I know what you're thinking. What's a kid doing running for president?
Good question.
Throughout my life, I've experienced the many follies of older generations, which all resulted in crisis to day; including a polluted planet, unnecessary wars, and genocide in the forgotten corners of the world, to list a few.
My generation is not ignorant about the world's problems.
I believe that the people of my generation, as well as every other generation, have the potential to change the world, for the better, or for the worse.
I believe that we can absolutely fill that potential to make the world a better place.
The only ignorant thing about this is ignoring it.
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My generation absolutely has the potential to change and fix the world, and here's why:
My generation has a fresher; more neutral "new perspective" about the world's problems.
We will not begin to influence the future tomorrow, we will begin influence the future today.
We see, entering the world and society as newcomers, that changes are needed, policies rethought, and problems fixed.
I am here today, a presidential candidate, because I believe that we, as a whole, can unite to fix the problems dividing us today.
For we are a divided people. And divided people fall together.
But I believe that we all can unite for any common cause and every common cause. Today, this cause is a call for unity.
So today, each and every one of us must answer this call, because only together will we prevail.
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The founders sought a nation of stability, a nation where in which their families could live in peace.
There were no political parties, an idea which was looked down upon at the time.
There was little division.
There was a common goal, a common belief, a commonality to stand together against the face of tyranny, corruption, and injustice, as well as a belief of Unity that our country was founded upon. "E Pluribus Unum", out of many, one.
We will have given up this idea of freedom and unity when we forget our past.
And again, almost a century later, the country was plunged into another major war.
But this war had much higher stakes and expenses:
The Civil War.
Didn't we, the American people, learn almost one and a half centuries ago, that more blood is shed when brother fights brother than in any other war we've ever participated in?
Didn't we learn, during that civil war, that united we stand, and only divided we may fall?
America was tested during those two points in time upon whether it could remain one united nation.
A nation of equality, a nation of hope, and a nation of the people.
It almost didn't.
But coming out of both wars, the new United States of Americas learned that it could only survive as one.
Many lives have been lost, so that you today can stand proud and free.
That is something worth preserving.
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Unity. A simple word with a convoluted meaning; "one".
Without unity, society condemns itself to failure every time.
One and a half Millennia ago, the Roman Empire collapsed, and only decades ago, the Soviet Union disintegrated.
Why was this?
These two powers shared two core problems:
Government corruption and a sharp divide in ideologies.
A sharp divide in ideologies causes a sharp divide in people.
Sound familiar? I think so. It's happening today.
Right here. The "United" States of America.
For we are in the midst of another battle, with stakes that can potentially become just as significant as they were one and a half centuries ago.
And that's why we ought to be concerned.
This huge cultural, psychological, and political civil war has been dividing America for years and continues to divide us today.
The combatants?
Are they the democrats and republicans? The poor and the rich? The left and the right? Black and white? Jews, Catholics, and Muslims? Religious and secular?
All of them, and none of them, in a way. For the real threat to our unity is not any particular conflict. The reality of the situation is not as simple.
The real threat towards America, democracy, and the World is the fact that the named conflicts, and so many more exist and perpetuate.
The fact that these conflicts divide us is the real culprit.
But we must come together by settling our differences, and only once that has happened can we take on the world's problems.
If we are to solve the world's problems, we must unite immediately.
Because procrastination is not an answer. In order to achieve unity, we MUST unite.
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A president needs to be the one who steps up and resolves conflicts to heal the nation and the world.
And that's the reason that America wants a President, and NEEDS a President who is going to strive for the rights of all Americans, as well as all the People of the World.
And that, my friends, is why I, Zachary D. Larkin, now officially stand before you today, a candidate for the office of President of the United States of America. Read More »
Have we become so petty as a nation that when we do not have valid real issues of substance against a candidate we turn to being petty and verbally assaulting candidates and people with spit balls? Perfect example is the negative frictional statements that Obama is so dumb he is scripted on cue of his every word by his handlers. A lot of people should be so lucky to be numbered among these gifted few dumb souls. The President who succeeded in tearing down a wall in Russia by his careful ingenious scripting not only with words but also by timing and date. This president was President Ronald Reagan. Really tired of the spit balls stating the concerns of Americans, usually conservative right wingers who say Democrats are immoral, crooks etc. They are ready to beat the drum on the events of a few while getting upset when you mention the crimal acts of a President name Nixon, resulting in resignation of born again Col. Oliver North and many of the Nixon administration. The ancient script states he that is not guilty of sin throw the first stone. Get real!!! There are great souls on both sides of the aisle of the political floor. John F. Kennedy didn’t have a lot of experience regarding foreign affairs, but he handled the Cuban Missile Crises quite well. Morality is not the gauntlet of government. Obama is honest enough to tell you his plans and possibilities for change in taxes and attempts to improve our economic futures to the more former prosperous days. Senior former President Bush said, read my lips no new taxes. What happened? More taxes, so wake up and be willing to trust again. Light, Life, Love. Ruth http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9124198051110115917 turn the page http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mMdnxVUnc8
The following post discusses what I think is the REAL elephant in our living room that no one is discussing:
In my opinion, and I'm sure others may disagree as well as agree since this is after all a democracy, I think that the bottom line for this election is really about wrestling our government out of the hands of conservatives and into the hands of progressives--and that includes conservative Democrats as well as conservative Republicans.
Our Democratic Party has its own unofficial conservative wing--the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) of which both Clintons have been very active over the years. By my standards, based on much of the legislation that they have supported, neither Bill nor Hillary Clinton are "progressive democrats". I would categorize both of them as conservative Democrats.
I have a lifetime of experience in the financial industry and I can tell you for certain that bankers have no greater friend than Bill Clinton.
Read More »Source: Foreign Policy
Author: Joshua Keating
Steve Clemons gives the Barack Obama campaign a good thrashing from the left today for the candidate's willingness to accept the resignation of his Muslim outreach coordinator, Mazen Asbahi. The Wall Street Journal reports that Asbahi, a Chicago lawyer, resigned because of questions about his ties to an Illinois-based Imam named Jamal Said who has been accused (though not indicted) of fundraising for Hamas. The two served together for a few weeks on the board of an Islamic investment fund back in 2000. Predictable smug outrage has followed on right-wing blogs.
According to the Journal, the tenuous connection between Asbahi and Said was first noted by the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, a subscription-only Web site that tracks the international activity of that Islamic party and its supporters. The WSJ says the Report is published by a "Washington think tank," but there doesn't seem to be any author or organizational affiliation mentioned on the site, and a Whois lookup yields no clues.
The Report employs a fairly loose definition of Muslim Brotherhood affiliates that includes fairly mainstream organizations such as the Islamic Society of North America and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Amusingly, recent FP contributors Graham Fuller and Marc Lynch are also described as Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers. As Passport readers know, Lynch has indeed met with senior Brotherhood leaders in Cairo, but they hardly see eye to eye. Fuller's supposed ties are of the six-degrees-of-Mahdi Akef variety. Read More »
By Perry Bacon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 6, 2008; 9:45 AM
Barack Obama's national Muslim outreach coordinator has resigned amid a controversy of over his connections to a man who the Justice Department named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the racketeering trial last year of several alleged Hamas fund-raisers.
Mazen Asbahi, a Chicago lawyer who had been appointed to help Obama reach out to Muslims, stepped down on Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported late last night.
The paper had inquired about his relationship with Jamal Said, who served on a board with Asbahi in 2000 that is a subsidiary of the North American Islamic Trust, which holds titles to mosques, Islamic centers, schools, and other real estate around the country. Said had been named in an investigation of alleged Hamas fund-raisers, which ended in a mistrial last year, the paper reported. Read More »
Way to go bloggers!
YES WE CAN!!
Frank Rich has a great article in today's New York Times titled "How Obama Became Acting President"
Here is just a taste of Rich's article. I highly recommend going to the NYT and reading all of it.
" . . . He never would have been treated as a president-in-waiting by heads of state or network talking heads if all he offered were charisma, slick rhetoric and stunning visuals. What drew them instead was the raw power Mr. Obama has amassed: the power to start shaping events and the power to move markets, including TV ratings. (Even “Access Hollywood” mustered a 20 percent audience jump by hosting the Obama family.) Power begets more power, absolutely.
The growing Obama clout derives not from national polls, where his lead is modest. Nor is it a gift from the press, which still gives free passes to its old bus mate John McCain. It was laughable to watch journalists stamp their feet last week to try to push Mr. Obama into saying he was “wrong” about the surge. More than five years and 4,100 American fatalities later, they’re still not demanding that Mr. McCain admit he was wrong when he assured us that our adventure in Iraq would be fast, produce little American “bloodletting” and “be paid for by the Iraqis.”
go here for the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/opinion/27rich.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
If you want the truth about Donna, read the source instead of some twisted right-winger interpretation of who Donna Brazile is.
Donna Brazile's Cooking With Grease is a powerful, intimate account of Donna's thirty years in politics, commencing with her first political fight at age nine, and capturing her tenacious commitment to political and social activism triggered by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.Read her inspirational accounts of the leaders and activists who have helped shape contemporary social and political policy in America as well as a detailed account of the 2000 Presidential campaign as seen through the eyes of Al Gore's campaign manager.Also here is her website:http://www.brazileassociates.com/index.cfm
Just in case you haven’t seen Alan’s new ad on TV yet, you can check it out on-line at the DailyKos:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/25/155020/561/340/556978 Read More »
Source: Bloomberg
Author: Caroline Alexander
A year ago, Palestinian medical student Wessam al-Ghoul in the U.K. thought Barack Obama would break new ground in bringing Middle East peace. Today, he says the Democratic presidential candidate is merely “the lesser of two evils.”
Al-Ghoul changed his mind after Obama toughened his rhetoric against Iran and said on June 4 that ``Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.'' Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as their future capital.
``He has become virtually indistinguishable from any U.S. politician running for office,'' said al-Ghoul, 24. He added that presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, 71, is worse only because he would continue the foreign policies of President George W. Bush, whose war in Iraq, now in its sixth year, has made him unpopular in the Arab world. Read More »
Source: The National
Author: Sharmila Devi
“The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the US from the inside out. What better way to start than at the highest level " through the president of the United States, one of their own.”
So reads an email widely distributed in the US from unknown senders as part of a smear campaign, satirised with mixed results by The New Yorker magazine last week, against Barack Obama, the presumed Democratic nominee.
The liberal weekly might have been making a joke when it pictured Mr Obama as a Muslim terrorist, his wife, Michelle, as an armed radical, and the US flag burning in the fireplace in the Oval Office. But some Americans actually appear to believe it, according to opinion polls. Read More »