The future is always waiting for us, despite our missteps and fears.
Although many have predicted a disastrous road ahead (economic and social cataclysms), in this administration I see new hope -- not a wild misguided sense of urgency and false alarms, but deliberate steps towards progress and a brighter future.
There is a new willingness to set aside the old failed ways, and face obstacles with every means available. It is a gathering of the nation's talent and its people under one sky, with common purpose, facing in one direction ... forward.
It reminds me of the Kennedy era -- boundless determination in pursuit of seemingly impossible but worthy goals -- like reaching for the moon, and the wealth of technology and "boundary breaking" that effort rewarded us.
My wife and I have done our part and will continue to do more. I spent 24 years in the military making America safer for our children, and now spend my days teaching at-risk children in public schools. My wife has been a nurse in critical care centers, sick wards, and on medical hotlines most of her adult life.
Now we look forward to the Obama Presidency doing its part to prove our hopes and our trust were justified. With decisive leadership and the support of the American people we cannot fail -- because we must not.
For years I've been wondering what if ...
What if we had the means to carry on the legacy of John F Kennedy?
What if we had a President who cared passionately about the Constitution and Bill of Rights?
What if we had a President who recognized, as Kennedy did, that we must never negotiate out of fear, but should never fear to negotiate?
What if we had a President who led not with fear and surrounded by secrecy, but with trust and the belief that our finest hour is still ahead of us?
What if we had a leader who counted everyone his equal but no man his superior?
What if we had someone to complete that journey Martin Luther King began so nobly, who could make the barriers of color crumble?
What if ... we had a man like Barack Obama to lead us?
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkinaugural.htm
Approximately 9 minutes into the speech he said: "So let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate."
JFK managed to save the world through intelligent and courageous diplomacy. He did not resort to power as a first measure, and he succeeded without the tragedy or loss of life that a war-prone President would doubtless instigate.
Real People aren't the people you see on TV
Curly Joe hated the way Three Stooges fans believed his head was unbreakable. In restaurants and public places they smashed plates and other objects on his head.
Basketball player Charles Barkley refused to be a role model for young kids. When asked whether his wild ways might inappropriately influence our youth, he insisted he has no obligation to act as anyone but himself in private life.
Benny Hill, the outrageous British comic, was an extreme introvert. Cher and Tom Hanks are also introverts. On screen they seem like the most outgoing people you've never met.
Jack Benny, the stingiest man alive, far different in real life; he was a generous man who donated a great deal of money to his home town.
Oh yes, the biggest reality-versus-fiction example of them all. George Bush and his gang seem caring, altruistic, devoted caretakers of the public good ... on television.
Privately they are avaricious, arrogant, self-serving, cold-blooded. They care nothing about the rule of law, except when it works in their favor. Care nothing about the average American, except when someone rebels against their tyranny. Care nothing about privacy, except their own, which is guarded by every means possible.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/palin/rally.asp#photo7
Look at the photos.
snopes.com: Alaska Women Reject Palin Rally
Photographs show women at an anti-Palin rally held in Anchorage, Alaska.
The Alaska Women Reject Palin rally was to be held outside on the
lawn in front of the Loussac Library in midtown Anchorage. Home made
signs were encouraged, and the idea was to make a statement that
The problem is that banks are afraid of people defaulting on mortgages.
The Feds already guarantee some mortgages through the Veteran's Adminstration and FHA with great success, so why not extend that program? With $700 Billion the Feds could guarantee all mortgages under about $150k for six months, with an option to extend the program to a year.
That would eliminate the bank's fears, instantly turn toxic mortgages to safe ones, and let people stay in their homes. It's much simpler than figuring out what everyone's home is worth and buying all the shaky mortgages out there. Buying the mortgages means the government would be stuck with the properties. It's much cheaper with little risk to the taxpayers.
As long as we're paying the mortgage bill anyway, why not pay it on behalf of the citizens who are paying the taxes. Banks and mortgage agencies don't need to benefit from their predatory practices. Let's help Joe America for a change, instead of the wealthy institutions.
As long as the mortages are backed on paper by the government, the banks have no excuse to freeze the nation's capital. Everyone around the financial world can breathe a sigh of relief.
Every effort must be made to keep families in their homes while they look for work, resell their home, or make other arrangements with the property. One provision of the Federal deal must guarantee no covered home will be foreclosed on during the terms of Federal protection. We don't want countless Americans made homeless, their kids dropping out of school, crime in their neighborhoods to rise, valuable real estate to slide into broken down abandoned properties.
Saving families from being evicted would win a lot of loyalty for the bill's backers.
A second condition of the backing would protect home buyers caught above the arbitrary $150k line. Bankers could not foreclose on any home, or demand full payment of the amount above $150k, during the term of Federal protection.
30 Sep 2008
Radio description of Palin's activities prior to the November 4th election
She's running for VP with Senator John McCain
Palin is already following in the footsteps of George Bush, abusing her powers, lying to the public to make her ethical failures seem like strengths, using her office to block government investigations into her wrongdoings, hiding personal information from the public that public law requires she provide.
Palin is the only candidate who hasn't released her tax information to the public. She promised to provide it twice before, but is again postponing the release date, till after the televised debates.
During the ongoing government investigation into charges Palin abused her powers, tried to fire the police chief because he dumped her sister, ten (10) witnesses were ordered by the courts to testify. Palin's office defied the courts, shielded witnesses and said they don't have to appear. Palin is exactly like Bush, who claimed his staffers can ignore Congressional subpoenas.
Palin is being kept in a protective bubble, like George Bush during his campaigns. Just as the White House press corps is now hand-picked to keep out reporters who confront him with hard questions, reporters are being kept away from Palin on the campaign trail.
Palin is making very rare public appearances, one a day or fewer. And reporters complain they aren't even allowed within shouting distance (they can't even yell questions at her). Palin claims in her speeches she is out there to "get our message out to everyone" but no one is allowed to ask about the message.
When making public appearances, Palin isn't even giving access to local reporters at the events she stages. Her speeches are all for political show.
While giving these carefully choreographed public speeches, she keeps recycling the highly successful speech someone wrote for her at the Republican convention. Nothing new has been added, but two very big pieces are missing:
(1) She no longer brags about stopping the "bridge to nowhere" - that pork barrel project her administration used to get its hands on federal funds - a $100 million waste of tax money. Palin quit bragging about stopping the project because it is now commonly known she supported the bridge until Congress and the national media made a stink about it for months.
(2) She no longer brags about putting the former Governor's plane on e-bay. It turns out no one bought the plane, so she gave it to one of her campaign contributors as a gift.
This doesn't mean Palin has given up on grabbing federal money for her state and business cronies. She managed to move forward with a $40 billion natural gas pipeline that would go through Alaska. That's a ton of construction money.
That protective bubble keeps the public from seeing how completely unprepared she is to run this country. It even shields her during staged events, those made up photo ops to convince people how competent she is. When Palin was rushed into a United Nations photo op, to counter her pathetic lack of exposure to foreign affairs, the media was only allowed 29 seconds to see her talking to a foreign head of state! The only ones allowed in the room were photographers to make that photo op happen, and a news producer for CNN. No reporters were allowed.
Self-sacrifice vs. self-serving
It is still hard for me to believe voters who supported Bush in the early days still stand by him. They seem to have a hard time admitting what a tragic mistake it was to hand power over to a self-serving group of insiders such as Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al.
Until Mr. Obama came along I thought we'd never again see the likes of a man determined to advance the state of humankind, who actually believed in liberty as a right, in sacrifice as a privilege.
Even as a young boy I recognized those things in JFK. Even as a child I knew he believed in what a united people can achieve when they are far-sighted and care about the future. The sitting President's administration cares about profit today, not the world tomorrow, in the exercise of power, not the power of a good purpose.
I changed from independent to Democrat because of what I believe I see in Mr. Obama. I know he can make a difference. The administration of Mr. Bush has shown me nothing but disappointment, and what a self-serving cabal can do for themselves.
I served 24 years in the military, 20 of those doing intelligence work, spying on the global threat. I was in constant touch with major info sources across the spectrum, and was responsible much of the time for the accuracy of our own organization's reporting. The entire intelligence community insisted that Iraq was no threat to the U.S. but the White House didn't want that answer. They lied to the American people about Iraq posing a danger, as an excuse to invade.
Worse yet, the military sent 50,000 body bags to the region prior to the invasion, in case it got that bad. The White House knew this was part of the preparations for war, but was undeterred. The smell of oil profits was too great. A year before the "last resort" invasion of Iraq, as Bush referred to it, VP Cheney made sure his own company would share in the profiteering, by handing them a contract to rebuild Iraq after the invasion came.
Rumsfeld himself made certain Iraq had its WMDs in the first place, and after we changed partners we made sure Iraq was devoid of such weapons. Powell himself testified to the U.N. a year before the invasion we had eliminated the Iraqi threat. It must have been galling for him to have to do an about face, especially when he knew it to be false.
Excerpt from a Truth Out article of 4 years ago ... it explains how simple it can be for a determined Republican party to rig the election after the votes are tallied, but before they are made public. I remember at the time, the President of Diebold held a fund raiser for Bush, and was quoted at that event as saying, "our job is to deliver the votes to George Bush."
------
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110804Z.shtml
Saturday 06 November 2004
"It was practice for a national effort," Fisher told me.
The State of Florida, for example, publishes a county-by-county record of votes cast and people registered to vote by party affiliation. Net denizen Kathy Dopp compiled the official state information into a table, available at http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm, and noticed something startling.
In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry.
In Dixie County, with 4,988 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush ...
The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in the counties where optical scanners were used. Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went 58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush.
Those exit poll results have been a problem for reporters ever since Election Day.
Election night, I'd been doing live election coverage for WDEV, one of the radio stations that carries my syndicated show, and, just after midnight, during the 12:20 a.m. Associated Press Radio News feed, I was startled to hear the reporter detail how Karen Hughes had earlier sat George W. Bush down to inform him that he'd lost the election. The exit polls were clear: Kerry was winning in a landslide. "Bush took the news stoically," noted the AP report.
But then the computers reported something different. In several pivotal states.
Conservatives see a conspiracy here: They think the exit polls were rigged.
Dick Morris, the infamous political consultant to the first Clinton campaign who became a Republican consultant and Fox News regular, wrote an article for The Hill, the publication read by every political junkie in Washington, DC, in which he made a couple of brilliant points.
"Exit Polls are almost never wrong," Morris wrote. "They eliminate the two major potential fallacies in survey research by correctly separating actual voters from those who pretend they will cast ballots but never do and by substituting actual observation for guesswork in judging the relative turnout of different parts of the state."
He added: "So, according to ABC-TVs exit polls, for example, Kerry was slated to carry Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Iowa, all of which Bush carried. The only swing state the network had going to Bush was West Virginia, which the president won by 10 points."
Yet a few hours after the exit polls were showing a clear Kerry sweep, as the computerized vote numbers began to come in from the various states the election was called for Bush.
How could this happen?
On the CNBC TV show "Topic A With Tina Brown," several months ago, Howard Dean had filled in for Tina Brown as guest host. His guest was Bev Harris, the Seattle grandmother who started www.blackboxvoting.org from her living room. Bev pointed out that regardless of how votes were tabulated (other than hand counts, only done in odd places like small towns in Vermont), the real "counting" is done by computers. Be they Diebold Opti-Scan machines, which read paper ballots filled in by pencil or ink in the voter's hand, or the scanners that read punch cards, or the machines that simply record a touch of the screen, in all cases the final tally is sent to a "central tabulator" machine.
That central tabulator computer is a Windows-based PC.
"In a voting system," Harris explained to Dean on national television, "you have all the different voting machines at all the different polling places, sometimes, as in a county like mine, there's a thousand polling places in a single county. All those machines feed into the one machine so it can add up all the votes. So, of course, if you were going to do something you shouldn't to a voting machine, would it be more convenient to do it to each of the 4000 machines, or just come in here and deal with all of them at once?"
Dean nodded in rhetorical agreement, and Harris continued. "What surprises people is that the central tabulator is just a PC, like what you and I use. It's just a regular computer."
"So," Dean said, "anybody who can hack into a PC can hack into a central tabulator?"
Harris nodded affirmation, and pointed out how Diebold uses a program called GEMS, which fills the screen of the PC and effectively turns it into the central tabulator system. "This is the official program that the County Supervisor sees," she said, pointing to a PC that was sitting between them loaded with Diebold's software.
Bev then had Dean open the GEMS program to see the results of a test election. They went to the screen titled "Election Summary Report" and waited a moment while the PC "adds up all the votes from all the various precincts," and then saw that in this faux election Howard Dean had 1000 votes, Lex Luthor had 500, and Tiger Woods had none. Dean was winning.
"Of course, you can't tamper with this software," Harris noted. Diebold wrote a pretty good program.
But, it's running on a Windows PC.
So Harris had Dean close the Diebold GEMS software, go back to the normal Windows PC desktop, click on the "My Computer" icon, choose "Local Disk C:," open the folder titled GEMS, and open the sub-folder "LocalDB" which, Harris noted, "stands for local database, that's where they keep the votes." Harris then had Dean double-click on a file in that folder titled "Central Tabulator Votes," which caused the PC to open the vote count in a database program like Excel.
In the "Sum of the Candidates" row of numbers, she found that in one precinct Dean had received 800 votes and Lex Luthor had gotten 400.
"Let's just flip those," Harris said, as Dean cut and pasted the numbers from one cell into the other. "And," she added magnanimously, "let's give 100 votes to Tiger."
They closed the database, went back into the official GEMS software "the legitimate way, you're the county supervisor and you're checking on the progress of your election."
As the screen displayed the official voter tabulation, Harris said, "And you can see now that Howard Dean has only 500 votes, Lex Luthor has 900, and Tiger Woods has 100." Dean, the winner, was now the loser.
Harris sat up a bit straighter, smiled, and said, "We just edited an election, and it took us 90 seconds."
On live national television. (You can see the clip on www.votergate.tv.) And they had left no tracks whatsoever, Harris said, noting that it would be nearly impossible for the election software - or a County election official - to know that the vote database had been altered.
Which brings us back to Morris and those pesky exit polls that had Karen Hughes telling George W. Bush that he'd lost the election in a landslide.
Morris's conspiracy theory is that the exit polls "were sabotage" to cause people in the western states to not bother voting for Bush, since the networks would call the election based on the exit polls for Kerry. But the networks didn't do that, and had never intended to.
According to congressional candidate Fisher, it makes far more sense that the exit polls were right - they weren't done on Diebold PCs - and that the vote itself was hacked.
And not only for the presidential candidate - Jeff Fisher thinks this hit him and pretty much every other Democratic candidate for national office in the most-hacked swing states.
So far, the only national "mainstream" media to come close to this story was Keith Olbermann on his show Friday night, November 5th, when he noted that it was curious that all the voting machine irregularities so far uncovered seem to favor Bush. In the meantime, the Washington Post and other media are now going through single-bullet-theory-like contortions to explain how the exit polls had failed.
But I agree with Fox's Dick Morris on this one, at least in large part. Wrapping up his story for The Hill, Morris wrote in his final paragraph, "This was no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across the board as they were on election night. I suspect foul play."
From: Ron Carpenter
24 years Air Force (4 in munitions - 20 doing intelligence work)
2 years Compaq Computers
4 years teaching at-risk students (gang members & drug users)
Stepdad married 22 years
... and changing from Independent to Democrat
McCain is trying hard to scrape Bush off his shoe.
I've thought of a way to make that impossible. A way to make sure everyone smells what McCain's been stepping in the last 8 years.
It's a new slogan to use before and after speeches, on bumper stickers, at gatherings, and on podiums and television backdrops.
It may unite and energize an audience, and it's a strong clear message for public speaking. It's sheer simplicity will make it an effective message and fund raiser.
It looks like this:
UV_XY
NO MORE W's
It is the strongest possible rallying cry for loyal Democrats and undecided Independents. It says in a simple way get rid of the "W" (Bush and his follow-ons).
(1) Everyone recognizes the oval office monkey by his nickname "dubyah" or "W".
(2) Every Republican ran out to buy "W" bumper stickers.
(3) Every loyal Democrat might use the "UV_XY" sign and slogan. People would see it on bumper
stickers on every highway and every parking lot in America, on front lawns, and tee-shirts.
(4) From now on, energize people with the simple chant "U-V-X-Y" and "NO MORE W's".
It is memorable and to the point, like Mr. Obama himself.
As a slogan it exposes the Republicans' biggest weakness: that link between Bush and McCain. They are doing everything they can to break that link before November, but this tactic will forge it into an unbreakable chain.
Republicans didn't even want "W" at the convention. The hurricane was just a flimsy excuse for his absence.
Mr. Bush ... the man who stayed to watch the Olympics when war broke out between Russia and Georgia ... the man who kept reading a nursery book to school kids after he heard the twin towers were destroyed ... the man who did nothing about Katrina for days ... the man who vacationed at his ranch every time the world went to heck ... that same Bush pretended a hurricane was keeping him busy.
Don't allow the Republican and Bush track record to slip into the background!
Every television backdrop should be showing "UV_XY" and NO MORE W's. Every speech should start with the "UVXY" chant and high spirits. Every car driven by every Democrat should proclaim the days of George Bush and his kind are over .
"U-V-X-Y" and "NO MORE W's" would also refocus the campaign on McCain and away from that awful woman Palin. It would reinforce in every listener's mind, Independent or Democrat or other, that McCain is just another Bush.
And one more thing. In the 2000 election Bush was relentless claiming he'll be a better President than John MCCain. With Bush's record, what does that say about McCain?
----------
There's been a lot of talk about change in this Presidential race. Some of it real, and some of it just talk.
I do admit the Republican party has made some very real changes.
For instance, after the Democratic party brought a woman so close to the White House, the Republican party finally brought one into the picture.
After the Democratic party demanded we consider other options in Iraq, the Republican party also began talks about ending the war ... a war which has lasted nearly 2 years longer than World War II.
After the Democratic party talked about curbing the abusive profit-taking of big oil, the Republican party did eventually admit something needed to be done.
And after the Democratic party talked for years about the need for major changes in the way the White House does business, the Republican party dropped its long held mantra "stay the course" and began calling itself "the party of change."
Oh they've made changes all right. The trouble I see is that they only do it when they're backed into a corner. When the majority of Americans are suffering and an election is coming.
And you can't really talk about majorities without talking about minorities.
Remember we are all Americans. We are not part rich and part poor, part black and part white, part Hispanic and part Asian. We are the people , every last one of us. Your government shouldn't pick and choose who gets all the benefits, who gets immediate attention after a hurricane and who doesn't, who gets laws passed for their personal benefit and who does not.
But the Republican party doesn't seem to see it that way. In this great democratic process of electing the next President, the Democratic convention floor was a cross-section of all Americans ... the Republican convention was a different story.
The Democratic party has long held the doors open to minorities, to Hispanics and the young and women and African-Americans and others ... in short to all Americans ... but the Republican party is slow to accept these differences.
This year a quarter (24%) of the Democratic delegates were African-American. On the Republican side, the number was less than 2%.
At the Democratic convention, almost half (44%) of delegates were the minorities of this country. Twelve percent (12%) of them were Hispanic ... at the Republican convention that number was a mere 5%.
It seems to me that if the Republican party is reluctant to lead the country towards real equality and opportunity for everyone, the Democratic party is more than willing!
The Republican convention this year did have more women delegates than in the past, and one woman even made it onto the ticket. But the Republicans had only a handful of African-American delegates, of handicapped, Hispanic or Asian, or young people ...
... and certainly no one they think of as undesirable ... or who dares to challenge the party line.
Republican gatherings have frequently been preceded by the signing of loyalty oaths ... and party loyalty, not competence, has been the chief requirement for Republican appointees to government positions.
For women in the Republican party things look pretty good right now ... not so good for others. But I suppose if you're only going to talk about change you don't need to go into it with your heart and soul.
I guess what I'm saying is that when you talk about leading the way ... making America a fair and free land for all Americans ... you have to actually do it ... to show it ... you have to mean it .
I often wonder what must be going through the minds of voters.
When John McCain's economic advisor called us a nation of whiners, did voters think perhaps the Republican controlled White House, Congress, and Supreme Court have given them plenty to whine about?
And what must the more open-minded voters think of the Republican way of viewing the world today?
A frequent Republican goal seems to be amassing personal wealth. They rub the shoulders of big oil and wall street firms and major banks. John McCain even had a billionaire speak for him at the convention. The speaker mentioned how hard it is to get by in America today, with the high price of gas and food and everyday necessities.
By the way, that speaker really opened my eyes. I can now say in all honesty that I'm no longer surprised the Republican candidate doesn't know how many houses he owns ... or the difference between millionaires and the struggling middle class. People of enormous wealth, though they may be very good people, live in a different world from the rest of us.
... We didn't have a billionaire guest speaker at our convention because, quite frankly, they understand the problems of the average American. They are much more familiar with Republican support of big business.
Another conservative political mantra is a free market economy. The Republican party still seems to believe the more money you put into the hands of the wealthy, the better off everyone will be. It's that trickle down theory they've chanted since the days of Ronald Reagan.
Yet when John McCain's economic advisor, Mr. Graham, threw away many of the restrictions on profit-motivated banks earlier this year, the economy took a nose dive and millions of investors were hurt.
This is not to say that all major U.S. companies are interested only in the bottom line, but it does seem like most of them are.
And when you tell a company CEO and stockholders they can make all the money they want, by whatever means, and no one will be watching ... there are those who just might take advantage of the ordinary American.
Like big oil. Their profits under President Bush have been record-setting.
There's one report that Exxon made over $35 billion profit last year, while claiming they only raised prices to cover increased costs. On profits alone big oil could practically pay for the Iraq war, without putting the burden on us taxpayers.
It's no secret this administration and John McCain and Ms. Palin are all for letting big oil drill anywhere it wants and make whatever profit it can. But will unrestricted drilling reduce the price of filling up at the pump?
Let's examine the Republican "trickle down" theory in actual practice.
The price of crude oil has dropped over a third since it's record high, but at the pump the price has dropped more like an eighth. You can be certain that between 33% and 12% is a huge profit that went into someone's back pocket, and it wasn't mine. Nor was it the average American's.
And when the Republicans' chief economists and political figures loosened other government oversight, turned their heads away from the mortgage lenders, it was a clear signal to market predators they had the government's blessing to chase down every last crumb of mortgage profit. They lured millions of American families into buying more house than they could afford.
Mortgage lenders also pressed hard to convert Americans across the country into refinancing existing homes with Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs). Americans were told this would be their ticket to bigger and better things, not to worry about the rates going up. But the rates did go up ... driving many of those same families into foreclosure.
Homelessness plays no part in the American dream as I understand it.
Surely some innocent Republicans are suffering along with the rest of America in the housing crisis. But the die-hards never seem to accept reality. They never seem to see the light of day.
The die-hard Republicans ... and I'm not talking about the typical Republican party member ... whose only concern is the good of the country ...
... but the die-hard Republicans like the Karl Roves and Henry Paulsons ... the John McCains and Sarah Palins ... they forge ahead continuing to support the same policies, the same political tactics, and the same administration. In the face of overwhelming evidence that things are not going as hoped, they stay the course .
Perhaps they're sticking to their guns in the mere hope their economic strategies will do better in the future ...
... though I've heard many Republicans claim Mr. Obama’s message of hope is merely a hollow promise. He has been attacked by die-hard Republicans for carrying his message of hope and the belief in a better tomorrow.
Let us not forget the Republican White House and Congress have been telling us the Middle-East, Iraq, the economy, and our standing and security in the world will all improve … all without a sliver of evidence. It sounds to me like they are saying “hope” only means something when they say it does.
Still it seems to me that hope has its place. Just not where the die-hards are looking.
Die-hard Republicans are hoping the job market will improve, even when their government does little to help ...
They're still hoping the price of oil will come down, when the government is backing the oil industry over the consumer ...
Hoping big corporations will trickle their profits down to the average American, when history tells us otherwise ...
Hoping the war will end, that our sons and daughters won't be dragged into that war, though the government refuses to consider the options ...
Hoping the world will be a safer place, when we go after the wrong targets ...
Hoping our civil rights will remain secure, when the very government meant to protect those rights is taking people to prison without trial, spying on our e-mails and phone calls without warrants ...
They're hoping college will be affordable, and opportunity will come knocking, when the government is spending less and less on college education ...
They're hoping people will get help when disaster strikes, though Katrina victims waited days for the Republican President to even acknowledge their plight ...
Most of all they're hoping the world will end up a better place for our children, despite the fact they keep putting the same kind of people and the same kind of policies back into power ...
It seems to me that's where the false hope lies.
.
I believe in hope, but of a different kind.
I believe in hope ... when it's backed by honest commitment, and it's not just a last-minute political label.
I believe in hope ... when I can see a political party that includes all Americans in that message.
I believe in hope ... when people say they're ready for change.
We cannot go on as before. We cannot survive as a nation if we continue to exclude everyone except the rich and powerful and closed-minded. We must change for the good of all.
This country does not belong to just a few of us ...
... to just 1.5% of the African-Americans ...
... to just 5% of the Hispanics ...
... to just those who support war ...
... or just those who support big business ...
... or just those who support Republican policies ...
This country is our land, rich and poor, black and white, Asian, Hispanic and everything in-between.
It's time to take the "W" out of the White House. It's time to give this country back to its people.
Say it with me. U-V-X-Y. No more W's.
