Politics
by Mary Hughes
This video may be titled V-spot, but it's actually about poll locations. Apparently, 1.9 million Americans don't know exactly where theirs is. And google maps can't actually get you there. This last minute PSA from Virgin Mobile and Do Something. org tells you how find out your official voting location. By text. Enter VSPOT to 38383 to find out where to go.
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Lena Dunham has created a campaign ad for Barack Obama that's both cheeky and tongue-in-cheek. In the ad, Dunham talks about how your "first time" should be with someone special: "a guy who cares whether you get birth control, and specifically whether you get birth control." Of course Dunham is talking about voting, not sex, but her ad targeting young, pop culture-aware voters has not gone over well with conservatives, who think it's too sexual, and blah blah blah. Who cares about them anyway. Watch it below.
Lesley Gore has released a PSA featuring her famous song "You Don't Own Me," re-imagined as a polemic on the Republican war on women. American women lip sync to Gore's song while message's about fair pay and women's representation in Congress, among other topics, flash across the screen. "A vote for Obama is a vote for your health and your right to choose. It is a vote for equal pay and equal rights," says the video. Watch it after the jump.
The US presidential debates are now over and the experts will run rampant again on various aspects of the debate including deciphering the body language of each candidate. The task becomes being able to separate the insights based on research to those that are not. Research does exists detailing the connection between specific nonverbal communication and people’s feelings on the candidates that use them.
Last night's town hall-style debate had a few things going for it, as far as women are concerned: It was moderated by Candy Crowley, the first woman to moderate a presidential debate since Carole Simpson in 1992 (20 years ago!), and the candidates each had to talk about women's issues, including the gender wage gap and contraception. Obama even mentioned Planned Parenthood -- 100 points for him! But I think we can all agree that the real winner of last night's debate was the hastily created bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com.
By Megan Reback
In the hours leading of Thursday night's vice presidential debate, Time magazine released some photos of GOP VP candidate Paul Ryan looking incredibly cheesy in a workout room. The photos instantly went viral, and soon mansplainingryan.tumblr.com was born: a meme designed as a send-up of one of the cheesier photos from the collection, highlighting Ryan's mansplainy ways. E.g., "Whoa whoa whoa. I don't go to your job and tell you how to pack your kids' lunches." More after the jump.
A new infographic from Colorlines.com looks at how the "war on women" has affected women around the U.S., with a particular focus on Texas. According to the graphic and its accompanying article, written by Colorlines' Akiba Solomon, 29 states enacted 69 anti-choice measures last year, with 5 apiece in Florida, Kansas, and Arizona. In Texas, some 284,000 women are projected to lose reproductive health care in 2012-13. Check out the graphic after the jump.
According to an infographic created by RootStrikers.org, this year Obama has received about 7.6 percent of the money he's raised from Super PACs (92.4 percent has come from direct contributions), while Romney has received much more from Super PACs -- 25.5 percent of his money raised (74.5 percent has come from direct contributions). But what about PAC funding for women candidates? Women running for office tend to receive much less money from Super PACs than their male counterparts.










