Many say they are voting for Barack Obama in a most enthusiastic and positive way. For me, this does not work. I see no compelling evidence in Obama’s history that he has what it takes to be a true, solid reformer. All I see is a young, inexperienced terrific talker that has used slick rhetoric to sell himself. With intellectual and ideological elitism and an aura of superiority and academic smugness, he has successfully fooled millions of people who are so disillusioned with our corrupt political system that they have let themselves be manipulated by poetic promises of change. In reality, he is just another super-ambitious, lying mainstream politician that has taken considerable money and support from all sorts of corporate and other special interests.

Indeed, despite all the hoopla about huge numbers of small contributors to Obama, he has also relied on exactly the same kind of big, wealthy supporters as the other candidates. As the Washington Post noted in the article Big Donors Among Obama’s Grass Roots: “Seventy-nine ‘bundlers,’ five of them billionaires, have tapped their personal networks to raise at least $200,000 each. They have helped the campaign recruit more than 27,000 donors to write checks for $2,300, the maximum allowed. Donors who have given more than $200 account for about half of Obama's total haul, which stands at nearly $240 million. …The list includes partners from 18 top law firms, 21 Wall Street executives and power brokers from Fortune 500 companies.”

Sure, Obama says that small contributors will have access, but Obama's bundlers help make up a more loosely defined "national finance committee," whose members are made to feel part of the campaign's inner workings through weekly conference calls and quarterly meetings at which they quiz the candidate or his strategists. Not exactly what $20 contributors get.

I remain troubled that Michelle Obama's salary at University of Chicago Hospitals when her husband won the US Senate seat was $121,000. Within weeks of his swearing in, her salary went to over $320,000. The following year Obama did an earmark request for $1 million for her employer.

Todd Spivak of the Houston Press has documented how Obama accomplished next to nothing in his first six years in the Illinois legislature. But then Democrat Emil Jones Jr. an African American with thirty years in the legislature became head of the senate and explicitly decided to make the young Obama a US senator. He did this by making Obama a sponsor of 26 bills that became law. This gave Obama exactly what he needed to portray himself as a highly successful legislator. Has Obama repaid Jones? Yes. He has provided tens of millions in earmarks for Jones’ district. As to such actions, Jones famously said: "Some call it pork; I call it steak."

Also, Obama’s judgments about people he has used to advance his career have been appalling. These include a former domestic terrorist, a radical hate-selling pastor and a federally indicted Chicago wheeler-dealer. While he talks about bringing diverse interests together, he has never done that to any significant degree as a senator or candidate. Voters have been divided along race lines whether or not it was planned. If he was not black he would not be getting over 90 percent of the African-American vote, without which he would not have beaten Clinton. There is no valid reason for making someone president because of his race.

Make no mistake; I was never for Clinton either. And I never appreciated why anyone should prefer her because of her sex. Call me an idealist, but the only candidate for president worth voting for should have nothing to do with their color, gender or religion.

What are better options for voters?

One choice is to boycott the presidential election altogether and not be a co-conspirator in the criminal conspiracy that our two-party political system has become. This requires facing the ugly reality that voting for Democrats or Republicans will never deliver the root, systemic reforms our failing democracy requires.

Better yet, if you feel compelled to vote, then vote for Ralph Nader. He has a distinguished record over many decades of working solely in the public interest without succumbing to corporate and other special interests seeking political favors. If honesty, integrity, intellectuality, independence, courageous policy positions and true political reforms matter to you, then Nader merits your support. This man of principles deserves your principled vote.

Here are some Nader positions that Obama and McCain do NOT support but that our nation sorely needs: a single payer universal health care system, aggressive crackdown on corporate welfare and crime, impeachment of Bush and Cheney, ending corporate personhood, adopting a carbon pollution tax, opening up ballot access. And Nader is a genuine supporter of the national peace movement to end the US occupation of Iraq. Note that Obama supported the reelection of Iraq war supporter Joe Lieberman. Unlike Obama, Nader is against government subsidies for turning corn into ethanol.

"We need a Jeffersonian revolution," says Nader. "If it doesn't happen, our democracy will continue to weaken and things will get worse. Right now, we have a two-party electoral dictatorship with each party looking for the highest corporate bidder." Amen.

I have been voting for Nader, the most legitimate populist and progressive, whenever he has been on my ballot. This wisdom by I.F. Stone keeps me committed to him: "The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing - for the sheer fun and joy of it - to go right ahead and fight, knowing you're going to lose. You mustn't feel like a martyr. You've got to enjoy it."

The fight is not about electing Nader president, but overthrowing the two-party plutocracy that is killing the middle class and fostering rising economic inequality. Should you have any negative thoughts about Nader because of the 2000 election, the facts refute blaming him for the Bush victory, including more than 200,000 registered Democrats in Florida that voted for Bush (compared to 97,000 votes for Nader, only 25 percent of which would have voted for Gore) and over half of the registered Democrats that did not vote at all because Gore ran a terrible campaign.

Go to the Nader campaign site to learn more and join this patriotic effort to spark a Second American Revolution. Enjoy yourself. Feel proud.

Fights for health care system reform are centered in Congress, as if legislators will do what they have never done before: achieve true, major and systemic reforms that only serve the public interest, not lobbyists and campaign contributors from business sectors.

Both Clinton and Obama believe that Americans have a moral right to universal health care. If this is correct and if this is what you believe, then achieving universal health care that covers absolutely everyone by making health care affordable to absolutely everyone, as it is in many other nations, requires a different kind of government action. What exactly?

We must expand the Bill of Rights as embodied in the US Constitution to include the right to affordable universal health care. The time has come for the public to conclude that the right to universal health care is as important and necessary as the right to free speech and all the other beloved constitutional rights. Common sense says that health care is a right, not a privilege.

After all, what good are our current constitutional rights if you are ill or dying prematurely because of a lack of good health insurance? Certainly the pursuit of happiness cannot be successful when individuals are suffering from poor health because of inadequate health care.

Why would sensible, caring Americans be against a constitutional right to universal health care? Are there people who would stand up and publicly condemn the right of all Americans to have first rate health care? The only ones I can imagine doing this are those now benefitting financially from the current unjust system, those blocking necessary congressional actions.

What Obama and Clinton should explicitly and loudly advocate is a constitutional amendment that makes universal health care a nonnegotiable right of all Americans.

Why has no member of Congress submitted legislation to get Congress to propose such an amendment for ratification by the states? Clearly, the only rational answer are the many business interests that have corrupted Congress and that benefit from the current system. The Constitution provides an alternative.

Article V provides an option never used in the entire history of the US, because Congress has refused to obey the Constitution and respect state requests. The Article V convention option was put in the Constitution because the Founders and Framers believed that one day Americans would lose trust and confidence in the federal government. With 81 percent of Americans believing the nation is on the wrong track and with so many millions of Americans lacking good health insurance and care, that day has surely arrived. And with abysmally low levels of confidence in Congress and the president, an Article V convention – a temporary fourth branch of the federal government – is clearly the right path to obtaining a universal health care amendment. A convention of state delegates could debate such an amendment and if they agreed to propose it, then the standard ratification by three-quarters of the states would still be necessary.

Yes, this would probably take a few years. But it would be worth it. The prospect of Congress, even with Clinton or Obama as president, achieving universal health care without business-friendly loopholes faster than the amendment approach is not good. The process of pursuing such an amendment, moreover, would help keep pressure on Congress to do the right thing.

If this sounds reasonable and necessary, then learn the truth about the Article V option at Friends of the Article V Convention and start talking up a universal health care amendment that Hillary and Obama should support.

It is as if the hero of every Republican and many Democratic politicians was Shakespeare's Shylock, demanding interest or a pound of flesh. Or in our case, payment or suffer a lifetime of servitude paying the principle and even interest off after successfully filing bankruptcy. Shylock has been very busy in the lobbying the halls of Congress inching up those usury rates to the point that America is witnessing the highest bankruptcy rates involving credit card debt in its history. It has become a bubble, and the mortgage industry meltdown is the pin that is bursting this Credit Card bubble.

Most middle class Americans today are but a major medical necessity, or several credit card interest rate bumps, or loss of job away from filing for bankruptcy relief from creditors. And this is not news. In 2006, the FDIC reported on a conference discussing the next potential recession. In their FYI publication they reported:

...there are at least three widely acknowledged areas of near-term concern that could pose risks to the economy going forward: a spike in energy prices, a decline in home prices, and a retrenchment in consumer spending arising from record consumer indebtedness. The consequences that any of these developments might have for economic growth could range from modest to severe, depending on how events play out over the next few years.

As 'bad luck' would have it, we are witnessing all three dire scenarios unfold simultaneously. It was not really bad luck. What it was was poor management, poorer regulation and intervention, and a Republican Congress and President transfixed on the positive economic data of international corporations to the exclusion of the rest of the economy and plight of consumers. To this day, the Bush White House still reports that the economy is strong, we are just going through some rough spots.

The simple fact is that we are entering a period when those Americans with the most life savings are entering retirement years in an environment that will eat their savings away in record time via energy and food inflation, unconscionable health care inflation when they need health care the most often, and when their working children will be facing enormous national and personal debt in a global marketplace that will continue to pressure their real wages lower.

The entitlement crisis looming threatens large increases in federal taxes or widespread financial and medical hardship for 10's of millions of Americans. At at time when we should be facing this crisis with enormous cooperative and creative national effort, and larger still financial set asides to meet looming demands, we are instead exporting 100's of billions of borrowed dollars overseas to benefit poor and wealthy alike in other nations favorable to our international corporation's profitability who increasingly employ foreign workers instead of American workers.

Someone needs to take a stand and begin defending America's future and American workers, their children and their retiring parents, and it has to begin somewhere. I can't think of a better place to begin than the usurers profiting from 30+ percent interest loans to millions of persons who should never have been issued unsecured debt in the first place. If this sounds familiar, this is precisely what critics have been saying about the sub-prime mortgage lenders who saw such profitability in lending to borrowers sums they could never hope to pay back a few years down the road.

The Credit Card lenders of usurious rates like Bank Of America who lured consumers in at 7 to 12% credit cards only to raise those rates to over 30% as credit limits were approached following President Bush's plea for help from consumers in supporting our troops by going shopping. It was a bubble or house of cards that has been building since the deregulation of the industry 3 decades ago.

And the Bankruptcy Reform of 2005 (PDF) is not going to save millions of Americans or lenders as consumers find themselves through unexpected life events turning to creditors out of desperation at any interest rate to buy that needed replacement vehicle, or pay those enormous uninsured medical expenses, or those months of gravely reduced income while looking for another job to replace the one just outsourced to India, China, or Malaysia. The cure is going to feel like the loss of a pound of flesh in one cutting. If only politicians would embrace an ounce of prevention as their guide, instead of a pound of cure, they would not find themselves apologizing for their Shylock campaign donors.

Yes, it is time our government turned an inspecting eye upon the Shylocks of the Credit Card industry, as they should have turned an inspecting eye upon the sub-prime mortgage industry back in 2006 when the FDIC reported this could have a very bad outcome.

Clinton's announcement eliminates the super delegate's concern that sufficient voter turnout for Obama would be wanting if Clinton failed to win the nomination and engaged in a scorched earth retribution. They can now rest easy that a healing will take place after the nomination is made, regardless of whether it is Obama or Clinton. The polls demonstrate that the nation is favoring Democrats, and hold the lowest opinion yet of both Republicans and Pres. Bush. Therefore, the super delegates can now dispense with concerns that the public would actually favor McCain over either Obama or Clinton. Once Democrats unite behind their nominee, super delegates now know the primary wounds will heal, and fast with the help of the losing nominee. This does not work in Clinton's favor. More on that in a moment.

Knowing McCain's chances are slim in November given a united Democratic Party and effective advertising and strategy to paint McCain as McSame as Bush which the public will not want by a serious majority, super delegates are free to dispense with the whole electability consideration. The question of whether Obama or Clinton is more electable against McCain has been answered. Either will do. This simplifies the calculus for the super delegates.

Obama's likability and trust ratings are higher than Clinton's. It is now hard to imagine how Obama does not wind up with more primary states won, the greater popular vote, and the most pledged delegates. This forces the super delegates to lean Obama. By 7 votes, Obama won the caucus in Guam today. This helps Obama get his momentum back. But the key will be North Carolina. If as predicted, Obama wins North Carolina, regardless of the result on this coming Tuesday's result in Indiana, Clinton will not change Obama's lead on the measures above.

However, what really simplifies the calculus for super delegates is the question of what happens to the Democratic Party if the super delegates decide contrary to most states won, largest popular vote, and most pledged delegates, and nominate Clinton instead. The answer to that question is obvious. The Party loses significant numbers of African-American and young white voters new to elections this year. That kind of loss spells doom for elections in 2010, 2012, and beyond.

With the economy the front and center issue, and economic issues which will dominate in all elections to come as the swelling national debt and entitlement crises bear down on consumers and tax payers, the future of politics in America lies with the Party capable of decisive progress on these two issues. That means the Democratic Party will absolutely need the 90% solidarity Black vote, and the 100's of thousands of new young voters confidence in elections to come. Dissing these groups in 2008 with a Clinton nomination gives Republicans an edge in dividing Congress evenly and even putting forth an effective presidential contender in 2012 if Democrats fail to bring the young voters and Black voters along.

Democrats cannot afford to let go a super majority in the Senate, or the White House in 2012, if they are to act decisively and with real progress in getting ahead of the national debt and entitlement consequences. And they must. For if the Democrats have control of both houses of Congress and the White House for the next 4 years, and fail to make real progress on these issues because of to large a Republican minority in the Congress blocking their efforts, their Party will lose confidence with the public by 2012 and that opens the door for a GOP comeback on a campaign of fiscal responsibility (purportedly for real next time).

Therefore, the super delegates decision is very easy after North Carolina's results. Decide for Obama and go forward with a solid public base of support of new young voters for years to come, brought into the electorate by Obama's message of changing old ways of politics and the greatest solidarity of Black voters the Party has witnessed in decades. The only other option is to decide for Clinton and lose significant percentages of those new young Democratic voters and solid Black voters base in 2010 and 2012. That option is not in the cards dealt to this 2008 election hand.

Barring Obama rendering himself unelectable by a major error or revelation, super delegates actually have little choice going forward. They are the Party's insiders, and the future of the Party is a primary concern. Given that the November outcome is all but assured guaranteed against McCain, the future of the Party is their guiding lighthouse and they dare not veer from that guiding light through ship wrecking waters.

By all legal definitions, a 17 year old high school student living at home as a dependent of their parents is a child dependent for tax purposes, for custodial legal purposes, for local school parental liability purposes, and on and on. But, this Congress wanted to cut the cost of the Stimulus package and decided and agreed that cutting $300 from parents of children turning 17 prior to Dec. 31, 2007, would be unfair to such a small number of parents that there would be no political cost to be paid for such a move come November.

It was simpler this way. No pro-rating the $300 for when the child turned 18 in 2008 which, in no way negates that child's dependent status, especially in this economic environment. The number or parents feeling cheated would be a real minority, not to be concerned about as such a small minority complaining would sound like a choir of sour grapes. Politics on the Margin.

Politics on the Margin is what keeps earmarks digging our national hole debt ever deeper. Nearly every politician is guilty but, their share of the total waste, fraud, and abuse is so small, as to marginalize the criticism by a challenger at the next election.

Politics on the Margin is what has kept the Iraq war and occupation going, as President Bush played the Senate 1 vote margin in favor of Democrats to the hilt, knowing full well, they had not the power to override his veto on the issue.

Politics on the Margin accounts in varying degrees for failing schools and educational standards in America, for the ever widening wealth gap, for the fact that virtually all Senators in the U.S. Senate are millionaires and millionaires are so well protected by laws, while the plight of the poor and middle class worsens gradually, by marginal degrees, to small to revolt over or about.

Politics on the margin accounts for the greatest and most rapid doubling of the national debt ever witnessed in American history in 8 years. Achieved by false promises to cut the deficit in half (who will remember), and a bit of pork here, a bit of fraud there, and a tremendous amount of waste spread out across vast agencies of government and politicians as to make an attack on any one seem petty.

Politics on the margin cheated my daughter of the $299.63 pro-rata stimulus tax refund she was due as her pro-rated share for her time as a 17 year old dependent of tax payers in the year 2008. But, who cares? No American who got their expected share is going to care that my daughter didn't have the extra for tutoring, or after school extra-curricular expenses in Band and ROTC. To actually care, voters would have to consider voting out their representative in the next election by voting for a challenger instead. And that is just unAmerican, and the bane of all Americans and their futures going forward.

To demand excellence and that which is hard over that which is easy, of our politicians would require a thinking voter capable of weighing the consequences for themselves and country of perpetually reelecting more than 90% of incumbents back to office regardless of how bad things become in America, or how dire the nation's future. And all the past election data indicate such thinking voters are just another marginalized minority. Fodder for Politics on the Margin.

Many attempts along the way were made by states to insure education and literacy were part of the voting experience. But, for the most part, where these attempts were made, the motives were publicized as racist as most of the states attempting such tests were former slave states. Thus, literacy tests were denounced by the general public and the Supreme Court as having no legitimacy. This was the case despite the fact that our Founding Fathers quite specifically designed a system in which democracy would be participated in by that class of people most likely to have the most education, be best informed through literacy and news print, and vested in the protection of what's theirs from those in power. Namely, these were white male landowners.

The issue of who should participate in our democracy is not however a settled issue. Just this week the Supreme Court upheld a state's right to require picture ID in order to vote. It should be quickly noted that in this narrow ruling, the state's right was upheld on the conditions that the state provided such ID free to those requesting it, and that those without it could still vote on the provision that they would provide such ID immediately after the election to validate their vote. The ACLU, an organization this writer generally supports, opposed the Court's ruling. On this issue, this writer opposed the ACLU.

Democracy should not be left vulnerable to wholesale fraud or abuse. That, most people would agree with. Indiana's ID law is one way of addressing the fraud and abuse of the voting system. Though fewer agree this is the best way. But, the issue of whether voters even have the capacity for informed, rational, educated, and self-interested voting is a far more controversial issue, and one with far greater consequences for America's future and governance than the Indiana voter ID issue.

Yet, neither the media, nor the politicians, nor the public seem interested in this more fundamental issue. Just as Ethanol subsidies and wholesale conversion were adopted by the Congress and President, only to have been proved to be a very bad idea, as WatchBlog's Jack points out, some universal suffrage too has enormous costs and negative consequences associated with it.

Many scholars and political philosophers would argue that the reason this issue is settled is because all measures to test voters have proven to be discriminatory and unfairly, unjustly, and unequally applied with horrible negative social consequences bearing down on other citizen and human rights. But, something in their arguments rings hollow when compared to reality.

States reserve the right, and the Court's have upheld their right, to deprive felons from voting rights. This constitutes a judgment that a person upon conviction, is deemed from then and forever to be unqualified to vote, without opportunity to prove differently or appeal. This is far more permanent a judgment than a voter awareness test in which a prospective voter may fail one year, but, upon improving their civics education, pass the test the next year. Is not the lifetime deprivation of voting to a convicted felon more onerous than a voter awareness test in which the voter at least has the opportunity at reprieve from their former ignorance?

The concept of the Founding Fathers that voters should, with some measure of assurance, be capable of understanding the import and consequence of their vote, in order to better insure responsible government, is a valid concept. Implementing the concept has been fraught with racism, class warfare, political party warfare. The concept of responsible government, is entirely void and null in a democracy if it is not the voters to whom elected officials are responsible to. Yet, we have witnessed decades of both the major parties abjectly failing the expectations of the majority of voters, culminating in the present with both the Congress and the President having some of the the lowest approval ratings in American history.

Not all the blame must fall upon the politicians. The voters themselves, specifically those who would never read an article like this, vote for candidates, yet allow ignorance and disinterest to dominate their political perspective between elections, relying on their Party to tell them how good or bad their politicians have performed. Needless to say, objectivity and holding their representatives to account for their actions is not what follows from such ignorance and disinterest in what politicians do between elections.

Would it be possible in America to require voters to know their precinct number, their Congressional and Senatorial District numbers, and the names of their US Congressional representatives and challengers before becoming qualified to vote? Would it be possible to ask American voters to name 5 of the 10 original Bill of Rights and what rights they protect, in order to qualify to register to vote?

The answer is clearly no, at this time. But, isn't that answer precisely the explanation for so much that is dysfunctional and unnecessarily costly in our federal government today? Our democracy was never intended to be overseen by an ignorant and civics undereducated electorate. Voters should be able to give an informed definition to the word 'electorate' before being allowed to become a member of it.

We don't grant children the right to vote due to lack of education and rational judgment in their own self-interest. Nothing unconstitutional about that. Why should we not impose the same constraint upon adult voters demonstrating a similar lack of education and rational judgment about learning civics as our children? Surely a vote in one's self-interest requires a minimum of objective information and education about our process and government. It is a fundamental question and issue that must be addressed before America can reclaim its functional democracy with the results the Founders intended.

'All men are created equal"... but, all voters certainly are not, anymore than all students of math or music are created equal. Universal suffragists failed to take into account the reasons the Founders did not advance universal suffrage, and those reasons were sound and valid, if not also peppered with other unsound and invalid motives of the Constitution's signers. America is on the wrong track, and this is one of those fundamental and unquestioned reasons why.

Universal suffrage should be an American goal, accomplished by elevating the education and information breadth of all potential voters universally to a minimum qualification. Universal suffrage which permits political automatons to vote as they are directed by their Parent's unquestioned Party affiliate is guaranteed to produce the kind of government and political system most Americans no longer trust or have confidence in today.

With this single position she can transform herself from status-quo-political-establishment-candidate to a true believer in what the Founders gave us in the Constitution: the right to turn public mistrust and lack of confidence in the federal government into peaceful constitutional problem solving. When 81 percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, then the constitutional path to reform should be used.

How can a true political leader do better than advocating use of what is sitting right there in our beloved Constitution?

How can a candidate advocating solutions for America do better than supporting what has already been used hundreds of times by the states, but has been blocked by fearful political forces for over 200 years at the federal level?

How could Obama tell the nation that he does not believe in using what the Constitution says we have a clear right to use? How could this self-professed change agent say he is against using the peaceful constitutional path to examining profound political reforms? Neither Obama nor McCain would find it easy to say that what the Founders gave us in our Constitution should not be used. Indeed, as Senators, would they introduce a bill to amend the Constitution to remove this option? I think not.

Sometimes, a great notion just needs to be articulated for people to see the clear way forward. Now is the ideal time for Hillary Clinton to say to Americans that she agrees that the political system must be fixed and that the time has arrived for a serious national discussion of political reforms that only can be achieved through constitutional amendments, because Congress has shown no inclination for pursuing deep, systemic political reforms.

The constitutional alternative is to use what is in Article V: a convention of state delegates that is given the constitutional power that so far only Congress has used, to debate and consider proposals for constitutional amendments. The Framers brilliantly created both this option and the safety net that proposed amendments, like those from Congress, must be ratified by three-quarters of the states. Nor can a totally new Constitution be considered, only amendments to the present one.

Clinton would have history and facts on her side. The clarity of the Article V convention option in the Constitution is undisputed. Better yet, the one and only stated requirement for Congress to obey for convening the convention has already been satisfied – namely that two-thirds of state legislatures ask Congress for a convention. Indeed, there have been over 500 such state requests from all 50 states. Hillary could state very simply that the time is long overdue for Congress to obey the Constitution and convene a convention. She could introduce a bill that says exactly that to show that she is really true to her words.

There have been several important books from respected academics that provide the intellectual ammunition for taking this bold position. These include: “A More Perfect Constitution” by Larry Sabato; “The Second Constitutional Convention: How The American People Can Take Back Their Government” by Richard Labunski; and “Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We the People Can Correct It)” by Sanford Levinson.

In other words, advocating the nation’s first use of an Article V convention is no far-out, brainless idea. Indeed, it is exactly what the nation needs at this time and exactly what any political leader that claims both to love our Constitution and see the need for political reforms should support.

Clinton can give many examples of what a convention could consider proposing, including amendments that: make universal health insurance coverage a constitutional right; replace the Electoral College with the popular vote for president and vice-president; take all private money out of political campaigns and replaces it with total public campaign financing; clarify that only Congress can declare war and must do so explicitly.

Be brave Hillary. Do what is both right and politically dazzling.

Pope Benedict XVI is calling for Catholics to act like Catholics.
He loves America... the America we were and can be again?
My point? It doesn't matter who you are.... where you come from... your religion or not. The Pope is there to bring people together peacefully. No other religion has a representative like the Pope.

All of us should be able to understand his message and try to live by it.
He loves America.... the America we should be.
What does that mean to a non-Catholic?
I was baptised Russian Orthodox in Buffalo,NY.
Something that happened when I was a baby and had absolutely no say over. We did not go to that church on a regular basis. We were taught that God is in our hearts ...that he is everywhere we go.

I now live in the 'Bible Belt'. Churches on every corner like some places have 7-Elevens.

Where I grew up.... we had neighbors who went to the catholic school. Until we got to junior high we thought, for no good reason, they were better than us. Most generally they were the kids who got in more trouble and ended up in jail.

The difference is mind boggling.
Where I grew up ... if you went to church it was ok.. if you didn't ... it was okay.
I now feel like I have to make my kids go to church or they will be outcasts. I don't like it.
I like the way I was taught... God is in my heart... not in a building where you have to give your last dollar to keep the church going.

The place where I grew up has changed aswell. Those who go to church are looked down on.

What is going on? If it were up to me ... time would have froze somewhere between Martin Luther King and Bill Clinton.

Referencing the 2005 Roads and Infrastructure Spending Bill, McCain said:

Maybe if we had done it right, maybe some of that money would have gone to inspect those bridges and other bridges around the country. Maybe the 200,000 people who cross that bridge every day would have been safer ...

Many a blogger elsewhere has commented on McCain's disposition to build infrastructure for Iraqis at a cost of 10's of billions for American tax payers. But where is his fidelity to Americans and their infrastructure? There is a clear answer to that question and you can find it in the oratory of Grover Norquist. Sen. John McCain does have one consistent theme miming Norquist, however, and that is to bankrupt federal government as a means of forcing it to cut back spending. Thus, any measure that will cut federal revenues like extending the Bush tax cuts permanently, deepening deficits and increasing national debt as a way of getting to entitlement spending is OK with Sen. John McCain.

Yes, the logical conclusion to McCain's budgetary and economic policies is to privatize Social Security and end Medicare spending for the poor and uninsured. Fits right in with Bush's and Republicans insistence on fashioning the Medicare Rx drug entitlement expansion in the most costly way possible to tax payers; no competitive bidding for prescriptions. Fits right in with Grover Norquist's plan to give the economy and plight of workers completely over to the corporations, removing federal government from interceding on behalf of those crushed by the excesses of free market capitalism, oligopolies, foreign trade policies, and immigration policies which throw millions of people out of work, out of income, and out of hope.

McCain wants smaller federal government. He wants to freeze all federal spending for two years except for military benefits and defense spending. This clearly signifies McCain's priority system. War and military first, and everything else and everyone else takes a back seat. This also reveals yet again Sen. McCain's incapacity to retain more than one priority at a time in his head. His this or that approach to issues precludes the kind of holistic multi-faceted solutions so many of our challenges require of our leaders, like climate change and energy policy.

McCain's vision of energy policy is Nuclear Power, with a mere mention of the generic category of other alternatives. Never mind that this approach replaces one byproduct crisis (greenhouse gas emissions) for another (nuclear waste disposal) and both with monumental costs associated with their respective byproducts.

Sen. McCain was for the McCain-Feingold campaign reform law, before it applied to him. Now that it applies to him, he insists it should not apply to him. Janus McCain speaking out both sides of his face, yet again as he is sued for violating his own law. This does not compare to Obama's voluntary statement that he would enter the general election using public funding but changing his mind after recognizing a windfall through internet donations. Obama's action violates no laws. McCain's action allegedly violates the law that made his name a household word.

McCain's capacity to contradict himself in public however, is nowhere so evidenced as in February when accused of catering to lobbyists: "the McCain campaign issued a point-by-point response...and insisted that McCain had never even spoken with anybody from Paxson or Alcalde & Fay about the matter." Yet, Sen. McCain said in Sept. of 2002 in sworn depositions:

"I was contacted by Mr. [Lowell] Paxson on this issue,"

One final note. In McCain's interview with Chris Matthews yesterday (MSNBC), Sen. McCain said he wanted to give young people a vision of the future. Of course, this is an upside down statement in an election year, though one commonly made by politicians. It is the people and the Constitution and Declaration of Independence that have always provided the vision of the future, and it is up to voters to find a candidate that best reflects that vision. It is not for candidates to give the voters the vision the candidate wants them to have. That is best left to authoritarians and dictators.

When it comes to integrity, McCain hasn't got it. Sen. John McCain is about as disintegrated a candidate as one could find for the 2008 elections, barring schizophrenics in oscillating fits of paranoia and omnipotence.

The Waste Management corporation, for example, is a leading provider of comprehensive trash and waste removal, recycling, and so called "environmentally safe waste management services". They advertise regularly featuring their landfill methane recovery to add to our energy resources. I visited one such site North of New Braunfels, Texas recently. A literal mountain of trash and garbage many stories high, with pipes coming up out of the ground to funnel captured methane into holding tanks.

One problem, for miles one can smell both the methane and stench of garbage (bacteria emitted greenhouse gases from consuming organic wastes). Which means, these mountains of buried organic materials from soiled diapers to cat litter waste to yard clippings are in fact leaking enormous amounts of methane into the atmosphere. The capture methods are incredibly inefficient, and methane is a major atmospheric greenhouse gas. It is good they are capturing a percentage of the methane, but, the fact is they are a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

Advertising themselves as green, is misleading, bordering on a lie. I say bordering, because if Waste Management didn't collect our garbage into landfills, we would create dumps of our own in our own neighborhood empty lots, and no methane would be recaptured in these dumps. To truly address this issue, Waste Management would have to work to end its current line of business by lobbying for an American wide effort to minimize organic waste and maximize constructive organic waste recycling.

This is why Steve Spence at Green Trust writes of a professor Seymore Garte's book entitled, WHERE WE STAND: A Surprising Look at the Real State of Our Planet :

Garte points out the fallacies in standard right- and left-wing approaches—the planet is not in imminent danger of imploding, he says, but neither will it be saved by the free market—and shows how most improvements over the past 40 years have been the result of government intervention.

The Free Marketplace has only two priorities, survival against competitors and profits. All of their actions are motivated directly or indirectly by those two motives. Any measure that will increase the cost of doing business without the benefit of compensatory increase in revenues and profits, will be avoided and fought. This is a maxim of the free marketplace. Is is very important for the American public to come to understand this basic driver in the relationship between capitalist lobbyists and government. Because if elected officials rely on the capitalist lobbyists to form public policy, neither energy independence nor a safe ecological future will exist for our children.

Coal. Coal is dirty. Coal is organic waste (carbon based), which nature buried and sequestered millions of years ago. And here we are digging it up and sending all that carbon back into our environment. Coal proponents like VP Dick Cheney and Sen. Larry Craig, are singing the praises of carbon sequestration, which is a fancy way of saying we burn or synthesize coal for energy and capture the carbon emissions and rebury them in the ground.

Mining coal remains dirty and polluting. The concept of permanently burying trillions of tons annually of coal waste gas underground without leaking back into the air of our children and grandchildren is a 'pipe dream'. We may clean the smokestacks and recapture CO2, but, burning coal releases a host of other toxic gases and they aren't on the radar in the new Energy Bill proposal.

Congress and the Bush administration are approaching this problem completely backwards. They are taking the present situation of global pollution and climate change and asking what can we do to improve it without offending or costing anyone too much. The approach that is needed is the JFK man on the moon approach. This approach specifically sets the goals that will meet the needs of the next generation for a safe and dramatically reduced cost basis for independently produced energy, and works back to the present, with investments in the research to meet the milestones to getting there, as well as making the sacrifices of choices that will keep the time table intact.

The American people may as well wait for Santa Clause to deliver a better future if they intend to await Congress and the corporations that black mail and bribe Congress to deliver such a future. Such a future will require homeowners to create their own energy with small capital investments. Such a future will require mass transit quadrupling, and dramatic changes to city and housing planning with jobs and business in the hub of housing, allowing folks to walk to work again or ride a bike. Such a future requires home based recycling of family wastes and dramatically altering packaging into reusable and recyclable products by residents at home. Such a future requires paring dependence on fossil fuels to an absolute minimum and mission critical use only.

General Motors waited until it was long past its window of opportunity to compete with foreign manufacturers delivering on smaller, lighter, and more economical vehicles for one simple reason. Annual profitability and investor demand for profits per share demanded it. So it will be with the oil companies, that the ravages of global climate change will be well upon us and them before they will accept more costly and less profitable measures. And they will never give up their position as supplier of energy for a profit in favor of individual produced energy production measures.

The people, the voters, must demand that better future for their children. That will require not a new president, but a new Congress populated by representatives committed to the voters, not the corporate lobbying interests. We all have a far more important vote this Fall than who will be president. For whoever is elected president will have to fight Congress tooth and nail to save our future.

Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski, a trustee for the village of Carpentersville, is very protective of her village. She recently failed in her attempt to have a member of the Board of Trustees removed after it came to light that that trustee, Paul Humpfer, was convicted of domestic battery. She cares about her community. She cares about the trees in her community. She is very protective of the village.

This past week, she noticed her neighbor’s kids, the children of single African-American mothers who live next to her, playing in the tree in their yard. It was a small magnolia tree and she was concerned about the boy’s safety and the small tree was being damaged. She came out and expressed her concern, after which the father of one of the boys told her it was none of her business. That is when she responded

The tree is not there for them to be climbing in there like monkeys.

The mother of one boy called the police. She was ticketed for disorderly conduct and fined $75.

Cmdr. Michael Kilbourne said the ticket was issued because the ordinance bans conduct that disturbs or alarms people, and one of the boys told police he was scared by her comment.

Shortly after the incident became public, the Obama campaign asked for her to resign her position as delegate, which she agreed to do, initially.

However, today, after some support from the mayor of her town, she has decided to remain as delegate, though she has stated she will not seek another term as village trustee. The Obama campaign has since stated that she could remain as delegate, days after the incident and initial demand for her removal.

Now, there are a lot of questions raised by this incident.

First, is it really now a crime to call a black person a monkey? Have we perhaps become a little thin skinned in our attempts to fight racism that we are now ready to go so far as to make some speech illegal? It is clear, IMO, that there was NO intention of a racial slur in any regards, that the animosity between the two neighbors has caused tensions between the two to bubble and the mother who called the police was playing a card that she should not have played. And the police, again IMO, caused more harm by feeding into the children’s uncomfortable feelings. Had they, and the parents for that matter, behaved in a more ‘tolerant and understanding’ manner, perhaps their children would not now believe that anyone using that word is automatically a racist and further propagate those feelings onto the next generation. Instead, the family, assisted by the police in this manner, successfully used race as a weapon against a woman who has dedicated herself to the betterment of her community, perhaps in too busybody of a way, but with nothing but good intentions. As town president Bill Sarto, who had been the other member of the board to try and force Paul Humpfer out of his position, stated and I agree with:

Frankly, I don’t see a law that was broken here,” Sarto said. “I think this entire thing has been blown out of proportion. She’s a good neighbor. She went over to caution the children to be careful not to fall out of a tree. She has never indicated to me any prejudice whatsoever. We have a trustee who has been convicted on four counts of domestic battery and refuses to resign from the board. He beat his wife with a baseball bat. This seems far less egregious to me.

He also said that the Obama campaign was wrong to ask for her to step down. Which brings us to the second, and perhaps more interesting on a national political level, point of why did the Obama campaign initially ask for her to resign and only relent when it was clear that public opinion was not on their side? Is this the type of leadership that Obama is speaking about when he talks about racial tolerance? Of understanding? The campaign could have taken a day or two to find out all of the details before asking for her to resign, that would have been the prudent reaction to take. Instead, they acted initially on the side of those claiming racial victimization and against an ardent supporter. Frankly, I question why Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski would still agree to be a delegate for someone who treated her that way. But, I question a lot of things, so that becomes second nature I suppose.

It’s clear that Sarto is right, this is ridiculous on both its face and at the deeper level once examined. She should have no trouble, IMO, defending herself against the charge which she has stated she will do. But I think that this adds to other events that Sen Obama has been involved in that causes many of us who are not members of the Cult of Obama to question the type of leadership that he will provide, not what type of leadership he tells us he wants to provide. It will be this kind of information, absent other examples of individual leadership, that will shape the second half of this campaign if he does win the nomination.

References:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/wire/chi-ap-il-obamadelegateresi,0,3669387.story
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/885822,delegate040908.article
http://www.wbbm780.com/Monkey-Comment:-Obama-Delegate-Says-She-s-Not-Quit/1972587

The message is designed to appeal to fiscal conservatives who reject government intervention in economic and market affairs, while in the same breath assuring the voting public that he will use their tax dollars to shore up the economy when it is in trouble. This is similar to McCain's position on getting out of Iraq so long as we can stay in Iraq, as insurance. Or, McCain's support for Rep. Jim Webb's idea of a better GI Bill education for returning Vets, but, inability to endorse the bill drafted in Jan. of 2007 and waiting over a year for McCain's help to pass it. Still, the polls show these errors of McCain's are not affecting his standing with the public, yet.

Obama this last week is celebrating having picked up 72 super delegate votes in the last 10 weeks or so, while Clinton has lost 2. Obama raised more than twice as much money as Clinton last month. But, Obama is being penalized for his glamour campaign, and if he doesn't address this line of subtle undermining criticism, he will have committed a serious error in his campaign. WatchBlog's own writer Jack in the Republican/Conservative column has launched a very similar critique of Obama and it is popping up on other blogs as well.

This constitutes a very subtle and distinctly dangerous line of rhetoric for the Obama campaign, which can be distilled down to the spin line: "He's all talk, and if elected, walking the talk will be beyond his experience." Of course, there is no evidence whatsoever that this implied accusation will be true, as many presidents in America have come to the office without experience in it, and rose to the occasion. However, there is no evidence that such a criticism may prove untrue either, save for Obama's masterful campaigning skills to date. And this is what makes this line of critique potentially dangerous to the Obama campaign. Obama must find a way to disarm this growing grapevine critique before it catches a public wave and does irreparable damage to his campaign.

This last week however belongs to Hillary Clinton for errors, fouls, and penalties. A serious error occurred in the Clinton campaign when Hillary repeated many times in many places a story she heard 3rd or 4th hand about a pregnant woman who lost the baby and then herself died. Hillary attributed the losses to a lack of adequate medical care and absence of insurance by the pregnant woman. Both proved to be untrue, and the Clinton campaign accedes to the error, stating Clinton will not recite the story again.

This is a major error in judgment by HIllary Clinton whose campaign has been centered around her judgment when that 3AM call comes into the White House. It begs the question of whether Sen. Clinton has the ability to screen and verify sources of information before making critical decisions that could affect the lives of 100's of millions of people. Pres. Bush failed to verify sources before invading Iraq, and the cost to America has been enormous. For Hillary Clinton to commit this same mistake to the jeopardy of her campaign, not once, but twice in a month, is a most serious error.

Previously, Sen. Clinton recounted a trip to Bosnia under fire, which turned out to be a complete fabrication. Americans do not want to bear the costs of another person in the White House who will both lie and fail to verify information before making deadly presidential decisions.

Sen. Clinton's foul of the week came in the form of accusing Sen. Obama and his allies of trying to stop people from voting as some of his backers have called on her to drop out of the presidential race. Pay very careful attention to that sentence construction, for therein lies the foul.

Some of Obama's backers have called on Hillary to drop out of the race for the good of the Democratic Party. Not Obama, and not any officials currently with the Obama campaign. Yet, Sen. Clinton's rhetoric attacks Obama himself for the actions of others who support him. That is a foul. There are probably hundreds of Clinton supporters in jail for various crimes, but, it doesn't mean Clinton sanctions their actions. Obama is on record as having said he thinks Clinton should stay in the race as long as she wishes to.

Sen. Clinton's penalty is being served up in several ways, but none more important than the loss of a double digit gain in the polls for Pennsylvania. If she loses Pennsylvania to Obama, small chance really, it is generally agreed she has lost the last opportunity for becoming the nominee. But, if Obama loses to her by only 3 to 8% of the popular vote, the pundits and analysts will penalize Clinton for having lost the momentum necessary to keep her in the race. The talk is that she must win the popular vote to get super delegate consideration on the scale against Obama's pledged delegate lead. Failure to decisively win Pennsylvania, the pundits will argue, makes the likelihood of winning
the popular vote through the remaining state's primaries and caucuses, remote at best.

This latter penalty is literally unfair. In a democratic process it should be up to the people to cast their votes without the influence of cloudy crystal ball readers laying claim to a future outcome, prejudiced by opinion and nothing harder in the way of data or statistics.

It has a been a very tough week for the Clinton campaign but the errors and fouls were of Clinton's own making. If she runs the White House the way she ran her campaign this last week, America will regret having elected her, just as they now regret having reelected Pres. GW Bush. Obama and McCain have largely gotten a pass on their imperfections, but primarily because Clinton's fouls and errors were so blatant and damaging. However, the Clinton's have rightfully earned the moniker of come-back kids, so, don't count Hillary Clinton out on this last week's performance alone.

This week the DHS declared that by May 11, 2008, all 50 states will be technically Real-ID compliant. That sounds like a win for the DHS, doesn't it? But, there is one minor issue. It isn't true.

In fact, it is not close to being true. Several states are not anywhere near being compliant, owing partially to the fact that the final requirements were only recently released by the DHS. But that is just normal operating procedure from the Federal Government; it doesn't speak to where the DHS actually blinked.

What the DHS is refusing to acknowledge is that the states of New Hampshire, Maine, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Washington, and Montana have all passed legislation saying that they will *NEVER* enact the Real ID rules. Instead, the DHS is ignoring these public protests enough to allow all states IDs to be used in travel after the May 11, 2008 deadline has passed.

Even worse, the DHS is accepting promises of introducing legislation, and even outright statements of protest, as capitulation into the Real ID program.

Last month, Montana took a similar approach. Its governor, Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, has repeatedly denounced Real ID and even called on his counterparts (PDF) in other states to oppose it. But Homeland Security dutifully accepted a relatively hostile letter from Schweitzer--saying he will never "authorize implementation of the Real ID Act"--as good enough

Does this tell us that when the December 31, 2009 deadline comes and goes that the DHS will continue to ignore the states that are not following the Real ID rules and continue to let their state IDs be used? Does this send a message to other states that they don't have to follow them as well?

"DHS is not in power here," said Jim Harper, the director of information policy studies at the free-market Cato Institute. "The states are in power. DHS has done all it could, but from a position of weakness...DHS put the best face it could on its capitulation to states with backbone. A lot more states will recognize that they own this issue, they control this debate."

So, it appears that a quiet death to the Real ID issue, with a new administration entering into power nearly a full year before the deadline. But I'm not sure I'm sold yet. I have heard other things dying quiet deaths, like the DMCA's first incarnation, before it came back into full force and imposed itself on the liberty minded American public. This is a fluid and continuing situation.

"I'm joining the Libertarian Party because it is a party that combines a commitment to freedom and peace that can't be found in the two major parties that control the government and politics of America," says Gravel. "My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy."

Bob Barr, who left the ranks of the Republican Party to join the Libertarian Party in 2006, welcomed Mike Gravel into the fold.

"It is a distinct honor to have another former member of Congress within the Libertarian Party," says Barr. "Just as Senator Gravel believes Democrats have lost touch with the American public, I too concluded Republicans had lost their core principles, and could no longer associate myself with the GOP. While coming from opposite sides of the aisle, Senator Gravel and I definitely agree on the fundamental need for systemic change in our political system, and that the only way we have of effecting that change is by supporting and working in the Libertarian Party, which is the only political party in America that consistently works in word and deed to maximize individual liberty and minimize government power."

Many people have said that they want to see the divide between the parties end. From what I've seen, neither major party is interested in doing anything of the kind. Only in examples like this one are those who are fed up with the status quo really working to achieve change after it is clear that the party leadership of the Democrats and Republicans are not willing to allow that to happen any time soon.

This is good news for Independents and 3rd Party supporters off all kinds. Even though we can disagree in many ways and on many issues, we should all be able to see that the way things have been going for the past several decades can't continue any more if we want a stable, healthy country to leave to our children.