On the brighter side. This was in my e mail box this morning and it has mobilized me again in HOPE... Look at 77 how much longer do I have. Maybe I can be the same age as McCain's mother and enjoy politics a long time. On the other hand if McCain wins I don't know how long it will take to get a Democratic president. Not that they have all been great but
significant changes have been realized more with them. I am thinking of the LBJ Civil Rights legislation.
Anyway here's the message :
latimes.com
>
>
> Opinion
>
>
> Palin: wrong woman, wrong message
>
> Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary
> Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.
> By Gloria Steinem
>
> September 4, 2008
>
> Here's the good news: Women have become so politically
> powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks
> with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to
> appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice
> president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too --
> who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted
> violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to
> Shirley Chisholm, who first took the
> "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to
> Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule
> and misogyny to win 18 million votes.
>
> But here is even better news: It won't work. This
> isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified
> woman just because she agrees with him and opposes
> everything most other women want and need. Feminism has
> never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about
> making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not
> about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us
> for that. It's about baking a new pie.
>
> Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush
> Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including
> die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a
> chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and
> deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican
> convention that has more than twice as many male delegates
> as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and
> operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes
> pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for --
> and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest
> for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole
> my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."
>
> This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be
> wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that
> people say she can't do the job because she has children
> in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the
> same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in
> the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about
> which she has zero background, with one month to learn to
> compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience.
>
> Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When
> asked last month about the vice presidency, she said,
> "I still can't answer that question until someone
> answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every
> day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I
> haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."
>
> She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was
> unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using
> unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every
> resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign
> as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state
> income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative
> action for so long that he doesn't know it's about
> inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them.
> Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration
> habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job
> candidate's views on "God, guns and gays"
> ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is
> filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the
> presidency.
>
> So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may
> have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women
> can't tell the difference between form and content, but
> the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the
> same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a
> supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the
> case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice
> president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like
> Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of
> Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from
> right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down
> to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.
>
> Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes
> just about every issue that women support by a majority or
> plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in
> public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes
> gun control but supports government control of women's
> wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves
> "abstinence-only" programs, which increase
> unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and
> abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a
> state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't
> spend enough money to fix a state school system with the
> lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs
> with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports
> $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across
> Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National
> Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the
> lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly,
> only younger.
>
> I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of
> the National Rifle Assn., she doesn't just support
> killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She
> doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil
> fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small
> town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to
> criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says
> that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or
> incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes
> reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it
> dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the
> right to have a child.
>
> So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has
> attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course,
> for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their
> husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for
> Palin's husband.
>
> Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term
> bipartisan gains from this contest.
>
> Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing
> patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in
> November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to
> take back their party, which was the first to support the
> Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to
> invite government into the wombs of women.
>
> And American women, who suffer more because of having two
> full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally
> have support on a national stage from male leaders who know
> that women can't be equal outside the home until men are
> equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on
> their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at
> home for their children.
>
> This could be huge.
>
> Gloria Steinem is an author, feminist organizer and
> co-founder of the Women's Media Center. She supported
> Hillary Clinton and is now supporting Barack Obama.
>
>
> |
