My Own Finger-Quotes

(Updated: It's merely a coincidence, but I love that Heather Armstrong at Dooce and Melissa Summers at Suburban Bliss have written posts very similar to this one in the last few days. I am restating my plea to anyone who reads this: it matters. It matters who you vote for. It matters that you vote to protect women in this country, women who can't speak out for themselves, who have no medium in which to say, at the top of our lungs, that this crackpot has nothing but contempt for us. It matters. It matters that you stand the fuck up and say, I'm an American and a patriot and you are not going to tell me to sit down and shut up because I have ovaries. John McCain doesn't give a rat's ass about me, and he probably doesn't give a rat's ass about you either, and it's high time that his career in professional politics was over for good. Let's end it together on November 4.)

I've been trying all week to write a post about politics, and failing. I have to say that I am totally and completely struck speechless by John McCain. So I've stopped trying, and I will now just say the following:

I think it's because I'm not great at talking through my outrage, and I do feel strongly about this election. I think that there will never be so important an election in my lifetime, and maybe not in my son's. I think that the conservatives have ransomed our economy, our environment, and probably our national security, and they must go. It's become a moral imperative.


I want to quote some other writers that I admire here. There are very smart people saying incredibly eloquent things about the current state of American politics, and if you are listening, I honestly cannot imagine a scenario in which voting for John McCain and Sarah Palin sounds like a viable alternative.

First of all, from Heather Armstrong:

I am angry. I am infuriated. And I don't think I would be if Sarah
Palin were a qualified or competent choice as McCain's running mate. But the
fact, the reality is that she is not. And instead of demanding better from their
party, instead of going, wait a minute, no, we deserve better than this, many
Republicans are contorting themselves into a denial of reality. (please read this, it's a report from the AP, not some spooky liberal blog that wants to kill babies) And
that right there is what has been going on for the last eight
years.

And I am just so damn sick of it.

From Nancy Keenan at Huffington Post:

Do you hear that?

It's the sound of even more women voters in swing states like Colorado,
New Hampshire, and Virginia moving to Sen. Barack Obama after
John McCain's response to questions regarding a woman's right to
choose in last night's debate.

McCain reiterated his call to overturn Roe v. Wade. (Even George W.
Bush didn't make this statement when he was running for president.)

McCain used "air quotes" as he insulted women who need an abortion
because their health is threatened. (A friend of mine who was at the debate said
the crowd gasped at McCain's callous disregard for women's
health.)

McCain looked every bit as out of touch with women's everyday lives as
his 25-year record of voting against women's freedom and privacy
demonstrates.

McCain even used the right-wing rhetoric of sending the issue "back to
the states" (a baseless argument that we've debunked on multiple
occasions).

From Completely Unnecessary:

My ‘health’ isn’t something you get to throw around as an angry,
uninformed talking point in a final, vain attempt to drag your base to the polls
as the pathetic and absurd campaign you’ve run grinds your last moment of
political relevance into the dust.

Only ten percent of the country agrees with your new-found
horror of a position (h/t Megan) - which, if polls continue in the current
direction, is about the percentage you can expect on election
day.

Women die in childbirth. They die being pregnant. Some of them die
inside - that’s why mental health is important, too.

It’s not ‘extreme’ to want the living, breathing woman to count for
more - or, hell, even only as much as - the fetus inside her.

And finally, and I think most eloquently, Alexa at Flotsam says:

McCain states that he would deal with the issue of abortion with “courage
and compassion.” I quote: “the courage of a pregnant mother to bring her child
into the world and the compassion of civil society to meet her needs and those
of her newborn baby.” As if terminating my pregnancy would be the easy way out,
the way not requiring his precious “courage.” As if dictating my medical care
based upon his religious beliefs is compassionate. And I find it interesting to
note that his “compassion” for this newborn does not extend to guaranteeing it
health insurance.

I have long suspected that McCain does not think much of women. First
because of what I regarded as his rather uncouth treatment of the women in his
personal life, and later when he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. But his
words last night, and the tone in which he spoke them, show such a terrible and
deep disregard for our personhood that they left me shocked and speechless. I
have never felt so powerfully disenfranchised as when hearing McCain insinuate
that women—us crafty minxes—are not above using trickery to get a (much-coveted, apparently) late-term abortion. How dare he. How dare he imply that women are either too stupid or immoral to be trusted to wrestle with ethical issues on their own. How dare he insult my intelligence, my character, and my commitment to my babies, to my much wanted and years-in-the-making pregnancy, by implying that he is better equipped than myself and my doctors to weigh my child’s life against my health. Women may have the vote, but we do not have the respect of a frighteningly vast segment of our government, and I am sickened and saddened to see it.

As am I. I've never felt that the Republican party had my best interests in mind and I know John McCain doesn't. And I am not okay with it.

You shouldn't be okay with it either. Unless you're a lobbyist for an oil company, a CEO, or an old, rich, white man (and I don't think I have many readers who are), John McCain doesn't give a fuck about you. He's made that sufficiently clear.