@HassanRouhani to @BarackObama: I express my gratitude for your#hospitality and your phone call. Have a good day Mr President.

— President of Iran Hassan Rouhani (@HassanRouhani) September 27, 2013

“No Congress before this one has ever, ever, in history been irresponsible enough to threaten default, to threaten an economic shutdown, to suggest America not pay its bills, just to try to blackmail a president into giving them some concessions on issues that have nothing to do with a budget.”

President Obama speaking before a crowd suburban Washington D.C.

If it’s true that in politics money talks, and it is, then there’s a reason why women remain more voiceless than their male counterparts. They don’t pony up. A new report released by the Center for Responsive Politics found that although women have made big advances in getting elected to office, they still don’t contribute as much money to the political system as do men.

In the 2012 election cycle, women contributed just under 30 percent of all of the money. Only 19 percent of the money that went to outside groups, or super PACs, came from women. When they removed Miriam Adelson, who was the top donor to such PACs, that number dropped to 11 percent.

More findings:

• As candidates, female Democrats rely most heavily (and male Republicans, the least) on the support of female contributors. That’s been the case since 1990.
• Of the top 100 contributors in 2012, 11 were women; that’s down from the 21 who fell into that elite group of donors in 1990.
• As politics has become more polarized, so too have the patterns of donations from women. They donate more consistently to congressional Democrats. But women who have outside employment (as compared to homemakers) have moved to the left, while those who self-identify as homemakers have moved to the right.
• The increase in female House candidates and winners since 1990 is largely attributable to Democratic women. The number of Republican women House candidates and winners has stayed static — it has even declined since a 2008 high.

Read the full report here.

Contact Amanda Coyne at amandamcoyne@yahoo.com

“The conservative war on food stamps is the most baffling political move of the year. Conservatives have suffered for years from the stereotype that they are heartless Scrooge McDucks more concerned with our money than other people’s lives. Yet in this case, conservatives make the taking of food from the mouths of the genuinely hungry a top priority…Why are conservatives overlooking a far more egregious abuse of taxpayer dollars in the farm bill?”

Henry Olsen on crop insurance in the National Review. Crop insurance costs taxpayers more than $8.6 billion a year and goes mostly to farmers making over $250,000.

“A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person.”

From a 12,000 word interview with Pope Francis which appeared in La Civiltà Cattolica, the Italian Jesuit journal, and was released simultaneously to 16 Jesuit journals around the world.

State Rep. Carl Sciortino is one of five candidates in Massachusetts running to replace former Rep. Edward J. Markey, who was elected to the Senate in a special election this June. Sciortino is openly gay, making the ad all the more poignant and effective.

“Due to budget cuts this year, we only receive janitorial services two days a week. We need a vacuum to make our classroom clean and ready for learning… Daily vacuuming is especially vital because we eat breakfast and lunch in the classroom…The other day I spied a cockroach, which are rare in Alaska. I don’t want to feed them!”

Ms. Becker, a teacher at Airport Heights Elementary School, trying to get the funds for a vacuum from DonorsChoose.org, an online charity that raises money for classroom projects.

“Health care’s unpopularity can be traced to the decision by the White House and its allies to allow Republicans to define it AFTER it was signed into law. Just how poorly has the White House messaged health care? Consider that 30% of Democrats say they don’t know enough about the law to have an opinion, and ‘only’ 56% of Democrats call the plan a ‘good idea’ So barely half of the president’s base calls health care a ‘good idea.’ That’s a big problem.”

From NBC’s First Read in a post about a NBC/WSJ poll showing that 44% think that the Affordable Care Act is a bad idea, while only 31% say it’s a good one.

“There’s an all out Republican civil war in Alaska, and Republican officials in Washington are in disarray when it comes to this race,” said Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee deputy executive director Matt Canter. “[D]ivisive primaries are hurting Republican Senate hopes across the country.”

From Thursday’s Politico story about Dan Sullivan jumping into the Alaska Senate race

“(T)his was a good day for peaceful diplomacy, but a bad day for America and its leadership of the world community.”

Rep. Don Young after news that Syria has agreed to allow Russia to inspect its chemical arsenal and to sign a chemical weapons ban, and after President Obama called on Congress to delay a vote on taking military action against the country, action that Young has been opposed to all along.

“So we’re bombing Syria because Syria is bombing Syria? And I’m the idiot?” – Sarah Palin.

A new project was launched on Thursday, giving voice to Christians who support gay rights. It is inspired by Dan Savage, the editor of Seattle’s Stranger and the creator of the “It Gets Better” project. The name of the new project,“Not All Like That,” comes from an interview where Savage talked about Christians who supported gay rights and who quietly condemned anti-gay Christians by telling him,“we’re not all like that.” Savage’s response: “Don’t tell me, tell the anti-gay Christian leaders who claim to speak for all Christians.”

Now there’s a place for those Christians to do just that. Not All Like That provides a platform for “NALT Christians” to post their videos and demonstrate their support for LGBT people.

From the website:

It’s time for us true NALT Christians—the ones who genuinely aren’t like that—to speak up and be heard, to affirm LGBT people as loudly and clearly as anti-LGBT Christians condemn them. We must stand up for young LGBT people, who are so vulnerable to feeling worthless and shunned. We must eradicate the culturally inculcated moral underpinnings that serves to support such bullying. And we must bring to the fore a renewed Christianity that, instead of standing for anti-gay bigotry, stands for the integrity and love that Jesus Christ himself so radically stood for.