I never heard of Barclay before and I could not agree more with him. He’s a little older than me, but we’re on a similar wave length.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7TO1Rcx8jQ]
See more videos from Local Voices for Obama.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
No vision
The stock market plunged 800 points today. News yesterday that the 700 billion dollar bailout may do nothing to improve the economy unless the value of real estate begins to rise. Iraq is teetering. Afghanistan is going backward and all Senator McCain can talk about is smears. The Republican smear machine is in high gear and let’s not kid ourselves its not about race, not the presidential race, but the race of Barack Obama. The Republican dirty tricks machine bending over backward with push polling and guilt by association. McCain comes from a party of redneck, homophobic, christianist, racists. This is not the party of Lincoln or the party of Barry Goldwater. Just under the surface of most of these Republicans is homophobia, sexism, racism, and really anti-Americanism and mindless fanaticism. Many of them talk of supporting our military but few if any have ever served and when you really press them on the issue they get a little testy.
Barack Obama is about as American as you can get. He is the melting pot. Let’s talk about issues Senator McCain. Let’s talk about Iraq and Afghanistan and why according to reliable sources 60% of the active duty military are pulling for Obama. They don’t want anymore of your sellout crowd who put American forces in an un-winnable situation without adequate equipment. Let’s talk about a man who had to get shamed into voting for a new GI Bill of Rights. Let’s talk about no-bid contracts for war profiteers and no health care for millions of Americans. Let’s talk about your plan to de-regulate health care. Let’s talk about a guy who has had government health care his entire life wants others to do without the same. Let’s talk about the failed economic policies which your own adviser Phil Gramm crafted. Let’s talk about what de-regulation has accomplished and why we have to bail out Wall Street because you slept while the store was being robbed.
You like to invoke the maverick image, but you aren’t one sir. Barack Obama is a maverick. He voted against this insane authorization for war that you favored and he did it at a time when few in his own party had the courage to. Mr. Obama has had the courage to do without public financing for his campaign. He’s financed primarily by small donors. He’s mobilized millions of Americans who have a positive image of the future of our country. He’s a man with a vision. You are a man without one and long ago in Proverbs 29:18 it is written, “Where there is no vision the people perish,” and that is what is happening right now sir. People are perishing because you and your friends have no vision.
Go Mr. Cohen
This short video clip is priceless and begs interesting parallels between McCain-Palin and Obama-Biden.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp_2Cw4RH1c]
Deregulation?
Just today I read that John McCain wants to de-regulate health care. Mr. McCain believes that the way the market functions best is when government leaves its hands off. In an ideal society where everyone really is honest with everyone else and real market forces are at play. It won’t work here and it can’t because the playing field isn’t level. I think we ought to deregulate prisons. Let’s get rid of the guards and let the prisoners come and go as they might. I’m sure they’ll all return to their cells everyday because they know that’s what’s expected of them. Let’s not stop there. Let’s deregulate roadways. No more speed limits. We’ll just let entropy take over. If we get rid of stoplights and other traffic devices like speed limits the roads will come to govern themselves. Intersections will become filled with enough debris so that traffic will have to slow down to get around it. I think we ought to de-regulate firearms laws. Why shouldn’t you be allowed to own your own howitzer or RPG. It’d be handy during deer season. You could get half a herd with one shot. What planet is McCain on? Deregulation has destroyed our airlines. It has destroyed Wall Street and Main Street too. One good thing about de-regulation is there would be no need for lawmakers and we could send Congress home. That would save a lot of money.
Veterans for Obama
I’m a proud veteran of the United States Navy and I’m supporting Barack Obama for President. I like this video of the veterans who are also supporting Obama. These folks are from Pennsylvania. I’d like to show the support of veterans everywhere for Obama. Barack’s got what it takes to be President. I don’t dislike John McCain and I wish him well, but his record of support for both this unfortunate war in Iraq and his inability to endorse a GI Bill of Rights for today’s veterans shows that he is out of touch with the needs of veterans of this or any war.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87LhqeQmnHw&feature=related]