We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Broadcast

I'm sure you'd love to hear all about how my husband threw away the kids snow pants this morning, because THEY WERE IN HIS WAY in our cramped, cluttered laundry room. Or about how the Jack is bouncing off the walls with anticipation for his Tee Ball game this afternoon and the possibility that his grandparents may be in attendance.

I could regale you with tales of how the dog and the kids have finally seemed to accept each other as part of the same litter and now Jack is regularly content to prostrate himself across the dog's butt and watch television.

But, instead, just for today, I'm going to go back to Politics.

On Thursday I participated in early voting in my state for the Democratic primary.

I walked into an historic courthouse, the one where abolitionist John Brown was tried and convicted for his Harper's Ferry uprising and just a few blocks from the tree where they hung him for his actions.

Into THAT courthouse did I walk, and I cast my vote for Barack Obama.

It was not until days later, when Big Daddy had cast his vote at that building, that he pointed out the irony to me.

I consider myself a modern feminist - ultimately, I am a humanist who thinks women still need to fight for respect and equal consideration. I look forward to the day I can cast my vote for the first woman president - one I can get behind and support with a clear conscience. For me, Hillary Clinton is not that woman. My decision to vote for Obama has nothing to do with his race or with her gender, it has to do with who they are and what they stand for.

Today, I found myself reading along on MOMocrats and nodding my head vigorously. I might have even shouted a "HELL YES!" a few times. CityMama has hit it on the head for me; that beyond all of the reasons I supported Obama in the beginning, there are a lot of very good reasons why my support has continued through what some people have tried to construe as his recent "scandals", his so-called "elitism".

Finding out that Hillary Clinton operatives have been sending messages to Obama mailing lists under false pretenses ( "I'm rethinking my support of Obama in the wake of the Reverend Wright scandal..." etc) in an effort to demoralize his supporters - to make it seem that those of us who believe in the MESSAGE should begin to doubt the man - the man who lives and breathes the message and has not waivered - when the message itself remains unchanged and, if anything, more timely and true than ever...... well, that wasn't even a surprise, but I am still shaking my head in sad disbelief.

I think the statements Reverend Wright made are reprehensible. I also find certain statements made by leaders in my former church reprehensible, but those statements are not the reason I finally left. I also find it true that everyone I have ever known with a strong attachment to their religion clings to it more completely in times of distress. I don't see anything incorrect in the statement that Obama made about people clinging to certain issues or belief systems all the more tightly because they are angry at their circumstances. He never said they only picked up those causes to begin with out of bitterness, only that they invest them with disproportionate importance when they are desperate. I agree with that sentiment.

I think that Obama's book, "The Audacity of Hope", is the most insightful, unpretentious and honest looks at politics from the inside that I have ever come across. I don't think that's a mantle you assume in order to fool people; for that, you can go read Chris Matthews' "Life's a Campaign". The works are antithetical in philosophy, as far as I am concerned.

So whether or not you like Obama, or agree with me politically or otherwise, I highly recommend reading the MOMocrats column and giving it sincere consideration. There is some serious truth up in there.