DEMOCRATS OR REPUBLICANS: 'They're all the Same"???

I keep reading disgruntled Americans who profess to believe that there's no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. Some of them are going to stay home and grouse about the perceived "sameness" of the two parties while others are going rogue and voting for candidates in other parties who appear to better-reflect their sensibilities. 

Although I honor and respect the dissenting voters who go with other parties, I simply cannot fathom why anyone who has been paying any kind of attention at all considers the choice that is before us this November--the choice that will elect one of the two major party candidates (Obama-Biden and Romney-Ryan)--considers them clones of each other!  It's absolutely appalling to me that anyone can believe this!  I must call it what it is: ignorance. Blind, resolute, unmitigated ignorance.  As opposed to stupidity. Stupid people cannot discern differences; ignorant people can discern differences, but they're too lazy or otherwise-occupied to take the time to do so.

There has perhaps NEVER been as stark a difference between the two parties as there is this year.  On the one hand you have two candidates (R-R) who want to roll back the family planning and reproductive rights of women--a party that refused to listen to a single, solitary woman when they debated a controversial reproductive rights agenda--a party that now pushes an agenda to overturn Roe v Wade and deny women the right to an abortion even in the case of rape, incest, and the threat to the life of the mother; on the other hand you have a party (O-B) who champions women's causes including violence against women (which the Republicans voted against), equal pay for equal work, and a plethora of other issues.

On the one hand you have a party (R-R) well-funded by gazillionaires that is so dedicated to gazillionaires that they're willing to gut this nation's safety net and social programs (not to mention education, jobs, and other necessities of life) to give themselves additional tax cuts; on the other (O-B) you have representatives who are dedicated to making sure we don't bankrupt ourselves or our moral responsibility to "the least of these".

I could go on and on, but those of you who have been following the political situation would be bored to tears.

I implore all of you fence-sitters and counterpoint-voters to truly look at what is at stake in November. Don't fiddle while Rome burns.

The GOP talks about being the party of Family Values.  HAH!  Read BLINDED BY THE RIGHT: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative to discover what goes on behind the scenes. It was written by a political operative who worked to create the image of the Democratic Party that you're hearing about from the GOP "viewpoint." It's a viewpoint filled with lies, slanders and libels that should be legislated against.

If a party can't win based on its own merits--if it has to win by lying about and slandering its opposition--it's not a party anyone should support.

Although DEMS have been known to exaggerate or misspeak, the GOP fabricates stuff and repeats it often enough that people begin to think it must be true. That was the plan of the Nazis--a propaganda campaign that almost brought the world to its knees.

You want to be careful. Fact check your party. (Dems, too, although Dems usually dance to truth because they have enough facts and integrity and lack the sociopath's twisted sense of "justice").

I have a lot of Republican friends. A lot of them. What I see them doing, almost to a person, is burying their heads in the sand. They think they're upholding America's highest ideals by doing so.  God bless them, but they're wrong. The new GOP will crush them as easily as they will crush the rest of the 98%. The GOP doesn't care about them... or about God... or about what this nation was founded on, despite their protestations to the contrary. You're deceived if you think they do.

I'm praying that there are more people paying attention (of those who plan to vote) and that they will discern exactly what their choice will do to America moving forward. I pray that everyone will vote for one of the two major parties so that those who DO vote will have them counted and we get the people we want in there. And when we do, we should follow them because they will be duly-elected by us.  This didn't happen when Obama was elected--to a man and woman, the opposition party filibustered, opposed and denigrated every policy the President put forth, defying the will of the people who elected him into office. In my opinion, this is sedition. These people should be tried as traitors. But voting them out of office this time around will suffice for me.

We need to get this nation moving forward again. Lock-step opposition to the leader of the free world is unacceptable. It is treason of the highest order.

Pay attention, voters. Pay attention!

Women's Right to Vote Came HARD! Women, VOTE!

I had never read about this! Isn’t it amazing that in school we were never told about this. I think every American woman needs to know this and teach it to her daughters. Amazing. I would love to see the movie.


This is the story of our Mothers and Grandmothers who lived only 90 years ago.




Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.


The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.


And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'


(Lucy Burns)


They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.



(Dora Lewis)


They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.


Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.


(Alice Paul)


When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.


So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because - why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?


Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie 'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.


All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the
actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.


(Berthe Arnold, CSU graduate)


My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was--with herself. 'One thought kept coming

back to me as I watched that movie,' she said. 'What would those women think of the way I use, or don't use, my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.'


The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her 'all over again.'



HBO released the movie on video and DVD . I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum. I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.


It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.


The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.'


Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you
know. We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Remember to vote in Nov.

History is being made. Women need to write their part of it.Thanks to JC Waters for sending the following to me...