Observations from the Coffee Shop 2.21

Today is Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, the day before Lent begins, or Carnival if you are lucky enough to be in the right spot. Beads, booze, and boobs are what usually come to mind, lots of them. Being a
non-believing type of girl I don't go in for that giving up something for Lent thing the way a more superstitious girl would, this year is different. I can think of numerous things I should give up but what I have in mind is something I want to give up, need to give up for my sanity. I want to give up any further thoughts of Rick Santorum for forty days, its not nearly long enough but it'll just have to do

In order to accomplish that feat I need to purge my mind of that man, pretty much pass him off on all of you, so here are a few things for you to think about for the next month. At the risk of ruining my dream of Santorum being the GOP nominee for President, and as a former Pennsylvanian, I feel the need to warn the rest of the country before it's too late. Or as John Baer said in yesterday's Philadelphia Daily News, "Are they nuts?" For a start I think you need to read that column but I have a few things to add.

Santorum is obsessed with gays, women, and birth control and this is nothing new. What is new is the fact that the people voting for him either don't believe him to be serious, he is, or they agree with him. The later just scares the shit out of me.

Recently he gave a speech about women in combat in which he said it was simple fact that neither nature nor  god designed the female body for the stress of combat. He added men have greater size, upper body strength and stamina for a reason, god intended them to use that strength to protect women and children. Women would become too emotional in combat and the men would forget their mission as they protected the crying cowering females. The man makes me want to hurl.

There is literary, archaeological, and artistic evidence that women have historically played a role in combat, that is till the rise of the modern Catholic Church and our supposedly progressive western civilization. Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, led a revolt against the Roman Empire in the 3^rd century. After initially defeating the Romans the "Warrior Queen" ruled most of the modern Middle East from for a decade. The Emperor Aurelian finally defeated Zenobia and she was led through the streets of Rome held by golden chains in a victory parade that also included a dozen Gothic women. The Historia Augusta, a Roman collection of biographies, includes this, "ten women who, dressed in male attire, had been captured fighting among the Goths, after many others of them had died, and whom a placard indicated to be the Amazons."

I could also remind the Catholic Santorum, and his church, of Joan of Arc. But than again they burned her at the stake when she was 19 years old only to make her a saint.