More From Elizabeth Edwards On DU
For those of you who don't get over to DU, here's more from Elizabeth Edwards.
Sun Nov-07-04 07:17 PM
We haven't given up either
It is impossible to believe that Ohio -- where they have lost over 230,000 jobs and have 12 (still vulnerable -- under GWB) chemical plants each capable of killing 1 million people if any was to be successfully targeted by a terrorist attack -- would go to GWB. We all felt the Ohio momentum, even the B-C campaign it seemed felt the movement to K-E ticket -- and yet . . . . By the way, I am not "in touch" with regular folks. We ARE regular folks. But thanks for the thought.
Sun Nov-07-04 08:15 PM
Trust is hard to come by, I know
Thanks for your best wishes. And it really is me. I posted in response to a post from someone who graduated from the high school I graduated from -- and I don't think that high school is mentioned in anything published about me, to confirm that it is me.
And I signed up the regular way, because I am just a regular poster -- I had signed up some time ago and posted, before the recent "fame" under my first screen name, but felt that I shouldn't hide when posting during the campaign. But the campaign got hectic so fast, and when I had access to a computer I posted on the Kerry blog first, and though I usually read DU, I didn't post then.
I do think someone from DU confirmed with the campaign that this is me.
And as for voter fraud, we are still piecing together the same stuff you are piecing together. I know that the two candidates had been assured that everything was in place -- and there was certainly a lot of visibility. I can't yet blame the people in the field who I believe were working hard to stop the election from being stolen. I don't think -- even in our frustration (and no one is more frustrated than we are) -- that we can say "the Democratic leaders did NOTHING to prevent the election being stolen."
Sun Nov-07-04 07:04 PM
Really love this post
All the good thoughts and support and terrific. Love this "rejoin your unit at the front" post because it says it all: there is a front in this war, and you can absolutely count on the fact that John and I will be there.
Sun Nov-07-04 07:17 PM
We haven't given up either
It is impossible to believe that Ohio -- where they have lost over 230,000 jobs and have 12 (still vulnerable -- under GWB) chemical plants each capable of killing 1 million people if any was to be successfully targeted by a terrorist attack -- would go to GWB. We all felt the Ohio momentum, even the B-C campaign it seemed felt the movement to K-E ticket -- and yet . . . . By the way, I am not "in touch" with regular folks. We ARE regular folks. But thanks for the thought.
Sun Nov-07-04 08:15 PM
Trust is hard to come by, I know
Thanks for your best wishes. And it really is me. I posted in response to a post from someone who graduated from the high school I graduated from -- and I don't think that high school is mentioned in anything published about me, to confirm that it is me.
And I signed up the regular way, because I am just a regular poster -- I had signed up some time ago and posted, before the recent "fame" under my first screen name, but felt that I shouldn't hide when posting during the campaign. But the campaign got hectic so fast, and when I had access to a computer I posted on the Kerry blog first, and though I usually read DU, I didn't post then.
I do think someone from DU confirmed with the campaign that this is me.
And as for voter fraud, we are still piecing together the same stuff you are piecing together. I know that the two candidates had been assured that everything was in place -- and there was certainly a lot of visibility. I can't yet blame the people in the field who I believe were working hard to stop the election from being stolen. I don't think -- even in our frustration (and no one is more frustrated than we are) -- that we can say "the Democratic leaders did NOTHING to prevent the election being stolen."
Sun Nov-07-04 07:04 PM
Really love this post
All the good thoughts and support and terrific. Love this "rejoin your unit at the front" post because it says it all: there is a front in this war, and you can absolutely count on the fact that John and I will be there.
posted by Pamela J. Leavey at 10:50 PM
2 Comments:
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
When the Personal Shouldn't Be Political
By GARY HART
Published: November 8, 2004
Kittredge, Colo. — If America has entered one of its periodic eras of religious revival and if that revival is having the profound impact on politics that is now presumed, to participate in a discussion of "faith" one must qualify oneself.
I was raised in the Church of the Nazarene, an evangelical denomination founded a century ago as an offshoot of American Methodism, which, the church founders believed, had become too liberal. I graduated from Bethany Nazarene College, where I met and married my wife, who was also brought up in the church. I then graduated from the Yale Divinity School as preparation for a life of teaching religion and philosophy.
The Nazarene Church abhorred drinking, smoking, dancing, movies and female adornment, believed in salvation through being "born again" and in sanctification as a second act of grace, and resisted most popular culture as the devil's work. In doctrine and practice, it was much more evangelical than fundamentalist.
A neglected thread of church doctrine was the social gospel of John and Charles Wesley, the great reformers of late 18th-century Methodism. The Wesley brothers preached salvation through grace but also preached the duty of Christians, based solidly on Jesus' teachings, to minister to those less fortunate. My political philosophy springs directly from Jesus' teachings and is the reason I became active in the Democratic Party. Finally, in the qualification-to-speak category, I will seek to pre-empt the ad hominem disqualifiers. I am a sinner. I only ask for the same degree of forgiveness from my many critics that they were willing to grant George W. Bush for his transgressions.
As a candidate for public office, I chose not to place my beliefs in the center of my appeal for support because I am also a Jeffersonian; that is to say, I believe that one's religious beliefs - though they will and should affect one's outlook on public policy and life - are personal and that America is a secular, not a theocratic, republic. Because of this, it should concern us that declarations of "faith" are quickly becoming a condition for seeking public office.
Declarations of "faith" are abstractions that permit both voters and candidates to fill in the blanks with their own religious beliefs. There are two dangers here. One is the merging of church and state. The other is rank hypocrisy. Having claimed moral authority to achieve political victory, religious conservatives should be very careful, in their administration of the public trust, to live up to the standards they have claimed for themselves. They should also be called upon to address the teachings of Jesus and the prophets concerning care for the poor, the barriers that wealth presents to entering heaven, the blessings on the peacemakers, and the belief that no person should be left behind.
If we are to insert "faith" into the public dialogue more directly and assertively, let's not be selective. Let's go all the way. Let's not just define "faith" in terms of the law and judgment; let's define it also in terms of love, caring, forgiveness. Compassionate conservatives can believe social ills should be addressed by charity and the private sector; liberals can believe that the government has a role to play in correcting social injustice. But both can agree that human need, poverty, homelessness, illiteracy and sickness must be addressed. Liberals are not against religion. They are against hypocrisy, exclusion and judgmentalism. They resist the notion that one side or the other possesses "the truth" to the exclusion of others. There is a great difference between Cotton Mather and John Wesley.
There is also the disturbing tendency to insert theocratic principles into the vision of America's role in the world. There is evil in the world. Nowhere in our Constitution or founding documents is there support for the proposition that the United States was given a special dispensation to eliminate it. Surely Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator. But there are quite a few of those still around and no one is advocating eliminating them. Neither Washington, Adams, Madison nor Jefferson saw America as the world's avenging angel. Any notion of going abroad seeking demons to destroy concerned them above all else. Mr. Bush's venture into crusaderism frightened not only Muslims, it also frightened a very large number of Americans with a sense of their own history.
The religions of Abraham all teach a sense of personal and collective humility. It was a note briefly struck very early by Mr. Bush and largely abandoned thereafter. It would be well for those in the second Bush term to ponder that attribute. Whether Bush supporters care or not, people around the world now see America as arrogant, self-righteous and superior. These are not qualities of any traditional faith I am aware of.
If faith now drives our politics, at the very least let's make it a faith of inclusion, genuine compassion, humility, justice and accountability. In the words of the prophet Micah: "He hath shown thee, O man, what is good. What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" And, instead of "O man," let's insert "O America."
Gary Hart, the former Democratic senator from Colorado, is the author, most recently, of"The Fourth Power: A Grand Strategy for the United States in the 21st Century.''
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=5237797&postID=109989728037472775
PETER NORTON
Red Sox Nation, literally
By Peter Norton | November 8, 2004
VOTING WILL get underway shortly in the New England states on whether to secede from the United States of America. The new country would be named Red Sox Nation and would comprise Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, and most of Connecticut.
Red Sox owner John Henry, who initiated the hastily organized referendum, said that he was not a sore loser. "This has nothing whatever to do with the defeat of yet another liberal Massachusetts politician with aspirations for national office. I'm just tired of living in such a bitterly divided country. My goal is to create a new nation where everyone can agree on something."
Polls show that 97.3 percent of people living within the borders of the proposed nation root for the Red Sox. Members of the New England Patriots football team and New England Revolution soccer team were quick to endorse the measure. Sales of bumper stickers, such as "Don't Blame Me, I'm From Red Sox Nation," have been brisk.
Senator John Kerry, a long-time Red Sox fan, said in a statement that he would vote for secession and would even vote to authorize the yet-to-be-elected president of the new nation to go to war if necessary. On the other hand, Kerry said that if there were a war, he would oppose it and vote to deny any funding whatsoever.
While Kerry has ruled out running for president of Red Sox Nation himself, numerous local politicians, sensing home field advantage, have formed exploratory committees, including Michael Dukakis, Howard Dean, Joe Leiberman, Niki Tsongas, Mitt Romney, William Weld, and half a dozen Kennedys. Political pundits, however, speculate that the top honor is most likely to go to a member of the Red Sox team.
"Having won the world championship, any one of them, even a utility infielder like Pokey Reese, would have an immediate advantage over the politicians," said one analyst. He noted one exception, though. Curt Schilling, who was once considered a front runner based on his status approaching that of a war hero wounded on the field of battle, may have hurt his chances by campaigning with US President George Bush before the referendum was even announced.
Newly reelected President Bush spoke out against secession. "I've always said I'm a uniter, not a divider. And by that I mean I'm a uniter. I unite things. You see, they don't call this great country the United States for nothin'. If you divide it, then it isn't united anymore, is it? It's as simple as that."
Privately, though, White House aides admit that the president would not be sorry to see the troublesome states leave the union; the United States could scarcely afford to redeploy troops from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to quell a local uprising.
Border disputes have already arisen. The southwest corner of Connecticut was excluded from the proposed nation, due to heavier concentrations of New York Yankees fans. However, plans for a security fence were leaked to the media and showed that officials intend to deviate from the originally proposed boundary in order to include several Red Sox enclaves deep within Connecticut Yankee territory.
Skirmishes have broken out in New Haven, near the proposed border, and an extremist Yankee website has posted a call for attacks on the "illegal Red Sox settlements."
One of the cornerstones of the draft constitution is the right of return. Red Sox fans living in exile anywhere in the United States, or even the world, would be guaranteed citizenship in the fledgling nation.
"I can hahdly wait," exclaimed one Red Sox fan, a Boston native currently residing in Manhattan, who refused to give his name citing security concerns. "During the World Series, I got up my courage to wear my Red Sox cap on the subway. It was the first time I felt safe wearing it in the last 10 yeahs. If this thing passes, I'd move back to Boston in a hahtbeat!"
Peter Norton lives in Acton.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/11/08/red_sox_nation_literally/
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