The Political Voices of Women

Heather and Eric from Care2 rant and rave about this week in politics…

Here is a guest post from community member Marcia G. Yerman, who also blogs at The Huffington Post.

[If you would like to be a guest blogger on The Political Voices of Women, just join our community, and start posting.]

I knew something was up when I turned on my computer and saw a number of e-mails that had similar subject titles. The two standouts were, “Please Respond and Forward” and “Women Say No to Palin.”
As I opened them, each featured the same text in the body, with different introductory clauses.
“We must do something;” ”Please sign this;” “I am outraged by McCain’s choice.”
I was beginning to get the concept.

The letter began:

“Friends, compatriots, fellow-lamenters,
We are writing to you because of the fury and dread we have felt since the announcement
of Sarah Palin as the Vice-Presidential candidate for the Republican Party.”

The note raised the issues of Palin’s stated beliefs and record, and questioned her preparedness to
“become the second-most-powerful person on the planet.” It featured a sentence that clearly
articulated, “We are not against Sarah Palin as a women or a mother,” making a point to take theconversation out of the personal realm, where much of the discourse has recently been.

It went on to say:

“First and foremost, Ms. Palin does not represent us. She does not demonstrate or uphold
our interests as American women. It is presumed that the inclusion of a woman on the Republican ticket could win over women voters. We want to disagree, publicly.

Therefore, we invite you to reply here with a short, succinct message about why you, as a woman living in this country, do not support this candidate as second-in-command for our nation.”

The site, Women Against Sarah Palin, is housed at blogspot. It has a clean design and features quotes from “American feminist role models,” photos, information and activist links (including a “Register to Vote!”), in addition to the blog archive. One of the letters is from Margaret Sanger’s 30-year old great great niece.

I spoke to Quinn Latimer and Lyra Kilston, the originators of the letter. Both women hail from California, and are associate editors at Modern Painters magazine. They were taking their daily work break, with a walk around Chelsea, discussing the choice of Palin as Vice-President. Latimer came up with the idea that they “had to do something.” She clearly emphasized that they were “not in the habit of calling out women.” However, they did feel that they needed “to come out as women because she [Palin} doesn’t represent our interests.” Kilston said, “McCain is the one to blame,” and stressed that that she opposed Palin on the basis of “her lack of experience and her positions.”

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Memo to the Media:  Stop Covering Manufactured Controversies, Start Covering Issues. 

It’s infuriating that the McCain campaign is continuing to claim statements they make are true, when many have been confirmed to be untrue.   Deception to change your perception, is what the Republicans seem to do best, and it’s only proven to win them elections.  So why would they stop?   Even more troubling, is that this behavior has become an “acceptable” practice in politics.  Not necessarily acceptable to you and me, but acceptable to the media, which in turn leads to the deception of the American people.

From Washington Post…

“We have created a system where there is not a lot of shame in stretching the truth,” said Charlie Cook, editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

However, I’m discovering that the “real” truth isn’t in debunking the lies, it’s in seeing through the lies.

See…We have all fallen for a classic bait-and-switch here.  Clearly, if the media continues to chase down facts (that are purposefully misleading), then the McCain campaign successfully diverts attention away from the “real” issues.  Which is EXACTLY what they want to do (what they are doing).

Why is it that the only people who can see through this smoke-screen are comedians? Or, is it just that they are the only ones who are “allowed” to speak the truth? Isn’t that kinda backwards?

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I am happy to announce that this weekend, our Political Voices of Women Community has surpassed 100 members.  Our growing community is a mix of political opinions and affiliations, from liberal to conservative, and everything in between.  [see community here]

The Political Voices of Women (main site), began as a list of 100 women political bloggers.  In less than a year, that list has grown to well over 500 (see list here).  We now have a growing community, and have recently added twelve contributing editors…

• Kay B. Day
• Sarah Granger
• Tami Winfrey Harris
• Pamela Lyn
• Patricia Murphy
• PunditMom
• SJ Reidhead
• Suzanne Reisman
• Janet Shan
• Dana Tuszke
• Tracy Viselli
• Jill Miller Zimon

In addition to our regular contributors, we also have many guest bloggers each week.  The Political Voices of Women is becoming a powerhouse of women political bloggers.

Our community members can contribute posts to our blog, and often these posts are used as guest posts on the primary site.  Here are some of our most active community members…

• Penny Ronning - The NonSilent Majority
• Deb Della Piana - Turn Left Hypocrisy.com
• Emily D - Political Artwork
• Marcia G. Yerman - The Huffington Post
• Anita S. Lane -Unconventional Politics
• Card-carrying Buddhist - No Blood For Hubris
• Just Wondering - Vim and Vinegar
• Nancy Hill - Build Peace
• Carol Gee - South by Southwest
• Zaftig Redhead -The Zaftig Redhead
• Doris Anne Bearlieu - Life’s Ultimate Test
• Emily Kronenberger -  New Wave Grrrl

Members can comment on posts, start and participate in forum discussions, promote their personal blogs, upload videos and images, make new friends, and more.  Our main site is open to both men and women, but our community is strictly women…I think the all women aspect of our community promotes “real” and “honest” discussion, without the need for visoral and personal attacks.  Even though we often disagree within the community, we also want to promote a safe place for these disagreements, so respectful disagreement is what you will find here.

If you are a woman who blogs (or would like to blog) about politics, I hope you will consider joining our community.

Here is a clip of Erin Kotecki Vest being interviewed live on CNN. GREAT JOB ERIN!

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Erin Kotecki Vest from BlogHer, did this interview earlier today, with Valerie Jarrett of the Obama campaign…

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After watching the full evening of the Democratic National Convention on C-SPAN I decided to pop over to CNN just to see what they were saying. I was amazed. I couldn’t believe that we had watched the same event.

The CNN pundits repeatedly harped on the fact that there wasn’t “enough red meat” and how the Democrats didn’t attack Bush/McCain enough.

Now lets think about this for a moment.

Here we had the opening night of a convention to nominate a candidate who promises to bring together people across party lines, a candidate who wants to prove that we are not a nation of “red states” and “blue states” and the media pundits want the opening night’s speakers to come out like attack dogs. Duh!

Apparently while millions of Americans are desperate for political change, the media wants to see the same old political games. In fact, some of them are practically salivating and dreaming of a repeat of 1980.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that the next few nights will provide the media and us with enough Bush/Cheney/McCain bashing to get our fires going. In fact, I’m hoping that someone is going to pull another Ann Richards’ speech out of the bag. And, I’m sure that more than one disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporter will be caught on camera with their “Hillary 2012″ tee.

But Monday night it was refreshing to watch an evening of ordinary people taking the stage and speaking about their encounters with Barack Obama. It was nice to see the faces of the people that the party has shied away from like former President Jimmy Carter and Senator John Kerry (D-MA).

The first night of the Democratic National Convention was for the “true believers”, “the new believers” and “the I want to be a believer(s)”.

Just seeing Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) reminded us that bridges are falling down in America. Watching the children of Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) introduce their mom reminded us of how important this election is to young people. Watching former President and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Jimmy Carter interview Hurricane Katrina survivors reminded us that we MUST care about the most vulnerable in our society. Seeing Caroline Kennedy and Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) reminded so many of us of just why we’re Democrats. ( Yes, I did shed a tear when he walked on stage.)

And, Michelle Obama… she reminded us that Dr. King’s Dream is inching a little closer and maybe, just maybe the world will begin to view African American women in a light other than some of the popular stereotypes.

So I highly recommend that if you’re planning on watching the remaining nights of the convention, watch C-SPAN first and decide what the speeches mean to you. Save the pundits for later. I’m glad that I did.

The Democratic National Convention begins today, and the latest poll numbers are being spun by the media as proof that Hillary supporters are not on board with Obama. How much weight do you think these polls really carry?

From where I sit…The media (not Hillary or Hillary supporters) are responsible for any real or imaginary riff in the Democratic Party. In a nutshell, it goes like this - Build her up, knock her down, and then suggest she bail-out before all the votes are counted. The trouble is, media manipulation does affect actual outcomes, and the Republicans are champions at media manipulation. A perfect example is the Bush administration, and how they learned very quickly, that the media couldn’t change lies into truth, but they could change lies into the perception of truth. Unfortunately for democracy, perception trumps truth every time. So, not surprisingly, the McCain campaign is using all the latest media hoopla to their benefit. Will it work? What do you think? Here is the latest from around the web.

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I was just checking out some of our community posts, and I came across this by Pamela Lyn…

Recently our own “Myrna the Mynx”, Tracy Viselli and Sarah Granger were prominently featured in a
MediaShift post entitled “Will the Big Tent in Denver Help Bloggers Break Through“?

The article broke through to Digg’s front page. Check it out.

Also See:

The Big Tent Home Page

Watch as Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates dance around the truth about the consequences for Russia’s actions in the Russia-Georgia conflict.

Try not to laugh

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url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li25wM6JTUkI give everyone of those journalists credit for maintaining a poker face during those interviews. However, don’t you wonder what was going on off-camera?

Now with a straight face, explain to me how Russia’s international reputation is any worse than that of the United States after the Iraq WMD debacle. If, as Secretary Gates states, “the world is looking at Russia through a different set of lenses”, just imagine the magnifying lens they’re using to look at the US.

As for the impact on Russia’s reputation referred to by Secretary Rice, apparently no one in the Bush Administration saw this 2007 interview with Garry Kasparov. I sure did.

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url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z9g7jN3Kso

A little earlier today, Reuters correspondent Oleg Shchedrov reported the following on the Russia-Georgia conflict:

“Washington demanded on Friday that Russia pull its troops out of Georgia ‘now,’ but Moscow said it would be another 10 days before the bulk of its force left Georgian soil.

In a sign of growing tension between Moscow and the West over the conflict in Georgia, a Russian news agency reported that Russia had temporarily frozen cooperation with the NATO alliance, though there was no immediate confirmation.

In some of Washington’s toughest comments to date, the White House declared Russia in violation of its commitments to leave the territory of Georgia after routing Georgian forces in a war that erupted two weeks ago.

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said he could not imagine a circumstance in which the United States would engage in military-to-military cooperation with Moscow until the Georgia situation was resolved.

U.S. impatience has been growing by the day as it waits for a full-scale pullout of troops and weaponry that Russia sent into its small Caucasus neighbor two weeks ago to counter a Georgian attack on the Moscow-backed South Ossetia region.

A Reuters reporter saw a column of T-72 main battle tanks lumbering across the border from Russia into Georgia — the first sign of heavy armor being withdrawn from Georgian soil — but elsewhere Russian forces remained in place.

As Charles Amico noted in his blog, “We The People”:

“So the Bush Administration has overplayed its hand again and has been blowing smoke at Russia in the form of bellicose language expected to threaten the Russians. Do you really believe this tactic will work? If you do, wake up.”

Related posts:

The New Old Russia