As President Bush announced yet another bail-out, this time for American automakers, it's hard to remember that there are other important problems that will need some serious attention when the administration takes over in January.

Over at BlogHers Act Canada, we usually focus on two broad sets of issues: the environment and family health. This week, one of our writers opened up a discussion on something that has nothing to do with saving trees or cutting carbon emissions, and that is only tangentially related to health, but something that nonetheless demanded attention for the simple reason that we're women. And for women, the issue of hatred directed violently toward women always deserves and demands our attention.

If there's a time of the year during which it's hard to be green, this would be it: the holiday season is a season of consumption. There's just no getting around it: regardless of what winter holiday you celebrate, you invariably spend December (and, if we include Thanksgiving, November) (and if you're Canadian, October) eating and drinking and shopping and eating and drinking and eating and did I mention eating? And odds are that you're not sticking to your locavore diet (because, my god: eggnog without rum?), and not restricting your shopping list to locally made goods.

Have you seen Amy Gate's No Plastic Holiday Challenge?  It warms my heart when other bloggers get on the no-plastic bandwagon. A suggestion I would emphasize is to be aware of packaging and shipping materials!  It's great to choose handmade and eco-friendly gifts, but often even these come packaged in plastic.  And plastic packaging is just the kind of disposable material that is making its way to the North Pacific Gyre.  (Isn't it ironic that a material that lasts forever in the environment is so often made into single-use disposable products?) So what can we do about it?

Yesterday was - how do I say this without risking profound understatement?

The other week, when John McCain got all dismissive about women's health during the presidential debate and kept waving his fingers around making sarcastic air quotes - or, as Jon Stewart correctly referred to them last night on The Daily Show, "dick fingers" - I thought that my head was going blow off. "Women" use "health" as an excuse to get abortions? This is something that the "extreme pro-abortion movement" uses as a ploy to promote abortion? "HEALTH"?

Is it just me, or does it seem that every time a celebrity (or politician: coughJOHNMCCAINcough) opens his or her mouth about anything related to health or parenting, they say something stupid?

It's Love Your Body Day. That's a good thing, and, also, a very, very sad thing.

We tend to be pretty quiet up here in Canada. You'd hardly know that we have an election coming up, for example. Nor is it obvious that we spend a lot of time worrying about things like the environment and our children and when the hell the Stanley Cup is going to take its rightful place in Toronto. (I kid! It would also look very nice in Vancouver!) You'd hardly know that we can get pretty gung ho about causes. Which is why it's time to remind you all about BlogHers Act Canada.

I don't usually write about politics, but I can't help myself. I just have to speak about what feels to me like a double standard when it comes to Sarah Palin. I'm surprised by the people who want equal rights for women so that they can do all the same things as men, yet now that Sarah Palin is the potential VP are all asking whether she can be a good mom and VP at the same time.

This just in: childbirth can be traumatic.

So there I was, feeling sorry for myself for having sustained extensive nether-region damage during the birth of my son ten weeks ago AND having the surgery to correct that damage BOTCHED (don't even ask), when I came across this: a Wall Street Journal report from Cindy McCain on the state of things in Rwanda.