New Campaign Job

Starting July 2, I will be working for Obama for America as a Field Organizer in Wisconsin. Although I do not yet know where in Wisconsin I will be located, I will find out shortly and will update my blog accordingly. I'm very excited about the opportunity.

As a disclaimer, any blogs that I have previously written and any that I write in the future are my own views. They do not reflect those of Barack Obama, Obama for America, or anyone within the campaign.

Obama Speaks Some Important Truths on Fatherhood

As Obama points out, not only does the government need to provide better support for the working class, but we all need to take more responsibility for ourselves and build the infrastructure that children need to succeed. More specifically, men need to live up the responsibilities that come with fatherhood. Obama's speech brings up some very relevant societal points.

A Perfect Description of the Republican Attack Machine

A summary of what Barack and/or Michelle Obama apparently are:

Muslim
Not a Muslim, but part of a "seperatist" church
Sexist
Radical liberal
Bitter
Plagiarist
Unpatriotic
Racist
Terrorist sympathizer

Do neocons have no ethics or shame?

Jon Stewart, well done.

A History of Anti-Sodomy and Anti-Homosexual Laws in the US

I read an interesting article discussing William Eskridge's book "Dishonorable Passions." The article summarizes Eskridges history of anti-sodomy laws and their ridiculousness and selectiveness. Eskridge discusses how Americans always have needed some boogey man to be afraid of, and now they have turned their attention to homosexuals/gay marriage to fill that void. The article (and book) is a good read and is worth checking out.

Jim Webb Talks About the Importance of the New GI Bill

With the GI Bill currently working its way through Congress, Sen. Jim Webb talked with Jon Stewart about, among other things, the hypocrisy in the Republicans' to pay for an ill-advised war, but not to support our veterans once they return home. The Bill itself would help fund a college education for American soldiers upon the completion of their military service. Is this an objectionable idea? Of course not. Yet the Bush administration has vowed to veto the Bill should it pass through the legislature, once again showing how George Bush and Republicans are only interested in support for their war, not the lives, health, and success of our men and women in service.

Do People Really Care About a Fist Pound? ...Seriously???

A Fox News anchor recently suggested that Barack and Michelle Obama's fist pound could have been a "terrorist jab." She and her guest then went on to discuss the pound, analyzing it's intricacies, meanings, and implications. - To clarify, no, this was not an article from The Onion. It's a serious (sort of) story. One can only roll their eyes at Fox news, and laugh at how out of touch they are.

The Mindless Menace of Violence - 40 Years Later

In the early hours of June 5th, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel following the California Primary and his victory speech. Today, his activism, calls to serve the poor and end poverty, and his dedication to bettering the lives of citizens in this country still ring true. Most notably, RFK believed in non-violence. He spoke at the Cleveland City Club only days after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the mindless menace of violence. His words were prophetic, and unfortunately they still ring true today. I encourage you to read his speech below, and ask yourself if we still suffer from these same afflictions in our society.

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity to speak briefly to you about this mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one – no matter where he lives or what he does – can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr’s cause has ever been stilled by his assassin’s bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.

Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily – whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence – whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men,” said Abraham Lincoln, “there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs.”

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach nonviolence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some looks for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear; violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man’s spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all. I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we known what must be done. “When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies – to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our bothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear – only a common desire to retreat from each other – only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is now what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of human purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of all. We must admit in ourselves that our own children’s future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember – even if only for a time – that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek – as we do – nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.