Women finally earned the right to vote 91 years ago today - after 72 years of largely unappreciated, back-breaking, work. It took another 66 years before we elected the first Democratic Senator in her own right - today Barbara Mikulski is the longest serving female Senator. And she shares the chamber with 11 other Democratic women.

I'm proud and lucky to be a part the community of campaign staffers who has worked to get women elected. The work that we have all been able to do is because of the women who paved the way for us and 91 years later, there have been over 100 pro-choice Democratic women elected to the halls of the U.S. Congress, and more than 500 women to state and local office.

And those are the women who are standing up for us fighting everyday - but there aren't enough. We've seen what happens when Republicans are in charge - since day one it's been an all-out war on women and families: they've tried to repeal health care reform, strip funding for family planning, eliminate collective bargaining, gut education, end Medicare, and destroy the economic safety net for many Americans.

If we stand together - just like we've done so many times already this year - we can stop the Republicans and elect people who will fight for us every day. I can tell you right now, 2012 will be game changer if women get to the polls. So on the 91st anniversary of the 19th Amendment, I'm asking women across the country to stand up and pledge to vote in 2012.

The suffragists paved the way for our success - and now, it's up to us to continue their fight. We have the chance to change things in 2012 - by mobilizing our families and friends and getting women to the polls to help elect Democrats up and down the ticket.

With each race we win, each new staffer that is trained, each blog we write, we are working toward that victory, but we need everyone together. There is so much we can do and after 75 years of struggle for suffrage we must be united in standing for those who will always stand for women and families. I want to take this anniversary to thank all of those brave women who came before me, and all of those young women just joining the fight. The suffragists gave us the right to vote in 1920, and in 2012, I'm sure as heck going to use it.

Crossposted from EMILY's List Blog

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The Gregory Brothers--Smoking Lettuce

Welcome to another game of "You Just Don't Get It": Sunday Morning Edition. Once again the Villagers have decided that they will approach the issues of the day without context, without background and without respect for their viewers. Which is why we'll have Tim Geithner on both This Week and Meet the Press, defending the economy, dismissing why we need Elizabeth Warren on heading the new consumer agency. But will anyone mention that Geithner's sticky little fingers were all over the financial meltdown in the first place? And Newt Gingrich will be on Fox News Sunday wailing and gnashing about the Obama administration, without ever 'fessing up to the fact that it was his party's leadership and policies that put us barrelling down the wrong track. And don't even get me started on the discussion of civil rights and racial politics that Bob Schieffer is presumably leading on Face the Nation. I'll lay even money that at some point during the hour he'll ask the panel if it's possible for blacks to be racist. Like I said, they just don't get it.

ABC's "This Week" - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Abigail Thernstrom, vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; Michael Eric Dyson, sociology professor at Georgetown University; Cornel West, a professor of African-American studies and religion at Princeton University.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Geithner.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Amy Walter, Howard Fineman, John Heilemann, Cynthia Tucker. Topics: Will African Americans Stick With Obama This Year? Will This Year's Elections Be an Historic Wave Year, and Is it Better for Obama to Lose Control of Congress?

CNN's "State of the Union" - Berkeley Law School Dean Christopher Edley; author John McWhorter; Mort Zuckerman, publisher of the New York Daily News; former CIA director Michael Hayden.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Is the United States making any real progress in Afghanistan? What about Pakistan? Find out what the Obama administration's man in the region has to say about the matter. Watch Fareed's exclusive interview with U.S. Special Representative Richard Holbrooke.

"Fox News Sunday" - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga; Howard Dean, former national Democratic Party chairman; the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

So, what's catching your eye this morning?

Here's a video that's a mash-up of reactions from USA soccer fans from around the country watching Landon Donovan's incredible winning goal against Algeria that put the USA into the knock out round of the World Cup. Today's game is going to be very tough because Ghana is a very young and athletic team and they'll have the entire stadium supporting them, but the USA isn't over matched in this game like they were against England.

Raf Naboa y Rivera writes:

Should the U.S. give up an early goal against the Black Stars, as they did in playing England and Slovenia, it'll be phenomenally difficult for them to tally an equalizer. Should the U.S. score once or twice early on, Ghana will be hard-pressed to draw even, thanks to their lack of scoring punch. And that's really the key to the game. I'll say it again - the U.S. has to do two things here:

1. Capitalize on early goal scoring chances. This is absolutely imperative. We can kvetch and moan about getting robbed of goals by the officials, but the fact remains that we wasted about seven different chances on Wednesday. At the minimum, we should've beaten Algeria 3-0 or 4-0, instead of 1-0 on a gasper.

2. Avoid defensive lapses. The U.S. cannot afford a repeat of what happened against England and Slovenia. Depleted as the Ghanian offense is, it's still blindingly fast, aggressive, and strong. That includes play in the penalty area. I fully expect Ghana to try to draw a penalty kick, so the U.S. will have to be more disciplined than usual in order to avoid this.

As wonderful as it would be to see the lone African team make a deep run, I think Ghana are too offensively deficient. As long as the U.S. scores early, or even first, and as long as they avoid defensive mistakes, they'll win.

Since the team is pretty much cut off from everything in South Africa, Youtube and Facebook is how Landon and the team realized how much passion the US had behind the team since soccer isn't a very popular sport nationally. That's pretty cool.

Donoho, a 21-year-old Purdue University senior and avid fan of the men’s national team, collected a montage of clips of USA fans celebrating Donovan’s injury-time winner against Algeria and assembled them into a catchy package, which he put on YouTube.

It didn’t take long for the images to be passed through to the USA’s training camp near Pretoria and onto the laptop of Donovan himself. For all of the praise and plaudits the goal-scoring star received after his moment of glory, it was seeing the reaction sparked by his calm strike into the bottom corner of the Algerian net that touched him the most.

“Not sure if you guys saw this but it brings tears to my eyes every time,” Donovan wrote on his Facebook account, while linking to Donoho’s video. “Thank you all so much … we can do it.”

I'm hoping for at least one more win, but the USA did what they were supposed to do at this point. If you're not into the World Cup just move on to another post. This only happens once every four years and it's fun watching the sport that the entire world is engaged in.

We have a live chat set for 11am PST today as Blue America welcomes Tarryl Clark, a new challenger we endorsed to take on the half-insane Michele Bachmann. I'm sure you'll want to meet her and support her.

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The USA gets a stunning goal by Landon Donovan to defeat Algeria in extended play and the USA wins their group for the first time since 1930. They get to move on to the knock out stage and play the home town favorite, Ghana. They were a minute away from packing their bags and going home. Talk about ups and downs. The USA dominated on their chances, but kept falling short and I thought they were done. And then suddenly goalie Tim Howard looks like Drew Brees and hits Donovan on a long pass. LD makes a mad dash, passes to Jozy Altidore, who spots Dempsey down the middle, the goalie makes the save and Landon cleaned up the rebound beautifully. The refs almost destroyed our chances of moving on by disallowing another goal that should have counted early on in the game, but the USA came away with a goal in the 91st minute mark to go undefeated in their group.

Sean Pendergast has a good piece up about the game and American soccer in general.
Bill Clinton was at the game cheering on the Yanks too...That's all for now. Carry on and chat away on any topic you like...

And don't forget to buy this book.

This game will determine if we move on. There are a few ways for the USA to advance to the knock out round of sixteen, but the best thing that can happen is if the USA wins the game outright. Nadir Belhadj is the man to watch and will be Landon's toughest competition in the tournament at this point. They can't start out slow and give up an early goal as they usually do in the World Cup or Algeria will play defense the rest of the way.

One of the most important games in United States soccer history kicks off today. In one 90-minute outing, the Americans will either make years of build-up and hype worth it, or crumble under the weight of the nation’s expectations for yet another World Cup.

Anyway, let's go Landon Donovan and Co. The game is on ESPN at 6:30 am EST.

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Right before game 2 between the Spurs and Suns began, TNT's pregame coverage did a segment on Arizona's misguided SB 1070 law because Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns have voiced their opposition to it. Charles Barkley had already criticized the bill and John McCain before the game yesterday, but we didn't know how the rest of the TNT crew felt.

As their reporter, Marty Snider on the ground finished, he made sure to say that the scheduled Al Sharpton protest was going to be peaceful. Kenny Smith thought that was ridiculous.

Snider: It's important to emphasize that this is to be a very peaceful protest. There's plenty of police around the arena...

EJ: What are you shacking your head about?

Smith: I'm not here to get on Marty, but why did he emphasize safe...What's going to happen...is the Mayor going to slap somebody?

Barkley: Al Sharpton's got a jerry curl. He's got a perm...

The only people screwing it up are the politicians.

Smith: Without question.

Barkley: The governor, the interim governor I might add. JD Hayworth and John McCain. They're the ones screwing this thing up. I have to really take my hat off to Robert Sarver and his sons for taking a stand. Living in Arizona for a long time, the Hispanic community are like the fabric of the cloth. They're part of our community and anytime you try to do any type of racial profiling or racial discrimination, this is a federal, Obama..we've got to do something because these little light weight politicians in AZ don't know what they're doing.

--

Webber: ..they said it a long time ago. By the time I get to Arizona," I'm not surprised. The didn't even want it to be a MLK day, when John McCain was in, so, if you follow history you know that this is part of Arizona politics.

I commend the Phoenix Suns organization and Steve Nash for speaking out and I also was glad to see that TNT didn't bury it either.

Let's go Butler. It's been a good tournament.

You can watch the game on-line here.

Remember this confrontation?

Chris Matthews attacks Alan Grayson and accuses him of pandering to the netroots because he believes the reconciliation process can be used to get a health care bill passed.

Transcript:

MATTHEWS: This is the problem, Congressman. Every night we deal with two worlds, the real world of Congress that has to do things and get things passed, and this outside world represented by the netroots and people like yourself, who play this game.

GRAYSON: What are you talking about? I sit in meetings with the Democratic caucus with meetings every week! I’m telling you, this is what we’re talking about. This is what the leadership is telling us.

MATTHEWS: We’ll make a side bet that it’s not going to happen. Congressman Alan Grayson, a true believer that you can get things done by willing it to get done! [laughs]

The Mike Thomas Blog writes:

I would like to see Chris Matthews publicly concede that Grayson was right during their hotly contested exchange on Hardball in January.

Say it Chris: I was wrong. He was right.

Grayson argued that health care would pass through the reconciliation process. This caused Matthews to launch into a five-minute tirade berating Grayson as an amateur pandering to the netroots. It was classic I-can-yell-louder-than-you, I-can-talk-fast-than-you Matthews moment...read on

The bill hasn't been passed yet by the Senate, but it probably will and then we'll see what CM has to say. If anything.

Alan Grayson rules.

USA started off with a goal within the first minute of the game, overcame being outplayed badly for most of the first period and then took it to the all world Canadian hockey team with a dynamite effort.

It's not the medal round, but we get a bye now as the country of Canada tries to figure out what just happened. Ryan Miller was outstanding in goal stopping almost everything they threw at him and the young US team. Brian Rafalski scored 2 goals and an awesome open net goal by a diving Ryan Kesler sealed the win.

Now they get a few days off and much needed practice time to get ready for the next round.

(I'm posting this only because I smell something rotten in Denmark, or rather, on CBS.)

Did you see the Tim Tebow ad that actually aired during the Super Bowl yesterday? The only one I saw was much different than what CBS told us was going to air during the game and which drew a ton of controversy all across the blogosphere and throughout the pro-choice movement. What I saw was not controversial and didn't even talk about the abortion issues that were supposed to be aired. The LA Times said: Tebow ad falls short of the hype

Here's some CBS reporting which helped get the controversy going on January 26th and then the 27th.

The 30-second commercial is expected to recount the story of Pam Tebow's pregnancy in 1987. After getting sick during a mission trip to the Philippines, she ignored a recommendation by doctors to abort her fifth child.

She later gave birth to Tim, who won the 2007 Heisman Trophy and helped the Florida Gators win two BCS championships.

CBS said Tuesday that the decision to air the Tebow ad reflected a change in its policies toward advocacy spots that has evolved over the past several years.

"We have for some time moderated our approach to advocacy submissions after it became apparent that our stance did not reflect public sentiment or industry norms," said spokesman Dana McClintock. "In fact, most media outlets have accepted advocacy ads for some time."

These ads had nothing to do with advocacy on the abortion issue. I think either CBS or Focus on the Family (or both) pulled a fast one on America and they should be called out on it. Not only that they should be panned roundly by the media for providing false journalism and advertising to drum up buzz for the commercial. Shameful, just shameful.