It's really hard for me to figure out how I feel about Hillary running for president. She lost my heart when she didn't come out and say the Iraq war is wrong, based on lies, and let's get the hell out. It's why candidates like Obama and Edwards have my heart.
Obama says yes when asked if he did things like get high. He doesn't hide it like Bush does or stretch the truth ridiculously far like Bill who didn't inhale. He says what I want to hear about Iraq. I like Edwards for saying what I want to hear about Iraq. I like him even better because he acted like a real husband who cares about his wife when she had breast cancer, unlike Newt who ran into the arms of his intern mistress--and then condemned Bill for a blow job, when HIS wife got cancer.
But more than anything it comes down to Iraq for me. From the beginning, right after 9/11 when the bullshit began, I read what I could easily find online and immediately came to the conclusion that the reasons for the war were a crock and a case was being made that was based on flimsy heresy. Experts were ignored and discredited. "Suicides" of those who could verify this suddenly increased. It didn't take much for me to figure out Bush and Cheney were lying the country into war.
My anger at Congress is based a lot on this. If I knew, if a few days a couple hours at a time let me know the excuses for war were flimsy and stretched beyond belief, why didn't Congress who were much closer to the situation than I ever would be? Are they that stupid? Or were they that bought.
That is my problem with Hillary right now. Who owns her? She rides the centrist train as if it were the only ride in town with a promise of getting to the destination. I don't want centrist, Republican-lites. I want someone with the courage to go against the war machine. If Hillary can't even speak against it, is she strong enough for the job? And if she isn't, why should I vote for her instead of Obama or Edwards who at least make a pretense of being strong enough?
I don't want to vote for Hillary just because she is a woman, although as a woman in my 50's the time is getting shorter to see a woman president in my lifetime. I cried when Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House. Only someone who grew up when I did and remembered what it was like to be a subservient secretary to an incompetent boss, or have all our accomplishements prefaced with female poet, woman writer, girl geek, or have school counselors tell us we could be Nurses and Teachers and Wives while the boys were told they could be anything they wanted, can ever possibily understand how important seeing a woman become President is to me and why I cried at the words: Madame Speaker.
But I didn't come all this way to compromise my principles just to see a woman become president. I am a Pacifist first and foremost. That is my soul and that is how I will vote.
Changing minds one t-shirt at a time. Visit Ursine Logic for more designs.
Changing minds one t-shirt at a time. Visit Ursine Logic for more designs.
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