‘You lie’

I saw most of the speech last night, but not all.  I did catch Rep. Joe Wilson completely berate our President by shouting out “You Lie!” while he was explaining that illegal immigrants would not receive free healthcare under this reform.

Now, I have to wonder how much of this might be racially based.  Coming from South Carolina – and excuse me for generalizing an entire state here – but South Carolina is known for being a hot bed of racial tension.  A white man from the south just called our black president a liar, in public, on camera while he was addressing Congress, and this is an outburst that has never been done before.

“CNN: Never has any member of Congress shown such disrespect for the president during a speech,” Fowler wrote. “One would think that as a member of the military, Joe Wilson would have more respect and patriotism than he displayed tonight. When Congressman Wilson insulted President Obama, he also insulted the American public. Joe Wilson is a poor example of a statesman and an American. He owes an apology to the president and the American people.”

This to me screams “White Privilege”.  Of course, I could be making a big deal out of nothing, but I have to wonder…

Quick Hit: Please read this great article on why the term “illegal alien” brings images of very bad things to the more conservative minded Americans and those whose families have been in America for so long that they forgot their families actually came from other places of the world (unless you’re Native).  Here’s a quick quote of why it’s actually a very negative term:

If you can classify a whole group of people with a pejorative –alien –and then group them as “illegal,” you have carried out a neat trick: you have stripped a whole group of people of their humanity. Once dehumanized, any ill-treatment is judged by lesser standards, perhaps less moral than ones we apply to animals.

Just a quick something to think about.

Big Week!

This is where I was when President Obama was inaugurated.  I watched in awe with hundreds of fellow classmates as our country made history.  I feel as if it’s a new day now.  I feel as if the weight of the world has been taken off my shoulders as I watched Former President George W. Bush along with Laura Bush get on that helipoter to take them away from Washington.

Watching the news yesterday has reassured me that Obama is going to do what’s right for this country.  He’s already signed to have Guantanamo closed, he’s going to repeal the Global Gag Rule, and doing so with sensitively.  He’s going to do right by our country, and I’m proud for the first time in a long time of what America is and what it stands for.  I lost my faith in my country during the past 8 years, especially 8 years ago when Bush stole the election.  But you get past it and move on and hope the country will correct the mistakes of the past, and it has now.

Yesterday also marked the day that 36 years ago Roe v. Wade was passed by the Supreme Court.  This is a momentous day, because the ruling states that a woman has a right to bodily privacy, to make whatever decisions she feels is right for her to make, not her father, not her husband, not the government.  I feel people forget this.  I feel that certain groups in our society feel that women are incapable of making educated decisions regarding their body and that they, the government, or someone else who is not a woman knows what’s best for them.  The truth is that nobody knows what’s best for someone except that person.

Because of this anniversary, there was a March in front of the Supreme Court in D.C., and man tried to ram his SUV into an abortion clinic in St. Paul.  What I find most interesting though is the fact that most of the people who are against abortions and whom are violent toward abortion clinics and patients are men.  It’s patriarchy doing it’s thing.  It reminds me a lot of the movie I saw about the Suffragettes, Iron Jawed Angels on HBO and all the men who were against them getting their voting privileges. Here’s a photo clip of the violence I’m talking about that was portrayed in the movie.

I’m completely convinced that this violence has everything to do with loss of power and control, just like it did back then, 100 years ago.  With every little freedom a woman is given towards the right to form her own decisions regarding her life, her body, and her well-being, certain men simply freak out, and I don’t seem to understand this.  I’ve always been priviledged to have my independence, and I was raised to speak my mind and take care of myself, because nobody was going to do that for me, so here I am, taking care of myself, forming my own opinions, and speaking my mind.

Another momentous thing happened in D.C. yesterday: The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passed the Senate!  Here’s what Planned Parenthood had to say about it:

Tonight the Senate passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act by a bipartisan vote of 61 to 36, vindicating Lilly Ledbetter’s long search for redress after 19 years of pay discrimination.

“This is an important first step in our efforts to undo years of backsliding on the right to be paid a fair and equitable wage,” said National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy. “The Ledbetter bill will allow redress for workers with the energy and willpower to seek redress in the courts, but we have a long way to go before we have fair pay for women, and laws with real teeth.”

While it is too late for her to receive the compensation she deserved from Goodyear and was denied by the Supreme Court, Lilly’s determined quest for equal rights for women in the workplace led to today’s Senate passage of the legislation introduced in her name. President Obama is expected to sign the legislation next week after an expected concurrence from the House.

The Ledbetter Act, which was blocked in the Republican-led Senate last year, will essentially reverse the 2007 Supreme Court decision that required workers to file charges on a pay discrimination claim within six months after receiving their first discriminatory paycheck. The Court’s decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber, which reversed the jury’s compensation award to Ledbetter, essentially gave employers the go-ahead to discriminate in pay, as long as they weren’t caught in the first six months after the onset of their illegal actions.

Earlier this month the House passed the Ledbetter Act with a companion bill, the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would close loopholes that allow employers to pay men and women discriminatorily and provides consequences for that discrimination. The Senate today acted only on the Ledbetter Act, so work on passage of the companion bill begins tomorrow.

But tonight NOW salutes Lilly Ledbetter and promises to continue working for passage of fair pay legislation with real teeth, so that her long journey through the courts and the halls of Congress will not have been in vain, and all workers will be able enjoy a fair, safe and equitable workplace where they can do their jobs and support their families.

Little by litte we are working our way to equality.  Little by little women are being freed from the oppressions they face that hold them back from achieving the great things we all know they’re capable of.

I also just got word that Obama overturned the Global Gag Rule this morning via Twitter (thanks Veronica!).  More on that as the info comes in.

It’s been a big week indeed!

History in the making

Today, I am proud to be a democrat. I am proud to be a woman. I am proud to be watching history in the making. I sat here and watched Hillary’s concession speech on CNN and I felt proud because for the first time in the history of the United States we had the decision to either elect a woman or a black man to run for presidency. For the first time ever we have a black man running to be president of the United States. This is a moment that I am proud to be able to see, and I am proud to be able to share the importance of it with my stepson and explain to him what a big deal this is and how this is going to open him up for many choices in the future. I’ve been saying from the very beginning that should Hillary not win I would vote for Obama, because regardless of what the differences between them is, and regardless of how I feel about him personally, the issues are still there and they will not away easily and we need to tell the government about how we feel about this issues. The biggest way we could tell the government is to vote for the person that addresses these issues and promises to change the way the government is controlling our rights.

McCain, I feel, will be the worst person to run this country. Allowing him to serve a term would be the equivalent of giving Bush a third term. He’s wishy-washy. He has no enthusiasm for what his issues are, he goes up at to the podiums to make his speeches and I fall asleep. There’s no chemistry, no passion, nothing. He’s like a wet fish. Obama has passion.

I have to comment about something because after her speech they were interviewing random people on the floor and they were all saying that if Obama would not pick Hillary as his running mate, they were not going to vote for him, and I’ve heard rumors of people not going to vote at all because they don’t want to have to vote for the lesser of two evils. I have this to tell them: YOU’RE STUPID! Barrack Obama believes in basically the same issues that Hillary believed in. Both Hillary and Obama are about instituting social change in our country that has already been crippled by a president who’s more concerned about his pride, his ego, and his pockets, then the real issues at hand, and I see the same thing in McCain.

Here’s McCain on the Ellen Degeneres show. Watch and I’ll comment below.

This man starts off as saying that he feels a contract is ok between people of the same sex, but what gets me is what is the different between said contract and actual marriage? Why not just go ahead and say “I agree with gay marriage”? In truth, you can’t force the church to allow this, and that’s their decision as a private, religious institution, I just won’t support that religious institution. Simple. But when it comes to the government, if they’re willing to allow “contracts” that give gay couples the same rights as married couples, just go ahead and call it a “marriage” already, because that’s what it is. At this point it’s just a play on words. Even after Ellen made some incredibly good points to him on how segregated his thoughts are, he stands by his point but almost embarassingly. This is not a man who stands by his convictions.

McCain was just here in Miami talking about conserving the Everglades, but he’s the one that voted against funding conservation efforts to begin with. Why now does he have an interest in the Everglades? I can tell you why. Because he wants the hispanic vote here in South Florida, and he’s also trying to get the conservationists to support him, but in truth-at least for me- his words are not enough. His actions have said loud and clear that he’s not about supporting the Everglades, and he can’t backtrack now.

His issues on the gay marriage, I don’t agree with. His issues on women’s rights, I don’t agree with. I get the sense that he wants to go back to a time that is outlined in the Feminist Mystique, and I am not for that at all. Women have more brains then men give us credit for. We are capable of thinking for ourselves, we are capable of working and making decisions when it concerns our lives, our futures, and the future of our children. We do not need a man to hold our hands and tell us what to do, because we can and will do that for ourselves, and people like McCain will try to turn back the clock so that we aren’t allowed to make our own decisions. Bush already tried to start the ball rolling when he signed the Partial Birth Abortion Act, which is an inaccurate term, and on top of that, they don’t even take into consideration the true facts about the procedure!

Under state law, abortions are permitted for up to 24 weeks or six months after pregancy. It is also permitted after 24 weeks if the woman’s health or life is in danger. [emphasis mine]

The partial-birth or IDX abortion procedure is usually done in the second trimester, from 18 to 26 weeks.[emphasis mine]

What is incredibly disturbing about this isn’t so much the process in which it’s done, or the act itself, it’s the fact that the government is not taking into consideration the risk that not doing this procedure may place on the woman’s life who’s trying to have the procedure done. What they’re doing is setting rules as to what we can do with our bodies, and in essence what they’re saying is that a life that most probably can not survive outside of the mother’s body for more than a couple hours or maybe even a couple of days is more important than a living, viable life that has been established for a good couple of years already.

I know this post is all over the place, but the thing is that these issues are the topics that need to be addressed during this election. This and many more are the reasons that I will be voting for Obama come November because I know I don’t want anyone telling me what to do when it comes to my body or any other decision I make, and should I have a daughter in the future, I do not want that decision being taken away from her either. I want my daughter to have all the same rights that I do and more. I want my daughter to be President of the United States if she so wishes. I want my daughter to be able to have an abortion if something were to happen and she were to have an unwanted pregnancy, and most importantly, I want my daughter to have easy access to birth controls until the time comes when she does decide to have children, and that choice needs to ultimately be up to her and her partner-male or female-NOT the government, therefore I will be voting for Obama because he stands for these issues and he stands for these changes. I really wish I could have seen a woman in office, but I’m not dead yet and won’t be for a very long time, so I’m sure the day will come when I will see a woman in office, and I will be proud when that day finally comes.