Friday, November 11, 2011
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
YES WE DID
So long sad times
Go long bad times
We are rid of you at last
Howdy gay times
Cloudy gray times
You are now a thing of the past
Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
So let's sing a song of cheer again
Happy days are here again
Altogether shout it now
There's no one
Who can doubt it now
So let's tell the world about it nowHappy days are here again
Your cares and troubles are gone
There'll be no more from now on
From now on ...Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
So, Let's sing a song of cheer again
Happy timesHappy nights
Happy daysAre here again!
**Heroes
Michelle Malia and Sasha Obama
Joe, Jill and the Biden Clan
David Axelrod and Plouffe
The Netroots, yes Kossacks and other active bloggers
The 50 + million Americans who agreed with me and supported this candidate
American Democracy
It's good to say: President Obama...say it....proud and loud!
Thursday, October 16, 2008
The making of the next POTUS...
Last night, was the final of all debates. That part is finally over! Now we must remind ourselves that folks need to make it to the polls to vote for the new POTUS.
It's been a long time. From the cold day in Illinois in February 2007, to now with the election almost two weeks away. Time flies. Yet maturity is part of time and if you followed Barack Obama from February of last year to today you will note the level of maturity that shaped Barack Obama, no longer the junior Senator from Illinois, through the vigor of debate, discussion and discourse for the past two years Barack Obama is READY to be the President of the United States.
It's not over, so there is still work to do. We must vote! But as we do so we need to keep in mind that more independent and even Republican leaning newspapers are endorsing Obama. Obama is at least 10 points ahead in every poll and if you are worried about the Bradley effect (subtract 4) but let me put into your head the Obama effect: men and women who say that they will vote for McPlain, yet in the privacy of the booth, vote Obama. Most economists, foriegn policy experts and global leaders have endorsed Obama while Republicans are jumping off the McCain/Palin train by the numbers for they see it crashing ahead. It looks good, but we cannot sit comfortably until Wednesday Nov. 5 2008 (I already have the day off).
As I reflect back, and think about how folks can support McCain and Palin, I decided to think about why I couldn't vote for that ticket. I think the real problem with the ticket is twofold:
1) There has not been a concrete plan proposed by the Republicans, and when there is one it does not stay on the table for a long period of time. John McCain has tried and said everything, so much so he has touted the Socialist line of government helping out Wall/Main Streets all the while proposing Republican initiatives that give back to the rich people (i.e. keeping Bush's tax cuts and cutting capital gains taxes when there is only a few companies making gains ???). Those two are polar opposites, thus impossible to legislate. So stick to one, and leave it there OR be seen as erratic....sounds familiar.
2) Sarah Palin: Last night John McCain stated that he repudiated all the hateful things said about Barack during Mc/Plain rallies. BUT WAIT! HE HAS YET TO REPUDIATE WHAT HIS OWN RUNNING MATE STARTED, YOU KNOW, THE WHOLE "PALLING AROUND WITH TERRORIST" COMMENT. He ignored it when asked last night and he looked foolish for doing so. Palin is a cancer on the McCain ticket--her know-nothing populism is exactly what we DON'T need. For the "know-nothing" party check out Wikipedia, for that is what party i think she is...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_nothing_party
Nevertheless, we need people who know what they are talking about, and if McCain isn't quite sure, how can we be sure that Palin is.
Finally, and less subtly but it needs to be pointed out!
Last night, John McCain reminded women their place in American society. In another out of touch moment that will not be addressed in the mainstream media, McCain stated that he was categorically against Roe v. Wade even if the mother's health is at risk. YES HE DID. Look at the tape, he puts air quotes when he says "health" and states that is a dubious claim made by pro-abortion proponents. Woman are baby making machines in the eyes of the Republican candidate. Holy 1885! Holy 1919! Holy 1950s! Holy...
1) I don't know anyone (as suggested by Barack last night) that is pro-abortion. I do not know anyone going up to people saying, "pregnant? get an abortion!" No, what I do see is folks having a tough decision on whether or not to keep a child. A private decision that has nothing to do with the government. It is about choice NOT PRO.
2) This "decision" was granted to Sarah Palin's daughter, yet it should not be a choice for the rest of America? Remember, the campaign stated that the Palin's were "proud of their daughter's decision"...DECISION implies CHOICE.
3) To strip women's right of control over OUR bodies is problematic on so many levels but to go out and state that women should not have the decision or choice, is abominable! It shows how McCain, himself, is a man from another era, IT PROVES HE DOES NOT HAVE A CLUE!
Overturning Roe v. Wade is a disastrous idea, and most Americans do not want to see it overturned, they would rather have more sex education and more information out there to encourage women to keep their babies--as opposed to misinformation and women going to butchers to abort a baby in a backstreet alley and in unsanitary conditions. No one is pro-abortion; we are just pro-choice and it should be women who shape this discourse (that's why I did not rant on Palin's ridiculousness on the issue)--not men!
Agency=decision=control=self
The same decision made by the Vice Presidential nominee's underage and unwed daughter, should be granted to all women, even those of age and married.
Congrats Bar, you handled it well! Last night showed, once again, what dangers lie behind a McCain/Palin administration....
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Undeniable--"that one" won!
There was a sense of something in the air in Nashville tonight. Something more than just a debate.
It was a settling sense of "the real." A sense that in our future, we are going to have a leader in the White House who will reshape the social climate of America, help quell the tensions of the unstable global economy, be a leader on tough issues by studying them, consulting with all sides, which will consequently lead to bridging the divisions that are unhealthy for any Democracy. Democracy in America! This sense is grounded in aplomb, class, intelligence, patience and Presidential.
President Obama, for all the research seems to point to AND over 95% of the world agrees, would restore confidence in America, what it stands for and how it should lead in the future. He will bring a breath of fresh air into the West Wing--education is a bonus--but he brings so much more to the table. One only needs to watch the debate to see, just by appearance, Barack Obama is a lobbyist not for greedy corporations who have robbed the pocket of the masses to pad the pocket of the richest few; but a lobbyist for the common person, like me, like you, like most Americans in this land.
Obama exudes calm, when rocky waters flow. Obama's presence is pure class--respectful, thoughtful and balanced. He remains grounded in his beliefs, ideas and initiatives that will bring America out of a Bush/Cheney induced slumber and age of apathy. In essence we are asking this man to take the world on his shoulders and point us all toward the right direction headed for the future.
Obama very well may be Atlas, but unlike the capitalist objectivists (yes, my beloved Randians) who led this economy into a ditch suggest he should do, he will not--SHRUG. He will lead....
In other words, "that one," you know....HIM...has not only my support but the support of the majority people in this WORLD! (Every country polled has supported Obama, the closest McCain got was in South Africa 61% Obama 26% McCain--hmmmm )
"That one" and "Whats-its-name" 08
A Positive Message for Once: The Nice Guy at the Airport
From all that I read on the web, this is a true story and has been carried throughout Europe, via press. However, it is rarely reported here in the states.
My short:
A woman with no money goes to the airport only to find out she had to pay 100 dollars to have her baggage shipped with her. The woman was stressed and despaired, for she had no one else to turn to and she was to fly to meet her husband in Norway.
A young man walks by and hands her the hundred dollars needed to pay for the luggage. She profusely thanked the man and promised she would pay him back. She asked for his name and address so she could send the money from Norway. His name:
Barack Obama
This happened in 1988, right before Obama attended Harvard Law, and while he was working with the urban poor in Chicago. He himself, did not have much then AND 100 dollars in 1988 is probably like $500 in today's economy!
Finally, the anti-smear, a nice guy!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/5/183340/309/352/621029
Monday, October 6, 2008
~~~~Turn back the clock, turn on the lava lamp and let's go back for a GROOVY ride in history~~~~~
In the Fall of 1992, I had just turned 18 years old. I was as apathetic as most children of baby boomers, searching for an identity while listening to Pearl Jam's "Black" on auto play on my brand new Maize and Blue Sony Discman (yeah, I had it all)! Luckily, for the "who gives a shit" and "me me me" attitude that was so characteristic of my X generation, my parents were fortunate enough to pour money and go into debt in order for me to have the privilege of an elite education. It was that year, and within my own Michigan experience, I became politicized.
Bill Clinton came to A2 that Fall. I was following some friends to the gallery near the Bell Tower in front of Horace Rackham, and was given a sign and pushed to the back of the growing mob. Understanding that I was merely a Freshman, yet knowing that "I was different," I waited, smoked a few cigarettes and stood accepting whatever was yet to come. I had lost my friends, which seems somewhat like a misnomer for I cannot remember who these friends were and I am sure I have lost touch in the 16 years since. I looked at my sign, was past a button and the roar began.
That day I "Rocked the Vote" and registered to become a habitual voter and (even still) continual supporter of former President William Jefferson Clinton. I have voted in every election since.
In 1964, William "Bill" Ayers, now infamous for the "domestic terrorist" rhetoric of the McCain/Palin folks, walked into the same elite institution that I would attend nearly 600 hundred miles and 28 years later. He came from the Midwest, so he probably had a head start on me with the whole Midwest "culture shock" thing, for I was a lot more New Jersey in 1992 than I purport to be in 2008. Nevertheless, young Ayers was politicized by his university environment in beautiful Southeast Michigan as well.
In the early 1960s, Ann Arbor, in conjunction with students and faculty, became a hotbed for antiwar and pro-civil rights activity. As many know, my undergraduate school founded many radical student organizations, most famously SDS--Students for Democratic Society. These (mostly white elite) students, and the movement that would sweep over elite and not-elite campuses throughout the decade, had awoken from a slumber produced by a myth of social homogeneity and Cold War induced conformity. Students, in A2 and elsewhere, were awaken by the sounds of faculty members from the New Left (some not much older than their students), teachers who thought outside the box of the conformist climate and risked the Scarlet "C" of Communist to interject oppositional thought into the young naive mind of "Greatest Generation" postwar youth. The Boomers.
A little known fact in circles outside of my academic ones, for I hang in many, is that Michigan was the first school to lead a protest against the escalation in Vietnam. Well before violent protests would rage on and off campus throughout the United States, yet shortly after Lyndon Baines Johnson raised the troops in Vietnam to over 300,000, daring university faculty, along with their virulent Wolverine student cohorts hosted the first teach-in which, in 1965, would spark a movement that continued for years from Columbia in New York to the University of Washington in Seattle. Since the Board of Regents and the University of Michigan administration would not let faculty teach about the implications of troop escalation or "surge" during classroom hours (oh boy what a different pedagogical climate it was), the teachers and students held special classes that began early in the evening and continued throughout the evening into the morning March 24-25 1965. It inspired the many students and future activists who stayed awake to learn about the Southeast Asian region that many had not known existed before the large escalation earlier that year.
This was the environment of a young sophomore Bill Ayers. As his education continued, protests became more prevalent, the war escalated into a quagmire and a very poorly executed foreign policy undercut many gains that were made on the social landscape during the era, specifically the dismantling of Jim Crow by the Civil Righters and the same dammed government that knotted the tangled web known as the Vietnam War. By 1968, MLK, the man of peace, and RFK, the candidate of peace, were brutally murdered in the media spotlight. The incumbent LBJ, who could have ran again, had to reject his party's nomination in disgrace thus inaugurating the era of the Silent Majority, the enigma of Richard Nixon, and the reprieve of the Cold War/ say nothing social and political climate of the mainstream.
By that time, some of the educated youth, including 21 year old Ayers and his soon to be wife Bernadine Dohrn decided they could not support a system that continued an abominable war which by that time had led to widespread genocide in the region, specifically in Cambodia when the US under Nixon decided to bomb that nation which ignited the terroristic Pol Pot regime, AND a system that would send in National Guardsmen to shoot at protesting students on the campus of Kent State University, prompting Neil Young to sing "...four dead in O-H-I-O."
Ayers, Dohrn and others decided to go underground. They were to make a statement by disrupting the system from within and attempt to unleash a campaign of attacks as a testament of protest that was fostered by years of angst and voicelessness, empowered by beliefs in their country and the rejection of the wayward path it was following. With deplorable tactics, more unsuccessful than successful, they attempted to uproot a system that in their eyes (and many others who were not as extreme) was undermining persons of color throughout the world in the name of stopping the spread of communism in Third World countries. Meanwhile, many others felt they were living in an America that was very much like a Third World country: dictated to and poor.
Dohrn and Ayers' Weather Underground founded in the late 1960s would dissolve by 1977. Members, disillusioned, fell into doldrum disco sounds of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive."
Whether or not the Weathermen and women were successful is up to debate (my advisor wrote a fantastic book on the subject) yet what is known is that many of its members have become valuable members of their societies and turned their passion for equality inward and help organize communities and/or use their education to teach and assist others, mostly those who are not as privilege as them (or myself) to go to an elite institution like The University of Michigan. Bill Ayers would end up doing both.
In the late 1990s, Ayers held an event for a young community organizing lawyer who was making inroads in the urban poor community in troubled Chicago. It was a coffee function to gain donations for the young 30-something Barack Obama and his run for the Illinois Senate. At that time, young Obama did not know about Ayers' history as the co-founder of the Weather Underground nor what the implications of meeting Ayers would bring him many years later in his run for the most powerful government position in the world. Reasons could range from Obama was 2 when Ayers traveled to Ann Arbor (by the time Ayers and Obama met, even I had graduated Michigan) from the fact that when Obama got involved in Chicago community organizing and politics, the Weather Underground as a movement was filed in the boxes of the past, it's relevance was as it's name implied.
In short, Obama-Ayers "palling" around is pale-in comparison to some actual palling around with nefarious figures that range from Charles Keating and racist John K. Singlaub to the secessionist organization the "first Dude" belonged to until 2002 and the witch hunting/exorcising preacher who blessed the Governor this summer. In essence, the real pals of John McCain and Sarah Palin have not been too compliant and friendly to the American government and system, similar to if not worse than, William Ayers from 1968-1977; 40 to 30 years ago.
For the sake of further contextualization, Bill Ayers entered Michigan 10 years before I was born. I graduated Michigan twenty years after the Weathermen ceased to exist. Barack Obama was eight years old when the organizations faded into the past...
The point, the historical distance is too great for this weak blow to stick, but to point out the Obama-Ayers meager connection as blatantly as Sarah Palin has done the past few days shows how low the Republicans are willing to go; especially on a day when the stock market crashed (again) to it's lowest number in over 4 years.
But this is about history. And going back to the era I became politicized in the early 1990s, that fall day shortly after my 18th birthday, I recognize that I did not have a similar sense of immediacy and frustration in my country's worldview and viewed world that Ayers and his colleagues had thirty years prior. My alma-mater has not changed. It still politicizes it's youth. The times were just different. Yet, I share this story to suggest that even I am tangentially tied to Bill Ayers, by Wolverine and activist blood, and if you call that "palling around" so be it.
But it does make me wonder what shaking some one's hand would imply.
Nonetheless, this is an attempt to point to how easy we all can be connected by history; however, six degrees of Kevin Bacon or Dick Cheney really doesn't matter in the end. It is the individuals actions of the past that can come back to haunt us personally, for we cannot carry the past of each person we meet when we barely can handle our own personal past. What's fair game for McCain, should be fair game for us all, and with this economy, the Keating 5 connection sticks much better to a former radical who lives nearby...
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Happy Monday!
Thanks to openthread from Daily Kos, I had to share because it seemed so true.
You can find Obama/Biden's October Surprise at:
http://www.keatingeconomics.com/
And Sarah, thanks for bringing up Obama's ties to a radical from the 1960s in Nevada (normally a safe "red" state) on Sunday. Yeah, Bill Ayers a madman student radical; so were some of my family members, mentors and colleagues...their in the 60s now, ya know aandd, um, they don't live in the past and have moved on. That's so like BEFORE I WAS BORN!
The irony here, Madame Govenour, you stated the other night, and I quote, "We can't look to the past to determine our future"
OKAY that's not a direct quote but it was something I think you tried to say between a doggone it and **wink ** So, by breaking open the can of the past and "guilt by association" tactic, let's go there:
We could start with your own husband's association with the Alaskan Succession Party (AP). Then we could discuss your mission from God and the demons and witches that were lifted from your shoulders by a pastor at your church earlier this year (Viral, MSNBC). What about the 17,000 dollars you had your tax payers pay for you to stay at home? Or even, what about the lie you told the other night about divestment in Sudan; you said you supported a plan for Alaska to stop sending millions to the genocidal Sudanese government on Thursday, HOWEVER, you stopped the bi-partisan bill in the Alaskan house -- YOU TAKE OWNERSHIP OF ISSUES BROUGHT TO YOUR TABLE THAT YOU YOURSELF SQUASH -- that in OUR America is LYING DURING A DEBATE! (ABC news)
Nevertheless, how 'bout your co-Maverick: the affair (yes, while McCain was married) with a female lobbyist is cited as foreign policy experience. Maverick McCain, you met your current wife, while married, at a bar and left your wife for her (Washington Post). You have been linked to criminal lobbyists throughout your career, yet you want to kill earmarks that make sure our bridges and tunnels are safe (McCain). You have supported President Bush between 80-90% of the time which is pretty much ALL THE TIME (except in campaign finance reform and with folks losing jobs and homes, what common "Jan Kegger" gives a frack.) And, oh yes, the um dagnabit K-E-A-T-I-N-G F-I-V-E scandal that made you a fortune and cost the American people millions. And all this, Sir, happened during my lifetime, unlike Bill Ayers. And these are things done by the candidate, not someone, somewhat and tangentially associated with one.
Guys, you ran yourself into this one. Whomever is advising you, really should think about applying to McDonald's after this campaign is over, they are hiring and they give great benefits. And think of all you can learn!
In an economy like this and in "wars" on two fronts, um...well....ya kNow, we can play this card too and from this vantage point it looks tremendously more damaging...