From The Wandering Hearth

Why do we assume that dawn is always a comforting thing? Sometimes when you open up your palm and force the things you've been clinging to so tightly for security into the full light of day, they sit there smoking and blinking madly back up at you, and suddenly...they don't seem so helpful after all. Sometimes the light is harsh, illuminating all the dark corners in truth and sometimes, that isn't such an attractive or comforting thing.

Bella Abzug

Comment from madamab:

Our struggle today is not to have a female Einstein get appointed as an assistant professor. It is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly promoted as a male schlemiel.
- Bella Abzug

Go read Violet's blog.

Comment of the Year

In response to the shit I have been getting on Facebook for my posts on the Stupak amendment to the house's health care bill, I give you the following comment:

I know... lazy, promiscuous people are messing up this country. They should all be taken out and shot. Specially the illegal ones. In fact, it shouldn't even be illegal to shoot them. I hate supporting other people with my taxes. I think they should all be forced to live in an ever expanding ghetto, with no medical services whatsoever. Look... if God wants you to die, or be sick, who are we to intervene? I don't like any social services at all, roads, construction of bridges etc. I bet more lazy dirty people use them than clean All American Patriots like us. In fact... screw taxes altogether, it's every man for himself (and his wife and family of course – single mothers, you're on your own). That way we can cut government down to a manageable size and fund important things like killing people in other countries, and stopping gays from doing anything legally, and any money we have left over we can give to the CEOs of major corporations, because they, after all, are the backbone of this great nation and deserve all the money that they work so hard to deprive us of. (sorry to end that sentence with a preposition!)

Correction: The comment was from my incredible son-in-law!

UPDATED

Photo found here

The more I think about the Stupak amendment, the more enraged I become. Old, greedy white men controlling our bodies and healthcare choices in a Democratic environment due to so-called religious beliefs. If this happened on Bush's watch, liberals would be screaming from the rooftops. Instead (a seeming impossible thought during the pre-Obama presidency), it is occurring during a solid Democratic majority in the House and Senate. Un-fucking-believable.

If there was ever a time women should rise up and unite, it is now. How dare they? How dare they attempt to repeal Roe v Wade by denying us healthcare? I refuse to accept this. If I have to gather my sisters and march on Washington, I will. I will also work against the re-election of every single Democratic candidate who votes for a bill which includes this provision. Tirelessly and forever. I have a very long memory.

By the way, did you know that there is a healthcare provision in the bill that allows insurance payments for Christian Science prayer treatments? Yep, courtesy of Hatch, Kerry and Kennedy. Kerry and Kennedy!! Insurance payments for scientific, clinical healthcare? Not so much. For spiritually healthcare? Hell, yes. Read it here.

So, we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. Healthcare for women is directly linked to pre-conceived notions in what remains in the brain cells of men and women in positions of power, who no longer understand what it is like to live in the real world.

There is no way I am sitting this one out.

UPDATE NO. 1: When I posted the link to the Send a Coat Hanger Petition to the right, my signature was approx. 1,100. When I checked last night, the number of signers was over 4,000. When I checked moments ago, it is pushing 7,000. This speaks volumes. In less than 24 hours, Credo's petition has really taken on momentum and that is encouraging.

UPDATE NO. 2: I received yet another call from the Democrat Congressional Committee. Apparently, they didn't take me seriously last time, when I told them I wouldn't give them one cent and that I was no longer registered as a Democrat due to the hijacking of the election and treatment of Hillary. In that call, the women on the other end of the phone completely understood my position, was gracious and we hung up each, each understanding the others position.

The call I received last night was from a black man. I am mentioning that for factual reasons, not because I am a racist. Pre-Obama, I wouldn't have to put in that disclaimer.

When I gave him my reasons for not donating, mentioning the primary, the Stupak version of the House bill and the fact that Obama had done nothing but travel around the world since becoming President, I was told that Some Say Obama has accomplished the most progressive feats of any other president. When I pressed him, he acknowledged maybe he hadn't actually accomplished them, but he would in time. I was also reminded that Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. Apparently, that was meant to appease women everywhere, seal O's commitment to women's issues and is one of the talking points of the Democratic Committee.

The most important aspect of this phone call was the women's health issues in the House version of the bill. I was advised by this jolly gentleman that it is is more important to get a bill through and signed into law. He chuckled with I mentioned the Stupak amendment and assured me that once the bill was signed, it would be tweaked and amended. We just needed to get it there. I guess women are supposed to take one for the team and we will be remembered at some later date. Sure...

The call ended with the admonishment that if I didn't give a donation to the Democrats, the Republicans would win and that would be the end of the world. Well, I advised him that I didn't see much of a difference between the Democrats in office now and the Republicans of the last administration. I went so far as to tell him at this point, Obama was nothing but a third term of Bush. Apparently, if the caller can't convince you that Obama is The One, they try to scare you with the Republican meme. You are either with us or against us. Ho hum.

Frankly, both parties sicken me. Politicians are beholden to corporate interest and lobbyists, fighting for the chance to stick in their thumb and pull out a plum - the plum being the special interests that keep them in their positions of power, far above the fray, unaware of the struggles of middle America. So, Democratic Congressional Committee, don't call me again. No means No.

Democrats. Listen up.

As you'll answer it, take heed
This Slave commit no Violence upon
Himself. I've been deceiv'd. The Publick Safety
Requires he should be more confin'd; and none,
No not the Princes self, permitted to
Confer with him. I'll quit you to the King.
Vile and ingrate! too late thou shalt repent
The base Injustice thou hast done my Love:
Yes, thou shalt know, spite of thy past Distress,
And all those Ills which thou so long hast mourn'd;
Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd.
William Congreve, in The mourning bride, 1697

Autumn in the Adirondacks

Christmas, Swine Flu and Credit Card Rates

As credit cards companies are raising their rates to unspeakable percentages prior to Congress enacting the Credit Card Act of 2009 and thanks to our Federal Government, the executives at CitiBank and Goldman Sacks are availing themselves of H1N1 vaccine ahead of the elderly, the young and pregnant women, you may want to pare down your Christmas giving with these 68 Ideas for Gifts in a Jar.

At least we'll eat.

(photo found here)

Congratulations, Yankees!

Paganism, Just Another Religion

Certainly, there is nothing new about Paganism per se. From Halloween to May Day to Yuletide, said Prof. Diana L. Eck of the Harvard Divinity School, “there’s a way in which all of us, especially in the Christian tradition, follow a religious calendar that is pegged to ancient Pagan festivals.”

But in the grand scheme of the Western world, polytheism was seen as being superseded by monotheism and faith itself by science, leaving Paganism as some kind of atavistic orphan of history. The fact that its practitioners lacked any formal denominational structure added to the religion’s relative invisibility, except as the object of fears or the butt of jokes.

In several ways, though, Paganism was waiting for modernity to catch up with it. The emphasis on the worship of nature in virtually all variations of Pagan faith, and the embrace of a female divinity in many, situated the religion to mesh with the environmental and feminist movements that swept through the United States in the 1970s.

In the 1970s, Wiccan groups began seeking and obtaining tax-exempt status from federal and state authorities, said the Rev. Selena Fox, the founder and spiritual leader of an early, influential Wicca church, Circle Sanctuary in Barneveld, Wis. By the decade’s end, Wicca was included in the handbook for military chaplains and had been written about in such popular books as “Drawing Down the Moon,” (Penguin, 2006), by Margot Adler.

Full NY Times article here