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Dreams of Our Fathers…and “Buck Up”……

  • Posted on October 4, 2010 at 7:09 pm

I must admit that while I have read President Obama’s, “The Audacity of Hope”, I have not read his “Dreams of My Father”.  After reading the recent Rolling Stone’s article on President Obama and seeing his comment that Democrats have to “Buck up!”, I am left wondering at the audacity of Obama.  This shows so well the complete lack of understanding there is between what happens in Washington D.C. and what happens “Anywhere” in America; where people are struggling to pay their bills, keep their jobs, get health care and be treated with respect.  It is appalling to think that this man who once joked about his lack of seniority in the Senate and the “jobs” they’d let him do, who at the time appeared to show a “humble” side is now becoming a rather arrogant president.  This behavior could be excused but insulting the American voter is never really excusable.

President Obama was essentially finished with the interview and overall it was pretty much a “love fest” between Rolling Stone magazine and President Obama.  The interview seemed to be used for the president to talk about that “70%” of his agenda that he says he has completed.  The president was motioned away and then came back and felt the need to add this condescending statement to the interview:

“We have to get folks off the sidelines. People need to shake off this lethargy, people need to buck up. Bringing about change is hard — that’s what I said during the campaign. It has been hard, and we’ve got some lumps to show for it. But if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.”

I know all of us come from varied heritages.  We have many different racial and ethnic backgrounds but one thing has always been true.  We have a deep abiding love for our country and we think it is the most wonderful place to raise our children.  Our dreams are what our fathers and mothers have always dreamed, that if you work hard and play fair you can go far in America!  America is a place of opportunity.  In recent times we have noticed that those doors of opportunity have been getting slammed shut.  We can and do still dream, but we haven’t quite figured out when all of these politicians started thinking more “globally” rather than about our own country and more about business than the American people.  I think it is a lofty goal to try to stamp out poverty globally but it’s almost sad to think that these same politicians cannot seem to recognize that they only need to look in their own districts and states to see the dire need in this country.

All of us know that there has been a progression, mostly through education, in our own families.  Each generation has become generally a little more educated and wealthier.  However, this most recent generation is finding out the hard truth of today’s world.  Some of them cannot even afford college and the truth is they may go to college and come out and not be able to find a job that pays enough to pay for their student loans.  The truth is they may end up with a life threatening illness and end up in poverty because they’ve lost all of their money trying to pay the doctors, the pharmacy and the hospital.  The truth is they may have worked in the same job for twenty years only to go in one day and find out their job is being exported out of the country and they have no idea if they have marketable skills for another job.  The truth is, both parents have to work, so their child goes to school and comes home to an empty house and mom and dad really don’t know what their child is up to, but they hope for the best.

We all dream for our children.  We dream that they will have a bright and shiny future filled with happiness and fulfillment.  We dream that they will grow up healthy, get an education, land a great job doing something that they love and have a wonderful family life.  These dreams used to be very attainable but today we are all filled with uncertainty of what the future will bring.  This is one of the many reasons why I cannot understand how President Obama can continue to show such a vast lack of understanding  of the American family condition.

His family has led a life of privilege.  His children go to private schools as did his wife and Obama, himself.  He and his wife have gone to the best universities.  He has traveled all over the world as has his family.  He sees the world globally while we see the world through our communities.  We are tied to our lives in our communities.  Many of us do what we can to better our communities.  We know that we are part of the global community but our heart may be in Michigan, Texas, North Carolina, Florida and somewhere else in this vast country.   In reality we are all brought together from many parts to make one, not “one world” rule, but we are Americans!  Yes, we continue to dream, just as our parents dreamed, but now we must fight.

We must fight to keep our dreams for our children alive.  We cannot sit back idly and allow our politicians, and even you, President Obama,  to continue to ignore the plight of our country.  We must address the issues of poverty, the economy, the two wars and our failing infrastructure.  This is how we can show our patriotism and our love not only for our country but for the dreams of our parents, ourselves and our children to come.  So President Obama if you are finding yourself in a quandary as to why the base isn’t too fired up this election cycle, maybe it’s because you seem so out of touch with who we really are and what we really want.

When you were voted in with that “hope and change motto” many people thought you were going to aspire to do all you could for our country.   However, as the countless vacations and golf outings continued to take place, some of us out here were left wondering if you have the right work ethic.  From my perspective, I haven’t noticed much difference between GW and you.  I will give you credit for the stimulus as I think it did some good.  It was probably too small and maybe should have been directed more closely to the American people like the home buyer’s credit and the car buying credit were.  However, I think I’m not alone in my disappointment about most of the other areas and this is what part of your problem is for us.  You talked a lot about change, but we find ourselves still involved in two wars.  Guantanamo is still open.  The health care bill avoided single payer or anything else that resembles what most of us were hoping would happen.  Like your predecessor the banks were more important than the people.  While the banks were too big to fail, the American people were too small to matter.  This is the sad truth.

So, now you want those Democrats to basically stop whining and buck up like we’re some sniveling child that simply is having a temper tantrum.  Mistakes were made back in May of 2008 with the fallout of the Michigan and Florida primary.  While you may have moved on, many Democrats, like me, still feel the sting of that primary election when our votes were simply awarded to you, even though we voted for someone else .  At that time many of us felt betrayed by our party.

From my perspective you probably could have won my “loyalty” back, if you hadn’t governed so much like a Republican.  It’s hard for me to see you as anything but a black version of GW and the Democratic Party as the “LITE” version of the Republican Party.  You actually seem to be more comfortable with politicians and corporate heads than the American people.  Trust me when I say, “I want to believe in my party again.”  The Republicans give me nothing that makes me want to vote for them.  With the Democrats being a somewhat less offensive version of the Republicans, it’s still hard to get fired up about this election!  I mourn for my Democratic Party and what it used to be.  These young kids today probably don’t even know what a “real” Democrat is or what a “FDR” Democrat governs like.  We have had many years of Democrats morphing into this Republican “lite” version.  You and your fellow Democrats may be used to it.  I, on the other hand, see no point in two parties that are so closely aligned with business that it’s difficult to see the difference between them.

Knowing that you will fail unless you can generate some enthusiasm with the Democrats, you sent Bill Clinton out to massage the masses.  Bill is so charming and he does make a lot of sense with his argument.  However, when I started listening to him I realized that I wished he was president, not you.  He can talk straight and he seems to have ideas for getting out of this economic mess, which makes me wonder why you didn’t put him on an economic team.  I know your people wanted to keep him out because Bill might take over.  He might shine too strong!  This was supposedly the big reason why Hillary couldn’t be considered for VP.  Seeing Bill makes me wonder what Hillary would have done different from you.  I know she would have used Bill’s talents instead of bringing him out for a failing election to throw a “Hail Mary” pass.  I also know she would have worked tirelessly because it appears that she is doing that as Secretary of State.  She barely took time off even for her own daughter’s wedding!  Bill “gets me”.  He knows how to talk to me and the American people.  Listen to him and maybe you won’t make me feel like a second class citizen with your “buck up” statement.  Bill would have never chosen to coerce me into voting for him with that kind of comment.  He would just lay out the choices in a logical manner that we all can understand.

Here is President Obama looking thoughtful. He needs to use his words as thoughtfully as he appears to be here.

President Obama, the problem you and the Democratic Party has is the fact that we are really “not that much into you”.  If there ever was a love affair, it is long past its prime!  I have to say when John Stewart made fun of Representative John Boehner and compared him to a cheating spouse that wants his woman back but promises not to change, which by the way was hilarious, I was left thinking he could mock you and the Democratic Party the same way.  You have  been sleeping with the enemy on everything from the war to taxes to even education!  That old “merit pay” talk was started by Republicans to kill the teacher’s unions.  It’s been enacted by you, supposedly a Democrat.  You can probably tell I’m a bit edgy about all of this.  I “bucked up’ a long time ago when I started writing down my thoughts and determined that I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the party left me!  My dreams of a party that will make this country strong again have been shattered.  I still dream for the future of our children as I will always keep “hope” alive.  I just don’t believe you when you say you’ve done so much and there’s more to do.  It sounds too much like when GW always used to say, “It’s hard work.”  We all work hard in this country.  You chose the job and spent a lot of money trying to get it.   I say President Obama “buck up” and quit your whining.  The American people deserve better and they deserve to have their dreams kept alive.  We will vote for the Democrats, if we think they’ll do everything they can to keep our dreams alive and attainable.  Right now, most real Democrats aren’t too sure about that.  The main thing you and the rest of the Democrats have going for you is the sheer fact that the Republicans are worse!

Continue reading Dreams of Our Fathers…and “Buck Up”…… »

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The Democratic Party Failure

  • Posted on September 18, 2010 at 1:01 pm

This video says a lot to me about the disrespect shown to Hillary Clinton during the 2008 election.  It’s subtle but it still shows me a lot about the men in the party!  I will always remember those words, “Likable enough!”

The last couple of months we have been hearing about how the Democrats are going to lose in November.  There has been much talk about which seats would go and how many are needed for the Republican Party to take over the House or even the Senate.  It almost feels like we have already voted.  I always find in interesting when pundits tell us what we, the people, are thinking.  I don’t know how they could possibly know what people are really feeling these days.  Most people don’t participate in polls, many don’t have land lines, and many don’t answer their phones for anyone but their friends.  This has made me think about what I’m thinking about all of this.  From my viewpoint, if the Democratic Party loses it’s because they still didn’t repair the problems created from the 2008 election, and they have governed more like Republicans than true Democrats.  If they lose, they deserve that loss.

Back in 2008 my primary vote was taken away here in Michigan and given to Barack Obama.  I didn’t vote for him and if I had been given an opportunity to revote, I would have voted for Hillary Clinton.  The Democratic Party then chose to even take some votes from Hillary and give them to Barack, a very undemocratic thing to do.  This and what happened in Florida has set the stage for a lot of what’s ailing the Democratic Party today.  The Democratic Party has for a long time acted in an elitist manner.  They have assumed that they know what is best for their constituents, even if their constituents think otherwise.  This is the main problem with the party.  They don’t listen to their people.  I called the Michigan Democratic Party when all of this was happening and I was treated poorly and even hung up on.  It’s hard to trust a party when they treat you like crap.  Well, fast forward two years to the November election.

It’s hard to see how anything has really changed.  I had high hopes that President Obama would do something to make me trust the party again.  I hoped that I could start respecting Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid again.  It hasn’t really happened.  I’ve written on here that we should vote for the Democrats because the Republicans are worse.  Isn’t that just a wonderful reason to vote?  Neither party is worth a damn these days.

The Democratic Party and President Obama have framed the last two years so there are four things that come to my mind:  We are still in these stupid wars.  We have a health care bill that no one seems to understand.  We have bailed out banks that didn’t bail out the American people.  We have a president that much like his predecessor likes to go on vacation a lot, acts clueless when it comes to real people and their needs, and has even embraced some of his Republican policies.

When President Obama came into office I was hoping he could convince me that he was the right choice.  It would be foolish for me or anyone else to want him to fail.  We’re talking about our country here.  I don’t want us to fail.  However, after two years, it’s hard to see what has really changed.  For all that talk about how things were going to “change”, much has stayed the same.  Washington is as hateful as it always has been, it’s as corrupt as it always has been and it’s as clueless as it always has been.  Even in the midst of economic disaster these politicians cannot seem to get anything done for the people.  They are too busy trying to get reelected than to do their jobs!  So if they lose their jobs this November, I have no sympathy.

Everything the Democrats have tried to do they have washed down so much that it looks more like a  Republican plan than a Democratic plan.  The health care bill didn’t fix anything.  We won’t know exactly what it will do until 2014 when much of it kicks in.  We do know that people with a more progressive agenda did not get their way.  Single payer was taken off long before the bill was completed.  John Edwards said if you let the corporations come to the table they would eat all the food because they’re a bunch of hogs.  I know, there I go about John Edwards again.  He is a horrible person and that’s what we are supposed to remember.  What I choose to remember are the policies he talked about.  He was right about this one.  President Obama invited those pigs in and they ate all the food.  Special deals were made.  Drug companies and insurance companies must have been pretty happy after all of this because they now have new customers that must buy from them.  It’s a closed market.  We are forced to buy from a corporation without any real cost cutting measures in place.  In fact, the people that supported a more progressive agenda for health care issues were not even invited to dine to supply their ideas on this discourse.  The people that really wrote the deal were insiders for the insurance companies.  You can’t play that slight of hand trick with the cards over and over and expect your people to continue to believe in you.  Of course the Democratic Party knows what is best for us even if we don’t.  This elitist attitude is what’s ailing the party.  They just don’t respect the intelligence of their voters.

Many of us Democrats, or used to be Democrats, would like to see the money that is going over to Iraq and Afghanistan come back home and help our war torn societies.  We have spent so much money overseas that we don’t have the money we need to run our city and state governments.  Times are tough.  Most of us want to take care of our own.  Many of us would like to see these wars resolved and the troops brought home.  President Obama was supposedly against the Iraq war but what he has done is really just shift the troops to Afghanistan.  It’s like these wars will never end.  If you have a child in kindergarten, chances are he may be fighting in the Middle East after he graduates!  At home we have to down size everything in our governments which means less police, less service, less education, basically less of everything so we can keep fighting over there.

The Democratic Party is clueless to what was happening with the American people.  The number one priority should have been jobs.  James Carville was right when he said, “It’s the economy stupid!”  It is the economy.  The stimulus package did some good but it fell far short from what it could have done.  The bickering over extending unemployment didn’t help.  Making the unemployment issue into “politics as usual” didn’t help.  When the Democrats cry that they can’t get anything done because they don’t have enough Democrats when they have so many, they appear ‘WEAK”.  They make the Republicans look strong as opposed to appearing just plain bad.  If the Democrats can’t figure out how to run things with the numbers they have, maybe they deserve to lose.  The Republicans didn’t have those numbers but they always managed to get what they wanted when they had control.  This tells me that either there are far too many DINO’s or Republicans are just better at the game.

Another thing that has really bothered me about the Democratic Party is their lack of female candidates.  The Republicans were smart enough to realize that there were a lot of women upset after the 2008 election and the way Hillary was treated.  I have noticed there are a lot of Republican women running for office.  They sound a lot like feminists even though they have a conservative agenda.  I want more women in office.  I could be tempted to vote for a Republican woman just because women are so under represented.  We are over half of the population and yet our laws are still largely written by white men!  When the Democratic Party comes out and attacks these women much like they have this last week with Christine O’Donnell they are tugging at another old wound from 2008.  Many of the women that I have come to know online since 2008 that were Democrats could easily vote for some of these women.  Many would like to see more Democratic female candidates but we recognize that the Democratic Party treats their female candidates horribly.  For as much as the Democratic Party would like us all to believe that they are a “big tent” when it comes to women, they still want us kept in our “place”.  Much like the Catholic Church we are supposed to sit on the sidelines and be supportive.  We are expected to be out at the grass roots level helping to campaign for the candidates.  We can lick envelopes, pass out flyers, make phone calls, canvas an area and make a financial contribution but we aren’t supposed to run the place!

Now I finally come to President Obama.  He governs much like his predecessor.  In fact I think he is a Republican.  He appears to be channeling Ronnie, not Jack or Lyndon and certainly not FDR!  A few weeks ago I heard a woman on CSPAN refer to Barack Obama as a socialist.  I can only wish he would have more of a social agenda.  She is dead wrong.  She said that the media didn’t do their job.  If they had shown what a socialist he was, she and a lot of other people wouldn’t have voted for him.  I thought that was ridiculous.  He really is everything I expected from the election.  I always thought he was more of a Republican and that’s why I didn’t care for him.  I heard his speech the summer of 2007 at the National Education Association conference and he talked about “merit pay”.  (I watched the video on the NEA website.)  Merit pay has always been “union busting” talk from my point of view.  This has been something the Republicans have pushed for years.  It came true under a Democrat.  Unbelievable, but true!  I don’t know exactly how it will work.  I do know that if you want teachers to teach for a test, that is exactly what they will do.  The problem is; it’s just a test.  It may not mean anything when it comes down to real education for your child!  President Obama has also been absolutely insensitive to working class America.  At a time when so many people are out of work and struggling to make ends meet, he vacations continually.  His family vacations much like President Bush did.  We have seen so many pictures of the Obama family on vacation that they don’t look like they have a care in the world.  President Clinton could “feel our pain”.  President Obama looks and acts like he is clueless to what the American people are going through.  If he had a clue, he would dial down these many vacations.  A lot of people gave up their vacations.  Others haven’t vacationed in years because they can never afford it!

In conclusion, if the Democratic Party loses in November, they have no one to blame but themselves.  It’s not because the Republicans are a better alternative, far from it.  The Republicans are a horrible choice.  It is because the Democratic Party forgot the people that put them where they are today.  We voted them in and gave them their jobs.  We handed the keys to the house and expected it would be taken care of.  Instead when we got home it’s like the wayward teenager that had a party.  Some stuff got broken and it didn’t get fixed.  We’re mad as hell parents looking for answers to our wayward teen’s choices and we are getting ready to ground him.  If the Democratic Party wants us to get fired up to vote them back in, they better start coming up with better excuses for their behavior than what we have been hearing!  They better stop taking all of us for granted.  They better repair the damage they created in 2008 and they better start respecting women!  They also better stop sounding like REPUBLICANS!  If we want a Republican in office, we will vote for them.  They could take care of a big issue right now that would show what a true Democrat would do.  They could let the tax cut for the wealthy expire.  Instead we keep hearing talk of an extension which means in 2012 there will be another fight to either extend it or make it permanent.  If they would act like Democrats right now and vote to extend the tax cuts for the working people and get rid of it for the wealthy, they could maybe save their party!

Truthfully, I should be thanking the Democratic Party.  If they hadn’t stolen my vote in 2008, I might not be writing this today.  I probably would never have even considered dealing with my thoughts on this website at all.  When my son set this up as a place for me to write this past Christmas, it was largely because of the events that happened in 2008.  He knew I was online a lot and writing comments on other sites.  He thought I might like writing my own blog.  I never had really given it much thought.  Now, I have discovered my voice.  In many ways I have always considered myself to be, “Silent Kate”.  I would go online and even post many places under that moniker.  I was a silent voice looking for a home.  I now have my home.  I just don’t have my party.  This woman will be silent no longer.  There are a lot of women out there like me looking for a political party that will actually represent them.  If the Democratic Party would like our votes, they should step up to the plate and encourage more women to run for office and they should stop belittling every Republican woman that runs just because she is a woman.  So, if the Democratic Party loses in November, they deserve it!

Continue reading The Democratic Party Failure »

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Women, Power and True Liberation

  • Posted on July 28, 2010 at 4:03 pm

Woman of Liberty

It can be a great time to be a woman but all that has happened in both politics with Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, in the media with Mel Gibson and his wife, and in the entertainment business with the antics of women like Lady Gaga I have been questioning the direction and movement of women’s liberation.  I have concluded that while it may appear that women have come a long way, there is much more to do to secure true liberation.

When I was a young woman in the seventies I remember this “bacon” commercial for Enjoli.

It actually is pretty silly.  Women were supposed to have it all and be it all.  Women and men expected a lot from women.  This commercial says we can have it all and our man too, as long as we can still cook, clean, take care of him and still look and smell wonderful!  Women’s liberation was all the talk.  We knew we were going to pass the equal rights amendment.  It was our time, or was it?  Civil rights legislation had passed so it was our turn, right?  Between Roe vs. Wade and the sexual revolution the times had to be changing.  During the seventies Title IX was passed.

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance…

—United States Code Section 20

So of course the equal rights amendment would pass too.  To my surprise the equal rights amendment was never passed.  It needed 38 states to ratify it.  It fell short by three states.  http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/ Many are still hopeful that it can be passed!

In my opinion the seventies were a time of real growth for women through education and their own spiritual awakening.  I grew up in a large family of 14 children.  I had much more opportunity in the seventies than my two sisters that were ten and twelve years older than me had in the sixties.  I knew I was going to college.  That thought wasn’t as clear for my sisters.  Part of it was probably because I was the youngest of those 14 children.  My parents were teachers through much of my real formative years and part of it was that my parents were financially better off in the seventies as opposed to the sixties.  However, a big part of it was because of the expectations of young women in the early sixties were different than in the early seventies.  The seventies also was a time of absolute turmoil with the Watergate scandal and the oil embargo.  However, it was a time when I was able to discover art and who I am as a person.

I went to Michigan State University and I had more freedom than I had ever known as a small town girl growing up in Kingston, Cass City and Maple City.  I met many different people from very different cultures than my own and I learned about tolerance, acceptance and understanding.  These really are the backbone of what I believe as a person today.  We are not all the same and that is the beauty of the human race.  I learned to embrace other people and to try and keep my mind open to the possibility that I wasn’t always “right” about everything.  MSU was a Utopian society for me.  Even though it was actually going through a crime spree of rapes during some of the time I was there, I was kept blissfully dumb about most of what was going on with that type of stuff.  I was ever the optimist and thought this was what the real world is all about.  The Utopian society of college where everyone wants to learn and the mind is like a sponge was where I was at.  I felt like I was doing something big, something real.

The real world is not the utopian college world of the seventies.  In the real world women were still subjected to the same degradation with commercials and advertising and general life that has always been present.  Today it seems like a lot of women are working but not because they are seeking their life dream but out of necessity for the family good.  Unfortunately, women are still getting paid less than their male counterparts.

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/38281/20100726/wage-discrimination-by-gender.htm

http://views.washingtonpost.com/leadership/panelists/2010/07/pink-ghettos-fighting-for-equal-pay.html?hpid=talkbox1

For men this is also a problem because with the current economy it is cheaper to hire women than men!

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/breadwinner-role-for-one-woman-in-three-but-pay-gap-at-its-widest-1.1042404

I’m also perplexed by the modern woman image that is often portrayed in advertising, movies, etc.  The modern woman of today is still very much dependent on her visual appeal to a man.  The modern woman is beautiful, fit and oh so sculpted by surgery and botox treatments.

The modern woman is a poor sister to the seventies woman as the modern woman has grown up thinking that she is absolutely equal in the eyes of the law and everyone else when the truth has so many more deceptive layers.  The modern woman is still subject to the same forms of degradation that her ancestors faced.  http://www.mincava.umn.edu/documents/herstory/herstory.html

Women may think they have come a long way and perhaps in some ways they have but in the area of abuse, power and control I think “We have miles to go before we sleep.”  Women are still subject to the laws made by men.  In our country where women make up 50.7% of the population we are still far behind in our political representation.  http://contexts.org/socimages/2008/05/18/comparison-of-percentage-of-women-in-state-legislatures-2008/

Some may think I am being picky here but it is time for women to be given the same rights as men.  The only way this can really be accomplished is through political representation.  As long as men are writing the laws from a man’s perspective, some areas that pertain to women will always be overlooked.  Politics is powerful.  There has to be a reason that politicians will raise millions of dollars for a seat that pays much less than the cost of running for it.  As much as we hear about all of the altruistic reasons these politicians run for office, the truth is politics is powerful and it is a magnet for money and more power.  Men have known this for years.  Women haven’t given enough thought about running for office for a variety of reasons.  Maybe they’re too busy raising their children or maybe they don’t have the confidence to run for office but it is time for women to stand up and be counted in the political arena.

If we are ever going to have the first woman president, we must engage more women in the political process.  Otherwise, that glass ceiling will never truly be broken.  I learned a lot during the 2008 election.  Both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin were subjected to systematic abuse by the media and even other politicians.  I don’t know why men are afraid of these women but it was pretty evident throughout the election cycle.  Both Chris Matthews and Tucker Carlson were afraid of a Hillary Clinton presidency.  I remember Tucker talking about crossing his legs in reference to Hillary.  I guess he thought she was one “castrating bitch”.  Chris wasn’t any better and of course he had such a fondness for Barack that he had a special “tingle” up his leg.  He also said on many occasions that Hillary wouldn’t be where she is today if it wasn’t for her husband.  He never once thought about the fact that Bill might not have been president if it wasn’t for Hillary.   Hillary was referred to being a “bitch” so many times that I have lost count and we all heard so much about her “cankles”.  Where Palin was concerned there was much emphasis on her looks and many sexual innuendos were made in regards to that.  She had her legs photographed sans her body.  I cannot imagine a man being photographed that way.  Men on the other hand can be bald, fat and ugly and still run for office and make it.

This is such a double standard that it is not hard to understand why many women may fear running for office.  However, I believe until we get that proper representation we will always still be second class citizens in many ways.  I hope there are women out there that are brave and willing to step up and run for office.  We must support these women as they run for office.  We must have true representation in our political system.  It cannot be a “good old boys” club that is unattainable by women.  In order for true equality we must win in politics as well as our own personal lives.  I encourage everyone to support women in politics.  They are your mothers, wives, sisters, friends but most of all they are your equal even if the law doesn’t fully recognize this.



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Sarah, Sarah, Sarah

  • Posted on April 22, 2010 at 2:40 pm

When I first heard about Sarah Palin during the 2008 election I had much curiosity.  I had been bullied by the Democratic Party during the primary, so I kept an open mind about Sarah.  When the Democrats started treating Sarah much like they treated Hillary Clinton I became even more curious.  I found myself drawn to her for many reasons.  When the Democrats made fun of her down to earth attitude and folksy voice I was amused.  No she didn’t have an “ivy league” pedigree but I kept thinking “thank God”.  I’m really tired of the attitude the Democrats have taken against these two strong women, Sarah and Hillary.  I found Sarah to be a breath of fresh air, someone that seemed willing to tell it like it is and not cater to certain groups of people, like wealthy Republicans!  I listened intently to her speeches and found them to be more against corruption than anything else.  This was something I grew to admire as I think there is much corruption in government that leads to government waste.  I even admired the way she held her baby in one hand and managed campaigning with phone calls and all with the other hand.  Fast forward to the Republican convention and this electrifying speech:

I liked what I heard and I was totally annoyed with the Obama team anyway.  I continued to like and to be drawn to Sarah, even after the election.  I continued to follow her and even bought her book, Going Rogue.  I enjoyed the book until I got to the all powerful, all important, Ronald Reagan, section.  I couldn’t believe this woman that I had admired could herself so admire Ronald Reagan.  I kept thinking this must be for her base, you know those crazy Republicans!  I still liked Sarah’s take charge attitude and her willingness to remain a fairly “normal” person.  I could even over look many of her faults and found her interesting even though many of her ideas were diametrically opposite my own.

Recently, I have had to give up on Sarah.  It seems the Sarah that I was drawn to has disappeared and been replaced with a new Sarah.   The new Sarah is more about making her own money than helping others make and keep theirs.  The new Sarah is making crazy statements at Tea Party events that I find terribly troubling.  We live in a violent society.  People that are seemingly at their wit’s end because of the economy or whatever else is ailing them don’t need someone encouraging them to act out with violent actions.  Sarah can say that her words mean something else but most of us see that as just more political double speak.  Words do have meaning and saying things can have an effect on people at their most vulnerable times.  The new Sarah has embraced the most right wing of the Republican Party.  It is unfortunate that the Republican Party has encouraged her behavior because it’s good for their business.  They like the money she can bring in at these events.  They are banking on these Tea Party people voting for them.  Many of those Tea Party people will probably vote Republican but it isn’t because they liked GW and how he spent money.  They are banking on the Republicans becoming more conservative with their money.  However, it defies logic how anyone can view these Republicans as being fiscally responsible.  They bank rolled these two wars on the future taxes of our youngsters.  They’re good at spending money on war and pretty much nothing else.  Sarah speaks with that same old rhetoric when she talks about our soldiers.  She creates this picture of such noble, greatness when the truth is neither of these current wars could possibly be described as being noble or great.  The soldiers are doing their job and sometimes their job requires extreme bravery.  This is noble.  They sacrifice much but the Republicans that put them there are anything but noble.  They would send anyone’s child to war but not their own.  Of course there are exceptions to this.  We know that both Sarah Palin and John McCain have children in the military and are willing to send them off to fight but there are many that had better things to do with their time as Vice President Cheney claimed during the Vietnam War.

I am deeply troubled with the antics of the new Sarah.  I can’t embrace the verbal assault that she continues to make about the Obama administration and the federal government in general.  I want a solution driven Sarah, one with ideas, not violent tinged rhetoric.  As far as the Obama administration goes they have yet to earn my trust.  However, it would be foolish for any American to want them to fail in any way.  We are at the center of a storm.  We must work together creatively for a solution to the problems we face.  Democrats and Republicans should be working together for the common good of our nation.  The economy is in dire straits.  While some of the losses have been recouped from the stock market crash of 2008, much of that wealth has not spread to the little guy.  Sarah has much new found wealth but I fear with her wealth she has lost touch with the rest of us.  I can see that President Obama may be trying to make some changes to the banking industry.  I see this as a plus.  The verdict is still out on his administration but it is still far superior to the Bush years.  Those years have left our nation in a world of hurt.  For anyone to want to revisit those years they would have to be insane!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp89-6_7Zsk

The two parties missed a great opportunity to help our nation during the health care debate.  Instead of real reform we ended up with some washed down version.  People and businesses would have all been better off if this reform had included a single payer option.  The cost of insurance is just mind boggling and I don’t see this changing with this watered down plan.  Sarah was against all of this.  On a personal basis it should be noted that her children and Todd already have health care because they are Native Americans.  Sarah doesn’t have to worry about health care for her children.  Unfortunately, most Tea Party people don’t know this information about Sarah.  When Sarah talks about death panels she omits the death panel that visited my sister that didn’t have health insurance.  My sister had her own death panel when her doctor made it very clear that she wasn’t “worth” much to him.  She didn’t have the true care that she deserved because she didn’t have insurance.  When my sister had insurance she doctored.  When she didn’t, she avoided going because it cost too much.  When she finally was forced to go it was late in her cancer, treatment was expensive and that in itself was a death panel!

I’m no longer looking to politicians for anything insightful.  I thought John Edwards was insightful but he was so busy screwing up his own life that he lost track of that insight.  He was a common man that I thought really cared about me.  John changed.  Sarah had something special.  She had a way of communicating to the common people that made us want to believe that she is one of us and that she cared about us.  She has lost all of this appeal.  She no longer interests me.  She has grown up into a full fledged millionaire that just doesn’t care about us little guys.  The Tea Party people need to figure this out.  Ronald Reagan was never one of us like so many tried to convince us.  George Bush wasn’t one of us either.  These politicians were wealthy people that were powerful and made to look common but were not common.  Sarah was common and powerful now she is wealthy and powerful but she doesn’t really speak the truth of the common person any more.  It is more Republican rhetoric and talking points.  Her power holds no truth and it is dangerous to have power and no truth!

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Hug a Racist Month

  • Posted on April 8, 2010 at 9:24 pm

I would be the first to tell you that I am not a fan of Barack Obama.  For me he is too much of a Republican and not enough of a real Democrat.  I also didn’t like the way he ran his campaign including the way he treated both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin.  He also basically implied that Bill Clinton is a racist.  Race was used throughout his campaign and it made me crazy.  No one could say anything against Barack Obama without being called a racist.  I felt this was all wrong during the election.   I really felt it divided our country instead of uniting it.

Leave it to the Republicans to make me slide to the side of President Obama.  Governor McDonnell from the state of Virgina has declared April to be Confederate History month.  I thought the Civil War was over and the slaves were set free.  Yes, the winners got to write the history book and thus get to celebrate their victory.  However, the victory was a victory for our country.  I get tired of hearing about the Civil War.  Back in the eighties I lived in Oklahoma.  Just about every pickup I saw had a Confederate flag hanging in the back window.  That flag is a symbol for racism.  The fight was about slavery.  For a governor in the 21st Century to want to celebrate anything about that war I find it just ridiculous and an amazing step backwards into ignorance.  We have a racial and class divide in this country as it is why would any politician want to push those buttons of hate?

Living in Oklahoma was interesting.  The people were really nice and friendly but some of them were racist.  They loved the University of Oklahoma black football players but they only loved them for winning a game.  They certainly wouldn’t want them dating their daughters.  I could feel it.  They flew their Confederate flags with such pride that I thought the war was still going on.  They would reference the war to me solely because I was from the north.  I, of course, never even thought about the Civil war.  I went to Michigan State University in the seventies.  While I grew up in a small town in Michigan where it would be rare to even know a black person, attending the university allowed me to grow as a person and meet many people of color from all over the country and even the world.  I always felt like I lived under a bubble at MSU as it was sort of like a utopia in the way we all embraced our differences.  I can assure you that many of the people that I met in western Oklahoma thought about the war and when someone from the north was in their midst it was mentioned as though it happened yesterday.  Now I know that many of them lost family and friends in the war and maybe there was never a real “healing” for this but to want to celebrate such a tragedy in our history is a mistake.  Just when a wound is beginning to heal why should we pick at that scab?  I can only believe this is so important this year because Barack Obama dared to become President.  Gov. McDonnell mentions next year as being a 150 year celebration but what is there to celebrate?  The lives lost by both the north and the south?  That scab will never heal unless we all become one as a nation.  We shouldn’t celebrate the north and the south.  We should celebrate America!  If you are so inclined to celebrate April with Confederate History month please hug a racist as they need all the love they can get.

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The Stepford Wives and Women Today

  • Posted on April 6, 2010 at 11:16 am

The Stepford Wives Movie With Katherine Ross and Peter Masterson.

For three bucks I purchased the original “Stepford Wives” movie from BigLots.  I had never seen that movie even though it came out in the seventies.  The remade version with Nicole Kidman in my opinion is just about awful!  I always loved Katherine Ross because I thought she was so beautiful so I decided to watch it.  It was interesting watching the old cars and the way people dressed in the seventies but some things stay the same, like the beautiful wife married to the balding, not so great looking, guy.  The movie is largely a statement about the threat women’s liberation is to men and their egos.  In the original movie we don’t end up with a satisfying ending.  In fact we are terrorized in the final thirty minutes of the movie when we realize what’s really happening.  I could feel the terror and confusion that Katherine’s character felt when she was trying to figure out what was happening in the village of Stepford.  Why were these wonderful, engaging, thinking, talented women suddenly turning into robotic images of themselves?  She was in fear of losing herself.  Just as all women secretly fear losing their identity when they marry a man and take his name.  In fact many women today keep their maiden names so they can hold on to their own identity whether it is for work purposes or to continue their heritage.  In the movie the men have formed a club, a club of men that work to make their lives perfect.  Perfect means a wife that is more like a robot than a human, a wife that will think you are a great lover, even if you aren’t, and one that will build you up and make you feel like you are the most important person in the world and can also cook.  The movie assaults men by making them appear to care only about the outward appearance of their women and nothing else.  The men were faced with a decision to rid themselves of their “nagging” wives by “creating” a better model of the imperfect one, one with larger breasts who could dolt after her husband and never challenge him in any way possible.

I used to think we have come along way baby, much like the Virginia Slims commercial from decades ago but now I feel that women have taken a huge step backwards.  It was brought home in the 2008 election when both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin were treated with such disrespect by the media, bloggers and even other candidates.  We all remember hearing about Hillary’s “cankles” and Sarah’s beauty was served up to destroy her credibility.  I thought we were living back in the fifties with the attitude toward these two women in politics.  I realize now that given the decades between the Stepford Wives and today nothing has really evolved all that much.  Men are still pigs as witnessed by the behavior of the Tiger, Jesse and Johns of the world.  Women are still trying to please their “man” as witnessed by the women who choose to get involved with these characters.  Most were probably opportunists that used their bodies to get what they thought they wanted, fame, fortune or whatever they were seeking but none of them were looking for self-respect which is foreign all of them.

As a young woman I never wanted to be “dependent” on a man.  I don’t know if it is because I have ten brothers or what.  I just knew that I wanted my own identity.  As an older woman I don’t care one way or the other but I am “man-less”.  I am a divorced woman of many years and I have never been interested in any real relationship since.  In fact I never put myself in situations where I could develop another relationship.  That in itself is probably strange for most people to understand.  However, I do have a strong sense of who I am as a person and what I’m willing to put up with.  In the Stepford Wives movie women with a strong sense of self were eventually beaten by the man and their identities and lives were brutally destroyed.  In real life today women are still putting up with men who don’t appreciate who they really are.  Women are still buying every product they can to please their man whether it be some beauty product, fancy negligees or even implants.  While women do everything they can to attract their man and keep him men continue to think the world revolves around them.  They have been told by their mothers that they are perfect and many of them believe it.  They can be bald, fat, and ugly but women will still appreciate them.  Women on the other hand better stay as they were in their twenties and thirties or they may risk losing their man to the younger version of themselves.

I don’t think women need to be more like men.  I just think it’s time that both sexes were honest with each other about what they need.  Men need to listen to their mates and really appreciate them and women need to see men as more than a paycheck.  Men control the world but need to let women have more involvement in the process.  The world would be a better place if we could use both sides of our brains.  Depending on men for everything only utilizes half of our potential as a race.  If we want peace in this world then we should try putting women of substance in powerful positions.  If we want equality then we should treat each other with respect.  If men love their daughters they should push for equality of the sexes and equality doesn’t mean a woman can choose which implant to get or what dinner to cook.  Equality means making decisions on your own without being pushed into situations you really don’t want to be in.  Equality means not being discriminated against because you are female.  Equality means you will be respected because you are human not because you are a man or a woman.

The Stepford Wives never knew what was happening until it was too late to change the inevitable.  People today, both men and women, can stop this disrespect of women by not feeding the frenzy pushed by the media and not buying into every gadget that is supposed to bring you fulfillment in finding a mate.  Equality will come when we have self respect.  This is not equality.  http://www.pressherald.com/news/Women-march-topless-in-Portland-without-incident.html While women might think acting like a man will get them what they want; it doesn’t.

Source: Gordon Chibroski/Staff Photographer The Portland Press Herald

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Women in Politics and What’s in the Fridge?

  • Posted on March 6, 2010 at 2:22 pm

How to Keep People From Stealing Your Food at Work

I was having lunch with a couple teachers in the teacher work room.  Another male teacher walked in took bottled water out of a bag in the bottom of the fridge and said, “I guess it’s unclaimed, so I claim it.”  This made me think about the differences between men and women.  There was another female teacher there and I said to her, “You would never take anything out of the fridge that didn’t belong to you, right?”  She said, “Of course not.”  So the other male teachers in the room pointed out that if something has been in there a long time and it’s unused, they would all eat it.  I told them, “So that’s why I was losing my bottled water a couple years ago.  I now drink it at room temperature and keep in my office.”  What this discussion meant for me was there is a vast difference between men and women and what they think about their place in the world.

The men felt entitled to take whatever was in the fridge as long as it had been unclaimed for awhile.  It almost sounded like they look in the fridge daily and make a mental note of what’s been in there for awhile.  Women on the other hand would never take somebody else’s food for several reasons.  One, they think it’s stealing.  They know it doesn’t belong to them and they don’t feel “entitled” to it.  Two, they don’t know what’s in it, who has touched it or how old it is and finally there is that whole germ phobia thing!

All of this made me think about men, women, politics and living.  Living with ten brothers I know the women in our family took second place at best.  The men always came first in everything.  When my oldest brother brought his future wife home she couldn’t believe all of the baked goods my mom had laid out on the counter tops.  She wondered what they were all for.  She thought maybe a bake sale or something.  By the end of the night she knew it was for all those boys.  They ate until the cows came home, all kinds of pies, bread, kolaches, all of it was gone.  My mother was a saint cooking for them.  When the boys were young we lived on a farm and they worked out in the barn.  My older sisters worked in the house trying to keep it clean with all those boys.  One day my parents were gone and my older sister Colleen was in charge.  She had just washed the kitchen floor and Paul, who was younger than my sister came in with his dirty boots from the barn.  She told him not to walk on her drying kitchen floor as she had just mopped it.  He ignored her as men are apt to do and walked on it any way.  Colleen took a broom and cracked him on the head with it.  I think she thought that was the only way to knock some sense into him.  I think the broom broke but that defiance that my brother showed came out in many ways from the males in our household.  One of the boys was five, who will remain nameless to protect him from adult embarrassment, just in case he finds this blog, was too lazy to go inside to take off all of his snow equipment; you know the old snow suit, etc.  So, he would soil his pants so his older sisters would have to clean him up when he came in from playing.  Luckily for me I was the youngest in the family.  He also had the nerve to tell mom that he would kick in the china hutch glass if he couldn’t have his way.  He didn’t get his way and the glass was gone.  None of us girls would ever have acted that way.  Now plenty of those ten boys would never have done that either but it’s interesting that some boys grow into men that feel “entitled” to certain things that don’t necessarily belong to them.

My brothers as youngsters and even as adults have never shown great respect for their sisters.  I don’t know why.  I just know that I have been disrespected in many ways by them over the years, not all of them, but a lot of them.  I don’t think they are so different from most men.  Some men from a younger generation that are growing up today may be different.  They help out in the house and all of that but from my stand point I still see them as thinking certain things can belong to them after a certain amount of time.  You know if it’s unclaimed or something.  I think when boys are young the whole world revolves around them and they grow up thinking that the world is their oyster for them to pluck whatever they want from it.  Women on the other hand are usually brought up to nurture.  We don’t think about our needs like most men do so it affects our choices.  The effect of all of this is that women do not feel that they are entitled to anything that they don’t work for themselves.

If you think back to the 2008 election many of us saw the bullying of both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin.  Both of these women seem to make men a little bit crazy.  I can’t quite figure out why.  Even though their basic politics are different, they are both strong women that carry themselves in a confident way.  They both are competent politicians that have proven records of that competency whether you agree with them or not.  So why were they able to be bullied by the press and the other politicians?  Why in this age was this allowed?  I’m still scratching my head over it but I have a better understanding after the male teachers were able to take what they wanted from the fridge and justify doing so.

I think that male politicians will take what they want from the election because they feel entitled to it.  Who is this woman, you know Hillary or Sarah, who so daringly tried to take what rightfully, belongs to them?  She’s just a woman.  Men know the difference because they have been entitled all of their lives.  When Hillary Clinton thought she could run for the office of the president she didn’t count on the male “club” of senators and congressmen that secretly went to Barack to get him to run.  She wasn’t part of that male club so no matter what kind of networking she was used to she could not possibly be part of that club.  The club allowed a few women in only because they could “control” them.  One that comes to mind is Claire McCaskill who openly admitted to supporting Barack because her teenage children wanted her to do so.  I remember my teenage son wanting me to do a lot of stuff, you know because everyone else is doing it.  I was a real spoil sport as a parent!  This boy’s “club” used their powerful influence to make Barack president.  They didn’t want a woman and they surely didn’t want Hillary Clinton.  They allowed Barack Obama and his cohorts to treat Hillary with much disrespect by using everything from music to racism.  Nobody screamed, “Foul!”  On the other hand Barack could do anything he wanted from playing foul music about “bitches”; you know that was secretly Hillary, to hanging out with Reverend Wright to having Bill Ayers host his first fund raiser for getting into politics.  Nobody cared because “boys will be boys”.  That attitude has let many men stay in politics when women can’t even get their shoe through the door.

After the primary and Sarah Palin was brought on the scene much energy was spent trying destroy her character.  Men were scared of this woman that could draw crowds bigger than Obama.  She was made into a cartoon figure.  Men acted like they would like sleeping with her but wouldn’t want to have her as Vice President.  She was totally disrespected by the media and the other male politicians and even the people John McCain supplied on her staff.  Is there any wonder why more women aren’t in this dirty game of politics?  Personally, I think our country is sick of the same old politicians and maybe it’s time to get some women in that don’t necessarily feel like they are entitled to everything they see.  Maybe more women of the caliber of Hillary and Sarah would think twice about spending my money because they wouldn’t feel entitled to it.  I’m just thinking out loud here.  The men have been running the show for years whether they be Democrats or Republicans and frankly I don’t think they’re doing all that well.  I would love to see more women in politics.  I know they will think twice before they get us into some stupid war and they’ll think twice before they send my kid to war or your kid to war.  They will also think twice before they waste my money on some stupid program that some lobbyist dreamed up.  They will do this because they don’t feel entitled to anything they see in the fridge.  No, women will think twice before they grab anything free out of our fridge.  That’s the kind of person I want to see in politics!

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What do Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Edwards and Sarah Palin have in common?

  • Posted on January 13, 2010 at 10:14 pm

Hillary Clinton

What do Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Edwards and Sarah Palin have in common?  Oh, yes, I know they are all women but there is more.  All three were targeted in the new book coming out this week by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, Game Change.  I read the excerpt in the New York magazine and I was appalled.  These two guys would like us to believe that Hillary is just so obnoxious, Elizabeth is a total bitch and Sarah is just plain stupid.  It leads me to believe that these three women must scare the hell out of the Washington D.C. establishment.  When the Republicans and the Democrats pretend to not be able to see eye to eye on anything but suddenly can agree on these three women there must be something up.

I have been saying for the last two years that there really isn’t any difference between the two parties.  This book just reinforces all of this for me.  When Steve Schmidt, McCain’s man can sit on 60 minutes and lambaste Palin, the person his team picked, you have to wonder.  Palin is powerful.  People like her because she is more like them than she is like Washington insiders.  They used her to help McCain because he was going no where before Sarah Palin signed on to his campaign.  However, now they don’t want her because the truth is neither party wants anyone that might actually shake things up and change all of the special interests and money changing going on in the Federal government.  McCain was never meant to be president.  Obama was the chosen one from day one by both parties.  This is why George Bush did everything he could before the election to help Obama out.  This is also why the transition has been so smooth.  If we didn’t know Obama was President, we would think GW was still in office.  Obama is just the new Bush.  He’s kept many of the same people on board and has kept the same policies in tact.  For all the fuss the two parties make over each other, they really are virtually the same.  They both cater to corporations and have been the main reason that we are losing our Democracy and becoming a “Corporatocracy”.  The corporations really have the vote, not the American people because they vote with their money through campaign contributions and special perks for congress.

So, between the excerpt in the New York magazine and the 60 minutes interview of Mutt and Jeff, the authors, not to mention Steve Schmidt as well I am only to believe those three things. First, Hillary is over the top obnoxious, so much so she was working very hard on her transition to the White House before the general election had even begun. That must have been what she was doing when I saw her campaigning hard in Indiana. I also learned that Elizabeth Edwards is one crazy “Bitch”.  Truthfully, they don’t like Elizabeth because she has been a big proponent of health care for all.  Finally, I learned that Sarah Palin is just plain stupid.  Sarah doesn’t fit into the conventionals wisdom of the elites because she didn’t go to Harvard or Yale.  For the shame of it all, she went to a state school.  What is really interesting in all of this women bashing is where is “NOW” or “Emily’s List”?  Hillary and Sarah we know hold great power if and when they choose to use it. You might think Elizabeth isn’t powerful but she has been a huge advocate for health care. It’s obvious to me that these men , who do the hatchet jobs on women, have a “Peter Principle” problem. They have obviously reached the level of their own competence to the point where they are now incompetent and just so envy those women that don’t need a “Peter” to succeed in life.

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