Just spent an engaging evening with the Canadian Women Voters Congress. The discussion topic was the mentorship program and its inspired me to write an imminent blog post on the importance of Canadian Women in politics. Register now to be notified when its published! #equalvoice

Hillary Clinton has been accused of many things, including being some shady underhanded crook who shouldn’t be trusted. The media and her opponents will tell you that she’s raked in millions in speaking fees and has received hefty donations from big business, which is the very evil that Democrats have been accusing the GOP of for years. I’m going to explain why the voters can and should forgive her for this.

In the world of todays politics its become very clear, you’re not going to get the prize if you don’t have the coin.

The United States is where it is today in part due to something seemingly innocuous that occurred at the beginning of the 1980’s. A woman from Missouri by the name of Harriett Woods was running as a Democrat for the U. S. Senate. Harriett was a mother of two that had followed an improbable path into politics, all the while gaining valuable experience at the city and state level. Her senate race had her running against Republic Senator John Danforth. (Now follow me here as this all comes full circle) Senator Danforth was not only an incumbent but also a former attorney general of Missouri, an ordained priest and the wealthy grandson of Ralston Purina. (Money, Money, Money by ABBA should be playing in your ear at this point)

Even with all this going for him, Senator Danforth found himself in a tight race with Harriett Woods, with Woods even winning some of the most rural Republican areas in Missouri. That was until the final week of the election cycle when the Woods campaign ran out of money which meant that she couldn’t afford to counter the last minute storm of virulent attacks broadcast by her opponent.

This heartbreaking defeat drew special attention, particularly due to the fact that Harriett Woods was the only female U.S. Senate Candidate in the whole country. It became so clear that she could have won with financial support to answer the attacks, that her race inspired the founding of EMILY’s List, (say it with me West Wing Fans ‘E’arly ‘M’oney ‘I’s ‘L’ike ‘Y’east) one of the biggest PAC’s in the nation.

So Senator Danforth did win and on his way to Washington, he took with him, an African American lawyer named Clarence Thomas, who had been working for Monsanto, the agrochemical giant responsible for Agent Orange, GMO seeds/foods and so much more.

Now here is where we bring it full circle:

1. If Harriett Woods hadn’t been defeated by less than 2% of the votes in Missouri, Danforth would not have gone on to be a U.S. Senator.
2. If Danforth hadn’t been a U.S. Senator, he wouldn’t have taken Clarence Thomas with him to Washington as a staff member who would then go on to be appointed by George H. Bush to the Supreme Court.
3. If Thomas hadn’t been on the Supreme Court, he couldn’t have supplied the one-vote difference that halted the Florida court-ordered recount in Gore V. Bush.
4. If the recount had continued, Al Gore would have been president not George Bush.
5. If George W. Bush had not been president, the U.S. would have been far less likely to launch the longest war in U.S. History, costing billions in tax dollars given to twenty thousand contractors, with thousands killed and wounded on both sides.
6. If Al Gore had been president, global warming would have been taken seriously. And, the U.S. would not have falsified evidence to justify invading oil-rich Iraq, which along with Afghanistan, convinced some Islamic countries that the U.S. is waging war against Islam.
7. With no George W. Bush presidency, there would not have been the biggest transfer of wealth into private hands in the history of this nation: a pay ratio where the average CEO earns 475 times more than the average worker (in Canada, it’s 20 times); an executive order giving an estimated $40 billions in tax dollars to Catholic, Evangelical and other religious groups, without congressional approval, often with the appearance of turning churches into a vote delivery system.

If you’re not screaming already, here is one more…

8. Without Clarence Thomas to supply the one-vote majority, the Supreme Court might not have ruled that corporations are people, therefore allowing them the right to unlimited political spending, which is why, my friends and fellow voters, Hillary needs to follow the money.

Hillary learned her lesson during the last election primary. This time, if she doesn’t dance with the devil, it won’t be President Sanders that you’ll be hearing at the 2017 Swearing-In, it’ll be President Trump!

This blog post was inspired by Gloria Steinem’s latest book – My Life on the Road

1,052 mass shootings in 1,066 days: this is what America’s gun crisis looks like.

Here we are again, another senseless mass shooting. More innocent people slaughtered for just going about their day. It wasn’t a school or college campus this time. It wasn’t a Women’s Health Clinic or even the mean streets of Chicago. This time it was a holiday banquet at an office building and the shooters were a married couple, one of which was an employee of the group holding the banquet and the other, his new wife from Pakistan who it has now been reported, had recently pledged allegiance to ISIS.
The facts of this most recent mass shooting have created a conundrum for the press. There is no question that this was a terrorist act but it seems that the motives could be a mix of both homegrown terrorism as well as Islamic extremism aimed at the West.

Regardless of what ‘label’ this atrocity gets tagged with, two of the guns used in the attack were purchased legally and the purchaser was an American Citizen. This leads us down the road to proposed changes to gun laws in the U.S.A. which even with the #Enough hashtag created by The Brady Campaign to pressure the lawmakers in Washington to actually do something this time, this President has already shown that he will not use Executive Power to force meaningful changes to the currently impotent laws.

Q: Did you know a gun purchased over the Internet or from a private individual at a gun show is NOT subject to a background check because neither instance involves licensed gun sellers?

After Sandy Hook, where twenty 5 & 6 year olds along with 6 adults were slain in their classrooms, a bill was put forward in Congress to stop the loopholes like those described above. But that bill failed by a 50-48 vote. Just think about that; there were 50 members of Congress that felt that is was too politically risky to strengthen background checks even after hearing that many of the Sandy Hook children couldn’t be identified by their parents because, well, you can imagine what multiple rounds from an assault rifle does to the body of a 5 or 6 year old child.

Q: Did you know that under federal law, the three day waiting period gives the F.B.I. 3 business days to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to deny a purchase. If the bureau cannot come up with an answer, the purchaser can return to the dealer on the fourth day and buy the gun!

In June of this year, a young man by the name of Dylann Roof, who also had a lengthy criminal history, exploited this loophole by waiting the 3 days and when the F.B.I. did not return a decision to the gun shop, on the 4th day Roof walked into the store and purchased the .45 caliber handgun which he used to murder 9 people in a historically significant black church in South Carolina.

Q: Did you know the Obama administration dropped a plan to ban green-tip bullets that can pierce a police officer’s protective vest because it faced too much criticism by the hunting community since these bullets are used in sport shooting? Do moose wear protective vests now?

This goes along with the outright assault weapons ban, like AK-47’s introduced by the Clinton administration in 1994. The ban expired in 2004 and efforts to renew it, even in 2013 after Sandy Hook, failed. Because if you use an AK-47 for hunting, you can definitely get your game, you’ll just go hungry because there won’t be any meat left on the carcass to eat!

This is only a conversation about gun control as it relates to mass shootings but to be considered a mass shooting, it’s 4 or more victims. Other lives could be saved by sending a message that gun ownership comes with grave responsibility. You wouldn’t leave your car in the driveway with the keys in the ignition if you had kids in the home. You would be pulled over by the police and charged if you were driving a car without a license. People may say that you can’t kill as many people with a car as you can with a gun but it might also be that many people mistakenly feel far greater responsibility owning a car than they do owning something that is meant for one purpose only, to kill.