Hillary and Me

OK, where was I? Oh ya, I had just been handed my head, figuratively speaking of course, by the site administrator over at Free Republic for a still undisclosed and unknown reason.

"Off with her head!", the Red Queen said.

What was really weird was I had just posted an update on Obama, martial law, and Blackwater. How could my “offense” have anything to do with that? Hmmm, not likely. Could it be my last post of a few days earlier, on my other blog, Say No to Plastic and entitled, Memo to Megyn Kelly – Using Plastic Bags is So Yesterday? If that was the reason, that would also be weird for two reasons.

One, I’ve posted on concerns about our thoughtless use of all forms of plastic before on Free Republic without suffering any consequences. While most did not agree with me, some did. I didn’t expect complete agreement. One knows in advance that people preaching about global warming, for example, are not welcomed there. I’ve tried to be respectful and mindful of that . . . never vilifying the plastic industry.

Besides we can’t all agree with each other all the time; Kool-Aid Kids and Obama bots do that . . . not adults. Aren’t Freepers and Puma’s against lock-step thought and absolute adherence to every point of view held by their leaders? I thought so.

Two, if the Megyn Kelly post was the offense, why take this action now? The post had already been up for days.

So what happened? I still don’t know. What I do know is this. This action by the administrator at Free Republic is emblematic, symptomatic of what has happened to Americans in our country. We just don’t listen to each other any more. Most of the time, we don’t have the courtesy to give the other side an opportunity to talk and present their side of an issue. Sad. We spend more time looking for bad guys than we spend on looking for good ideas. The former is a waste of time . . . the latter is productive.

That is too bad, because we are all diminished when, with “knee jerk reactions”, we close our ears and our minds to those holding opposing opinions. Holding onto strident positions without considering, even momentarily, that there is another legitimate point of view weakens us.

Let me give you two small examples of personal changes I have made.

For years I have been against drilling in ANWR and building new nuclear plants. While I remain a Hillary supporter, once it was clear Obama was going to be selected to run for POTUS by the Dems, I became a McCain/Palin supporter believing that putting country ahead of party was the only thing to do.

I thought Palin was a brilliant pick by McCain . . . still do . . . and if the Republican Party wants to resurrect itself, it needs more common sense people like Palin. Anyone think if Palin was Governor of California that the State would have the deficits that have been allowed to grow under Schwarzenegger? No, of course, not. Ah, but I digress.

When Sarah was campaigning I heard her discussions about ANWR. Who better to discuss the issue than the Governor of Alaska. Not surprisingly, her observations of the importance of ANWR and its environmental impact were markedly different from what is generally portrayed in the MSM.

I also listened to McCain discussing nuclear power and remembered living through Three Mile Island when I lived in Pennsylvania. I still remember radio station KYW’s updates. We were told that there was a real possibility that we were going to have to evacuate; the fear was thick, palpable. I remember asking myself, if there’s only a half hour to decide what to keep and what to leave behind (forever?) what my choices would be.

I listened to McCain’s point about accident free power on subs and throughout the country; not a single accident in 20 years. Even after having lived through the Three Mile Island fear, I changed my position. Times change, the economy changes, what is necessary to continue to foster growth and greatness changes. We need to look at ourselves and ask if we are holding on to positions that no longer make any sense.

Right now the State of California has the resources and ability to run budget surpluses and get out of debt. Want to know how? Start opening the off shore oil leases. Start pumping the oil. In a barely reported story, FOX detailed how California and the country could profit. Instead, lacking the political will to do what makes sense and is for the common good, the “Governator” would rather take money from the “stimulus” bill . . . would rather have tax payers from Georgia and across the country foot their largess!

So what’s the moral to this? Well, for starters, any site/blog administrator can choose to do what they want, but I would suggest there was a better way to handle this.

I’ve deleted a hand full of comments over the last year . . . maybe six or seven. I’ve also left repugnant comments when I felt the comments were a true reflection of the person making them. In one case I was called a Nazi ”C” word . . . no not that “C” word . . . Conservative . . . the four letter one that begins with “C” and rhymes with runt.

I have a page called “Deleted” that gives the posting guidelines here. The first guideline is not to attack me personally. Attack the problem or topic of the post. This blog is supposed to be place for intelligent discourse, after all.

Let me point out, yet again, that no group has a monopoly on common sense, good ideas, or ideas for moving this country forward. More than ever before, we need to be talking to each other and listening . . . listening . . . even if the topic being discussed is one we do not agree with.

BTW, I checked my emails again this morning. Still no response to query. Think I’ll ever here back?

{{Sound of crickets}} Bueller? Bueller? Hello . . . is anyone there?

A few days ago I posted this under the title Can One be PUMA and a FReeper at the Same Time. Yesterday I realized that what I am discussing is much larger than a site administrator suddenly revoking someone’s posting privileges without any notice and completely out of the blue or my bruised feelings about the unjust accusation. Hence the title change.

This is really about us. All of us . . . closing ourselves off into little groups, hurling accusations, like spit balls, at people and ideas we don’t agree with. As you read this. Ask yourself how many ideas you are really giving a fair voice to?

For months, the answer to that question has been yes, as it relates to me. That all ended two days ago, when my posting privileges at Free Republic (where FReepers come from if you don’t know) were suspended for being a troll. A troll! AN OBAMA TROLL? WHAT KIND OF TROLL?

Need I say that I was stunned? Anyone that continues to visit this site knows my positions on faux President Obama and his ineligibility of hold the office of POTUS, the new age phony Democrats, my support of Sarah Palin, and host of other topics that continue to plague this country. Taking about plagues, we can put Princess Pelosi, Haughty Reed, Piggy Schumer, and Barfy Frank in that class. Scratch the word “class” none of these people have any class . . . replace that with cabal.

For those who have never heard of Free Republic, it is a conservative site where “true believers” and Reagan Republicans come to blog and share information. Some have called it a rabid den full of conservative loonies, not me, but guess who? Before going any further, if anyone wants to jump ugly about either PUMA’s or Freepers, don’t. This is not meant to be disparaging of either group!

I, on the other hand, found it to be a place that welcomed me, a fierce moderate (something I share with Benjamin Franklin), a Hillary supporter, and a one time Democrat. Point of fact, they found me before I found them. I’d never heard of them and probably would have never sought this group out on my own. So how did the relationship happen?

When reviewing the blog stats for this site, I continued to see numerous hits from the Free Republic site. Hmmm . . . who were these people? Freepers were reading what I had to say on a daily basis. After visiting their site and with a little trepidation, I joined the group because I found I agreed with most (not all) of their positions. (Candidly, I’m always a little suspicious of people that claim to hold every position I hold. That’s not possible and anyone who claims to hold identical thoughts with you all the time is either lying to themselves or lying to you.)

Yes, I joined a group with the dreaded “C” word . . . no not that “C” word you fool . . . Conservatives. What I found were smart, savvy, to the point, and in your face people who dislike the direction our country has taken, as much as the PUMA’s do. Yes, I am a PUMA and proud of it.

So, what could be the problem since both groups that I associate with share a love of country, a belief that the Constitution is of paramount importance . . . that it is the life blood of this country and that our country’s continued greatness is dependent upon adherence to the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the documents that form our most perfect Union.

The only thing I can figure out is I have second blog that has a very tiny following. It is called Say No to Plastic which I will get back to in a minute. It couldn’t have been my last post at Hillary and me, which focused on an update on Obama’s abilities to declare martial law. SO, I’m guessing this is the reason because I really don’t know. I immediately sent an email to the site administrator asking what I had done that caused the equivalent of my being guillotined in France. The response I received was:

{{Sound of crickets}} Bueller? Bueller? Hello . . . is anyone there?

Yup, no response from the administrator of a group that should represent respectful freedom of speech and thought . . . one would think anyway. Not a word …. Zippo, zero, zilch, nada.

Tomorrow, more in Part II.

Sarah Palin just may be the most complete woman I have ever seen!

She’s a mayor and governor, a mom, a married woman with 5 children who has been with the same man she married since high school, she hunts and shots, is an accomplished athlete, she’ sexy (yes, it’s OK to acknowledge the obvious and not take offense) and smart, intelligent, a problem solver, tough as nails . . . what’s not to love!

And, that, boys and girls, is why tired sour old pusses like Sally Quinn and Maureen Dowd dislike her and are threatened by her. She’s everything they aren’t. If that wasn’t enough Sarah is clearly happy with who she is! That’s got to be galling to these old time, out of vogue, feminists. It’s not their ages that make them passe, its their adherence to the 70′s feminist model orthodoxy … the one so many young women today have chosen to reject.

Sarah’s brand of feminism is not an extreme of the left or of the right. Sarah Palin is not Phyllis Schlafly or Dr. Laura or Gloria Steinem. In truth, Sarah chose a life style someplace in the middle. She may not have it all, but she’s damn close! And she’s authentic in a way those other pusses will never be, will never understand or “get”.

Shouldn’t old time feminists like Sally and Maureen be singing Sarah’s praises? Wasn’t the reason all those bras were burned was so women would have the right to choose? Well, yes and no. The truth is, the underlying current of the 70′s feminism was, the right to choose really meant the right to choose abortion, to disparage men, to choose career over family. You always had the feeling that when a woman choose not to have a career or “just” to have a family that the choice was considered second rate. I think many women felt their choice of a traditional family was looked down on and thought to be quaint . . . a throw back to yesteryear.

That’s sad, because the right ot choose should mean exactly that; and either choice should be celebrated and not diminished by either side. That having be said let me be perfectly clear. The feminism of the 60′s and 70′s had to be fought and many of the issues then remain with us now, not the least of which is the rampant sexism that plagued Hillary and which Sarah and women across the country deal with on a daily basis.

I grew up in a single family home. My mother had to work nights (11pm to 7am) as a machinist for 14 years because my father, the sperm donor, (a term Dr. Laura coined to identify men who father children, leave, and do nothing to support them) deserted my mother leaving her with two little girls to support, ages 4 and 5 years respectively. How she did everything I will never understand. She worked nights, made sure we had piano lessons, tap dancing lessons, she made our clothes, canned food, made our lives as complete as she could under the circumstances she was given.

How far have we come? When my mother wanted to buy a house, she had to have my grandfather co-sign for the loan because banks didn’t lend money to divorced single women. Women didn’t have the ability to get credit in their own names until 1976 when a law was passed preventing banks and credit card companies from discriminating.

Title IX had yet to be passed. For those who don’t know Title IX gives women the same rights and access to sports as men. Before that, girls and women were cheated, big time. When I taught and coached in the 70′s I was also the girls department head. The high school budget for boys sports teams was $50,000.00 . . . a tidy sum in the 70′s. The budget for the girls sports teams was $5,000.00. I taught in one of the wealthiest communities in Connecticut and we had to hold bake sales to get new uniforms for the girls hockey team because there was no money in the budget!

How far do we still have to go? When I left teaching I became a business woman through a series of circumstances in my life. I’ve been in business with a male partner (my husband at the time) and without and I can tell you first hand that it is definitely easier trying to finance a business when lenders think there is a man that is heading the operation. Little has changed over the years. Here we are in 2008, and women . . . small business owners for the most part . . . already acknowledged to be a primary engine in the U.S. economy get little help!

After last night’s speech at the Republican Convention, America has a new political leader. Women have a new hero, and for all the rest of you who don’t get it . . . she’s our next Vice President! Deal with it!

You go girl! You go girl! You go girl!