I was extremely confused by Bush's rosy economic speech. Here my local bank, IndyMac, is collapsing, with distraught customers waiting in line for hours last week to get their money. Gas at my neighborhood pump has surged to nearly $5 a gallon, the price of oil plunging aside. California's unemployment...

He hugged me when I walked in the back door and found him unexpectedly standing in my kitchen. Unlike so many of my 18-year-old son's friends, who've crossed that invisible line into manhood where it's not considered cool.

Because he and my son had drifted...

This essay is an excerpt from the recently published anthology, "The Maternal Is Political," by Shari MacDonald Strong.

In May of 1999 I flew from Budapest into Tirana, the desiccated capital of Albania. I had come to this city...

This morning I asked my 15-year-old daughter what she didn't like about Hillary Clinton.

"I mean at the beginning, before she started going negative and attacking Barack Obama," I said, trying to rewind history.

My daughter was sitting at the kitchen table, where thousands of impassioned conversations in...

Is this ever going to end?

Superdelegates who haven't yet declared for Obama or Hillary are waiting it out under the pretense of letting the remaining voters have their say. And then come June or perhaps July--when they feel like it, I guess, or when they're sure Hillary is toast...

Things sure are getting weird with Hillary. And I don't just mean the arresting spectacle of the 60-year-old presidential candidate in her suit and good jewelry knocking back Whiskey and yukking it up with some working-class fellows in an Indiana bar. Hey, I'd be driven to drink too...

Let's hear it for guns!

It's really getting dangerous in Los Angeles. The last two weeks we've seen so many random shootings I'm starting to lose track. I would say it's beginning to feel like Baghdad only that wouldn't be quite fair. The U.S. troop surge...

Read more Super Tuesday coverage on HuffPost

It is election day and I am, improbably, still on the fence. This is really not good. I know. As my Republican family would wearily tell you, it is also quite uncharacteristic. For most of my life I have had fierce opinions...

Before John Edwards said a single word in New Orleans about ending his bid for the presidency, before he set foot in an abandoned neighborhood in the lower Ninth Ward to talk about poverty, the same place he'd announced his candidacy 13 months before, the pundits were already...

Anyone who thinks John Edwards is a loser and should take his marbles and go back to North Carolina apparently was not at the Edwards' rally in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday.

Is this why the campaign played "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" during the pre-rally warm-up?

It seems...

I hate to spoil everyone's fun this week -- the relentless focus on Hillary's tears (were they a shameless ploy for sympathy or genuine?) and their role in her surprising New Hampshire victory. Or Bill's snarky comments likening Obama's uplifting vision to a "fairy tale." But isn't this a presidential...

It's too bad the White House isn't putting on a production of "A Christmas Carol" this season because Bush would have made the perfect Scrooge.

The issue barely made news, but last week Bush vetoed a bill that would have greatly expanded the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or...

I'm having trouble with Hillary.

It's not so much that she got rattled by her opponents in the last Democratic debate, or that she allowed her staff to do her dirty work with the "piling on" video they quickly displayed on her website. Yes, women still encounter sexism across...

Why do networks send national correspondents to California who apparently know nothing about the place? Or prefer to perpetuate stereotypes about those who live here that telegraph such an embarrassing level of ignorance?

I am speaking in particular here of CNN's Rick Sanchez. Last night, while watching CNN's...

The young men in wetsuits were only a few years older than my 17-year-old son. On this cool, gray afternoon in August they gathered on a white sand beach a few miles north of Camp Pendleton, mustering up their courage. None of them could surf. One couldn't even swim. His...

Here we go again.

Why is it always about women and their parenting, or alleged lack of it, that gets center stage in the tedious debate about kids and political campaigning? Where are the men in this equation? And why are women so sanctimonious about the choices other women make...

It's not easy being a mother. It's not easy working and raising a family. Anyone who says otherwise either has a full-time household staff or needs serious therapy. This afternoon, for instance, I have to pick up my daughter from school, drive my son to the doctor, figure out dinner,...

Our dear mayor must be taking a liking to me. Not ten minutes ago, he showed up in my humble LA neighborhood trailed by a pack of news cameras. Oh, Antonio! Why didn't you call and let me know you were coming? I would have slipped on something more fitting...

So now it's official. Our dear mayor has been having a longterm affair with a Telemundo reporter. And not just any reporter, but a 35-year-old hottie named Malitha Salinas who covered the 54-year-old Villaraigosa when she was still a political reporter. Talk about access. Way back in 2005, the mayor...

Last spring I saw a mother bury her 14 year old daughter. During the funeral service my 13 year old daughter sat next to me, tears sliding down her freckled cheeks. As I looked at her and squeezed her hand I couldn't help but think of that mother's grief, of...