Letters to the Editor
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@ doloresflower and fetboy: Good lists!
We are good list makers. You may note that many things on my list are connected with the issue of poverty. Medical bills are the number one reason people go bankrupt in this country. People who go bankrupt due to health concerns should not be penalized by recent strict bankruptcy laws. Trust me: It could happen to any of us.
Fetboy, you raise an important issue when you talk about the right to vote. I believe that felons should have their right to vote restored after they have served their time. Too many people have their lives ruined by ineffective and uncompassionate drug laws and they should not punished additionally by having their right to vote forever taken from them. Upon release, they should be allowed to vote just like the rest of us.
(Also, let us hope we have fair elections this time. I worry that the stuff that went on in Ohio in 2994 will repeat itself somewhere.)
There is something I left off my list: We need to restore a real understanding of separation of powers. The executive branch and the president is not above the law. In my dreams, but I would love to see the Bush people -- including Bush and Cheney -- who have violated the law brought to trial. I believe Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld to be guilty of war crimes. I believe that if the White house was involved in the destruction of the CIA torture tapes in an act of obstruction of justice, that the responsible parties should be held accountable. I am feeling really angry about this and not in the least in a bipartisan sort of mood.
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To AKA Smith
"I believe that felons should have their right to vote restored after they have served their time."
I agree, but would say "once they have fully repaid their debt to society"; meaning after they have also completed their parole on the outside. Yeah, the details on that one could be better hammered out, but I agree that ex-cons should all eventually, automatically, get their right to vote restored, at some point, after they have gotten out of prison.
That one's a touchy issue, so be careful on that one.
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Oops! Correction:
I said: "The executive branch and the president is not above the law."
Problem with subject-verb agreement. I meant: The executive branch and the president are not above the law.
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doloresflower
I appreciate you taking so much time to answer my questions. Even more, I appreciate fully honest answers, you are fairly unique amongst the Obama supporters, as you have been willing to express concern about certain things he says, and it shows maturity to realize that one can't get everything one wants in a candidate (at least not in this cycle!). I don't feel quite so trusting of Obama as you seem to, but if he wins the nomination, I sincerely hope you are the one who is completely right about him.
I still agree with other posters that the republicans need to be brought to justice, and I'd like to see enough of a democratic majority that they can be investigated, brought to trial, and brought to true justice. They've certainly committed serious crimes, and that's why I do not think they have a place at the table. As I've mentioned elsewhere, it comes down to this, putting rotten food in your meal will not make it more nutritious, and treating insane neocons as having legitimate views (really when do they ever have a legitimate view, i can't think of one thing they've brought into law that wasn't a crime in itself), just pollutes the process. THAT is the way to heal our country of its partisan rifts, by being honest about what's been proposed and dealt with for so many years now. Then maybe some sane republicans can take over their party again, or there can be another party to take their place. I don't want to replace a long period of republican hubris with democratic hubris--though I don't propose that they are equal in that, as democrats squabble to much amongst themselves to ever do to the country what the republicans have done.
--Ron
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OBAMA IS A LIGHTWEIGHT WHO MUST BE REJECTED!
Obama is a policy dilletante with a personable manner and a good line. He and his wife are Harvard elitists who have a much higher opinion of themselves than is justified. You and I have NO idea what he would try to do as president, other than bring about some sort of unspecified "change." If he is nominated we will get four more years of a Republican presidency, which we cannot afford.
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Keeping Hope Alive In 2008: Campaign of Current Black-American President For The Real Presidency
When Senator Edward William Brooke III (R)of Massachusetts (from WikiPedia)was the first African American to be elected by popular vote to the United States Senate when he was elected as a Republican from Massachusetts in 1966,as of 2007, he was one of three African Americans to serve in the United States Senate and is the most recent of three Republican African American Senators. He was also the longest-serving black senator(two terms) and the only one to be re-elected(1972.)He was also the first African American elected since Reconstruction, and would be the only person of African descent in the Senate until 1993 when Democrat Carol Moseley Braun would be elected.
Between 1978-1992, America had no Black President:Only five African Americans have served in the United States Senate. Two were appointed and three have been elected. (Until the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment -- which went into effect in 1914 -- all senators were appointed by state legislatures.)
The first African American in the Senate finished out Jefferson Davis's term. Two have represented Mississippi, two have represented Illinois, and one has represented Massachusetts. Barack Obama and Carol Moseley Braun are Democrats. The other senators were Republicans.
Pages in category "African American Senators"
There are 5 pages in this section of this category.
B
Carol Moseley Braun
Edward Brooke
Blanche Bruce
O
Barack Obama
R
Hiram Rhodes Revels
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:African_American_Senators"
Because the dynamism of left-wing social-scientists driven by core beliefs that socialism is a better system even though it failed in the vaulted-USSR: backwards thinking from Harvard elites playing affirmative-action games to boot. Because of America having one U.S. Senator at a time, this one percent becomes the black president: the only legitimate arbiter of black interests which lie absolutely with protection and expansion of the welfare state rather than tax cuts and entrepreneurship and expansion of global markets in African trade agreements tied to life in the hip-hop ghetto. Yeah Oprah trips and America swoons about our own little Black President as he tries to elevate his status with a valient attempt at mastery of the universal principles of political governance and electoral engineering. He plays policy-lite while Daley and the Boyz in the Cook County machine in Chicago line-up for JFK-from-Harvard- Part II in the eards in Chicago in the wee hours of the morning : if necessary!
Their unphilosophy goes something like this:The racist empire which violates continues to deny rights to blacks whites and Hispanics while serving the interests of capitalist investors using industrialization to destroy the environment, is peeing on the entire world with its oil-driven wars and support for Israel and the phony War against terror. This world of America's Super-Powerhood will only improve itself if a "pure" hearted non-ideological pragmatist is able to charm and schmooze the fawning electorate that peace is at hand cause Bush is finally gone.
The three Republican U.S. Senators may not have agreed with the entire playbook of former Ambassador Alan Keys, but one has to admit that Senator Obama had lent sunstantial credence to the myth of the Black U.S. President. What a classic opportunity to raise the profile about the horrid conditions in Kenya Africa and malaria which kills millions of children each year in Sub-Saharan Africa. And what about universal health care and bringing the troops home by March 2008, and meeting with Chavez face-to-face for the hug and photo op makes any of this relevant to the violence of black on black crime and the failure of education in the innercities filled with baby-mamas for Obama and convicted felons lobbying for the right to vote from their local voting rights attorney. Yeah: it's 2008 let us watch the Kool-Aid and Keep Hope Alive!