After twenty-four hours I am still grumbling.
One would think that the GOP would know the difference between these three words. Where has good old diplomacy gone? I'm afraid that it has been brushed under the rug recently. Here Senator Obama offers to unearth this art and gets hammered by the idiotic and uninspired. Diplomacy is talking for goodness sake.
Negotiation is seeking a goal. Hopefully it would be a win-win situation. Appeasement is giving away something so that something doesn't happen. Pretty simplistic.
What is wrong with talking to Iran? This is a world supposedly of grown-ups. Nothing was ever said about negotiations and/or appeasement but these two things became instant talking points.
As a person who has always voted Republican I am ashamed.
If anyone is even considering voting GOP this year I would urge them to do three things:
1) Watch the Frontline presentation, "Bush's War".
2) Watch Michael Moore's Sicko.
3) Read David C. Johnston's Free Lunch. This goes into great depth of how we, the taxpayers, are paying for everything. Include in that the new Yankee Stadium. It also talks about Enron.
A couple more films would be Rendition and Lions For Lambs. After doing these things and you still want to vote for the GOP this year, then all I can say is that I pity you.
Me? I'm voting American and to put an end to wasting my taxpayer's money. There has to be a better tomorrow!
Ah, the inevitable. Hopefully not.
I had not realized how mean spirited the Clintons were until I saw Charlie Rose in December when Bill was a guest. He was talking about Sen. Obama's kindergarten paper about becoming president and Bill thought this was the funniest thing ever. He said that he and Hillary had gotten a good laugh at it.
Bet they weren't laughing so hard after Iowa. But wait. Iowa doesn't count since it holds caucuses. In fact we were told by the Clinton campaign that there were only ten states that count. How rude and how...elitist!
But that is Hillary. Arrogant and elitist. She acts like she is entitled. When someone says something against her, she starts whining. And her voice is downright annoying, you know. And I don't appreciate being talked down to. I'm supposed to be in her perfect demographic. I have a brain though and know how to research. No way am I going to support her.
Supposedly Hill is intelligent and a fighter. I don't see it. Fighter? She wasn't very brave when it came to the Iraq vote, was she? She followed the crowd. She wasn't very brave standing up to Sam Walton when she was on the board of WalMart, was she? She could have fought for fair treatment of women workers but she didn't. What intelligence has she shown in running her campaign? How many overhauls has the campaign gone through and how many people have been fired?
I don't want more Clintons in the White House. I barely survived the 90s. Can we say NAFTA and Welfare Reform? The answer to everyone's prayers? These wonderful things would of course be part of Hillary's experience, wouldn't they?
And then Bosnia sniper fire. How could she keep telling that story when she knew that it wasn't true? Carl Bernstein did say that she had a problem with the truth. But the videotape didn't lie when she came off the plane and accepted flowers from a little girl. And what kind of mother would allow her daughter to come under fire? Chelsea was there.
Bill has to chime in about how she said those things at 11 at night and she was exhausted and how when the reporters were 60 they would make mistakes too. Well, what kind of president would she be if she lies when she is tired and has a problem with the truth at her age?
I do find it curious that before the caucus in my state I received four phone calls from the Obama campaign. I never received one call from the Clinton campaign. But then we find out how badly the Clinton campaign has been run.
So here we have an exhausted 60 year old woman that will make mistakes when she speaks and can't administer her campaign. Do I want her to answer the phone at 3 a.m.
And the latest? I want witnesses to the HRC duck hunting to come forward and give details. Needless to say I think this story rates with the one of Chelsea out jogging when the twin towers fell or the soccer player telling her that she didn't like her...and of course Bosnia.
And guess what? I live in a small town and I AM bitter. I'm tired of Washington not listening.
In December, 2007, I started following the campaign leading up to the caucuses in Iowa. I hadn't paid too much attention before that because quite frankly the rhetoric was not something that I caught on to. Everyone was speaking in generalities. I didn't watch any debates.
I had hoped that Senator Obama would finish in the top three but then he won. That was a great night! And even greater was the speech Senator Obama gave afterwards. I was literally moved to tears. This had never happened before. I had never been moved that much before. I came close once before...President Reagan's Challenger speech. I mean who could not be moved by "slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God". It was a sad time.
This time though the tears were of happiness...and hope. The audacity of hope. Things can change in this country...if we dare. Do we? Will we rise to the challenge of changing and taking back our country? Can we show government that indeed this country was built on "of the people, by the people and for the people"?
The alternative is too horrific.
I found myself paying more attention. I watched the New Hampshire debates and could have kissed John Edwards for his status quo comment.
Indeed, there is hope.
Have you ever noticed how intent people are with labels? It has become standard practice for labels to define who you are. No trouble is ever taken to know a person on the inside.
Democrat, Republican, rich, poor, white, black, brown are all labels.
Whatever happened to the idea of being an American first? What is wrong with that? Patriotism is seriously in trouble. We can do the things we can in this country because of those who came before us. The Founding Fathers had a grand new plan, an experiment, in democracy and then fought for it. How difficult that must have been. I can only imagine.
This year I'm voting American...the most important label of all.
You have to understand my background.
Very middle class. I was always expected to go to college. In fact, most of my high school graduation class went on to college. I chose though not to go to the state university that everyone else was planning on attending. I chose a small liberal arts college that was my mother's alma mater. There a I got a secondary teaching certificate in Latin and Social Studies.
However, it wasn't much later when I found out that my parents were bigots. They didn't really ever make comments about things while I was growing up but my father was fond of telling off color racial and ethnic jokes once in a while and then thought they were really funny. I didn't think much of it until my mother confessed one day how disturbing it was for her that we had lived in an area where there were so many Jews. My high school had a lot of Jewish kids. Again, I didn't really think about it. I knew that there were certain days in the year when I could expect empty classrooms when there were holidays.
This "disturbance" of my mother's carried over into anything of the unknown. Any race or culture that wasn't a WASP was suspect. My parents were products of the Depression and fear was a big factor I think for them...my mother especially. FDR's "the only thing to fear is fear itself" never quite made a dent in her thinking. She was definitely a person that had her ideas and as strange as I thought they were she held on to them until she died.
I do not choose fear. I choose hope.
Imagine if you will, the Democratic convention of 2004. The nominee was decided. But there was one speaker that caught my attention. His address was one for the ages. I was mesmerized. But then I thought, "What a shame about his name. It will have no appeal for the voting public. I know how they are...so very conventional. Nothing exotic for them."
One of my Christmas presents in 2006 was The Audacity of Hope. What a great title! And what a great book! The struggles that Sen. Obama overcame were amazing. It is truly a story of the American Dream!
Then the news came. Barack Obama had declared his candidacy for president. I was amazed. He was really going to try! How exciting. I've watched the progress from there on and have become hopeful that change can actually happen.
