether Crossroads will have to comply with the law. All that remains is the issue of when...including reported contributions of $12 million per donor...As you know, the court in Citizens United stressed that it's ruling preserved Congress' authority to require disclosure...130 S. Ct. 876, 914-15(2010)...

In order for disclosure to be demanded following a known offense by a major conservative electioneering company, there would have to be investigation for same. I do believe the IRS in diffuse methodology or one of leadership had a profoundly good reason to check and recheck the request for innumerable certification of 501(c)4s.