We can no longer afford the same old in fighting we have seen for so so long. We're all tired of it. I've been watching CNN over the past few days to see what was being said. There are a few people who are already starting with some real critical and negative rhetoric.
One of the most vocal and negative was Ben Stein on Larry King last night. Now we all know that Ben Stein is a staunch right wing conservative, but isn't it a little early to be bringing partisanship of this kind into play? Obama has'n't even been sworn in yet. If I recall, the current president is still his guy. If action needs to be taken NOW for the economy, he should be critical of Bush. It just makes no sense!!
Ben, Obama is going to be your president too!! Like it or not, he deserves your support. America, I just hope we are not going to go down this road. in the end it leads to nowhere.
Just today, Barack Obama said that he would work to end the mindless partisanship and divisiveness that plagues our nation. But he can't do it alone. He needs all of us. That's why I've started the New National Dialog Project, both here and on Facebook.
The New National Dialog Project is, at this point, just an idea. It is a recognition that Barack Obama's highly successful ground game in 50 states has helped turn this election around for him, and that it can just as easily help turn around the culture wars of this country. When people speak to people - their friends, neighbors, family members, people wherever they spend time, strangers on the street - they can begin to explore our differences and our similarities.
The idea behind this project comes from Barack Obama, but we have to make it real. Please join the New National Dialog Project and help build it, define it and make it real. You can find it on this site and on Facebook. Some day, I hope we'll have our own website and that a national campaign, and that Barack Obama will take the reigns of this idea and begin the healing that, over the next four or eight years of his presidency, can bring sanity and unity to this country and end the domination of fear and lies.
Please join us now.
Thank you,
Rusel DeMaria
I'm collecting people's stories from the road here in Las Vegas. Not a lot of time so will just bullet point them:
I was watching Fox News last night, and Ben Stein was giving his opinion of the $700B taxpayer bailout and backstopping of the financial markets. Now, I'm no Ben Stein fan, and I often find myself musing when I will hear him deliver his famous cult-comic lines from Ferris Bueller's Day Off -- "Anyone? Anyone?" But I listened to Fox and Stein to try to understand how those so deeply invested in Republican rule would frame their candidate's ideological commitment to deregulation in the face of what has become an obvious desperation for more regulation.
I was stunned by Ben Stein's moment of candor. Stein conceded that McCain has been fundamentally wrong on the issues. Was I hearing correctly. I replayed it. Same words. Same deadpan delivery.
But then I heard something else.
Senator Lieberman's speech at the Republican National Convention, video and transcript, are in today's New York Times, among other places.
Some memorable lines.
Our first president, George Washington, in his farewell address, warned that the spirit of party [that is, partisanship] could be the worst enemy of our democracy and enfeeble our government's ability to do its job. …Today we are living through his worst nightmare in the capital city that bears his name. And that brings me directly to why I am here tonight. What, after all, is a Democrat like me doing at a Republican convention like this?
If John McCain is just another partisan Republican, then I'm Michael Moore's favorite Democrat. And I'm not. And I think you know that I'm not.
I have had the privilege and I'd say the pleasure of traveling the world with John McCain, even with Lindsey Graham it was a pleasure.
I ask those of you who are watching or listening, vote for the leader who, since the age of 17, when he first raised his hand and took an oath to defend and protect our Constitution, has always put America first.
My reaction to the speech?
I felt that it was very intriguing. Quite a balancing act! I still feel that his super-sized ego has more to do with this than anything else. Two points:
Please take a look at these and related posts currently on TPM Muckraker.com about partisanship run amok at the Justice Department under this administration.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/doj_chief_of_staff_to_deputy_a.php
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/80_of_socalled_liberal_applica.php
Sure, we know this bunch is bad but this, this is just beyond the pale. Especially as it targets the young, people who sign up for government work knowing that the pay is not as good as what they can earn in the private sector and so it will take much longer to pay off their huge student loans. Young folks who get out of school believing that they can make a difference in Washington, in their government, and come to find out that they were not selected not because someone better was hired, but because they were too liberal! Or more to the point some small-minded (probably right-wing) petty bureaucrat decided that because the candidate believed in the separation between church and state that they were somehow unreliable.
I came into the government in 1989 as a Presidential Management Intern (PMI) a program run by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management that hired recent graduates of Master's Degree Programs (MPA, MPP, MBA, etc). So I was hired into the federal government by George H.W. Bush. I worked for the government for the next 17 years rising to the rank of Senior Executive. I had a good career and always believed that I was answering a higher calling by being a public servant. So if the PMI program in 1989 was run the same way the Justice Department Honors program was run as recently as last year I would not have been hired 19 years ago. I would have lost and in my humble opinion the organizations to which I have contributed over the years would have lost too.
This is no way to run a government and we must make sure that we don't try to do something like this when we're running things come next January 20th!
This is a comment that I've been posting on the occasional right-wing blog when someone bloviates and nitpicks Sen. Obama's magnificent speech yesterday. ----------------------------------------It seems to me that your quibbling and nitpicking at Sen. Obama's address is motivated by his color; not black or white, but blue, instead of red. Some Republican partisans can't bring themselves to admit that the best candidate to be our next president could be riding a donkey.
You are in a dwindling minority, friends. There are thousands of us now that are sick of the Republican Party's corruption and philosphical backsliding (hello trillion-dollar deficits, endemic corruption and the largest new entitlement since Medicare -- under a Republican watch?!?). We're backing Sen. Obama's campaign now, because he's a leader that we might not always agree with, but we trust he'll hear our side in good faith.
This is a man with two children, who flies back and forth from Washington to Chicago every week; who didn't uproot his young family to Washington. Yet he has never missed a dance recital or PTA meeting. Now you say he is supposed to take a meeting with his pastor every time he disagrees with the sermon? Please. Sen. Obama's political priorities might not match mine, but his personal ones are the same, and I applaud that. His time in Chicago is precious, and his family deserves all of it.
Sen. Obama didn't say that his grandmother and his pastor are equivalent. He pointed out that all of us at sometime have reacted to or even participated in the poisonous racial undercurrent in our society. To disown Rev. Wright would be falling back on the safe, gutless politics of the last generation. I applaud the fact that Sen. Obama didn't throw his pastor under the bus. It shows loyalty to and respect for the man who brought him to salvation in Jesus Christ. He owes the man his everlasting soul; unless your Christianity is just a posture, you must respect that. It is further proof that he's doing things differently; even under extreme duress, he's not just another politician.
But all is not lost. When you're tired of your partisan tantrums, you're welcome to join us at the table. We're going to be talking about how to control the cost of healthcare. As any entrepeneur can tell you, it's crushing the American economy. If you can refrain from the name-calling, you'll have a place. Otherwise, you're just relegating yourself to the childrens' table, where you can play with your red and blue fingerpaints. When it comes to picking leaders, some of us are colorblind.
Sincerely,Michael Blackburn
The history on the acidic partisanship over Presidential nominations dates clear back to the Dems torpedoing the John Tower nomination...
Hillary used the pronoun 'we' exclusively in her closing remark. It was an inclusive remark, inclusive of her, Barack, the attendees and all Democrats and voters.Those standing in ovation were applauding themselves, the Democratic party, high ideals and the fine decent manners forthcoming from Hillary. They were also celebrating the debate itself as it closed.
If someone had conveyed to the audience that their applause was partisan, akin to a vote for Hillary and against Obama, the applause and comity would have been several degrees muted.
I've come across Obama supporters who clearly don't get Barack's message of change, who don't get that the core of the movement isn't all about policy. It is as much if not more so about a change of character. Not just the character of our president, but the character of America. A change in all of us, and how we go about working together to make a better society, a better world. I'm just a messenger, so let me get out of the way of the message:
We're up against decades of bitter partisanship that cause politicians to demonize their opponents instead of coming together to make college affordable or energy cleaner. It's the kind of partisanship where you're not even allowed to say that a Republican had an idea, even if it's one you never agreed with.That's the kind of politics that is bad for our party, it is bad for our country, and this is our chance to end it once and for all.We're up against the idea that it's acceptable to say anything and do anything to win an election. But we know that this is exactly what's wrong with our politics. This is why people don't believe what their leaders say anymore. This is why they tune out. And this election is our chance to give the American people a reason to believe again.
— Barack Obama, South Carolina Victory Speech
I don't want to catalog here the ways some Obama supporters have betrayed the above. I'll just discuss one example I've come across frequently: calling Mike Huckabee "crazy" just because they disagree with his religious convictions and points of view. I'm an agnostic and I am diametrically opposed to Huckabee on many if not most issues, but as far as I can tell, he is one of the more honorable politicians I've come across. I believe he truly cares about the poor, though I disagree with his economic policies. Democratic economic policies are far from perfect. Huckabee has taken a lot of flak from hardcore lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key Republicans because he has pardoned or commuted the sentences of convicts who he believed reformed themselves. Sure, there are questions about bias, that the way to get a Huckabee pardon was to show religion, but that doesn't take away from the fact that he does a better job of following Jesus's example of compassion and humanity than most other Republican Christians. He's also taken a lot of flak from his party for his policies to guarantee the children of undocumented immigrants the same access to good education as those of citizens. I could go on.
If you demonize people like Mike Huckabee, we're all back to square one. Might as well shut down the Change movement. Maybe Hope never made it out of Pandora's Box.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
— Mahatma Gandhi
Originally posted in my Newsvine column with a wonderful photo of Barack Obama.
There is a "fairy tale" being told in the Clinton electioneering speeches.
Two weeks ago it was because Democrats weren't living up to their campaign promise of ending the extreme partisanship of recent years. The votes in congress were going straight down party lines, so they are just as partisan. (That was the idea at least)
Now they have made a compromise. My first reaction was: okay, they tried to send up what they wanted and were vetoed, expected this to happen more, so they passed what they could, making a compromise. I'm all for compromising, and I don't blame the Democrats for not having a two-thirds majority. Our country needs more compromising, that's been the problem. But the bashing becomes stronger. And where is Obama in this?
