DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL IS H.R. 2965 ~ HERE IS THE LIST OF WHO VOTED FOR AND AGAINST DADT

See below for the United States Senators' names and which way they voted for allowing gay people to serve in the military without fear of losing their jobs

But first~

This is a quote from the article Why is Obama leaving the grass roots on the sidelines? at www.washingtonpost.com

“…Obama needs a senior adviser whose job is to be a liaison to the movement that elected him…Obama needs twice as much grass-roots support in the next election - and he's not going to get it by sidelining his supporters…”

Why is Obama leaving the grass roots on the sidelines?

By Sam Graham-Felsen

Friday, December 17, 2010

In the wake of President Obama's deal to extend the Bush tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, pundits have focused on how Obama has alienated the left. But the issue isn't the left - it's the list. Read the article by clicking the link: www.washingtonpost.com

❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧

Of course, I don't believe that President Obama is reading all the letters that I have sent to him. But surely some staff members are calculating the subjects being addressed in our phone calls, letters and emails. I have addressed mostly Darfur. But also, other things, such as Health Care Reform. And most recently I addressed the very issue that I won't be joining his campaign next time around, stating the reasons. I am one of those who never had gotten engaged in the election process before. It is definitely not in my comfort zone to knock on doors, which I did for him in New Hampshire and Rhode Island. I am not in the demographic that he won: older generation, white, female. I will vote for him next time. But it is more that I will be voting against his opponent, than for him, as I stated in my email. And this is the very "list" that Sam Graham-Felsen is talking about.

Tonight the "list" received this email:

Sandra --

Moments ago, the Senate voted to end "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

When that bill reaches my desk, I will sign it, and this discriminatory law will be repealed.

Gay and lesbian service members -- brave Americans who enable our freedoms -- will no longer have to hide who they are.

The fight for civil rights, a struggle that continues, will no longer include this one.

This victory belongs to you. Without your commitment, the promise I made as a candidate would have remained just that.

Instead, you helped prove again that no one should underestimate this movement. Every phone call to a senator on the fence, every letter to the editor in a local paper, and every message in a congressional inbox makes it clear to those who would stand in the way of justice: We will not quit.

This victory also belongs to Senator Harry Reid, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and our many allies in Congress who refused to let politics get in the way of what was right.

Like you, they never gave up, and I want them to know how grateful we are for that commitment.

Will you join me in thanking them by adding your name to Organizing for America's letter?

I will make sure these messages are delivered -- you can also add a comment about what the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" means to you.

As Commander in Chief, I fought to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" because it weakens our national security and military readiness. It violates the fundamental American principles of equality and fairness.

But this victory is also personal.

I will never know what it feels like to be discriminated against because of my sexual orientation.

But I know my story would not be possible without the sacrifice and struggle of those who came before me -- many I will never meet, and can never thank.

I know this repeal is a crucial step for civil rights, and that it strengthens our military and national security. I know it is the right thing to do.

But the rightness of our cause does not guarantee success, and today, celebration of this historic step forward is tempered by the defeat of another -- the DREAM Act. I am incredibly disappointed that a minority of senators refused to move forward on this important, commonsense reform that most Americans understand is the right thing for our country. On this issue, our work must continue.

Today, I'm proud that we took these fights on.

Please join me in thanking those in Congress who helped make "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal possible:

http://my.barackobama.com/Repealed

Thank you,

Barack

I did click the link and thank those who worked toward repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell, while adding my own little message:

To Majority Leader Reid, Speaker Pelosi, and all those who fought for repeal,

Thank you for your leadership in making sure "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is repealed before the end of the year.

Because of your commitment, gay and lesbian members of our military will be able to serve equally and openly. We are proud to stand with you.

I would like to specifically thank US PA Representative Patrick Murphy for his dedicated effort regarding this bill. And also for being the stalwart person that he is. (Please find a way to keep him working for America in D.C.) If I were gay, I would want to live my life in truth and this bill finally allows that to happen while being in the service.

Sincerely,

Sandra Hammel

I sat beside Patrick Murphy in New Hampshire, while we both made phone calls on behalf of Barack Obama's Presidential campaign during the primaries. Patrick ordered a sandwich as it was during the evening. And he gave me half his sandwich. Listening to him make the phone calls, was a treat. He was relaxed, unlike me who wasn't, enthusiastic and talked from the heart. He put you at ease just being around him. I am sorry that he lost his seat in the House of Representatives. The country needs people like Patrick Murphy in Congress.

...................................................

...................................................

❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Do Tell what the repeal number is. H.R. 2965

The following is confusing and the "Measure" and "Title" below certainly makes for confusion, but I believe this is the Don't Ask, Don't Tell vote. Click on H.R. 2965 and I think it becomes clear that this is exactly what this vote is for. Briefly, this is what you read when you do click H.R. 2965 ~
H.R.2965
Latest Title: Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010
Sponsor: Rep Altmire, Jason [PA-4] (introduced 6/19/2009) Cosponsors (9)

Here is the breakdown~

H.R. 2965 (SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act of 2009 )

U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 111^th Congress - 2^nd Session

as compiled through Senate LIS by the Senate Bill Clerk under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate

Vote Summary

Question: On the Motion (Motion to Concur in the House Amendment to the Senate Amendment to H.R. 2965 )
Vote Number:	281	Vote Date:	December 18, 2010, 03:02 PM
Required For Majority:	1/2	Vote Result:	Motion Agreed to
Measure Number:	H.R. 2965 (SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act of 2009 )
Measure Title:	A bill to amend the Small Business Act with respect to the Small Business Innovation Research Program and the Small Business Technology Transfer Program, and for other purposes.

Vote Counts:	YEAs	65
	NAYs	31
	Not Voting	4

Vote Summary

By Senator Name

By Vote Position

By Home State

The vote can be found at www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=2&vote=00281

Senate ~ 65 - 31 and 4 "no votes"

Grouped By Vote Position

YEAs ---65
Akaka (D-HI) Baucus (D-MT) Bayh (D-IN) Begich (D-AK) Bennet (D-CO) Bingaman (D-NM) Boxer (D-CA) Brown (D-OH) Brown (R-MA) Burr (R-NC) Cantwell (D-WA) Cardin (D-MD) Carper (D-DE) Casey (D-PA) Collins (R-ME) Conrad (D-ND) Coons (D-DE) Dodd (D-CT) Dorgan (D-ND) Durbin (D-IL) Ensign (R-NV) Feingold (D-WI)	Feinstein (D-CA) Franken (D-MN) Gillibrand (D-NY) Hagan (D-NC) Harkin (D-IA) Inouye (D-HI) Johnson (D-SD) Kerry (D-MA) Kirk (R-IL) Klobuchar (D-MN) Kohl (D-WI) Landrieu (D-LA) Lautenberg (D-NJ) Leahy (D-VT) Levin (D-MI) Lieberman (ID-CT) Lincoln (D-AR) McCaskill (D-MO) Menendez (D-NJ) Merkley (D-OR) Mikulski (D-MD) Murkowski (R-AK)	Murray (D-WA) Nelson (D-FL) Nelson (D-NE) Pryor (D-AR) Reed (D-RI) Reid (D-NV) Rockefeller (D-WV) Sanders (I-VT) Schumer (D-NY) Shaheen (D-NH) Snowe (R-ME) Specter (D-PA) Stabenow (D-MI) Tester (D-MT) Udall (D-CO) Udall (D-NM) Voinovich (R-OH) Warner (D-VA) Webb (D-VA) Whitehouse (D-RI) Wyden (D-OR)

NAYs ---31
Alexander (R-TN) Barrasso (R-WY) Bennett (R-UT) Bond (R-MO) Brownback (R-KS) Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK) Cochran (R-MS) Corker (R-TN) Cornyn (R-TX) Crapo (R-ID)	DeMint (R-SC) Enzi (R-WY) Graham (R-SC) Grassley (R-IA) Hutchison (R-TX) Inhofe (R-OK) Isakson (R-GA) Johanns (R-NE) Kyl (R-AZ) LeMieux (R-FL) Lugar (R-IN)	McCain (R-AZ) McConnell (R-KY) Risch (R-ID) Roberts (R-KS) Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Thune (R-SD) Vitter (R-LA) Wicker (R-MS)

Not Voting - 4
Bunning (R-KY) Gregg (R-NH)	Hatch (R-UT) Manchin (D-WV)

The House voted 250 to 175 to repeal the 17-year-old law; 15 Republicans voted for the bill, and 15 Democrats voted against it.

Washington Office

Patrick Murphy
1609 Longworth HOB

Washington, DC 20515

(202) 225-4276

❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧

About The DREAM Act

S.729 - Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act of 2009

A bill to amend the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 to permit States to determine State residency for higher education purposes and to authorize the cancellation of removal and adjustment of status of certain alien students who are long-term United States residents and who entered the United States as children, and for other purposes.

Source: www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s729/show

The DREAM Act

dreamact.info

Over three million students graduate from U.S. high schools every year. Most get the opportunity to test their dreams and live their American story. However, a group of approximately 65,000 youth do not get this opportunity; they are smeared with an inherited title, an illegal immigrant. These youth have lived in the United States for most of their lives and want nothing more than to be recognized for what they are, Americans.

The DREAM Act is a bipartisan legislation ‒ pioneered by Sen. Orin Hatch [R-UT] and Sen. Richard Durbin [D-IL] ‒ that can solve this hemorrhaging injustice in our society. Under the rigorous provisions of the DREAM Act, qualifying undocumented youth would be eligible for a 6 year long conditional path to citizenship that requires completion of a college degree or two years of military service.

This bill would have given states the authority to repeal the denial of an unlawful alien’s eligibility for higher education benefits, which have been previously tied state-residency. Additionally, it allowed for the adjustment from status of alien to conditional permanent resident and outlines the criteria for such an adjustment by the Secretary of Homeland Security. The bill and its equivalent in the House, H.R.1751, is just as controversial as most other immigration related bills, such as, H.R.1868, the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2009.

COMMUNITY ORGANIZER RUNS THE BEST PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

Where will you be November 4th? I don't understand anyone who will not vote this year. I don't understand how stupid some people are. Some people don't want to know the truth. They just want to make up the truth and call it truth. Truth doesn't lie.

Barack Obama has run a superb campaign. Superior to anyone else. George W Bush had his Rove brain to be his axis of evil architect. Barack has used a different style. But no one can say that Barack Obama has no new ideas, is sloppy on details or the long view, hasn't shown true grit and fortitude, can't stand up to his own party (consider the stand he took on when he ran against the Clinton team) ~ this is a fantastic use of "community" organizing only on a national scale. His new ideas are shown in his various policies and his broad view of how to take this country forward into the 21st century although we are down and not quite out - but the new ideas of how to run a Presidential campaign are overflowing and they have worked quite well.

I am hoping and praying that this is all in God's plan. I question God's plan when I have to continually learn of the horrendous treatment of human beings by other human beings here and in other countries, of the lies we have been putting up with in this land of faux democratic government, tapping our phone lines, reading our emails, and torturing all in "the name" of what's best for the USA, helping corporate USA at the expense of the middle class and the poor, trashing habeas corpus... If God has a plan, then we need to help God implement the optimum plan. Otherwise, we get the same pool of Republicans to fill positions that have been filling those positions for the Bush years. With an unimaginable national debt, jobs lost on the rise with no end foreseeable, crumbling roads and bridges, many school buildings not fit to be open, health care causing people to file bankruptcy, foster children languishing in a system that is broken and under-funded, it is time to consider we have left this administration to go unchecked, unheeded and blindly trusted beyond a reasonable amount of time and chances to redeem themselves.

Time to wake up or die sleeping at the metaphorical wheel.

Stepping down from my soapbox for the night.

"...If you don't vote, you're a moron..."

On the Sept. 10th edition of The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson, a new American citizen preparing to vote in his first US election asks, "Are we so lost we have to be sold our own democratic right!?" Uploaded by CBS

.....................................

.....................................
Community organize, email, call - Help Get Out the Vote for Barack Oamba
Uploaded by BarackObamadotcom

KNOW YOUR VOTING RIGHTS ~ State by State

VOTE OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT

Help Out
www.barackobama.com

ON A SCALE OF 1 TO 10 HOW DUMB ARE THE USA VOTERS?

I think there should be a required test that you not only have to pass with a B or above, but the completed test should be made public - online - before you can accept the nomination for President or Vice-President.

And I think we should get to submit questions for the test.

We have a tight race between an intelligent and articulate candidate - Barack Obama and one, John McCain, who has spoken with so many mistakes - mixing up countries that don't exist anymore, associating the wrong Presidents with the appropriate countries, confusing Shiites and Sunnis when talking about Al Qaeda in Iraq and lying repeatedly about Barack Obama - then selecting a running mate he met...once, before he offered the job. Thank goodness, Russia is next to Alaska otherwise we wouldn't be able to have any confidence in Sarah Palin's international knowledge. She did get her passport, but that doesn't comfort me.

Many times, John McCain has stammered and looked like a deer caught in headlights when asked a question. This alone makes me question his intelligence.

..................................................

..................................................
Maps of the world
Uploaded by POPobscura
..................................................

..................................................
Uploaded by probablytubing
..................................................

..................................................
Uploaded January 26, 2007 by bravenewfilms

..................................................

..................................................
Uploaded June 04, 2008 by Veracifier
..................................................

..................................................
New Hampshire Primary night
Uploaded January 09, 2008 by BarackObamadotcom

Why Won't McCain Vote for the GI Bill?

..................................................

..................................................
John McCain and Mortgages
Uploaded by bravenewfilms

If I have to listen to John McCain and Sarah Palin for the next four years I will have to consider how I can cope. It will be a problem. Any country looking for good USA expatriates?

I NEED SOME HOPE

VOTE

OBAMA - BIDEN 2008

McCAIN - SPAIN IS IN EUROPE and WHEN YOU SPEAK I GET A SICK FEELING

John McCain ranked 894 out of 899 in college.

Fifth from the bottom.







...................................................

...................................................
John McCain interviewed
This includes the question about Spain and Spain's President Zapatero
Uploaded by tpmtv

I CAN'T STAND IT - McCAIN CAN'T GET STRAIGHT WHAT THE QUESTION IS

Repeatedly John McCain says stupid things,
contradicts himself,
lies,
makes stuff up,
and chose Sarah Palin as the first person in line if he dies to run the country

JOHN McCAIN IS NOT FIT TO BE PRESIDENT

but that doesn't mean the USA won't elect him as President

We are on shaky ground, here.

I have tried to restrain myself about John McCain. But McCain scares me. And the fact that so many USA citizens feel McCain is the one to lead the USA causes me to be very worried.

I know I'm not qualified to lead this country. And I am smarter than John McCain or Sarah Palin. The fact that these two think they are qualified to be President scares the living daylights out of me.

The rest of the world has to think we are stupid.



...................................................

...................................................
John McCain didn't know who the President of Spain was or that Spain is a democracy that USA is friendly with.
Here is a report on John McCain and Spain

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/217710.php

...................................................

...................................................

Chris Matthews interviews Republican Representative Eric Cantor

Email Chris: hardball@msnbc.com

...................................................

...................................................

Brian Williams and the financial disaster

Uploaded by KevinAction

...................................................

...................................................

Barack Obama and John McCain speak about the financial disaster this week.

Uploaded by jedreport

John McCain and the Lying Game

By Joe Klein

Politics has always been lousy with blather and chicanery. But there are rules and traditions too. In the early weeks of the general-election campaign, a consensus has grown in the political community"a consensus that ranges from practitioners like Karl Rove to commentators like, well, me"that John McCain has allowed his campaign to slip the normal bounds of political propriety. The situation has gotten so intense that we in the media have slipped our normal rules as well. Usually when a candidate tells something less than the truth, we mince words. We use euphemisms like mendacity and inaccuracy ... or, as the Associated Press put it, "McCain's claims skirt facts." But increasing numbers of otherwise sober observers, even such august institutions as the New York Times editorial board, are calling John McCain a liar. You might well ask, What has McCain done to deserve this? What unwritten rules did he break? Are his transgressions of degree or of kind?

Almost every politician stretches the truth. We journalists try to point out the exaggerations and criticize them, then let the voters decide. When McCain says, for example, that Barack Obama favors a government-run health-care system, he's not telling the truth"Obama wants a market-based system subsidized by the government"but McCain's untruth illuminates a general policy direction, which is sketchy but sort of within the bounds. (Obama's plan would increase government regulation of the drug and insurance industries.) Obama has done this sort of thing too. In July, he accused McCain of supporting the foreign buyout of an American company that could lead to the loss of about 8,000 jobs in Wilmington, Ohio. McCain did support the deal, but the job loss comes many years later and was not anticipated at the time. That, however, is where the moral equivalency between these two campaigns ends.

McCain's lies have ranged from the annoying to the sleazy, and the problem is in both degree and kind. His campaign has been a ceaseless assault on his opponent's character and policies, featuring a consistent"and witting"disdain for the truth. Even after 38 million Americans heard Obama say in his speech at the Democratic National Convention that he was open to offshore oil-drilling and building new nuclear-power plants, McCain flatly said in his acceptance speech that Obama opposed both. Normal political practice would be for McCain to say, "Obama says he's 'open to' offshore drilling, but he's always opposed it. How can we believe him?" This persistence in repeating demonstrably false charges is something new in presidential politics.

Worse than the lies have been the smears. McCain ran a television ad claiming that Obama favored "comprehensive" sex education for kindergartners. (Obama favored a bill that would have warned kindergartners about sexual predators and improper touching.) The accusation that Obama was referring to Sarah Palin when he said McCain's effort to remarket his economic policies was putting "lipstick on a pig" was another clearly misleading attack"an obnoxious attempt to divert attention from Palin's lack of fitness for the job and the recklessness with which McCain chose her. McCain's assault on the "�lite media" for spreading rumors about Palin's personal life"actually, the culprits were a few bloggers and the tabloid press"was more of the same. And that gets us close to the real problem here. The McCain camp has decided that its candidate can't win honorably, on the issues, so it has resorted to transparent and phony diversions.

This new strategy emerged during the first week of Obama's overseas trip in late July. McCain had been intending to contrast his alleged foreign policy expertise and toughness with Obama's inexperience and alleged weakness. McCain wanted to "win" the Iraq war and face down the Iranians. But those issues became moot when the Iraqis said they favored Obama's withdrawal plan and the Bush Administration started talking to the Iranians. At that point, McCain committed his original sin"out of pique, I believe"questioning Obama's patriotism, saying the Democrat would rather lose a war than lose an election. Ever since, McCain's campaign has been a series of snide and demeaning ads accompanied by the daily gush of untruths that have now been widely documented and exposed. The strategy is an obvious attempt to camouflage the current unpopularity of his Republican brand, the insubstantiality of his vice-presidential choice, and his agreement on most issues"especially economic matters"with an exceedingly unpopular President.

The good news is that the vile times may be ending. The coming debates will decide this race, and it isn't easy to tell lies when your opponent is standing right next to you. The Wall Street collapse demands a more sober campaign as well. But these dreadful weeks should not be forgotten. John McCain has raised serious questions about whether he has the character to lead the nation. He has defaced his beloved military code of honor. He has run a dirty campaign.

Source: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1842030,00.html

I'M FOR OBAMA AND BIDEN

A few months ago, I bought both of Barack Obama's books that he wrote. And today, I started to read Dreams of My Father -A Story of Race and Inheritance. He is a good writer. And brave to open up as he did.

His second book is The Audacity of Hope-Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

..............................................

..............................................
Yes We Can to Equality and Justice

John McCain ranked 894 out of 899 in college. Fifth from the bottom.

A PRESIDENT FOR THE PEOPLE

BARACK OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT

States: Dates for elections and results center

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey plans to endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president today (March 28, 2008) in Pittsburgh, sending a message both to the state's primary voters and to undecided superdelegates who might decide the close race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Dan Pfeiffer, deputy communications director for the Obama campaign, confirmed that Casey would announce his support during a rally at the Soldiers and Sailors Military Museum and Memorial and that he would then set out with the Illinois senator on part of a six-day bus trip across the state.
...

Casey sees Obama as an "underdog" in the campaign who sacrificed at the beginning of his career to be a community organizer "in the shadows of the closed steel mills in Chicago," said a source close to Casey who is familiar with the endorsement decision but was not authorized to speak publicly about it.

The source, reached by The Inquirer yesterday, said that Casey was also impressed with how Obama had stood up to the pressures of the campaign, including recent attacks over the racially incendiary remarks of his former pastor.

Casey's decision was also personal, motivated in part by the enthusiasm his four daughters - Elyse, Caroline, Julia and Marena - have expressed for Obama, the source said. "He thinks we shouldn't be deaf to the voices of the next generation."

........................................................

........................................................
Pennsylvania Obama Ad

Help Out ~ "The Most Important Office Is That Of Citizen" Louis D. Brandeis

Barack spoke about the need to change Washington in order to tackle challenges that face all Americans, like creating jobs, improving our schools and making health care available to everyone. He said:

Our nation is at war, but the struggles at home have been dominating the headlines and have been dominating the minds of people...people right here in Pittsburgh have seen how difficult this economy is for so many Americans for a long time. Everywhere you go, people are working harder and harder just to get by. You've never paid more for gas at the pump, you've never paid more for healthcare. You've never paid more for a college education, a dozen eggs, or a gallon of milk.

In addressing the speech he gave at Cooper Union yesterday calling for immediate relief for homeowners hit by the housing crisis and modernization of our regulatory framework, Barack said:

This housing crisis didn't happen by accident. We're going to set up an FHA program that lets people stay in their home and negotiate between borrowers and lenders. It's bad for everybody when you start seeing foreclosures in the neighborhood. I want to invest in infrastructure in this country. We can invest in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and put people back to work.

Senator Bob Casey

I can't do it by myself. I've got to have you with me. Because ultimately this is about the American people standing up and insisting on real change. When you stand up, when you make your voices heard, that's when you get real change.

...When we first started this campaign, people didn't think we could do it. They thought, well he's not taking PAC and lobbyist money, how will he finance his campaign? What they didn't understand is that you were going to finance my campaign. You are what wins elections. You're the ones knocking on doors and talking to voters.

Barack began his "Road to Change" bus tour through Pennsylvania this morning with a community event at the Soldiers and Sailors Military Museum and Memorial. He was introduced by Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, who used his introduction to endorse Barack's campaign for President. Senator Casey said:

I believe in my heart that there's one person who's uniquely qualified to lead us in a new direction and that's Barack Obama.

We need to work hard and listen to the voices of people all across this state...We know that we have to bring change to America. If there's one thing that Pittsburgh knows, if there's one thing that Pennsylvania knows, it's that we have to do hard work. We have to invest in our economy. The best way to do that is to invest in our kids with early education and healthcare. It's not enough for elected officials like me to curse the darkness. We've got to roll up our sleeves. We have to invest in the skills of our workers.

...The new direction for America has to begin with the question of the war in Iraq. We can work hard, but we can only do so much as individual Americans. We need a President who is committed to change and a President who will lead us in that new direction, and he's right here in this room.

...[Barack] has judgment that is steady in the eye of the storm, and I believe he's the kind of leader who's ready to be Commander-in-Chief.

........................................................

........................................................
United States Pennsylvania Senator endorses Barack Obama March 28, 2008

........................................................

........................................................
Indiana Obama Ad

........................................................

........................................................
Senator Obama on "The(ir) View"
Uploaded by SallyJ2007

BARACK OBAMA'S MOTHER ~ A GREAT ROLE MODEL

I wanted to include this with the post below, but it was too long to post together.
So, now here is the front page New York Times article from today:

The Long Run

* A Free-Spirited Wanderer Who Set Obama’s Path

By JANNY SCOTT

In the capsule version of the Barack Obama story, his mother is simply the white woman from Kansas. The phrase comes coupled alliteratively to its counterpart, the black father from Kenya. On the campaign trail, he has called her his “single mom.” But neither description begins to capture the unconventional life of Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro, the parent who most shaped Mr. Obama.

Kansas was merely a way station in her childhood, wheeling westward in the slipstream of her furniture-salesman father. In Hawaii, she married an African student at age 18. Then she married an Indonesian, moved to Jakarta, became an anthropologist, wrote an 800-page dissertation on peasant blacksmithing in Java, worked for the Ford Foundation, championed women’s work and helped bring microcredit to the world’s poor.

She had high expectations for her children. In Indonesia, she would wake her son at 4 a.m. for correspondence courses in English before school; she brought home recordings of Mahalia Jackson, speeches by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And when Mr. Obama asked to stay in Hawaii for high school rather than return to Asia, she accepted living apart — a decision her daughter says was one of the hardest in Ms. Soetoro’s life.

“She felt that somehow, wandering through uncharted territory, we might stumble upon something that will, in an instant, seem to represent who we are at the core,” said Maya Soetoro-Ng, Mr. Obama’s half-sister. “That was very much her philosophy of life — to not be limited by fear or narrow definitions, to not build walls around ourselves and to do our best to find kinship and beauty in unexpected places.”

Ms. Soetoro, who died of ovarian cancer in 1995, was the parent who raised Mr. Obama, the Illinois senator running for the Democratic presidential nomination. He barely saw his father after the age of 2. Though it is impossible to pinpoint the imprint of a parent on the life of a grown child, people who knew Ms. Soetoro well say they see her influence unmistakably in Mr. Obama.

They were close, her friends and his half-sister say, though they spent much of their lives with oceans or continents between them. He would not be where he is today, he has said, had it not been for her. Yet he has also made some different choices — marrying into a tightly knit African-American family rooted in the South Side of Chicago, becoming a churchgoing Christian, publicly recounting his search for his identity as a black man.

Some of what he has said about his mother seems tinged with a mix of love and regret. He has said his biggest mistake was not being at her bedside when she died. And when The Associated Press asked the candidates about “prized keepsakes” — others mentioned signed baseballs, a pocket watch, a “trophy wife” — Mr. Obama said his was a photograph of the cliffs of the South Shore of Oahu in Hawaii where his mother’s ashes were scattered.

“I think sometimes that had I known she would not survive her illness, I might have written a different book — less a meditation on the absent parent, more a celebration of the one who was the single constant in my life,” he wrote in the preface to his memoir, “Dreams From My Father.” He added, “I know that she was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known, and that what is best in me I owe to her.”

In a campaign in which Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, has made liberal use of his globe-trotting 96-year-old mother to answer suspicions that he might be an antique at 71, Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed for this article, invokes his mother’s memory sparingly. In one television advertisement, she appears fleetingly — porcelain-skinned, raven-haired and holding her toddler son. “My mother died of cancer at 53,” he says in the ad, which focuses on health care. “In those last painful months, she was more worried about paying her medical bills than getting well.”

‘A Very, Very Big Thinker’

He has described her as a teenage mother, a single mother, a mother who worked, went to school and raised children at the same time. He has credited her with giving him a great education and confidence in his ability to do the right thing. But, in interviews, friends and colleagues of Ms. Soetoro shed light on a side of her that is less well known.

“She was a very, very big thinker,” said Nancy Barry, a former president of Women’s World Banking, an international network of microfinance providers, where Ms. Soetoro worked in New York City in the early 1990s. “I think she was not at all personally ambitious, I think she cared about the core issues, and I think she was not afraid to speak truth to power.”

Her parents were from Kansas — her mother from Augusta, her father from El Dorado, a place Mr. Obama first visited in a campaign stop in January. Stanley Ann (her father wanted a boy so he gave her his name) was born on an Army base during World War II. The family moved to California, Kansas, Texas and Washington in restless pursuit of opportunity before landing in Honolulu in 1960.

In a Russian class at the University of Hawaii, she met the college’s first African student, Barack Obama. They married and had a son in August 1961, in an era when interracial marriage was rare in the United States. Her parents were upset, Senator Obama learned years later from his mother, but they adapted. “I am a little dubious of the things that people from foreign countries tell me,” the senator’s grandmother told an interviewer several years ago.

The marriage was brief. In 1963, Mr. Obama left for Harvard, leaving his wife and child. She then married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian student. When he was summoned home in 1966 after the turmoil surrounding the rise of Suharto, Ms. Soetoro and Barack followed.

Those choices were not entirely surprising, said several high school friends of Ms. Soetoro, whom they remembered as unusually intelligent, curious and open. She never dated “the crew-cut white boys,” said one friend, Susan Blake: “She had a world view, even as a young girl. It was embracing the different, rather than that ethnocentric thing of shunning the different. That was where her mind took her.”

Her second marriage faded, too, in the 1970s. Ms. Soetoro wanted to work, one friend said, and Mr. Soetoro wanted more children. He became more American, she once said, as she became more Javanese. “There’s a Javanese belief that if you’re married to someone and it doesn’t work, it will make you sick,” said Alice G. Dewey, an anthropologist and friend. “It’s just stupid to stay married.”

That both unions ended is beside the point, some friends suggested. Ms. Soetoro remained loyal to both husbands and encouraged her children to feel connected to their fathers. (In reading drafts of her son’s memoir, Mr. Obama has said, she did not comment upon his depiction of her but was “quick to explain or defend the less flattering aspects of my father’s character.”)

“She always felt that marriage as an institution was not particularly essential or important,” said Nina Nayar, who later became a close friend of Ms. Soetoro. What mattered to her, Ms. Nayar said, was to have loved deeply.

By 1974, Ms. Soetoro was back in Honolulu, a graduate student and raising Barack and Maya, nine years younger. Barack was on scholarship at a prestigious prep school, Punahou. When Ms. Soetoro decided to return to Indonesia three years later for her field work, Barack chose not to go.

“I doubted what Indonesia now had to offer and wearied of being new all over again,” he wrote in his memoir. “More than that, I’d arrived at an unspoken pact with my grandparents: I could live with them and they’d leave me alone so long as I kept my trouble out of sight.” During those years, he was “engaged in a fitful interior struggle. I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America.” Ms. Soetoro-Ng recalled her mother’s quandary. “She wanted him to be with her,” Ms. Soetoro-Ng said. But she added: “Although it was painful to be separated from him for his last four years of high school, she recognized that it was perhaps the best thing for him. And she had to go to Indonesia at that time.”

That time apart was hard for both mother and son.

“She longed for him,” said Georgia McCauley, who became a friend of Ms. Soetoro in Jakarta. Barack spent summers and Christmas vacations with his mother; they communicated by letters, his illustrated with cartoons. Her first topic of conversation was always her son, her female friends said. As for him, he was grappling with questions of racial identity, alienation and belonging.

“There were certainly times in his life in those four years when he could have used her presence on a more daily basis,” Ms. Soetoro-Ng said. “But I think he did all right for himself.”

Fluent in Indonesian, Ms. Soetoro moved with Maya first to Yogyakarta, the center of Javanese handicrafts. A weaver in college, she was fascinated with what Ms. Soetoro-Ng calls “life’s gorgeous minutiae.” That interest inspired her study of village industries, which became the basis of her 1992 doctoral dissertation.

“She loved living in Java,” said Dr. Dewey, who recalled accompanying Ms. Soetoro to a metalworking village. “People said: ‘Hi! How are you?’ She said: ‘How’s your wife? Did your daughter have the baby?’ They were friends. Then she’d whip out her notebook and she’d say: ‘How many of you have electricity? Are you having trouble getting iron?’ ”

She became a consultant for the United States Agency for International Development on setting up a village credit program, then a Ford Foundation program officer in Jakarta specializing in women’s work. Later, she was a consultant in Pakistan, then joined Indonesia’s oldest bank to work on what is described as the world’s largest sustainable microfinance program, creating services like credit and savings for the poor.

Visitors flowed constantly through her Ford Foundation office in downtown Jakarta and through her house in a neighborhood to the south, where papaya and banana trees grew in the front yard and Javanese dishes like opor ayam were served for dinner. Her guests were leaders in the Indonesian human rights movement, people from women’s organizations, representatives of community groups doing grass-roots development.

“I didn’t know a lot of them and would often ask after, ‘Who was that?’ ” said David S. McCauley, now an environmental economist at the Asian Development Bank in Manila, who had the office next door. “You’d find out it was the head of some big organization in with thousands of members from central Java or someplace, somebody that she had met some time ago, and they would make a point of coming to see her when they came to Jakarta.”

An Exacting Idealist

As a mother, Ms. Soetoro was both idealistic and exacting. Friends describe her as variously informal and intense, humorous and hardheaded. She preached to her young son the importance of honesty, straight talk, independent judgment. When he balked at her early-morning home schooling, she retorted, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”

When Barack was in high school, she confronted him about his seeming lack of ambition, Mr. Obama wrote. He could get into any college in the country, she told him, with just a little effort. (“Remember what that’s like? Effort?”) He says he looked at her, so earnest and sure of his destiny: “I suddenly felt like puncturing that certainty of hers, letting her know that her experiment with me had failed.”

Ms. Soetoro-Ng, who herself became an anthropologist, remembers conversations with her mother about philosophy or politics, books, esoteric Indonesian woodworking motifs. One Christmas in Indonesia, Ms. Soetoro found a scrawny tree and decorated it with red and green chili peppers and popcorn balls.

“She gave us a very broad understanding of the world,” her daughter said. “She hated bigotry. She was very determined to be remembered for a life of service and thought that service was really the true measure of a life.” Many of her friends see her legacy in Mr. Obama — in his self-assurance and drive, his boundary bridging, even his apparent comfort with strong women. Some say she changed them, too.

“I feel she taught me how to live,” said Ms. Nayar, who was in her 20s when she met Ms. Soetoro at Women’s World Banking. “She was not particularly concerned about what society would say about working women, single women, women marrying outside their culture, women who were fearless and who dreamed big.”

The Final Months

After her diagnosis, Ms. Soetoro spent the last months of her life in Hawaii, near her mother. (Her father had died.) Mr. Obama has recalled talking with her in her hospital bed about her fears of ending up broke. She was not ready to die, he has said. Even so, she helped him and Maya “push on with our lives, despite our dread, our denials, our sudden constrictions of the heart.”

She died in November 1995, as Mr. Obama was starting his first campaign for public office. After a memorial service at the University of Hawaii, one friend said, a small group of friends drove to the South Shore in Oahu. With the wind whipping the waves onto the rocks, Mr. Obama and Ms. Soetoro-Ng placed their mother’s ashes in the Pacific, sending them off in the direction of Indonesia.

Source: www.nytimes.com March 14, 2008

BIGOTRY, HOMOPHOBIA AND ME

VALUES INVENTORY

When you judge me at the end of my life,

judge me,

not my associates, not my family

or by those who didn't like me.

I have written before (Legal to Have Skin Color and Hair) about my own experience of being raised in a white culture and in 1960 having a crush at the age of 11 on a negro boy at a fundamentalist Christian summer camp in northeastern Indiana. So when I read about Barack Obama's mother's experience, I have some personal perspective what it is like to do something that is not considered normal or acceptable. Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro is Barack's mother's name. And she must have been so very dynamic, individual, courageous, strong and possessing high ideals and valuable principles. A great example and a great mom.

And since I too had to let my son (who was adopted when he was 11) choose to live his high school years physically away from me, I felt another connection to the turmoil that I have experienced and know Stanley Ann had to feel. We love and that means at times we have to do what life requires of us, even though it is not what we would have wanted or chosen. To have to trust that life will take care of our children is an act of great faith.

I just went back to the first blog I started on TV Guide's website, where I wrote from the inspiration I felt by the first year of the TV show Brothers and Sisters with a gay adult sibling. What follows is part of what I wrote in one of my posts. This includes my experience with the bigotry in my own family and my broadening understanding and acceptance of gay people. Two issues that are still unresolved in the United States of America.

...Words can be used to disguise and hide what we are really thinking and feeling, and they can highlight and enhance the otherworldly experience of being human.

About this thing of gay human beings and a slice of America that thinks they are offended with gays being openly gay, two men kissing and what follows. Let’s put this in perspective. How outraged are people with men killing men, in genocide, war, whether with any kind of reasonable explanation for going into a war, OR NOT? It just doesn’t make any sense, well – to me,...that two men kissing is unpleasant or odious in any way. I didn’t know this about myself, until this show, Brothers and Sisters, put it in my face and I had to deal with it. I love it just as much as I would love seeing a man and woman kiss, who truly have feelings for one another. And in a way, I love it more, because, well, it opens up a whole new dimension to my life that I never had the opportunity to welcome into my consciousness. I don’t mean I plan to add this dimension to my own personal experiences. Not at all. I mean I can love life and the human race even more. Gaining something new to my awareness of life, human beings and diversity - just makes my life richer, broader and more dynamic.

I was raised in the Hoosier-Hysteria-Land, aka Indiana. I was raised Republican. My whole family is Republican. Only me - and well, I learned later, my Dad’s oldest brother had turned on the family tradition and was Democrat, too. My Dad was from a personality-diverse family of five siblings. Sitting at my uncle’s dinner table, after he had retired from his active physicist research, that he had done around the world, my uncle was surprised to learn that I had been raised no differently than he had been raised a generation before me.

The house where I was born is in a small Indiana town, which proudly has a sign out on the bypass for the Dan Quayle, Vice-President Museum. Very Republican. It was my second college boyfriend’s apartment-mate, who turned me into a Democrat. A memorable night in college for me was when we sat around listening to the draft numbers be called off for my boyfriend and his apartment mates. The Viet Nam War was going on. So this stuff was serious.

I was raised in a fundamentalist church. Where a lot of things are considered a sin. We couldn’t dance, swear, wear make-up, go to movies, talk back to our parents – ever!, the only sex - was married sex, ... you get the idea. When I was in second grade there were days of serious discussions about whether or not I would be allowed to go with my second grade class to see the Disney movie, Bambi. I had to tell the boy who asked me to the high school prom my junior year, that I could go with him, but I wouldn’t be allowed to dance. And we didn’t. I have been condemned to hell many times by my family members. Wearing mascara was one reason for condemnation, that I remember and another was rolling up my skirts above the knee in high school where my father was the high school basketball coach, as well as a teacher. The condemnations didn’t stop when I became an adult.

My life was pretty imposed upon. I felt smothered. But I knew what was right and what was wrong. You know, by my parents’ standards. The community I lived in was all white. I graduated high school in 1967 and entered college that fall, a commuter train ride away from Chicago. My family never said a word about Martin Luther King, Jr. or the civil rights that was on the TV every night. But it impacted me big time.

As a child, I always looked forward to going to summer church camp, which was always all white. In seventh grade, there were two black boys from Gary, Indiana, at camp. One night in the camp church service, the cutest black boy sang with this beautiful, clear voice. I still remember the song. I cried night after night when I found my two love letters from this young boy were taken from my bedroom’s desk drawer along with our picture together, which I read and looked at every night. Never a word was said where these things went. But I knew who. And I knew why.

...Betrayal of trust and the difficulty in understanding why I couldn’t “love” someone who wasn’t white - confused me when I was eleven. After all, I was always told to treat everyone as equals. Fortunately, I internalized this value, before it became apparent that they were just words. The family didn’t really believe that. But I do.

I’ve lived a diverse life. When I started my career, I moved a long distance away. Sorta had to - to find my own spirit. I am grateful for a life that has so far been very dramatic, colorful and full of graces. I have few regrets. I have traveled outside the U.S., for one. That alone is a great lesson in widening our small-mindedness. And I don’t care what the more narrow-minded might say about my chances not to go to hell. Our heaven or hell starts here on earth. And my life is heavenly to me.

In my childhood, I got religion. Jesus never said anything about sexual orientation. Jesus was gracious toward a prosititute, even. I have a problem with giving carte blanche to Old Testament’s words. The OT informs us how to treat our slaves. And the New Testament’s Paul has a great chapter, to the Corinthians (I, Chapter 13), but Paul also places females as subordinates to males. Not something I believe in.

So I don’t know - does the fact that there are some words in the Bible which people use to condemn same sex marriage and partnering - make it so off-limits to our using our brains to question the validity of the perception that God, gender-neutral, him or herself, may be just fine with gays being free to be who they are?

It takes nothing away from your life to live and let live. Really. It takes so little to be a good human being on this planet. Kindness is kindness in any language. And it is free.

In Brothers and Sisters, Scotty delivered a great line to Kevin in the episode, Date Night: “When you get home, more nights than not, you’re alone. Cause the one place you don’t feel secure and comfortable is in your own skin.” When things, such as two men kissing one another, rankle the senses, my guess is that you don’t feel comfortable in your own skin.

“…Take me down
You can hold me,
but you can’t hold what’s within.
Pull me round,
push me to the limit,
maybe I may bend,
But I know where I’m not going...
I will not be broken,
I will not be broken.

I will not be
someone other than who I am
I will fight to make my stand
Cause what is livin’
if I can’t live free,
what is freedom
if I can’t be me?"

I Will Not Be Broken
By Gordon Kennedy, Wayne Kirkpatrick &
Tommy Sims
Sung by Bonnie Raitt

From the Gettysburg Address:

......The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us --that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, November 19, 1863, By Abraham Lincoln

ANOTHER OPINION ABOUT GERALDINE FERRARO, HILLARY CLINTON, ETC

Strong opinions come from the root of who we are.
........................................................................................


........................................................................................
Mind made up

From: 46 year old woman "DeepRegrets2008"

Text by "DeepRegrets2008, the uploader of this Youtube video:

I believe the video itself is all the description it needs.

Sorry about the word "excluse". I was angry as I typed it.

The women in the paintings and photographs near the end are other women from history who shame feminism by using their power in the name of cruelty, oppression, and evil. The last two photos shown are female Nazis who tormented and murdered Jews in the name of racism during the Holocaust.

This video is in no way connected to the Barack Obama campaign. It is connected to a very angry woman tonight.

Added: March 11, 2008

My added words:

OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT

ARE WE WHO WE THINK WE ARE?

The most important things to me are truth and justice. I would like my country and my government to be based on these things. But if We the People don't know what is being done in our name, we are missing the point of being a government "of the people, by the people and for the people".

We've been wrong: The USA and slavery
We've been wrong: The USA and indigenous people
We've been wrong again
and we've been wrong again
and we've been wrong again
and again

"Abraham Lincoln best described democracy as 'government of the people, by the people, and for the people.' For that government to be 'by the people,' however, requires that the people decide who shall be their leaders. Without free and fair elections, there can be no democratic society, and without that constant accountability of government officials to the electorate, there can, in fact, be no assurance of any other rights. The right to vote, therefore, is not only an important individual liberty; it is also a foundation stone of free government." Source: usinfo.state.gov

The Gettyburg Address

A speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Lincoln was speaking at the dedication of a soldiers’ cemetery at the site of the Battle of Gettysburg. The opening and closing lines are particularly memorable: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…. [We must] be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth.”

1

‡ Lincoln surprised his audience at Gettysburg with the brevity of his speech. He delivered the Gettysburg Address, which lasted about three minutes, after a two-hour speech by Edward Everett, one of the leading orators of the day.

.............................................................................

.............................................................................
John Dean on George W Bush

From: THXl138

The Presidents of the United States of America
I think we have had some awful Presidents. In my opinion, we have voted for the wrong candidate sometimes. Also, in my opinion, a word to describe us is fickle. Just tonight, I heard pundits on MSNBC make generalizations about the country's feelings about Barack Obama based on a poll taken tonight only with people in Mississippi. Poll those same people in 7 days and it could be a different result. And a poll of Mississippians surely isn't enough to gauge the entire population. But not one pundit on the panel, thought to mention this possibility. The danger is that these people make statements that perpetuate their personal feelings and they get amplified because they are on television.

My experience is that many people don't think for themselves and are influenced by immaterial and irrelevant things they hear, as well as lies and manipulations by candidates.
.............................................................................

.............................................................................
Women for Obama

From: AkinScribe5

Democratic Primary and Caucus Results Center