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On a cold afternoon, I put water to heat for some tea. I opened the refrigerator to get milk and saw the gallon jug had been put back—empty. I let out a loud sigh and sent one of my sons for milk. I gave him a twenty dollar bill, measured the tea leaves and waited.
When he returned with the milk, I finished making the tea and resumed reading my book. The next day, while rooting through my purse to pay for a pack of gum, I realized I had never received change from the twenty given to my son the day before. I asked him for the $16+ change he had not returned. “Oh yeah!” he said and then wandered about the house looking for the change. The next day, after much prodding, he found the jeans he had been wearing on the day of the milk errand under his bed. After turning the pockets inside out, he handed me some badly crumpled bills.
I reminded him of the many times he had been careless with money, spending without remembering where or how he had used it—I was feeling a bit cranky since it was his actions that had deprived me of a stick of gum.
Obama is acting like my teenage son. We sent him out to buy milk and he doesn’t want to give us back our change.
The 700 Billion dollars that was loaned to the banks is being repaid faster than expected and guess what? There’s 200 BILLION in the TARP fund—our change. There was a sale and good news, bailing out the banks is only going to cost 500 Billion. So can we have our change back please? Congress is divided on what to do with the “extra” money. Since we never had it anyway, I wonder how they can call it extra. Obama wants to spend it and the Republicans want to use it to reduce the deficit.
I look at like this. On the day I sent my son out to buy the milk, imagine that I owed the electric company $50 and $80 to the phone company. While he was out buying milk, if he had spent the $16 change on what he perceived were more important needs, perhaps socks, deodorant and chips—such a decision would have been outrageous. I would have used the money to reduce my debt or perhaps I would have saved it for more groceries.
Obama wants to use our change for more spending projects—after he pays off Hilary’s friends. How about letting the American people decide? Or better yet, just like I tell my kids—Don’t spend money you DON’T HAVE.
I don’t know about you, but $50 is a good chunk of money and $100 is still a lot of money to me. Obama wants to spend 200 Billion Dollars, that’s nine zeros!—200,000,000,000 on more spending projects. Our national debt is already over 10 Trillion! Stop the madness; reduce what we owe, so our children do not have to pay for our folly.
Natalie Behring-Chisholm/Stringer/Getty Images
This week French President Sarkozy called for a ban to be placed on Muslim women who choose to express their faith by observing hijab and donning a burkha. The French have been the most vocal and active in the arena of attacking religious freedom. In 2004 they outlawed the use of headscarves, Sikh turbans, large Christian crosses and Jewish skullcaps in their state schools. The French defend their law which is designed to strictly adhere to their ideas of separation of church and state, but French liberalism is coming dangerously close to ending religious freedom. Even worse it seems to be spreading to other parts of Europe. Italy, Turkey, three Belgian towns and seven of Germany’s 16 states have banned headscarves. While speaking in Cairo President Obama said it clearly, “it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit – for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We cannot disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism.” Members of the French Parliament, from both the left and right called the burkha an “oppressive dress that breaches individual freedoms”.
Individual freedoms? According to whom? There are many in the world who would consider Western women oppressed because they feel compelled to don a style of dress that is made to entice and attract men. Indeed, upon hearing the new French policy the spokesman for the Muslim Council of Great Britain said, “Unfortunately, there is a pressure on women to dress skimpily in the West.” I agree.
Perhaps the burkha could provide greater freedom than a skimpy bikini ever could. It can be said that the burkha is a tyrannical and repressive piece of clothing forced on the women who wear it, but the same could be said of a bikini. Both the burkha and the bikini are worn to indulge the whims of men in the society they represent. The burkha is worn to mask and conceal that which belongs or could belong to the men, and the bikini is worn to expose and display the same. Both articles of clothing find their impetus in their effort to control and subjugate women.
Women long to adopt a carefree and liberating expression in their choice of clothing. There are few women that can wear a bikini and feel comfortable in it. Even supermodels lament because they feel their thighs or behinds are more ample than they should be. Donning a large black covering in the morning could provide a liberation few Western women have experienced. To arrive at work, school, or social occasion without first applying makeup, dressing the hair, and fussing over clothing would be a dream come true!
One need only to read the comments and remarks made about Hilary Clinton’s appearance to long for this type of freedom. During her run for the democratic presidential nomination, what Mrs. Clinton said was never as important, as how she was dressed when she said it. The criticism made about Mrs. Clinton’s hair, makeup, body type, and clothing took precedence over what she was saying. Her legs were compared to tree trunks, her clothes called frumpy, and her hair and makeup was the topic of many water cooler gatherings. In the same vein, such discussions did not take place about Benazir Bhutto or Indira Gandhi when they were Prime Ministers of their countries. The political pundits debated their political agendas and viewpoints, not their choice of clothing or makeup. Perhaps this was because the males in their countries were conditioned to view respectable women in a non-sexual way, and therefore these women were taken more seriously than Hilary Clinton.
Men will be unable to view women as equal—as long as women continue to exercise their right to seduce men, and therefore objectify themselves. If women will dress in a manner that does not engage a man’s libido and instead engages his mind, they will be able to experience true freedom and liberation. Both women and men should be disturbed by this fact: the American voting public is unable to elect a woman even as a vice-president. While India, in 1966 and Pakistan, in 1988—countries thought by the West to have little equality for women, had already elected women as Prime Ministers!
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