PunditMom » hunger

Occupy Wall Street: The New Tea Party Movement?

PunditMom — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 20:50:04 +0000

Some on the right are trying to portray the Occupy Wall Street movement as just a bunch of hippies and trust-fund babies who have nothing better to do with their time than smear the good names of all those Wall Street investment bankers who get the fat bonuses at the end of the year while millions of American families struggle to put food on the table.

For many Tea Party supporters, our economic system isn’t about fairness so everyone should suck it up and manage on their own. They’d really like the “have nots” to quit whining about the “haves.”

But try to compare the Occupy Wall Street to the Tea Party movement in terms of a populist uprising, and you’ll really see their eyes roll back in their heads and steam come out of their ears. For them, Tea Party supporters are the backbone of middle America while those who are at the end of their financial rope should stop making such a fuss.

There is clearly a class war going on in this country. Whether the poor get poorer, go hungrier and stay out of work longer is not much of a concern to some extreme conservatives. But for those on the right who are scoffing at the protestors, but who also often like to tout their “Christian” values, I’ll just take a line from FDR:

Whether O.W.S. can sustain momentum is hard to say right now, but those Tea Party people started out exactly the same way — holding a few rallies and finding support from others who also felt alienated and cut-off from any way to change their lives. Sounds like Occupy Wall Street is headed down that same path to me.

ONE Moms in Kenya: A Trip of a Lifetime

PunditMom — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 22:50:22 +0000

Remember I told you last week about ten amazing women — including some of my very good friends — who were invited ">to go to Kenya by ONE to see firsthand the health and hunger issues in Kenya, especially for mothers and children?

While at the BlogHer ’11 conference this past weekend, I got a sneak peak at this ABC News story that left me awed and in tears.

While I didn’t get to go to Kenya, I am honored to be one of the “ONE Team Member” asked to spread the word about how we, as moms, can make a difference for other families across the globe.r

GOP Threatens Food Programs for Political Gain

PunditMom — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 14:25:54 +0000

Two bills concerning the food we feed our children are headed to the President’s desk to be signed into law — a comprehensive food safety bill to put the brakes on the growing phenomenon of tainted food in our country and a bill to make sure the 18+ million kids who go hungry every day in our country have at least one decent meal each before they go to bed.

Even though these both sound to me like no-brainers in terms of how the government should use regulation and taxpayer dollars, Congressional GOP leadership put on their virtual Grinch costumes to block these efforts as part of their keep-Obama-to-one-term scheme.

I’m wondering what the heck is up with that today at my Speaker of the House column at CafeMom’s The Stir.

Image via beliefnet

Three Reasons I Think My Head Will Explode

PunditMom — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:15:38 +0000

I usually do a good job of sticking to one topic in any given post. But there is so much going on at the moment, I feel like my head will explode:

1. My very new friend Anissa, whom I’ve admired from a afar in the blogosphere for some time, had a stroke this week. She’s 35. And has a husband and three kids. And loads of friends who are praying for her. I can’t get my head around this one. How is this even possible? If you want to see if there’s a little something you can do to help her family, you can take a look here.

2. Other things I can’t grasp? Now we’re not supposed to get mammograms until we’re 50, so all the 49 and under crowd can just wish and keep their fingers crossed that they’ll be lucky and won’t get breast cancer until they’re older?

Tell that to my friend Susan. Or my friend Debbie. Or my late friend Marjorie. Or Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Or countless other women we’ve known under the age of 50 with no family history or risk factors who saved their lives by getting screening mammograms.

I have no problem with medical experts revising their opinions based on medicine and science about what works and what doesn’t, but the timing of this report seems awfully suspect, as we’re debating other health care for women, including abortions and contraceptives (yeah, they want to prevent federal funding for that in health care reform, too), as well as care for women who have been victims of domestic violence. I understand from a wonky friend that the way the current health care bill is written, the insurers under the legislation will only be required to pay for things that are ranked “A” or “B” by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

The USPSTF has now given screening mammograms for women 49 and under a “C” rating. You do the math.

Already half a million women a year die from breast cancer. How many more will now not know they’re a ticking time bomb because insurance companies might not be required to pay for screenings because of this new recommendation?

3. And speaking of bombs, don’t even get me started on hungry children. Seriously, we’re spending almost $900 billion on two wars this year, but we don’t have enough to feed 13 million hungry Americans, over four million of whom are children?

When I clean up the mess from my head explosion, I’ll try to gather my thoughts a little more eloquently.