Who to Vote For?

Many people say if I want a large readership for my blog, I better steer clear of politics. Thus far, I have obeyed this advice. Today, inspired by this lovely video, I cast aside the perspective that I should not be political and instead, proclaim that the political is personal, and it matters.

If you don’t want to read my work because you know that I voted for Obama and I think gay people should have equal rights and I think abortion should be a choice, then perhaps you are not my readership?

Today, I proudly cast my vote today for Obama because I believe in freedom and choice and human rights for all people. And, I think you should get your rosaries off my ovaries, and take your laws off my body, and because I love women and men and gay people and all people and peace and love and I think we should make love not war. Even though he’s not as radical as I’d like, he’s WAY better than the alternative!

A few things I love about Barack Obama are that he funds early childhood education and education overall. He puts education and teachers in the forefront. Even though I think the system is outdated and needs to transform completely, it is what we have now, and given that, I prefer Obama.

He also put tax money back in our pockets. No other president has ever handed me a check, yet, he did. Remember the stimulus package? I don’t care if it worked or not, I got money in the bank.

He made it so birth control could be covered by insurance for women. This is revolutionary and I love it! From my perspective, this should have happened long ago!

The bottom line is that women make up 60% of the population. We are mothers and sisters and daughters and we birth the future. It is high time that we be honored as Goddesses and have freedom and choice. We, and we alone, should choose for ourselves and laws should not be made that restrict our freedom, force us to choose abortions in back alleys, take money from our pocket to have birth control, rob us of support if we have families and children, take away early childhood education, and access to health care.

I studied Women’s Studies in college. I was one class shy of a Minor. This rabbit hole is deep. Politics can place women between a rock and a hard place. Robbed of adequate birth control, we are forced to have families. This keeps women who may not want to be mothers, in a position robbed of choice. A woman will statistically never make more money than she did at the time of her first child. We may want to create in the world through our gifts and by our service and not via actual mothering. Without adequate access to health care, we don’t have that freedom and are then held down in a sense by a system keeping us in a role. Women are motherly, and nurturing and meant to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. This is actually not the desire of every woman.

The alternative, if Roe vs. Wade were to be overturned, and health care rolled back and clinics closed down, then we women are left to make even harder choices that could impact our health now, or cause early death.

Republicans argue that government should not fund all these programs. I don’t get this mentality. Government is. It exists. It creates the way the world is, the reality we live inside. Government tells me the laws I must follow, where and when I can build, how and where I can work, when I can drive, what states and countries I can enter. Government is BIG! It’s already controlling. It creates the education system in which we all have been indoctrinated, it controls what we see on TV, the news we get, what’s printed n the newspapers, and who we bomb and kill.

But let’s not allow women and families access to medicine. Yeah. That will limit government power. Let’s let government make new laws that I can’t marry whomever I choose. Let’s let government outlaw affordable, easy, safe ways for me to choose how and when I have a family. Yeah. Let’s do all that.

I don’t get it. People who judge others and say, oh, they live off of the government, they need handouts, do those people fail to see that the government set it up that way? The government controls who is in charge,what the laws are, where money is made, how it is used, they make up the fabric of political and public life.

And when someone grows up poor and hungry and comes a thief and drug addict and then needs health care, or help, or education, let’s make it difficult and costly and blame them for their inadequacy to carry out the American Dream.

The fact is, early childhood education, nutritious food, and loving touch from caring family members who are stress free create well-developed human beings able to accomplish a lot. What do Republicans do? They want to limit money, funding, quality education, health care, which all contribute to women feeling worried about money and stressed when pregnant, which lays a scary ground work for the brain development for their young.

Oprah visited Denmark on one of her shows, because they were voted the happiest people on Earth. They pay 50-60 percent in taxes and get free education, free health-care, free child care, and a year of maternity leave. The more you earn, the more you have to pay taxes. Careers are chosen on human values, what you want to do, not what pays the best.

They all have similar home sizes, no one lives in mansions, and they have no crime, no poverty, and no homeless people.

Another interesting fact is that most women here don’t choose to get married. They are the happiest people on earth and many do not believe in God. They say, “We believe in humanity. It is the way you use it.”

Perhaps we are backwards in this country. We, in the media, claim to be a country that believes in God and freedom and living your dreams. I call bullshit. I think we have a diseased idea of what God is. A country that lets its poor starve, and interferes in the other countries, touting that we believe in human rights, yet let’s its people beg on the streets, is obviously ass backwards.