Happy Birthday, Madam President Clinton

Happy Birthday and a Healthy Personal New Year Hillary Rodham Clinton and the very same wishes to all Puma Scorpions!

And may God bless you Murphy and send you a healing and a new energy in your time of reflection and new direction.

It seems so long ago that we all wanted so badly for Hillary to win.
Instead we got this swine that even his party members told to go shove it.

I have the photo that was taken with Hillary residing on my computer desk top but not once have I looked at it since the elections. I just could not bring myself to see the hope in all our faces.

Happy Birthday to the President in waiting.

Happy birthday!
And in the tabloids, meet the hypocrites
http://edgeoforever.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/tabloids-hypocrisy-edition-obama-bloomberg-bp-karzai/

meanwhile, over at the creatives
http://edgeoforever.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/dudies-october-22-26/

The thread that binds us.
Happy Birthday Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton.

First welcome back to all the Pumas who haven’t posted in awhile. It’s great to see your blog names pop up again and know you’re still out there fighting the good fight.

Now, Happy, happy birthday Hillary Rodham Clinton, the woman I have watched for many, many years in her triumphs and her trials. She showed me that you can survive the viciousness out there and still move forward to achieve great things. Even in my personal life, she got me off the treadmill with people who try to hold you back and bring you down. I made some major life changes after watching what she went through simply because she is smart and tells it like it is. Many, many more happy birthdays to you, HRC.

Hillary Clinton has always kept me from giving up and being depressed, she inspires me.

The divisive atmosphere we live in lets me know there are no lesser evils. I will be glad when The election cycle ends. The garbage being spewed is corrosive.
I voted 3rd party and/or every woman possible.
I always vote…………

Phone calls from groups (who knows who they represent) encouraging me to vote by mail not only drive me nuts but make me wonder why they want me to mail in my ballot. Paranoid?, probably, but I will continue to drive to my polling place as long as I can, then I will definitely vote by mail.

Oh and I voted in person at my Town Hall……..

BCL…I first requested an absentee ballot..had to fill out my voter information and was told to return or mail in, I chose to bring it back in person. When I returned with the form they had just set up a voting station right there in front of the counter…asked if I wanted and was ready to vote and HELL YA I was!

(((((pumaland))))))

Happy Birthday Hillary Rodham Clinton.

You are so loved.

I will never forget New Hamshire—–She so WON me over,
and I lover her even more today.

My best overarching memory of Hillary: how I got misty-eyed with every.single.speech. she made after a primary. Her ability to inspire me personally is way up there.

My best single memory of Hillary: how she made a point to roll down the window of the SUV she was riding in on her way to board the plane after the Austin debate. We were at the airport too on that very chilly morning bright and early—having just dropped off the Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. My partner and I waited all alone in that cold morning air to catch a glimpse of Hillary, and she did not disappoint. As the SUV whizzed past, she rolled that window down and waved at just the two of us with the biggest smile. That was the closest we ever got to meeting her, but that simple act of making contact reduced us both to tears.

My favorite memory of Hillary:
I was lucky enough to go to a fundraiser for Hillary in Beverly Hills in 2008 and at the end of her speech, I stormed the stage to get a “Hillary” autograph on my program. I was recovering from Bell’s Palsy at the time and the left side of my lip was drooping and my left eye was not blinking right. I didn’t look normal at all. When Hillary looked my way, she smiled and winked at me with such kindness and compassion in her eyes as she was signing. It spoke volumes about the kind of wonderful person she is.

Happy Birthday Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton!!!
This is my favorite speech by Hillary Clinton:

Women’s Rights Are Human Rights Famous Speech by Hillary Clinton
Beijing, China: 5 September 1995

“Mrs. Mongella, Under Secretary Kittani, distinguished delegates and guests:
I would like to thank the Secretary General of the United Nations for inviting me to be part of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. This is truly a celebration – a celebration of the contributions women make in every aspect of life: in the home, on the job, in their communities, as mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, learners, workers, citizens and leaders.

It is also a coming together, much the way women come together every day in every country.
We come together in fields and in factories. In village markets and supermarkets. In living rooms and board rooms.

Whether it is while playing with our children in the park, or washing clothes in a river, or taking a break at the office water cooler, we come together and talk about our aspirations and concerns. And time and again, our talk turns to our children and our families. However different we may be, there is far more that unites us than divides us. We share a common future. And we are here to find common ground so that we may help bring new dignity and respect to women and girls all over the world – and in so doing, bring new strength and stability to families as well.

By gathering in Beijing, we are focusing world attention on issues that matter most in the lives of women and their families: access to education, health care, jobs and credit, the chance to enjoy basic legal and human rights and participate fully in the political life of their countries.

There are some who question the reason for this conference.
Let them listen to the voices of women in their homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces.

There are some who wonder whether the lives of women and girls matter to economic and political progress around the globe.
Let them look at the women gathered here and at Huairou – the homemakers, nurses, teachers, lawyers, policymakers, and women who run their own businesses.

It is conferences like this that compel governments and people everywhere to listen, look and face the world’s most pressing problems.
Wasn’t it after the women’s conference in Nairobi ten years ago that the world focused for the first time on the crisis of domestic violence?

Earlier today, I participated in a World Health Organization forum, where government officials, NGOs, and individual citizens are working on ways to address the health problems of women and girls.

Tomorrow, I will attend a gathering of the United Nations Development Fund for Women. There, the discussion will focus on local – and highly successful – programs that give hard-working women access to credit so they can improve their own lives and the lives of their families.

What we are learning around the world is that if women are healthy and educated, their families will flourish. If women are free from violence, their families will flourish. If women have a chance to work and earn as full and equal partners in society, their families will flourish.

And when families flourish, communities and nations will flourish.
That is why every woman, every man, every child, every family, and every nation on our planet has a stake in the discussion that takes place here.

Over the past 25 years, I have worked persistently on issues relating to women, children and families. Over the past two-and-a-half years, I have had the opportunity to learn more about the challenges facing women in my own country and around the world.

I have met new mothers in Jojakarta, Indonesia, who come together regularly in their village to discuss nutrition, family planning, and baby care.

I have met working parents in Denmark who talk about the comfort they feel in knowing that their children can be cared for in creative, safe, and nurturing after-school centers.

I have met women in South Africa who helped lead the struggle to end apartheid and are now helping build a new democracy.

I have met with the leading women of the Western Hemisphere who are working every day to promote literacy and better health care for the children of their countries.

I have met women in India and Bangladesh who are taking out small loans to buy milk cows, rickshaws, thread and other materials to create a livelihood for themselves and their families.

I have met doctors and nurses in Belarus and Ukraine who are trying to keep children alive in the aftermath of Chernobyl.

The great challenge of this Conference is to give voice to women everywhere whose experiences go unnoticed, whose words go unheard.

Women comprise more than half the world’s population. Women are 70% percent of the world’s poor, and two-thirds of those who are not taught to read and write.

Women are the primary caretakers for most of the world’s children and elderly. Yet much of the work we do is not valued – not by economists, not by historians, not by popular culture, not by government leaders.

At this very moment, as we sit here, women around the world are giving birth, raising children, cooking meals, washing clothes, cleaning houses, planting crops, working on assembly lines, running companies, and running countries.

Women also are dying from diseases that should have been prevented or treated; they are watching their children succumb to malnutrition caused by poverty and economic deprivation; they are being denied the right to go to school by their own fathers and brothers; they are being forced into prostitution, and they are being barred from the bank lending office and banned from the ballot box.

Those of us who have the opportunity to be here have the responsibility to speak for those who could not.

As an American, I want to speak up for women in my own country – women who are raising children on the minimum wage, women who can’t afford health care or child care, women whose lives are threatened by violence, including violence in their own homes.

I want to speak up for mothers who are fighting for good schools, safe neighborhoods, clean air and clean airwaves; for older women, some of them widows, who have raised their families and now find that their skills and life experiences are not valued in the workplace; for women who are working all night as nurses, hotel clerks, and fast food cooks so that they can be at home during the day with their kids; and for women everywhere who simply don’t have time to do everything they are called upon to do each day.

Speaking to you today, I speak for them, just as each of us speaks for women around the world who are denied the chance to go to school, or see a doctor, or own property, or have a say about the direction of their lives, simply because they are women. The truth is that most women around the world work both inside and outside the home, usually by necessity.

We need to understand that there is no formula for how women should lead their lives. That is why we must respect the choices that each woman makes for herself and her family. Every woman deserves the chance to realize her God-given potential.

We also must recognize that women will never gain full dignity until their human rights are respected and protected.

Our goals for this Conference, to strengthen families and societies by empowering women to take greater control over their own destinies, cannot be fully achieved unless all governments – here and around the world – accept their responsibility to protect and promote internationally recognized human rights.

The international community has long acknowledged – and recently affirmed at Vienna – that both women and men are entitled to a range of protections and personal freedoms, from the right of personal security to the right to determine freely the number and spacing of the children they bear.

No one should be forced to remain silent for fear of religious or political persecution, arrest, abuse or torture.

Tragically, women are most often the ones whose human rights are violated.

Even in the late 20th century, the rape of women continues to be used as an instrument of armed conflict. Women and children make up a large majority of the world’s refugees. When women are excluded from the political process, they become even more vulnerable to abuse.

I believe that, on the eve of a new millennium, it is time to break our silence. It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights.

These abuses have continued because, for too long, the history of women has been a history of silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words.

The voices of this conference and of the women at Huairou must be heard loud and clear: It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls.

It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution.

It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.

It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.

It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes.

It is a violation of human rights when young girls are brutalized by the painful and degrading practice of genital mutilation.

It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.

If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, it is that human rights are women’s rights – and women’s rights are human rights. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely – and the right to be heard.

Women must enjoy the right to participate fully in the social and political lives of their countries if we want freedom and democracy to thrive and endure.

It is indefensible that many women in nongovernmental organizations who wished to participate in this conference have not been able to attend – or have been prohibited from fully taking part.

Let me be clear. Freedom means the right of people to assemble, organize, and debate openly. It means respecting the views of those who may disagree with the views of their governments. It means not taking citizens away from their loved ones and jailing them, mistreating them, or denying them their freedom or dignity because of the peaceful expression of their ideas and opinions.

In my country, we recently celebrated the 75th anniversary of women’s suffrage. It took 150 years after the signing of our Declaration of Independence for women to win the right to vote.

It took 72 years of organized struggle on the part of many courageous women and men. It was one of America’s most divisive philosophical wars. But it was also a bloodless war. Suffrage was achieved without a shot being fired.

We have also been reminded, in V-1 Day observances last weekend, of the good that comes when men and women join together to combat the forces of tyranny and build a better world.

We have seen peace prevail in most places for a half century. We have avoided another world war.

But we have not solved older, deeply-rooted problems that continue to diminish the potential of half the world’s population.

Now it is time to act on behalf of women everywhere. If we take bold steps to better the lives of women, we will be taking bold steps to better the lives of children and families too.

Families rely on mothers and wives for emotional support and care; families rely on women for labor in the home; and increasingly, families rely on women for income needed to raise healthy children and care for other relatives.

As long as discrimination and inequities remain so commonplace around the world – as long as girls and women are valued less, fed less, fed last, overworked, underpaid, not schooled and subjected to violence in and out of their homes – the potential of the human family to create a peaceful, prosperous world will not be realized.

Let this Conference be our – and the world’s – call to action.

And let us heed the call so that we can create a world in which every woman is treated with respect and dignity, every boy and girl is loved and cared for equally, and every family has the hope of a strong and stable future.

Thank you very much.

God’s blessings on you, your work and all who will benefit from it.”

A great Happy Birthday post by WonkTheVote,
includes Hillary’s Wellesley 1969 graduation commencement speech and much more:
http://riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/october-26-2010-happy-birthday-hillary/

(Posted without comment, due to the graphic words I would choose)

Clint McCance is a school board member at Midland School District in Arkansas. Here are some quotes from his facebook response to “spirit day”

“Seriously they want me to wear purple because five queers committed suicide. The only way im wearin it for them is if they all commit suicide.”

” I cant believe the people of this world have gotten this stupid. We are honoring the fact that they sinned and killed therselves because of their sin. REALLY PEOPLE.”

“Being a fag doesn’t give you the right to ruin the rest of our lives. If you get easily offended by being called a fag then don’t tell anyone you are a fag. Keep that shit to yourself,”

“It pisses me off though that we make a special purple fag day for them. I like that fags cant procreate. I also enjoy the fact that they often give each other aids and die.”

“I would disown my kids if they were gay. They will not be welcome at my home or in my vicinity. I will absolutely run them off. Of course my kids will know better. My kids will have solid christian beliefs. See it infects everyone.”

http://www.hrcbackstory.org/2010/10/meet-the-face-of-hate-midland-school-board-member-gives-voice-to-bigotry/

——————
Facebook page has been set-up calling for McCance’s removal.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fire-Clint-McCance/170421922968484

(#32 cont. again)
Arkansas School Board Association
phone at 501.372.1415
e-mail at arsba@arsba.org.

Happy Birthday Hillary!

This song is for you and how I still feel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwEiQOVzXdA

Hiya Murphy and Pumas!

Thank you Murphy for the beautiful post and pics of Hillary.
Thank you Pumas for sharing your lovely stories.

the night that I saw Hillary up close was at the Inaugural Ball, DC Armory in 1997…I was down front with only the press pit separating me from the stage…Meatloaf performed with Patti Russo and his daughter Pearl that night..

Bill and Hillary were stunning…it was a night I will never forget!
I’d like to think it was me that Hillary smiled and waved to…who knows..
but it was hard to miss me…I was screaming my heart out..HILLARY! HILLARY! HILLARY! lol

Happy Birthday Hillary…
you’re simply the best!!!

G”night ((((Murphy and Pumas))) sweet dreams.
Going to rest now…been a long day.

Good morning and your Wednesday tabloids
http://edgeoforever.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/tabloids-circus-and-tragedy/

Oblow Go Low

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/Hi_assets/TopHitPageNews.html