I have heard it said that nearly $30.00/3 months is a paltry amount for the individual consumer, and that the Clinton proposal is, therefore, a gimmick. Well, I do not know you, but I can remember many times when I wished for $10.00 in the last week of the month, but did not have that much left over. If I just craved a donut, I could not buy it. Granted, a donut is hardly a "need." My whole point is that there is a real class of people for whom $10.00 per month is some relief. That said, I do not see a real divorce between the economy and the need to end the war. Isn't it obvious that one of the reasons that we, as a nation, are bankrupt is that we are spending billions in Iraq? But not even the war is the reason for the increasing number of poor people. Far more crucial is "free trade," which is based on the notion that some people are disposable---American workers being more expensive than Chinese workers, they are disposable. At the most, we as a nation will toss at them some welfare funds and food coupons, but their dignity as people is something they will have to do without: they are now engrossing the ranks of the trash heap. And we happily breathe the heavily polluted air that blows across the Pacific into our West coast... :-(

I have been all along a supporter of Hillary Clinton. I'll set aside for now my reasons not to support Sen. Obama, but one of them is crucial to my thinking: *he* left no room for me in his movement. I am a 64-year-old White woman, quite tired of hearing him talk about how "the old ways" have no place in politics anymore, how it is time to change, and "look at you, all young people." Well, age is something you cannot change (just as you cannot change race or gender) and, frankly, he could have delivered his message of hope and change without overusing the word "old". Does he mean to change our reverence for the forefathers? No! He just means to change the *corrupt* ways of Washington... Hmm, did he ever stop to think that he was tying together "old" and "corrupt"? No, he never did. And there is the rub: what you take the time to think about, that's what you care about. He does not care about *old* people, and has shown that time and again. When, at a debate, he mocked Hillary's and Sen. Edwards' replies to "What is your main weakness", his comment was: "I could have said, 'My weakness is that I like to cross the street to help little old ladies.'" And that says it all: "little old ladies." Would he ever put in that crowd of "little old ladies" the likes of Elearnor Roosvelt, Golda Meier, Indira Gandhi...? I am afraid that is a "species of females" that he cannot see. (By the way, thank you, Joan Walsh, for your cogent views about sexism: I, for one, have appreciated them very much.)

All throughout the speeches last night I was struck by how much overtly heroic sacrifice is being put up for us to see and emulate. The father who gets up one hour earlier to go to work because MS forces him to dress up slowly; someone else talks about a brother who works the day shift and then, again, the night shift (wages from the latter to put a sibbling through college). And the moral of the story is always the same: If you sacrifice and are willing to work hard, you'll reap your just rewards. Why do we need more myths, quasi-religion? In the first place, these glamour stories bear no resemblance to the sacrifices of real people. You know what sacrifice is? It is working at a mind-dumbing job eight hours a day, after which all energy is sapped, except the energy to worry about unpaid bills. Many people would like to work two shifts: their physical strength is not what it used to be, though. Finally, it most certainly is not true that, if you work hard, you will be rewarded: tell that to the people who worked for years at a mine, only to see it cave in and, in the end, shut down. I do not know what "religion" they are trying to pull over my eyes with all these stories of sacrifice, but I think the emphasis is misplaced. Should truly progressive Democrats rejoice that, after working so hard, Michelle's father was able to send her to Princeton U? I think that truly progressive Democrats should bemoan the fact that Michelle's father, suffering from MS, still had to work after 30 years because he was his family's main provider. That's just the pity of it. That's what must be changed. No, do not tell me the man's life as an example to emulate! This is the cult of sacrifice that has no place in a truly progressive vision, a vision of joy, not a vision of Paradise tomorrow --- and by the way, suffer for now because we have no intention to change the circumstances that make your life so painful: "My father sacrificed, so can you."