Sarah Palin, Please Shut Up!

Dear Sarah Palin,

You do not represent me as a woman so please shut up. Frankly, I think you are an embarrassment to women in general. I am fed up with your remarks denigrating Barack Obama and claiming that he is paling around with terrorists. You are spreading lies and hate and feeding on others fears. That is not how classy intelligent women behave, so I am guessing you aren't one.

As a woman and a mother, I believe our role is to nurture our children, to teach them right from wrong. To raise them to stand up when an injustice is being done and to find compassion for ALL human beings. It is our responsibility to teach our children that others deserve a second chance. You continue to refer to William Ayers as a terrorist even though he has redeemed himself and become a highly respected university professor. I call that hateful. Launching a smear campaign against your opponent because you can't come up with anything intelligent of your own to say is not behaving like an upstanding, patriotic christian. Through all this what I have learned about you is that you are cruel, calculating and you will work to win at any cost.

Our young people need real examples of positive leadership, human compassion and the ability to participate in the democratic process with out resorting to ugliness. You should be ashamed of yourself for the mean smear tactics that you are currently employing. This is not what we want our children to learn. In particular our daughters do not need to learn this. You should be setting a better example for them.

Irregardless of your difference of opinion with Barack Obama, he deserves to be treated with respect for all of his accomplishments and his ability to not judge another person by their past acts but by the lessons they have learned and what they have to offer to the community now. You could learn a lot from Barack Obama and I suggest you shut up and listen, because for now, you do not speak for me.

My Bitter Clinging: It's All I Have

That's right I'm bitter and I'm clinging. I'm clinging to my Faith and my traditions because that's just about all I have left! In the Democratic Debate tonight in Philadelphia, Hillary Clinton said that she doesn't think people are clinging to their faith or their traditions when they feel that Washington isn't listening to them.

Well Hillary, YOU aren't listening to me. I've been unemployed since October, my unemployment has run out and I'm clinging to my faith and my traditions because those are the two things that can't be taken away.

Granted when your husband was in office, I did better, but not as well as I think I should have. Working for non-profit agencies that serve the most under-served populations, (homeless, drug addicted and mentally ill) it was Bill Clinton that ensured there was more money available to do the work. But the problems remained, they weren't solved.

Now under this administration, there is even less money available at a time when the need is greatest, shelters are being asked to serve more homeless on less money. The end result is warehousing people. I could be doing something about that. I could be contributing, if there was money available to hire program workers like me. Instead,I've been laid off twice in the past three years. I'm just like those other people that Barack Obama speaks of. I'm sitting at the kitchen table wondering how I'm going to pay the bills at the end of the month.

Under your proposals, I'm looking at working even more years before retirement and not being able to make enough money to really put enough money away for that time. I'll still worried about the car breaking down, I'll still worry about my future, I'll still be stuck at the bottom of the income ladder.

If you were talking to people like ME Hillary, then you would know that we are bitter, we are clinging to our faith and our traditions. But most of all, We are clinging to the HOPE that Barack Obama becomes our president so that we can get back to work and then get to work on fixing the problems here at home.