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Nov
4
Democracy Never Tasted So Sweet!
We have been hearing it from the politicians running in this election, our local volunteers, social media contacts, news anchors, journalists, bloggers and others–The election millions of us will take part in voting in this morning, November 4th, is the most crucial election perhaps any of us will have the civic responsibility to vote in. So, if the overwhelming feeling of a job well done just isn’t enough incentive for you, can I interest you in some ice cream? No? How about free ice cream?
Yep, I knew that would get your attention.
Not only are we talking free ice cream from some unknown ice cream parlor that just opened and is taking over the old gas station in your neighborhood that has been closed for five years; we’re talking about Ben and Jerry’s. Ben and Jerry’s! You know, the ice cream that costs $3 per spoonful! And an entire cone of a flavor of your choosing is all yours for the exchange of you voting in this election. Sounds great, right? So here is what you have to do:
Go here and find a Ben and Jerry’s local to you. Make sure to go to that participating Ben and Jerry’s location during the times of 5-8pm. Tell the Ben and Jerry’s worker what flavor of ice cream you would like and be sure to tell them that you voted; if you really want to make things interesting you can scream in the middle of the store about who you voted for, why, and why everyone else better have voted for that candidate. Say thank you. Indulge.
If you’re still not sure of where to vote, visit Vote for Change for all information on polling places and hours of operation.
Nov
3
Four Years Ago, My Birthday was on Election Day
And oh the fun that was had! Four years ago my family and I agreed on pretty much everything politically, except for my belief about the 9/11 myth, which is to be expected when a member of your family is currently serving in the Army, but other than that, there was no familial conflict when it came to politics. Four years ago, I turned 18 and because I had registered to vote early, I could vote and voice my disapproval of George Bush the first time and I reveled in my civic duty. To me, voting is not only important because I am an American, but I’m also a woman and women in the United States have only possessed the right to vote for the past 88 years, which is not a long time at all when you look at history as a whole. Four years ago I voted and the only thing I wanted for my birthday was a new commander in chief and even though the election did not turn out the way I had wanted, I knew that I had done my part in voicing my concern for the future of my country. But a lot has changed in four years.
George Bush’s second term has brought conflict internationally and nationally and has been put at the forefront of America. Instead of thinking about what would be better for this country, we have had 8 years of a president who thought about what would be in his best interest. What was once believed to be a wealthy country of hope and inspiration has been turned into a nation of conflict, not only with an unjust war but also a country that has been divided between the people who believe the government is and has been doing the “right thing,” those people being deemed as “patriotic” and the rest of us, people who believe that not only the last four years, but the last eight have been a major error and who are called unpatrotic, terrorists and heathens because we cannot bring ourselves to agree with an unjust regime hungry for power and money at all costs.
This year, my birthday was not on Election Day, it was a day like any other and two days later, on November 4th, I will be doing my civic duty yet again and this time it isn’t a battle between George Bush and some Democrat, it is a battle between John McCain, George Bush squared, if you will, and a man who can bring about change. A man who inspires the people he speaks with and instills hope within the people of this country.
Four years later and each time I walk into my family’s house I am warned not to bring up politics, partly, I believe, is because I know what I am talking about and my family simply cannot get over the fact that the one politician finally looking out for our best interests is half black. But why does that matter? Well, Pennsylvania is divided between the sane folks like myself who don’t see race, gender or sexual orientation as something that is worthy of dividing people for and the rest, who believe if you look, speak or even think differently than the white majority, there is something wrong with you.
After a second Bush term we cannot afford a third and a vote for McCain, a man who voted 100% of the time with Bush during his first term and 95% during the second, would be putting into effect a third Bush term. We cannot afford to be divided nation any longer. Throughout the past year or so I have done countless posts about McCain’s politics and if you are still an undecided voter, I urge you to check them out and become a more informed citizen. Now is not the time to vote based on merely your party lines or for the white guy because the black guy is shady or something; this is the time to assess who would be a better leader for this country and John McCain simply is not it.
Vote for change tomorrow; we have already let a president get away with murder, deceit and lies and this election we must scream from the rooftops never again. Never again will a man steal an election and go on to deface what this country was based on. Vote for change, vote for Barack Obama.
We have a lot of work to do. Don’t give up and make sure your voice is heard!
Oct
31
Sarah Palin is Not a Feminist and She Agrees!
Just two months ago, when Sarah Palin was announced as the Republican vice presidential nominee, I wrote a post voicing my outrage over Palin calling herself and being called a feminist. To this day, that post is the most popular post on Menstrual Poetry, receiving more comments than any other post on this website, mostly from McCain and Palin supporters telling me that indeed Palin is a feminist and how dare I say that she isn’t just because she possesses stronger anti-woman policies than even most male Republicans.
Recently, much to my satisfaction and most likely to the dissatisfaction of some Palin supporters (like the LA president of NOW, for one) Palin has recently had a change of heart on her whole “I’m a feminist” stance.
So what’s behind her change of heart on feminism? Perhaps it’s because of the disapproval of actual feminists. Perhaps she realized that it’s a hell of a lot easier to claim she’s a feminist than to actually believe in what feminists fight daily for. While I doubt Palin will comment on her flip flop, I think we can all think of a few reasons why it’s really a great thing that she is choosing to not label herself as anything. For a woman with strong, anti-woman policies to label herself as a feminist is an insult; not only to feminists, but to all women, everywhere.
Good going, Palin! Never insult us by claiming you are one of us again, got it? Good.
Oct
21
Who Knows what Joe Biden was Talking About
Sarah Palin recently did an interview with CNN where for an entire 3 minutes and 20 seconds, she talks in depth about Joe Biden’s recent comment where he said that Obama would be challenged by an international crisis in his first six months of office. Palin mocked this comment and also repeatedly insists that Biden, the Democratic vice presidential candidate running with Obama, was telling the American people that his own running mate is not ready to be president. Apparently, with this interview, Palin just went and earned herself the ‘Fearmongerer of the Year’ award. But when asked if she (and her running mate, I’m supposing since this has turned into a Palin for president parade) had been briefed on the “four or five scenarios” Biden mentioned may happen within the first six months of Obama’s presidency, she replied with “Well who knows what Joe Biden was talking about.”
Well Sarah, if you didn’t know what he was talking about in the first place, why are you bringing up his remark? Oh to twist it around, I get it now. You’re such a maverick, bringing up other people’s comments and five seconds later say you don’t even know what comment your twisting around for your own campaign’s sake.
Here’s the specific segment of her interview and as always when it comes to a Palin interview, brace yourselves:
So why would Biden make a remark like this to begin with? Well as he stated in his closing statement of the vice presidential debate, this upcoming election is perhaps the most crucial election you will ever have the responsibility to vote for in your lifetime and with that being said, Jezebel has outlined all of the previous happenings after important elections:
The Cuban Missile Crisis started off Kennedy’s Administration, the fall of Saigon started off Ford’s, the first World Trade Center bombing started off Clinton’s and 9/11 started off Bush’s.
But we all know Sarah Palin has no interest in history, that or she can’t rebuttal during a debate about how a McCain/Palin ticket would be different from the existing Bush administration so she simply kept bringing up diversions so she could easily slip into whatever topic she felt like talking about, so why would we even expect Palin to realize the point Biden was making? That’s right, we shouldn’t and we learned that as soon as the media had the nerve to award the win of the vice presidential debate to Palin just because she didn’t fall walking to the podium or drool all over herself while attempting to speak.
Oct
14
I Would Suggest that Cindy McCain Change Shoes with Any Middle Class American
At a recent McCain/Palin rally in Bethlehem, PA, Cindy McCain made a speech where she said:
“I’m proud of my sons, but let me tell you, the day that Senator Obama cast a vote not to fund my son when he was serving sent a cold chill through my body. I would suggest that Senator Obama change shoes with me for just one day, and see what it means.”
First of all, Cindy McCain is not the first person in this Republican choke hold to the top to make this remark; in fact, she probably was not smart enough to come up with it on her own, so she took it from Governor Sarah Palin, who was most likely told to say it by Senator McCain or one of the Bush speech writers lending Palin a hand with all of this political talk business. On October 2, 2008, during the vice presidential debate in St. Louis, Missouri, Palin said:
“I know that the other ticket opposed this surge — in fact, even opposed funding our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Barack Obama voted against funding troops after promising that he would not do so,”
So let’s take a closer look at this particular, horribly misleading remark (although Obama has already disproved this remark several times, but you know, people don’t listen to him and would rather get their information from a camp that has been proven to have made over 62 different false and misleading points about Obama throughout this campaign.)
Obama, along with 13 other senators, voted against a war-spending plan that would have provided emergency funds for American troops overseas on May 24, 2007. The reason Obama voted against this plan was because, he said:
“We must fund our troops, but we owe them more. We owe them a clear, prudent plan to relieve them of the burden of policing someone else’s civil war.”
Now, what Palin and Cindy McCain failed to mention is that Senator Obama supported and voted for an earlier version of that bill which would have provided the same funding for American troops, but had established a timeline for Bush to begin bringing them home.
Also, as a side note, Biden had also voted for that version of the plan as well.
Now guess how McCain voted on this war spending plan? Yeah, he didn’t, so doesn’t that make McCain, a former POW and also a father of a deployed American soldier just as bad as Palin and the McCains are trying to make Obama out to be? Yeah, I think so.
So now that we know the point both Sarah Palin and Cindy McCain made about Obama is bullshit, let’s take a look at how a woman who is an heiress to an estimated $100 million beer company, who makes approximately $6 million a year, has the right to compare herself to average, middle-class citizens who have sons and daughters currently deployed or who have been deployed themselves.
If we know anything by now, it is that the McCains make enough money where John McCain seriously cannot recall just how many houses he has, so why does Cindy McCain think it is okay to compare herself, a woman with potentially 11 different homes, to a family who is struggling to pay their mortgage on their one and only home, or perhaps even their rent on their one apartment? Because her family and your family both have deployed family, although she will rest her head on $800 sheets and you will be laying awake all night wondering what bill is important to pay this month or if you can afford to put gas in the car and buy groceries? While Cindy McCain makes bold statements, do you think she would change shoes with you, or any middle class citizen with deployed family? I wouldn’t count on it and neither would the many military spouses (most of which who coincidentally support Obama) Cindy McCain offended with her statement.
“When millionaires such as Cindy McCain act as if they understand our lives, and the lives of everyday military families and veterans, we get upset,” said Himel-Nelson.
Perhaps the next time Cindy McCain feels the need to publicly offend middle class, military families, someone should ask her why John McCain received a 20% rating from Disabled American Veterans (Barack Obama received an 80% rating) and a D grade for his voting record on issues such as additional funding for combat body armor and for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other medical treatment by the non-partisan group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. (Barack Obama received a B+.)
Oct
11
Rally of the Buzzwords
From here on in, expect any smear campaign that McCain launches towards Obama to be taken at face value, but instead of those of us who are sane, practical and logical, we know to do our homework on any candidate, no matter who they are, and make an informed decision based on what that candidate can do for this country and for us. However, like many of us are all too aware of, there are some people out there who instead of doing their research on a candidate or thinking for more than 1.3 seconds about the legitimacy of what kind of bullshit “their” candidate is putting out into the media, there are way too many people who will soak up McCain’s bogus ads, go to see him speak and then throw nothing but buzzwords out, believing wholeheartedly that the bullshit their brains soaked up like a sponge from the oh so “reliable” sources like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Fox News and John McCain and Sarah Palin themselves are completely right, not giving any of these accusations a second thought and accepting them as truth.
So for those who believe that the video in the last post was a fluke or that “not all” McCain supporters think or act like those who made asses of themselves in that video, here is another from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I am ashamed to share a state with these people.
A big thanks goes out to all of the aforementioned sane, practical and logical folks who were also at that rally trying to spread the truth about McCain/Palin such as the fact that Palin made women in Alaska pay for their own rape kits. The replies of their supporters? Well, they believe that a woman who is raped should pay for their own rape kit and not only that, but they should pay double, die, or be killed.
Nice, huh?
This election is ugly, yes, but a woman is never at fault for being raped and the people who believe that a woman is at fault are the same people who believe that she was asking for it, deserved it, should be killed because of it or they are the people who believe rape doesn’t exist, don’t teach their children about sexual assault at a young age, or maybe they are also the people who are abusers themselves.
While it is obvious that the McCain camp is “turning a page” and doing very little but launching attacks on Obama, what the fuck ever happened to humanity? As a feminist, activist, and advocate for rape and sexual assault, myself and many other people out there are speaking out about abuse and trauma and if you ever thought “Hey, this is about human decency, who doesn’t care about something that should come naturally to being a human?” These are obviously the people we are up against.
If there is one issue that is screaming at the top of its lungs that we need to reform, it’s education. There are so many people in this country who need to be educated and you just saw a video of several.
Oct
9
This is What McCain/Palin Supporters Look (and Act) Like
While Obama makes his supporters feel uplifted and hopeful to the point where they will encourage people to vote, start conversations through party lines, speak with their friends and family about the upcoming election, McCain supporters are a little different; they embarrass themselves–Repeatedly. They take the smears, hate, and most of all, the ignorance and arrogance that McCain puts out there and run wild with it.
This video shows that there are still some people whose minds are still so clouded with racism and with ignorance and belligerence that I am truly blown away by the amount of hate that is being fueled by this campaign. To put it bluntly, this video and the people (especially the blond woman who doesn’t believe in letting her fellow McCain/Palin supporters speak because the word ‘tact’ was never taught to her) who are spouting McCain and Palin’s regurgitated bullshit makes me sick.
This is perhaps the most crucial election that many of us will have the responsibility to vote in in our lifetime and the reason for that is because of a Republican regime who shoveled very, very deep into the Earth, put our country in the hole and proceeded to bury us alive. It is because one candidate wants to give us the same, exact Republican regime that many of us have been the victim of for the next four years. Another candidate has a shovel and is willing to dig us back up again and make sure that we don’t have to tell our children that we can’t afford to send them to school or decide what bills are important that month and what bills can wait until the next month or be a person, like myself, who are plagued by illness but don’t have health insurance because we can’t afford it and we can’t go to the hospital because we can’t bear to think of the amount of debt that would bring upon us and so we live in pain.
This video is proof that instead of reading or even watching the news (C-SPAN is great because it shows you what is actually going on and isn’t being funneled through a reporter with obvious bias) or reading the websites of the candidates to read about the issues and how each candidate feels about them, McCain supporters are merely parroting buzzwords and smear campaigns and taking them as truth without a second thought and making pure asses of themselves (especially the blond woman.)
This video also proves that people can be very, very proud of their ignorance.
Edited to add: If you wish to Digg this story, please digg this one. This video needs as much attention as possible.
Oct
7
Pennsylvania Voter Registration Sets Record
People registered to vote in Pennsylvania has hit an all time high and set a new record of 8.6 million Pennsylvania people registered to vote–And last minute registrants who sent in their registration as late as yesterday still have to be counted.
Democrats saw the largest increase in voter registration with an increase of 500,000 new Democratic voters. While Democrats increased in numbers, Republicans voters have dropped by 28,000.
Pennsylvania, I want to thank you for waking up; for crawling out from whatever dark hole you’ve been hiding in for the past how many or so years to get out there and make your voice heard. I also want to thank the young, recently 18 and voting in their first election and also the other people who had never registered to vote before and are voting for the first time in this election because they finally want to believe and to have hope in America. All 500,000 (and counting) new Democratic Pennsylvania voters, thank you for standing up for what you know this country needs. Those of you who have been registered to vote for years but never did because you either didn’t know much about politics or didn’t realize just how much of an impact you could have, thank you.
It is about fucking time. Now let’s win this shit, okay?
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