Despite my best intentions, I still don’t understand most of the things that make our economy run or stammer. When I finally took an economics course in graduate school I made my lecturer crazy because I kept questioning the reality that are economic models – which aren’t based in reality, but theory. Theory says that when demand goes up, supply goes down and price should go up. Oil usually follows this, but organic foods don’t really follow.

The past few months and especially this past week has been almost impossible to follow for the average person. Banks are failing, someone who spent only 17 days on a job gets $11M in severance, and thousands of families lose their homes each day. The US Congress is on the verge of passing a GINORMOUS bailout package for Wall Street. The talking heads from Wall Street keep saying that we, the regular person, must go along or we’ll end up in a depression.

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Last week the National Organization for Women PAC along with other feminist organizations announced that they were endorsing Obama for President. Normally feminist endorsements don’t make many waves as the media ignores feminism. When NOW PAC endorsed Hillary Clinton in spring 2007 you had to know to look for the story. Believe me, I wanted to blog it and link to a media piece. But this endorsement got some media attention and not for the right reasons.

Oddly anti-feminists and feminists saw this as an anti-Palin statement rather than a pro-Obama statement.

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No matter how I try, I can’t seem to come up with a good reason why Lynne Spears would write a tell-all memoir about her children. I know she aimed to write an innocent momoir about tips on motherhood, but what probably started out as a decent idea has evolved into a bloated “inspirational” recount of how her daughters went from innocent school girls to tabloid darlings.

In some ways I feel badly for Ms. Spears. When she saw talent in her older daughter Britney, she probably was like any other aggressive mom on the block - she wanted her daughter to succeed. Even she admits that things got out of control, and I bet it was difficult to not get sucked into all the hype and wonder of fame.

But now that one of her daughters has had a mental breakdown and the other had a child out of wedlock at a young age, why did Lynne Spears feel the need to relive and retell it all again? Was it just for the money? How responsible is it of her as a mother to overshare on her childrens’ lives?

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I received a review copy of “National Security Mom” by Gina M. Bennett and part of her thesis is that women and especially moms should be participating in politics. As a terrorism analyst and a mom, she parallels many issues from international affairs with what we deal with everyday as mothers. While I will fully review this book on my personal blog later this week, I was struck by her premise that our lives as mothers should be enough for us run for elected office.

Contrast Bennett’s message with the pounding that Sarah Palin has been taking since McCain announced her as his running mate. On one hand she’s presenting herself as just a hockey mom who happened into politics, on the other she keeps mentioning that she has executive experience. Then Charlie Gibson did many of us hoped he would do, pressed her on issues including her views of international affairs. Obama backers jumped on her inability to state what the Bush doctrine is while McCain backers including George Will on ABC’s This Week said that they didn’t get the memo about what the doctrine is exactly. Palin’s status as a mom plays as both her strength and a weakness.

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A lot has been said in recent years of the green movement and of moms helping their families to leave a smaller carbon footprint. But what are we doing to plan for the inevitable?

Yes, I’m talking about the day we or someone in our family dies.

I’ve often pondered about how I would want my life celebrated when I die and considering that my mom died at the age of 47, I know that I’m not guaranteed that it will be 50 years from now.

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There are, for sure, many unanswered questions about Sarah Palin for Vice President. I have a list of about 50 that I’m not sure tonight’s speech will answer. There is, however, one thing about her that remains clear: Sarah Palin is a working mom.

But, because she happens to be a working mom with young kids, a lot of young kids, and because she’s vying for the second-highest office in the nation, the mommy war flames have been ignited all over again. Everyone seems to be questioning whether or not she could possibly be vice president AND be a mother to her children at the same time. And everyone has an opinion.

The New York Times found a way to create a front page story on the matter with subjective quotes from “working moms” all over the country, who want to give their two cents on if she can handle the campaign and her family.

In the article, one mom, Christina Henry de Tesan, a mother of two in Portland, Ore. said,

You can juggle a BlackBerry and a breast pump in a lot of jobs, but not in the vice presidency.

Ok, she might be right, but she might be wrong. When moms are asked to opine on the way other moms work, our conversation becomes a subjective one, not a productive one.

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It was the tweet heard around the world. Sarah Palin is John McCain’s pick for his running mate. Ah, sweet irony.

Palin is now the second woman to ever be chosen for the vice-presidential position on a major party ticket. This is a major milestone for women in this country. It was a generation ago, 1984, that Geraldine Ferraro was the running mate for Walter Mondale. The college students I work with on a daily basis weren’t even born then. Think about that.

That said, I think that Palin may be the best thing for feminism since Alice Paul went on a hunger strike. Stay with me…

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Can I get an whoop whoop? I am tired, for reals readers! First I stayed up to listen to the speeches for the DNC all week, then I thought Friday I could try to take a break to work on some other writing when BAM! McCain drops a bomb on all of us with the Palin pick. Just as I’m trying to wrap my pretty feminista head around Palin and KA-BOOM! It was all about whether Trig was Sarah or Bristol’s son and then I check my Twitter this morning and Bristol is 5-months pregnant NOW? I need a pundit vacation. But alas, in my devotion to all things politics, I give you the low down on what the GOP and McCain have in store for women and working moms:

First of all the McCain-Palin website does not have a page devoted just to women. Odd considering that women, especially moderate women appear to be the soccer moms of this election…Along with Latinos, blue-collar men, and the Evangelicals. Off to hunt…

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