14 days!!

Well, we've ticked another week off of our countdown to the election.  The Presidential debates are over and we've only got 14 days to go before the main event--election day.  In order to pass the time, I've come up with a new feature.  First up...7 reasons I'm not voting for Mitt Romney.  Then in the week preceding the election, 7 reasons I'm voting for Obama.  We'll still be taking a look at events as they happen, but we'll be doing this as well.  As The Doctor says...Allons-y!!

Seven Reasons I'm Not Voting for Mitt Romney-Reason #1

I'm a woman.  Yep, it's true, I'm a lady.  I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, etc..  Mitt Romney and company do not respect women.  This time, I'm not sure that it's so much Mittens himself.  Who the hell knows where he stands on women's issues, really?  Except that we know that he has binders full of us.  Let me be honest here; if nobody puts Baby in a corner, they sure as hell aren't going to stuff me in a binder.  Then there's the whole Paul Ryan issue.  Paulie is as misogynistic as they come.  He's the damned president of the He-Man-Woman-Haters-Club.  

Paul Ryan voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.  So, he's okay with women making 28 cents less per dollar than a man makes.  

He voted for legislation that would have granted health care providers the right to refuse to provide emergency abortion care, even if the life of the woman is in danger.  He's comfortable with making children orphans because the unborn has more rights than the mother and her existing family.

 Ryan is in favor of eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood Centers.  One in five women in the US receive services from Planned Parenthood.  A lot of those services are preventive measures, such as cancer screening.  For many low-income women, it is their only access to health care services.  Paul Ryan is a champion of women getting cancer and not having a way to find out in time to get treatment.  He's also not a fan of family planning.  

He called rape just another form of conception.  Ryan is so anti-abortion, he doesn't care if the fetus a woman is carrying is the product of a brutal attack.  He feels he has the right to force (via legislation) a woman to carry the product of a violent, forcible rape to term, and then (in 31 states in the nation) face her attacker on a regular basis as she is mandated to grant him visitation rights to the child.  I wonder how he'd feel if it happened (heavens forbid) to his daughter?  

Ryan also co-sponsored person-hood legislation that grants the rights of a living person to a fertilized egg (even if it hasn't resulted in a pregnancy yet).  This legislation could make surgery to remove ectopic pregnancies illegal.  It would also make hormone based contraceptives (the pill, the shot, etc.) illegal, as well as many aspects of in vitro fertilization.  I wonder how Romney feels about this.  He has in vitro grandkids, you know.

Both Romney and Ryan plan to gut social safety net programs such as SNAP (food stamps), medicaid and Head Start programs that benefit low income families as well as single parent households.  Don't even get me started on Social Security and Medicare, which they want to privatize, thus ending Medicare's guarantee of coverage and handing Social Security checks to the goons on Wall Street to gamble with.  Paul Ryan loves unborn kids.  It's once they're out of the womb that they become a drain on society.  No help for you, kids.  And Grandma?  He'd really be glad if you'd just check out asap.  Medicare is unsustainable and it's getting on his nerves.

Are these guys for real?  Are you kidding me?  We didn't even get into the issues of the party that they now head, with Todd Akin's legitimate rape, or Ryan's plan to re-define rape. We didn't bring up the Governor of Virginia who was a fan of forcing women to undergo trans-vaginal ultrasounds that are medically unnecessary if she exercised her constitutional right to an abortion, for what ever reason.  It was tantamount to state sanctioned rape via medical probe (it also got shot down, causing McDonnell to lose any shot at the VP nod).  Not to mention the voice of the GOP, Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke a slut because she dared to stand up for her rights.  In a nutshell, if you have a uterus, or ever had a uterus--these two people are not your friend.  Run screaming for the hills into the Obama camp and stay very far away from the misogynist duo that is Romney/Ryan.  As far as you're concerned...they think you need to stay barefoot and pregnant.  And they want you to make them a sammich.  

So, if you're a woman, you know they're not on your side.  If you're a man.  Do you have a mother, a wife, sister, daughter, Auntie or a crazy lady next door with 20 cats?  Show her some love and stand strong with the women in your life.  We've earned it.  We women are amazing and let's face it--you know that the love of a good woman makes life worth living.  Show us how much we mean to you.  Don't vote for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.  Let them know that women have a right to make their own health care choices.  Let them know that rape is rape and it's not just another means of conception--it's a despicable act of violence.  Let them know that your wife and daughter deserve equal pay to any man.  Show Romney and Ryan what a real man does.  We need your support, and honestly, a vote for Romney is a vote to relegate women to second class citizenship. I know we mean more to you than that.  You know we've got your backs.  We live with you, and we love you anyway!!

And that, my friends, is reason number one why I'm not voting for Mitt Romney.  I'm a woman.  I have daughters.  I have a grand-daughter.  And I'll be damned if I'll let Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan step all over their rights...or mine.

Until tomorrow...just say no to Republican Kool-aid!!