As I turned onto my street about an hour ago, I discovered both sides were lined with cars and Mark Kirk (R-IL) for Congress signs and flags in most lawns. My across the street neighbor was having a tea. Oh goody. Hopefully, my Dan Seals (D) for Congress sign would still be in my yard, but it's been known to disappear before.
Pulling closer to my house, I noticed him standing in my neighbor's driveway and I realized there was no place for me (the homeowning taxpayer) to park. Normally, this would not be a problem because I would simply park in my driveway. Unfortunately, my town is in the middle of replacing my street and they started on the curbs on my side of the street, just poured the concrete yesterday, and we have not been given the clearance to park in our own driveways yet. Given how much stuff I had to bring into my house (I had been meeting with some clients), I wasn't about to park a block away just because all the GOPers were having a party. I pulled right into my driveway figuring if someone says something to me, I'll blame my violation of the rules on my Congressman.
Settled into my driveway, one of my neighbors walked across the street to greet me. She said "Congressman Kirk is across the street to meet with all the neighbors. Everyone's invited . . . except you because you have a Dan Seals sign in your yard."
To be honest, I'm not sure I remember the last time someone spoke to me that way. It made my blood boil. It's not that I want to be invited to a GOP coffee because let's face it, if I was there, I would have to point out all of his lies, but no one needs to speak to me in such a condescending manner. You can be certain that I told her exactly why I'm not voting for Kirk and am voting for Dan Seals.
Since I am obviously not going to be given the opportunity to speak to my Congressman, here's what I would have told him.
1. You don't really care what your constituents think. I hate that you call at 6:30pm (or other random times) with a recorded message that says "We're having a town hall meeting via conference call NOW and if you'd like to participate press 1." I have, in fact, pressed one a few times only to discover that I am not allowed to ask questions. What's up with that? Other times, the calls come at completely bad times and I've just hung up. These calls completely irritate me. I'd like to participate. I'd like to hear what my Congressman has to say. I want to ask him questions. And if I knew about the calls IN ADVANCE, I would be able to plan an evening around them. I've called his office numerous times about this and never get an answer to my complaint.
2. I am troubled by your hypocrisy. Mark Kirk, although being a member of the Naval Reserve, did not go to Iraq when his unit was called up during this war. Instead, he served his time at the Pentagon. It must be nice to have that option. His reason was that he would put his unit at risk by being there. I hate to burst his obviously inflated ego, but I don't think anyone in Iraq cares about him. But it's a nice message to send to the folks back home: "I'm in the Reserves, but am too important to serve."
3. Judgement matters and you don't have it. Mark Kirk supported the War in Iraq. In fact, he authored the resolution to go to war and has voted 12 times against a withdrawal. He also took money from Halliburton and then voted to protect Halliburton's Iraq contracts.
4. Off-shore drilling isn't going to lower gas prices for at least 10 years, if at all. Mark Kirk loves off-shore drilling and takes money from oil companies.
5. You're too much of a "yes man." Mark Kirk has voted in line with President Bush's wishes 88% of the time.
6. Uninsured Americans cost us all more and aren't uninsured because they're lazy or don't want health insurance. He voted AGAINST SCHIP which would give healthcare coverage to impoverished kids.
7. No Child Left Behind isn't working. Ask any teacher. He supports President Bush's "No Child Left Behind," but refuses to fund it.
8. Gas costs too much. When Mark Kirk was running for office in 2000, gas was under $2 per gallon. At my neighborhood gas station, it's $3.95 today. Why is that? Why doesn't he do anything about this?
9. You're out of touch. He voted against extending unemployment insurance and refused to support any measures that would help homeowners facing foreclosure due to predatory lending because we live in a very high income district.
10. Why do you hate women? Finally, as a woman, I cannot ever support someone who opposed the Paycheck Fairness Act and Lilly Ledbetter Act which would have ensured pay equity for women. He was worried it would create lawsuits. How dare we want to enforce laws and get equal pay for equal work, when we're currently making $0.77 for every $1 a man earns.
When I see Mark Kirk, I see President Bush's lackey. He's a significant part of the problem in Washington these days. I want my Congressman to have a clue what goes on in our district. I want him to be someone who listens to members of the district, rather than telling us what he wants us to hear.
I'm voting for Dan Seals, who will work to end this debacle in Iraq, support my right to control my body and support a real energy policy that will include alternative forms of energy.
Oh, my yard sign is still there and I'm loving the fact that my car is parked squarely in my driveway with 4 Obama, Dan Seals, and anti-war stickers on it! But if my yard sign disappears, you bet I know who will get my first call of anger.
Sources: Mark Kirk's Congressional Website, Kirk Facts, Where Was Mark Kirk?, Dan Seals for Congress, Ellen of the 10th, and Progress Illinois.
Showing posts with label wolf in sheep clothing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wolf in sheep clothing. Show all posts
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Friday, September 5, 2008
An Open Letter to Sarah Palin
My friend Scott (he's one of the good guys) posted this on his Facebook page and I just have to share it with you.
Feel free to distribute it as you like.
Hello All,
I just can't refrain from sharing this piece with you which I wrote this morning after Sarah Pallin's appalling speech last night! I was so outraged by her smarmy sarcasm! This piece has just been picked up by Women's Feature Service, a syndicate to which I regularly contribute, so I am prohibited from submitting it to major dailies. However, feel free to share as widely as you'd like!
Elayne Clift
PO Box 299
Saxtons River, Vt 05154 USA
802-869-2686/fax 2687
eclift@vermontel.net
www.elayneclift.com
AN OPEN LETTER TO SARAH PALIN
Okay, you did it. You hoodwinked your party and a lot of other Americans too, I suspect, with your cheerleader’s charm and your finger-waving fervor. You got yourself called “Hottest VP.” Some say you “knocked it out of the park.” Well, I think you should be knocked out of the park, Sarah, and here’s why.
First, your hypocrisy is astounding. How can you possibly say that something like an unplanned pregnancy is a personal matter deserving of privacy? Doesn’t every woman who grapples with a painful abortion decision deserve the same privacy? What rock have you been living under that enables you to advocate for abstinence-only sex education when you can’t even teach that dubious value to your own daughter? Why do you speak of love and support for children (including the unborn) when your party refuses to legislate policies that would offer them decent healthcare and early childhood education and provide their mothers with a modicum of support, including paid maternity leave?
You are a selfish woman, Sarah, with dubious priorities. “J’accuse”, as writer Emile Zola wrote -- but you must pardon me for exposing my elitist education -- because as a mother myself, I cannot fathom how you would subject a teenage daughter in trouble to the kind of public scrutiny she now must endure in the interest of your own ambitions. At the risk of sounding like a failed feminist, I must also say that being the mother of a special needs child too, I just don’t get how you can abdicate the desperately important advocacy and monitoring that will be required in these first years of your son’s life. (I know your husband is deeply involved and responsible, but believe me, Sarah, no one does it like a mom.) As you said yourself, “Children with special needs inspire special love.” Where is your special love, Sarah? Family values, I might remind you, are not just a set of lofty ideals wrapped in grandiose rhetoric; they involve making hard choices in the best interest of everyone in the family.
By now many people are finding you either mean-spirited or remarkably ignorant. I think you are both. Nothing revealed these characteristics so much or so shockingly as your attack (and Rudy Guliani’s) on community organizing. “I guess a small town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer’ except that you have actual responsibilities,” you said. Don’t you get it, Sarah? Community organizing is what your beloved faith-based charities do! Community organizing by women all around this country is what happened in the 1970s and 80s to enable you to be taken seriously as a candidate for vice president, and to stand, God forbid, a heartbeat away from being the CEO of the most powerful country on earth. Community organizing is what got us the Americans with Disabilities Act which will serve your son well as he matures. I will never, ever, forgive you, Sarah, for your snide, sarcastic, demeaning, despicable disrespect for one of America’s finer traditions – or for your surly attacks on the media, America’s Fourth Estate and a pillar of any democracy.
Your much anticipated coming out party was billed as a way for all of us to get to know who you are. Well, Sarah, I know who you are. You are the bully in the sandbox, the teenager who thinks she can get her way by being flirtatious, the adult who thinks she can get by without doing the hard work and get ahead without paying much dues, the politician who believes that lies are more expedient than facts. I know who you are, Sarah, and I don’t like or trust you. I find you duplicitous, shallow, insulting and frighteningly retro – all qualities I am terrified to contemplate in a V.P. or a president.
For the record, by the way, here are just a few reasons, reported by the Associated Press, that I find you duplicitous and dishonest:
• You said you had protected taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending but the truth is that as mayor of Wasilla you hired a lobbyist and went to Washington every year to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. Since you’ve been governor Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal funding, the largest per capital request in the country. And that Bridge to Nowhere? You only dropped the idea after it was ridiculed nationally.
• You accused Barack Obama of never having authored a major law or reform, “not even in the state senate.” The fact is that as a new senator Mr. Obama worked in a bipartisan way to pass federal legislation, now law, that helped intercept illegal shipments of WMDs and made it harder to stockpile conventional weapons. He also co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.
• You falsely accuse Mr. Obama of planning to raise all kinds of taxes without fully sharing his complete and complex tax plan. In reality, just for starters, the McCain-Palin plan would raise taxes for middle income taxpayers by 3% while the Obama-Biden plan would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly.
• You and Mr. McCain continue to inflate your experience and role as governor in a state that ranks 47th in terms of population. For example, you may be in charge of your state’s national guard, but your authority does not include calling those guards into actual military service. (Alaska has one of the smallest state guards in the country, by the way.) Contrary to what John McCain has claimed, you do not have national security as one of your primary responsibilities.
Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. Even your own political pundits, Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy, were caught by a live mike calling your speech “political [expletive]” and bemoaning the fact that “It’s over.” Honey, I’m afraid that as the truth keeps surfacing and folks get beyond your being a “hotty,” and when you must finally respond to the press on the Sunday morning talk shows or at press conferences, and when the spotlight shines down upon you as you debate your formidable, experienced opponent you will no longer be the toast of your party. You will simply be toast. And that’s something I wouldn’t find hard to swallow at all.
# # #
Elayne Clift writes about women, politics and social issues from Saxtons River, Vt.
Feel free to distribute it as you like.
Hello All,
I just can't refrain from sharing this piece with you which I wrote this morning after Sarah Pallin's appalling speech last night! I was so outraged by her smarmy sarcasm! This piece has just been picked up by Women's Feature Service, a syndicate to which I regularly contribute, so I am prohibited from submitting it to major dailies. However, feel free to share as widely as you'd like!
Elayne Clift
PO Box 299
Saxtons River, Vt 05154 USA
802-869-2686/fax 2687
eclift@vermontel.net
www.elayneclift.com
AN OPEN LETTER TO SARAH PALIN
Okay, you did it. You hoodwinked your party and a lot of other Americans too, I suspect, with your cheerleader’s charm and your finger-waving fervor. You got yourself called “Hottest VP.” Some say you “knocked it out of the park.” Well, I think you should be knocked out of the park, Sarah, and here’s why.
First, your hypocrisy is astounding. How can you possibly say that something like an unplanned pregnancy is a personal matter deserving of privacy? Doesn’t every woman who grapples with a painful abortion decision deserve the same privacy? What rock have you been living under that enables you to advocate for abstinence-only sex education when you can’t even teach that dubious value to your own daughter? Why do you speak of love and support for children (including the unborn) when your party refuses to legislate policies that would offer them decent healthcare and early childhood education and provide their mothers with a modicum of support, including paid maternity leave?
You are a selfish woman, Sarah, with dubious priorities. “J’accuse”, as writer Emile Zola wrote -- but you must pardon me for exposing my elitist education -- because as a mother myself, I cannot fathom how you would subject a teenage daughter in trouble to the kind of public scrutiny she now must endure in the interest of your own ambitions. At the risk of sounding like a failed feminist, I must also say that being the mother of a special needs child too, I just don’t get how you can abdicate the desperately important advocacy and monitoring that will be required in these first years of your son’s life. (I know your husband is deeply involved and responsible, but believe me, Sarah, no one does it like a mom.) As you said yourself, “Children with special needs inspire special love.” Where is your special love, Sarah? Family values, I might remind you, are not just a set of lofty ideals wrapped in grandiose rhetoric; they involve making hard choices in the best interest of everyone in the family.
By now many people are finding you either mean-spirited or remarkably ignorant. I think you are both. Nothing revealed these characteristics so much or so shockingly as your attack (and Rudy Guliani’s) on community organizing. “I guess a small town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer’ except that you have actual responsibilities,” you said. Don’t you get it, Sarah? Community organizing is what your beloved faith-based charities do! Community organizing by women all around this country is what happened in the 1970s and 80s to enable you to be taken seriously as a candidate for vice president, and to stand, God forbid, a heartbeat away from being the CEO of the most powerful country on earth. Community organizing is what got us the Americans with Disabilities Act which will serve your son well as he matures. I will never, ever, forgive you, Sarah, for your snide, sarcastic, demeaning, despicable disrespect for one of America’s finer traditions – or for your surly attacks on the media, America’s Fourth Estate and a pillar of any democracy.
Your much anticipated coming out party was billed as a way for all of us to get to know who you are. Well, Sarah, I know who you are. You are the bully in the sandbox, the teenager who thinks she can get her way by being flirtatious, the adult who thinks she can get by without doing the hard work and get ahead without paying much dues, the politician who believes that lies are more expedient than facts. I know who you are, Sarah, and I don’t like or trust you. I find you duplicitous, shallow, insulting and frighteningly retro – all qualities I am terrified to contemplate in a V.P. or a president.
For the record, by the way, here are just a few reasons, reported by the Associated Press, that I find you duplicitous and dishonest:
• You said you had protected taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending but the truth is that as mayor of Wasilla you hired a lobbyist and went to Washington every year to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. Since you’ve been governor Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal funding, the largest per capital request in the country. And that Bridge to Nowhere? You only dropped the idea after it was ridiculed nationally.
• You accused Barack Obama of never having authored a major law or reform, “not even in the state senate.” The fact is that as a new senator Mr. Obama worked in a bipartisan way to pass federal legislation, now law, that helped intercept illegal shipments of WMDs and made it harder to stockpile conventional weapons. He also co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.
• You falsely accuse Mr. Obama of planning to raise all kinds of taxes without fully sharing his complete and complex tax plan. In reality, just for starters, the McCain-Palin plan would raise taxes for middle income taxpayers by 3% while the Obama-Biden plan would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly.
• You and Mr. McCain continue to inflate your experience and role as governor in a state that ranks 47th in terms of population. For example, you may be in charge of your state’s national guard, but your authority does not include calling those guards into actual military service. (Alaska has one of the smallest state guards in the country, by the way.) Contrary to what John McCain has claimed, you do not have national security as one of your primary responsibilities.
Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. Even your own political pundits, Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy, were caught by a live mike calling your speech “political [expletive]” and bemoaning the fact that “It’s over.” Honey, I’m afraid that as the truth keeps surfacing and folks get beyond your being a “hotty,” and when you must finally respond to the press on the Sunday morning talk shows or at press conferences, and when the spotlight shines down upon you as you debate your formidable, experienced opponent you will no longer be the toast of your party. You will simply be toast. And that’s something I wouldn’t find hard to swallow at all.
# # #
Elayne Clift writes about women, politics and social issues from Saxtons River, Vt.
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