Tuesday, September 30, 2008

*FOR PINKIE LA RUE*........The Rainbow Bridge

Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge. When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge. There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together. There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable. All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor; those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by. The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind. They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent; His eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster. You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart. Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together.... Author unknown...


I love you Pinkie and I will so miss you, Your Cat Mother

*MICHAEL MOORE'S TAKE ON FINANCIAL CRISIS*

The Rich Are Staging a Coup This Morning ...a message from Michael Moore
Friends,
Let me cut to the chase. The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies -- who must soon vacate the White House -- are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door.
No matter what they say, no matter how many scare words they use, they are up to their old tricks of creating fear and confusion in order to make and keep themselves and the upper one percent filthy rich. Just read the first four paragraphs of the lead story in last Monday's New York Times and you can see what the real deal is:
"Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it. "Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages. "At the same time, investment firms were jockeying to oversee all the assets that Treasury plans to take off the books of financial institutions, a role that could earn them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees. "Nobody wants to be left out of Treasury's proposal to buy up bad assets of financial institutions."
Unbelievable. Wall Street and its backers created this mess and now they are going to clean up like bandits. Even Rudy Giuliani is lobbying for his firm to be hired (and paid) to "consult" in the bailout.
The problem is, nobody truly knows what this "collapse" is all about. Even Treasury Secretary Paulson admitted he doesn't know the exact amount that is needed (he just picked the $700 billion number out of his head!). The head of the congressional budget office said he can't figure it out nor can he explain it to anyone.
And yet, they are screeching about how the end is near! Panic! Recession! The Great Depression! Y2K! Bird flu! Killer bees! We must pass the bailout bill today!! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Falling for whom? NOTHING in this "bailout" package will lower the price of the gas you have to put in your car to get to work. NOTHING in this bill will protect you from losing your home. NOTHING in this bill will give you health insurance.
Health insurance? Mike, why are you bringing this up? What's this got to do with the Wall Street collapse?
It has everything to do with it. This so-called "collapse" was triggered by the massive defaulting and foreclosures going on with people's home mortgages. Do you know why so many Americans are losing their homes? To hear the Republicans describe it, it's because too many working class idiots were given mortgages that they really couldn't afford. Here's the truth: The number one cause of people declaring bankruptcy is because of medical bills. Let me state this simply: If we had had universal health coverage, this mortgage "crisis" may never have happened.
This bailout's mission is to protect the obscene amount of wealth that has been accumulated in the last eight years. It's to protect the top shareholders who own and control corporate America. It's to make sure their yachts and mansions and "way of life" go uninterrupted while the rest of America suffers and struggles to pay the bills. Let the rich suffer for once. Let them pay for the bailout. We are spending 400 million dollars a day on the war in Iraq. Let them end the war immediately and save us all another half-trillion dollars!
I have to stop writing this and you have to stop reading it. They are staging a financial coup this morning in our country. They are hoping Congress will act fast before they stop to think, before we have a chance to stop them ourselves. So stop reading this and do something -- NOW! Here's what you can do immediately:
1. Call or e-mail Senator Obama. Tell him he does not need to be sitting there trying to help prop up Bush and Cheney and the mess they've made. Tell him we know he has the smarts to slow this thing down and figure out what's the best route to take. Tell him the rich have to pay for whatever help is offered. Use the leverage we have now to insist on a moratorium on home foreclosures, to insist on a move to universal health coverage, and tell him that we the people need to be in charge of the economic decisions that affect our lives, not the barons of Wall Street.
2. Take to the streets. Participate in one of the hundreds of quickly-called demonstrations that are taking place all over the country (especially those near Wall Street and DC).
3. Call your Representative in Congress and your Senators. (click here to find their phone numbers). Tell them what you told Senator Obama.
When you screw up in life, there is hell to pay. Each and every one of you reading this knows that basic lesson and has paid the consequences of your actions at some point. In this great democracy, we cannot let there be one set of rules for the vast majority of hard-working citizens, and another set of rules for the elite, who, when they screw up, are handed one more gift on a silver platter. No more! Not again!
Yours, Michael Moore

Saturday, September 27, 2008

*THE MEMORIAL WALL*


*THE MEMORIAL WALL*

The following is a post written by one of my nurse friends from California & posted on our nursing message board:


When I was 19 years old, and in nursing school, there was a group that sent packages to the troops. You see, they were the same age as me. My mom and I would go shopping for the things on the list, Gum, nonperishable candy, it was too hot there for chocolate, cookies, they loved home made cookies. The list goes on, but you get the idea.

I became pen pals with a young Marine, a Sergeant and the leader of his group of men, he was from Texas and 24 years old. After that, I began sending the packages directly to him and his men. It became fun to pick things out that they really needed. Socks were very important to them.

I wrote to him and he wrote to me every few weeks. I saved the letters he wrote. He had been to San Diego, so he knew the area. So we had a little something in common.

He would tell me about his men and how hard it was to write the parents of those who didn't make it.

One thing that he wrote me one time, was that, all of his men wrote Cindy on the inside of their helmets. They felt it was good luck to put my name there. I was so flattered.

Then, I didn't get a letter for a long time. I was so worried. Then finally, a letter came. He had been wounded and was in Hawaii. He said he was going to get better and when he did, he was going to go home.

I never heard from him again. I didn't know if he lived or died.

I went to the Wall 5 years ago. I had saved every letter he wrote me. All these years I kept them save in my dresser. I would take them out every once in a while to read them. They were very special to me. I took them with me when I went to the Wall.

I went here to look for his name. It wasn't there. I was so relieved. But I wanted to leave the letters there. A park ranger told me there is a huge room some where in DC and they take every thing that people leave there to the room for storage and some day, there will be a museum, and they will fill it with the memories that people leave there.

I asked the ranger if my letters would be safe if I left them there, she said yes, that every night they take all the memories to the storage area and every day, the new memories start.

I put the letters in a plastic zip bag and set them by the Wall. Then I cried and cried and cried some more. Just as I sit here right now crying at the thought that 53,000 brave men and women dying in that horrible place called Viet Nam.

How could we as a country allow something like that happen? For what? And how could we allow it to happen again? Where will the next Wall be? The Mall in Washington DC is almost full of war memorials. There isn't too much space left for any more.

Yes, I am a liberal democrat and proud of it. That doesn't make me, or any other liberal less a patriot than anybody else. I believe there just has to be a reason to allow so many people to die, and I don't believe this war is the right reason and nobody will convince me other wise.

Friday, September 26, 2008

*OBAMA DID NOT BLINK: MC CAIN DID = DEBATES TONITE!

Finally, the Presidential debates are being broadcast and America can see where our candidates stand. For a great deal of time, I felt that the Republican Grandstander who feels he is "Mighty Mouse", out to save the day, would not attend due to his 'solving the financial crisis' in Washington. But, Mighty Mouse did not save the day, he flew into Washington and did nothing but muck up a near-pending agreement.
I cannot abide Grandstanding and Political photo ops by any candidate! I was so impressed by Barack Obama's coolness with all of the drama being spread around.
I think tonite will very well show the weaknesses and lack of preparedness that Senator McCain has for this job. He obviously cannot multitask, that's a given.............

*STEP UP AND CAMPAIGN, HILLARY!!!*


I have long been an avid supporter not only of the Democratic party, but of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Lately, I have seen little effort from either of them to assist their party in winning this election and I am disappointed. We are about 50 days from the election of our next President, and this is the most crucial election for America in a very long time. I read the Huffington Post as well as many other news blogs faithfully and this article was particularly interesting:In accepting her role as John McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, made an unabashed appeal to Hillary Clinton supporters and, in one of the greatest displays of chutzpah in recent political memory, offered to carry the baton that final yard for her to smash the glass ceiling. Women, and people who care about women, should be afraid of this Republican ticket. They should be affronted by the Republican's appeal for support to the very people whom they sees to harm. And they should look to Hillary Clinton to make clear the distinctions between herself and the Sarah Palins of the world. John McCain and Sarah Palin are people who can be counted on to repair any cracks in the glass ceiling made by Hillary and countless others, and roll back progress made by and for women over the past half century. Hillary is in a unique position to point out that this Republican ticket proposes to pack the Supreme Court with radical conservative judges, take away a woman's right to chose, blur the line between Church and State, jeopardize Social Security, and cut social programs whose beneficiaries are primarily women and children.Yet, following the announcement of Palin as the VP nominee, Hillary Clinton released the following tepid statement: "We should all be proud of Governor Sarah Palin's historic nomination, and I congratulate her and Senator McCain. While their policies would take America in the wrong direction, Governor Palin will add an important new voice to the debate."During the debates against Barack Obama, a man with whom she voted approximately 90% of the time in Congress and with whom she shares a basic set of values, beliefs and core political principles, Clinton did not hold back her pointed criticisms of the man she hoped to defeat. It is now time for her to unleash her oratory power and, in this case, well-deserved indignation, against John McCain and his choice for vice president.John McCain and Sarah Palin are the antithesis of everything that both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton stand for, and everything that Hillary Clinton has fought for during her political career. I have been an Obama supporter from the start, but I always knew that, if Hillary turned out to be the nominee, the Supreme Court would be safe from justices who would seek to prevent women from maintaining control over their own bodies and reproductive decisions. I knew that the fight for healthcare, education, social security, and support for our nation's veterans would be in capable and concerned hands. And, I had the comfort of knowing that the unilateralism that has been the hallmark of the Bush foreign policy would come to an end and that we would once again reach out to our allies. These are the common causes that should spur Hillary on to step forward and make the difference she clearly can in shifting the tone and substance of the media coverage of this campaign. As a woman who has become a feminist icon with serious track record on issues relating to women and children, she is needed at the front lines, a place where she told us during the primaries she has always been.Hillary was much praised for her speech at the democratic convention, but her relative silence now can only lead Democratic voters to wonder whether she is in this for the Democrats or for herself. If McCain's reckless ploy actually works and disaffected Clinton supporters vote to put oldest president and the least qualified vice president in American history in office, Hillary might have succeeded in proving that the Democratic party needed her more than it thought it did. And her legacy might very well end up being the first woman in the White House -- just not one who advances the cause of women. Hillary Clinton's silence could very well contribute to the election of John McCain, and to a President Palin who appoints a Supreme Court that overturns Roe v. Wade.Hillary commands an audience when she speaks. And Sarah Palin has given her a veritable invitation to respond to and attack the McCain-Palin ticket for the devastating effect its policies would have on women and children. Hillary has it in her power to draw the cameras of CNN and FOX's. She has the opportunity to use her influence and unique position in this campaign to get the media to run and re-run speeches conveying her outrage over Republican lies and her exhortation to women voters to support the Democratic ticket. If Hillary Clinton was serious when she said that this election is not about her, but about the issues, then she needs to lend her voice, loud and clear, to help pop the Palin balloon with one of the shards of that glass ceiling that she can legitimately claim to have cracked. She needs to take the spotlight away from John McCain and Sarah Palin and focus it back on the issues that matter to her and to the American people.**I began as a Hillary supporter, but when she was not nominated I was loyal to Senator Obama. Hillary, get off your butt and campaign!!

Thursday, September 11, 2008

*Sarah Palin: A Trojan Moose for the GOP*




Today is the anniversary of the horrible 9/11/01 and a day to remember what our country experienced on that day.

We need to focus on issues, not personalities to bring our country back to it's former greatness!

Thanks also to our troops, let's bring them home from the godforsaken Iraq to be with their families and not be re-deployed.

Let's force our candidates to focus on our real issues such as healthcare, foreclosures, the economy, the price of gas, the homeless, the failure of our government to deal with mental illness, the homeless, many issues.

Here is an interesting post from Huffington Posts' blog:


Did Sarah Palin wrongfully push to have her ex-brother-in law fired? Was she really against the "Bridge to Nowhere?" Did she really sell Alaska's plane on eBay, or just list it on eBay? Did she actually have any substantial duties commanding the Alaska National Guard?
The correct answer to all these questions is: who cares? Which isn't to say these aren't valid questions, or that Palin and the McCain camp aren't playing it fast, loose, and coy with each of them. The point is that Palin, and the circus she's brought to town, are simply a bountiful collection of small lies deliberately designed to distract the country from one big truth: the havoc that George Bush and the Republican Party have wrought, and that John McCain is committed to continuing.
Every second of this campaign not spent talking about the Republican Party's record, and John McCain's role in that record, is a victory for John McCain.
Her critics like to say that Palin hasn't accomplished anything. I disagree: in the space of ten days she's succeeded in distracting the entire country from the horrific Bush record -- and McCain's complicity in it. My friends, that's accomplishment we can believe in.
Just look at the problem John McCain faced. George Bush has a disastrous record, and the country knows it. John McCain -- the current one, not the one who vanished eight years ago -- has no major disagreements with George Bush (and I'm sorry, wanting to fire Donald Rumsfeld a bit sooner doesn't qualify) and wants to continue his incredibly unpopular policies for another four years. The solution? Enter Sarah Palin, a Trojan Moose carrying four more years of disaster.
And the plan has worked beautifully. Just look at what's being discussed just 57 days before the election. Is it the highest unemployment rate in five years? The bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? The suicide bombing yesterday in Iraq that killed six people and wounded 54 -- in the same market where last month a bomb killed 28 people and wounded 72? That the political reconciliation that was supposedly the point of "the surge" is nowhere near happening? That Iraq's Shiite government is now rounding up the American-backed Sunni leaders of the Awakening? That the reason 8,000 soldiers may be leaving Iraq soon is so more can be deployed to Afghanistan where the Taliban is steadily retaking the country?
No. We're talking about whether Sarah Palin was or was not a good mayor, whether she was or was not a good mother, whether her skirts are too short and her zingers too sarcastic.
Contrary to what we're hearing 24/7 in the media, the next few weeks are not a test of Sarah Palin. The next few weeks are a test of Barack Obama.
He needs to dramatically redirect this election back to a discussion over the issues that really matter -- the issues that will impact the future of this country. A presidential campaign is a battle and this is the time for Obama to show some commander-in-chief skills. I'm not talking about calling Palin out for lying about his record and demeaning community organizing. I'm talking about grabbing the political debate by the throat. The country is already angry about what's happened over the last seven-plus years -- he shouldn't be afraid to give voice to that anger. Obama has spent years adopting a non-threatening persona; but he can't let his fear that appearing like an "angry Black man" (a stereotype not-too-subtly fueled by Fox News) will turn off swing voters keep him from channeling the disgust and outrage felt by so many voters --swing and otherwise.
McCain's team, in an effort to distract, is going to keep doing what they're doing -- diverting voters and the media with a tantalizing combination of personal trivia and small lies. It doesn't matter if they're caught in them -- in fact, all the better. Because they know there is no way in hell they can win if this election is about the big truth of the Bush years.
McCain's real running mate is George Bush and the failed policies of the Republican Party. Even if they are dressed up in a skirt, lipstick, and Tina Fey glasses.







Tuesday, September 09, 2008

*WHY WOMEN NEED TO VOTE*


WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE !

This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago. Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.
The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'

They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.

They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms. (Alice Paul) When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/prisoners.pdf

So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because- -why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie 'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say.

All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. My friend is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by to talk about it, she looked angry. She was--with herself. 'One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,' she said. 'What would those women think of the way I use, or don't use, my right to vote?

All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.' The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her 'all over again.'HBO released the movie on video and DVD . I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.'

Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know. We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party - remember to vote.History is being made.

*SARAH PALIN* My views on the GOP choice......

My faithful blog readers just knew that I would have to have an opinion on the GOP's selection of a running mate for John McCain.
When the choice was first announced, I must say that I was shocked. Sarah Palin is a female that most voters have little or no knowledge of. Then, as I watched things unfold, at first I was surprised at the choice and then I began to see the reality of why this choice was actually made.
I would like to list as part of my blog on this event an opinion by Gloria Steinem:
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"Palin: wrong woman, wrong message

Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.By Gloria SteinemSeptember 4, 2008Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience.Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays" ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband.Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.This could be huge."
Gloria Steinem is an author, feminist organizer and co-founder of the Women's Media Center. She supported Hillary Clinton and is now supporting Barack Obama."
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This sums it up pretty well for me. Sarah Palin is deluding herself if she thinks for one minute that John McCain is interested in her thoughts, views or opinions on anything. He is using her as a tool to win the election. I find it insulting to women as a whole to think that just because a woman is put on the ticket that one would vote for her. We do have minds! We want answers on education, health care, women's rights, the economy. I don't care that Sarah can shoot a rifle, bring down a moose or caribou, field dress it, bring it home and make it into stew. It also concerns me that she has an infant with very special needs, young children, and a very young daughter who will soon make her a grandmother; are they to suffer the loss of a mother while she is in Washington helping run the huge tasks of our country? Maybe they could be raised by a nanny? I am all for women, strong women in fact, as I attempted to show with my quote of Ms. Gloria Steinem, the all-time feminist, but Sarah Palin, I think not! She is only a tool used by a very clever Republican party in an attempt to win an election, nothing more.