Everything I have read about these children for the last dozen years has pointed to greed and money grubbing. I am curious, have any of these kids actually worked in an industry unrelated to the marketing of their father? I don’t think I have ever read of any of them working at all. What have they done for their community in the same vein as their father giving up his life to fight prejudice? Have any of them engaged in any truly unselfish behavior? Is there any evidence to indicate that any one of them has ever attained anything of note without trading on their father’s name? I would appreciate any information that shows that they have done anything on their own, to benefit anyone other than themselves.

I think one of the biggest problems in our government today is that politics is no longer a service to country and a duty, but a profession which is taking on dynastic overtones. Fathers (or states) passing on Senate seats or governerships to their progeny. The people who work in government are making the running for these offices prohibitively expensive which is tantamount to buying the offices they run for. The PACs on both sides of the aisle give money only to their chosen candidates so that only their preferred candidate is allowed the seat. That was never the Founders intent. Government was supposed to be participatory and short term. Because of voter apathy people bounce from legislature to lobbying to advisor to the executive, without ever being in the real world of hard work. While I think Ms. Kennedy’s endorsement was helpful to Mr. Obama and I believe she did it for reasons of legitimate belief, giving her a Senate seat is a bad idea. It is time to get the dynasties out of politics, all of them. And the only people who can do that are “We the People”. It takes more than changing the man at the head of the government to create real “Change we can Believe In”. It will take fresh blood and fresh ideas in both houses of congress, blood and ideas untied to corporate interests. Anyone who has been in either house more than 10 years has unhealthy ties to corporations of all stripes. The higher up they are in the internal political structure the more hamstrung they are by money they have accepted to keep themselves in the legislature. It’s a cushy job with a golden parachute after a minimal amount of time put in. That’s why some people will spend millions of dollars to attain it. Track how many people go into the central government middle and upper middle class, and come out (if they ever leave) millionaires several times over. Ask yourself how that is possible based on the salary they are paid, the answer is not pretty. But only we can change that, because they (the representatives and Senators) will not. Educate yourself about your employees, discourage the creation of dynasties on either side, and no matter how much you like the job which your employees are doing; discourage their temptation to corruption by committing yourselves to limiting their terms to 8 years in the House and 12 years in the Senate.

The reason we are “not listened to” is because we keep waiting for the boy’s club to “GIVE” us our due. Men are never going to “give” us anything except a line of bull, and a sweet smile. What you are seeing with the Obama team is about what I expected, show me the change from business as usual. Women are going to have to educate themselves and take responsibility as Suzanne did. I have been burned and have less nuts than I should have. But I do have a little more knowledge than I did have and that’s a beginning. Thanks to wow for helping me educate myself. By the time the wheel turns again I will be better prepared to take care of myself than I was. But at some point we must face the fact that these are wolves not princes, who will use our vulnerabilities to strip us of everything we have. And if they can do that… we are ultimately responsible.

You know what really gets to me, according to assorted statistics in assorted places, these bailouts amount to around $300,000.00 per citizen in America. I ask my self what the economy would be like if those dollars now being given to the men who got us into this mess in the first place were given to the citizens being harmed by them,… that would be quite an economic stimulus. But “we the people” sit quietly with our $600 per, while the guys with the $7,000.00 shower curtains get handed more of our hard earned money. What is wrong with this picture?

I first saw Liza live when she subbed for Gwen Verdon in “Chicago”. Then once at Carnegie Hall. When she fell apart I put her in my prayers, when she married whatsisname I hoped I was wrong. And when she did a concert at the Melody Tent in Hyannis, two years ago I cried. She had made it to there and back again. And now she’s playing the Palace. God I wish I could be there, I’ll bet she’s all the way back. I love you Liza.

The hardest lesson of my life has been that I did nothing to deserve the way I was treated by my husband, except permit it. Those who have never been in the military culture cannot begin to understand its systemic corruption and arrogantly patriarchal attitude. If you are a “good soldier” you WILL be protected all the way up to 4 star general. I am sorry ladies but it is true. And no one, especially not the women in the culture will acknowledge it. You MUST go along to get along, which includes sexual favors and the covering up of harassment. If you want to make it to the top of the officer corps, you will “suck it up”. It takes only one attempt to understand that there is NO protection for wives or whistleblowers. Forgive me for saying so, but the attitude at the top is still, if the army wanted you to have a wife it would have issued you one. And by the time couples have been in the military culture for several years both halves have been trained in the mindset that the army comes first and no whining allowed. A difficult (in my case husband’s case impossible) mindset to over come.

Women will also tend to aim for security. Consolidating gains and maintaining what they have or have created. Men tend to seek “Master of the Universe” status. To be the alpha dog in the room, and will generally speaking, use any means necessary to get there, and once there, to stay there. it is not about earning or creating wealth, it is more about power, and its accumulation. I do think more educated women in the field would create more transparency,… we think differently from men. Our priorities are different, AND what I think is even more important we assemble the same information differently… hand a male and a female the same information and they will interpret its value differently. Thanks Liz for your writing as I gain more of a grasp of the subject I will have questions for you.

It is logistics and if Ms. Clinton chooses to, it is a fairly simple matter to solve. Presidents and former presidents and their families receive a very specifically defined type of protection from the Secret Service. With Mrs. Clinton moving to the State Dept, which has its own security forces, there will be a conflict over “who has jurisdiction”. Let Mrs. Clinton define her needs and concerns, and go from there. Generally, a permanent team is assigned to a former president’s family, at least that was my understanding. So she might be comfortable with people she has known for several years already who know her. There was a very funny movie with Shirley Maclaine and Nick Cage which was a fairly accurate portrayal of what goes on. My husband used to work presidential protection with the Secret Service.

Grace. That is the note, to me, that they all seem to have. No matter what they are wearing, all of them, it is clear that at the moment captured; each and every one of them is comfortable in her skin. The Hepburn ladies were role models for me from around the age of 7. They made living look like fun. I still remember pictures of Audrey Hepburn helping children in Africa, I gave up candy to “trick or treat” for UNICEF, because I wanted to be like her.

I think the hardest thing for me was realizing that all media has an inherent bias and that no matter who is doing the talking you can’t really believe what they are telling you. Thanks Okpulot for the deets about fact check. I like Truthout.org (which is also pretty left leaning), and Consortuiumnews.org which tries hard to be objective. but after so many republican screw ups and George Bush’s unimaginably stupid choices, it’s kind of hard NOT to be biased. I wish some news organization would show up w/ a truly jaundiced eye about both mainstream parties. They both have their agendas and their bankers. And until someone shows up determined to tell the truth about the whole political class, “we the people” are seriously screwed.

Come on, the fact that the Republicans are “admiring” the choices says it all.

Seems like the same old hacks to me. I was really hoping for new faces and NEW ideas. Without the same old loyalties and debts to lobbyists. How in the world can you expect integrity from the guy who was instrumental in Mark Rich’s pardon. Or the guy who is married to a lobbyist for the airlines. Or the woman who tolerates serial (in your face) infidelities to preserve her political viability. How is that a recipe for meaningful change? Read John Kass of Chicago about where Rahm Emanuel’s loyalties lie. I am an independent thinker who thought that Mr. Obama’s words meant something. These are not names which inspire trust based on their past actions, I didn’t expect that he was going to hire politicos from the same old Democratic institutions that ran things before the Bushies stole the election, although frankly, I became suspicious as soon as he announced Biden as his choice for VP. There was totally nothing new and honorable about a 36 year veteran of the Senate with a talent for plagiarism.

Wow! Rahm Emanuel… Hillary Clinton…. Eric Holder… and Tom Daschle … now that’s change from the old Washington way of doing things. Is this really the change you had in mind?

I hate to bring this up, but the thing that is breaking the auto companies is the healthcare costs for their retirees, not their executive compensation. Not to say that their execs are underpaid, but GM is trying to cover the healthcare costs of UAW contracts from the ’70s and ’80s and it is breaking them. They are no longer a car producer, they are an HMO and going broke because of it. When my dad died he was on 10 different medications for which he paid $2 per prescription. That didn’t even cover shipping of the bottles. But that is off topic. I am glad that we as a nation are reconsidering our need to consume endlessly. It is very hard to teach kids to celebrate meaning when all the social signposts tell them they want..”the newest, the biggest…the most expensive.” and that that is all Christmas is for…collecting trophies to show their friends. What a joy to read these posts and know how many others like me there are.

I, too, like Sarah Palin and think she bears watching. I believe most everything we have seen so far with a couple of exceptions has been edited to make her look foolish. She’s not stupid, she would never have gotten this far. She has run a state and balanced a budget and made cost cutting decisions. She has also made stupid mistakes, trusted the WRONG people, and talked about things when she should have been listening. But I will be interested to see if she learns from her mistakes. Because the one way in which women are most consistently different from men, (in my observation) they have very little problem changing their minds when they have been shown to be incorrect. A smart woman will admit she’s been wrong, gather more information and move forward. A smart man will argue to death his “smart” point of view no matter what evidence is produced to the contrary. Interestingly enough, that’s what stupid women do as well.