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Despite the title, this article is as much a congratulations to the American public as it is to President-elect Obama. For the first time in a very long while, I believe we have elected the kind of leader we really need in this country. I believe Barak Obama demonstrated a great capacity for inspiration during the campaign and I hope he’ll use that talent to inspire Americans to pull out of this economic tailspin and once more take on the challenges that once made us the envy of every other country in the world.

During my lifetime, I’ve seen the U.S. retreat from being the leader in technology, production, science, education, medicine, and space exploration and turn into a twisted shadow of the nation I grew up to love. I kept hoping for that moment to come when we would realize that we had to resume our place in the world as a nation of adults. I would imagine us collectively straightening up, standing tall, and stepping forward to take on the problems we helped create - working with the other nations of the world as a partner, not as some presumptous bully. I hope that is what this election represents.

I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. I remember that a cross was burned in my middle-class neighborhood, in the yard of the first black family who tried to move in to the area. I remember listening to class-mates parrot their parents beliefs that the only real solution to the “black problem” was to ship them all back to Africa. That our nation has matured enough that we can elect a man of African descent to our highest office - that is more deeply satisfying to me than I would ever have dreamed possible. I think it says a lot about the true character of our nation.

This was a race about prejudice. Some of it was racial. Some was prejudice about ideology. Let’s not forget prejudice against Islam, and against African-American Christian churches. And, of course, prejudice over political party affiliation.

Prejudice came out in different ways. We saw prejudice on Obama’s part when it came to small-town America. That was echoed by Palin’s remarks intimating that New York City and other big cities weren’t part of “Real America.” We even had the press telling us that white voters couldn’t actually be trusted to vote for the person they said they’d vote for, if that person was black. (Surprisingly, I had no trouble at all casting my ballot for Obama. It seems others also over came the evil mind-controlling power of the Bradely Effect, as well.)

Fortunately, this was also a race about hope. I believe that fifty-two percent of Americans cast a vote for Obama because they felt he was their best hope for a better future.

We’ve taken a giant step forward. Let’s hope it’s just the first of many.

I was spoiled growing up in Louisville Kentucky by Actors Theatre, one of the best regional theatres in the U.S.. I had season tickets for several years before I left, and really loved attending the shows. (For one thing, it was the one night of the month I was sure I could get a date.) Later I moved to Florida and later out to Colorado, and never found anything really comparable near where I lived. By the time I moved to Walpole, I didn’t think about going to the theatre as much. I believe that’s just changed.I ran into someone from the Footlighters, Walpole’s community theatre, at an a local art festival. It sounded interesting, so my wife and I went to see their latest production, Rabbit Hole, over the weekend. It proved to be really enjoyable experience for me, reminding me of the times I’d go to Actors Theatre in Louisville.The players, Amy Snodgrass, Shannon Lillian Hogan, David DaCosta, Sandi MacDonald, and Patrick Maloney all turned in wonderful performances. I could easily have seen them playing in Louisville.The story is about a couple that had everything until a tragic accident splintered their world. Over the course of the play, they have to navigate a blind maze of broken expectations in order to find their way back to each other.This coming weekend is the last weekend for the play. Don’t miss it.

I used to wonder why someone as woefully unprepared to be President as Palin would run for V.P. Given recent revelations, I now understand: it’s for the shopping spree! She went to New York, did the photo op at Ground Zero, and then hit the shops. In two months, she’s spent $150,000 on clothing. That’s just on herself. She also got new duds for her husband. You gotta love the perks.

All the shopping was paid for by the RNC. I’ll bet that’s going to make for some angry conservatives. But it doesn’t end there, not wanting to take advantage of her gracious hosts too much, she had her home state pay for the airfare and hotel rooms for her kids. One hotel room was $770 per night. Then she cooked the books a bit to make it look legitimate. Not a smart thing to do when you are under so much scrutiny. Especially when, upon digging a bit deeper, reporters discovered that she’s been charging the State of Alaska a per diem to allow herself to live in her own home. I guess she figures she’s renting it out to herself. But hey, it’s another $17,000 per year out of the tax payer’s pockets and into her own.

I mean, how foolish do you have to be to run scams while you’ve got every reporter in the world looking into your life? Either you have to be so naive as to border on brain dead, or you have to be so much in the habit of cheating your way through life, that you can’t tell the difference between what is ethical behavior and what isn’t. Either way, I don’t want someone like that anywhere need our fiscal crisis.

This is someone who pretends she knows what it’s like to be middle-class. How many of you would have the audacity to try that kind of stunt on your employer? You wouldn’t. Why not? Because you can be fired. You aren’t elected to an office that you merely plan to use as a stepping stone to an even better gig. You don’t have a job where you can just leave your responsibilities behind and go on the campaign trail for a few months. I realize that’s the reality for politicians, but it’s nothing like the reality for the rest of America. Politicians know they are safe in their jobs until the end of their terms. No matter how bad the economy gets, they’ll be just fine until the voters have a chance to boot them out. The rest of you have to worry that your boss will walk in at any time and tell you that they’ve just decided to cut back and your name is on the list.

It is Palin’s desperate hope that you’ll vote for McCain/Palin on November 4th because she looks pretty and claims to be just like you. But saying it doesn’t make it so.

When you get into the polling booth, think about the kind of leader we need and what happened the last time we got fooled by someone who claimed he was just like us. Can we really afford Sarah Palin?

Apparently, according to Representative Bachman, anyone who is liberal or has criticized America is anti-American. She believes that there are all sorts of anti-American people running around in our Congress. She wants the news media to do a penetrating look at all the members of Congress to find out if they are pro-American or anti-American. Sounds an awful lot like the kinds of nonsense that was being tossed around back in the fifties, except back then, it was Communism.

I’m pretty sure I’d wind up on her list of anti-American people, since I think that the U.S. has made some serious mistakes in the past and I am frankly and honestly ashamed of what we’ve done. What she doesn’t seem to understand is that having a realistic view of my country and the actions taken by the worst administration in our nations history, doesn’t mean I don’t love my country. Since I haven’t had the benefit of much travel outside the U.S., all my friends and all my family are here. The places that I love, like Red River Gorge in Kentucky, are here. My home is here. I love all of that. I am also proud of America at the same time that I am ashamed of our President. I am proud of the work being done by our brave soldiers at the same time that I feel they’ve been betrayed by their Commander-in-Chief.

I would guess, that even those of you who are very conservative still loved America when Bill Clinton was President. You loved America even if you believed that what he was doing was wrong.

Party affiliation and political leanings aren’t what determine patriotism.

What worries me, are those who love their political party more than they love this nation. I worry about those who love their political ideology more than they love this nation. Unfortunately, I think there have been far too many of those people, on both sides of the aisle, elected as our representatives.

This is the UNITED States of America. Those who seek to tear us apart in order to gain political power are the real anti-Americans. People who try to stir up racist, class, or ethnic hatred, whether they be Democrats, Republicans, Independents or members of any other political party, are doing anti-American things. They might justify them by claiming they are trying to “save” America, but what they are really trying to do is remake America into their own idea of what America should be.

John McCain has taken to running “robo-calls” that make it sound as if Barak Obama is somehow directly involved in terrorist attacks and that he somehow plans to enact “far leftist legistlation” once he is elected. It’s a pathetic attempt to scare people into voting for McCain. Two years ago, if you’d asked me if I would have believed McCain would stoop to such tactics, I would have said no. I’m very sad that I was wrong.

Today, Retired General and Former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Senator Barak Obama’s bid for the Presidency. He did this despite the anger it will undoubtedly generate in the Republican party. While Powell was very respectfull of Senator McCain, the former Secretary of State said he felt that Obama was the best man to lead our nation through the upcoming time of transitional change. He also said he was disturbed by the decision of the McCain campaign to attack Senator Obama. McCain’s campaign has tried to tie Obama to former domestic terrorist William Ayers, and has even suggested that Obama is somehow secretly a Muslim, as if that would make any difference in Obama’s patriotism or loyalty to America.

You can see a transcript of Powell’s remarks here: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/19/powell.transcript/

I applaud Colin Powell’s decision. I’m sure he’s well aware that he’ll be accused of making his decision on the basis of race and of being a traitor to his party, yet he’s had the strength of character to stay true to his own conscience. If only we had a few hundred more Colin Powells serving in our government.

I’ve always respected Colin Powell and had hoped he would run for President himself. He’s one of the few Republican leaders that I think I could have voted for. It appeared to me that he worked very hard to try to keep us from going to war with Iraq and was unflinching in saying what he believed. He’s served our country well, and does so again by speaking up for Obama and by taking the McCain campaign to task for their unconscionable attacks on Obama.

This week, the McCain smear machine is trying to label Obama a socialist. Perhaps they’ve chosen this tactic because people have started to realize we’ve always been a socialist nation. We provide socialism for the rich to protect their profits and capitalism for the rest of us. McCain has even fallen back on the tired old catch phrase “redistributing wealth.” As Powell points out, taxes are always a redistribution of wealth, with most of it going back to the people who paid the taxes in the form of roads, defense, police and fire protection, and other government services.

What bothers me the most about the McCain campaign is their willingness to incite hatred if they think it will help their candidate. When they fail to shutdown hate speech at their rallies, they are creating an environment where bad things can happen. Such a rally might be all some post-traumatic-shocked veteran needs to convince him that he’s got a mission to save the country by killing Obama. Can you imagine the terrible backlash of such an action? Can you imagine the sense of betrayal that would give to every African American in this country. It would set us back forty years.

It’s not just Obama they put at risk. When they incite hatred based on race and on religion, they attack the very foundations of this country. To me, trying to divide our nation along racial, ethnic, religious, or even sexual preference lines is about as unpatriotic as you can get. We are facing tough times. We are one nation with many different people, languages, skin tones, religions, ethnicities, sexual preferences, and favorite foods. We are the great melting pot of the world. THAT is what makes America the greatest nation. We should celebrate that diversity every day.

It’s time we stopped treating people who don’t share our exact ideologies as if they are pariahs. It’s time we decided that it’s alright to talk about politics and to have different opinions. We should all remember that the things that bind us together as a nation, such as the love of freedom, are far more important than the forces that try to tear us apart.

It’s one thing to play to the crowd and get them fired up. One of Sarah Palin’s strengths is her ability to get McCain supporters fired up and enthusiastic. But what is she getting them enthusiastic about? It’s not about how McCain is going to be a great leader. It’s not about his secret plan to capture Bin Ladin. It’s not even about his vision of buying up all the failed mortgages with money that doesn’t exist while cutting taxes for his rich buddies. She’s on the attack. She takes tiny kernels of truth, wraps an inflammable comment around it and tosses it into the bonfire.

Now, a certain amount of rabble rousing happens in every campaign. But a line is crossed when people in the crowd start shouting out “Kill Obama” and shout racial epithets at a black cameraman, and the politician standing there on stage says nothing.

What does it say about Sarah Palin?

I don’t know if Sarah Palin is a bigot, and I won’t accuse her of being one on the basis of not shutting down that kind of stuff at her rally. What I think her behavior demonstrates is a lot more important than her racial attitudes. It shows that her instincts for political leadership are poor. If she can’t think on her feet, recognizing that the ugly remarks being made are going to hurt her rather than help her, than she isn’t ready to lead this country.

We’ve had enough clumsy leadership for a dozen administrations. We can’t survive any more. Even if I believed that John McCain were the better man for the job of President, I couldn’t vote for him, because he was foolish enough to accept Sarah Palin as a running mate. To me, that indicates that he doesn’t have enough control over his own party to show he can lead this nation, or that his judgment is badly flawed when it comes to political associations. I would have thought after the mess with Keating twenty years ago, that McCain would be a lot more careful about picking his political associates.

On the other hand, I continue to be impressed with Obama’s even-handedness and his coolness, even under the pressure of this campaign. In the town-hall meeting style debate, Obama appeared to be at ease, while McCain wandered around aimlessly, his face set in a kind of rigid smile that I suspect was intended to hide a man who is seething with anger.

We need a leader who can think on his feet, one who can reassure a frightened nation that there is someone who understands what it’s like to be in the middle-class, working for a living. We need someone who people respond to, that they trust. I think Barak Obama is that man. 

McCain’s favorite attack on Obama these days is to claim we don’t know the guy, even though Obama and his wife Michelle have been scrutinized more carefully over the last 20 months than any presidential candidate in history, except possibly Hillary Clinton. The punch line is one already used in the primary, that Obama is chummy with a former domestic terrorist, William Ayers. A man who has since been given the Model Citizen of the Year award by Chicago, and is recognized as a leader in his community.

Ayers sat on the same board with Obama and hosted one of the early meet and greets that helped Obama get started. The stuff Ayers did happened almost 40 years ago. People tend to mellow over time, and it doesn’t sound like the guy has a lot of influence over Obama.

Here’s my question, do you know the real John McCain? Remember Milken, Keating and the S&L disaster? Didn’t that all start in Arizona?

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If John McCain really wanted to talk straight to the American People, it would be easy. Here are some suggested talking points:

• Apologize for blindly following the leadership of the most foolish man who’s held the Presidency in my lifetime, and then claiming to be a maverick.

• Apologize for repeating the lie that Alaska provides 20% of America’s energy needs or even 20% of the oil and gas we use.
• Retract the statements made by your ad, “A Gross Distortion,” which claims that Obama killed the immigration bill, when it was really your abandonment of your own legislation in order to further your political ambitions, that killed the bill.
• Admit that Sarah Palin has accepted earmarks. While she’s used fewer than her predecessor, Alaska still leads the nation in earmark spending per capita.
• Apologize for making up bogus crowd size numbers and then trying to claim they came from the fire marshal or Secret Service. Isn’t this the kind of thing we usually see done in China and in the old USSR?
• How about coming clean about just how ugly the “Disrespectful” ad was. Using out-of-context quotes, it tried to make it your opponent Obama and his running mate, Biden, look as if they were saying nasty things about Palin. In truth, they have made reasonable statements that have stayed respectful when the same can hardly be said of you or your running mate.
• Or maybe you could pledge to stop making up facts and then attributing them to respected new sources.
• Perhaps you could explain that by “taking on the oil companies,” you really meant that Palin married a man who worked in the oil industry. And that when you claim she said “thanks, but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere, what you forgot to say was that she supported it while running for office, and then opposed it when it became an embarassement, but kept the money anyway, so she could use it on other transportation projects.

I’m sure you can think of more.

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Sarah Palin wants us to leave her family out of the presidential campaign. At the same time, she advocates a strict abstinence-only pregnancy prevention program for all our public schools. It begs the question, how well did that work with your own daughter? Because clearly, it didn’t. There can’t be a more appropriate indication of what a foolish idea such a policy is. Obviously, Sarah Palin’s daughter chose to have sex. Perhaps, if she’d been taught about birth control methods other than abstinence, she would not be getting married and becoming a mother at such a young age. She’s fortunate, though. Sarah Palin’s daughter has a powerfully connected mother, and is unlikely to face the crushing poverty that affects most single mothers.

Abstinence only programs DON’T WORK. That’s not the only problem with them. The reason Sarah Palin wants to teach abstinence only, despite the fact that many studies have shown it is one of the worst things you can do, is that she wants to enforce her own religious ideals on the entire country. She is presuming to tell everyone how they should raise their children, even when it is clear that her own ideals don’t work within her own family.

I’m sure that I’ll be accused of being mean and partisan because I’m “picking on her family,” but I’m not, actually. I’m not making any judgments about Ms. Palin’s daughter or husband. I’m talking about a political issue, her stand on that issue, and the fact that she can’t admit that she’s wrong, even in the face of the evidence in her own family.

John McCain is an old man. He’s been fighting cancer off and on for years. He is far more likely to die in office than anyone we’ve had in that office during my lifetime. That means, that if McCain is elected, it’s quite likely we’ll get to have Sarah Palin as our president for at least some part of his term. While John McCain clearly has the experience needed to be our president, you can’t convince me that governing Alaska gives Palin what’s needed to do the job. It is possible that she’d be a fine president, but so far, I don’t see any reason to come to that conclusion. It appears the RNC have used the same criteria to select her that they’ve been using to pick judges: who cares if they can do the job, just make sure they pass the political litmus tests and aren’t well known enough that anyone can dig up stuff to make them look bad.

We can’t afford another four years of this foolishness. Who would have thunk that “Compassionate Conservatism” actually meant: invade Iraq, ignore Bin Ladin, torture prisoners, and illegally spy on your own citizens. If only we’d had that definition before we allowed the Supreme Court to appoint him King — ummm, I mean President. We need to know what we’re actually going to get, this time around, and McCain has guaranteed that by electing him, we’re trusting the Republican Party to have made a wise choice in selecting a Vice President. Do I really need to go over their track record on that one?

I’m very sad that McCain made this selection. I’m sure there are well-qualified women in the Republican party, women who wouldn’t have represented a painfully transparent attempt to appeal to unhappy Clinton supporters. McCain should have picked the best man or woman for the job, and told the pollsters what they could do with their polls. It was his independence that made him attractive in the first place, but ever since he ran out of money, he’s been pandering to the worst of the conservative special interests. Here’s a man, who when presented with the problem of Global Warming, thinks it’s a good idea to drill for more oil.

If John McCain were elected without any special interest money backing him, I think he might make a good, but not great, president. Unfortunately, he’s made lots of deals with special interests in order to get the money he needed in order to continue his campaign. We wouldn’t get a John McCain who was free to do as his conscience dictated, we’d get a John McCain who is owned by the oil companies and the defense contractors.  If he dies in office, we’d wind up with Palin, and we don’t know much at all about her, except she passed the vetting process of the RNC, the kind of process that gave us the kind of people who’ve put us in the mess we’re in.

John McCain could have done better. We, as a country can do better than McCain and Palin.

I write science fiction, and I use Open Office to do my writing, since I don’t have the money to shell out for Microsoft Office and can’t find any compelling reason to do so if I did have the money. Overall, I believe that Open Office is just as good as MS Word. However, as with any piece of software, sometimes it isn’t immediately obvious how to do something.

A lot of terms that are used in science and in science fiction are from Latin, and I got tired of having to check each one and add an exception to my spell checker for it. So, I went looking for a way to teach Latin to Open Office.

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