This almost 57 year old white guy wants 2012 to be even more of a year of the woman than 1992!
I'm running this up the flagpole. Some of you may salute and some of you may pee on the pole.
There are many women that I love in my life. Among them are my mother-in-law, sisters-in-jaw, neices and grand-neices. I love the memory of my little sister who left this world at a far too young age of 29 in 1996. I love my wife's best friend and her life partner who is also a woman. I love my best friend's wife in a purely platonic and respectful manner. My older sister and I have never liked each other, but I at least wish her no harm.
There are 2 women, however, that I love more than any others. They are my wife and my mother.
In WWII, my mother packed meat and had my sister while my father was overseas. After this, she worked while my father went to college on the GI bill. She went to Dayton, Ohio with him when he was recalled for the Korean War and was stationed at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. After the war, she was raising my sister and I and keeping a great home while my father screwed around at every opportunity.
In 1962 my bastard of a father took off and married my step mother (whom I eventuall developed a small level of love and respect for) in such a rotten way that he was on his honeymoon before my mother even knew she was divorced. Remember that at that time there were no "deadbeat dads". There were "aggressive young business executives with a take no prisoners attitude". In the face of all this, she moved my sister and I into a nice apartment, went to work at the bank that would employ her for the 20+ years until she retired. When she didn't have the proverbial pot to pee in, she kept us in a warm and safe place where we were never hungry. She did all of this in the face people saying that she was "hot to trot", "didn't know how to take care of a husband", "a woman's place is in the home", "she's really a lesbian" and all the other stereotypical baloney that men used to shovel onto women at that time. I never had any idea when we were broke . She never let on that she was lonely. She never once said a negative word about my bastard father to me even though he was always bad mouthing her. My mother wasn't educated, so thought she was stupid. In reality, she was a clear thinker with more common sense than most ever have.
For most of her life, she believed that different races shouldn't mix, but my Irish Catholic mother grew to love and respect my Puerto Rican wife and, in her nearly 85 years of life loved NOBODY as mich as she did my African American son. a few years before she died, she told us that when she did go, her spirit was going to follow my son. If anybody gave him a hard time for being black, they wouldn't know where the kick in the ass came from, but they'd sure as hell FEEL IT!
Yes, she could be a big pain in the ass, but she was a great woman and a great human being.
My wife is my partner, my lover, my best friend and the woman I raise a child with. She is beautiful. She is way smarter than I am. She puts up with more BS from me that I can imagine. She is, simply put, the most remarkable and wonderful and beautiful woman ever put on the face of this earth. My love and respect for her knows no bounds. She has done many things in arts and crafts in the time we've been together. She has decided that she didn't like some of them. She has never done any of them badly. When she was a teacher, she was creative, inspirational and knowledgable. She is the best math teacher I've ever seen and she had the amazing ability to make her lessons seem like an adventure that she and the kids were making discoveries together.
To papaphrase an incredibly sexist commercial campaign from the bad old days, "My wife, I hope she keeps me!"
With these 2 fantastic women, who have and will continue to make such a major impact in my life, respect and high regard for women is hard wired into my system.
My marriage to one and my memory of the other are the reason that I practically tremble with fury when I think of the disgraceful "hearing" that was perpetrated by the republicans headed by grand theft auto izza and assisted by the 5 stooges who are, in GOP land, the experts in women's health based on their decades old degrees in theology. I thought that they were bad before, but seroiusly, a war on friggin' rubbers?
Their cluelessness is beyond incredible. Their contempt for women is detestable. Their stupidity is apparently beyond bounds and bottomless. Apparently, they believe that sarah palin(comparison)'s "mama grizleys" are an actual political force. In a near bushian stroke of "genius", they seem to think that the best way to get women to vote for then is to disrespect the entire gender.
I would be voting a straight Democratic ticket this year no matter what happened given the current state of the teabagger/fundie/koch/limbooger dominated republican party.
When I think of their disgraceful contempt for women and when I think of the remarkable woman who is my wife and the remarkable woman who was my mother, I want the republicans to lose very badly. I want President Obama to win 40+ states in a huge landslide that carries the baggers right out of the House and into small numbers in the Senate. I want the teabaggers and fundies to be absolutely repudiated and humiliated in a historic rout that wouldn't give even fox any grounds to rationalize.
For those 2 wonderful women that I love so much, I promise to do all I can do to make that happen.
Maria and mom, this one's for YOU!
Thanks for reading my rant. It's my 2 cents, and possibly overpriced at that.
PEACE!
= new reply since forum marked as read
PEACE! 
I think we all keep each other afloat. 
PEACE!
PEACE!
I'm luckier than any danged fool has a right to be.
PEACE!
Thank you, madokie.
PEACE!
(you rock!)
PEACE!
PEACE!
