BlogHers Act

I received an email from the BlogHers site. They want women bloggers to select a single issue to focus on:

Project #1: Choose a global issue – BlogHer's red-hot issue for the year

If you could turn the power of the BlogHer community on to making a difference on a single global issue for the next 12 months, what would that issue be? Why? How would you and your community of blog readers help? Do you already have a blog or issue that you're working on and want the BlogHer community to fend for? Great! Tell us below… This year at BlogHer '07 in Chicago on July 27th , we'll be looking at some case studies of using social media to raise consciousness and awareness, and we'll apply them to an action plan for this issue.

Project #2: Creating an Election '08 Voter Manifesto

Let's create a Voter Manifesto, asking the media and presidential candidates from all parties to answer real questions and address real issues. Let's help them by creating a template: the questions any candidate must answer if they want to earn our vote next year. If you could tell the presidential candidates what is most important to you, what are the top four hot button issues you would ask them to address?

# 1 - My issue would, of course, be Illegal Immigration. I would ask BlogHers members to post once a week on the topic, with the intent to raise awareness of the current alien situation, and to lobby our Congress to make changes to current law to protect our borders, and eliminate the de facto 2-tiered, European-style residency classification -

1. citizens and legal residents
   
   vs.
   
   
2. illegal aliens

This is a Global Issue - we cannot preserve our country's heritage while simultaneously accepting floods of temporary workers, who have not broken their ties to the old country. Either they're Americans, or they're not. Either they follow the rules set down by our country, or they can leave.

Repeat after me - we ain't the world's solution. While I recognize the need to accept refugees during times of crisis, we can't take in everybody. They need to stay in their own country, and work to change it. By leaving, they may help their personal situation, but it doesn't do anything to help the place they came from. In fact, accepting refugees has the same purpose as a valve on a pressure cooker - it releases the build-up of pressure, but allows the overheated situation to continue.

Our goal should be to help those citizens transform their society to benefit the average resident. In short, democracy.

# 2 - the top 4 issues for Presidential Candidates to address:

1. Illegal Immigration
   
2. Homeland Security - beef it up, and take it seriously.
   
3. Social Security reform - the young of this country deserve better than paying ever-increasing portions of their income for a scheme that they will never benefit from.
   
4. Repeal McCain-Feingold - NOW! Restore Freedom of Speech.