There is just over a month to go until the presidential election, and across America, attention is now firmly fixed on the state of our economy. In key swing states, economic issues are now front and center. Many voters, including many women, who often take responsibility for managing their family finances, are wondering which candidate offers the best policies for their family, their town or city, and their state. But in my state, the way that each woman decides to vote could prove especially critical and indeed determinative.

Close your eyes. Relax. Take a deep breath in. Hold it. Now, let it out. Om. There, I just wanted to try to create a small moment of zen before I started talking about our economic mess. The one that has apparently caused my blood pressure to spike this week.

This afternoon Jack Turner and Jill Tubman over at Jack & Jill Politics have launched the Voter Suppression Wiki, a non-partisan

Janna Six from the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado shared with us some of the efforts to make the DNC (and The Big Tent) the greenest convention ever. From compostable flatware and smoothie cups to businessmen on bikes and an army of volunteers, the DNC benefited from an array of clever efforts to not just green the conference but to plant seeds for the future. Now to see if the RNC follows... Stay tuned!

On Monday, John McCain visited Pennsylvania, where he attended a meeting with small-business owners to discuss jobs and the economy. While his remarks on energy earned plenty of press coverage, his comments on strengthening small businesses, and thereby promoting future economic growth, were less noted. As such, I wanted to use this post to highlight some key aspects of John McCain’s plan to help them.

Last week, Liz Mair of the RNC guest-posted here at BlogHer, and asked what issues would be on readers’ minds as you head to the polls in November.

Are High Gas Prices Affecting Your Health and Wellness? With gas prices going up and up, many people are facing difficult choices when it comes to their health. From not being able to afford their medications, to buying less expensive (usually unhealthy) foods at the supermarket...They are being forced to make financial decisions that may be bad for their health. Last year I did a post about how a major medical crisis (such as cancer) could force a person to choose between lifesaving medications, and paying their mortgage.

Dieting and frugality are a lot alike. After all, when we diet, we eat less and when we live frugally, we live with less. With both, we abstain, we hold back, we do without, we make do. So they are alike, two peas, yes, in that pod called life. Right? Wrong?

With the 24/7 media coverage of the presidential campaign, Michelle Obama on The View and stories about what John McCain calls his wife, there's a news gorilla in the room we've been ignoring -- the Iraq War. Sure, we hear on the campaign trail that Barack Obama wants to bring the troops home and McCain, not so much. But the coverage of what's really going on in Iraq isn't making it onto the nightly news shows.

The election is only five months away; the economy is threatening to collapse any minute. It's currently about as stable as that chick George Clooney just dumped, and has the long-term reliability of a pair of $300 gladiator sandals. In other words, we're in trouble. So exactly which one of the current Presidential candidates is the man who will rescue us from certain doom? I sat down (in pajamas, on the phone, with a few other bloggers) with Frank Donatelli, deputy chairman of the McCain 2008 campaign, to hear why he thinks his candidate has the upper hand on economic policy.

John McCain held another in his series of question and answer calls with bloggers today and BlogHer was invited to join in (though I was unable to make it into the Q&A queue before time ran out).  The call came on the heels of his speech last night in Louisiana (video available at this link to Catherine Morgan at The Political Voices of Women and his media call this morning where, along with Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA) and his foreign policy and national security director Randy Scheunemann, McCain responded to Senator Barack Obama's earlier speech to  the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Today's blogger call confirmed that McCain is now campaigning against Obama and that national security and foreign policy will be key issues.

Oh the irony. After years of being told "I've never met anyone from Montana before!" my home state of fewer than one million people will have a high profile Tuesday when voters in Montana and South Dakota (with even fewer inhabitants) go to the polls to decide which Democratic nominee gets their combined 31 delegates.