Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will have surgery “in the coming week” to repair a broken below. Clinton was headed to a meeting at the White House when the accident happened. She was walking to her car with Richard Holbrooke (Afghanistan and Pakistan policy coordinator) when she fell in the State Department’s garage. It was about 5 p.m.

Thank goodness someone was with her! I fell by my car once and it was really hard to grab my purse and dial 911. After she fell, Clinton was taken to George Washington University Hospital for an exam. Doctors do not think the fracture is severe.

Image: Bauer-Griffin

1. She reminds me of my mother.

2. She kind of reminds me of my mother-in-law.

3. She reminds me of myself actually.

4. She’s ballsy. She stood up to all the mean girls who trashed her and the perverts who made pornography of her and the media who mocked her. She did it with grace, complete sentences (unlike our current resident moron) and with HUMOR and a big wide smile on her face.

5. She refuses to stay in the box society made for her. In fact, she pretends there is no box.

6. She believes in God and she believes God has a plan for HER. So to I.

7. Seriously, she breast fed her baby in the limo and green rooms before those speeches. Let me repeat - she breast fed her baby on the campaign trail. That’s cool. That’s freaking amazing.

8. She realized kids are portable and brought them with her to campaign instead of refusing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pursue her dreams “because she had kids.”

9. She’s ambitious.

10. She’s beautiful AND smart. Yes, world, women can be pretty AND smart. We don’t have to pick one.

In fact, the ONLY thing I don’t like about Sarah Palin is her politics this year.

In 8 years she’ll be more mature and more experienced and qualified-enough if she can keep her nose clean in Alaska.

Barack Obama is the LAST man I will vote for before a woman serves as President of the United States.

So some Democratic women better step up to the plate and groom themselves for a solid run in 8 years. Hear that Emily’s List and The White House Project? It’s Sarah Palin if you can’t train a female superstar to step up to the plate and win in 8 years. I’ll even send you money and help you groom her, but I’m not voting for another pro-woman MAN.

I WILL vote for Sarah Palin in spite of her politics to break the glass ceiling on 2016.

In fact, the way I figure it - if Barack Obama does what he says he’s going to do, then I will be satisfied with my equal pay, universal healthcare, family medical leave insurance, and solid standing in the Supreme Court, and will have healed the economy by using cash to pay as we go.

The Republican Party will have reinvented themselves and brought in some young blood like Sarah Palin and kicked out the crazies who are against birth control or I’ll be menopausal so it won’t be that important to me.

Obama will have healed the racial divide and sexism will be the final social frontier (Ok there will still be homophobia, but it too will be less pronounced in 8 years) and I’m sorry people, I don’t give a crap how much you personally hate her, feel offended by her, feel jealous of her, feel defensive by her outward morality - I NEED to see a woman in the highest office of that land.

More importantly MEN need to see it so we can earn their damned respect. My children need to see it, both my son and my daughter.

If that woman is Sarah Palin, well, she’ll be highly entertaining to watch for 8 years. We might learn a few useful tricks from her about how to have it all. I’ll be watching her.

Photo Source: JohnMcCain.com

“‘”There is no one more surprised than I — except, of course, my husband. You know what they say, ‘Behind every successful woman there is an astonished man.’” said Ann E. Dunwoody, 55, the first female four-star General in the United States Army.

“I grew up in a family that didn’t know what glass ceilings were,” she said. “This nomination only reaffirms what I have known to be true about the military throughout my career — that the doors continue to open for men and women in uniform.”

Read about her rise to power in a very, very patriarchal profession on MSNBC.com

Salute!

Tomorrow is Election Day.

I’m the Alternate Election Judge in my precinct. I’m can’t wear campaign paraphernalia - but, I will be wearing dog tags bearing the name of a real woman who never had the right to vote. This has been a banner year for women - all women - and I salute both parties and all people for the participation of women we’ve seen in 2008.

Let there NEVER, EVER be another election without the female half of this country being represented on a Presidential Ticket. That’s my fervent prayer.

I’ll be at my polling place to make sure the Republican Election Judge doesn’t cheat or harass Barack Obama voters. He’ll be there to make sure that I, the Democratic Election Judge doesn’t cheat or harass John McCain voters.

It’s going to be a very, very long day and I’m super-excited.

My husband and I participate in election judging every election we can. We both do it if we’ve got a grandma to watch the two kiddos for 12 hours. This year we don’t.

After the election we’re going to the Democratic Headquarters for Pizza and News.

We’re feeling optimistic enough to bring champagne. If polls are to be believed at all then Barack Obama is going to win.

But, anything could happen. It’s hard to determine what will happen.

Personally, the human nature of this election has been a little disappointing for me.

The racism and sexism and blatant and intentional ignorance isn’t in our country’s best interest.

I’m praying for a landslide because being on the fence as we have for the last 8 years - where half the country loathes and disrespects the sitting President hasn’t been good for us. Having a president who openly disregards and disrespects half the country’s interests and ideas has been detrimental to our citizen moral.

The best thing that could ever happen tomorrow is to have a solid Congress that sits with the President - at least for 2 years. Nothing can ever get done if we’re a 50/50 country at war with each other. Then both sides become cynical and blame the other.

The party who wins tomorrow better do it with grace and proceed with rapid action.

The party who loses tomorrow better do it with grace and lick their wounds in a quiet support of the winners. That’s the American way. A peaceful transition of power.

We consent to and support the outcome (even if it’s not the one we wanted) - that’s our process.

We need to move to the middle people. We need to make some compromises with each other or there will not be peace in our country. There will be anger in our country.

Choose one way or the other America.

Make it a crystal clear choice and make it a consistent one.

Vote your conscience.

Marrianne Williamson had a lovely prayer for both candidates and all voters and a peaceful and loving election on her daily devotional today.

Oh, and if you want to experience a Patriotic High there will be plenty of volunteer opportunities tomorrow. Help an elderly person vote, take a neighbor, call your party’s headquarters and volunteer to make phone calls.

Image Source: www.barackobama.com

It’s not your grandma’s modesty and “don’t do it.” It’s a hotter, sexier, kind of “don’t do it” that Sarah Palin exemplifies.

Had the sexier version of “don’t do it” and the empoweringly hot message of “make him chase you to the alter and then do it wildly,” been the focus of my community’s “don’t do it” message when I was growing up . . . .

Well, I might not have done it. . .

Read the article about the Sexy Puritan type at Slate.

I’m kind of Sexy {Feminist} Puritan aren’t I?

You know what I find fascinating?

The religious conservatives, by which I mean the specific people in my life, who have always been the biggest influences on my own Internal Mommy Wars are in full, unequivocal support of Sarah Palin and have no doubts that can be both an effective mother and vice president.

Then why do you doubt that I can be both a great mom and fulfill my professional ambitions using the gifts and the calling God gave me? I wondered, as I lay sobbing during one yoga practice last week. If there is some distinction between she and I - and our worthiness for my family’s support - I don’t get it.

My whole motherhood and professional, experience would have been vastly different had these same people in my life been as unquestioningly supportive of me and my abilities to do both as they have been about Sarah Palin.

The economic and emotional toll of my own internal Mommy Wars can be added up to include: poverty and massive amounts of debt including a bankruptcy, unbelievable strain on my marriage almost leading to divorce, addiction to anxiety medication including a hospitalization that incurred yet more debt, severe post partum depression, not to mention the decision to stop having children so I could return to work without debilitating guilt and extreme economic “sacrifice” sooner.

But, at least I was a “good mom,” according to the specific narrow definition my family and cultural influences - religious conservatives, represented by Sarah Palin - have held out as the one virtue I must live up to above all.

Go figure.

They don’t even know her, they’ve never met her, they’ve never seen her with her children, they know very little about her politics even. Yet, they support her without reservation, judgement or criticism. If only I’d been worthy of the same support.

Thank God for Sarah Palin - I’m choosing to make their full support of Sarah Palin apply to ME and all other women. Her mission is no more important than mine, her abilities to both be a good mother and ambitious in her work is no more developed, her values no more sacred, and above all - she is no more entitled than the rest of the working mothers of this nation to respect, equal pay and working hours that adjust to acknowledge the existence of a family.

I’m choosing to let go of their judgement that has so effected my choices. It’s quite liberating really. Its like releasing a burden that has weighed heavily on my soul and tainted my experience of motherhood.

My motherhood experience has been about unnecessary guilt and sacrifice - false choices really. False choices that have made me teeter on a fence between working and motherhood, judgement and approval, fear and love, economic stability and poverty as sacrifice, powerfulness and powerlessness, economic independence and social acceptance - it’s not as though choosing to not work to be a good mom to acquire the currency of their social acceptance and approval came without serious consequences.

Forgive them for they know not what they do. I want to be free of their criticism and judgement, therefore I forgive it.

I don’t think they knew. They didn’t know they would feel this positively and supportive about a working mother character. They may or may not realize the kind of inner-turmoil they’ve caused in my own emotional life. Likely, it is only a reflection of their own inner conflict about themselves - not really about me at all.

I’m going to expect them to feel the same about my abilities as they feel about Sarah Palin’s and if they choose not to, well, this time I’ll perceive that choice as their failure, instead of my own. I’ll figure out a way not to internalize it.

Surely, I had this power all along - lots of other women have done it - but I wasn’t strong enough to apply it. So, I forgive me too.

Thank God for Sarah Palin, she’s liberating me from a social construct and false choices and a deep inner conflict about working and motherhood.

Image source: JohnMcCain.com

This just in from The Huffington Post:

“The Palin administration won’t release hundreds of emails from her office, claiming they cover confidential policy matters. Then why do the subject lines refer to a political foe, a journalist, and non-policy topics?”

I can think of at least 100 different emails I wouldn’t want released to the public that I’ve sent or received just in the last week. When I think back to the 1990s, when I first got email, and I was long-distance dating - Dear God, I hope that guy didn’t keep those emails after he got married.

Almost all of them have included sarcasm and my edgy humor - cause my friends and family get that about me - but, the media would have a hey-day with them.

Some of them have had to do with sex toy parties and book clubs, and some have had gender and policy-issues and some have even discussed journalists. Some have been about abortion and choice. Some of have been about interpretations of the politics of our childhood with my little brother - we see things differently.

When I think back to the 1990s when I first got email and I was long-distance dating through it - Dear God I hope that guy didn’t keep those emails after he got married.

Oh what the Mommy Bloggers would do to me if they had access to my email.

Raise your hand if you want your emails made public.

I can see you all now - Me! Me! Make mine public!

Or more likely, Holy crap - maybe I should have hit delete more often, I hope it’s not too late.

I was thinking Sarah Palin had opened the doors and maybe I really might be able to be President of the United States someday if the stars aligned just right.

But, probably not if the public gets to read my email.

Photo Source: www.johnmccain.com

You can also read her advice on How to Deal with Internet Trolls.

The nomination of Sarah Palin begs the question - just who is the real feminist in this election?

Barack Obama who talked a lot about how proud he was of Hillary Clinton, but didn’t consider her or another woman for the office of Vice President?

Or John McCain who actually nominated Sarah Palin, a woman, for Vice President?

Before you answer, read Obama’s for Equal Pay, Yet Pays Female Staffers Less than Males that says while Barack Obama has a lot to SAY about equal pay and employee benefits for women, John McCain actually employs more females on his campaign staff and pays them more.

As I said in a previous article - vocal Democratic women raised the fair market value of Republican women in this election.

Image Source: http://gov.state.ak.us/official_portraits.php