There's been a lot of shouting over the summer and name-calling in the Capitol.  On the outside, meanwhile, respected economists say a second stimulus (including healthcare reform) is necessary to pull us out of this 'Great Recession.'

Nevertheless, Republican leaders say the President is "bankrupting America," that we can't possibly spend any more, borrow any more.

Let's look at some facts; about calamitous crashes and the climbs back from them.

******************

Great Recession Unemployment: Since December 2007, employment has fallen by 6.9 million.  As of August 2009, 14.3 million people were unemployed.  [ Bureau of Labor Statistics ]

Great Depression Unemployment: At the height of the Depression in 1933, 12.8 million people were unemployed.
[ Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum ]

******************

Obama Stimulus Cost: $816 billion over ten years (2009-2019). [ Congressional Budget Office ] Jobs saved/created: 1.5 million as of the fourth quarter of Fiscal Year 2009.  And an estimated 3.5 million as of this time next year. [ Recovery.gov ]

New Deal Cost (adjusted for inflation): $500 billion over six years (1933-1939).  Over the course of the New deal, the government created jobs for more than 8.5 million people.  Still, millions remained unemployed.
 
******************

WWII Cost: $5 trillion in inflation-adjusted dollars, 16.1 million enlisted; 406,000 died. [U.S. Census]  

Instead of unemployment, we had a labor shortage.  But it took a war to do it.

******************

"The New Deal brought jobs and relief to millions of Americans. It did not, however, end the depression. The depression ended because of World War II. During the war the nation's economy was devoted to the production of weapons and other materials necessary to win the conflict."  [ Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute ]

So, which would you rather have; a second stimulus to create jobs for the 14 million citizens out of work?  Or another massive war with hundreds of thousands of deaths?

The choice is up to you.

Call202/224-3121and tell your members of Congress which one you prefer.


##

Oh, and the 'bankrupt' idea didn't seem to come up when the previous administration was on these two spending sprees:

The bailout of the banks: after 30 years of the conservative 'Reagan Revolution' that ripped up regulations and let the bankers run free: $700 billion and no jobs for ordinary folks.

Iraq War Cost: $3 trillion and 4,344 deaths (as of 9/15/09).

##

Those who rail against the Muslim world as a seat terror perpetrated by 'Muslim fundamentalists' not only besmirch nearly a billion observant, mainstream members of the faith as old as Christianity and Judaism; but adherents to that stereotype also seem to be blind to the Christian fundamentalist extremists among us.

If we needed a reminder of the virulent and violent hate that rages on the far right among extreme fundamentalist Christians, we surely received it June 10, when James W. von Brunn murdered Holocaust Museum guard Stephen G. Johns in a fit of anti-Semitic rage in Washington. [ Washington Post ]

Soon evidence appeared of von Brunn's extremist writings.  His website, MSNBC reported, "promotes a treatise, 'Tob Shebbe Goyim Harog!' --  which he says translates as 'Kill the Best Gentiles!' The book blames Jews, Marxists and 'Negroes,' among others, for 'the millions of Aryan crosses covering the world's battlefields.'"  [ MSNBC ]

Are these the words of a Christian fundamentalist, using that faith to justify terror?

The pattern repeated itself the previous week, when Dr. George Tiller was assassinated by Scott Roeder, who "was once a subscriber and occasional contributor to a newsletter, Prayer and Action News, said Dave Leach, an anti-abortion activist from Des Moines who runs the newsletter. Mr. Leach said that he had met Mr. Roeder once, and that Mr. Roeder had described similar views to his own on abortion." [ New York Times ]

In Iowa, Dan Holman, of the anti-abortion group Missionaries to the Preborn, told CNN that Tiller's death was something to "cheer."

"I was cheered by it, because I knew he wouldn't be killing any more babies," Holman said.  Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry told reporters in Washington that Tiller's killing was "wrong, period," ... But he added, "George Tiller was a mass murderer and horrifically, he reaped what he sowed.

"We in the pro-life movement must not shrink from our duty to continue to use words that are highly charged, to do protests, to expose these abortionists, and to work for the complete eradication of child killing," he said. [ CNN.com ]

Extremist rhetoric, laced with calls for morality, and tied in twisted thinking to a religion.

Anti-abortion activists Anthony Leake and Regina Dinwiddie told CNN that Roeder had strong beliefs.  "He was a confessing Christian," Leake said.  "He always had his Bible, which wasn't uncommon. He professed faith in Jesus Christ." [ CNN.com ]

Remember when the Oklahoma City bombing occurred?  Alerts spread like wildfire that a search was on for a Middle Eastern man who had boarded a plane in Chicago.  [ New York Times ]

Within hours we learned that the perpetrator of the horrific mass murder was a young white man, Timothy McVeigh; a former member of the U.S. armed forces who espoused the anti-government hatred common to Aryan-like 'militias,' some meetings of which he and co-conspirator Terry Nichols reportedly attended. [ BBC ]

According to the Anti-Defamation League, survivalists and white supremacists formed a variety of paramilitary groups in the 1980s, "ranging from the Christian Patriot-Defense League to the Texas Emergency Reserve to the White Patriot Party. ... 'The Federal government and the press is [sic] fighting a war against independent thinking Christian patriots,' Christian Identity adherent and militia supporter George Eaton wrote in 1993." [ Anti-Defamation League ]

Christian fundamentalist extremism?  Terrorists?

Remember Eric Rudolph, whose bombs brought death and destruction to abortion clinics in Alabama and Georgia and at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta?  

Not only was he a raised by his mother in the Christian Identity movement [ Anti-Defamation League ] -- "a movement of many extremely conservative Christian churches and religious organizations, extreme right wing political groups and survival groups." [ Religious Tolerance.org ] --  but he apparently had plenty of fellow 'believers' who aided him while on the run in the North Carolina mountains, where he eluded the police and FBI from 1998 to 2003.  According to Time magazine, "Rudolph had become a local folk hero. In Murphy (N.C.), T shirts and coffee mugs appeared saying RUN RUDOLPH, RUN." [ Time ]

These acts of terror tied to religion here in the U.S. are often linked to hatred of African-Americans and Jews.  In the early parts of the last century, a movement that preached hate and terror tied to a sick form of Christian identity -- the Ku Klux Klan -- had almost become mainstream in many parts of the nation.  

At its peak in 1925, the KKK claimed 4 million members.  These white-robed supporters of lynching terror, marched, chests emblazoned with bright red crosses, along Washington's cherished Pennsylvania Avenue on August 18 of that year.  [ Britannica.com ] They marched again in 1926. [ Learner.org ] And once more in 1928. [ IndyWeek.com ]

Judge for yourself: to which religion do terrorists adhere, and does that religion inspire hate so intense that a practitioner would commit an act of terror?  Do you honestly believe Islam propagates terrorists?  If so, might Christianity also create terrorists, given the history of terror carried out by Christian extreme fundamentalists in the United States of America?  

Stereotyping is a dangerous practice.  Stereotyping a faith, based on the actions of a group of deluded believers in that faith, is simply wrong.

The word patriot has been kicked around a lot for the past 28 years, when the moneychangers ran wild with our money and eventually bankrupted the nation.  Business could do no wrong; 'government' was 'the problem, professed that nice man, Ronald Reagan, who, upon leaving the presidency, termed patriotism  "an unambivalent appreciation of America." [ Reagan Foundation ].  

In the 28 years since Reagan uttered his anti-government remarks, our nation has been raped, repeatedly, by those who were turned loose to cash-in when the regulations were turned off.  Now, in our moment of national terror, the economy withering and accelerating into unknown depths, we're led to ask, 'Who are the patriots today?'  Who has been acting for the good of the nation with what Reagan called 'unambivalent appreciation' for it?

Might it be those Brahmin bulls, who populate the bull-statued center of our capitalist economy; you know, the fellows who used to chat with Louis Rukeyser on Wall Street Week?  What kind of patriotism have we seen among the market class?

Some might call what they've accomplished - bringing our nation's economy to its knees [ New York Times ] - sabotage, which Webster defines as, "destructive or obstructive action carried on by a civilian or enemy agent to hinder a nation's war effort."  Take the 'war' out of it and we've got what Wall Street's been doing to us since the days of the Reagan 'revolution' [ CNN.com ], 'destructive action carried on by a civilian agent to hinder a nation's effort.'

And hinder it has.  Our economy is in collapse, and we all can look to one place, on Manhattan island, where those infamous 'bonuses' are the subject of national fury today [ Reuters ]

They weren't content to make profits via investments in commodities and manufactured goods.  No, their greed was so unrelenting that they had to create something new; an 'instrument' [ Business Week/msnbc ] of such questionable and mysterious value that it could be bought and sold and resold to the the witless citizens of our republic.  

All conceived so the sellers could become, as baldly stated by one Wall Street analyst, 'wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters' [ Bloomberg News ], while the rest of us could do nothing as our nest eggs rapidly disappeared [ CNN.com ].

How did it begin, this dizzying slide into oblivion?  Was it a mistake; a misplaced comma, a clueless money transfer?  No, the climactic shift away from Washington and into Wall Street occurred where all foul deeds find their origin, late in the day, when few are watching.  Here is what occurred, as reported by the Columbia Journalism Review:

"In the early evening of Friday, December 15, 2000, with Christmas break only hours away, the U.S. Senate rushed to pass an essential, 11,000-page government reauthorization bill. In what one legal textbook would later call 'a stunning departure from normal legislative practice,' the Senate tacked on a complex, 262-page amendment at the urging of Texas Sen. Phil Gramm."

There was little debate on the floor. According to the Congressional Record, Gramm promised that the amendment - also known as the Commodity Futures Modernization Act - along with other landmark legislation he had authored, would "be seen as a watershed, where we turned away from the outmoded, Depression-era approach to financial regulation and adopted a framework that will position our financial services industries to be world leaders into the new century.." [ Congressional Record ]

Thus was born the 'credit default swap' and the seeds of our economic destruction [ NPR.org ].

Patriotism?  Or saboteur?  Was this the act of one who regretted that he had but one life to give to his country?  Or was it the act of a cynical, guileful senator, who doubtless chortled that his singular deed would bring great wealth to his new masters at UBS, for which he exited the Senate to sit as vice chairman today? [ UBS.com ]

You know, that 'bank' where so many of our ultra-rich -- those whom George W. Bush called "The haves and the have-mores... my base" [ CBS News ] -- keep their money, so they don't have to pay for the privilege of living in this country.  The same UBS which, "in February ... agreed to pay a $780 million fine on charges it had helped thousands of U.S. citizens hide assets from the Internal Revenue Service" [ UPI.com ].

Now, you tell me; who is a patriot today?  A Phil Gramm? A George W. Bush?  A Bernard Madoff?  

Or is s/he more likely Leonard Abess Jr., "the Miami banker who gave $60 million to his tellers, bookkeepers and clerks" ... or Geneva Lawson, a 51 year employee of Abess's bank, where she's "the safe-deposit custodian at the Miami Beach branch"? [ Miami Herald ]  Both of these honest patriots, and 18 others who work for a living and believe in extending a helping hand, sat with Michelle Obama during the President's recent address to Congress [ White House.gov ].

So, here we are.  Our economy trashed by the kind of men and women who likely worshipped Gordon Gekko's creed: "Greed is good" [ AmericanRhetoric.com ].  

And yet we are governed by a man who embodies all that truly is good about this nation.  A man who told us on his night of nomination that we are, at our core, good and honest and caring:

"It's that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper -- that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. 'E pluribus unum.' Out of many, one."

Yes, we'll call for an end to the greed.  We'll make certain that no evil deed will go unpunished.  But at the same time, let's also be challenged and filled with hope for the man in this nation who gives us reason to hope:

"The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there" [ Election Night Speech ].

Now, those are the words of a patriot.

You know how it goes.  A friend who 'forwards' lots of e-mails sends you this one: "HERE IS THE CHANGE!," which dumps all over the Democrats, saying they've done nothing since the won the majority in '06.  Don't groan and delete it.  Copy all those who've been sent the 'forwarded forward' and start your answer this way:

Think about it.

Sure, the Democrats got control of both houses in '06.  But they hold the Senate by one vote, and that one belongs to McCain's best friend, Connecticut's former Democrat Joe Lieberman [ MSNBC.com ].  It takes 60 votes to do anything in the Senate, which must approve anything passed by the House before it can go to the President [ C-SPAN ].  

So the Republicans have blocked nearly everything the Democrats have tried to move forward [ New York Times ].  Besides, we have a Republican president who threatens to veto or does veto everything the Congress may manage to put together that could have brought change [ About.com ].

For six of the past eight years we have 'enjoyed' an administration and GOP Congress which deregulated nearly every sector of the economy they could [ Google News Archives ].  The party had complete control of all three branches of government.  Recall that the GOP-appointed members of the Supreme Court put George W. Bush into office... not the voters [ US News ].

Recall that in 2004 John McCain did a complete 180 and decided to throw his lot with Bush, after working against him for his first four years.  There are photos of McCain -- who stood by the President all through the 2004 campaign -- embracing Bush [ msn/MSNBC.com ], the very man who tried to crush McCain and his credibility in 2000 [ The Boston Globe ].  McCain threw his former 'maverick' principles aside and welded himself to the pro-war, anti-regulation Bush agenda [ The Hill (D.C. newspaper) ].

And what did that deregulatory atmosphere bring us?

Economic collapse, the root of which came from a cleverly composed amendment by a Republican U.S. Senator, Phil Gramm of Texas, who quietly slipped his 'hands-off Wall Street' amendment into a must-pass bill at the end of the 2000 session of Congress [ The Texas Observer ].  

That one move allowed Wall Street executives to concoct and trade and re-trade to one another 'instruments' -- not tangible products -- that led to the creation of a virtual 'house of cards,' as one stock analyst wrote in an e-mail [ New York Times ] , that finally began to collapse, as the free-wheeling, shaky ARM mortgages began to re-set starting in 2006 [ The Heritage Foundation ], leading to the economic disaster we're now experiencing.

The Phil Gramm who made that move is the same Phil Gramm who said we are in a 'mental recession' and 'a nation of whiners,' as people lost their homes and then their retirement savings, and finally their livelihoods, as the stock market wizards swooned toward catastrophe.  The same Phil Gramm who was 'officially' -- and presumably still unofficially -- John McCain's top economic adviser [ The Washington Times ].

So, the Dems barely have control of the Senate, giving the GOP virtual control over it.  The Dems have the House, but anything they pass is halted in the evenly-divided, filibuster-prone Senate [ McClatchy Newspapers ].

The choice, though difficult for some to consider, is becoming clearer every day.  The stakes are too high to put at the head of our government a former 'maverick' -- who turned into a Bush advocate -- and his 'heart-away-from-the-presidency' v.p. pick, who is clearly not up to the job of assuming the duties of the Presidency, should McCain have a heart attack or his cancer recur [ The Independent-U.K. ].  

She said the other night that the Constitution is 'flexible' when it comes to the duties of the vice president, yet the words of the Constitution could not be more precise: "The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided." Article I, Section 3 [ The United States Constitution, Cornell University School of Law ].  That is the only reference in the Constitution to the vice president, other than his or her election.  He or she shall be the President's successor in the event of the President's death or incapacitation [ 25th Amendment ], and shall be President of the Senate.  Period.  No 'flexibility.'

Times are too desperate to cast a purely partisan eye on this election.  We have spiraled down terribly over the past eight years, and particularly over the past four years.  "Getting government off the backs" of business [ The Idaho Statesman ] led us to this stage.  Government had to step in, we have been told by the current occupant of the White House [ Associated Press via MSNBC ], because the unregulated system he nurtured fell apart.  A new executive with an entirely different point of view is called for.

And on January 20th  -- the date that's brought us too many scoundrels and 28 years of unhinged, wealth-tilted presidencies [ Time magazine ] -- he will raise his right hand, saying, as stipulated in Article II, Section 1 of The Constitution [ The Constitution, Library of Congress, 1789 image ], "I, Barack Hussein Obama, I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God."

And this time we'll have a president who means it.

So, on November 4, get up out of your bed, go to your precinct, and, together -- all across this immense land -- we'll get our country back again.

God save this great nation.

Purple Thumb.

It has become the shorthand for free, fair and first elections in emerging democracies and in U.S.-conquered nations.  First used by Delaware’s Pete DuPont in the June 21, 2005, Wall Street Journal, “Iraqis held their third purple-thumb election last week ...” the purple thumb represents the unsaid guarantee that a free and fair election has taken place.

That same electoral hue was later adopted by our President, when he spoke to the UN General Assembly in September 2006:  “To the people of Iraq: Nearly 12 million of you braved the car bombers and assassins last December to vote in free elections. The world saw you hold up purple ink-stained fingers, and your courage filled us with admiration.”  [ White House press office ]
 
Yet, the concept of an admired and fair “Purple thumb” election seems to mean nothing in our “We’re Number One! God Bless America!” country; where suppressed turnouts and election day equipment ‘shortages’ and ‘malfunctions’ have become the expected norm on our national polling days.

With the appearance of George W. Bush on the national stage, each presidential election – upon which the stability of our nation and the world is dependent – has been guaranteed to feature numerous attempts by his political party to throw every obstacle possible to prevent or discourage voting among certain classes of voters; usually the poor and minorities, particularly African-Americans. [ People for the American Way ]

Yet our current president – widely noted as ‘the worst in our history’ [ History News Network ] – called the June 25 Zimbabwe election “a sham,” adding, “The Mugabe government has been intimidating the people on the ground in Zimbabwe.”  He termed this “an incredibly sad development.” [ PBS ]

Do you know what’s ‘incredibly sad,’ Mr. President?  How about the black voters in north Florida, who in 2000 experienced outright police intimidation, as they approached many precinct polling stations [ Business Network ] ....  And the reported examples of manipulated election 2004 results, caused by a deliberate low allocation of voting machines in high minority precincts. [ Fox News ]

In the President’s home state of Texas, the town of Prairie View - home of the historically black Prairie View A&M University - was the scene of a concerted attempt by white local officials to prevent Prairie View A&M students from voting in the 2006 elections.  The area’s Waller County Justice of the Peace, DeWayne Charleston, told the New York Times, “The cold war’s not over -- they just moved the fence from Berlin to the Texas border,” after he reported local election officials had not recorded thousands of black student registrations he had personally gathered prior to election day.

More often than not, these blatant attacks on U.S. citizens’ right to vote under our Constitution - the one Mr. Bush swore to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ - are successful; leading to another unfair, GOP-skewed final tally.

In 2000, as we all know, the Supreme Court awarded the presidency to Mr. Bush, following an extremely close count; twisted in his favor by a deliberately confusing ballot prone to miss-votes, the aforementioned police harassment in North Florida, and removal of alleged or redeemed felons from the voter registration rolls. [ Palm Beach Post ].  All carried out under the jaundiced and cynical eyes of Republican Secretary of State (later Congresswoman) Katherine Harris. [ The Guardian-UK ]

In 2004 the down-to-the-wire ballot tampering took place in voter operations overseen by Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. [ USA Today ]

Who knows what the Grand Old Party will have lurking in the wings this election, seen by many as the most crucial in more than a generation? [ The Guardian-UK ]

That’s why Senator Obama’s campaign and the Democratic Party are hiring attorneys and poll watchers to stake out polling places for evidence of harassment and challenge any precinct voter rejections and/or ballot counting missteps.  [  South Florida Sun-Sentinel ]

Tragic, isn’t it, that the ‘greatest nation in the world,’ and the planet’s beacon for democracy cannot assure every eligible citizen that he or she will be able to vote; and can leave tens or hundreds of thousands (millions?) of its citizens with uncertainty as to whether his or her vote was counted.

If any nation on this globe needs purple thumbs, if any one country has a voting system that cries out for impartial international monitors, it is the United States of America.  The Land of the Free, and home of the heretofore suppressed voter.

Help make sure this will not happen, not this time, not this election.  Find out what you can do at the Verified Voting Foundation.

"The work begins anew. The hope rises again, and the dream lives on." [ Senator Edward Kennedy ]

So, this is the legacy you want, John McCain?

You did not start the race division between the Republican and Democratic Parties, but you are feeding it generously.  We can most likely find its birth in the moments after Lyndon Johnson had addressed Congress, advocating for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and uttering three words that transformed the political divide for the next 43 years. 

He looked out at his colleagues and the nation and said, “We shall overcome.” [ LBJ video ]  How’s that for guts?  Could you have mustered such courage?

It didn’t take long for the Republican Party to take advantage of the racist backlash Johnson’s bold statement had caused in the once “Solid South.”  Up to that point nearly every southerner had been a Democrat because of racism, since the defeated South had succumbed under a Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, whose worst ‘sin’ had been liberation of the nation’s slaves. [ Wikipedia  ]

With local governments racist to the core, southern Democrats nevertheless could scarcely imagine embracing Republican beliefs.

South Carolina’s racist governor, Strom Thurmond, made the jump, in 1964, to the Republican Party  [ About.com ] , which first didn’t know what to do with him, as the GOP had been dominated by moderate folks such as Nelson Rockefeller, Charles Percy, Edward Brooke, George Romney, Wayne Morse and Jacob Javits. [ American Prospect ]

By 1970 the Republicans knew exactly what to do with disgruntled southern Democrats, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan (yes, the late ‘liberal’ senator from New York), then a staff aide to Nixon, wrote him a memo in which he recommended Nixon adopt a policy of “benign neglect” of civil rights issues, leaving the slain Martin Luther King’s movement to carry on by itself, without presidential backing. [ Answers.com ]

This began Nixon’s opportunistic GOP campaign to politically ‘take over’ the South with his so-called ‘Southern Strategy.’ [ Washington Post ]

The GOP grip on the South was further cemented by the avuncular Ronald Reagan, who unashamedly announced his run for the presidency with a “state’s rights” speech in the small town of Philadelphia, Mississippi, infamously known as the scene of the vicious, terrorizing 1964 murder of three Civil Rights activists who had dared to drive south to register blacks to vote. [ Black America Today ]

Reagan gave us eight years of ‘welfare queen Cadillac’ [  Washington Monthly ] stories that led to the eventual end of federal public assistance for poor families -- a policy destruction later sought and won by another southern governor, Bill Clinton. [ Washington Post ]

Republicans George Bush --- both H.W. and W. --- appointed right-wing justices [ TPM.com ] to the Supreme Court, which has delivered ever-growing racist decisions that weakened affirmative action, erased an African-American city’s gun-control laws, made school integration more difficult, and appointed an unelected George W. Bush president.  [ Grolier ]

So now we have an inspirational African American running for president of these United States.  He emanates wisdom, reflection and calm in the face of crises.  He has organized a complex and brilliant campaign organization with its roots in communities, not board rooms.   Bearing stellar academic credentials and an estimable record of private and public service [ Seattle Times ]; he has the unique ability to inject hope and steadfast faith into a nation haunted by doubt and growing despair.

With the economy hanging by a thread [ Akron Beacon-Journal ], thanks to years of unregulated Wall Street greed of the worst kind [ Mother Jones ]; Republicans now look to John McCain, heir to and admirer of past Republicans who cleverly drew their own so-called ‘race cards,’ which was particularly successful during the 1988 campaign of the current president’s father via his racist ‘Willie Horton’ ads. [ YouTube ]

This same John McCain, bearing few of the qualities we seek in a president, is grasping for anything to paint his opponent, who happens to have been born with deep brown skin, as an ‘elitist,’ a mere airhead ‘celebrity,’ who is ‘out of touch’ with the average citizen. [ CNN.com ]

And because he dared to say his face ‘doesn’t look like any of those other presidents on dollar bills,’ Barack Obama is now accused of himself ‘playing the race card’? [  Washington Post ]

How can a black man ‘play’ any kind of race card, when it is dealt to him every waking moment of every day; when he looks in the mirror in the morning, and when almost every white person he is near looks back at him with ‘that glance,’ which is more of a stare, that says, “What are you doing here?”. 

He is black; McCain is not.  And to inject race into any campaign is to insert a needle filled with poison used to infect the public with the racist elements that too many white citizens either have buried in our souls, or alive and flaming in daily thoughts and deeds.

McCain, once considered a ‘moderate maverick’ [ NY Times ] in the Republican Party, now seems  just another cynical politician, who arranged a meeting for a criminal savings and loan executive with five United States senators  [ Memphis Commercial-Appeal ]  , and who voted for a war when that action was exceedingly popular and knowingly wrong.

How will he react from his ‘Straight Talk Express’ seat when confronted with the well-established fact that at least one of his television ads is a cynical lie – the one in which the announcer states that Obama did not visit wounded soldiers in Germany, ‘because he could not bring a television camera with him’?  [ Media Matters ]

How will he face his God and his conscience with his decision to allow vicious and racist attacks on an honorable man, who simply happens to have black skin?

Many of us, myself included, once thought of John McCain as an honorable man.

But when he tells an outright lie about his political opponent at this tenuous time in our nation’s history, when he gives the green light to television and radio commercials [ USA Today  ] that belittle and disrespect a fellow public servant, when he seems to have sold his soul to win a prize; then he is not only not worthy of that prize, but he has also drug up from the slime of our past the one lasting evil stain on our national soul.  And that act can only serve to divide us, when the need for unity is paramount.

It is not up to us to forgive his sin; it is up to him to absolve himself, and to refuse to rip this nation apart again, for the selfish sake of one more rich white man’s personal political gain.

You don’t need a flag pin to say “God Bless America.”  But you should need decency and honor.

End this, Mr. McCain.  Tell your crafty team that you’re better than the slime they’ve slopped on our kitchen tables and into our family rooms.

In the meantime, our hope is for a united country.  And our prayer is “God help America.  God be with Obama.”

The family of Robert Kennedy, reminded this spring that it’s been 40 years since they lost him, heard May 23rd that his tragic death had been diminished into a talking point in another senator’s crass campaign rhetoric. [Sioux Falls Argus-Leader transcript]

In 1968, having won California, Senator Kennedy’s life and his nation were struck, turning joyful hope into instant emotional chaos: RFK assassination, live audio

The following day, June 6, I had awakened on my parents’ couch to the sound of a news report from KMOX radio on Dad’s breakfast table, “Senator Robert F. Kennedy died at 1:44 A.M. today.” [New York Times]   Mary Ann Templeton and I were to be married that afternoon, at 3:30.

Just weeks earlier, on March 18, he had spoken in Manhattan, Kansas, at the state university, of another war in another time, with words that echo in Barack Obama today:

“For it is long past time to ask: what is this war doing to us? Of course it is costing us money -- fully one-forth of our federal budget -- but that is the smallest price we pay. The cost is in our young men, the tens of thousands of their lives cut off forever. The cost is in our world position -- in neutrals and allies alike, every day more baffled by and estranged from a policy they cannot understand.” [PBS American Experience]

Speaking in Fayetteville, North Carolina, nearly 40 years later to the day, on March 19, 2008, Obama evoked the message of the fallen Senator:

“This war has now lasted longer than World War I, World War II, or the Civil War. Nearly four thousand Americans have given their lives. Thousands more have been wounded. Even under the best case scenarios, this war will cost American taxpayers well over a trillion dollars. And where are we for all of this sacrifice? We are less safe and less able to shape events abroad. We are divided at home, and our alliances around the world have been strained. The threats of a new century have roiled the waters of peace and stability, and yet America remains anchored in Iraq.” [Time Magazine]

While Bobby’s death jolted many of us into political awareness, it also seemed to snuff out the dream for a better nation and world that he, his older brother and Martin Luther King -- all gone in an instant -- had held out in promise.

With dashed hopes, starting with Watts and culminating with the riots after Dr. King's assassination [Atlanta Journal-Constitution], we watched our country morph into Nightly News maps with bonfire icons displayed on what seemed a dozen cities per night, a series of ‘long, hot summers’ [Time Magazine], turmoil that Kennedy and King had hoped to stop. [YouTube] 

Why are we moved now, in this year, when idealistic former 22 year-olds, having turned into 62 year-old cynics, are grasping again for hope?   Because we, finally, have before us a person who holds within his and our grasp the promise of a renewed dream. 

As Caroline Kennedy, our only direct link to the Camelot of JFK, said in her January 27 endorsement, “Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.”

She spoke for so many of us who had watched in disbelief as her father was carried to his grave [Britannica.com], “I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president -- not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.” [New York Times]

While our memories are filled with sadness, tinged with the news of Senator Edward Kennedy’s illness [Reuters], we listen each day and read each day and hope each day that Bobby’s smashed vision [YouTube], John’s call to service  [Kennedy Inaugural] and Martin’s eloquent dream ["I Have a Dream"] now stand before us in the form of Barack Obama.

And, God willing, we will see a new America emerge next January 20. 

He sums it up, when the Senator says, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” [YouTube], while we believe “He is the one we’ve been waiting for.” [YouTube]

We have the opportunity, this once in a generation opportunity, and we can’t afford to let him slip away.  Not for your sake, and, 40 years later, not for my bride's sake, not for our four daughters' sake, not for our two grandsons' sake, not for our nation's sake.

Go to BarackObama.com.

Let’s make it happen. 

Let’s get to work.

A year ago, illegal immigration stood out as the issue many of us feared would dominate the presidential campaign of 2008.  First, there was Congress, where fiery speeches and anti-immigrant rhetoric soared in a fierce debate on whether illegal immigrants should be allowed access to public housing.  Democrats pulled out all the stops to kill this Republican motion.  While the GOP plan was defeated, the back-and-forth voting was so controversial that the chamber had the atmosphere of a near riot.   [Congressional Record]

We had presidential candidates, early on, who blasted illegals  [YouTube] and, as a result, the climate for immigrants, legal or not, became a fearsome one. 

Our federal government was well on the way to building a non-stop wall between the United States, a land of freedom, and the United Mexican States, our poorer neighbor to the south.  And self-styled ‘Minutemen’ patrolled the border "doing the job the federal government will not do".   [BBC News]

Unfortunately, the trend in Europe continues in that direction with the recent election of Italy’s fiercely anti-immigrant Silvio Berlesconi.   [Reuters]

And there's the continued influence in Russia of Vladimir Putin, who was quoted last year as saying his decision to ban immigrants from food market stalls will “ease tension on the labor market and make it more civilized.”   [New York Times].

Mercifully -- thanks to the immigration reform policies of John McCain and Barack Obama -- immigrants, particularly Latinos, won’t be bashed at the national level.

While the GOP presidential field did have an aggressive anti-immigrant player, U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., his defeat in the primaries, and the failure of anti-immigration rhetoric at the polls, demonstrated that “candidates with a hard line – ‘close the border and kick them all out’ -- fared worse than those in favor of more nuanced reforms.”   [Reuters]

State action is another matter.

And Virginia stands out as among the worst.

The Washington Post reported May 11 that Loudon County, Va., public schools have experienced a markedly slower enrollment growth in English as Second Language (ESL) courses, those provided for children who know little or no English.  The Loudon Board of Supervisors last July passed a resolution to limit illegal immigrants’ access to county services.  [Washington Post] 

While decrease in construction activity in Northern Virginia was noted as a possible cause of the slump, Alessio A. Evangelista, supervisor of Loudoun's ESL program, said, “"I suspect the decrease in [ESL] growth also has to do with the general appearances’ that Loudoun has become less friendly to immigrants.”  [Washington Post]

On May 7, the voters in the town of Herdon, Va., re-elected their mayor and town council, all of whom backed a policy that removed the city’s job center for day laborers.   [Washington Post]

The most anti-immigrant jurisdiction in Northern Virginia, Prince William County, April 30 revised its October “check immigration status of all ‘suspects’” policy  [Washington Post] and put in place one that allows county police to question the citizenship of arrested persons only.  The motive for the change was described as giving the county “better protection from potential racial-profiling lawsuits” at the suggestion of its County attorney. 

But, when asked if this move was a change in Prince William’s vicious anti-immigrant stance, County Board Chair Corey A. Stewart responded, "We have not rolled back or repealed any portion of it."  [Washington Post]

Other examples of anti-immigrant policies include:

North Carolina, where the state’s Attorney General, Roy Cooper, “advised the [state’s] 58 community colleges to return to a 2001 policy that prohibited illegal immigrants from degree classes.” [Raleigh News & Observer]; and 

Postville, Iowa, where, on May 13, according to the Des Moines Register, “federal agents conducted what they're now calling the largest raid of its kind in the nation's history” and arrested and detained 390 workers alleged to be illegal immigrants.  [Des Moines Register]  

The local school superintendent spent the day trying to help more than 200 immigrant children find out what happened to their parents. [Education Week]

Aren’t those of us who are ‘white’ lucky?  We don’t have to go through the day wondering if the authorities will suddenly burst in and deprive us of our freedom.

While the presence of illegal immigrants from Latin America may be the most openly-expressed reason for these anti-immigrant policies, the unspoken reason could be a nationalist fear of the growing numbers of persons in the U.S. of Latin American descent.  According to the U.S. Census, Hispanics are the nation’s fastest-growing minority, whose children are now one in four of all children under the age of five.  [Washington Post]

Of course illegal immigration is a problem.  But the way to handle it is to develop a “path to citizenship,” as Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain have proposed.  [US News].

Looking at the origins of our nation, you have to agree that among our founding ‘fathers’ were persons who came here with no legal right to displace native peoples.  They sailed into Massachusetts on the Mayflower and occupied what they chose to call “New England,” where native peoples already lived.  They invaded Virginia and set up their own ‘illegal’ settlement at Jamestown.  They conquered the West and Southwest with their invasion from Spain, illegally taking land from the Incas and Aztecs and well-established native nations of the area.  And they illegally claimed all of the middle of North America in the name of the King of France, naming ‘their’ misbegotten land Louisiana.

So, who are the illegal immigrants among us?  Ellis Island was established in 1892, long after these earlier invasions and occupations.  [Bowling Green State University].

You see, we are not as ‘legal’ and ‘pure’ Americans as we would like to think.  And those who also come here ‘illegally’ yearn for no more and no less than those who landed on this multi-nation continent prior to 1892.  Imagine what emotions must tear at Native Americans when they hear us sing, “This land is your land; this land is my land.”  It is?  Really?

Let’s see ... after graduating from Harvard Law as Law Review Editor, one candidate -- the grandson of a goatherd from Africa [Bloomberg News]  -- heads for Chicago’s notoriously poor and ravaged South Side to organize neighborhoods in need of community playgrounds, asbestos cleanup and just plain help after the steel mills had shut down, leaving families with no jobs and not much hope. [L.A. Times]

The other made Law Review at Yale, married the Arkansas political ‘boy wonder,’ and, while he was attorney general, managed to turn $1,000 --- put into cattle futures on the advice of a Tyson Food counsel --- into $100,000. [Marshall Magazine]  . Later, “just as her husband was being inaugurated as the nation's youngest governor,” she was made partner, at age 32, in the Little Rock-based Rose Law Firm, where she was putting $200,000 in the family coffers by the time she and her husband moved to Washington. [N.Y. Times]

The other guy... the one from Illinois? He started a civil rights practice and taught constitutional law.

And she, according to the New York Times, “lent prestige to the (Rose) firm’s letterhead [and] served as director of several of Rose’s” major clients, “including Wal-Mart and TCBY.” The Times also reported that “the head of the firm's executive committee ... said she was a leading ‘rainmaker’” who brought in clients based on her marriage to the governor. [N.Y. Times]

Since becoming a senator, she and her husband have made $109.2 million [National Public Radio] . Just last year the William J. Clinton Foundation received hefty donations totaling $131.3 million from a grateful Canadian financier, who brought along Mr. Clinton in his corporate jet, when the two traveled to Kazakhstan. Upon arrival they headed for a dinner with the president --- infamous for his suppression of dissent --- and soon the former governor/former president’s ‘friend’ won “three uranium projects controlled by the state-owned uranium agency ...” [N.Y.Times]

All the Clintons have to do is show up and money falls from the sky.

Go to Barack’s website [BarackObama.com] and look at the black and white shots of this earnest young man trying to help folks who actually needed help.

And after you’ve seen his story, you tell me who’s among the ‘elite’ ... And who represents people struggling to get by ... who understands the real needs of real individuals.

We need a president to represent the family at their formica kitchen table ... not the big shots seated around the mahogany board room table.

Let’s see ... after graduating from Harvard Law as Law Review Editor, one candidate -- the grandson of a goatherd from Africa <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aOOwMgWY_VIA&refer=home">[Bloomberg News]</a> -- heads for Chicago’s notoriously poor and ravaged South Side to organize neighborhoods in need of community playgrounds, asbestos cleanup and just plain help after the steel mills had shut down, leaving families with no jobs and not much hope.   <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usobam025598601mar02,1,6933215,full.story">[L.A. Times]</a>
<!--break-->
The other made Law Review at Yale, married the Arkansas political ‘boy wonder,’ and, while he was attorney general, managed to turn $1,000 --- put into cattle futures on the advice of a Tyson Food counsel --- into $100,000. <a href="http://www-marshall2.usc.edu/main/magazine/98winter/hillary.html">[Marshall Magazine]</a> . Later, “just as her husband was being inaugurated as the nation's youngest governor,” she was made partner, at age 32, in the Little Rock-based Rose Law Firm, where she was putting $200,000 in the family coffers by the time she and her husband moved to Washington.  <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A05E2DB163AF935A15751C0A962958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2">[N.Y. Times]</a>

The other guy... the one from Illinois?  He started a civil rights practice and taught constitutional law.

And she, according to the New York Times, “lent prestige to the (Rose) firm’s letterhead [and] served as director of several of Rose’s” major clients, “including Wal-Mart and TCBY.”  The Times also reported that “the head of the firm's executive committee ... said she was a leading ‘rainmaker’” who brought in clients based on her marriage to the governor.  <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A05E2DB163AF935A15751C0A962958260">[N.Y. Times]</a>

Since becoming a senator, she and her husband have made $109.2 million <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89397707">[National Public Radio]</a>.   Just last year the William J. Clinton Foundation received hefty donations totaling $131.3 million from a grateful Canadian financier, who brought along Mr. Clinton in his corporate jet, when the two traveled to Kazakhstan.  Upon arrival they headed for a dinner with the president --- infamous for his suppression of dissent --- and soon the former governor/former president’s ‘friend’ won “three uranium projects controlled by the state-owned uranium agency ...”  <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html">[N.Y.Times]</a>

All the Clintons have to do is show up and money falls from the sky.

Go to Barack’s website <a href="http://www.barackobama.com/learn/meet_barack.php">[BarackObama.com]</a> and look at the black and white shots of this earnest young man trying to help folks who actually needed help.

And after you’ve seen his story, you tell me who’s among the ‘elite’ ... And who represents people struggling to get by ... who understands the real needs of real individuals. 

We need a president to represent the family at their formica kitchen table ... not the big shots seated around the mahogany board room table.

Let’s see ... after graduating from Harvard Law as Law Review Editor, one candidate -- the grandson of a goatherd from Africa <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aOOwMgWY_VIA&refer=home">[Bloomberg News]</a> -- heads for Chicago’s notoriously poor and ravaged South Side to organize neighborhoods in need of community playgrounds, asbestos cleanup and just plain help after the steel mills had shut down, leaving families with no jobs and not much hope.   <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usobam025598601mar02,1,6933215,full.story">[L.A. Times]</a>
<!--break-->
The other made Law Review at Yale, married the Arkansas political ‘boy wonder,’ and, while he was attorney general, managed to turn $1,000 --- put into cattle futures on the advice of a Tyson Food counsel --- into $100,000. <a href="http://www-marshall2.usc.edu/main/magazine/98winter/hillary.html">[Marshall Magazine]</a> . Later, “just as her husband was being inaugurated as the nation's youngest governor,” she was made partner, at age 32, in the Little Rock-based Rose Law Firm, where she was putting $200,000 in the family coffers by the time she and her husband moved to Washington.  <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A05E2DB163AF935A15751C0A962958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2">[N.Y. Times]</a>

The other guy... the one from Illinois?  He started a civil rights practice and taught constitutional law.

And she, according to the New York Times, “lent prestige to the (Rose) firm’s letterhead [and] served as director of several of Rose’s” major clients, “including Wal-Mart and TCBY.”  The Times also reported that “the head of the firm's executive committee ... said she was a leading ‘rainmaker’” who brought in clients based on her marriage to the governor.  <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A05E2DB163AF935A15751C0A962958260">[N.Y. Times]</a>

Since becoming a senator, she and her husband have made $109.2 million <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89397707">[National Public Radio]</a>.   Just last year the William J. Clinton Foundation received hefty donations totaling $131.3 million from a grateful Canadian financier, who brought along Mr. Clinton in his corporate jet, when the two traveled to Kazakhstan.  Upon arrival they headed for a dinner with the president --- infamous for his suppression of dissent --- and soon the former governor/former president’s ‘friend’ won “three uranium projects controlled by the state-owned uranium agency ...”  <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html">[N.Y.Times]</a>

All the Clintons have to do is show up and money falls from the sky.

Go to Barack’s website <a href="http://www.barackobama.com/learn/meet_barack.php">[BarackObama.com]</a> and look at the black and white shots of this earnest young man trying to help folks who actually needed help.

And after you’ve seen his story, you tell me who’s among the ‘elite’ ... And who represents people struggling to get by ... who understands the real needs of real individuals. 

We need a president to represent the family at their formica kitchen table ... not the big shots seated around the mahogany board room table.