With a Little Help From Our Kids

I watched a repeat of the Lee Atwater story on Frontline last night. I still get angry when I hear of the dirty tactics used by people like Jessie Helms, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove or hear the one sided extremist talk from pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, etc. It reminds me of John Dean's book Conservative Without a Conscience.

In this last election we had several examples of were this style of dirty tricks didn't work; Obama being a socialist, friend to terrorists, Elizabeth Dole???s charges that Kay Hagan attended ungodly events, Colin Powell???s support for Obama was all about race, etc.

Could this be a realignment of the mindless conservativism that has so poisoned American society for the past 40 years?

Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
Victor Hugo

One columnist pointed out that Obama is the first candidate to come of age post-1960's. His age and inexperience are an essential part of his character, if only for one reason: the ability to believe his own rhetoric. After he has been used and thrown out by a country that desperately needed him, he may not have the ability to believe any longer. I am too young to have seen the upheaval of the 1960's, but I clearly feel the angst, escapism, and anger of Generation X. I served my country in the uniform of the U.S. Peace Corps and I can tell you that fatalism, skepticism, anger, and distrust are the enemies that will do the most harm to our communities and our country. This is change we should all believe in.

In 1968, I was living at Aurora, Illinois which is located about 40 miles from the Democrat convention site. I saw the news coverage of the demonstrations and participated in discussions over lunch on the situation. No one dared to address non work subjects during work hours during those days. Some of my peers had children in the service and one had gone AWOL to Canada. We thought that the demonstraters were protesting the Vietnam war. The parents with children in the service sure thought so. I thought that the demonstrators had to be quite well off financially to be able to afford these activities. You see, I was part of the working class. There were major racial struggles during that period as well. Perhaps they were more of a factor in the demonstrations than I realized or possibly I have misinterpreted Jonathan's column.

Whatever the case, I appreciate the connection that Jonathan has drawn and have total confidence in this country and the President elect. to overcome whatever challanges we face.

November 5th, 2008 SP Editor Posted in American News | 159 Comments »

Anything can happen in America???

You can literally be ANYBODY and win an election, something that I bet a lot of lazy (and criminally inclined) children will be happy to learn. From now on, experience, knowledge, intelligence, character, associations, intentions, substance, and demeanor will be irrelevant, if you are fortunate enough to belong to an ethnic minority that the Media wishes to promote and that enough European Americans can feel guilty for.

In this first (and probably not last) AFFIRMATIVE ACTION election, we have discovered that if you promise enough nonsense to those who are desperate for a handout, you can be victorious. We have discovered that when you allow the spread of ignorance, entitlement, and irresponsibility throughout an entire population, you can reach very high (note to self when selling any product!).

Yesterday was the beginning of the end for the United States of America. We are only left to see what we can create from the ashes of this entire mess. WE will have to get ready for the tornado that is about to hit us, and be ready to take over from the mindless hordes that now dominate our land.

Will many of these same ???AmeriCONS???, as I will now call them, ever learn?

Yesterday, people elected a clone of Mr. 2000 and 2004. An unprepared empty suit of a man, whom we shall forever call the Affirmative Action Bush (AA Bush for short).

What will be our next step?

???In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism and skepticism and humbug and we shall want to live more musically.??? Vincent van Gogh

Chris Matthews shows his true colors. Talk about an ongoing free pass!:
Matthews: "I Want To Do Everything I Can To Make This...New Presidency Work"

matthews_11-6b.jpgChris Matthews appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe this morning to discuss Rahm Emanuel's decision to announce he has not yet accepted President-Elect Barack Obama's offer for White House Chief of Staff and other Obama-related stories.

But after some questioning by co-host Joe Scarborough, Matthews said, "I want to do everything I can to make this thing work, this new presidency work."

"Your job as a journalist is to make this presidency work?" asked Scarborough.

Scarborough, co-host Mika Brzezinski and guest Richard Stengel continued the conversation about a journalist's role with Matthews throughout the interview. Stengel described the "constitutional responsibility" of journalists to "hold his feet to the fire."

As always, J Alter has his bald head up his a**
Grant Park isn't Chicago. If Obama or any other black walked thru Bridgeport (Daley's old neighborhhod) after dark in 2008, it would be the last time they were ever seen. Chicago remains the most racist big city in the country. At the same time, Patrick Fitzgerald would surely argue that Chicago also has teh most corrupt city government in the U.S. Change??? LOL

If Obama is smart , he'll expedite the construction of the TransCanada gas pipeline project from Alaska through Canada and into the lower 48 states....its a quicker fix to reach energy independence and will
create thousands and thousands of jobs. You people scoff at this when Palin mentions it but the truth is
everybody in the oil and gas industry which includes me , agree with Palin on this one 100 %.

TO: hss46, I feel for you, and your son. I did one tour in Vietnam and can't imagine having to turn around and do it again. Jonathan Alter, as usual, is right on the money, except that the DRAFT didn't double back on itself, which would have cut down on the insanity of multiple tours to Iraq. If there was a draft, the opposition to that war would be deafening. Some right-wingers might even have second thoughts!

To: Turth Will be Told, My son is just now returning from his 2nd deployment and the government that is being replaced didn't give him body armor, sent him and his unit back to Iraq understaffed and under equipped without adequate time to retool, train/retrain or rest, and, with McCain's help tried to stop Congress from passing a GI bill that is still shy of what I had or my father had. If you want to fear something, if tears will bring you to a place of balance, fear the effect on how the world, and especially the Arab world, sees us when we invade their homeland based on the lies of a goverment that only wants to control their oil and shed tears over the fact that we still have 70 plus days of rule by a government that would love to invade Iran and get control over its oil.l

The real shame is that the Roves and Schmidts are able to scare people into believing that the "other" is the enemy because the "other" will do all the same things that they (Rove, Schmidt and the republicans) have done and would continue to do if only they had been able to scare even more people..

Hubert Humphrey was a pig?

You just have to laugh at the hypocrisy. If the current conditions prevailed after 8 years under a democratic administration, these same apologists would be calling for impeachment! Listening to Rush, O'Reilly and Hannity can make you believe that monkeys fly. I used to love listening to O'Reilly, until I caught on.

Alter is full of self-inflating garbage. The sixties never really left. Indeed,they will become a hallmark of the national discussion on the environment[where scorched-earth policies to do away with ''big''energy,precisely as in the sixties among the ''whole world is watching''set],will be pursued in a vaccum that will not be able to bring the ''new technologies''online fast enough to fill this creating an untenable situation.
''anti-Establishment'',then as now,vests itself in the hostility against the ''corporation''as evidenced by a wide array of Obama backers policies from the left side of the fence that will move to implement programs designed to punish these in order to establish [as in the sixties],union hegemony in the workplace[.Nancy Pelosi,Steny Hoyer,George Miller and Jim McDermott of the House Education and Labor Committee are already hard at work on these policies strangely unmentioned at any place or at any time by NEWSWEAK].
Alter can claim a retreat from the sixties in only one area alone. Race. The rest of it is has not only moved from Ivy League colleges and coffeehouses into the halls of power in Washington,but will be a portion,for better or worse,of all of our lives. Alters nonsense can be thus handily dismissed.

Good-bye to the Sixties? Ever since Obama started campaigning it has been reliving them all over again. He may have been a child then, but his politics are Classic Sixties Liberalism.

I loved the title "with a little help from our kids." That certainly rang true for me, an aging white retired school teacher, who volunteered to help on Nov 3 and 4 at an Obama phone bank on Crenshaw Blvd, in Los Angeles. As an older fuddy-duddy, I must say that I HATE cellphones. I certainly do not own one. So when I reported for duty (hoping to walk precincts), I had to borrow a cell phone from the headquarters. With the patience of Job, younger African-American volunteers, who could have been my former students, helpd me operate the confusing contraption, so I certainly received a very concrete lesson in "a little help from our kids."
One of the most compelling incidents I'll retain for ever occurred on the second day. An African-American man, somewhere in his mid to late 30's, about the age of many of my fomer students, showed up with his teenage son. Together, side by side, as father and son, they joined the phone bank using their cell phones with an aplomb that I could only admire. Obama has spoken extensively about the importance of fatherhood in the African-American community. That man was an excellent example of being a dad. It also reminded me of passing of one generation to another. Had I taught in a different inner city high school, the father could have been in my classroom, and one of many former students, who are now replacing me in the classroom, might actually teach his son.
Truly, an example of a "little help from the young."