Sort of long but necessarily so, I think. This appeared on the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensle ... 24829.html

Drill, Drill, Drill by Eve Ensler

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

ADG said: "You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in". It's clear we've got the 'dark to stick it in'. Does anyone else feel like lighting up???

Thanks for the read Zap.

She clarifies and epitomizes what was meant by clinging to guns and religon.

this one is for kj,


>>I'm a little confused, and I know many people are fretting, if not
>>downright in a panic. Let me see if I have this straight (pardon the
>>pun)..... . If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're
>> 'exotic, different.' . Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers and
>>shooting wolves from a helicopster, a quintessential American story. . If
>>you are named after your father, Barack, you're a radical, unpatriotic
>>Muslim. . Name your kids Willow, Bristol, Trig, and Track, you're a
>>maverick. . Graduate from Columbia College and Harvard Law School and you
>>are unstable. . Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating,
>>you're well grounded. . If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community
>>organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review,
>>create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters,
>>spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a
>>State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become
>>chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee,
>>spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13
>>million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign
>>Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees,
>>you don't have any real leadership experience.
>>
>> . If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city
>>council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20
>>months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're
>>qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive. . If
>>you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2
>>beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real
>>Christian.. If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and
>>left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a
>>Christian. . If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education,
>>including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of
>>society. . If, while mayor, you charged rape victims for the cost of
>>their rape kits, and while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence
>>only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system
>>while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're to be admired. .
>>If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a
>>prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city
>>community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't
>>represent America's. . If your husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', with at
>>least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to
>>vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the
>>secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable. OK,
>>it's much clearer now.
>>
>>
>
>

thanks MG!!... I love it!!...

You are welcomed! Always good to get a new perspective on these family values ( good luck with that one!)