This vignette touched my heart, because it has such relevant symbolism.
In the clips last night, Michelle Obama spoke of finally giving in to Barack's request for a date. She had been refusing his advances because she was very proper in the top law firm of Sidley & Austin, where she was a full fledged attorney and Barack was just a summer intern. Barack surprised Michelle when he took her, not to a fancy restaurant, but to a church basement where he gave a speech to steelworkers who were laid off when the local steel mill closed.
Michelle said Barack riveted everyone in the basement with a magnificent speech about how America actually was, and how America should be.
The clip showed a picture of the burly white steelworkers raptly listening to the young African American orator, demonstrating that the races were cooperating even back then.
I grew up in the same neighborhood as Michelle Robinson Obama, actually in between her house and Rev. Wright's church. I personally knew many of the steelworkers who forever lost high paying jobs to the slave labor wages of Indian and Chinese steelmills, and feel quite strongly about fair trade instead of free trade.
Those hard working men never, ever got jobs with pay remotely near what they earned in the mill, for very hard work.
Micehlle felt the same thing I did, and said that speech in the church basement made it all over, the end! She was in love with Barack.
A symbolic lesson for us all, united.
Democtratic party and uplift the issues of our candidates, my heart burst with pride as I watched our great Democratic Party make history as the first major party to nominate an African American for President of the United States of America.
On the Fourth of July, 2007, I signed the papers to register as a Democrat and abandoned my life long membership in the Republican Party. What a great day!
May God Bless America, and God Bless our Democratic Party!
My favorite was the groucho post, does anyone remember that one?
I know I went off the deep end, but it was such a funny picture I couldn't stop myself.
I confess, I went back to it many times, just for the crack up.
I can't do that anymore.
I can't read Ben's fantastic blogs, or any of the people who were wrongfully silenced and whose words were permanently deleted.
This site will never live that down, unless.....
Things can be put back the way they were, otherwise, it is just a crime of ignorance.
Never will this site have as much integrity as it once did,
until these senseless crimes have been atoned for.
Who is crazy?
Comments on previous posts have stooped to the politics of personal destruction, ad hominem attacks, and calling people "crazy."
Did you know that shortly after Frank filed with the FEC there was a staff post, since deleted, on Daily Kos, asking if Kos should support Frank instead of Obama? So the Kos staff was taking him seriously.
Tell me, who is crazy?
Frank Lynch is creating a new university http://www.fluni.com to train teachers of science, math, medicine and engineering to help treat our national shortage of science teachers and had the audacity to name the university after his father, who died at home in his arms.
Obviously Lynch is crazy, a loon, an egomanic and should be chased out of town. It goes against the principles of the Democratic Party to advance education and to deal with the teacher shortage. Drive Lynch away from posting, he is dangerous. And he is taking on the monumental, back breaking tsask of creating a non-profit, charitable university, and serving without compensation? What a jerk!
Frank Lynch is creating a public charity devoted to abused children and abused women and to fighting poverty inside of America as opposed to Clinton's foundation which is mostly outside the USA. http://franklynchfoundation.org also named after his deceased father.
Lynch is insane, What a narcissist. Anybody who wants to fight poverty inside America is a Nazi. Shout him down, ban him, ridicule him. And he wants to help abused children and save them from the broken foster care system? He can't possible be a true Democrat.
Lynch is writing books and creating a publishing company to raise money for his charities to help education and fight poverty in America. Criminal! UnAmerican. Anti-Democrat. No Democrat Presidential candidate ever wrote a book? Boo! Go away Frank. It is illegal to write a book.
Frank filed to run for president even though he knew the Democratic Party insiders would not let him on the ballots. Why? As a means of getting the other Presidential candidates to copy the ideas he posted on http://www.franklynch.org and use them in their previously vacant websites previously filled with only empty rhetoric from Jimmy Carter's 1976 campaign, and we know Carter's legacy.
Gee Frank, you reminded Hillary and goaded Barack into helping college students and into adopting Universal Healthcare. Frank, you really are a tin hat wacko loon. Everybody knows that Hillary and Barack adopted universal healthcare AFTER you publicized it and nagged the Chairpersons of all 50 state party organizations about it. What a maroone.
And by doing so, Frank Lynch changed America. What a terrible person! Pushing for universal healthcare and helping college students. Lock him in jail.
And Frank Lynch filed to run for President without ever serving as a legislator.
Now this is a big one. Frank Lynch is going to propose a Constitutional Amenment to forbid anyone who has ever been a US Senator or Representative, or ever graduated from law school, from running for President.
No lawyer ever SUCCESSFULLY managed anything of substance in the entire history of America. No many of you will cite lawyers who were the head of all sorts of things. Yes, ABraham Lincoln, my geatest personal hero, was a lawyer, but he never went to law school. Ha! Try to focus. No lawyer evere SUCCESSFULLY managed anything of substance.
Chew on that! First it is a really big crime how so many Senators do nothing about carrying out their duties to the taxpayers for two whole years while they abandon the Senate to run for President.
Second, the Presidency is EXECUTIVE. Senators and Representatives do nothing but work to get re-elected and collect campaign donations by holding hearing after hearing after hearing after hearing to extort contributions from the victims of their hearings.
Third, have you every watched CSPAN? None of those bums should ever be allowed to be President.
Frank Lynch has expert experience in the areas that determine America's future: science, national security, finance/economics, and running a business. See http://www.franklynch.name
In fact, compared to the irrelevant experience of all the other candidates, Lynch is OVERQUALIFIED
Frank Lynch at age 18 dropped out of college because he thought his professors were stupid. At age 19 he was back as a National Science Foundation researcher studying the effects of early experience on adult biochemical and hormonal reactions to stress.
Since stress is involved in weapons systems, he was recruited as a national security consultant, first on selection of advanced weapons systems, then intellegence, and he co-authored a study that predicted the current MidEast situation, in detail, with 100 percent accuracy, 40 years ago! Current candidates don't even understand the MidEast today, let alone see the future.
He then spent 10 years as a Corporate Finance Officer on Wall Street, followed by creating a new business from scratch, building it up into a publicly traded company, and selling it to a larger company.
In contrast, both Obama and McCain state they do not understand business, finance or the economy.
No other Presidential candidate has these comprehensive, totally relevant, qualifications to deal with the problems facing America today.
Maybe Howard Dean erred by keeping Frank Lynch off the primary ballots? Would it not be interesting if the voters had had the chance to debate this?
Are these blogs contaminated by professional paid assasins in the employ of funded campaigns?
In July 2007 I read every word of every website of all the Democrat and Republican Presidential candidates.
Then I wrote my Top Ten List and the http://www.franklynch.org website including only ideas that were not on any Democratic or Republican Presidential candidate website at that date, the sole exception being that Kucinich had the same elegant version of single payer healthcare.
Clinton had dropped universal healthcare after the Republicans threatened to put her in jail for unauthorized expenditure of taxpayer funds in 1993. She never again sponsored unversal healthcare until after I embarassed her on September 11, 2007. On that date she was in my neighbordhood doing a "not really campaigning" fundraiser in which her only words on healthcare were cheaper drugs for seniors and more healthcare for children, less than truly revolutionary concepts.
At the same time a mile down the same street the ABC station televised me campaigning for universal healthcare. Since her staff scans television news wherever she appears, they viewed the five televised spots of me pushing unversal healthcare when she did not.
Shortly AFTER that embarassment, she REMEMBERED that she used to support it. She researched me so thoroughly that she found out my mother belonged to an HMO named "America's Health Choice" and Clinton adopted the name of my mother's HMO for her universal healthcare plan.
As that website says, I filed for President with the FEC because I was disgusted that Hillary's and Obama's websites at July 2007 had almost no specific steps on how to achieve change, even though he had been campaigning for seven months and had spent more than a hundred million, including millions on consultants and writers to flesh out and put substance to his rhetoric.
Silly me, I thought that if someone were to run for President, they should have their ideas fleshed out with specific plans BEFORE starting a campaign, otherwise why run? That is not a rhetorical question. I think the reason to run for President is because you have specific ideas. If your initial, starting Presidential website lacks specific steps you intend to implement, why bother running?. Much worse is if after running for seven months, there is no excuse for not having specific, concrete actual steps, except if you have no specific, concrete ideas?
Isn't the purpose of running for change to have specific changes written down? All of the Democratic candidates were insider Senators or Congressmen (if Obama was an outsider, how come he lived off the taxpayers for the last ten years? Ha!) I knew there was no way the Party machine would let a true outsider like me into the debates or on the ballots, so I used faxes and certified mail to the State Party Chairpersons, and within 48 hours, the elements of my Top Ten List and website began appearing on the DNC website and on Hillary's and Obama's website. It is an incontrovertible fact that at July 20, 2007, neither Hillary nor Barack had Universal Healthcare, plug-in electric cars, windfarms, talking to our enemies, Energy Independence, Free College or College Tuition Assistance, or the phrase "Bold New Ideas" on their websites. How short memories are!
Sure, if you Google any idea you will find many hits, but none of the ideas on my Presidential website were on Hillary's or Obama's websites at July 2007, and I did in fact succeed in inserting them into the current Presidential campaign and defined the major issues of this campaign.
And by doing so I changed America!
What amazes me is the vicious antagonism of this Democratic website toward a Democrat because he contributed to defining the issues and expanded the debate.
Perhaps Fox News may have something when they claim that we Dems really suppress free speech and ideological expansion while claiming the opposite?
You and Howard Dean have proven to me that our Party is the old establishment, and is highly resistant to true change. We won the 2006 elections to bring change, but tell me please, why are Congressional approval ratings so low after our 2006 victory?
I urge everyone to embrace outsiders who publicize ideas of change, instead of responding with pettiness and calling people "crazy." First, that is immature. And Second, That is what Hitler's Brown Shirts did.
When Obama appeared after Joe Biden's speech tonight, Obama said he was going to the Mile High Stadium tomorrow because he needed room for more people because "In America, ordinary people do extraordinary things."
Now, Obama did not have universal healthcare until I promoted it. Same for plug-in electric cars, energy independence, windfarms, and talking with our enemies. I enjoyed his copying my ideas because that is why I ran for President:
In July of last year Obama and the other candidates had very little specifics, so I filed for President with the FEC and deluged all the State Party Chairs with my Top Ten List as a means of defining the national issues for the 2008 campaign to uplift the nation. And I was wildly successful. More than half of Obama's issues today were nowhere to be found in his pre-July 2007 speeches and websites until he copied from http://www.franklynch.org only after I posted them in July 2007, had them broadcast on television and sent them to the 50 State Party Chairs.
In fact, during the last primary debate before Christmas 2007 I actually rolled off the couch with laughter as Clinton and Obama tossed verbatim quotes from my website back and forth during their phony debate.
But I object to Obama's plagarism of my line "America, where ordinary people do extraordinary things everyday" because that was really a trademark identifying the theme of all of my websites, charities, and publications.
Obama, either stop plagarizing from the 180 pages of my five websites, or have the decency and honesty to preface or follow your quotes from me with an acknowledgement such as "as the Futurist Frank Lynch says . . . "
Thank you for your courtesy, Barack
Here is the story those who are intrested in others thoughts please follow the link and read the comments below. Read More »
Spray-On Condoms: Still a Hard Sell Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2008 By CALLIE LEFEVRE Spray-on condoms Tyne News / WENN Edison had his lightbulb, Ford had his Model T, and Jan Vinzenz Krause has his spray-on condom. Inspired by the mechanics of a drive-through car wash, the German sexual-health educator designed a custom-fitting male contraceptive using liquid latex and some materials from a hardware store. "I felt a little like MacGyver," he says of building the contraption. Read More »
#6 seems odd to me but whatever Read More »
Anyone know what exactly sort of field you need to have experiance in to get one of these jobs? Read More »
...I was in the process of commenting on Janes comment... who apparently agreed...with the poster... Jane, is a friend,..except she did not say she would vote for McCain so I wasn't sure where she stood...
Anyway this is what I wanted to say to her, but I never had the chance.
From me Kristine aka "Vidya"
"Well, perhaps he is less qualified than some, but I do think he has enough appropriate qualifications for the job, and surely you would prefer him to McCain, right?"
No, I did not have a chance to comment, or defend my choice. I no longer have the privilege to choose which post I comment on, that is now done for me.
No one is allowed say anything unfavorable about Obama on this site. I read this post, and yes she is mad, and frankly with the crap the is being pulled on this site lately so am I. I do believe I have had enough.
We are all adults here, we can decide for ourselves how to respond or not to at all. Stop the censorship, or more and more democrats will feel alienated, censorship of this sort is exactly the what is causing an uprising within the party. Censorship is wrong, and the scissor happy cutting of posts needs to stop, before it gets around, everyone heres about it and it damages the GE.
Here is the post as it was in it's entirety...I believe you have the right to read it, and it is wrong for the Democratic party, and/or this site to imply that you don't.
"Well I see that our Speaker has been flapping her gum again. I am a Calif and think I have the right to be insulted when she bashes Hillary supporter. I AM A HILLARY SUPPORTER and will say right up front . I WILL NOT VOTE FOR OBAMA, IN FACT I WILL VOT REP FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE as I have talk to many others who feel the same way, so you are losing 2 vote per person. 1 for Rep and one taken away from Registered Dem. I am 82, have voted since FDR, still work in the public every day and pay my share of income tax, so have a right to complain and be highly insulted. WE HILLARY SUPPORTERS ARE NOT WHAT IS DESTROYING THIS DEM PARTY, but the lack of the Dem led Congress to do what we sent them there to do, the lack of the DNC to be neutral until a nominee was picked by the American People, by this I mean the people of Mich and Florida were left out .
Had the DNC, Speaker Pelosi put aside there differences and been fair about the choice of people in this country , then and only then could the Dem party been united. Hillary would have been a better choice to run the country, would have been fair to ALL THE PEOPLE, regardless of race , color, gender, age or creed.
I will say this much to the Democratic Party, don't come crying after this is over and either we have a REP Pres, or an inexperience, race , well educated driven man with no plan to save this country from another depression, another war, another separation from reality man, whose main goal is to make a history statement rather than lead a country and ALL THE PEOPLE in the right direction.
SO BASH HILLARY AND HER SUPPORTERS right into the hands of the REPUBLICANS"
Again this is what I wanted to be able to say to Jane, who agreed.
"Well, perhaps he is less qualified than some, but I do think he has enough appropriate qualifications for the job, and surely you would prefer him to McCain, right?"
If you're still out there Jane I'd like to discuss this further.
If, we can at least have that opportunity, that freedom.
Intresting articl I found.
Some Clinton backers won't go quietly at convention
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 6 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Still sore from an epic primary battle, some of Hillary Rodham Clinton's supporters aren't buying the unity theme planned for the Democratic National Convention.
Read More »Oh and another question and I mean no harm but only asking. How many pro Obama people have been banned for their insults? Also what of those dems who have worked hard to elect dems in other areas of goverment.... are they no longer needed here?
Why can people be banned for speaking about Obama but other dems can be slammed?
On that creepy/CRAZY "Focus on Family" website I saw this, and it made my blood curdle.
"COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. �" Pro-life initiative Measure 11 offers South Dakota voters an opportunity to stand in defense of preborn human life during the November election, and carries the endorsement of Focus on the Family Action in conjunction with the South Dakota Family Policy Council.
Both groups are urging South Dakota voters to vote “yes” on Measure 11, which would prohibit abortion except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life or health of the mother is endangered by the continued pregnancy.
“South Dakota continues to be a driving force in efforts to protect women and the preborn from abortion. Focus on the Family Action is pleased to lend its support to this important ballot effort that will result in saving the lives of preborn children,” said Tom Minnery, senior vice president of Government and Public Policy for the organization.
“South Dakotans know the value of human life and the deep threats against it,” South Dakota Family Policy Council President Chris Hupke said. “Our organization pledges to come alongside this historic effort and the state’s voters to help ensure a November victory for Measure 11.”
South Dakota, please say NO, to Pro-life initiative Measure 11!
Focus on the Family is one hellfire and brimstone of an organization, how can anyone worry about Obama, with nuts like that supporting McCain?