Quixotic Tales

      Today’s big newspaper story was not that General Colin Powell endorsed Sen. Barrack Obama but the big story was that Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan said General Powell, who is African American, endorsed Senator Obama because he was ‘Black’.

     Since Senator Obama is actually a Mulatto, Limbaugh and Buchanan conclude that the only reason that Colin Powell endorsed him is because he is half African; should I assume therefore that all White people endorsing Obama are endorsing him based on Obama being half Whiite? Does it appear to anyone else that America is moving backwards in race relations as a result of Obama’s candidacy?

     Holy crap, Obama talks with the elegance of Franklin Roosevelt, is as common as Harry Truman, has the charisma of John Kennedy, he has as much or more  education and brains as Bill Clinton, and he has the complexion of Martin Luther King! What are voters to do?

     Limbaugh and Buchanan have shown their ‘colors’, so to speak.

     Obama has nothing to gain personally from being elected President and everything to lose, as I see it.  Therefore, I take him at his word that the only reason he has to run for the Pesidency, is the restoration of the American democratic Republic for his children and the American people; his vision is the same American democratic Repbulic that provided him so much opportunity and the same democratic American Repbulic that George Bush has devastated for 8 years.  As such, Obama is my only hope for an America respected in the world and one that I trust to be there for me. Are American voters going to vote for Obama for the same reason I am or are they going to vote for a candidate based up how dark is his complexion?

     Look at America today and give me one reason that the average American voter has to vote for McCain instead of Obama?  Right now, Americans need most of all to unite and save the democratic Repbulic. Leave color discrimination to the artists!

       Lately, just before the November 2008 Presidential elections, Sen. John McCain has been touting Sen. Obama’s campaign, as an effort to spread the wealth in America.  The connotation of John McCain’s policy is that Obama’s plan is to take money from voters and give to poor people and (1) poor people are undeserving, (2) God intended rich people to have all the money, (3) only rich people should be allowed to vote or Heaven forbid, the poor people would be a majority and take over, and (4) a more equitable distribution of wealth in America is a sin against God and unpatriotic!

      My response is short.  As I read American history, the wealth of America was generated by its democratic U.S. Constitution proclaiming the equality of people and therefore creating a huge consumer base, where most Americans were able to participate in the economy and claim a fair share of the wealth of production.  If Senator McCain’s philosophy were adopted, the wealth of the nation would be in the hands of the 2% of the American people who ended up with all the money.  The result would be that only 2% of Americans are consumers and 98% OF AMERICANS COULD NOT AFFORD TO BUY CONSUMER GOODS because they have inadequate or no income!

      Let me just remind Americans that the latest economic crisis to hit America in 2008, is referred to as a ‘Consumer Revolt’, caused by the American working people who have quit buying consumer goods because of financial problems.  It never seemed to occur to ‘experts’ and politicians that American jobs have been outsourced to India, Taiwan, and the Phillipines and those foreign people are now the only consumers left, since American workers are out of jobs, have no money to buy consumer goods, and their unemployment benefits have expired.  For each job outsourced to a foreign nation, America loses one wonderful consumer.

      Evidently, the Republican leadership is completely devoid of any knowledge of the history of American economic success; President Bush was admittedly drunk when he should have been studying that economic history and Sen. McCain was evidently a POW when he should have been studying that economic history.

    Therefore, if America is hoping to regain its history of equitable distribution of wealth and economic success, the voters had better vote for the Mulatto Presidential candidate, Barrack Obama, who despite that fact or because of it, he is an exceedingly intelligent candidate for President, he is a well educated candidate and cum laud graduate of America’s finest universities, he is a candidate who knows history, and he is a candidate whose only purpose in running for President,  is to restore American success and glory  which has been devastated in the last sight years by a really crappy, dishonest Republican regime.

     Note: it doesn’t take investments to make big profits, it requires CONSUMERS!  American workers are consumers!

       Sen. John McCain is an enigma.  His career has been a checkerboard career and he may well be the king of flip-flop; yet opponents find it difficult to fault him, not just because he was a POW and victim of the unnecessary, immoral Vietnam War but he is a charming man at times and convincingly pleads that he has had an honest change of heart, at times (however only at times).  John McCain is the kind of person that you might easily welcome as a pal but could never accept as a President (which is the case with me).

     Lately, I have been exceedingly critical of McCain and his sleazy campaign that at least I certainly considered contemptible.  The most recent Repbulican campaign consisted of unjustified smears of McCain’s opponent and incited violence (“kill him”) among his supporters, against his political opponent, Sen. Barrack Obama.

     After I was finally giving up entirely upon Sen.  McCain’s character and sense of morality, yesterday I watched a video of the McCain campaign http://video.newsweek.com/#?t=1849018146&l=203709669 in which he exhibited what I  consider courage and unselfishness.

     One of Senator McCain’s supporters, on microphone, told McCain that he was concerned about the possibility of having to raise his children under a President (Obama) who, “cohorts with domestic terrorists as Ayers.”

      “Look,” McCain replied, “[Senator Obama] is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared about as President of the United States.  If I didn’t think I would be on heck of a better President, I wouldn’t be running.”

     The partisan crowd groaned their disapproval of his response.

     Then John McCain turned to an older woman to hear her question and the woman said on microphone, “I don’t trust Obama, I have read about him.  He’s an Arab.”

     “No, ma’am,” McCain responded, visibly exhibiting distress, “He’s a decent family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign is all about.”

     Later, to a chorus of boos from his crowd of supporters, McCain told them, “I admire Sen. Obama and his accomplishments.”

     It would be very easy to rationalize Sen. McCain’s behavior, in light of the campaign’s last two weeks but, personally, I choose not to deprive Sen. McCain of what I consider one of his greatest moments.  No one can deny McCain’s courage as a POW in Vietnam; however in that context McCain had no choice.  In his tempering of the incitement of hatred against his opponent, Sen. Obama, of his own volition and judgment, he displayed a ‘profile in courage’.

     Surely, it could be argued that McCain’s defense of Obama’s character was merely a responce to the drop in polls that he experienced as a result of the cheap Republican smear campaign waged against Sen. Obama the last few weeks.  However, I would maintain that McCain clearly was aware of the great success of a similar undeserved smear campaign waged against him in the 2000 Presidential primaries by the current President Bush. 

     There are times in this campaign when I very seriously doubted the sincerity of John McCain; this is not one of those times.  Sadly, there are times of doubt about Sen. Obama’s sincerity on certain issues, also.  This appears to be a ‘business as usual’ fact for political campaigns that is am embarrassment and quite distressing to we ordinary citizens.  However, whatever your partisan politics, there are times when you just cannot deny admiring an opponent’s unselfish act of decency.  I confess to admiring what I consider Sen. John McCain’s act of unselfishness.  It was his finest moment!

       In looking at the statistics for Religious Groups in the US, I discovered that there were 2,721,000 Buddhists, 4,657,000 Muslims, 5,290,000 Jews, 16,439,603 Southern Baptists, and 67,259,768 Roman Catholics; I also discovered that all of those mentioned were all committed to the sanctity of Capitalism and without exception all ‘lost their ass’ in the stock market, the last couple two weeks.  Capitalism is indeed a fickle God. 

     Personally, I believe in capitalism and believe it should be a fundamental human right, and that every citizen should be allowed to profit financially from his or her own creativeness and industry.  (Therefore this essay is copyrighted and cannot be copied or reproduced without the expressed permission of the author).  Admittedly though, I have no investments in the stock market; I am old and poor and therefore I do not invest in stocks nor do I even buy green bananas.  When I ‘go’, I am taking it with me!

     Having said that about capitalism, I must quickly rush to the defense of President George Washington and say that I do not believe he was a Communist or Socialist simply because he was one of the founders of the American socialized institution, the United States Postal Service, and he supported the American socialized public schools, by virtue of providing for them in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.  Personally, I greatly admire, respect, and support George Washington, the United States Postal Service, and public schools in America. 

     The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States reads, “We the People of the United States, in Order to . . . promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”  I love those words.  In my own mind, there is no sanctity in ‘capitalism’ or ‘socialism’; for me however, the U.S. Constitution is sacred.

     When our Constitutional forefathers established the United States Postal Service, they had a purpose and I am, as an American, in total agreement with them.  In the democratic Republic of America, the founding leadership believed that communications was simply ‘too important to the citizens’, to trust communication to private companies. 

     Even as a child, I trusted my governmental United States Postal Service to delivered the letter I wrote to the addressed recipient, intact and secure, and my American Government was trustworthy (at least more trustworthy that F. W. Woolworth, Incorporated). 

     After studying and researching American History, I have concluded that George Washington, Tom Jefferson, and Ben Franklin were not ignorant dummies; I decided that they were pretty darn smart and I am a beneficiary of their intelligence and leadership.  I totally disagree with today’s politicians who want to privatize the United States Postal Service, or Social Security, or oppose national Universal Health Care for Americans..

     Now that I am old and no longer set the alarm for six o’clock in the morning five days a week, I have come to the conclusion that I am over-educated.  When I meet new friends, I never use the title doctor in providing them with my name; I am a little embarrassed.  However, in retrospect I am always aware that were it not for America’s ‘socialized’ public schools, as the son of a poor Wabash Railroad Blacksmith’s Helper with less than an eighth grade education, I would never have had the opportunities to get the education that I received.  I also thank my father for encouraging me to get all the education that I could, so that I could rise above spending my life as a Blacksmith’s Helper (certainly, I believe that there is nothing wrong with being a Blacksmith’s helper, however). 

     Private schools have their purpose in the American democratic Republic.  Their purpose is to educate those students who choose or whose parent’s choose for them to be indoctrinated and educated in a parochial and not a democratic setting.  Public Schools are required to be democratic in operation and educating of the masses.  American public schools are a democratic socialized institution.

     Now, I am a child of the Depression (I was born in 1930) and I have been a student and teacher of American History.  From this background and experience, I could not avoid learning about economics and capitalism.  Therefore, I was a witness to the establishment of regulations, primarily by President Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrats, put on banking and businesses for the purpose of guaranteeing the American people that the Great Depression could ‘never happen again’; those regulations were fiercely opposed by the Republican Party and other ‘pure’ capitalists at that time and still are today.  To the opponents of regulation on banks and businesses, regulation was blasphemous to the sanctity of capitalism; ‘pure’ capitalist advocates never seemed to realize that economic stability was actually the result of regulation.

     The Republican Party has never accepted regulation in the economic sector as a ‘positive good’.  Therefore at their first opportunity after winning a majority in Congress, the Republican Party began wholesale deregulation.  The Republican Party believed that if a little deregulation was good (and profitable), total deregulation was the ultimate (and the most profitable).

     When the Great American Economic Collapse of 2008, occurred, Republicans were shocked, surprised, and they ‘lost their ass’ in the market; personally, I smugly ‘told them so’ and was unfortunate (a person is never fortunate to be poor) enough not to have investments in the stock market.

     What I have seen so far in the aftermath of this collapse of ‘American Capitalism’ has been truly bizarre.  I witnessed a video yesterday of Bill O’Reilly of Fox News angrily blaming Rep. Barney Frank, Democratic Chair of the House committee on banking, for this 2008 economic chaos in America; yet, Frank has over the years consistently opposed the deregulation that is responsible for the economic chaos.  Since Democrats became a majority in the House of Representatives a little over a year ago, Frank has been trying against Republican opposition to get regulation through committee unsuccessfully.  The Americans public would appear to be definitely uninformed , confused, and they forgot their history lesson.

     America is facing another Great Depression and economic disaster; capitalism is a fickle God!

      Actually, I went into shock reading ABC News’ report: http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=5987004  entitled “Is Negative Rhetoric a License to Taunt?”  The title doesn’t begin to express the horror and disgust that permeated my being, while reading the article.

      The charismatic GOP vice President candidate, Sarah Palin, in a Florida speech was smearing Presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, by attempting to tie him to Bill Ayers, a member of the radical Weatherman during the Vietnam war protests at a time when Sen. Obama was seven-years-old.  The relationship tying the two, is that Obama sat on a board of a charitable organization with Ayers, as did other Republican politicians and religious figures.

     “One of (Obama’s) earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers,” Palin told the crowd.  Ayers, she said, was a domestic terrorist and a member of a group that, “launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capital.”

     Palin supporters at the rally shouted out “treason” and “traitor” and one of Gov. Palin’s supporters yelled, “kill him!”  The Republican candidate for Vice President of the United States of America did not react to the crowd’s threats and continued her tirade against Obama.

     In America, it is impossible to understand the total impact of this situation, without considering that the speech was in Florida, a deep Southern State with a history of lynching Africans, and the fact that Sen. Obama is half African.

     Now I am seventy-eight years old and compared to me, Gov. Palin is a child.  However, I am a living American with vivid memories of segregation in the South, the schools, restrooms, hotels, restaurants, drinking fountains; I have been there and a witness to that.  Furthermore, I have been there when President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated.  I have been witness to the attempted assassination of President Ford, President Reagan, and George Wallace.

     Some of this violence was more personal to me than others, but regardless of the victim, all of the acts of violence diminished the glory of my democratic American Republic!

     I know of the meaning of fanatic chauvinism; I know the feeling of Chauvinistic violence; I have experience the devastation and loss of national heroes to chauvinistic violence and assassins.  There is no way and no how that I can condone the irresponsible rhetoric and behavior of the current Republican candidate for the vice Presidency of the United States of America, when she would incite violence on her political opponents.  Shame on the Republican Party!  Shame on America!

     Let me assure readers that I am not being partisan in this case nor am I being biased nor am I merely over sensitive in my reaction.

     Let me explain that on November 22, 1963, I was a student attending a class in Constitutional Law in the Law School of the University of Arizona and when the class ended and I emerged from the classroom, there was laud cheering and noisy laughter and shouting from the law students in the hallways.  I asked what the excitement was all about and another student yelled laughing, “President Kennedy has been shot and killed!”

     I was nauseas and I  felt like puking!

     The traumatic scene that I encountered that day was not typical of the university, or Arizona, or America; but it did happen!  I will never forget it. 

     I have never written about this incident before; I was ashamed!  I am equally ashamed now that I did not speak up in that frenzy of vile law students; I was not afraid of their cowardly expression of jubilation over the death of our President, I was merely sick and nauseous at the thought of it.  My reaction would have been the same had the assassination victim been President Ford or President Reagan. 

     Today, I will not remain silent and not show my disapproval of any political candidate who incites violence and death threats against his or her opponent in a political campaign for any office in America and especially the Presidency. 

     Admittedly, I have not always been proud of America and this is one of those times.  But, I am an American.