Blog-In For Democracy!

* Today, across the web, bloggers will be simultaneously posting this letter as a new form of democratic protest called the Blog-In. I am just one of many. Click here to see a full list of the writers participating. (Our hashtag on Twitter is #BlogIn2011.)

You are invited to join, too. Simply copy & paste this letter on your blog, Facebook or Google+ page—and let your voice be heard.

Many Thanks to TheMotherhoodBlog and TheMamaFesto for doing all the writing and the leg work to make this happen. Much love to you both. 

Dear 2012 Presidential Candidates,

We are your future constituents and we are parents. We are American mothers and fathers and grandparents and guardians. Our families might be the most diverse in the world. Blended and combined in endless permutations, we represent every major religion, political ideology and ethnic culture that exists. We are made from equal parts biology and choice. Our children come to us in every way possible—including fertility miracles, adoption, and remarriage.

To be honest.

To be honest, I would like to forget, I would prefer not to remember.  I would enjoy not knowing.  I don’t want to be given some CNN, narrated by Anderson Cooper, version of the event.

And to be honest, there’s no way I could forget feeling by 9:45am that world was bound to be ending.  People fell out of the sky. Men ran not away from, but into fires. And me, I became a grown woman by 10:22.

Completely off topic – On Christianity and being a Liberal.

The reason I’m a liberal is because I was brought up a Christian.  I’ll repeat that, just incase you’re doing a double-take.  The reason I’m a liberal is because I was brought up a Christian.

I taught Sunday school under my Gram’s tutelage, I wrote and delivered children’s sermons in front of packed congregations in my teens.  I’ve read the Bible – The reason I’m a liberal, is because I was raised a Christian.

Love Ire and Song.

Sometimes there is a song that so represents how the world is at that very moment, that I wish I could just package it up in bubble and float it over the general populace and get everyone to hear it. But that’s just silly, so instead, I blog about it. And Frank Turner, who I’m currently madly in love with,  has this tune.  And well, while congress is letting the world blowup over politics and so-called principles, me, I’m driving around in my bourgeois, car-seat full, minivan, blasting this Englishman’s rageful, and regretful tune, with the windows down, as if somehow a song could make it all better.  

the things I cling to.

“I believe we can be better.  Those who died here, those who saved lives here – they help me believe.  We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us.  I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.”

 

President Barack Obama
January 12th, 2010

My Man Bernie – Live Blog

Bernie has been filibustering all day —  tuning in now — covering the high points.

6:30 pm Could not get one Republican vote to give a one time $250 check for disable vets or senior citizens, but all will gladly give a 100k tax break to millionaires.
6:32 It’s time for the American people to tell the Senate “What are you smoking?”