It’s my birthday month.  I’m not like most…I love birthdays.  Not the acknowledgment that one gets older, but the chance to tell and be told, that someone else is glad your or their spirit arrived upon this earth.   I have a wish, and since it’s my birthday month, I thought I would share it.  Like, anyone could stop me.  (It’s also an election month.  Lots of wishes there, but I’ll stick to my birthday wish.)

We all share common survival needs for food, clothing, water, shelter, a physical need for safety, predictability and certainty, and a sense of connection and community.  We recognize the frailties of our physical bodies and how close madness is when pitched against the disease of substandard wages and the ongoing torture of unemployment.

The decline started with Reagan, and no president since then prior to Obama changed our nation’s course to protect us economically.  One man…one lone man as president without the backing of Congress…cannot change a lifetime of bad choices in 4 years.  (He might be able to do it in 5, though.)  I cannot find one non-political, objective and mathematical statistics to support the position that Obama caused this and could clean it up in four years.  That doesn’t mean you have to like the man.  Please look beyond the house of mirrors that reflect Obama as the sole instigator of our economic woes (all Europe is fighting as well), and discover the other issues that matter to you, that may be hidden.  I will share with you a fear I have as a very real female…he will protect my rights as a woman…the other candidates will not.

My wish for today is thus:  that all men out there against Obama consider choosing him to help protect me and the women in your lives who matter.  For although we are not a Taliban country yet…the other candidates are sure putting out a welcome mat for them, and I am deeply afraid.  In the end of course…vote your conscience.  All I ask is that if you can protect me as a female, that you do so with your vote.

Vote…it is our only voice to be heard as a united people for one cause:  good leadership and safety through freedom.

— ( c ) St. John 2012