In her first major visit to a Muslim gathering, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice wore a short (several inches above the knee) skirt, then spent the entire time fidgeting in her seat trying to pull it down to her knees. Not only was it bad form, it made her seem ridiculous when she should have been sitting among peers. A headscarf doesn’t subjugate women - governments that force them to dress a certain way do. Never in human history was a woman made more free because someone told her to wear a little bit less clothing. That Clinton wore one was intended, as always in these situations, to minimize the issue so we could get on with more important things.

See, the concept was funny. The execution… not funny. Just kind of sad and bitter. And Democrats have no reason to be bitter right now, they have Congress, the White House, and a Supreme Court Justice to appoint.

I think Elizabeth Edwards is the only person in the world who gets to decide how she spends her remaining time here on earth. It isn’t for any of the rest of us to presume to tell her how to live the rest of her days. Remember the old saying - to err is human, to forgive is divine.

but where the heck have the moderate and sometimes liberal Republicans gone?

 Ask Senator Arlen Specter. Oh, wait…

I was 19 when I first got pregnant, I had dropped out of high school and had only ever held one job. I was absolutely terrified - words just don’t suffice to describe how scary that situation can be. The father swore upon all things holy or sacred he would be there and take care of us, and I believed him. We moved into my mom’s house, and a few months later I kicked him out because he had yet to get a job - any job would have done, really - and I knew I wasn’t up to supporting a kid and the father. He never did become dependable, and a few years ago I pretty much told him to leave our lives and not come back until he grew up. I haven’t seen or heard from him since. The second time, a few years later, that I got pregnant was only slightly better. He had a job, and a place of his own - but in the end refused to do what it was going to take to get us into a place big enough for a family. Oh, he also never really accepted that I earned more than he did at the time - so that’s a sign right there, isn’t it? That relationship didn’t last the pregnancy, either. He sees his daughter on the weekends, and makes his child support payments about half the time. I was fortunate to have had support from family and friends in both situations. It has been rough going - I’m 31 and working on a college degree now, and won’t be in the workforce again full-time for another year and half. I’m lucky enough to have found someone who supports me fully and loves me and my kids. I have new daughter through him who is now twelve, and I’ve already discussed with her regular birth control, emergency contraception, STD prevention, and promised to provide her with these things without judgment. So: I would be totally straight - if you choose to keep the child, be prepared to bear the full responsibility. This means time, effort, energy, finances, at the very least postponing your own goals, medical care for her and the child - the whole shebang. I’d be totally straight about the options - all the options. I would emphasize that the family would be here for her, and help her out with a baby should she decide to keep it. And I would do my very best to be around when that baby arrived - because you need someone to tell you it’s okay to let a baby cry if it just becomes too much, that babies don’t break nearly as easily as you might think, and all those other wonderful things my mom passed on to me. I would make it clear that we would help her make a plan to achieve independence financially, and support her fully in whatever education or career choices she made. I would support her if she chose adoption - though I would encourage her to choose someone in the family, or at the very least an agency that allowed her to choose a loving family. I would support her if she chose abortion, help her pay for it if necessary, and be there to make sure she was okay - and beyond that I would make sure she knew that I would protect her privacy. And I would do everything I could short of totally alienating her to get her on birth control so that it doesn’t happen again.

What I see is that Palin was a tactic, to change the entire nature of this race. She’s bait - it almost makes me feel sorry for her. The sad thing is the Democratic party fell for it, and now there’s this whole debate over whether Palin or Obama is more qualified to take the office of President. This in turn insinuates that McCain is above them both - and also removes him from scrutiny because everyone’s so busy picking apart Palin’s experience, politics, history, etc. Hopefully the race gets back to issues and focused on Obama and McCain - after all, it is one of them who will be taking that oath in January - not Palin.

Iris, you’re right - it isn’t about age. But it seems to me that lately people are far more willing to simply do what is going to make them happy rather than whatever it is that can bring home the most dough. To me, that’s a vast improvement. Michael Moore may be a little too out there sometimes, but he did all of this to get people involved in the political process, and that’s awesome no matter where you sit on the political spectrum. There’s nothing wrong with being a power broker. It all depends on what you use it for.

I don’t think we are a generation of slackers. I think we just have different priorities - the top one just plain isn’t money anymore. It’s one thing to be comfortable, it’s something else to have a 5,000 square foot house and four cars - that you never get to enjoy because you’re working 60 or more hours a week to pay for all of it. Somewhere in there, you start missing out on life. So yeah, maybe we aren’t bringing home as much bacon, but we’re also not bringing home as much stress and unhappiness. If that makes me a slacker - then slacker I’ll be.

While both tickets have someone who is strong in foreign policy, it does matter that it’s not the same. Obama will have Biden to turn to if he has any questions, and it’s not like he doesn’t have some instinct for it already. He does, after all, have family on three different continents. Should, heaven forbid, something happen to Obama after he takes office the person in the big chair has foreign policy strengths he can call on, and a large network of friends in Washington to help him get the nation through such a tragedy. Palin, on the other hand, is extremely weak in foreign policy. She lacks the perspective to deal with it. And if, heaven forbid, something should happen to McCain after he takes office, she won’t have those same resources to draw upon. She won’t have the network in Washington, either. We really need to see VP as more than an advisory role. The two candidates both have high risk factors to take them out of office early - sad, but true. McCain has had serious medical problems in the past, and at this point I don’t think it’s any exaggeration to say he’s past his prime. Obama is a huge target, both for being African American and for bearing an Arabic name. I don’t think anyone really doubts that sometimes politicians make decisions based more on appearance than substance. This is definitely one of those choices - she is ideal to ramp up the Republican base, attract women voters, and presents someone that is nearly impossible for the Democrats to attack without opening themselves up to a counter-attack.

I hope that win or lose you find the personal strength to return to being yourself, following your guts instead of listening to what some silly campaign advisers tell you to do. That way lies happiness.

There’s a reason we love to use Greek architecture, it was the Greeks who first used democracy as a form of government. And last night I saw democracy in action in a lot of ways. Maybe it’s because this is my hometown, but it seems like I’ve heard a lot more about the protests going on. The big one Wednesday actually caught my attention the most. A few thousand people, marching without permits from a concert by Rage Against the Machine and the Flobots, led by Iraq war Veterans in protest of the Iraq war, walked up on the Pepsi Center. They were well behaved and orderly, and when they got there demanded to be heard by Obama’s people. Here’s the part that gets to me - it worked. A representative came out and agreed to meet with the veterans and hear their concerns. So they turned to the crowd, told them the good news, and asked them to disperse - which they did, orderly and quietly. These were not the ‘Recreate ‘68’ people, this was a much larger group, and I’m so very happy that it worked exactly the way protests are supposed to work. I have no doubt that the Republican convention will have many more protests and protesters. I just hope they can deal with it as smoothly as we’ve seen here in Denver. The speeches were all quite awesome, and I love that the whole thing was so family oriented. I only had to keep my kids up a little past their bedtime so they could see history in the making. I was so afraid the protests would get out of hand and make Denver look foolish, and I’m so glad it didn’t turn out that way at all. And yes, it is totally awesome that so many young people have turned out and become involved in the process. It’s going to take a lot more than one good President to fix this country - and they were all there to answer the call to action. 10 years to energy independence. Heck yeah!!!

The tunnels actually run all over downtown Denver. One goes from the Brown Palace to the Capitol, too. That was so the Governor and various state representatives could have their long lunches…

“know there are women who choose this as a career” No, they don’t. There are no little girls out there in the world saying to themselves ‘I want to be a hooker when I grow up.’ Women who end up doing this are forced into it from economic need, at best. At worst they are trapped by abusive pimps and just can’t see a way out. There are many countries in the world where prostitution is already legal, and absolutely no proof that it has made any real difference in their safety and security. The truly scary part is how many of these ‘women’ are not women at all, but underage girls forced into prostitution, sold and rented out like human cattle. This does happen in this country all the time, young girls who have run away and get talked into this life by pimps, only to be abused and beaten if they ever try to get away from it. Making it legal would only make it harder to prosecute the abusers.

I would very much like to come back as a pampered housecat. That right there, my friends, is the good life. :P All kidding aside, I really do believe that people spend way too much time worrying about other lives. It might be past lives, it might be the after life, whatever. I’d like to see people spending a whole lot more time dealing with the life we’re all sharing right now. I figure if you do that, the after life, or the next life, or what-have-you, will take care of itself.