Sorry, but the nearly 200 members of Congress--including Paul Ryan--who were willing to sign onto the Akin bill limiting the rights of women to decide for themselves how to handle their pregnancy after rape or incest---that's a pretty big deal. Linda Worthy has written very eloquently on this subject in the past few weeks, right here on this Patch! As for the Catholic Church--much as I love it, it is NOT a leader in establishing equality for women (duh). And why shouldn't the unemployment rates for men and women be relatively aligned? As long as they're going down across the board?

I haven't seen anything on the Republican platform to expand women's rights on social or economic issues; in fact, they seem to be set on setting more limits. Women still get less pay for the same jobs -- any attempt to fix that has been denied by the Republican led senate without any alternative bills presented. Insurance companies and employers can cover viagara without debate but for some reason should not be required to cover birth control (is that really still an issue? Really? ) I guess we aren't supposed to "worry our pretty little head" over such issues, as the GOP clearly knows what is best for us.

Pete...Thank You for your concise and practical views on these topics. Lets tax all the corporations more ,so they all pack up and shift more American Jobs overseas! Seems to me thats what the Dems want. Lets make even more people dependant upon the government.

How come no Democrat will address the issue of unemployment being over 8% for over 40 months? And I am not referring to the distinguished Democrats that post here!

A few points:
-Same rhetoric as all the other Tea Party stuff that has proliferated this site.
-So much for "Westborough Patch" if we're also reaching out to Dover for more of the same.
-I may not be the best writer in the world, but the writing is embarrassing. A rambling one-paragraph rant. If I wanted to strain my eyes I'd look at the sun.

If this is where Westborough Patch is going, we're in trouble.

Jon, I live in Northborough, where for some time the Patch seemed to proliferate far right stuff, often by people who changed their names to aliases after been challenged, and where there is a Tea Party that is far to the right of 'fiscal responsibility' and into Manchurian candidates, birtherism, etc.. The editor there seems to have cleaned a lot of that up and now Westborough appears to be the wild west where anything goes without editorial oversight. I think they need to require real names, simply not publish rants, and put some kind of limit on how long a thread can run. Perhaps even limit the number of comments any single person can make in a thread (exceptions being for those who are directly challenged by name). But again, the goal of what I call Patchworld is clicks, clicks clicks. And to further repeat, there are examples of editors who produce balanced sites that encourage good discourse in what is really a civic space. Sometimes, as we found with the crackpots in Framingham, corporate can make the right decisions.

Oh and I do think Obama has addressed the high unemployment rate and some of the reasons (hint, hint, Tea Party faction in Congress that won't even support its majority leader) why it is stuck marginally above that 8% rate. If he lowered the rate to 5% there would be the usual boo birds saying it is really 8%. It is well below 8% in Massachusetts but you would think we are Kosovo or somewhere.

These people packing up and moving jobs overseas--do you think those are Democrats? The CEOs of those businesses that have been outsourcing to cheaper labor--they're Democrats?? You say that's what the "Dems" want--I'd like to see your documentation for that. Here's an article in Forbes that makes it pretty (and painfully) clear that Mitt Romney is up to his ears in outsourcing--involved in it in a big and lucrative way. Lucrative for him, I mean. And that's NOT the American way.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2012/07/12/how-mitt-romney-invested-millions-in-outsourcing/

Ron: I am a Westborough resident and agree with you that some measure of quality control is desirable on the Patch. However, I disagree with you about the need to use real names. People use assumed names for all kinds of reasons when expressing public opinions. For example to maintain a distance between their political and social selves. To require that real names have to be used in my opinion will diminish frank discourse. As long as people are being respectful and not indulging in personal attacks, I don't see the need to insist on real names.

Ron: I don't know what process Patchworld would use to determine if someone were using their real name. If it might be for folks to sign on thru their Facebook account as some sites do, that would leave out those of us who don't Facebook. But I imagine there could be some way for Patch to verify if they really wanted to do so.
As to your concern about people using an alias and becoming abusive, I do think Patch could do more in the way of placing an opening post on each blog encouraging people to use "Flag as inappropriate" when they feel it is warranted. Someone posted an offensive remark on another thread last night. I clicked 'Flag" and posted a note asking others to do so if they also felt the comment was offensive. The comment was gone in just a few minutes.
I think most rants get ignored. All or part of it may be read but I think people generally recognize a rant when they see one and disregard it. We all go to some movies and ignore others; watch some TV programs and bypass some others. This particular blog title has netted only a dozen comments thus far and half of them do not directly address the origina post.

I would look dimly on limiting the length of a thread or limiting the number of comments any single person can make in a thread. Those things feel like too much 'government' control. I think most threads are self-limiting. Scroll thru the list of blogs and I think you'll see that a great many get well under a couple dozen comments.

Thanks Linda. I have no major disagreement with you on this, or most things you write. I tend to confuse Patches with more serious news outlets which do indeed exercise some control over their comments sections. I think it would be great if there were occasional comments from editors about standards and processes.

Part of the problem is that comments are spread across so many different towns, and are right on the front page. They cannot be so easily avoided and that is a turn off for many. On talk radio you can move down the dial. TV, too. Would you favor having comments done on a town-by-town basis? If folks want to know what is being said in another town they select the town Patch and go from there. That would give the town more visibility. In any event, this is out of our hands.

Find balance made 35 of the 112 comments (31%) on the blog entitled "SOUND OFF: Who Won the Brown-Warren Debate?" So I stand corrected, Ron. There does need to be a limit on the number of comments any single person can make in a thread. Some of Find Balance's responses to other people's comments began with: "What does that even mean?"; "You sure don't understand the issue"; "Not quite accurate"; "DH - It is irrelevant"; "What are you talking about?"; "Let's say you are right'; "Boy, more people who don't understand the issue"; "please elevate the discussion;" "you missed what the issue is"; "Patty and Ron, you miss the issue'.

Linda--- you aren't exactly slacker in the comments department either.

I'm not a slacker in much of anything I do. Has to do with a certain upbringing.

Good comment Linda- we don't agree on many issues but I read your blogs and respect the work that goes into them. I've been active politically for over 4o years and the biggest enemy our country faces is a disinterested, entitled minded population that wants instant gratification.

Was this article about Democrats and women's rights or writing on the Patch? Is there any kind of policing of the comment section or can we just voice off on any topic?