Just for the record, I still think that every one of Obama's descriptive hints about who will be his VP choice have pointed right at Mark Warner, and that Warner will be his VP nominee…. Continue reading
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
(Excerpt): I don’t think Obama walks a race tightrope. I think he walks and talks and thinks just exactly how he walks and talks and thinks, and he doesn’t attack anyone, white or black, because that’s who he is. Somehow, Obama has learned not to bother with blaming anyone for anything, because blaming is a waste of time and spirit and resources, and besides, it only invites retaliation, which must then be defended against. Instead, Obama consistently accepts, “as-is,” all others, black and white, American and “other.”
(Excerpt): Obama knows that everyone makes mistakes, and that the greater one’s power, the greater the potential for and impact of their mistakes. As Dr. King did, Obama encourages his audiences to move forward together to find solutions to unsolvable problems, to clean up impossible messes, to do better than the last generation, and he knows we can’t do it while carrying a burden of past guilt.
Not-blaming is a deliberate, habitual practice of Obama’s. He shares with King the best, most productive kind of humility: self-acceptance born merely—and spectacularly—from realization that they are God’s creatures, which is to say, imperfectly perfect, perfectly lovable, and forgiven. Continue reading
(Excerpt:) Why don’t we all just humbly accept that we are all destined to live and die with great mysteries and uncertainties, and that we aren’t meant to know very many things with any great deal of clarity? We can still pursue understanding, but it's more fun when we realize that whatever it is that God intends for us to do and be and have and believe on this earth—if there is indeed a God even of each of our personal understandings, and Whoever or whatever we each choose to mean by that Name—it is very evidently not likely that we will ever clearly understand everything, or anything, and will certainly never all come to the same conclusions. (Excerpt:) Especially in religious, philosophical, and political discourse, we can spend less time divided among our many differences, and instead celebrate and focus upon our many commonalities—all the universal truths upon which we can all agree, all that unites us, such as love, hope, faith (wherever we choose to put that faith), respect, responsibility, honesty, fairness, hard work, spiritual practice, community, kindness, compassion, forgiveness, generosity, purity, selflessness, peacefulness…and the rest of the long list of good things we can all agree upon which goes on forever. These ecumenical values, in all their various positive permutations and versions, can always be communally embraced, taught, admired, built upon, and warmly shared among people of all faiths and ideologies, or of no faith or ideology. Then, instead of forever being self-righteously “right”–that is, wrong–we can celebrate and embrace one another's uniqueness, and…just get along. Continue reading
Excerpts: Bushie and Harrie were pardners/Oh lordy, how they cleared brush/They swore to be true to each other/Then Bushie gave her the brush/He was her man/But he done her wrong…/I couldn't tell you no story/I wouldn't tell you no lie/Ol' Georgy Porgy ain't studyin' no justice/He just wants his puddin' and pie/He done kissed that girl/And now he's makin' her cry…. Continue reading
Excerpt: During the upcoming hearings, the GOP will be constrained from coming right out and saying exactly what it is that they really wanted to do, which was to put in place an ideologue whom they could trust to consistently seek out whatever constitutional pretexts were necessary to legally lead the country back to the stone age. They'll be forced instead to mumble lip-service courtesies to Bush's candidate, even while scheming to blow her out of the water and replace her with some right wing nut. Democratic senators will also be squirming as they assume the distasteful duty of backhandedly persuading everyone to confirm an avowedly conservative nominee…. Continue reading
The very complex, fine-line, difficult-to-weigh-and-decide, arguably this-or-that cases that come before the Supreme Court are best considered by a group of independent thinkers who represent the broad range of American constitutional thought, both left and right. Even I don't want a Supreme Court packed with only liberal justices; I hardly have that much faith that I'm always right, and the court will never be served by hordes of knee-jerk partisan yes-men. Besides, some of my opinions are proudly rightish. Continue reading