The next president

[goku]

why?

[Thunderbird]

why?

 

 

One of the basic ideals this nation was built on is that all men are equal and should be judged only on ability talent and sincerity of purpose .

When we elected Barak Obama we showed ourselves and the world that we really do believe in these principles.

My minister considers himself “a man of color” {his ancestry is from India his family from Surinam } He said to me before the election that if Barak Obama is elected that this country would truly become what he believed it was when he was a poor child growing up in a third world country.

Many millions of people around the world have looked upon this country as a beacon of freedom and hope.

The example we have set in the last few years have cast a shadow over this hope to many that would stop looking in our direction for leadership. It should have taken decades to rebuild this reputation and trust built up by so many of our past leaders, but it only took one election to start a new.

 

"I want a president who . . . appeals to the hopes of those who still believe in the American Dream, and those around the world who still believe in the American ideal; and who can lift our spirits, and make us believe again that our country needs every one of us to get involved," said Caroline Kennedy, JFK's 50-year-old daughter.

Call us shameless idealists, but that sounds right on to us.

Obama has been open with us about his flaws -- his youthful drug use, an appetite for danger, insecurities about his absent father. Yet all that seems to play in his favor, to make him a little more like a regular American.

 

The Harvard-educated, street-trained Obama has largely been accepted on his own merit -- his race, rightly, relegated to near afterthought. His biracial heritage is a bonus for a generation that has grown up in integrated schools and fawning over black celebrities and athletes.

Should we elect a man because of how he makes us feel? Of course not. Obama has substance, too.

Obama was right about the asbestos back in 1986. Much later, on the bigger stage, he was right about the Iraq war. He has a workable plan to get our troops out of Iraq without a disastrous retreat, and he's the only candidate who consistently opposed the war. Unlike, we are embarrassed to say, this newspaper.

Before a shot was fired, Obama told a Chicago audience:

"I don't oppose all wars . . . what I am opposed to is a dumb war."

That's not weakness. That's not Obama being soft -- he has also suggested he'd bomb Pakistan if he thought it would kill America's terrorist enemies.

We like the thinking he has put into extending universal health care to the uninsured by working through existing insurance companies. It's a scheme rooted in the doable, not the ideological.

We like that this man of faith believes in something bigger than himself. He told the Sun-Times that he believes all people -- Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists -- know the same God.

"I am a Christian," he told us. "I have a deep faith. I believe that there are many paths to the same place."

He speaks powerfully of his faith and manages not to alienate nonbelievers. This man can get both votes.

Quite some trick.

Obama's worldview is shaped by his multicultural upbringing. He was born in Hawaii in 1961 to a white mother from a Protestant family and a black father from Kenya. He grew up in Indonesia. This global heritage can go a long way toward repairing our image abroad, particularly in dealing with Islamic terrorism and national safety.

America would instantly gain credibility on the global stage, and that's huge. Even a right-wing thinker like Andrew Sullivan put it this way:

"It's November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man -- Barack Hussein Obama -- is the new face of America. In one simple image, America's soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm . . . a brown-skinned man whose father was an African . . . who attended a majority-Muslim school, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama's face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can."

But Obama is American through his bone marrow, and only this wonderfully multicultural free land could even produce such a man.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/771028,CST-EDT-edit01.article

[belovelife]

now is we could get the gentleman barrak oboma

to start a department of peace, then we would again

be the light of the eyes of the children of the world

furthermore, a beacon of good to a world in disarray

 

 

5 Minute Actions for Peace

 

A new Congress is being sworn in on January 6, and less than two weeks remain before the new President takes the Oath of Office. Now is the time to help this new Administration make "change" not just a campaign slogan, but a lasting political and social reality.

 

How much change can you create in five minutes or less? The answer might surprise you!

 

Join us in taking action to keep the momentum going. Here are four simple things you can do today, each of which takes five minutes or less:

 

1. Vote at Change. org

 

Thanks to your tremendous effort, the ideas to "Appoint Secretary of Peace in Department of Peace and Nonviolence" and "Bridging the Empathy Gap - Yes We Can," BOTH made it to the final round of voting at Change. org!

 

Voting began anew yesterday so we must ALL vote again, and enroll our friends and family in doing the same.

 

1. Go to change. org/ideas

 

2. Type "Department of Peace" into the search bar on the right side of the page and hit return.

 

3. Click on the blue "Vote" button to the left of the idea.

 

4. You'll be prompted to sign in.

 

a. If you voted in round one, put in your login information.

 

b. If you didn't vote in round one, create an account. An email confirmation will be sent to you. Click on the link in the email to verify the account, then click on "Ideas" in the upper right menu items. Repeat steps 2 and 3 to make your vote count.

 

5. Make sure the "Vote" button turns from blue to red/brown and says "voted" at the bottom of the button.

 

6. If you also support the Nonviolent Communications (NVC) initiative, repeat steps 2 and 3, searching for "empathy" to bring up the idea.

 

You can find more information on our action page.

 

Voting ends at 5:00 pm ET on January 15 and only the top 10 out of the 90 remaining ideas will be sent to the President.

So please vote today and forward

[CraigD]

A thought-provoking question.

 

On one hand, if the Constitution is working as it should, each successive president should have the same powers as his or her predecessor. The US is an important country, and its president important in determining the nation’s interaction within and without its borders, so I think it’s accurate to say that every President is significant, and comparisons of their significance of dubious worth.

 

On the other hand, many thoughtful people expressed skepticism that a darker skinned person could be elected US president, contending that racial prejudice is too common for this to occur. This position has been shown to be wrong: while racial prejudice undeniably exists in the US and other countries, Barack Obama’s election shows that it is not so great that it prevents a non-white from winning the election. Much of the pride and enthusiasm for the upcoming administration is being expressed, I think, because Americans now feel confident “bragging to the world”, and among ourselves, that an overwhelming majority of us are not racists.

 

Weighing the arguments on both these hands, I concluded and voted “yes, Obama is more significant than recent presidents”. I’d qualify this by saying that the first few US presidents, by virtue of demonstrating that the US federal government could work, Abraham Lincoln, by virtue of establishing that states would not be permitted to succeed from the US, or that presidents during the first half of the 20th century, who established the policy of a large, permanent US military, were extraordinarily significant, like more than the Obama administration will be, though, as it hasn’t yet happened, I can’t reliable speculate on how significant Obama’s administration will be, only on the significance of his election.