Search Results for: domestic

A Feminist for Obama

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I love Marianne Williamson (www.marianne.com). Like me, she believes in Barack Obama. We are both feminists. For me, feminism means being able to live your life in integrity with your own values and preferences and perspectives, not according to someone else's belief system about what is feminine or gender-appropriate.
For more insight on Marianne's wonderful take on feminism, read her great book A Woman's Worth. But for now–here's Marianne's endorsement of Barack Obama, a true friend of women and men alike:
“As a feminist, I believe nurturing and nourishing a world trying to be born is the most efficient way to counter the malevolent effects of a world that needs to pass away.
That is why I support Obama.
As a feminist, I believe inclusion is more powerful and life producing than is exclusion.
That is why I support Obama.
As a feminist, I believe tending and mending is a more effective way to deal with the world's stress points than is fighting or fleeing.
That is why I support Obama.
As a feminist, I believe having a vision for what I want the world to become is as important as solving problems that have arisen in the world that is.
That is why I support Obama.
As a feminist, I'm more concerned with creating a world my great-great-grandchildren can live in than in trying to make things better for me right now.
That is why I support Obama.
As a feminist, I am convinced that building authentic relationships is a more lasting, creative way to build peace than just strategizing to destroy enemies and manipulate alliances.
That is why I support Obama….” – by Marianne Williamson (www.marianne.com ) Continue reading →

Barack Obama is a Conservative, Not a Liberal

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American conservatives have always known that cooperative, caring, and harmonious relationships among Americans and nations are a very practical goal, critical to our national security. Certainly, we can sustain neither a desirable standard of living nor our well-loved freedoms at current levels of war spending, yet the problems we face in a violent, unstable world relentlessly compound.
The American dream of “peace in our time” is the essential and constitutional business of a government charged with insuring domestic tranquility, a more perfect union, justice, the common defense, the general welfare, and the blessings of liberty. Peace has always been a conservative idea. Peace conserves lives, resources, good will, money, health, principles and values, our American ideals and traditional way of life, our environment and talents, our time, energy, and property. Barack Obama, like other true American conservatives, is deeply committed to conserving and preserving our American values, ideals, and way of life. The only thing “liberal” about Barack is his openness to fresh solutions to America’s many contemporary challenges. Continue reading →

7 Reasons Why Barack Obama is Uniquely Suited to be President

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Only a United States of America and an Obama presidency will change a bleak American future into one that is genuinely hopeful and positive. Barack Obama’s unique combination of strengths and abilities make him the only candidate:
1. Who convincingly articulates an ambitious plan for addressing the most pressing common problems facing most Americans;
2. Who has the leadership, character, and political skills to take the Democratic nomination from insider/“incumbent” Hillary Clinton;
3. Who will win the general election with the backing of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike;
4. Whose popular “coat tails” will pack Congress with legislators from all parties supportive of his agenda in ’08 and in following elections;
5. Who will inspire national leaders having competing interests, ideologies, and agendas to find workable legislative solutions;
6. Who will inspire a grassroots citizen movement to get behind and pass such legislation; and
7. Who has the honesty, integrity, courage, intellectual bandwidth, global perspective, vision, character, judgment, and Presidential leadership skills necessary to simultaneously and successfully handle breaking crises as they arise, while healing and transforming national and international relations, and shepherding huge domestic policy changes through Congress.
If we want to elect the smartest and best person in America willing to take the job, we should be working to elect Barack Obama President of the United States of America. Continue reading →

War Was My Path to Peace

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(Excerpt): I grew up loving a gentle, funny, talented man who was also a highly-decorated war hero and career military man—my father. Many long nights I lay awake listening to the sad bugled tones of “Taps” floating through the quiet night air of the far-flung military stations where we were posted, worrying and wondering about whether my darling Dad might be called away again at any moment, to fight, to suffer, maybe even to die. My deep respect and affection for this dear man made my lifelong fascination with war and my search for alternative paths to peace inevitable.
But war itself no longer seems inevitable to me. I’ve come to believe that, while human conflict is completely natural, and while our many differences and disagreements offer the necessary challenges leading to growth, learning, and change, violent responses to conflict only complicate issues, making them that much more difficult to resolve. In fact, I’ve come to believe that violence itself, and the fear which begets it, is the greatest threat both to our nation and to mankind. Continue reading →

The Best (and Only) Way to Solve Our Terrorism Problem

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(excerpts): Consider: what if an imagined, vastly more powerful Muslim alliance had invaded and occupied the United States five years ago? We wouldn’t be “generating vigorous, sustained condemnation” about an occasional American suicide bomber way over in Iraq, consumed as we would we be already, here at home in America, with simple day-to-day survival, with burying and mourning our million dead brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, with caring for five times that million beloved wounded, with desperately fleeing the violence along with the millions of our fellow Americans abandoning their homes and trying to pick up the pieces of their lives and dreams anywhere else….
Just who is it, Mr. Friedman, who is “erasing basic norms of civilization” by terrorizing—Islamic suicide bombers, or our own invading and occupying armies?
Both, of course.
I have no doubt that many extremist Muslims are every bit as crazy as some of our very own home-grown terrified fundamentalist Christians and Jews who stand ready to nuke whole Islamic nations right now with no more questions asked. Yes, there are violent, ignorant, vengeful people everywhere, and this is a big big problem. And adding more violence, suffering, anger, and fear to all of their lives is being done to what good purpose? (Excerpts): Friedman argues that it’s up to Muslim leaders to “remove this cancer” of terrorist violence. No. It is up to western leaders to remove this cancer of military-backed hegemony, this cancer of “might makes right,” this cancer of trampling the rights and traditions of smaller and weaker peoples.
Unless Mr. Friedman and I can somehow agree upon which of our children and grandchildren we’re willing to trade for a steady flow of cheap Middle Eastern oil, and which of our cities we’ll willing to exchange for bigger earnings for American stockholders, we should support leaders capable of shifting our nation and the world into to a new era of non-violent global cooperation, for the sake of all in both the east and the west. Continue reading →

Some Sane Policy Strategies, Both Foreign and Domestic, for a Dazed-and-Confused America

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(Excerpt): The best strategy for insuring a reasonable share of post-war oil is for the U.S. to follow China’s admirable (and successful) approach to foreign relations: make friends with every country; don’t try to control events; don’t take sides with factions by using bribes and threats and offering weapons (all of which strategies only make more enemies, while making conflicts harder to resolve); offer apologies as necessary; and spread goodwill by generously supporting, in every country, only open, popular, peaceful initiatives of leaders with broad-based, loyal coalitions.
(Excerpt): We need to attend to the real “illegals” in American life—not the immigrants who daily seek respite and freedom from the world’s violence and injustice on our shores, but the thousands of prisoners rotting forgotten in illegal dungeons throughout Iraq, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Cuba, and elsewhere. We must find a way to bring due process of law to these imprisoned and abandoned “illegals” who have been deprived of their most basic human rights, and end our inhumane criminalization of the inevitable south-to-north global migrants whose only crime is fleeing poverty and terror, finding hospitable ways to assimilate them into American life.
(Excerpt): All the strategies described above depend upon our growing awareness that nothing we may fear is more dangerous than fear itself, and no weapon more effective than love in all its forms—kindness, patience, understanding, acceptance…. It is not hate, but fear which builds up armies and stockpiles nuclear weapons; not hate, but fear which looses destruction upon hapless presumed enemies, and thus upon ourselves. The Golden Rule–treat others as you would be treated–works just as well in international relations as it does with individuals. Just as families and businesses must learn to accept, respect, and support others (just as they are) in order to be successful, so must all political leaders, their party members, and their followers—indeed, all citizens everywhere—learn and teach acceptance, respect, and support all our brothers everywhere, all God’s beloved children, every one—if we are to survive and thrive together on our tiny blue planet. Continue reading →

Democratic Candidates Debate in South Carolina

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I heard only part of tonight’s debate as I was driving home, but during the hour or more I heard, the obvious winner was Dennis Kucinich. He had the best ideas on both domestic and international subjects, was the most confident, and the most passionately articulate and quick-on-his-feet. John Edwards came across as knowledgeable, deeply caring, and committed, if political. Biden and Richardson cancelled out their moments of lucidity with moments of politician’s foolishness. Obama and Clinton stumbled egregiously and looked childish and awkward. The potted plant will remain on the periphery. If I missed mentioning anyone else, let such omission speak volumes on forgettability. As far as I’m concerned, Kucinich is the surprise clear leader of tonight’s debate, Edwards distinguished himself, and the front-runners fell way behind. Continue reading →

We Can Prevent More Tragic Shootings

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(Excerpt): America cannot shoot its way out of a world full of angry, well-armed enemies, criminals, and crazies, and we cannot find solutions to tomorrow’s problems using the same approaches that got us into this trouble in the first place. In today’s tiny, interconnected world, how we treat others will always come back to help or harm us—however randomly—as we have chosen. We must demonstrate the best practices of humanity—or fear, fight, and express humanity at its worst.
(Excerpt):
We cannot avoid suffering some injustices, as Virginia Tech’s tragic victims attest, but we can avoid adding to their sum. We no longer have a choice of changing or not changing. Our only choice now is whether to change for the better or for the worse. As our forebears courageously risked war, it is time for us now to risk peace. Continue reading →

A Department of Peace?

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Excerpt: “The people of the world genuinely want peace. Some day, the leaders of the world are going to have to give in and give it to them.”- Dwight D. Eisenhower (Excerpt): A cabinet-level Department of Peace is a fundamentally conservative idea. Peace in America and throughout the world has become an urgently practical mainstream goal for generations of Americans wishing to conserve lives, resources, good will, money, health, our American ideals, principles, and values, our traditional way of life, our environment, and our talents, time, energy, and property.
There is no reason why the long-held American dream of “peace in our time” should not be the business of government. According to our Constitution, a good government supports domestic tranquility, a more perfect union, justice, the common defense, the general welfare, and the blessings of liberty. Without a citizenry and leadership skilled in non-violent resolution of conflict, all these goals are doomed to failure.
If we don’t stand for peace, what do we stand for?
What better way to show our heartfelt appreciation and support for our troops’ past and future selfless service, what better way to express our debt of gratitude, than to give them a Department of Peace charged with partnering with our military, diplomatic, and political leadership to insure that American soldiers never again march into ill-planned unnecessary wars?
Department of Peace legislation could be the unifying, groundbreaking, even visionary legacy needed by the Bush presidency.
Most importantly, a Department of Peace promises an effective new approach for solving our nation’s biggest and most costly problem—domestic and international violence. Continue reading →

Choosing Freedom from Fear (also see my photos attached)

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“America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way (in a) revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. These are the times for real choices and not false ones.” –Martin Luther King, 1967 Continue reading →