Tag: Barack Obama

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This can’t be happening

For over thirty years I’ve listened to a litany of lies and subterfuge from politicians and pundits about the wrong headed New Deal policies of Franklin Roosevelt. The global economy called for new ideas and well we just couldn’t have another 1929 because we had protections in place. Earlier this year our President said we weren’t in a recession. John McCain said the fundamentals of our economy were strong. Both McCain and Obama went along with the bailout as did most of the rest of Congress and the President signed it into law.

Wise people have long said that those who do not pay attention to history are doomed to repeat it. I wonder what the punditocracy will say now. How will Fox, CNN, CBS, MSNBC et al spin this?

Wall Street joined world stock markets in a precipitous plunge Friday, with the Dow Jones industrials dropping more than 400 points in early trading and all the major indexes falling more than 4 percent. The growing belief that the world will suffer a punishing economic recession has investors furiously dumping stocks.–Huffington Post

Read more here. The good news is that oil futures are down to $65 a barrel.

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CC Goldwater weighs in

I came across this well written piece on HuffingtonPost.com as I was eating my lunch. It’s written by CC Goldwater, the grand-daughter of the late Republican icon, Barry Goldwater. If you like the excerpted quote below then follow the link after it to read the rest of her thoughts.

My grandfather (Paka) would never suggest denying a woman’s right to choose. My grandmother co-founded Planned Parenthood in Arizona in the 1930’s, a cause my grandfather supported. I’m not sure about how he would feel about marriage rights based on same-sex orientation. I think he would feel that love and respect for ones privacy is what matters most and not the intolerance and poor judgment displayed by McCain over the years. Paka respected our civil liberties and passed on the message that that we should conduct our lives standing up for the basic freedoms we hold so dear.

Read the rest.  I supported Barry Goldwater and William Miller in 1964. I was the only student in my seventh grade class who did.

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Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan

I heard Colin Powell’s eloquent comments about Senator Obama’s candidacy and his own rather stunning endorsement. General Powell’s eloquence didn’t stop there. As a direct descendant of the Buffalo Soldiers, Colin Powell knows the sting of racism and bigotry that is rampant not only in America but elsewhere too. Usually it is the those who bear the wounds that have a message for us all and yesterday General Powell’s endorsement was really overshadowed by the story he told about a brave young American soldier who happened to be a Muslim. Until yesterday I’d never heard of Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan. Somehow his name didn’t make the evening news and yet his sacrifice was more than worthy of it. Like the Buffalo Soldiers, the Tuskegee Airmen, the 442nd Regimental combat team, and the Navajo code talkers, Kareem served a country that is still struggling to accept him. He died for a country that is struggling to overcome racial and religious bigotry. Like those who served before him, Kareem was bold and brave, perhaps his sacrifice and his story can bring healing to our troubled land.

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Powell Endorses Obama

I’m delighted to see that Colin Powell has endorsed Barack Obama for President. His interview with Tom Brokaw is eloquent. General Powell has the respect of most Americans and his endorsement is important. There can be no doubt of the integrity of a man who served his country both on the battlefield and in highest levels of government even as Secretary of State in the first term of George W. Bush.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efv3Vr8T9MA]

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A name

What is in a name? What is the language of racism? George Washington Carver was born a slave. His mother named him after the first American president when she and he were still slaves. A woman who thought more of her country than it thought of her and her son. George Washington Carver was a brilliant scientist. He worked with Booker T. Washington another brilliant scientist born into slavery and bearing the last name of our first president.

Barack Hussein Obama should be our next president and perhaps he will be, but the hoop he has to jump through caused by racism has been cast upon him by generations of flag waving, bible toting Americans who are as unfamiliar with what is really in the Bible as they are with what is in the Constitution of the United States of America. The real issue with Mr. Obama is not whether he’s qualified. The real issue is his race. He’s more than qualified. He’s brilliant and charismatic too. He’s assembled a brilliant team of advisers and he will make a great president, but his biggest problem is that he lives in the United States of America where a black man is still just a nigger. They won’t use those words on the news or political advertising. They are just below the radar.  They tip-toe around hot button words like that, but the implication is there. Mr. Obama dignity as a man and a brother in our human race is further denigrated because his middle name is Hussein. Barack Hussein Obama is named well as the name Hussein translates to “handsome,” and he is one handsome man.

Barack Hussein Obama is my brother and we are all brothers and sisters of the same father and mother. We are not Arabs, Jews, Catholics, Protestants, Irish, Polish. Those are terms that divide us. They may have been appropriate at some time in our past but they are not germane now. We all have hearts, brains, eyes, ears and mouths. We all need to eat. We all have blood and we all need air. Some of us are women and others men. Some of us are obese, some are slim, but we share the basics. We are all children of the same creator. We may have different names for the creator but that doesn’t change the central fact that we’ve all sprung from the same source.

Epithets like nigger, wop, polock, spic, gook, mick, rag head, haji fill our language. Epithets are the verbal expressions of fear and prejudice. They divide us. In any other country that may be acceptable, but here we are the United States of America and it must end now.

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Peace Train

I got an email today from a guy who wants me to believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim and because of that he’s not fit to lead the United States of America. I don’t care if he’s a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist, or an atheist. America is not a theocracy. I love this song by Yusuf Islam. Yusuf is a convert to his faith. He’s not an American, but he’s clearly my brother in the quest for peace.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7wEctHyuc0]

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

–U.S. Constitution.

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What if..

The following brief article came in today’s mail from a friend.

What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review? What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class? What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said “I do” to? What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?

What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization? What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard? What if Obama were a member of the “Keating 5”? What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?  This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference. — Kelvin LaFond, Fort Worth

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The debate

I’ve been watching the presidential debate a bit tonight. It’s the first one that I’ve really viewed on my big TV. I watched the conventions on my laptop with UStream.tv and an NBC live feed. I find the debates tiresome. I did get to see Senator Obama refute his association with Bill Ayers and ACORN. I don’t know how John McCain can talk about voter fraud after the elections of 2000 and 2004. The Republicans seem to have written the book on fraud. Wall Street dropped another 700 points today and all John McCain can zero in on is guy that used to be part of the Weathermen forty years ago. I used be a John McCain admirer and in other years, particularly in 2000 I was pulling for him against Governor Bush. Tonight he doesn’t even look senatorial let alone presidential. He looks instead like an angry little boy. I want to know who is Joe Plumber? McCain is enthralled by this guy. McCain hates publicly financed health care, but he himself has been on the dole all his life. What’s up with that? Does John McCain honestly believe that a $5000 tax credit would allow average Americans to afford health care. How much does $5000 buy?  The average health care policy in this country costs $12,000. What planet is Senator McCain on? Oh well, the election is only a few weeks away and then we can prepare for campaign 2010.

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When doctrine trumps the Gospel

One of the readers of this blog maintains that one cannot be pro-choice and a good Catholic or even a good Franciscan and that Francis would be appalled. Francis lived in a time much like our own when the church sanctioned murder in the name of Christ. It was called the Crusades. Francis went to the Holy Land and visited with Malik-al-Kamil at the time of the Fifth Crusade. Francis, who opposed all killing no matter what the cause, sought the blessing of the Cardinal who was chaplain to the Crusader forces to go and preach the Gospel to the sultan. The cardinal told him that the Muslims understood only weapons and that the one useful thing a Christian could do was to kill them.

It seems then as now the church can be very wrong. The Pope signed a Concordat with Hitler which guaranteed the life of the Catholic Church in Germany but in so doing he stood not for Christ, but for the political entity of the Catholic Church. We have Christian chaplains in our armed forces who routinely bless members of our armed forces who will kill or be killed in battle. That’s not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s not love your enemies. That is political expediency.

Senator Obama is pro-choice. Pro-choice is not pro-abortion,  it is pro-choice. Senator McCain is not pro-choice and he’s going to get a pass from some narrow minded Catholics who can turn their back on their brothers and sisters whose blood cries out from the killing grounds of Iraq and Afghanistan. Demonizing the poor and marginalized is okay as long as you’re not pro-choice. You can defecate on the Constitution of the United States of America as long as you’re not pro-choice. You can turn your back on the Gospel of Jesus Christ as long as you’re not pro-choice. You can race bait and slander as long as you’re not pro-choice. If that’s what it means to be Catholic then I don’t want to be one.

I’m reminded of another brown man more my brother than some of my own race who said,

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
–Mahatma Gandhi

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Loving their own noise

Loving their own noise. Tonight’s presidential debate seemed like a lot of noise to me. I listened to perhaps thirty-five minutes and then I turned it off. Debates usually lack substance and this one seemed more devoid than others. It was like Senator Obama was debating a five year old. Same rhetoric of the last thirty years. Drill-drill-drill is how we solve global warming. Bomb-bomb-bomb is how we solve global terrorism. Deregulate-deregulate-deregulate is how we provide health care. It’s just noise. It’s meaningless. Wall Street dropped another five hundred points today and that’s just illusion. Only silence is real. Only stillness is real. The rest is just noise.

Those who love their own noise are impatient of everything else. They constantly defile the silence of the forests and the mountains and the sea. They bore through silent nature in every direction with their machines, for fear that the calm world might accuse them of their own emptiness. The urgency of their swift movement seems to ignore the tranquility of nature by pretending to have a purpose. The loud plane seems for a moment to deny the reality of the clouds and of the sky, by its direction, its noise, and its pretended strength. The silence of the sky remains when the plane has gone. The tranquility of the clouds will remain when the plane has fallen apart. It is the silence of the world that is real. Our noise, our business, our purposes, and all our fatuous statements about our purposes, our business, and our noise: these are the illusion.

–Thomas Merton, Seeds (Shambhala, 2002), 65