Being the Change I Wish to See

If you’ve been watching the news and heard the threats of violence against Barack Obama during the Republican rallies, you’ve heard the candidates say or people yell things about Obama like:

• Terrorist
• Kill him
• Off with his head
• Arab (in a derogatory way)
• Muslin (in a derogatory way)
• Associates with terrorists
• Obama is not like us

This whole thing is unconscionable and completely disgraceful.

John McCain says he’s learned his history, but he obviously hasn’t learned squat.

I’m currently reading Ian Kershaw’s biography of Adolf Hitler, and this reminds me of a Nazi rally on November 8, 1938. What followed this rally was the “night of broken glass” (Reichskristallnacht) on November 9-10, 1938. It was a night of terror against Jews. Synagogues were burned. Jewish shops were destroyed. Jews were arrested, beaten and murdered. Hitler didn’t raise a stick, a torch, or a gun. But his inflammatory speech whipped the crowd into a hate-filled frenzy and led to extreme violence and thousands of deaths.

Similar things happened in America in the 1960′s during the civil rights movement. Segregationist leaders yelled their hateful speeches from the stump and African Americans and civil rights workers were murdered. Again, the leaders, like George Wallace, didn’t raise a hand, but they tacitly gave permission to their hate-filled followers to carry out horrendous crimes against their fellow American citizens because they had different beliefs or their skin was a different color.

Sarah Palin and other members of the McCain campaign are repeating this very frightening history of the imperfect human race. She and other members of the campaign are giving tacit permission to crowd members to believe untruths and to harbor violent thoughts and intents against a fellow American citizen.

I do not believe for a second that Sarah Palin doesn’t hear these epithets and calls to violence. When she hears them she has chosen to ignore them. I have seen that when John McCain hears these things he stops them, but not strongly enough to put a stop to them.

U.S. Congressman John Lewis of Georgia is 100% right to warn John McCain about the tone of his rallies and draw comparisons between them and the violence of the 1960′s.

McCain claims similar threats are being made against him and Sarah Palin at Obama rallies, but this is completely untrue. Barack Obama won’t even allow crowds at his rallies to boo McCain or Palin, let alone say anything of an inflammatory or violent nature against them. Obama stops his crowd as soon as any of that begins and tells them they shouldn’t be booing the other candidate, they should be getting out the vote on November 4th for him.

Why hasn’t John McCain stopped mid-sentence when one of these threats is yelled and put his foot down that this is America and we do not threaten people period, and that he will not permit anymore of these disgraceful outbursts. Why hasn’t McCain told his audiences that if they make such threats they will be found, arrested, interrogated and possibly tried and imprisoned. Why hasn’t John McCain ordered his Secret Service to find and arrest crowd members who yell violent threats?

Why hasn’t President George W. Bush ordered the entire Secret Service to find and arrest anyone who yells threats of violence against any candidate running for a federal public office?

McCain and Palin both say they can’t control everything everyone in the crowd says and that these threats are from the few nuts in any crowd. This is not true. They can stand up and tell their crowds to stand down and that this behavior won’t be tolerated. They can have the Secret Service find and arrest people who yell these threats. All it takes is one ideological nut with a gun to commit a murder.

If Barack Obama is murdered or there is an attempted on his life or the lives of his family, the blood will be all over John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, civil rights movement, Hitler, John McCain, kristallnacht, Nazi violence, Sarah Palin, violence

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and slapped its ass, got it to take off at full gallop, and head for a Democratic victory on November 4!

What a speech! Hillary Clinton is indeed an American and Democrat first. She not only asked her supporters to support and vote for Barack Obama, she loaded them up and gave them marching orders to do so. She and Bill will be actively campaigning for Barack between the convention and election day. No matter what, she demanded her camp join with the Obama camp because another 4 years of Bush/Cheney isn’t an America she wants to live in. Neither do I.

Last night, Ted Kennedy passed Camelot’s torch to Barack Obama. Tonight, Hillary passed her torch and Bill Clinton’s torch to Barack Obama. That speech united the Democratic party once and for all. If any Hillary supporter goes out from that convention and either doesn’t vote at all or votes for John McCain, Hillary made it clear that they were not for her if they would do that.

Don’t forget, Hillary won’t be too old at the end of an 8 year Obama administration to run for president again.

No way! No how! No McCain!

It’s about time somebody in the Democratic party sunk a few teeth into their opponent. I can hardly wait for Joe Biden and Bill Clinton to work McCain over tomorrow night. That should be fun to watch.

For the record, I will watch the entire Republican National Convention next week, assuming we aren’t hit by Hurricane Gustav and don’t have any power. My son is thirteen and at just the right age to witness such a historic election year. We are watching both conventions together in their entirety and discussing each speech and procedure as they unfold as part of his homeschooling. If we have to catch up after our power comes back on, I hope somebody in McCain’s camp will put the main speeches on YouTube so we can watch them later.

And I thought the Harriet Tubman metaphor was the best one Hillary could have picked out of all the people in the history of the United States. It spoke to the hopes and dreams of African Americans and women, two groups that will be very well represented by the Obama/Biden ticket. Today, the 88th anniversary of the adoption of the 19th Constitutional Amendment granting women the right to vote, it is fitting to remember that black men were granted the right to vote decades before women.

It is another repetition of history that a black man will become the President of the United States before a white woman, or any woman. We must put the fate of that final change in the hands of Barack Obama, who married a brilliant and equal partner in his wife, Michelle. Barack was raised by a single mother and his grandparents. He knows the plight of women. He has two daughters and I’m sure he dreams for them to have more and better opportunities than he and their mother have now. It’s what we all dream of for our children. Equal rights for women are part of who Barack is.

Senator Biden is a huge asset to the Obama campaign because he’s been in the Senate as long as John McCain. He knows John McCain. Joe Biden has been a very strong advocate for women and families all his years in Congress. He helped draft the law to protect women from domestic violence and John McCain voted against it. Joe was key to the family and medical leave act. Joe Biden was around when John McCain used to be somebody I would consider a liberal. Over the last few years John has turned into some guy that looks like a George Bush clone. Hillary’s Twin Cities metaphor was perfect.

Eight years ago, I might have voted for John McCain had he been the Republican nominee. But not now. I don’t even know who he is anymore. I respect his sacrifice to our country in an extremely unpopular war in which he was imprisoned as a P.O.W. He experienced the horror of war up close and personal, and is probably haunted by nightmares to this day. For that, he deserves our gratitude and respect as a war hero.

But that doesn’t give him license to continue to put U.S. soldiers in harm’s way unnecessarily. President Bush listened to his generals (finally) and allowed the military to fight the Iraq war as it should be fought. Now it will come to a successful end a lot sooner than if he had allowed Congress to dictate strategy and tactics. I won’t even go into why we should never have gone into Iraq. We’re there and we must win.

If anything, Vietnam showed us that politics cannot win a war. But John McCain remarking off-handedly that we would have troops in Iraq for 100 years was either poorly thought out or he’s been in the Senate so long he doesn’t remember that generals strategize and soldiers fight. Give them what they need and get out of their way. Had World War II been fought with the same political interference as Vietnam, Hitler would have won his thousand year Reich. Had politicians micromanaged the Manhattan Project, we might be a Japanese province right now.

John McCain lived the damned history and can’t seem to remember the lesson! He questions Obama’s ability to be commander-in-chief. I question his judgment to be commander-in-chief. If he can change his spots so far so fast, how are we, the American people, supposed to have faith in him? I don’t.

Everyone was nervous about how the Democratic Party would be united, and Hillary Rodham Clinton rose to the occasion and the challenge to unite the party behind Obama, and she did it with grit and grace. Hillary Clinton showed tonight that she is a team player and even more formidable a leader than anyone could have imagined before. Only great strength brings that kind of grace. I am extremely proud to be one of her supporters, and I am extremely proud to throw my full support behind the Obama/Biden ticket.

Technorati Tags: 2008 election, Biden, Democratic National Convention, DNC, Hillary Clinton, Hitler, Manhattan Project, Obama, political war

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