Thanks, Obama. HAHAHA

When it rains, it pours.

Do it for your Mammaw!!!!

This is the story of our Grandmothers, and Great-grandmothers, as they
lived only 90 years ago. It was not until 1920 that women were granted
the right to go to the polls and vote.
A reminder on the importance of using our voice!

The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night,
they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their
warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly
convicted of "obstructing sidewalk traffic."
They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head
and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They
hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed
and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was
dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the
guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching,
twisting and kicking the women.
Thus unfolded the "Night of Terror" on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at
the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson
to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow
Wilson's White House for the right to vote.
For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their
food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms. When one of the
leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a
chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until
she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was
smuggled out to the press.
So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because-- why,
exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote
doesn't matter? It's raining?
Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie
"Iron Jawed Angels." It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women
waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my
say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.
All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the
actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote.
Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege.
Sometimes it was inconvenient.
My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO
movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked
angry. She was--with herself. "One thought kept coming back to me as I
watched that movie," she said. "What would those women think of the way
I use--or don't use--my right to vote? All of us take it for granted
now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn." The
right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her "all over again."
HBO released the movie on video and DVD. I wish all history, social
studies and government teachers would include the movie in their
curriculum. I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women
gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are
not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock
therapy is in order.
It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a
psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be
permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor
refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her
crazy.
The doctor admonished the men: "Courage in women is often mistaken for
insanity."

We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard
for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic,
republican or independent party - remember to vote.
History is being made.

More Reasons to Vote - Keith Olbermann, MSNBC

We are, as every generation, inseparable from our own time.Thus is our perspective, inevitably that of the explorer looking into the wrong end of the telescope.But even accounting for our myopia, it's hard to imagine there have been many elections more important than this one, certainly not in non-presidential years.And so we look at the verdict in the trial of Saddam Hussein yesterday, and, with the very phrase "October, or November, Surprise" now a part of our vernacular, and the chest-thumping coming from so many of the Republican campaigners today, each of us must wonder about the convenience of the timing of his conviction and sentencing.But let us give history and coincidence the benefit of the doubt—let's say it's just "happened" that way—and for a moment not look into the wrong end of the telescope. Let's perceive instead the bigger picture:Saddam Hussein, found guilty in an Iraqi court.Who can argue against that?He is officially, what the world always knew he was: a war criminal.Mr. Bush, was this imprimatur, worth the cost of 2,832 American lives, and thousands more American lives yet to be lost?Is the conviction of Saddam Hussein the reason you went to war in Iraq?Or did you go to war in Iraq because of the weapons of mass destruction that did not exist?Or did you go to war in Iraq because of the connection between Iraq and al-Qaida that did not exist?Or did you go to war in Iraq to break the bonds of tyranny there, while installing the mechanisms of tyranny here?Or did you go to war in Iraq because you felt the need to wreak vengeance against somebody, anybody?Or did you go to war in Iraq to contain a rogue state which, months earlier, your own administration had declared had been fully contained by sanctions?Or did you go to war in Iraq to keep gas prices down?How startling it was, sir, to hear you introduce oil to your stump speeches over the weekend.Not four years removed from the most dismissive, the most condescending, the most ridiculing denials of the very hint at, as Mr. Rumsfeld put it, this "nonsense."There you were, campaigning in Colorado, in Nebraska, in Florida, in Kansas -- suddenly turning this 'unpatriotic idea' into a platform plank."You can imagine a world in which these extremists and radicals got control of energy resources," you told us. "And then you can imagine them saying, 'We're going to pull a bunch of oil off the market to run your price of oil up unless you do the following.'"Having frightened us, having bullied us, having lied to us, having ignored and rewritten the Constitution under our noses, having stayed the course, having denied you've stayed the course, having belittled us about "timelines" but instead extolled "benchmarks," you've now resorted, sir, to this?We must stay in Iraq to save the $2 gallon of gas?Mr. President, there is no other conclusion we can draw as we go to the polls tomorrow.Sir, you have been making this up as you went along.This country was founded to prevent anybody from making it up as they went along.Those vaunted Founding Fathers of ours have been so quoted up, that they appear as marble statues: like the chiseled guards of China, or the faces on Mount Rushmore. But in fact they were practical people and the thing they obviously feared most was a government of men and not laws.They provided the checks and balances for a reason.No one man could run the government the way he saw fit -- unless he, at the least, took into consideration what those he governed saw.A House of Representatives would be the people's eyes.A Senate would be the corrective force on that House.An executive would do the work, and hold the Constitution to his chest like his child.A Supreme Court would oversee it all.Checks and balances.Where did that go, Mr. Bush?And what price did we pay because we have let it go?Saddam Hussein will get out of Iraq the same way 2,832 Americans have and thousands more. He'll get out faster than we will. And if nothing changes tomorrow, you, sir, will be out of the White House long before the rest of us can say we are out of Iraq.And whose fault is this?Not truly yours. You took advantage of those of us who were afraid, and those of us who believed unity and nation took precedence over all else.But we let you take that advantage.And so we let you go to war in Iraq to oust Saddam or find non-existant weapons or avenge 9/11 or fight terrorists who only got there after we did or as cover to change the fabric of our Constitution or for lower prices at The Texaco or…? There are still a few hours left before the polls open, sir. There are many rationalizations still untried.And whatever your motives of the moment, we the people have, in true good faith and with the genuine patriotism of self-sacrifice (of which you have shown you know nothing), we have let you go on making it up as you went along.Unchecked and unbalanced.Vote.--Keith Olbermann, MSNBCNovember 6, 2006

Peace

"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."--War veteran and patriot, John Kerry

Although the statement was supposed to be refering to Pres. Bush himself, he screwed up the joke and inadvertently slammed military men and woman. Sen. John Kerry was actually 100% correct when he stated that if you do not get an education you could end up serving in Iraq. The truth of the matter is that the middle and lower classes in this country make up a disproportionate share of those serving in the military.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15519404/