Leader Of New York’s Women Firefighters Makes Controversial Post On ‘White Privilege’

According to The New York Post, the leader of New York City’s female firefighters has sparked outrage for blasting “white boys” and “white privilege.”

Sarinya Srisakul, president of United Women’s Firefighters, is taking heat from fellow firefighters after posting online comments.

They read:  ‘“These white boys crying and complaining over this because their white privilege is being messed with. Trying living a life being racially profiled!!!!”’

Critics say Srisakul violated the FDNY’s social-media policy when she posted the comments in November. The policy bars statements that bring the department into disrepute, but some firefighters say Srisakul gets away with it because she is “politically correct.”

(Updated article)

Fox News Megyn Kelly Responds To Rand Paul’s Bahavior With Women Interviewers

YouPoliticsNews

Fox News host of The Kelly File Megyn Kelly confronted Senator and Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul on his recent behavior toward female reporters.  The interview was reportedly from Wednesday, April 8th.

“It’s only going to get worse,” Megyn Kelly pointed out, talking about the difficult interviews Rand Paul will face.

(Updated report)

MSNBC: FDNY Swears In Their First Lesbian Chaplain

MSNBC

The Fire Department of the city of New York made history last week when it swore in its first female and first openly lesbian chaplain, the Reverend Ann Kansfield.

Reverend Kansfield joins Thomas Roberts to discuss it.

Mika Brzezinski On New Morning Joe Female-Focused Half-Hour and Ratings Race

Mika Brzezinski has become something of a poster child for navigating the rocky terrain of being a working mother.

After three best-selling books — the most recent, 2013’s Obsessed, explores her struggles with food and body image — Joe Scarborough’s able foil is expanding her brand on MSNBC with a series of conferences and her own female-focused half-hour on Morning Joe. The latter has been up and running unofficially at 8:30 a.m. for several weeks.

Guests booked for March include D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Bobbi Brown and Arianna Huffington. And in April Brzezinski will hit the road with a series of conferences that dovetail with her book Knowing Your Value: Women, Money and Getting What You Want. The Know Your Value Tour will kick off in Philadelphia, followed by Washington, D.C., Chicago, Boston and Orlando, and feature panels of experts, keynotes and workshops designed to help women achieve the lives they want — at home and in the workplace.

The tour will be featured on MSNBC and also will have a robust internet extension (msnbc.com/know-your-value) that will include video streams of the conferences.

Last year, Morning Joe was overtaken by CNN’s New Day, which has bested Joe in the adults 25-54 demographic for seven months. CNN recently taunted the show with a full-page ad in The New York Times, but Scarborough brushes off the competition: “The people who watch our show run the world.”

Brzezinski and Scarborough reveal how the new segment came together, the ratings race and booking high-profile guests.

Hollywood Reporter:  How did the 8:30 segment evolve?

Brzezinski: It was Joe’s idea and something we’ve been talking about for years in different ways. Knowing Your Value really resonated, and still people come up and talk to me about it: the impact of women’s success, women breadwinners, on their lives and relationships.

Scarborough: Everywhere we went people would go, “Let Mika talk more!” So we have really reversed roles here. Mika runs it, [and] I’m Mika’s sidekick. This is a great format for her to own, to grow, and one that she didn’t ask for, [but] one that [executive producer] Alex [Korson] and I wanted her to take on because we knew how great she is.

Why didn’t you want it?

Brzezinski: We actually had different ideas for the half-hour, and I didn’t think of myself [for it], which is funny because now I am asking women who get promotions, “How did you do it? Did you step up and ask for it?” This is just something that evolved and seemed like we needed to do it; it’s interesting and it’s time. These conversations keep popping up. We’re meeting more and more women who are confronting these issues.

There are several female panel shows in daytime now. Are you mindful of differentiating what you’re doing?

Brzezinski: It’s going to be a challenge, and we’re a work in progress and we’ll be transparent about that. I think the risk is to pander and to go for the low-hanging fruit and to do stuff that’s talky. We want to address substantial issues that impact women.

Scarborough: [At 8:30] Mika is coming on and she’s running it and I’m either in the control room or I’m her co-host. And we’ll have more of a focus on women’s issues, but it has to be consistent with the smart talk that we have the first two and a half hours.

The Mercury 13

Fifty-five years ago this month, the first of a group of female aviators was invited to undergo rigorous challenges to become astronauts – and on some tests, they outperformed the men. These elite women became the Mercury 13.

“I was one of the very active women pilots at the time,” explains Sarah Ratley, one of the women chosen. “Many of us had dreams of being in the space program.”

Aviation was very much a man’s world at that time, and the female pilots had already needed to push past considerable barriers in their pursuit of flight. “I started flying while in high school. I paid for part of college [by] flight instructing and commercial flying. I continued working in aviation after college while being employed full-time in engineering,” says Ratley, who also held a degree in mathematics with minors in physics and chemistry.

Some scientists believed that because the average woman was smaller and lighter than a man, their build could make them better potential candidates to travel into space and cope in the cramped conditions.

NASA had not publicly expressed interest in sending women into space, so testing on the female astronauts began under private funding, spearheaded by Dr William Lovelace, who had been involved in evaluating male astronauts.

The 13 would-be astronauts also included Jerrie Cobb, Bernice Steadman, Janey Hart, Jerri Truhill, Rhea Woltman, Jan and Marion Dietrich, Myrtle Cagle, Gene Nora Jessen, Jean Hixson, Wally Funk, and Irene Leverton. Some of the group had come from the humblest beginnings to claim their status as elite pilots.

Testing was eventually canceled, and despite protests from some of the women and a public hearing in 1962, the answer was still no. At the time NASA required all astronauts to be test pilots, which was also something no woman was allowed to do.

More:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150205-unsung-heroines-of-the-space-race

Sexism: Wilimington, N.C., Female Vet Harassed For Parking In Space For Vets

“An Air Force veteran who served in Kuwait found a note on her car Friday criticizing her for parking in a veterans-only parking spot in Wilmington, N.C.

Mary Claire Caine said that she returned to her car from shopping at Harris Teeter to find a note on her front window from a person identifying themselves as a ‘Wounded Vet.'”

TYT Network

Brazil: Female Latino Rousseff Re-Elected President

Brazil’s left-wing president, Dilma Rousseff, was re-elected on October 26th to a second four-year term.  It is the fourth election in a row won by her Workers’ Party (PT).

Perhaps Ms. Rousseff’s victory was inevitable. Only three Latin American presidents have lost re-election bids in the past three decades.  Odds are stacked in favor of incumbents, with all the machinery of power and patronage at their disposal.

Ms Rousseff can point to record-low unemployment, rising wages and falling inequality under the PT’s watch.  Mr. Aécio Neves, the center-right opposition, put up a valiant fight and argued that progress has stalled since Ms Rousseff was first elected in 2010.

The bad side is that the president will lead a divided country.  Most of the richer south, south-east and center-west went convincingly for her market-friendly rival.

In her victory address, Ms. Rousseff did speak of “unity”, “consensus” and “dialogue”.  But healing campaign wounds got off to a poor start when she failed even to mention Mr Neves (who had earlier called to congratulate her and wish her success) or his center-right Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB).

There may some bad feelings between the two.  In the past, Ms Rousseff’s predecessor and patron, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, went so far as to liken the PSDB to the Nazis for their supposed disregard for the poor.

The PSDB, for its part, has repeatedly accused the PT of being irreparably mired in sleaze, citing a probe into a kickback scheme at Petrobras, the state-controlled oil giant, that allegedly benefited Ms Rousseff’s party and some coalition allies.  Sources claim they are certain to push for a congressional inquiry into the Petrobras scandal.

This and other impending fights are hardly conducive to the sort of broad consensus that will be necessary if Ms Rousseff is to carry out her first priority outlined in the victory speech: political reform to make the country more governable.

For the moment, dysfunction is only likely to increase. Starting in January Congress will host 28 parties, up from an already unwieldy 22 at present.

According to The Economist:  “Ms. Rousseff’s weak mandate—the weakest of any government since democracy was restored in 1985—will make it hard to bang heads together to push through meaningful change.”

Her vow to hold a referendum on political reform deserves credit.  But a previous attempt, prompted by huge nationwide protests in June 2013 that demanded it (among other things), was stymied by congressmen content with the current set-up.

More pressingly, Brazil needs to exit the funk of no growth and high inflation, running at 6.7% a year.

However, Ms. Rousseff roundly dismissed the opposition’s economic ideas on the campaign trail as responsible for high unemployment, prohibitive interest rates and stagnant wages during the PSDB’s tenure in 1995-2002.

Republican Insults Wisconsin

Republican National Committee co-chair Sharon Day spoke at a Republican Party field office in Waukesha on Monday.

She spoke of the need to get Scott Walker supporters to the polls.

Did she insult Wisconsin in the process?

Cenk Uygur discusses.

Kurdish Female Fighters (YPJ)

Video by Mirava News / 60 Minutes Australia.

Poland Has New Woman Prime Minister

WARSAW — Poland’s incoming prime minister, Ewa Kopacz, said Friday that she intends to take a somewhat different, more feminine approach to the job.

At a news conference to introduce her new cabinet she was asked whether Poland should be sending weapons to aid the Ukrainian government — as the country’s leading opposition party has advocated. Ms. Kopacz (pronounced co-POTCH) replied that Poland should act only in concert with other European Union nations, not unilaterally.

“Poland,” she said, “should act like a reasonable Polish woman.”

Ms. Kopacz and her cabinet will be sworn in on Thursday.