Wondering on Wednesday (v175)

Right off the bat, I'm wondering where the heck summer colds come from, and I'm wondering why they're so much worse than other colds?
Seriously, I've not been able to string together enough words to make a single sentence in four days.

More importantly, though, I want to do some wondering about the president, and women. Now, I'm not going to go back and relive the 'grab them by the pussy' stuff or the porn stars or the creepy beauty pageant owner stuff, because that's so yesterday's news.

I want to wonder about new news, as it were.  News like this, which I found in a fact sheet issued yesterday on the White House website.

Today, the Trump Administration released a Strategy on Women, Peace and Security, which aims to increase women's meaningful leadership in political and civic life. This Strategy implements the Women, Peace and Security Act signed by President Trump in 2017.

Another thing the fact sheet tells us?

The United States will promote the protection of women and support humanitarian assistance efforts that address women's economic security, safety, and dignity. The United States will work with partner countries to remove barriers, laws and regulations that impede women's access to justice and participation in the peace and security process.

So, I wonder, if we are supporting "humanitarian assistance efforts that address women's economic security, safety and dignity," why have we

• gutted funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), including not only their core family planning activities, but also specific services UNFPA is providing in humanitarian crises in Syria, Iraq and Yemen? And yes, we did that - on International Women's Day in 2018.
• expanded the Mexico City Policy to include "nearly all bilateral global health assistance" including maternal and child health, the WASH program (household-level water, sanitation and hygiene, nutrition, HIV under PEPFAR, tuberculosis, malaria, neglected tropical diseases, and global health security, and certain types of research activities?
• dramatically slashed "life-saving financial assistance" in areas of humanitarian crisis around the world?  Trump's 2018 budget, for example, included unprecedented cuts to international humanitarian funding for food, shelter, global health, maternal/child health and international peacekeeping measures, and while funding was restored by Congress, the 2019 budget came back with more cuts for refugees, disaster assistance, food aid, global health programs and more?

How can pretend we are concerned about women's "security, safety and dignity" if we are actively trying to strip away Temporary Protected Status  for folks who were allowed to come to the US from 10 countries, among them El Salvador, Haiti, and Guatemala, to avoid "disease, violence, starvation, the aftermath of natural disasters, and other life-threatening conditions" - including women with American-born children?

And more importantly still, I wonder how it is that we can not just once ($12B), but twice (another $16B), come up with billions of dollars in welfare aid to farmers, in response to a completely manufactured crisis - one caused directly by the president - but we can't figure out a way to finance a fund to take care of 9/11 first responders?

Or, how is it that we can make the United States Postal Service pre-fund decades of benefits - the only agency required to do this, by the way - but we can't figure out a way to finance a fund to take care of 9/11 first responders?

This piece has the long and winding history of getting the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act passed. Zadroga was a NYPD officer and the first whose death was attributed to his exposure to toxins at Ground Zero. The bill only included a little over $4B, and passed despite the best efforts of Republicans who thought it was "too expensive." Funding had been extended only through the end of next year, which is atrocious.

If you didn't see Jon Stewart's testimony yesterday before a congressional subcommittee, you missed a gut-wrenching 10 minutes. It's worth watching, or watching again if you've already seen it.

And it seems that Stewart and the first responders who also went to Washington to plead their case may have made a difference, according to the NY Post.

The bill that permanently authorizes the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund passed out of the House Judiciary Committee unanimously Wednesday...  At the full committee markup Wednesday, a handful of lawmakers were absent, but (Chairman Jerry) Nadler dismissed calls to make the committee vote a roll call vote. 

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), will likely need to be scored by the Congressional Budget Office before it can get a full vote in the House, but it is expected to pass, as the legislation has 313 bipartisan co-sponsors.

Kudos to Stewart, but boy, it's hard to imagine that this needed a hard sell that generated tons of  negative media coverage for Congress as a whole.

I mean, if we can't get this right, who are we?