With the election just over a month away, now is the time to get your voter registration in.
Even if you think you are already registered, if you are at all uncertain, you should re-register. If you have had a change of address, you should re-register. And if you did not get your primary ballot (Oregonians), or couldn’t seem to vote in the primary, you should re-register.
It’s not too late to request an absentee ballot. So if you are out of your home state, will miss the election, or would like to keep your registration in your homestate rather than your temporary home, you may still register absentee.
A friend sent me this shirt. Get yours! I Love it. I think it’s just jarring enough to start a conversation, and people should be talking. Not about Sarah Palin’s gender. But about her politics.
Women Against Sarah Palin. – a big collection of letters and ideas from women who see Palin as a political figure, not an example of womanity.
The American economy is crashing today.
Sarah Palin’s economic decisions of the past include a series of hedging decision in which she approved and revoked a series of immensely wasteful spending measures. She can’t make a decision on economic policy because she doesn’t understand the economy, government spending, or tax paying. What she does understand is payoffs, including paying Alaskan citizens thousands of dollars per person to accept her destructive drilling plan.
Sarah Palin is destroying the world around her -she supports drilling in the Alaskan Wilderness, which is killing off the local wildlife, destroying the home and resources of native tribes. She has fought hard, including suing the government to keep animals like the Polar Bear and Beluga Whale off the endangered species list. She beliefs in hunting Wolves – from the Air.
She claims to be pro-life, however Sarah Palin does not bat an eye at the Iraq war that has killed thousands of humans, and destroyed the lives of millions more. And though she doesn’t believe in abortion, she does not believe in a sex education program that would give teenagers the knowledge to prevent unwanted pregnancies (in fact McCain has voted against requiring abstinence educations to be scientifically accurate!)
Sarah Palin’s church is promoting a gay conversion conference: "Pray Away the Gay."
There are so many more issues I would like to discuss, but in the interest of brevity, I will only say that I hope everyone is thoroughly investigating the issues most important to them.
I will not vote for someone who is pro-war, anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-environment, and too short sited to make decisions that span beyond her lifetime. I will not vote for someone who believes the economy is healthy, simply because the wealthy are still wealthy. I will not vote for someone who vows to take away my rights in the interest of promoting her own religion.
I might be a woman, but I’m voting for my political peer, not my ovarian double.
Women Against Sarah Palin is a project collecting letters and testimonials from American women, explaining why we are not supporting her candidacy. John McCain’s advisors seem to have told him that he will get “The Female Vote” by slipping a woman onto his ticket. The truth is, there is no elusive Female Vote. There are only female voters.
Feminism is not the translation of a male patriarchy to a female matriarchy. Feminism is a philosophy of equality. As such, it is inherently anti-feminist to vote for a woman because she is a woman. It is demeaning to vote for a woman based solely on her gender. The implication is that she cannot stand on politics and experience alone. The implication is that a woman can only survive in politics (or in the workplace in general, or in society at large), if she is granted special consideration. To support a female candidate based upon her gender is to define womanhood as a handicap.
I will no more vote for Sarah Palin because of her gender than I would defend Not voting for her on the basis of gender.
I am not a supporter of Sarah Palin because her politics are backward thinking, anti-progressive, destructive and demeaning.
Sarah Palin supports drilling in the Alaskan wilderness. She believes in the permanent destruction of the environment in order to eek out a few more years of consumption of a dying resource. It’s a fact. We will run out of oil. And there are alternative power sources available and in development. With more incentives to use alternative fuels, we can stretch the oil we do have, as we perfect the emerging technologies that will propel us into the future. There is no reason to permanently destroy the planet in order to prolong the inevitable movement to alternative fuels.
Sarah Palin is destructive to animals. She has fought to keep the Polar Bear from being protected as an endangered species. She is a hunter. She supports the practice of shooting large game from airplanes. Both humans and animals are harmed by blood lust as sport.
Sarah Palin believes in teaching Christian Creationism in science classrooms. Our constitution separates church from state in order to leave our citizens free to practice their own beliefs – the original reason for this separation was to protect puritanical Christians…but now that Christians feel less oppressed, they would like to reverse this core value in order to promote their own views. The goal of science is not to overturn religion, but to determine how the universe works. Science and religion are neither mutually exclusive, nor equitable forces. Contrary to common belief, Creationism is addressed in American public schools. In Literature, History, and Philisophy classes, where it belongs. It is a school of thought, not a branch of science. Parents are free to continue their child’s education outside of school, and delve more deeply into their own personal beliefs. What Sarah Palin is hoping to accomplish is the profession of her belief system as fact.
Sarah Palin is against homosexuality. Not only does she oppose gay marriage, and support bills to block partner rights; Sarah Palin attends a church that promotes the conversion of homosexuals into socially acceptable heteronormative people.
Sarah Palin believes in overturning Roe v. Wade and revoking a woman’s right to control her own body. Before abortion was legalized, abortions already took place. Upper Class women would travel overseas to a safe and legal abortion in another country. Middle Class women would travel to big cities for back alley abortions at a steep price – including permanent reproductive damage and rape by supposed “doctors.” Those who can find a way to have an abortion will always do it if they deem it necessary. Which means only the lowest income bracket are left unable. There is a direct corrolation between legalized abortion and crime statistics. In essence, 18 years after abortion became legalized, crime dropped in proportion to the number of abortions performed. …Rescending Roe v. Wade will mean tens of thousands of unwanted children born to women who can’t or won’t take care of them. Let’s respect the women who find themselves in situations in which abortion is the necessary and responsible decision – for themself, for their unborn baby, and for the wellbeing of the community into which the child would be born.
I respect Sarah Palin’s intelligence and success. I respect her integrity and her consistency. But I have no respect for her politics, and I absolutely do not support her candidacy.
I will not vote for John McCain, just because he has added a woman to his ticket. I would not vote for Sarah Palin if she were in the presidential slot. And my reasons for disavowing support for Sarah Palin are exactly the same as the reasons I don’t support John McCain. She is a bloodthirsty social conservative who would happilly brainwash the gay population and American children, revoke my reproductive rights, and physically destroy the world.
I say no to Sarah Palin, and I say no to John McCain.
This will be the second time in three years that my hometime is wiped off the map. Before Oregon, Illinois, New Zealand, Colorado, I lived in Louisiana.
I was born in New Orleans. It probably explains a lot about me, actually.
There’s a part of me that’s breaking now, seeing that the city is once more at the mercy of the gods…..and in the three years since Katrina, the Bush administration has refused to do anything to save New Orleans from another catastrophe. The levees are just as weak. The mistakes of the past are looming large and real.
People didn’t have to die three years ago…..but we disrespect their memories so thoroughly that we forget they have died.
So here it is, ravaged by the weather again…..and I don’t think it can bounce back right now.
…..New Orleans is special – it has a culture of its own. ….So what we’re witnessing on some level is the death of a civilization.
And no one seems to care.
I’m so fucking angry at our government right now.
anyhow, here’s a little Ani DiFranco-esque rant music.
LINK
(10 points to anyone who can tell me how to embed flickr video to wordpress – the embed script seems to be a big fail.)
If you can’t understand a word I said, here it is:
I left her innocent to her parties and her beads, her broken dreams.
She bleeds.
I left her quietly in the hot sweltering heat on crocodile shores
and I ignored the shadows and the whores.
I left her lonely, with a flask in her back pocket, thinking,
Hey – that girl’s got sass.
She could kick my ass if she wanted to.
I left her in a storm, with cake in her mouth and a baby in her teeth, and I said
Hey, that bitch is strong.
There is nothing else she needs.
But she bleeds.
And the mask slips from her face and she bleeds.
She bleeds, and her beads twist in the wind, and she -
She chokes and bleeds.
I heard the wind screaming and the rain pelting
And the sirens in the distance.
I smell violence and phosphor in the air, and I -
I close my door and count to ten.
I heard her cry for me and I thought
Maybe it’s the storm or maybe gunshots in the street.
No good-time girl would be here now;
She won’t come crawling back to me
And she bleeds,
In the gutter in the storm, and she bleeds.
And she falls, and the water rushes in, and she -
She chokes and screams.
And I don’t love her anymore,
Her broken teeth and scars, her makeup runs, her lipstick smears.
And I think,
We should clean the neighborhood, get rid of trash like this.
And she bleeds
And I turn my back, and I close my door, and I think,
Nothing a little jazz and liquor couldn’t cure.
And she bleeds, all alone out in the storm
And she– …..
….I’m not really all about explaining my metaphors, but that’s pretty much how I’m feeling – that we’re treating Nola like a party girl we fuck for fun and abandon the moment she’s in need.
If you have anything to give right now, please help Red Cross prepare for the relief.
