Uncensored Feminista

It’s been a while, I know, but life is incredibly busy lately with two research projects, one ecology project, and acting monologues to memorize, but I thought I would post a quick hello to you all simply to let you know that I’m still alive.

As for what’s going on in political news, I am incredibly ecstatic to find out that the polls are turning.  Obama is again in the lead in the polls, and it seems that there has finally been a shift among women from the McCain camp back to the Obama Camp.  He’s even ahead in battleground states, according to MSNBC.  Honestly, I was starting to get worried.  I was already thinking of how I was going to pack up my house, my cats, the kid, and the boyfriend to move us all to Canada, but it appears as if the blinders are coming off and I won’t have to move.

This election is important.  It is so important in fact that I succeeded in convincing my boyfriend that he must not only register to vote but vote come November 4th, and he’s watching the news daily to see what else is going on in the McCain/Palin camp as far as all the drama goes.

Obama was here in Miami for a rally this morning, but unfortunately I could not go.  I ust recently started a new job and was unable to ask for the day off to go see him, so I’m a bit bummed that I missed the rally.  I can only hope there was someone out there nice enough to video it and will be posting it up on YouTube later on tonight.

I also attended a panel discussion called “Sex, Lies, and Sterotypes” that was hosted by Planned Parenthood, VOX, and SEICUS.  I will write more on it later, but the jist of it is that Abstinence only education is bad (like we needed a panel to tell us that), and it’s being implemented domestically and internationally.  Kids are being misinformed, it’s not working internationally, and more and more people are contracting HIV/AIDS and dying.  Locally Planned Parenthood is trying to organize the Healthy Teens Campaign which I personally think is awesome because it would stop the lies and the half truths from being spread, but unfortunately right now they’re not teaching anything at all because of “budget cuts” (or so they claim), so I’m writing letters to the Board in hopes that they will see the error of their ways, but I would love it if others would do the same.

One last thing before I go; if anyone had done any research on how toys genderize kids or on commercial sexual exploitation of kids, please email me at lmato002 {AT} fiu {DOT} edu.  I would love your input or any information that you found.  Thanks! 

Well then, you must watch these.

For anyone who watched the Sarah Palin speech last night, I would like to say that I am truly pissed off. I feel more and more that these people just don’t get it, that they just seem as if they are so out of touch with reality and what life is truly like for real people like me. Her attack on community organizers was just wrong, because her running mate may be a war hero and he may have been imprisoned and torchered overseas, but the truth of the matter is that you don’t need to go overseas to fight a war, because there is one being waged right here on our soil. There are women being raped and beaten at an alarming rate, there is gang violence, drug use, and many other kinds of horrible things happening right here on American soil. These are the things that Obama has been fighting against as a “community organizer”, so if you really want to look at things from a war perspective, Obama is a war hero as well since he’s been through the trenches of our opressed and depressed communities and he’s tried to bring them back to life and tried to raise these people from the ashes.

Here is this woman, who is so anti-woman that I have to wonder if she’s even proud of being a woman, and she’s flinging mud in the faces of those who fight for the little guy, when the truth is that she’s got more skeletons in her closet than I care to think about. I’m hearing things like, pot use, was part of an organization that was trying to cecede Alaska from the United States, a pregnant teenage daughter (aka evidence that abstinence only education does not work), claims that she didn’t support the “bridge to no where” when the truth is that she did support it, used public funds to bail husband out of jail, is using public funds now with her lawsuit on her abuse of power to get her ex-brother in law fired as a state trooper. I means is there anything that I’m missing here?

She claims to believe in a lot of things, and she claims to be a part of the superior party who’s going to bring about “change” in a way that Obama is incapable of because of his experience, but from what I’ve seen in Obama’s past is that he is capable of the change he’s speaking of, and what I see from McCain is someone who has followed Bush on every single issue, and who has voted with Bush 95% of the time.  I call that a lemming.  He will follow Bush off that cliff when he decides to jump.  This is not the man I want running this country, and I would hope that others see what I’m seeing.

UPDATE:  I just found this great Palin Fact-Checking site.  Check it out and see how much of what she actually said was true.

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For the most part, I want to stay away from this issue because as Obama said, we need to lay off families, but the truth of the matter is that there’s several hypocrisies surrounding Bristol Palin’s pregnancy.  Firstly, she’s 5 months pregnant which means that this was hidden from the public for FIVE months.  Why?  Was it kept hidden for the same reason that Sarah Palin kept her own pregancy a secret until the very end?  Here’s the official statement from Sarah regarding her daughter Bristol’s pregnancy:

“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents,” Sarah and Todd Palin said in the brief statement. {emphasis mine}

This statement seems like an oxymoron to me coming from a staunch Anti-Choice governor.  I have to wonder how much of it was truly her choice. I wonder how much coercion (whether they’ll admit to it or not) was involved in this teenagers “decision” to keep the child and to marry the father(!?).  I have issues with what I’m going to consider this shotgun wedding because I have to wonder whether she would have considered marrying this boy had she not been pregnant at this time.  If the answer to this is no, then in my opinion, she really shouldn’t marry the boy because it will eventually lead to a divorce.  Why am I mentioning all this?  Coming from the conservative right who believe in “family values”, I don’t believe that forcing a teenager into marriage, or even teaching that she must marrying because she’s pregnant, is very good family values.  It is teaching her that marriage isn’t about loving and caring for your family, it’s about the situation you’ve put yourself in and concequences you have to suffer through.  It’s seems that it’s setting her up to fail and making her just one of many statistics.  I may be wrong but I’m almost positive I won’t be.  Very few marriages in this day and age survive, and even less when they’re married as teenagers.  What kind of “family values” are these?

Over at Feministing there’s a debate about the pregnancy/choice issue because it just seems as if these incredibly staunch conservatives are flinging around the word “decision” and going around pretending as if “decision” does not equal “choice” when it truth it does.  It seems that this “decision” is fine and dandy when it comes to their own families, but when it comes to the general public-which I seriously feel as if they think we’re too stupid to know what to do with ourselves should we be faced with such a decison-it’s not ok for them to make this decision and they feel as if the government needs to make the decision for us.

I could be totally off on my assumptions, I could be completely backwards on my thinking, but seeing as how things are evolving in this election, and the things that I’m hearing lately, I really don’t think I’m wrong.

With the start of the GOP Convention today, I’d like to post this little You Tube video to remind everyone what I’m about and who I believe in.

Also, lets not forget what happened when the Republicans were truly put to the test 3 years ago with Katrin in the wake of Gustav.  Bush, Cheney, and McCain can talk all they want, but the truth of the matter is that when the shit was hitting the fan, Bush and McCain were partying hard for McCain’s birthday while people were dying and drowning because of hurricane Katrina.  They can pretend to be doing all they need to do now for Gustav, but what’s been done can’t be undone.  They dropped the ball three years ago, and just because it’s an election year, that doesn’t mean that they’re supposed to be on their best behavior now.  They should have been caring individuals and they should have done what needed to be done to protect and save those people in New Orleans.

So here’s the video.