The Brand New Respectful Presidential Campaign Thread

I believe you have it correct, Shokk.  Florida & Michigan state officials disenfranchised themselves.  What is going on right now is that the race is so tight, the DNC is beginning to think they need them, so they are desperately looking for a way to seat them at the convention (trying to turn a swat on the behind into a slap on the wrist, IMHO).  This is going to be very interesting to see how it plays out. 

Grace says: 

Absolutely there is room for improvement in the system. We have treated our Vietnam Vets horribly. These men came back physically and emotionally damaged from that war, and then we didn't even give them the respect they should have gotten when they came home. They were treated not like heroes but like they were criminals. These men did what the government required them to do. They did not have a choice, they had to follow orders, unless they killed their commanding officer one night in the dark.

Americans have shunned them. and now we expect them to walk meekly into a hospital and ask for care? These homeless vets may use drugs and drink. They are doing exactly what others do who don't get help for their problems--self-medicating.

Of course there's always room for improvement.

Americans have shunned the Viet Nam vets.  I wonder why.  Sort of reminds me of the Berkley crap that's going on.  Sad, isn't it?

Here's just a little clip about a soldier that served in Afghanistan.  I was fortunate to see the entire hour.  This soldier and his wife are incredible.  This soldier loves his country.  I wished everyone had seen this show.  It would bring tears to your eyes just how much this man loves his country and what he's willing to do. 

Try to tell this guy that the troops need to come home.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2008/03/12/beck.saluting.a.hero.cnn

Shirley...SSDD! Exactly where our troops are concerned! I have been trying to reiterate the same thing. People who espew "bring our troops home" are not doing it because they support our troops they are doing it because it is what THEY want! Ask our troops what they want and you will see the majority of them know what their job is and are dedicated in doing it. They are the armed forces, it is the civialians who don't seem to grasp this and at that it is usually the liberals who protest to protest!

Shirley...I admire your courage and patience in standing up for your principles against others on this board through their insinuations and direct insults towards what you believe in, you are awesome!  

Shirley,

Thank you for posting this link.  What an amazing man and what a moving video clip.  I know others in my small home town who have served in Iraq

Paulette, I'm so glad I am able to amuse you. There is so little humor on these threads these days. And I thank you for your definition of a crone, and accept it as my own--a wise, old elder. Woo-hoo. You make my day!



Oh, I can't believe that the majority of those troops sitting over there wouldn't want to come home! Unless of course, they continue to be entertained by the likes of Jessica Simpson (who just came back from a rally to keep up the troops' spirits)



And I do not "generalize" as you accuse me of doing to others, I offer MY PERONAL EXPERIENCES as a differing point of view. I do not think many of these women, including yourself, are very open to reading points of view that differ from yours. And so, I in turn find you and other women on this thread amusing to me.



Isn't it delightful we can amuse each other? So no offense taken by your posting to me above! Isn't it nice we can disagree and amuse each other at the same time.



As far as not answering your question about knowing these vets personally, this is the first time I have seen you question as I was at the hospital yesterday and unable to come to this site.



The vets I have met, and yes, spoken too personally, since that seems to be a real issue for you; are off the grid, so to speak. They ask for money from passerbys in our downtown. They get food, when they can walk from their unauthorized campsite to downtown where a church serves them a meal each day, and they have expressed to me and others that they feel America has turned their back on them. They feel ostracized and angry that the government and the American people think so little of their service in Vietnam (after all, we didn't give them any parades when they returned, did we). So I am not generalizing, but I 'm sure you won't believe me. I'm not even sure affidavits from thsese fine men would satisfy you or others on this site.



Now, hopefully we have settled the personal here, and can get back to the political her.



Respectfully (as the thread title says)

grace

Yes, that was very moving.



Thank you for sharing that with us, Shirley.



The majority of the troops may know their job and want to finish it, however they have been sent there under a false premis by a President and his yes men to do this. Sad, that young people can be hoodwinked by lies in the guise of patriotism and democracy, of basically telling another country what they need. Perhaps we need to rethink how we help other nations in the future. Maybe this is a history that we can learn from.

Regardless of how it came to be that the Florida and Michigan primaries were moved up, regardless of why it is that revotes can't be done (assuming that ends up being the decision in Michigan as well as Florida), and regardless of the rules of the DNC, the problem for the Democratics is that it's been government and party officials who've created this mess but it's the people in these states who are being disenfranchised. 

It's certainly true that the people of Florida and Michigan can still vote in the election in November, but if the Democratic party doesn't find a way to allow them to participate in the nomination process for the Democratic candidate (particularly since it's such a close race and their input could actually impact the nomination), do we really believe that these voters will rush out to vote for the Democrats in November?  The Democratics need Florida and Michigan to win in November, and yet only a small percentage shift (or even a fraction of a percent) in the votes could result in a victory for the Republicans in both states.  That would give the Republicans the White House. 

If the Democrats continue down the current path and don't find a way to ensure that the voters of Florida and Michigan are fully accounted for in the nomination process, they are fools.

I don't think that Hillary should get the Michigan delegates as it stands today, although I will point out that the voters could vote "uncommitted" and Obama's people actually campaigned in Michigan to get supporters to vote "uncommitted."  Quite a few of them did.

In Florida, if we don't have a redo, then Hillary should get her delegates.  It was the Republican legislature that moved the primary up, and it's not true that all the Democrats agreed to the move, a very few did. The majority of Democrats told Dean it was a disaster waiting to happen if he refused to seat the delegates.  And since neither Clinton nor Obama, supposedly, did any campaigning there, it's a fair election and should be counted.  Obama actually ran some national ads in Florida (he says he was forced by the Cable news to run the ads in Florida) and Hillary did some fund raising (with permission of DNC) but did not campaign there.  So the reasons for not counting Florida, as is, is not valid as presented by MS-NBC.  But to be fair, both states should have a redo.  It really does appear that the DNC wants to lose this election.  

And above and beyond, I find it ridiculous that two small states like New Hampshire and Iowa should decide the nominee, which happens quite often, as the momentum starts to build and can't be stopped.  This method of selecting the nominee has to be changed, and I feel strongly that the popular vote should always count.  How can Wyoming with 60,000 primary voters have a greater say over the nominee than Florida with 1,700,000 primary voters.  I don't care if you're for Obama or not, make a case for that one!

I am not posting tonight.  Well, I'm sorta not posting...hmmmm...wonder how that's done. LOL

I'm tired.  It's been a long day.  Perhaps that's why after watching that clip again and remembering what he and his wife said and stood for..well, there goes the mascara.  Nope, haven't cleaned my face yet. 

Thanks Paulette and acarr for the "pat" on the back.  Sometimes we just need that.  I feel like I've been through a battle.

I just feel like many citizens don't get how very fortunate we are to live in this country.  Inna has a real experience.  I believe she knows more than any of us.  I thank her for her participation and her allowing us to "walk" a little in her shoes.

I still believe that by rehashing the horrible injustice(s) that African Americans went through only hampers one to move forward.  I believe that if Martin Luther King, Jr. had lived through the civil rights movement and beyond things would be different today.  His message was "I have a dream."  His message wasn't divisive.

Yes, there is still racism.  How do we truly get beyond the anger?  What do we need to do before we, the whites, are forgiven.  Perhaps the Jewish community could help heal some wounds.  The Holocaust was real.  Horrible (beyond) inhumane treatment happened to the Jews.  Children were snatched away from their parents.  I cannot imagine!  Have you seen pictures of the bodies piled on top of each other?  Have you seen film clips of the "skeleton" like men and women behind barbed wire fences?  Yep, there really were ovens.  My father saw them.  I would love to know how the Jews have been able to forgive.  We still have Jewish people alive today that endured beyond what we could comprehend.

I was watching a while back a special that Oprah had on.  I believe it was of a museum Auschwitz (not sure).  There was hair that had been piled up that was shaved from men, women and children's heads.  There were shoes, baby shoes.  So much atrocities.  I cannot imagine walking through the museum and feeling the horror these people went through.

How do we move beyond slavery that happened centuries ago?

I loved the movie, "Roots."  I cannot believe how human beings can treat other humans.  I cried watching that movie, did you?  Some scenes I couldn't watch.  And it's been said that I'm scarier than a skinhead. 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with speaking out and criticizing our country.  That's what we call freedom of speech.  But a war is going on.  Just like the Viet Nam war.  The marching starts.  The hate begins.  And our military suffer.  Our vets who have returned home are suffering, I'm sure, from what they have endured, seen, and done.  Our enemies LOVE it!  And the politics begin.  How do we keep our politicians honest?

Good night.

Shirley

Shirley...I lived in Germany for six years. One of the concentration camps we toured was Dachau, it's near Munich...it was the most sobering experience of my life, mostly I remember the dead silence of the tour even though all the things the Nazis used for torture were still in tact, the showers, the ovens, OMG the ovens, there were large ones for adults and on the side of those were small ones for the children. How in Gods name could a human being do that to another human being is beyond me, it was HORRIBLE. There were many people touring but nobody said a word, it was HORRIBLE,HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE. When we were walking to our car, still silence, the silence was deafning (sp)...I cannot even explain it. You really have to experience something like that to even begin to understand the complexities of what happened.

What's particularly sad is that this country does not yet have a national slave museum nearly 150 years after slavery was abolished. I believe one is planned, but when will we see it? Nor have we paid reparations to the children of slaves.  Germany has paid raparations (3 billion marks paid over  fourteen years to the State of Israel; 450 million marks were paid to the World Jewish Congress.)  We all know that money can't purchase a return to honor, but it's at least an attempt to atone, if atonement is ever possible.  I suspect it's not.

Shirley--you asked how Jews who lost families in the Holocaust were/are able to forgive. I thought I'd turn it around to ask how Europe (more than Germany was at fault) sought forgiveness.  Germany, so far, is the only country that's made a determined effort to open up its history and to make amends. I think that some countries in Europe (France, Italy, Switzerland, for example) are in a rush to forget their history of complicity in the same way that the U.S. is trying to forget its history of slavery.  Other countries in Europe are guilty as well but most of them just recount the good stories, of the heros who went against the norm. Plenty of heros as well.     

Not that we're free from shame concerning the Holocaust:  the ships with Jewish refugees that we refused to let dock and which had to return to Europe, where many of the original passengers were sent to concentration camps to die; the U.S. Congress that voted not to accept the children of German Jews when their parents were desperately trying to get them to safe harbors (Kindertransport); the Nazis we accepted here after the war, and with great honor, so we could build rockets and weapons of mass destruction. 

There are a few slave museums here and there and some restored slave plantations where visitors can see how the slaves lived, but nothing that equals a national effort to inform the national conscience.  I suspect it's easier to look at the shame of other nations than to acknowledge our own shame. You can't force forgetting; it comes only when the bitterness is gone.  Fewer than 50 years have passed since the Civil Rights Act was enacted--that's a very short time in the history of human suffering, shorter even than the passage of years since the Holocaust.

I'm sure someone famous has said the following beautifully, but I don't have time to look up quotations at the moment, so here's my stab at it: Only a nation that knows its history, the good and the bad, and strives to atone for the bad, can ever ahieve and retain greatness.  

Anne there is no way that any country is going to be perfect and not experience its own shame the same thing with people............there is no perfect nation......all countries have made mistakes........and will continue to do so.................as young as America is we are still the most generous country in the world............we provide more aid around the world then any other country in history............are we perfect absolutely not..........I have never heard anyone deny or imply that we are somehow a perfect nation....but one thing is for sure there is more people worldwide that come to our nation then any other place in the world.....we have more people trying to become American citizens then any other nation in the world.......we have more people that have been suppressed in their native countries and come here to be free.........no we are not a perfect nation.......there is no perfect country..........I just don't get why the left always sees the glass half empty and complaining about all the wrong in this country instead of seeing our nation in spite of it's flaws is still one of the greatest countries in the world............Shokk

I don't get it? The thread is still the Brand New Respectful...I don't see that it's only Obama4President. I think Amy just changed her name. Did I miss something here?



As far as the South goes, and museums, you can go to any state in the south, and they have restored many many wonderful plantations that you can tour. There is very little mention of the slaves or their quarters. So, historically we are really still good at putting forth the same old, same old history--and leaving out the history of hundreds of thousands of African Americans whose ancestors started their history in the south over 150 years ago. you would think that each state would have at least one true Slave History Museum.