Bob Hollis's Blog

Welcome Family and Friends!

Bob Hollis — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 17:52:17 EDT

Senator Clinton has graciously changed the form on her web site to direct her amazing and dedicated supporters to sign-up as volunteers for Senator Obama’s campaign. www.hillaryclinton.com

That means we all have new FRIENDS and FAMILY members joining our Obama groups RIGHT NOW!

Senator Obama and Senator Clinton have come together to make sure that we elect a Democratic President in November. They have also agreed to not discuss the VP position publicly because it is their decision alone and they do not want to be pressured by the public, party members, supporters or the press.

We at the grassroots level would be well advised to follow their lead and respect their wishes.

It’s up to us to WARMLY WELCOME all of the new friends and family members who will be meeting us for the first time today.

Since we can’t impact the VP decision and since it could be a sensitive subject we might be better off as a group if we respect the requests of the Senators and refrain from discussing it.

Those of us who might like to help Senator Clinton retire her debt, can do so at www.HillaryClinton.com, those of us who want to contribute only to Barack’s campaign can do so at www.BarackObama.com with the assurance that any money given to his campaign will be used only for his campaign. (Any financial arrangements that might be developed between the two campaigns would not involve a direct transfer of funds.)

Since the decision of whether or not to assist Senator Clinton's campaign with debt retirement is a very personal one that should not be subject to group pressure, I would also suggest that in the name of building family unity we refrain from trying to influence others by expressing our opinions on this subject.

Remember that "words matter" and the words our new friends and family members read in our posts will determine how welcome we make them feel.

In many ways we are all surrogates for Barack Obama. So before we post on any potentially sensitive subject we should pause and ask ourselves, “What would Barack want me to say?”.

Here in Sacramento we are having a “party unity party” on June 12th to welcome Hillary supporters to the team. Those of you in other cities might consider doing the same thing. There is nothing better than a Democratic PARTY!

All together now,
YES WE CAN!
Bob Hollis

Attn: Senator McCain, Our troops should be honored NOW!

Bob Hollis — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:35:10 EDT

While on a closed-door private fundraising tour with George W. Bush today, Senator John McCain said that he will “never surrender in Iraq”, that he will “bring our troops home with victory with honor”.

He apparently thinks that if our troops started coming home to their families within sixteen months they would be perceived as failures and would not be treated with honor by his fellow Americans.

Well I’ve got news for Senator McCain: Our troops should be treated with honor for the victories they have already achieved!

Our troops have done everything that has been asked of them. It is the civilian leadership of people like George W. Bush, John McCain and Donald Rumsfeld that has failed. How dare Bush and McCain try to pass the buck for their failures to the soldiers who have fought with honor on the fronts lines of a war that they had no right to start; a war that John McCain is comfortable with lasting more than 100 years if “necessary”?

And exactly how does Senator John McCain intend to honor the troops when they come home?

Answer: By voting against the GI Bill in lock-step with his fundraising partner George W. Bush and thus denying our veterans improved educational opportunities.

And why would he do such a thing?

Answer: Because he is concerned that if the troops have an opportunity to come home to their families and go to college after a four year tour of duty they will leave the military and diminish McCain’s ability to conduct the wars that he has told us to expect if he is elected as the next President of the United States.

The fact that McCain claims to know little about the economy does not give him a right to focus only on WAR!

It’s time to turn the page!
Bob Hollis
El Dorado Hills, CA

It's Time to Take Back OUR Flag!

Bob Hollis — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:55:01 EDT

It’s Time to Take Back OUR Flag!

Symbols are an important part of every human culture and they often serve as a way of identifying with a particular group or conveying a particular belief.

After 9/11 flags sold in record numbers as Americans came together in a show of unity and patriotism.

I myself purchased a flag lapel pin, and raised a flag on my front porch in Naperville, Illinois.

Unfortunately, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, Rove and their neocon political allies soon took over the public debate and anybody who dared speak out against their ideas was branded as an unpatriotic supporter of the terrorists under the divisive “with us or against us” Bush ideology. They began feeding false information to the American people to win support for an unjust war, they began stripping us of our civil liberties, they began censoring the media through threats and intimidation, they enlisted the support of corporations such as AT&T to violate the law and our constitutional rights, they oversaw the torture of human beings in Abu Ghraib, they isolated and interrogated people in secret CIA prisons in foreign nations, they opened Guantanamo Bay and suspended habeas corpus, they abandoned the Geneva Convention, they gave billion dollar no-bid contracts to Dick Cheney's friends who then stole from our brave military heroes, and they banned the media from showing the American people our dead brave soldiers coming home in flag-draped coffins in the name of national security, all the while leaving our northern and southern borders completely unsecured. They showed complete disregard for the principles that have made our great nation a beacon of freedom all around the world for more than two centuries, and they abandoned the principals that make us all proud to be Americans.

…and they shamefully did this under the symbol and brand of the American Flag.

Many people who saw what was happening stopped wanting to be identified with George W. Bush and Karl Rove’s destruction of American values and stopped wearing the lapel flag pin that the neocons had co-opted as the symbol of those allied with their anti-American behaviors. I was one of them, and Senator Barrack Obama was another.

When Bush was elected to a second term using a false fear-based agenda the Canadian government reported that U.S. citizens began applying for Canadian citizenship in record numbers. I however decided that it was better to stay and fight for the country that I love so much. It was time to take back our flag and restore our deeply rooted American values of truth, freedom, and justice for all.

I started wearing my flag lapel pin again while publicly challenging the actions of the neocon extremists, and I became more politically active, including running for public office and winning my seat with more than 80% of the vote in a strongly Republican county. Many other Americans also became politically active for the first time in their lives.

The neocons and allies of John McCain are again trying to politicize the American flag lapel pin by co-opting it as their exclusive brand. They are labeling people as patriotic or unpatriotic based on whether or not they consistently wear a flag pin in public. They are challenging Senator Barrack Obama’s patriotism based on their narrow-minded ideological views, and unfortunately some less well-informed American voters are buying into the spin.

Senator Barrack Obama is one of the greatest and truly patriotic Americans of our lifetime. He is an inspiration to our generation, and the embodiment of the American dream. I was pleased to see that Senator Obama wore a flag lapel pin during his endorsement by John Edwards in Michigan last night.

Senator Obama is fighting the good fight to TAKE BACK OUR FLAG and the meaning it has to not only the American people but also the majority of the good citizens of our global community.

All of Senator Obama’s supporters should follow his lead and educate the American voters who might question our patriotism. Consider this a call to action to all true Americans who believe in the principals that have made our nation great to TAKE BACK OUR FLAG from the neocon radical extremists who have done so much damage to our great nation over the last eight years.

Begin wearing a flag pin while going door to door campaigning for Senator Obama,

Wear a flag pin when you wear your Obama shirt,

Wear a flag pin above your Barack Obama pin everywhere you go,

Place an American flag sticker on your Barrack Obama posters,

Proudly display a flag on your car near your Obama bumper sticker,

Place a flag in the window of your home where you display your Barrack Obama poster,

And place a flag in your yard near your Barrack Obama sign.

George Bush has destroyed the Republican brand with his incompetence and misguided, immoral, and un-American behavior while seated as our president, but we can’t let him destroy the American brand represented by our flag!

It’s time to TAKE BACK OUR FLAG and to fly it proudly as Americans who believe in true American values and as supporters of Senator Barrack Obama, one of the greatest Americans to have ever lived, and the greatest hope our nation has to restore our historical place in the world as the vision of peace, freedom, justice, and liberty for all.

As Senator Obama has so inspirationally stated, WE ARE THE CHANGE WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR!

Bob Hollis,
El Dorado Hills, CA

There's a Pattern Emerging Here

Bob Hollis — Fri, 09 May 2008 03:33:45 EDT

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition, Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me." "There's a pattern emerging here". Hillary Rodham Clinton – USA Today, May 8, 2008

There certainly is a pattern emerging here.

I was born in West Virginia and grew up in the steel town of Aliquippa, PA in a blue collar family. But I was educated at Carnegie Mellon, The University of Chicago and Harvard, so I guess that means I am now one of Paul Begala's "eggheads". I loved the Clintons before observing their behavior in this campaign. But what I have seen out of them over the last few months deeply saddens and disappoints me. When Hillary reflects back on her behavior in this campaign she will also be deeply saddened and disappointed in herself. She has spent a lifetime fighting for civil rights and has now completely destroyed her legacy and reputation with her race baiting remarks. As a native West Virginian I am personally insulted by her misguided pandering to uneducated hard working, “white” voters in the run up to the West Virginia primary. She apparently views West Virginians as a bunch of ignorant racist white Hillbillies.

Whatever happened to honesty, fairness and integrity as qualifications for being president? Hillary is trying to change the rules regarding FL and MI only because it helps her get closer to her personal goal. If any of our children did such a thing we would reprimand them for cheating. Winning at all costs, even if lying, cheating and race baiting are necessary to do it, is not an admirable quality. Her spin on the issue of Florida and Michigan often fed to the mindless media by Terry McAuliffe and Howard Wolfson pivots on her claim that “no voters should be disenfranchised”. Then why does she want to disenfranchise all of the people who stayed home and did not vote because she told them that their votes would not count? If I am a Florida voter who stayed home instead of voting for Obama how is my vote going to be counted? You can’t tell people their vote won’t count then count the votes if they come out in your favor.

Hillary did not “misspeak”, about Bosnia, she LIED, repeatedly, until caught on film, but Obama is running a campaign that continues to take the high road and he did not make nearly as much of this incident as the Clinton’s would have if the shoe were on the other foot.

I once paid $100 at the request of Hillary’s NY senatorial campaign for a $20 book advertised as hand-signed by Hillary. I finally received it six weeks later after making several phone calls. It had a rubber stamped, smeared, stick-on label with her name on it inside the front cover. I was disappointed but still held Hillary and Bill in high regard until this campaign.

She and her campaign manager continue to spin lies regarding the polls. Last September she was ahead of Obama by nearly 30 points in almost every poll including Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. Only one poll out of more than 20 ever showed Obama leading in Indiana. Now the Clintons keep repeating the lie that she was “never supposed to win in Indiana” and she was “always supposed to lose North Carolina”. A November 5, 2007 SurveyUSA poll had Clinton ahead by 24 points in North Carolina, but the media never challenges her on the false claims being made by Hillary and her campaign representatives.

The Clintons are also trying to sell the "fairy tale" that Obama should be winning because he is outspending them, but the reality is that he started this race as an unknown neophyte with no campaign funds and he is outspending them only because he is raising more money than one of the most powerful and strongly backed political teams in history. Hillary was the clear frontrunner in every poll when this campaign began. She had more money, Bill Clinton, and a head start of nearly 100 super delegates, but the Clintons continue trying to portray themselves as the underdogs. If this is a joke, the American people are not laughing.

Barrack’s proven ability to win more votes, win more states, raise more money, pay his campaign bills, and manage his national campaign better than the Clintons proves that experience does not mean as much as integrity and intelligence when assessing a person's ability to do a job. The Clintons' vast campaign experience has lost to Obama's core competencies and his ability to unite and motivate the American people. Obama is outnumbered 3 to 1 on the campaign trail by political celebrities Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, but he is clearly winning against the vastly more experienced Clinton machine. Obama’s core competencies, strong moral values, and good judgment have clearly defeated Hillary’s experience. The only people who will be calling her at 3 AM are the bill collectors trailing her in the wake of her mismanaged and debt-ridden campaign.

There is a reason that well educated people are voting for Obama and less well informed voters are voting for Clinton. This campaign has opened my eyes and the eyes of other well informed voters to the Clintons’ lack of integrity and character and the hope that Obama offers this great nation. The Clintons are destroying their political legacy and diminishing the likelihood that the Democratic candidate will win the general election for their own egotistical and self-serving purposes. Obama is running a campaign with the class and dignity that America deserves in a president.

Considering Hillary’s comments about her base, it’s time for “educated” superdelegates to pledge their support to Obama and put an end to Hillary’s shameful campaign before she destroys what's left of her reputation and any chance for a Democratic victory in November.

Bob Hollis,
El Dorado Hills, CA

Clintons' exaggerated response to Shuster comment

Bob Hollis — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 14:07:32 EST

David Shuster certainly used a poor choice of words in describing Chelsea Clinton's role in her mother's campaign. However, the Clinton's are over dramatizing and elevating this incident in the news to play the victim role and win sympathy from baby boomers with children. Because it is so obvious, it comes across as phony indignation and I think it will backfire. Hillary recently claimed to want more debates, but she threatened to boycott future MSNBC debates due to Shuster's remark. That seems to me like a kneejerk overreaction to a minor incident. Why would she want to attack an entire network and have a negative impact on her campaign just because one reporter made a mistake? Because by attacking the network she can effect its reporting on other issues related to the Clintons (Similar to what the Bush Admin did to Dan Rather and CBS) and because by threatenting to boycott debates it gets the issue into another news cycle. If the Clinton's really felt it was insulting to their family they would not be doing everything they can to get it back into the news. People are tired of political theatre, and the more of it that gets integrated into the Clinton campaign the more people will see that Barrack is the clear choice to put sincerity, honesty and integrity back in the White House.