November 5, 2008

We went to bed last night, after watching both speeches, full of excitement, pride, and hope. I tried to avoid bawling like a baby, but tears were inevitable. We have many more challenges ahead of us, but I am optimistic and look forward to doing what I can to make our country better and our citizens happier.

On a sadder note, Californians were fighting against bigotry and discrimination in the form of Prop 8. This measure, supported heavily by Christian groups, seeks to ban gay couples from marrying. It baffles me how a "true blue" state can support a measure which limits the rights of decent, loving human beings because they do not fit the traditional definition of married couples. I'm sorry, but I just can't buy into the whole idea of "the sanctity of marriage" unless anyone can prove that heterosexual couples can love one another more than gay couples can, or that heterosexual families have a stronger bond than homosexual families. Divorce rates, broken homes, and troubled kids point to the fact that marriage and family aren't magically protected from harm just because the union was between a man and a woman.

While I sit here today as a proud American, I also can't help but feel shameful for my Catholic upbringing.

Eve Ensler on Sarah Palin

Yes, yes, I know. Another post about Sarah Palin. Obviously, her supporters have every right to do so, but that doesn't change the fact that the idea baffles me. (And I'm sure there are those who feel the same about Obama's supporters.)

So I came across this on an LJ Community and on HuffPo this morning, and I just had to repost. Eve Ensler -- writer, activist, feminist, best known for her play The Vagina Monologues -- wrote a piece on her thoughts about Sarah Palin. As a woman and feminist myself, Ensler -- and Gloria Steinem before her -- have expressed and described a lot of my own feelings about Palin. (Except I'm not having nightmares about her. Yet??)

Drill, Drill, Drill
by Eve Ensler
September 8, 2008

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

McCain's Distortions

Feigned Outrage and Lies

So the latest "controversy" to come out of the wonderful world that is the 2008 elections is that McCain has asked Obama to apologize for his sexist "lipstick on a pig" remark because it was obviously about Palin. Except ... it wasn't. Obama was referring to McCain's economic policies, which in context of the phrase, means that it's more of the same 'ole thing.



I'm perplexed at how McCain can cry sexism now, when he's been well documents in using the term himself, with regards to Hillary Clinton no less. Please help me understand this ... is it just that McCain and his advisers don't remember his use of the term in the past, or that they don't consider his remarks to have been sexist (as opposed to Obama's which they do)? Or is it they're hoping their supporters don't remember or that they'll agree that McCain using the phrase and Obama using it are TOTALLY different?

Also ... I just have to get this off my chest. I'm really quite annoyed that they are still using the Bridge to Nowhere and the jet sold on eBay to pump up Palin to the public. (And what I find scary is that it's probably actually working.) So here's my question for this: for those who are glad that Palin said "no thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere and that she sold the jet on eBay for a "profit" ... what do they think of the arguments against it? What do they think when they hear that Palin was actually FOR the Bridge to Nowhere before it became an unpopular topic? Or that the luxury jet actually DIDN'T SELL on eBay and that it ended up being sold to a contributor for a loss?

I don't expect people's minds to be changed. I just want to hear their POV and explain some of these things that the Republican party is being called out on.

Palin Might Make a Mistake

Todd Harris, a GOP strategist, slips up (?) and admits on MSNBC that the reason for Palin's press silence could be because she might make a mistake. So ... they need to groom and prep her to the point of a practical gag order?



Oh, and the bit about her asking before if someone could explain to her what exactly a VP does everyday ... because, you know, she's used to "being productive and working real hard." Nice tone there, lady. Seems like this woman doesn't think much of jobs other than her own, considering she's mocked Obama's community work and the job of vice presidents.

Seriously, GOP, WTF?

I found information about this new group from a friend on LiveJournal. Community organizers are fighting back against some unflattering comments recently made by the GOP.

Community organizers across America, taken aback by a series of attacks from Republican leaders at the GOP convention in St. Paul, came together today to defend their work organizing Americans who have been left behind by unemployment, lack of health insurance and the national housing crisis. The organizers demanded an apology from Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for her statement that community organizers have no “actual responsibilities” and launched a web site, http://organizersfightback.wordpress.com, to defend themselves against Republican attacks.

They provided some interesting quotes as well:

-Former Governor George Pataki said: [Barack Obama] was a community organizer. What in God’s name is a community organizer? I don’t even know if that’s a job.”

-Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani said: “On the other hand, you have a resume from a gifted man with an Ivy League education. He worked as a community organizer. What? [Laughter]…I said, OK, OK, maybe this is the first problem on the resume.”

-Governor Sarah Palin said: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.”

Unless these have all been misunderstandings, I just have to ask how can this NOT sound obnoxious and elitist??

(For the record, my parents are very active within Catholic communities. They help organize events and fundraisers to help people in need. I just don't understand how you can mock people who do selfless things?)