politics

I am honestly surprised and frustrated with myself. I haven't said a word about the election, which is TODAY! The polls close here in Ohio in about half an hour, and I'm itching to see which way this historically red state will vote.

Voting.

Show me the justice in this scenario: a teenager who has been active in a wide variety of political organizations since the age of 12, and has volunteered many hours for various campaigns, and is, honestly, better informed on many of the issues being voted on today in Ohio than many of her peers with whom she has discussed politics with, cannot vote because she is 17.

Is McCain-speak for overturning Roe V. Wade.

Culture of life? Is it a culture of life to continue a war that was started on false intelligence?

Or to cut funding for a center that helped teenage moms like his VP did?

Or make women pay for their own rape kits?

Or follow the direction that other countries without abortion have and make it so difficult for women to get abortions that even when medically needed doctors refuse to perform abortions for fear they will be fined or jailed?

What is so scary about McCain is that he could care less about human life. He admitted in a 1997 interview with 60 minutes to killing innocent women and children in Vietnam, to being a war criminal. More then a decade later he is now calling himself a war-hero to win an election.

I'm not the type of person to read the paper. I prefer my media to come filtered through the liberal lens of feministing, NPR or google. However I got into the habit of reading the local paper after one of my co-workers kept leaving it on the breakroom table. Of course I was drawn to the opinion section.

If negative stuff about Obama written by locals did not bother me enough I just had to read the opinion of a conservative nut job Cal Thomas. The first article I read was how Democrats are pushing away "faith voters". Voters of course who are of the Catholic faith and are also pro-life.

"At the time, it was better to be a man than to be a woman, because women were on the same level as animals" explains Pashe Keqi in a recent article in La Stampa about an old Albanian custom (original article on page 17 of La Stampa from June 29th, 2008). What Pashe means is the history of the "sworn virgins", woman who vowed to essentially become men. The tradition first started about 500 years ago, and today there are still 40 women living who went through their whole lives with all the rights and duties of a man.

In a country rife with conflicts and wars, families were often left without a male to fend for them. But since the women had no rights and thus could not take on the jobs needed to sustain a family, a man was needed as the head of family.

Today is national Blog for Choice Day.

I did not sign up because I was not sure whether I'd have the time, but I think it's really pretty important to get the word out anyway. The topic this time around is: Why is it important to vote pro-choice?

Here's why I think voting pro-choice is important: We're all going to be faced with tough choices at some point in our lives, and with a lot of those choices, we can never know how we'll react until it happens to us. It's easy to judge, and it's easy to rationalize and theorize, but ultimately all of that means very little when the situation arises. And when we're in those situations, it's always best to have as many options as possible, and to have information about all of them, and to then be able to make the decision that is best for us at the time.

Just a short entry to note the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister of Pakistan.

The first woman to be voted leader of a Muslim country, and one of the few female heads of state in general.

There's a lot to be said about Bhutto, her politics, and her leadership but for me the key fact is another strong, outspoken woman is gone.

On a recent episode of Real Time With Bill Maher on HBO, retired general Wesley Clark said that the vast majority of women enjoy wearing the burka and choose to live in "those" societies.

The conversation over the burka started when Bill Maher pulled out a photo of Laura Bush sitting in between two women dressed in burkas. She was recently on a tour in middle east as part of her breast cancer awareness campaign (which brings up the point of why she isn't involved in a domestic violence awareness campaign this month, which is an important issue in that part of the world, obviously) but instead the panel focused on if Laura Bush should be speaking to women in burkas about breast cancer at all, that it was missing the obvious point. Wesley Clark jumped in and commented that women like wearing the burka, that polls have been done showing the vast majority of women in these countries like wearing the burka and even went further by saying that these women are choosing to live in these societies.

The threat of global mass destruction felt extremely real and close to home to many during the Cold War. The conflict between the United States and Soviet Union went beyond the two nations’ borders, threatening citizens around the globe. People felt paralyzed by fear, something illustrated by letters to advice columnists: Dear Ann Landers, should we put our surplus income towards a family vacation or home bomb shelter? (Answer: Fallout shelter.)

However, this angst turned into activism as world citizens took action, expressing themselves and raising awareness in their communities and beyond. Nena’s “99 Luftballoons” became a mainstream international hit in 1983; its strong antiwar message especially resounded with young people in Germany and the US. People were now informed and concerned, mad at government muscle flexed at citizen expense. The tension had eased considerably in the late 1980s, and this period of conflict had ended by the early 1990s. Petra Kelly was at the forefront of this movement (and so much more), responsible for working in both a governmental context, and for inspiring and organizing everyday activists across the Atlantic.

Imagine having to make a huge choice four days after coming into your new office. Your superiors and the media at large are pressuring you one way even as your beliefs go another way. How do you vote?

Before Hilary, Nancy, or Barbara ever had to make that choice, Jeanette Rankin did. And she voted against World War I in accordance with her beliefs as a feminist and pacifist.

She was also the first woman ever elected to Congress, in 1916, before women could even vote for her. After completing college and trying out various jobs, she decided to become a social worker to help the poor and children. She was the first woman to speak for the Montana legislature and helped the women of Montana get the vote. Then, she ran for the House of Representitives.

A woman is running for president. She advocates for fair labor practices, social welfare programs and women's rights. She also appears a bundle of contradictions -- she is anti-abortion (as are most at the time), but pro-free love; a eugenicist, but also a civil rights supporter and socialist; a suffragist and a spiritualist. She has worked as a stockbroker, a lobbyist, a businesswoman and a newspaper publisher. She is both admired and despised by many. Nominated as her running mate is an African-American man.

No one really thinks she will win. However, everyone who nominates and supports her, including she herself, feels that it is important a message be sent to the U.S. government that it is time for a woman in government and in the White House.

During her run, personal -- rather than political -- attacks are made on her from all sides, in all the ways women who threaten the status quo, women who dare, are typically attacked: she is painted as a witch, a bitch, a prostitute, a woman of "loose morals." Her politics and platform are not critiqued: she is a woman, and so it is her person which is maligned and demonized. She is purposefully scandalized by people -- primarily men, or women acting as protectors of men -- with power to prevent her and any other woman from having any chance at all.

Sound kind of familiar? But it isn't 2007. It's 1872.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first over-the-counter weight-loss drug.

I seriously can't believe this. I mean, we spent years fighting so that women over 18 can now get EC, explaining over and over again that the drug is safe, easy to use properly, and won't promote unsafe sex, and this weight-loss drug gets approved, just like that. There's not even an age restriction to purchase it, even though the drug is "recommended" only for those 18 and over.

Bad news comes in threes every time.

A fond farewell to our dear Molly Ivins, calling 'em out and putting 'em down every time.

I'm sure you've all heard about the young woman who survived a rape and then was jailed without being given her second dose of EC. Her rape took place in the middle of the afternoon at a popular and widely-regarded as dangerous street festival near Tampa, Florida. She is 21, pre-med, and had the forethought to go straight to police to make her report. Later after most of her assault treatment, police found out she had an open warrant for a juvenile charge. The investigation of her claim was abandoned, and the medical examiner at the jail where she was taken refused to allow her after-24-hours dose of EC. The examiner claimed it would be against her religion to do so.

Perhaps some of you have seen this article in reference to the women of Japan as baby making machines. (Can you see the angry vein popping out of my forehead?) Perhaps a little background information is required here. Japan is experienced a declining birth rate. This means that the percentage of aging folks in relation to younger tax payers is skewing in a rather non economical way. I figure, that if young couples in Japan are barely even able to afford to live together thanks to the current economy what is going to make them want to have children - never mind several?

Does Tivo count as live blogging?

Good Morning America sent Diane Sawyer to sit down with the 16 women of the U.S. Senate. Maria Cantwell (Washington) is an early standout, very diplomatic, very articulate, and frankly I think she's a little more intriguing than Hillary.

I didn't know much about Claire McCaskill (Missouri) before the midterms, but she's familiar with seeing both sides of an issue. When Sawyer threw out the classic "there'd be less wars if there were more female leaders", along with Barbara Collins (Maine) ("I don't want to leave the impression that a woman presiden't wouldn't do what was necessary to defend this country"), she was the one who stepped out of the happy "collaboration and cooperation" box that her colleagues had set up and was quick to point out that any of the women in the room would act decisively in the even of an attack on America (ha, well, except for the journalist...). I'm glad to see some balance that the media wouldn't let us see: Claire McCaskill isn't just a baby killer, she's pro-America too! The radical right would have you think she walks around frozen embryos with a magnifying glass on sunny days. However, I was wanting her to say "this is a tough group of people" when she kept mentioning a "tough group of women".

As usual, the holidays hit the highs and lows of the year. Coping with a critical break-up, graduating from college, traveling for nearly three weeks straight, family drama, job hunting--so much, so much to do. But it was my trip to visit the red, red, red relatives--funnily enough--in the Northeast.

Self-identifying as a leftist puts me on the fringes, farther out than the cousin who lived in Miami and who everyone thought was gay (without talking to him about it, of course). I didn't realize it until I went north and saw what exactly we're up against.

For my aversion to war games (apparently I'm anti-patriotic for not appreciating the World War II games with inhuman portrayals of Japanese soldiers, or so says the side of the family not bearing my Japanese grandmother), my eleven year old cousin saw fit to call me a terrorist-- or at best used the word to bait me into an argument. After quitting the conversation on the possible televising of Saddam Hussein's execution, my aunt continued to go on about CNN televising journalists who "joined" the "terrorists" and killing American soldiers. Forgive me if I don't buy your third- or fourthhand relay of the Fox News propaganda...