A Historic Day For Motherhood

Guest Blogger: Jeff Porter, Obama Supporter

John McCain has selected Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his choice for Vice President. Who is Sarah Palin? In many ways, she's an impressive figure.

Palin, 44, is a first-term governor of Alaska, taking office on December 4, 2006. She is the youngest person and the first woman to hold the office. As governor, she signed two major pieces of legislation -- an overhaul of the state's ethics laws and a competitive process to construct a gas pipeline. Under her leadership, Alaska invested $5 billion in state savings, overhauled education funding, and implemented the Senior Benefits Program that provides support for low-income older Alaskans. She created Alaska’s Petroleum Systems Integrity Office to provide oversight and maintenance of oil and gas equipment, facilities and infrastructure, and the Climate Change Subcabinet to prepare a climate change strategy for Alaska. Alaskans like her. She has an 80-90% approval rating.

Before governor, she was the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, population 6,715, located about an hour's drive north of Anchorage, and served on the Wasilla City Council.

Her personal story is quite interesting. She is an avid fisherwoman and lifetime member of the NRA. She has 5 kids - Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and Trig, a 4-month old with downs syndrome. She won the Miss Wasilla beauty pageant, then finished second in the Miss Alaska pageant. Her husband is Todd Palin, a lifelong Alaskan and four-time champion of the Iron Dog, the world's longest snowmachine race. Governor Palin has a bachelor of science degree in journalism from the University of Idaho. Her religious affiliation is Assemblies of God and she enjoys hunting, fishing, running (she runs marathons) and plays flute.

On the issues, she is anti-abortion rights, pro-gun rights, supports the teaching of creationism in public schools, opposes same-sex-marriage, and has a strong record of ethics reform. She is considered a fiscal conservative and is credited with slashing millions of dollars in state spending. She initially supported the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere", but cancelled the project when some federal funding was lost. She supports responsible drilling in Alaska's ANWR and helped pass a tax increase on oil company profits. She also has expressed skepticism about man-made global warming. Her views on immigration, trade, foreign policy and national security issues are unclear, but I'm sure we'll learn much more in the coming weeks.

One final note of interest. Palin is currently under investigation for potential abuse of power related to the firing of the state's former public safety commissioner Walt Monegan. It is alleged that Palin pressured Monegan to fire a state trooper who was going through a messy divorce with Palin's sister. It's hard to imagine McCain selecting Palin without fully vetting this issue, but the investigation will continue.

Overall, Palin is a fascinating choice. McCain's age and health is sure to become a bigger issue in the campaign with Palin on the ticket. She complements McCain's reform/maverick message and should appeal to religious conservatives on the social issues. It remains to be seen if she pulls broader support from women, especially pro-abortion rights women.

Palin is obviously a strong modern woman and not afraid to go up against the "big boys." Democrats should be careful to not underestimate her. This campaign just got a lot more interesting. The media must be in heaven right now.

A Historic Day For Motherhood

http://politics4moms.blogspot.com/2008/08/historic-day-for-motherhood.html

Sarah Palin - A Heartbeat Away From Commander-In-Chief

Guest Blogger: Jeff "Married to my Daughter's Mom" Porter, Obama Supporter

Can someone please explain to me how Obama isn't experienced enough to be President but Sarah Palin is? I guess the inexperienced argument only applies when it's the other guy.

Sarah Palin - A Heartbeat Away From Commander-In-Chief

http://politics4moms.blogspot.com/2008/08/sarah-palin-heartbeat-away-from.html

Are You a World Changer?

This was first posted in January 2008.

The former prime minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated last month allegedly by Islamists for her conviction that secular democracy was the only answer for her troubled country.

She was considered an ally of the United States and many had put their faith in her for bringing democratic stability to Pakistan. As NPR wrote, we also like her because, "The Harvard and Oxford-educated Bhutto had become an icon in the West, which found it hard to resist the allure of the charismatic female leader of an otherwise male-dominated Islamic nation."

For as many supporters as Bhutto had you'll find double the number of people who doubt her place in history. William Dalrymple from the International Herald Tribune wrote that she was,

"a natural autocrat who did little for human rights, a calculating politician who was complicit in Pakistan's becoming the region's principal jihadi paymaster while she also ramped up an insurgency in Kashmir that has brought two nuclear powers to the brink of war."

Dalrymple definitely provides a different picture, and now with her death, we may never know whether she was truly one of the "good guys" or not.

However, what still intrigues me about this woman, and mother of three, is that she knowingly put her life in jeopardy every day because she believed a secular, democratic Pakistan was the best choice for the future of Pakistan. She was a visionary who was determined to change her nation and ultimately alter the course of the world. Bhutto was a world changer.

In the United States today, we don't know what it means to live in oppression. As women, we can't comprehend a life where we are merely a possession or a piece of property that is owned by our father or husband. And as mothers, we've never experienced a time when are children were not afforded every opportunity to follow their own dreams, even something as common as marrying for love.

Our country was founded by world changers; men and women who believed in ideals that required the same passion and commitment as Benazir Bhutto. They fought and suffered and many paid the ultimate price with their lives for the very freedoms we have come to expect and take for granted.

In my prior post I closed with the question, 'What does Benazir Bhutto have in common with Politics for Moms'? The answer is actually another question: What do you believe in so passionately that you are willing to give your life for?

Now that doesn't mean you have to believe in say, literacy, so passionately you are willing to take a bullet for it. But maybe it means getting involved in your local soup kitchen, stuffing envelopes for your candidate of choice or becoming a mentor to the kid down the street.

I believe moms are born world changers. Even when we're sleep deprived and up to our armpits with dirty dishes, we still believe in the ideals of this country and we want those ideals to be around for generations to come.

Isn't that why you're visiting this blog? With your vote you want to make a difference? You want to have a voice. You want to be a world changer!

Are You a World Changer?

http://politics4moms.blogspot.com/2008/01/on-wednesday-i-introduced-you-to-former.html

Three Women Who Could Join GOP Ticket

McCain's camp has been tight-lipped about who they are looking at for vice president. There is no doubt that this is a decision that could make or break his chances to win. Not surprisingly, three women are among the possible candidates that pundits are suggesting in an article from Politico:

Alaska Governor Sarah Paulin

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin may be nationally unknown, but in her state she is nothing short of a political phenomenon.

Palin, 44, would add youth to the GOP ticket. As governor she has shown a willingness to veto some of the state’s large capital projects, no small plus for fiscal conservatives. But it’s her personal biography, which excites social conservatives, and reformist background that might most appeal to McCain.

She’s stridently anti-abortion, and recently brought to term her fifth child — who she knew would have Down syndrome. A hunter, fisher and family woman with a rapid professional rise, Palin is a natural for Republican framing.

In 2003, as ethics commissioner on the state's Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, she risked her rising political star by resigning her position in protest of ethical misconduct within the state’s Republican leadership as well as then-Gov. Frank Murkowski’s acceptance of that impropriety. Though this briefly made her an outcast within the party, within a year several state Republican heavyweights were reprimanded for the conduct she’d decried.

Her reputation with the party thus redeemed, Palin defeated Murkowski in the 2006 Republican primary on the way to being elected governor.

As governor, she’s continued challenging the state’s powers that be, even winning tax increases on oil companies’ profits. Her approval rating has soared as high as 90 percent, making her one of America’s most popular governors.


Carly Fiorina

Carly Fiorina has an up-by-her-own-bootstraps success story, having worked her way from a start as a young secretary straight through the glass ceiling to become Hewlett-Packard’s chief executive from 1999 to 2005. She presently serves as the chair of the organization tasked by the Republican National Committee with preparing the party’s crucial get-out-the-vote operation. It’s no symbolic post, but a crucial position for a party facing an uphill presidential contest.

Fiorina is also already close to McCain. The two of them recently sat down at his Arlington headquarters with frustrated Clinton supporters and urged them to shift their political allegiance to him. On the campaign trail and on shows like CBS News “Face the Nation,” she’s served as a ubiquitous advocate of the candidate. Privately, she has also become one of McCain’s most trusted economic advisers.

Grover Norquist, a fiscal conservative leader and longtime party organizer, touts Fiorina’s economic and executive bonafides but labeled her a “dark horse” vice presidential prospect. One Republican state party chairman said, “everybody would be very pleasantly surprised with her” before adding that “the danger is that she hasn’t been vetted” — a concern echoed by several GOP insiders.

These insiders also expressed concern that adding her to the ticket would do little to galvanize social conservatives, some of whom still view McCain with suspicion and antipathy. They also brought up her lack of foreign policy experience, and expressed concern that her reputation as “the most powerful woman in business” — as she was once called by Forbes magazine — could prove a dubious distinction at a time when economic anxiety is reaching levels unseen since the late 1970s.

Kay Bailey Hutchison

Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, the longest-tenured female Republican senator, who until recently headed the Senate Republican Conference, now serves as chairwoman of the Republican Policy Committee, two top Beltway party posts.

In Texas, where she has been comfortably reelected, one Republican strategist notes that she’s “proven she can get scores of Hispanics in a huge state surrogate.”“She’s underused as a surrogate to the party,” the strategist added.

But despite her popularity in the state and in the party and her years of experience, insiders are skeptical she’ll be selected. Like Alaska, Texas is already a solidly Republican state in presidential races. And adding Hutchison — who supports embryonic stem cell research and is relatively moderate on abortion (she is against outlawing the procedure, though she also opposes federal funding for it) — to the ticket would also alienate some social conservatives.

And then there’s the energy problem. Hutchison has long been a defender of Big Oil, which may make political sense locally but could prove a liability in a national race at a time when oil companies are enjoying record profits even as Americans pay record amounts at the pump.

But before McCain can entertain the prospect of these three heavy hitting women, he needs to address the real question: Can a woman help him get to the White House?

via Politico.com

Three Women Who Could Join GOP Ticket

http://politics4moms.blogspot.com/2008/06/three-women-who-could-join-gop-ticket.html

How do you even begin to wrap your brain around this?

There are some things that I've always assumed are universal desires that all moms share: We want healthy kids who will reach their full potential in life.

I've always thought these truths would transcend race, religion or culture even though they may look slightly different walked out in a remote village in Africa or as a Royal in Buckingham Palace. Still, I could picture moms around the globe having that same glint of hope that their children will use their life to help others, better the world around them or to simply show love where it is needed most.

I was wrong. And I didn't realize how naive and wrong I was until I read this article in The Wall Street Journal:

Zahara Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber.

I have been trying to write this post for several days because I just can't wrap my brain around those words, "She wants her son to become a suicide bomber."

As a mother, I can't even imagine that as my dream for my child. I can't fathom following a religion that would place such honor on the taking of life. And yet, "Ms. Maladan was quoted in the New York Times giving the following warning to her son: "if you're not going to follow the steps of the Islamic resistance martyrs, then I don't want you."

As a mom I'm horrified.

Now there is a new image of mothers urging their children to die, and then celebrating the martyrdom of their suicidal sons and daughters by distributing sweets and singing wedding songs. More and more young women -- some married with infant children -- are strapping bombs to their (sometimes pregnant) bellies, because they have been taught to love death rather than life

As an American, I'm outraged.

As more women and children are recruited by their mothers and their religious leaders to become suicide bombers, more women and children will be shot at -- some mistakenly. That too is part of the grand plan of our enemies. They want us to kill their civilians, who they also consider martyrs, because when we accidentally kill a civilian, they win in the court of public opinion. One Western diplomat called this the "harsh arithmetic of pain," whereby civilian casualties on both sides "play in their favor." Democracies lose, both politically and emotionally, when they kill civilians, even inadvertently. As Golda Meir once put it: "We can perhaps someday forgive you for killing our children, but we cannot forgive you for making us kill your children."

So how does the United States and other Western democracies protect and defend themselves against something so twisted? How do you counter a belief that is so fanatical that you are willing to sacrifice your own child---and in some homes, more than one child?

Neither she nor her son -- if he listens to his mother -- can be deterred from killing by the fear of being killed. They must be prevented from succeeding in their ghoulish quest for martyrdom. Prevention, however, carries a high risk of error. The woman walking toward the group of soldiers or civilians might well be an innocent civilian. A moment's hesitation may cost innocent lives. But a failure to hesitate may also have a price.

I'm sure it's a scenario that our forefathers could never have predicted. Ever. Yet, here we stand as a nation trying to traverse the new rules of engagement and trying to decipher an enemy that may look just like us.

Or like our children.

How do you even begin to wrap your brain around this?

http://politics4moms.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-do-you-even-begin-to-wrap-your.html

The Boston Globe Weighs in on Double Standard Question

We asked the question in this post if there was a double standard in how the media was treating Hillary Clinton versus her male counterparts. There was a lot of good discussion that followed in the comments.

Here's The Boston Globe's analysis of the same question.

The Boston Globe Weighs in on Double Standard Question

http://politics4moms.blogspot.com/2008/03/boston-globe-weighs-in-on-double.html

Are We Seeing a Double Standard?

I've heard a lot of chatter the last several days about how Hillary Clinton is being unfairly treated just because she's a woman. The one commentator said that if you searched on any of the derogatory names being used to refer to her (ice queen, Lady MacBeth, femi-Nazi, etc.), you'd find hundreds of thousands of hits linked to her name.

So I searched on the three names I listed above plus one other (b*tch) and came up with nearly 250,000 hits directly tied to Hillary's name.

So let me throw out a few questions for fodder:

1. Is Hillary being treated unfairly just because she is a woman? Would we ever characterize a male candidate in similar terms?

2. I think most people would agree Hillary is one of the leading feminists of this era. So, then, is her waning support with women for the presidential nominee an indication that women are moving away or even rejecting feminism?

On last weekend's SNL, they made fun of the media's love affair with Obama as they lobbed him softball questions and swooned at his answers. Clinton? She was passed over completely.

Are we seeing a double-standard? Would the other Clinton be receiving the same type of treatment if he was running again?

Are We Seeing a Double Standard?

http://politics4moms.blogspot.com/2008/02/ive-heard-lot-of-chatter-last-several.html

Benazir Bhutto

Last fall, I began hearing the name Benazir Bhutto in the news. I knew nothing about her but the few times I saw her on television, I was struck by this woman's passion for seeing democracy established in her beloved country, Pakistan. I was also captivated by her intelligence, beauty and fearlessness as she refused to be silenced by her detractors.

However, it was her death on December 27, 2007, when I started reading more about her life. Her father was Pakistan's first democratic prime minister who was popular among the people. When Bhutto was 25, he was hanged after being charged and convicted of conspiring to murder an opponent. Bhutto's desire to carry on her father's mission of democracy propelled her to devote her life to restoring democracy to this troubled country.

Bhutto was elected and served two times as Prime Minister but was overthrown both times on charges of corruption. Bhutto went into self-imposed exile in Dubai in 1998.

Bhutto returned to Pakistan on October 18, 2007, after reaching an understanding with President Pervez Musharraf by which she was granted amnesty and all corruption charges were withdrawn. She declared her intent to run for Prime Minister again and she quickly became a contender due to her determination and populist support that was a huge threat to terrorists and others . With her life in constant danger, she was assassinated just three weeks before the elections.

So what does Benazir Bhutto have to do with this blog, Politics for Moms? Check back tomorrow...

Benazir Bhutto

http://politics4moms.blogspot.com/2008/01/what-is-politics-for-moms_20.html