We got a few comments (;_^) about our view of Paula Jones with perhaps the most interesting from someone who said I was obviously part of the old boyz network.
      Oh, sure.
      Congratulation on *that* thinking.
      But PLEASE - I don't HATE the so-called leaders of some of the feminist organizations. I just want them to get off their butts and start doing something for their salaries besides blow wind and make like busy, busy nothing. Parading in streets doesn't cut it, kids.
      One sits down with the movers and shakers and make compromises. But one sits down with them. You do not taunt them; you do not ridicule them if you want them to do things for you!
      For the love of women's lives, will some of those leaders look at American history and study how things evolved?

      Let me say again, we elect a president to govern our country. We are not canonizing him.

      What Catt's Claws tried to do when we wrote about the Jones porno- style lawsuit was warn how women are being sucked into the babble-on-on discussion vortexes that are created when we use the language of right-wing rhetoric. Why are the so-called educated people like the leaders of National NOW using the radical right's woman-hating terms?
      Ladies - the BASIC premise of the right-wing argument is wrong.
      Re the Paula Jones argument, feminists did not race to support Anita Hill until she testified. For GAWD's sake, we didn't even know she existed.
      Feminists did not immediately jump all over Senator Packwood. For years they ignored his reputation. The same for Ted Kennedy. The same for U.S. Representative Kalich of Ohio who lives with his chief of staff and wants to cut all benefits for all women, but shhhh.
      Maybe I'll support Paula Jones when she testifies UNDER OATH. Until then, I will maintain for Bill Clinton and any other person - male or female, rich or poor, educated or uneducated - their right to be innocent until proven guilty IN A COURT OF LAW. Even Newt who HAS been found guilty.
      We've had two elections with Paula Jones' lawsuit in the public domain.
      Even with the American people voting resoundingly that this issue is not important, "airhead PC feminist leaders" are so busy arguing about things they can't control that they are be too busy to work on important things like welfare reform, jobs, pay equity, ERA, etc., etc.
      Look, let's face facts.
      Just because a woman makes a statement does not mean that women should accept it as fact. There are women who lie, who cheat - and will sell their bodies and souls for money. The same as men do.
      But that also is beside the point.
      The point is, that the right-wing spin doctors are keeping the *airhead PC feminists leaders* so busy with stupid, nonsensical stuff that they cannot devote *their* limited time and *our* limited money to fight for the important things.
      And praise to the eternal male god, they are succeeding.
      Instead of answering this wild nonsense about what Paula Jones did or didn't do when a slobbering TV reporter sticks a mike in your face, ask why the CDC isn't educating women about the dangers of HIV transmission from their male lovers and husbands?
      Or why most women in the U.S. have little or no health insurance.
      Why so many women in the U.S. are living under the poverty level...
      Or why so many other things including child support, welfare reform, etc.
      Rant a little bit, ladies.
      Rave a little bit, ladies.
      Raise a little bit of hell, ladies.
      Women are suffering... women are DYING...
      Let the courts decide the issue of Clinton's dropped pants or Paula Jones' dropped lies while you get on with the business of leading...

      Surely we can find feminist leaders who aren't airhead PC feminist puppets reacting to right-wing rhetoric. Reacting with those ten-second sound bites.
      Reacting... reactionaries heading the feminist movement. Makes one ill.

      We are NOT amused by discussions in which the "airhead PC feminists" are claiming that feminists don't have any choice about what issues women should support. According to them, if a woman, such as Paula Jones, makes a charge, ALL women should race out and kill for her without hearing one shred of evidence!
      But there are other women - like me - who want to know why these airhead PC feminist leaders think they have the right to take away our right to free speech and our right to decide issues for ourselves.
      Interesting that the airhead PC feminist leadership is for dictatorship, censorship, and the complete gagging of discordant voices.

      Well, maybe if any opposition gets recognized, those who have been arguing for a FULL and COMPLETE auditing of the NOW foundation will be heard.
      We are not saying there are problems. Far from it since the IRS pointed out problems in the past, so we assume things are on the straight and narrow. We just want to know why the secrecy?

      The baby Richard case which captured so many headlines has taken on a twist that only sensible women of an age could have foreseen. Women have witnessed in practical ways the lousy manner some men treat their families.
      Seems the father who fought so hard through the courts to win custody of his biological son (MY SON, MY SON!) has left the boy and his sister in the care of their mother and is living in a residence registered to another woman. The attorney for Baby Richard's father said the situation is no different from that of thousands of struggling families. "(Baby Richard) is being cared for by his mother. What's wrong with that? It's not some sort of Dickensian scene."
      No, but the fact that the media seems to have overlooked (bleat to them) is that custody was given to THE FATHER, not the mother! The father had deserted baby Richard's mother before the baby was born and the mother had given Richard up for adoption. However, the father decided to worship at the temple of my son, my son, and fought to gain custody of the child he had NEVER cared for or supported. And he convinced the soft-headed ones of the Illinois Supreme Court that sperm thrown away in a casual sex meeting means ownership forever of any children.
      Most judges who decide these kinds of issues are graying, middle-aged men who are still living by the standards instilled in them by men who were born in the 19th century.
      (If a judge is 60, he was born in 1936... his father was probably born about 1910 and his grandfather about 1885.)
      One of the most famous sayings by the church clergy is "give me a child until he is 7 and I will have him the rest of his life."
      Most of today's judges were brainwashed in the bigotry and the cult of the penis that was the norm during the childhoods of their father's fathers. Education has not erased those prejudices, especially when it comes to family law.
      How can the law be so fixed on sperm ownership that no one sees this man's desertion as a means of opening the custody question?
      And you tell me our first priority as women isn't getting women active and elected to political office? Wake up and smell the old tyme religious ethics of the legislatures and the judicial system.
      Of course not all women are perfect. There are some women who have learned to play the boyz games, trading it for promotions... the judge in the OJ custody trial comes to mind.

      Maj.-Gen. Clifton Poole, interim president of the South Carolina's sacred Citadel has disgraced the southern hyperbole tradition. He recently urged the two women who left the Citadel to return to classes when he conceded that some cadets had "overstepped the bounds of our rules."
      Overstepped, in this case, means throwing nail polish remover on the women and setting them afire. It's like the church making Joan of Arc a saint, saying it was all a terrible mistake - about 500 years after they burned her at stake.
      (Isn't it fascinating that Poole is referred to as Maj.-Gen as if he were still in active service and not retired? Is it because he parades around with a bunch of young men playing with guns, most of whom never enter the armed services???)
      Anyway, Kim Messer and Jeanie Mentavlos have transferred to the University of South Carolina. The record shows that the women had complained as early as last September about rough treatment that was way beyond the limits of hazing. Their parents were assured by the Citadel administration that the matter was being taken care of. The fire and death threats occurred after "things were taken care of."
      The Citadel said last week that 11 cadets had been charged with school violations in the alleged incidents. Let's wait to see how they are "punished."
      Maybe it will be doing the pushups (imitating rape) that most Citadel cadets were allowed to do in the quadrangle as a means to celebrate when Shannon Faulkner left last year - pushups and yelling all witnessed by the Citadel administration.
      And surprise...
      A big thing is being developed about the fact that only two of the four women at the Citadel have complained about violence and threats... seems that the boyz are saying maybe it wasn't bad leadership but the women's personalities that caused the violence. Shall we dance that waltz again?

      The right-wing attorney of Paula Jones who also represents a lot of other strange cases was videotaped WITH HIS PERMISSION as he offered to help a woman client appear in the Playboy, a girlie-exploitation magazine that has also shown pictures of Paula Jones in "provocative" poses.
      Gilbert K. Davis who is representing Ramona Hines in a separate sex discrimination case against her employer as well as Paula Jones admits he is shown on tape as saying, " I know what you want to do. You want to take your clothes off... you want to take all of your clothes off and expose your body."
      However, Davis says he had been drinking and that the video should have NO EFFECT on his efforts to gain the Republican nomination for State of Virginia attorney. Probably it won't since it's the VA Republican party that offered Ollie North as a U.S. Senator to the disgusted citizenry.

      The subject is horrifying enough but the way it was reported by Raymond Hernandez in the New York Times was just plain disgusting.
      Hernandez said lawmakers were "siding with women's groups," as if the subject was a partisan football game not a race for women's lives.
      What was the subject of the article? That New York pass legislation that allows DOCTORS, not HMO-Wall Street investors to decide who long women undergoing MASTECTOMIES will stay in the hospital. Seems that HMOs were ordering women released THE SAME DAY!
      What the hell is happening to doctors that they put up with this interference in the health care of their patients? Have they all abandoned medicine for the stock market?
      Sending a woman home the same day as she has undergone a MASTECTOMY - sending a woman home the same day as she has given birth... tell me comparable horror stories for men.
      Yeah, tell me.
      HMO - Hating Mothers Organizations...
      President Bill Clinton is attempting to get a similar law through the Republican Congress. He got it through for hospital stays after birth. The laws would also require the insurance companies to pay for reconstructive surgery as a mastectomy. Many insurance companies, to save a few bucks, are claiming such reconstructive surgery is elective, not a health requirement.
      (Who paid for Bobbit to get unbobbed? How much do you need to urinate? Wasn't a lot of that cosmetic?)
      Another radical HMO money-saving scheme is having premature babies sent home from the hospital within days so the non-medically-trained mothers can give TLC personal care to those tiny, fragile little people instead having highly trained nursing staff care for them properly. Often these mothers have other children and work grueling 80-hour-weeks as "only a housewife" cleaning, laundry, cooking, shopping, caring for the other children - and the husband who demands his time for HIS needs.
      Our TV screens are full of the propaganda on how good premature release of premature babies is for the mother and baby... only a man who hasn't cared for a NORMAL baby would ever dream up such used cotton- balls in the brains thinking.

      How many of you are being monitored for high blood pressure?
      Yeah, you woman - you.
      Heart attacks kill more women than breast cancer. REPEAT: Heart attacks are the biggest killer of women! Strokes are right up there too. Buried in a news story about the high risk of strokes for blacks and Hispanics was the statement:
      "The study also found, somewhat surprisingly, that women make up 61% of all stroke deaths...And though the incidence rate of stroke appears to be greater in men, women may tend to have more severe strokes or receive less aggressive treatment for the condition."
      Ah yes, that euphemism: "less aggressive treatment."
      Because doctors think of strokes and heart disease as a male disease, they have "a low index of suspicion to recognize and treat cerebrovascular disease in women. This could lead to higher mortality from stroke," the authors wrote in the highly regarded medical journal Stroke.

      (By the way, we just got news that the lesbian mother in Florida who lost custody of her daughter to her former husband who had been convicted on murdering his first wife has died of a heart attack. We would like more details, PLEASE. Was there an autopsy?)

      As long as we're on the subject of women being neglected by the health care system, let's stop off at University of Rochester medical school which had been warned about deficiencies in its human research procedures.
      The university says the procedural deficiencies that received warnings from the FDA and now from the NIH had nothing to with Hoi Yan Wan who died from an anesthetic overdose.
      Seems Hoi Yan Wan had been given FOUR times the recommended dose of lidocaine during a bronchoscopy performed as part of a study of lung cells. She complained of pain and feeling weak but she was discharged anyway. She then suffered a fatal heart attack.
      Do we know why her symptom were ignored? Who didn't do their job? Were they charged with manslaughter or reckless endangerment or just plain malpractice? Are they still doctors?

      Here's another situation that proves we need more women in the Congress.
      The boyz of Newt cut the budget of the National Weather Service which then had to stop forecasting temperatures for agricultural areas - people in cities demand service but the cows don't have much voice. Made sense to the boyz because the cows don't vote.
      But their short-mindedness is now causing a drastic rise - 50% or more - in a lot of fresh veggies because South Florida agriculture which provides more than half the fresh veggies for the Eastern half of the U.S. in the winter was not warned of coming FREEZING temperatures.
      Even the dimmest wittest woman would have known better than to destroy the safety net for the kitchen table.
      Congratulations NEWT - another one for the gipper...

      RUMOR that the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra has agreed to hire women is NOT true. Werner Resel, chairman of the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra, obviously was trying to blunt the boycott of the orchestra by women as it makes a money-raising trip to the U.S. this spring.
      The threat of a women's boycott is making them VERY nervous.
      The Vienna orchestra needs the dollars of American women but they are saying their "special sound" doesn't need women...

      Catt's Claws wrote a piece some time aback about the need for women to drive to a well-lighted and populated area if there is ANY attempt to pull them over at night, or in isolated areas, by blue lights that may or may not be police.
      A "blue-light rapist" is believed responsible for three rapes in Eastern Arkansas after stopping women at night in isolated areas. A police chief said, "We feel this is a personal affront to the law enforcement business."
      Well, yahoo. How about the affront to women - the victims? It's been more than a year since this monster started his police imitation.
      Instead of just warning, why not actively post signs warning ANYONE not to stop for blue lights in isolated areas but to drive at a normal speed to the nearest lighted and populated area???
      The police chief explained "We (the police) have a vested interest to pursue this with all vigor (since the rapist imitates a police officer)."
      No interest in preventing rapes??? Just your professional ego?
      The rapist flashes his blue light and, when the woman pulls over, he races to her car and points a gun.
      Amazingly few states - including Arkansas - allow someone facing the criminal charge of fleeing to cite the desire to reach a public lighted area as a legal defense.
      How about some of the state NOWs getting after this issue?
      Should be relatively easy to get passed. If memory serves, several New England states have such laws.

      Another long overdue idea is a national databank to track DNA information of men who commit sex crimes and violence.
      The FBI keeps fingerprints... why not DNA?
      Many states are forming DNA databanks but that doesn't make any good sense.
      Sex offenders - such as Ted Bundy - didn't stop at state lines.

      Before the hurrahs start regarding the apparent court approval of same-sex marriages (that decision still faces years of legal wrangling), let us examine the actions of the Hawaiian state House which approved, by a vote of 44 to 7, a proposed constitutional BAN on same-sex marriages. The BAN if also approved in the Hawaiian senate would be subject to a voter referendum in the general election of 1998.
      However, pro-gay and lesbian attorneys are predicting that the present ban will fail in the Hawaiian senate because it is too poorly written.

      The correct FDA approved dosage for the morning after abortifacient is: 2 Wyeth's Ovral or 4 tablets of Wyeth's Nordette, Lo/Ovral or Triphasil or Berlex Laboratories Levlen or Tri-Levlen and then take the same, second dosage exactly 12 hours later. Nausea occurs in some cases. Vomiting, which is RARE, will prevent it from working so take an antiemetic (antinausea) medication such as Dramamine with the pills. This method must be used within 24-72 hours of the intercourse. Later than that a more complex method is necessary.
      The Emergency Contraception (EC or Morning After Pill). Their number is 1-800-584-9911. They are available 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, and will refer you to the nearest place to get EC. EC has a website (http://opr.princeton.edu/ec/ec.html.
      EC hotline has information about emergency contraception and have a directory of more that 1800 clinicians willing to prescribe emergency contraceptives.