http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHVHXsl-n2E

For the first time in a long time, I think that our country has seen the right path and chosen to take it.

Americans have now shown the world that we can vote for the man whom we think can do the best to lead our country. We didn't vote for Barack Obama because or in spite of his ethnic heritage but because he shared with us his plans and ideas about bringing good changes to our country and we thought them worthy.

I am proud today. Our people have made me proud.

Now, it's time for us to learn what we can do to effect the changes we so fervently want and need.

We can get this work done!

YES WE CAN!

If you have not yet voted, please consider doing so during the early voting period. The advantage is that you can go when it will only take you a few minutes out of your day and then you will not be pushed for time on November 4.

I voted for Obama and "no" on amendment 2--the "marriage amendment."

I'm hoping that more people will vote as I did than not but whether or not you vote as I do, I want you to vote. Voter apathy is to blame for many ills that we now suffer. We need an electorate that is pushing all the time to make the people who are supposed to represent us, really represent us instead of special interests.

Vote--it is your right, your privilege and your responsibility.

Peace,
Ann

Check out the link below. It will take you to an editorial that appeared in the "New York Times."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/opinion/16herbert.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

I just finished writing a letter to the editor of the Tampa Tribune concerning Sarah Palin's lack of knowledge and how dangerous a pick as a running mate she is for John McCain. I also signed a petition as a woman against Palin.

McCain's choice of Sarah Palin was just a ploy to get women to vote for him so they could have her. What he doesn't seem to know is that many of us find that cynical and insulting. To offer up a woman who is so inexperienced and lacking in knowledge of the most basic issues facing our nation is just a slap in the face to those women who THINK!

We will not be fooled. We will not vote on the basis of gender. We will vote on the basis of qualifications and values that match our own.

It's important that WOMEN WHO THINK rather than just follow some woman who is out only to further her own agenda to gain power stand up and say how wrong for our country Sarah Palin is. By his choice of her alone, McCain has shown how unfit he is to be in the nation's highest office.

That's my bit for today.

Peace,
Ann

Yesterday, I signed up to post on the Community Blog at the OBAMA/BIDEN official site. Because I realize that there I'm definitely preaching to the choir, I am going to be posting my blogs to my Live Journal and here on MySpace. My hope is that even one person who has made the McCain/Palin ticket his or her choice will read my words and be led to examine his reasons for that choice and maybe at least consider voting for Obama/Biden instead.

My blog on the Obama/Biden site is titled "Tama Ann's Blog."

Here is my post from this morning.

***

While I am a pacifist and dislike the use of negative advertising for political gain, I realize that the cold, hard truth is that it's time for the Democratic party and others interested in getting our man Obama into the White House to get tough.

It's time to fight the lies, the snarky name-callers and the religious right wingers who want to highjack the nation the way they've highjacked the Republican party.

If the Republicans kept religion out of their campaigns it would be unfair to attack them on that issue but since they attacked Obama first through his minister, and since Sarah Palin brings God and religion into her politics, it is fair to attack McCain/Palin on that issue. Just the fact that our nation was founded on the basis of a separation of church and state makes it fair to attack when candidates bring religion into their campaigns. 

So, I say that the Democratic party needs to hit hard against the use of religious matters such as the teaching of Creationism in schools rather than science, the attacks on Roe v, Wade, and the prejudicial treatment of gay and lesbian citizens based on their interpretation of the Bible. 

If McCain/Palin stuck to issues such as the need for healthcare for all of our citizens, the failing economy, and the misdirection of our nation's foreign policy by the Bush administration, it would not be right to publicly air the personal failings of McCain and Palin. They don't stick to those and similar issues though. They push their right wing so-called Christian life choices on us all.

Their lives will not stand up to the scrutiny that they would use on us. They have made it fair to scrutinize them because they have set themselves up as paragons of virtue. 

It's time to unmask these "Mavericks" by hitting them hard on the real issues and not allowing them to divert people's attention by bringing God into the campaign.  It's also time to attack them on their disregard for the Constitution and the rights it gives our people. 

That's my bit for today.

 Peace,

Tama Ann

When I heard the news the other day that California's supreme court had determined the state's ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional and had thereby overturned it, I was amazed. Even for a state which is perceived to be liberal, the event was noteworthy.

I do wonder, however, how long it will be before so far right they are wrong citizens will create a stir and try to get the ban reinstated or get a new one, worded in such a way as to be vaguely constitutional, on the books and out there making people miserable.

It's never good to underestimate the power of the people who think that something allowing other people with different viewpoints to live their lives in the way they wish can threaten the way they live their own lives in some way.

Just what is the big deal about letting gay people marry? I really don't get it. Who does this hurt? Why would letting two people who love each other and who want to let the world know they are united in love and want to share their lives and fortunes and be a family be detrimental to families created by non-gay people. Does it somehow turn those non-gay people gay? Nope, don't think so. Does it suddenly wipe out the non-gay couples marriages? Again, nope, don't think so. Does it mean the government has said we all need to be gay now? Nope, nope, and nope.

For the most part, it seems to me that the people who feel threatened most often cite their bible or some other religious text as having said that marriage is only between a man and a woman. Well, if you believe in that text and you believe that true marriage is only between men and women, then you hold to that and you only marry someone of the opposite sex. That's fine. It's probably the right way for you to live. The trouble starts with people who have the idea in their heads where there's no budging it that their right way to live is everyone else's right way to live. They also tend to think that if everyone else does not live their "right," that it is somehow endangered.

It isn't.

If I like chocolate ice cream and you like vanilla better, am I in danger because of your ice cream difference? Of course not! If gay people marry, my straight marriage remains the same as it has always been. It doesn't become weaker and I don't start worrying that my husband will go out and find himself a lovely guy and leave me.

Allowing gay marriage makes sense to me. When people love each other and want to be together for the protection that forming a family unit can give, it's a good thing. It's nice for people to be together and look out for each other and to be able to get health insurance coverage and share a family name and raise their children in a family that is not labeled as illegal by the government.

Defining marriage by the gender or genders of the people involved seems to me to be cheapening it. My thinking is that marriage is not merely a uniting of two bodies in bed but a uniting of two minds. It matters not what genders are involved. When true minds join together to live in love and friendship, it is GOOD. There is no evil in that and if someone finds evil there, I truly cannot understand that person. There is real evil in the world but it's not in letting gay people marry.

I'll leave you with these words from Shakespeare, who seemed to know a thing or two about what love is. Notice that gender is never mentioned.


Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Recently, I volunteered to be on a panel at OASIS (a small central Florida science fiction convention) on blogging.  Those of you who read my few and far between blog entries may wonder why I did that when I don't blog much.

Well, just because I don't blog much doesn't mean I don't have some opinions I'm willing to share. 

It's rather amazing to me how many people have blogs that they keep up quite regularly.  Are there really so many people who have a lot of leisure time on their hands?  I only work part time and my son is grown and in his own home and I still don't have time to blog the way a lot of busy people I know do. 

(Just an aside here: how the heck do some people have time to send out all those plants, pillows, fish, name quizzes, etc. on Facebook?  I'm afraid to go to my Facebook page.  I might drown in all the stuff people have put there!)

Blogs by people like Peter David who make their living writing may contribute to their popularity (his blog is a very popular one) and thereby also contribute to their income.  If you feel you know an author through his or her blog, you just might be more likely to by your "cyber-friend's books.  In such cases, I can understand why frequent blogging is more a part of the person's occupation than his hobbies.

One of my favorite bloggers, also an infrequent one, is an actor who writes about the ways in which people misbehave.  One of my favorites was one that detailed an incident in which two of his fans took the liberty to grab his butt without any indication from him that this would be all right.  Telling an actor you enjoy his work is good.  Thinking it's all right to put your hands on his body without permission is bad.  One of the points in this particular blog was that fans' bad behavior make an actor less inclined to appear where his fans can interact with him in any way. 

While it may be lamentable that actors can carry a lot of sway with their fans, it isn't such a bad thing if they use that power for good.  Telling people to respect other people is the light side of the force.

As with most things on the Internet, blogs can be good or bad.  The ones used to spread rumors and lies or flame someone are the dark side of the force and I hope that they get the attention they deserve--none.

Most blogs seem to be cyber diaries of a person's daily acitivities.  If you can't visit in person with friends, this is not a bad way to keep up with therm but I'm horrid at this kind of blog.  I lose interest quickly.  I tried keeping up a Live Journal but as was true with the diaries I was given as a young girl, I wrote a bit and then set it aside. 

 So, to blog or not to blog?

The aswer is an obvious one.  Blog when it feels good and don't when it doesn't.  I could have saved a lot of time by writing that at the beginning of this blog but then, it wouldn't have been much of a blog, would it have?

That's all for now.

Ta!

 

Okay, here is my theory. People with only themselves to drive around and not a lot of kids or stuff to take along show that they have small brains if they drive big cars. If you have three kids, fourteen boxes of stuff you take to use with your first grade class, 200 pounds of camping gear or you drive five friends to work, a big car is fine. Your brain is fine.

If you just drive a big car because you think big cars are cool, your brain is not fine.

I don't even drive and the small brain/big car people still make me crazy. For instance, yesterday, at the credit union, some person with a truck as big as a house--you know--jacked up wheels and such--took two parking spaces even though the freakin' thing would have fit in one. That's not only small brain thinking. That's just downright RUDE!!!

You see this sort of rudeness from the big car/small brain people all the time. If you can fit your big ol' vehicle in one space, you should do so. If you can't, then you should park at the far end of the lot and not take two spaces up close to whatever business you are visiting.

Of course, I have seen plenty of smaller car owners having left their little preciouses in two parking spots too. These are still big car/small brain people because they are thinking like the big car owners. Somehow they are better than other people and deserve two spaces. BAH!

I'm done now.

Bye.

Today, I saw (sort of--and I will explain this later) the worst movie I have ever seen. This movie was so bad that I felt as though I had been damaged by it. What movie was it, you ask?

HALLOWEEN!

This is not the old really scary HALLOWEEN with Jamie Lee Curtis. This was the new Rob Zombie production.

The first movie was violent but it was not bashing you over the head repeatedly violence. The new one has gorey, brutal, nasty scenes that go on way too long. I can't help but think only a very disturbed mind would want to produce such a film. It wasn't scary. It was just gross and disturbing. I had to cover my eyes and ears through a large portion of the movie which is why I say I saw it "sort of."

The story had big plot holes too. For me, it had no redeeming features.

Generally, I don't feel a need to tell people not to see a movie but I would urge anyone who is thinking of seeing this one to skip it and see the new MR. BEAN'S HOLIDAY instead. That's an entertaining and fun movie.

I will NEVER even consider seeing a film by Rob Zombie again and I hope nobody I know will either. Someone who puts such disgusting material out for the public has a right to do so but I claim my right to suggest that nobody else pay to see it. I know it had a huge weekend but I hope it dies quickly after people go out and tell others about it.

The movie is rated "R" but it should be "XXX" for violence. I've seen a lot of "R" movies and none of them were as horrid and brutal as this one.

If you have not already been suckered in, DON'T GO SEE THE NEW HALLOWEEN!!!