LOL! weeping

Whatever. We're in cyber world. i actually somehow thought aka was a dude, too, a strongly feminist dude.

AKA you're the coolest. I don't like your choice for prez, but again, I bet there's much we agree about. y'know my mom worked her ass off to get a college degree while raising me and working full time, so hats off!

The thing about Obama that causes such fear (and resentment)…

…is that people know he’s serious about making big changes. Despite all the talk of him being an empty suit, it’s pretty evident that he is intelligent, can bring people together, has a plan, and is prepared to work for it.

He thinks the American people should be represented by their government, and that corporate lobbyists currently have a vastly disproportionate influence. He isn’t against free enterprise, or businesses making money; in fact, he has smart plans to stimulate economies in conservative, non-bubble fashion.

It’s a truism that humans will resist change to a large degree, particularly when it has an aspect of the unfamiliar.

But here’s the thing: we actually do need to change things in a big way—not to entrench a loony radical ideology, but to restore America to the principles upon which She was founded. The plutocratic neoCons have gotten us so far away from our true historic values that their platform is unrecognizable even to classically conservative Republicans, and certainly to all people (religious or not) who value tolerance, compassion, and human rights.

So some people claim he’s an empty suit and some claim he’s a radical (commie) leftist ideologue, but he is neither. He is religious, but doesn’t insist that others be, or condemn those not of his faith. He wants to look out for the legitimate rights of workers, but not create a society full of victims looking for handouts; he espouses hard work and responsibility.

He is against the trumped up war in Iraq, but not against defending America, not a spineless fool who doesn’t know how; Obama’s measured, informed approach is exactly what we need since we do face so many serious challenges locally and globally.

(The thoughtless macho posturing of the Bush admin has damaged the economy, gotten thousands of Americans killed and who knows how many wounded either physically or mentally, proved a tremendous recruiting tool for the terrorists they claim they’re so good at fighting, isolated America from much of the world and lowered Her esteem in their eyes, let our infrastructure decay, chosen an immoral and impractical solution to our energy challenge/crisis, and done serious damage to our civil liberties.)

Obama wants to encourage America to rediscover the notion of civic duty and service to one’s country, but not in the socialist authoritarian fashion of Mao with his little Red Book. How ridiculous some of these charges are! He doesn’t want to infringe upon our personal liberties, but enhance them! These things are not at odds with one another.

Obama is a lawyer, a scholar and advocate of the U.S. Constitution and the philosophical legacy therein.

-majority rule restrained by minority right

-checks and balances

-the notion that government is in place not to grant liberties, but to secure them; individual liberty

-you know the rest, right?

And yes, our Constitution grew out of the Enlightenment, which contained many anti-religious figures, but also plenty of religious figures, and even doubters tolerant of and hospitable to beliefs they did not share.

Our Founders—rightfully wary of monarchy and the claim of Divine Right by kings—had a variety of religious beliefs, and didn’t seek to create an atheistic rationalist utopia hostile to religion (and neither does Obama), but did agree to the notion that it was dangerous to invest unlimited authority in a single mortal, that the greatest protection for everybody’s freedom to practice as they pleased was to prevent any one sect from being endorsed or mandated by the civic government.

Obama’s ideas will mean change in a good direction for all of us.

It's not to big a stretch to interpret her statement as an intimation of: "...for all we know, he could be assassinated, so it's good if I'm around to step in."

I mean, most fair-minded people would give a public official the benefit of the doubt on something like this, and just call it awkward or insensitive given the current political climate.

But in the case of Hillary Clinton—and all her demonstrably false/absurd accusations and claims during this campaign designed to hurt Obama—it would seem naive to not scrutinize her statements.

I mean, just make a little timeline. Include the one where she said Obama isn't a Muslim "as far as I know."

I'm not personally convinced that intended a sly assassination inference, but I'm not at all bewildered that people see it that way. (It doesn't seem necessary to use the word/idea "assassinate" to make the point that primaries can extend into June. But often events are linked in our minds in with strange logic of their own.)

The trouble with throwing the kitchen sink is that you've got nowhere to go to wash your hands.

I think it very possible that there are hypersensitive Obama supporters who see malice where it isn't, but it's also possible that there are Clinton supporter who avoid confronting hard truths by rejecting even valid complaints as "playing the race card."

And once this vicious cycle of hypersensitivies gets whirling, it builds its own momentum.

Maybe it's time to have an in-depth look at what "race" is really about—culture and psychology and all the like...or coming off of this Memorial Day Weekend, we could reflect on all the lives, limbs, and healthy psyches lost during this dreadful conflict (Iraqi people, too), and think about how to make a better future.