Recapturing the meaning

What would you say if you had to explain Christmas to someone who knew nothing about it? You might begin with the shepherds in the fields by night, or Santa at the North Pole, or even tell how it all was blended with a pagan winter festival. You might tell of the rituals of Christmas, rejoicing, feasting, singing, the smell of baking and balsam trees, the stillness of the world on Christmas Eve except for carols and midnight church services. You would probably have something to say about the importance of family, how everything centers on the children, and on your memories of being a child during Christmastime.

Would you mention all the shopping?

In 1822, an American named Clement Clarke Moore wrote a poem about a visit from St. Nick. It was Moore (and a few other New Yorkers) who invented St. Nick's physical appearance and personality, came up with the idea that Santa travels on Christmas Eve in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, comes down the chimney, stuffs toys in the kids' stockings, and then goes back to the North Pole.

The giving of gifts became a major feature of Christmas during the 19th century. Christians denounced gift-giving as a Roman practice and denounced Santa as the Anti-Christ because he pushed Jesus to the background. They thought that Santa did not reflect Christian ethics. Instead of being a champion of Christian mercy and unconditional love, Santa symbolized justice – giving only to good children, showing no mercy toward bad ones. Instead of admonishing the wealthy and demanding that they give to the poor; the children of the rich received more extravagant and numerous gifts. Even though the myth was that he gave gifts to all, the poor got little to nothing.

By the end of the 19th century, thanks to our country’s success with capitalism, there was enough wealth in America to make gifts possible for almost everyone with a great productive apparatus to advertise them and make them available cheaply. The whole country gleefully took to giving gifts on an unprecedented scale. Christians relented and joined in the Christmas commercialism with everyone else.

By the last half of the 20th century, Christmas had become so commercial and extravagant, gift-giving so common, that there became a disconnect between the message of love and good will toward all in the Christmas hymns and the immodesty of the shopping season. Nowadays, most of us spend the holiday season racing around and battling each other at sales tables to make sure loved ones are loaded up with gifts. In doing so, the meaning of the season has been lost – although some will attend a Christmas service and then put Christ on the back burner as they party and shop.

How does this frenzied, stressful commercial machinery of weeks of Christmas shopping connect with peace on earth? What does all that retailing and wrapping paper have to do with Christ’s birth? We seem to have turned the promise of salvation into the hope of beating everyone else to the sales tables as retailers and government uses the Christmas season to prop up the American economy. That is why they call the Friday after Thanksgiving, which is the beginning of the Christmas shopping season, Black Friday. It is when stores and some local governments get out of the red.

But not this year.

With the rise in unemployment at an all time high in decades, the recession has taken its toll. The shoppers have spent far less this year, leaving governments in the red and some stores closing their doors forever.

It is at times like this that people begin to realize that the pursuit of material gain is often at the expense of far better traits like charity, spirituality, compassion, family values and concern for your neighbors and those worse off than yourself. Do the children really need a “big” Christmas? Do you really need to buy all those expensive gifts for everyone on an ever expanding list? Do all those fancy, expensive gifts really hold the feelings we are looking for and say what we want to say? If we genuinely love one another – truly hold one another in our hearts – wouldn’t saying it and showing it often be far better? Gifts are much more wonderful when they are modest, from the heart, and spontaneous.

Christmas is about Christ and his message of peaceful cohabitation among all men. That was the essence of the message spread during that first Christmas Eve: “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.” [Luke 2:10] This message of good will was meant to be year round and not just exist only during this season.

If the recession helps us to get beyond the commercialism, then it holds a silver lining. Hopefully, we might once again find the real meaning of Christmas allowing it to once again become a church-centered holiday of modest spirit, humble aspirations, loving, and being loved.

Then, perhaps as a society, we can recapture some of the true meaning of this special time and carry it throughout the year.

Warren is not an issue

The “Warren controversy” doesn't have anything to do with pro-choice or gay rights. This is about a president-elect exercising his prerogative to choose whomever he wants to deliver the blessing at his inauguration. It's about pulling America together which means no one will get their way all the time. It’s about compromise. It's about -- as President-elect Obama noted this week -- Americans learning to agree to disagree without becoming disagreeable. It’s about most Americans being in the middle, neither far left nor far right

The gay-rights people speak about respect, demand respect, insist that they are not given respect. Someone should remind them that it works both ways. If they want respect, they have to give it. They can start by respecting the wishes of the president-elect to plan his inauguration as he sees fit.

These anti-Warren protestors are insisting that the selection of the pastor must mean that Obama isn't interested in advancing gay rights or preserving abortion rights. They say that he just used those groups to get elected and has now thrown them under the bus. That shows a lack of reasoning ability on their part. They are gleaning more than what’s there from the simple act of asking a famous evangelical preacher to deliver the invocation. Obama has said that he wants to pull everyone together – to work together on common ground. This includes the evangelicals. Why not let Obama get sworn in and have a chance to govern before issuing judgment on being abandoned?

Even as Obama takes fire from liberals on the left, Warren is being bombarded with criticism from conservative supporters on the right who can't believe he is even associating with Obama, let alone appearing at his inauguration. Have they not heard Obama say that he wants to pull America together? This means compromising on some issues, or setting them on the back burner so that issues held in common can be solved.

What do these two sides expect anyway? Those familiar with the evangelical movement in America should already know that Warren is a moderate on some issues. And, if gay rights activists are surprised that Obama would share the spotlight with an opponent of gay marriage, they need to do more research. Obama has stated many times that he believes marriage is between a man and a woman, as do most Americans, a view that also happens to be shared by Vice President-elect Joe Biden. Obama never promised to allow “gay marriage.” Obama did promise that he would try to the best of his ability to bring all Americans together – to be inclusive.

Having Warren speak at the inauguration makes sense for Obama. The idea is to signal that Obama will be a president for all Americans, whether or not they voted for him on November 4. This is not new. Obama and Warren have often used each other to demonstrate that they are willing to listen - even when it makes their friends angry.

We have had enough of divisive politics. It has torn America apart into groups hating other groups. Us against them. This needs to stop. Just because Obama and Warren disagree on certain issues should not disqualify the pastor from blessing the inauguration.

Get over it. Obama choosing Warren is not an issue.

A devious lame duck

We have "only one President at a time," President-elect Barack Obama continues to say in press conferences. Normally, that would be a safe assumption – but with the financial crisis growing worse by the day, it has become obvious that one President is no longer enough (at least not the President we currently have). So, Obama has become a more public presence. He has quickly named his economic and national security cabinet members to try to help the psyche of the markets. He has promised an enormous stimulus package that would somehow create 2 million new jobs, and has begun to push the new Congress into having the bill ready soon after being sworn in this January.

That we have slightly more than one President for the moment is mostly a consequence of the collapsing economy. This final humiliation for George W. Bush seems particularly appropriate. At the end of a presidency of stupefying ineptitude, he has become the lamest of all possible ducks with an approval rating that hit a very low 19% just a few weeks ago (although it has risen a little since then). This is a presidency that has wobbled between two poles – arrogance and paralytic incompetence.

Paralytic incompetence has held sway these past few months as the economy has crumbled. In rating the performance of Bush's economic team, we have more than enough evidence to say, definitively, that at a moment when there was a vast need for national reassurance, the President has not been a leader. He's a lame duck with one of the lowest approval ratings of any president ever. He doesn't have the clout to influence Congress, even in the conduct of foreign policy, because people know he is only going to be there another few weeks. He is less than President now, and that is appropriate. He was never very much of one.

In the end, though, it will not be paralysis that defines Bush. It will be his intellectual laziness, at home and abroad. Bush never understood, or cared about, the balance between freedom and regulation that was necessary to make the economy work. He never understood the necessity to maintain a strong middle class – required for both prosperity and democracy - because he has never been a part of it. He never considered the complexities of Iraq’s cultures when he invaded. He never understood that religious faith when unaccompanied by rigorous questioning is a recipe for nearsighted foolishness.

But he is not just lazing around the Whitehouse waiting for January 20. There are proclamations and regulations in the works that harmful to the public good and are bypassing Congress’ and the public’s approval:

Recently, the Washington Post reported that the Bush Administration is preparing to formalize a deal which would allow Plum Creek Timber Company to convert hundreds of thousands of acres of forestland in Montana into residential subdivisions. The deal was made behind closed doors between the Undersecretary for Natural Resources and the Environment and Plum Creek Timber. Neither local officials in the region nor the public were granted an opportunity to have a say in the matter. Forty years of Forest Service history has been reversed in the last three months without even standard environmental assessments.

Similarly, the New York Times recently reported that Bush Administration appointees are preparing to propose a number of regulatory changes to securities rules, changes which critics say would dilute measures put in place after the Enron scandal in order to forestall accounting gimmicks and corrupt practices.

The harm to our country perpetuated by these two deals, and many others like them, pale in comparison to the damage to national security caused by the nuclear deals the Bush administration is promoting. The fact that some of these deals have been in the making for a long time does not make them more benign. For decades, those committed to preventing a nuclear conflagration have called on nations that have nuclear arms to gradually scale them back until they are all removed and urged all other nations not to acquire these weapons. The treaty against these horrible arms had been quite effective with several nations that started down the nuclear road reversing course and folding their nuclear plans. Others decided not to even set out in this way. But now, as a favor to various American corporations, the Bush Administration is promoting the sale of nuclear technology to Russian corporations, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. This is despite the fact that Russia is helping Iran to build its nuclear facilities. These acts by an administration on its way out the door could pave the way for more countries to acquire nuclear military power.

In another midnight regulation, on November 4, while the nation’s attention was turned toward the presidential election, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced that it will sell oil and gas leases on areas in eastern Utah‘s Nine Mile Canyon region. The December 19 sale threatens large swaths of several magnificent public landscapes, including Upper Desolation Canyon, where the Green River meanders through hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness in the northern Book Cliffs. Desolation Canyon was named and apparently first described by John Wesley Powell during his historic expedition in 1869 down the Green and Colorado rivers to the Grand Canyon. The BLM had, under previous administrations, declared these pristine lands to be wilderness caliber landscapes and off limits to new oil and gas leasing.

Utah already has a surplus of lands that have been leased for oil and gas development, as well as a surplus of applications for permission to drill. At the end of the fiscal year, there were approximately 4.6 million acres of BLM- managed lands in Utah under lease.

This giveaway to the oil companies borders on criminal malfeasance. At a time when oil companies already hold millions of acres of public lands under lease -- but not being developed -- there is simply no reason for the Bureau of Land Management to rush ahead with this sale. Handing over the magnificent Desolation Canyon and the surrounding wild lands is the icing on the gift cake given to the oil and gas industry over the last eight years.

The administration has taken another disturbing step in recent weeks. The IRS restored tax breaks for banks that take big losses on bad loans inherited through acquisitions. Now we learn that JP Morgan Chase and other banks are planning to use their bailout funds for mergers and acquisitions, transactions that will be greatly enhanced by the restored tax write off.

In coming weeks, it is expected that the Environmental Protection Agency will issue a final rule that would weaken a program created by the Clean Air Act, so that utilities no longer have to install modern pollution controls when they upgrade their plants to produce more power. The EPA is also expected to issue a final rule that would make it easier for coal-fired power plants to locate near national parks in defiance of longstanding Congressional mandates to protect air quality in areas of special natural or recreational value. Along this same vein, the Department of Interior is awaiting EPA’s approval on a proposal that would make it easier for mining companies to dump toxic mine wastes in valleys and streams.

For industry they're rushing through some rules
To ease restraints on using toxic goop
And dumping tops of mountains into streams.
In every hole, they seek a larger loop.

The ornithologists can tell us that
Such actions have a simple explanation:
A lame duck, though incapable of flight,
Is fully capable of defecation.

Poem By Calvin Trillin From The Nation magazine, December 2, 2008

But all is not lost. As usual, Bush hasn’t read the fine print. In fact, he doesn’t read much at all. There is a clause in the Congressional Review Act that states that “any regulation finalized within 60 legislative days of congressional adjournment is considered to have been legally finalized on the 15th legislative day of the new Congress, likely sometime in February. Congress then has 60 days to review it and reverse it with a joint resolution that can’t be filibustered in the Senate.” That means that executive orders signed within the last six months can be eliminated with a quick party-line vote if Congress will do it. This even applies to regulations that have already been enacted.

So do not worry about any future sneaky lame duck moves. The only thing left for Bush to do that cannot be undone is figure out who will get quick pardons the night he leaves office. I have read that he plans to do a blanket pardon for everyone who has served the administration so that there is no possibility for anyone being prosecuted for the crimes they have committed.

Soon we can say sayonara to a devious lame duck who has led the most destructive, secretive, and immoral presidential administration in the history of our nation.

The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

There is a children’s book called Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Maurice Sendak. In the story, as Alexander's day progresses, he faces a barrage of difficulties worthy of a country song: waking with gum in his hair, sitting in the middle seat of the car and getting smushed, a lunch sack with no dessert, a cavity at the dentist's office, sneakers with no stripe, witnessing kissing on television, and being forced to sleep in the much hated train pajamas. He resolves several times to move to Australia.

Lately, I have been calling the days that are full of pain from fibromyalgia “Alexander Days.” I am having an Alexander Day when the pain is so bad that I cannot do much more than curl up on the sofa and watch old movies. If I say to my husband that I am having an Alexander Day or that I want to move to Australia, nothing else need be said – he understands that I have had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

What is fibromyalgia?

Chances are you have heard of fibromyalgia, if only through advertising on television for a drug (with significant dangerous side effects) recently approved to treat it. This painful and debilitating form of arthritis has been receiving more attention in the press lately. Although it is a common condition, with over 10 million sufferers, the disease continues to remain shrouded in mystery and confusion. Part of the reason is that due to the symptoms overlapping with other health problems, it can take years before the average fibromyalgia patient receives an accurate diagnosis. Another part of the reason is that, until recently, many doctors didn’t believe fibromyalgia existed anywhere but in the patient’s imagination. Often, patients were all too often misdiagnosed as having sub-clinical hypothyroidism, lupus, multiple sclerosis, or, worse, being a hypochondriac. About a decade ago, the American College of Rheumatology recognized the disease and issued a set formula of tests for diagnosis.

It's always difficult to explain fibromyalgia without getting overly complicated, but I will try. To help you understand how fibromyalgia feels, think back to the worst case of the flu you ever had. Remember that tired and ‘down to the bone’ achiness? Now multiply it times ten. Besides the awful widespread body pain, there are other symptoms that can very from person to person like extreme fatigue, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, cystitis, insomnia, numbness in the extremities, skin rashes, migraine headaches, hypoglycemia, and pronounced weight gain. Although fibromyalgia is not life-threatening, the disorder can be extremely debilitating. The associated chronic fatigue and cognitive problems often referred to as a “brain fog” or “fibro fog” keeps the sufferer homebound more often than not.

Most fibromyalgia sufferers have had one or more experiences that were life threatening such has a horrific vehicular accident, inner city violence, war, or, as in nearly half of cases, are survivors of emotional or physical child abuse and neglect. Traumatic experiences change the chemical structure of the brain, sometimes permanently. Brain scans of fibromyalgia patients have, in fact, shown abnormalities within the hippocampus, the part of the brain which controls emotion and pain. Early childhood abuse permanently changes the hippocampus. While the child’s biological system may expect inputs such as comfort and security, the reality of extreme stress and rejection causes an internal conflict that requires the nervous system to adapt its operating structure. This in turn causes the brain to release chemicals, such as substance P, that induce pain and, hence, the later onset of fibromyalgia and its ensuing depression. Research has detected up to three times the normal level of substance P, a neurotransmitter, in the cerebrospinal fluid of fibromyalgia patients. Substance P is associated with increased pain perception. So, a small pinch to a normal person is very painful to someone with fibromyalgia. The experience of abuse during early childhood literally changes the organizing framework for the growing child’s brain, and therefore causes a never ending negative influence on emotional and physical well-being throughout life.

Fibromyalgia sufferers have low levels of serotonin, another neurotransmitter, produced by the brain, causing difficulty in getting enough sleep – the time when muscles rest and recharge. Changes in serotonin levels can alter mood: increases have a calming effect, relieving depression, insomnia, and irritability; while decreases are associated with wakefulness and greater sensitivity to pain. There is also a link between low serotonin and depression; therefore many fibromyalgia sufferers struggle with depression. Serotonin also does double duty in the cardiovascular and gastrointestinal systems. It helps regulate the expansion and contraction of blood vessels, affecting blood pressure, and the function of platelets, the blood cells that cause blood to coagulate and close a wound. It also causes smooth muscles to contract, such as the abdominal muscles that aid digestion by pushing food through the GI tract. Bone growth is controlled in the gut through serotonin, according to a new discovery from researchers at Columbia University Medical Center, with the resulting low serotonin levels playing into osteoporosis.

SSRI antidepressants (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors), such as Cymbalta or Zoloft, do increase serotonin levels, but they also greatly increase the risk of suicide. For this reason, they are not generally used for fibromyalgia because several studies have found the rate of suicide was already nine times greater for those suffering from fibromyalgia than in the general population.

One of the most frustrating things about fibromyalgia pain is that the medications used to treat other types of pain often have little effect on it. In a study comparing people with fibromyalgia to people without it, researchers at the University of Michigan Health System found that those with the condition had reduced binding ability of a type of receptor in the brain that is the target of opioid-type pain medications. The reduced availability of the receptor was associated with greater pain among people with fibromyalgia, according to the study published in the Journal of Neuroscience. This study, and others like it, brings hope that one day a cure, or at least a way to control the pain, will be found.

Understanding a person with fibromyalgia:

The other day, during a casual conversation, a friend told me how she explains my fibromyalgia to someone else:

“You know, when you work yourself really hard, so that you feel totally exhausted, and you ache from top to bottom so badly that you cannot even get up? Well that's how Melinda feels. Only it doesn’t go away.”

In reading articles written by others with "invisible" conditions about their desire to be understood, I found the answer as to why it means so much to be understood. (Invisible conditions are those that are unnoticeable when looking at the person.) If we were understood, they explained, we would not have such a difficult time being excused from certain activities. Friends and family would understand why we were saying "no," and not push us. They would accommodate us, or give us a break when we need it. In addition, being understood is important because it can restore self esteem when we are not able to finish (or even start) the projects we take on. Being understood means we are not thought of as "lazy," a "hypochondriac," or a "whiner." It means we do not have to explain in detail to produce an accurate picture or evoke an appropriate response. Constantly having to explain gets very tiresome. But most of all, to be understood is to be validated.

On the other hand, there are those with “invisible” illnesses who prefer secrecy. They would rather appear to be like everyone else. They have weighed the cost of added physical discomfort against the biases they imagine people may have against them, their abilities, their attractiveness, and even their value as a person, and decided to "bite the bullet." For them, understanding appears threatening, unless reserved for their most intimate circle.

Receiving understanding can be a two-edged sword. Some people, once they hear our explanation as to why we cannot participate in an activity, stop sending invitations. Therefore, we fibromyalgia sufferers prefer to offer limited explanations to a few trusted persons rather than tell everyone. After all, we don’t want pity, but instead prefer to be invited to take part in the activities of life (even if we mostly have to say no, or leave early). The spirit is often willing, it is just that the body isn’t. On the few days when we do feel better or have the gumption to push, we want to join in!

In the meantime, I cope by using warm showers, muscle rub cream, vitamin D and magnesium (seems to help some), and being grateful that I no longer have to work out in the world. Sometimes, after receiving an email about my having an Alexander Day, my husband will come home with supper in one hand, a bouquet of flowers in the other, and the offer of a very gentle hug. Right now, that is the best medicine for my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days.

The gift of God’s Grace

Many people have been told about “the path” to God, usually by their pastor, and do not recognize any other interpretation. They have been told to do things in a certain way, to think things in a certain way, and not question why. If they do question, the answer is because the Bible says to do it that way. They are never told that everyone “interprets” the Bible in some form – that there is no such thing as a “literal” interpretation. These people often do not know how to follow the Spirit, but only follow what they interpret to be or have been told is the letter of the law as written in the Bible.

Even within the same path or denomination, people interpret the Bible’s religious teachings differently. Every faith system is reflective of the culture and the level of knowledge available to those who shaped it. Many Christians follow different paths to the same God because their life experiences have been different. God made us all uniquely different. But all people of faith have the same goal of reunion with God.

Who is right? How can one Christian denomination be more correct than another? How can one Christian hear God’s message differently from another? Does God condemn you because you have chosen the “wrong” path to Him? Or is it religion, and not God, that is so exclusive? God and religion are not the same. Religion is the human attempt to place the mystery of God into meaningful words and rational concepts. Therefore, by definition, religion is a human creation, all creedal statements are human creations, and at any time when a person articulates a system of beliefs that person will always be bound by the prejudices and limitations of the world that produced him or her. The creeds do not capture the truth of God. At their very best they can only point beyond themselves to an experience of God.

Jesus was Spiritual. The religious leaders of His day put forth the letter of their own faith, but often condemned other teachings, spiritual teachings, including the teachings of Jesus. The Spiritual person understands this fact. The religious person is often so blinded by what they have been taught by their religious leaders that they cannot see God’s Truth. They are truly unable to acknowledge the many paths to God. The religious person may have read or heard that all things are in God but does not truly understand it; whereas, the Spiritual person has actually experienced God, felt enveloped by His presence, felt His touch, and has a deeper understanding. The truly Spiritual person can see that only God is Truth, and that religion is Man’s attempt at finding God’s Truth. Spiritual persons can see God’s Light in all believers and realize that it is not their place to condemn different interpretations. The religious only see their own narrow interpretations and therefore condemn others.

"People often take the truths of a tradition on faith, accepting the testimony of others, but find that the inner kernel of the religion, its luminous essence, remains elusive." - Karen Armstrong, author of The History of God.

Many devoutly religious people seek to discredit other paths to God, thinking that their way is the only way. This kind of thinking has caused many wars and countless deaths throughout history. People have been persecuted because of religion. The Christians persecuted the Pagans and the Muslims. Christians persecuted Jews. The Jews and Muslims persecuted the Christians. The Chinese government persecuted the Buddhists in Tibet and Christians living in China. Christians persecuted other Christian denominations.

God’s Grace is greater than man can fathom and is universally available to all. All humans have the ability to receive God’s gift of Grace. All humans have God’s voice in their hearts. Some hear Him clearly. Many, although they may try, do not hear Him at all. This does not mean that I have a complete understanding of God; no one can. The more one learns, the more there is to learn. No one has all the answers – no one. Therefore, even if I think you are wrong, I do not condemn you for what you believe – just as God does not condemn you for the path you choose to Him. That is not how God works. God is not exclusive.

I was raised in the Methodist denomination which follows Arminian principles. We Arminians are the ones who argue against the notion that God so strongly imposes His will on people that people cannot decide whether or not to follow Him. Methodists think God so values all people that He vested us with the power to choose Him. Or not. It’s called Free Will. Contrary to Calvinists, who believe in predestination, we believe that God wants all people to be saved:

(2 Pet. 3:9*) The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

(1 Tim. 2:4) (God) desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

Currently, I am a member of a moderate-leaning Southern Baptist church which has a few fundamentalists, many moderates, and a few progressive Christians. I am one of the progressive members, a Spiritual person, who understands God’s truth through Jesus, whom I believe to be the Word of God, metaphorically.* Jesus so fully understood the meaning of God that he broke the barrier between God and mankind, teaching us to recognize that we are all a part of God.

Although I find God through my Christian faith, through Jesus, my deepest understanding of God resides in the depths of my heart. I have always heard and listened to the small, quiet voice deep within me – God’s voice. I not only see God working in my life, most of the time I can feel His presence. He is always with me.

God’s Grace is a gift that no human can take from another human. No one has the right to point a finger and say “you are not saved” if that person does not interpret Christ’s teachings in the same way. Just because someone does not believe the same, does not interpret the Bible in the same way, does not interpret Jesus’ teachings the same, does not see the world the same, does not mean that person is not following a path directly to God. Every person’s life experiences are very different; so they do not hear exactly what you hear, do not see exactly what you see, do not feel things exactly the way you feel things, and do not think exactly the way you think. God made each person’s brain and soul unique which, in turn, creates as many paths to God as there are souls.

Many Christians whose understanding of God is incomplete, narrow, and limiting, may think that someone is condemned (to Hell) for their beliefs or for not being a member of a particular denomination. But I believe that even if someone’s understanding of God is “wrong” they are not condemned. I believe all people who follow the Great Commandment, the universal law of love, as taught by Jesus, will join with God in the hereafter, if they choose to do so. God does not condemn us for misunderstanding – for getting it “wrong.”

This is the gift of God’s Grace.

* metaphorically means conceived as representing another; a symbol

Feeling Grateful

While giving thanks can be practiced whether it is truly felt or not, gratefulness cannot. Being thankful is not the same as feeling grateful. The experience of gratefulness is rarely a choice, but is, instead, more often a serendipitous result. We can desire gratefulness with all our hearts and minds and souls, and desire it for others as for ourselves, and it still eludes us. We can try to choose gratefulness, but moving from despair to gratitude during hard times goes against our humanness. Look at the prevalence of mourning, depression, and suicide in a world that yearns for contentedness and gratefulness. We can be surrounded by love, realize a long-held goal, or be financially secure, and not experience gratefulness.

The feeling of gratitude cannot be pretended or forced, often showing up in the middle of tragic suffering. Most people express thanks for a kindness extended, but some people have known terrible cruelty and feel deep gratefulness just for having lived through it. Some people experience thankfulness for good health, but there are those who experience gratitude even though their bodies and minds are wracked with illness. We are thankful for our homes and the food we eat, but some people have a grateful spirit although they are hungry and unsheltered. How can this be? Because gratitude is the human response to the kindnesses, relationships, and greater spirituality experienced during a time of suffering.

Perhaps gratitude is more about finding hope in the face of hopelessness. Many who face death will tell you stories of gratitude for the sheer miracle of a new day. Those who have lost someone say that even though they wish they had appreciated their beloved more deeply, they are grateful for the time they had with their loved one. Those who have been hungry know that bread and milk and rice are sacred manna. The eyes of those we love, a bite of food and a safe home take on new meaning when it is elusive.

It is in response to the elusiveness of gratitude that some people say that gratitude is a gift. But there are those who, despite their best efforts, do not receive this “gift” and live their entire lives in despair. Such a characterization might suggest that God refuses not only their efforts but answers their despair with indifference. At one time I believed God to be indifferent to my own circumstance – visualizing my prayers hitting the ceiling, falling to the floor, and not being heard. In spite of the good intentions of doctors, the downward spiral of my own health eventually required me to stop teaching. This began an inner struggle with guilt because I had to walk away from my career, leaving much undone. Angry with God, family, and friends whom I perceived to have abandoned me, I struggled through a deep depression. But I eventually surrendered to and became grateful for the quiet solitude of my days. As I started to relax, my creative skills returned to me – talents long ago abandoned for the whirl of a busy career. In the new stillness of my days, in my acceptance of my circumstance, I have been able to reconnect to God and to myself. One door closed, many others opened, a sense of gratefulness filled my heart, and I have found a sense of peace even in the midst of adversity.

When so much of our lives is affected by strife, hatred, violence, pain, and suffering, gratefulness sets us free to love wholeheartedly and to discover a fullness of life not found in the material world. The feeling of deep gratefulness allows one to recognize the small gifts that most people take for granted... the profusion of color in a flower garden, with perhaps an emerald green hummingbird dining on nectar... the wonder and splendor of a blue sky speckled with billowy white clouds... the sound of birds greeting the dawn... the sun and shadows dancing on the lawn... the spirit of God, who dwells in the depth of every human heart, whispering in "a still, small voice."

The inner contentment that survives the roller coaster ride of life has its roots deep within ourselves. The source comes from finding and embracing who we are as a person, and accepting circumstances that cannot be changed. Acceptance and peace leads to a sense of gratefulness, which, in turn leads to fullness in life.

Fullness in life follows gratefulness. And there's no reversing the order.

Drop the sour grapes and do a reality check

In trying to explain why Republicans lost the election, John Ziegler, a regular on Fox’s Hannity and Colmes and an outspoken critic of Barack Obama, created a web site, How Obama Got Elected, that says the Democratic senator’s victory was made possible by the news media because it failed to inform voters of Obama’s shortcomings. A survey done by Zogby International and paid for by Zeigler was meant to bolster his argument and be used in his upcoming documentary called “Media Malpractice...How Obama Got Elected.”

Zogby, on a book tour when the contract was reached and the survey conducted, has said he would not have approved the poll in the form it took because the questions were skewed to reflect Zeigler’s prejudices and only Democrats were polled (no Republicans). Nor would Zogby have approved the press release posted on his Web site. “This was not Zogby International’s finest hour,” he said. “Something, somehow, fell through the cracks.”

The theory of conservative Republicans as to why they lost the election is blinded by their prejudices. Anyone can skew questions and twist data to prove their own theories. Republicans like John Ziegler are desperately looking for anyone or anything to blame except for their own failed policies or their sleazy campaign tactics.

The Ayers issue, Palin’s personal issues, McCain’s personal issues, and Obama’s steely political record in Illinois Democratic politics played a small part but were not the main reason why conservatives lost. This election centered on the fundamental direction the U.S. should be taking, both in domestic politics, and in the international arena. The voters voted for the Democratic Party concepts and against the tried, but failed, Republican policies, which McCain/Palin defended.

During the two previous elections the media signed on with Karl Rove and the mightily financed Swift Boater groups causing the Democrats to lose. This time around, the public was once again bombarded with right-wing Swiftboating against Obama. The Republican campaign spent its entirety trying to justify calling Obama a Socialist, Elitist, Celebrity, Terrorist, Muslim, Britney Spears and at one point tried to imply that the Illinois Senator was a danger to children. When McCain was called on some of these ads he cited Obama’s refusal to have more than three debates as justification for slander. The fact of the matter is that Republicans are accustomed to the tactics of Karl Rove being rewarded by success. The American people didn’t fall for the Swiftboating this time, so now they want to blame their loss on the media.

Republicans seem to not be able to honestly own up to the fact that the cultural issues took a back burner because issues of substance such health care, jobs, regulating the financial industry, and ending the Iraq war were more important to the voters. They are so accustomed to their character-assassination obscenities, such as “baby-killer” and “Marxist,” working that they are stunned it did not work this time.

If Ziegler really wants to help the GOP, he needs to abandon this nonsense and start dealing with the issues, the demographics of this lost election, and how the party must change and reform to meet the electability test for a majority of voters in the future. See, for example, the article on this theme by Republican columnist Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post:

“It isn't that culture doesn't matter. It does. But preaching to the choir produces no converts. And shifting demographics suggest that the Republican Party — and conservatism with it — eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one's heart where it belongs. Religious conservatives become defensive at any suggestion that they've had something to do with the GOP's erosion. And, though the recent Democratic sweep can be attributed in large part to a referendum on Bush and the failing economy, three long-term trends identified by Emory University's Alan Abramowitz have been devastating to the Republican Party: increasing racial diversity, declining marriage rates and changes in religious beliefs. Suffice it to say, the Republican Party is largely composed of white, married Christians. Anyone watching the two conventions last summer can't have missed the stark differences: One party was brimming with energy, youth, and diversity; the other felt like an annual Depends sales meeting. With the exception of Miss Alaska, of course.”

Republicans should drop the sour grapes and do a reality check.

Hanging up the stethoscope

Why does a doctor hang up her stethoscope and quit? I am not speaking of a doctor who reaches her 60s or 70s and wants to retire. My doctor is in her late 40s, in her prime, who not long ago spent countless hours and large sums of money learning her craft. One who is exceptionally intelligent, has a wonderful manner, and who had a potentially bright career ahead.

This question is on my mind because my family doctor has decided to close her practice. Dr. McKelvy is one of the best doctors I have ever known. She subscribes to the idea that the patient knows her own body better than anyone else, listens carefully as the problem is described, and is not intimidated by a patient who has research in hand. You can see the wheels turning as she carefully thinks over a patient’s problem. Using a holistic approach, she will often prescribe alternative medicines along with traditional.

It took me eight years to find her after my previous doctor of 30 years retired. Having gone through about eight doctors who were only average and did not listen well, I thought I had finally found an excellent doctor who would be available for at least the next 20 years. But she is closing her practice – just at the time when, due to worsening chronic health problems, I really need a very good doctor who can think outside the box because I do not fit neatly in anything learned from a textbook. It will not be easy to find another doctor who listens as well as she does and is so good at getting the diagnosis right the first time. I will greatly miss her.

Why is Dr. McKelvy quitting? She has been practicing medicine for 25 years. When insurance companies turned to the PPO and HMO models, she found herself having to spend more time on paperwork than on patients, trying to run a small business instead of a practice. There was less and less time for individual patients as federal reimbursement cuts force most doctors to pack in more patients during each day. Dr. McKelvy refused to do this, never booking more than one patient per time slot, continuing to spend as much time as necessary for each patient, and refusing to pad her bills with unnecessary charges. (One can see why she would not easily fit into a group practice.)

As she continued her struggle to practice medicine on her own, Dr. McKelvy found she was not making enough money to keep her office open. She is frustrated by how difficult insurance companies have become – overriding her decisions for treatment and substituting a cheaper medicine for the one that, in her professional opinion, was best for a patient. Her training did not include how to run a small business, how to deal with insurance companies or how to cope with the red tape and paperwork generated by government agencies. Since she can no longer make a decent living being the kind of old-fashioned, caring doctor that patients love, she has chosen to walk away.

According to news sources, these days many family doctors are leaving medical practice causing a shortage of primary care doctors. More and more family doctors are abandoning their role as the glue of health care, with fewer young doctors replacing them, and choosing to go into higher paying specialties.

As the costs of running a practice continue to rise, insurance payments for many routine procedures continue to decrease, thanks in a large part to the decreasing payouts from Medicare and Medicaid whose payment structure private insurance companies often emulate. In fact, Medicare and Medicaid are becoming such money losers for physicians that over a third have closed their practices to Medicaid patients and 12 percent have closed their practices to Medicare patients. If we are already short on primary care doctors and a many of those still practicing are declining Medicare and Medicaid, how will we get enough primary care physicians to provide for families without raising payouts to entice and retain these doctors? And if we raise payouts so that doctors can stay in business, the overall costs associated with the healthcare system will increase.

Any new healthcare system that the Obama administration puts in place has to make primary care a reasonable and profitable option for physicians, or our shortfall of family care providers will become massive. In any new plan, even if everyone has some type of insurance, it will do little good if they cannot find a doctor.

Just take a look at the disheartening results from a survey from the Physicians’ Foundation. The study confirmed that there are not enough primary care physicians in the U.S., even though there are plenty of specialty doctors. Here are some of the disturbing findings from 11,950 doctors who responded to the survey:

*94% said the time they’ve devote to non-clinical paperwork in the past three years has increased – with 63% saying the paperwork has meant they spend less time per patient.

*82% said their practices would be “unsustainable” if the new proposed Medicare pay cuts were made law.

*78% believe there is a shortage of primary care docs in the U.S.

*60% would not recommend medicine as a career to young people.

*49% said that over the next three years they plan to reduce the number of patients they see or stop practicing entirely.

*42% said professional morale is either “poor” or “very low.”

Walker Ray, MD, Vice President of The Physicians' Foundation put the results of the survey into context: "At a time when the new Administration and new Congress are talking about ways to expand access to healthcare, the harsh reality is that there might not be enough doctors to handle the increased number of people who might want to see them if they get health insurance. It's as if we're talking about expanding access to higher education without having enough professors to handle the influx of students."

I wish Dr. McKelvy luck. I hope she has not permanently hung up her stethoscope and will find a way to practice medicine again. If she does not, it’s our loss.

The ebbing tide

Economic inequality is growing in the United States, jeopardizing the American Dream of social mobility just as the world enters a recession, said a 30-nation report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released on October 21, 2008. The United States has the third highest inequality and poverty rates in the OECD, after Mexico and Turkey, and the gap has increased rapidly since 2000, the report said. Coincidentally, that is the year that the Bush administration began to govern.

George Bush and the ultra-conservative wing of the Republican party have a unyielding belief in trickle-down economics and therefore did all they could to remove taxes and regulations for the wealthy corporations, including the financial sector. At the same time, they did very little for all other citizens, except for a couple of "stimulus" packages which gave the average family around $600 to $1200 – a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the billions raked in by the CEOs of oil, financial, and pharmaceutical companies. Indeed, the “rising tide” did not lift all boats as promised by Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush. Remember: although the wealthy love trickle-down economics, President George H.W. Bush called it “voodoo economics.”

And just how well did “voodoo economics” work? Rich households in America have become much richer, leaving both middle and poorer income groups behind. This has happened in many countries, but nowhere has this trend been so stark as in the United States. The average income of the richest 10% is $93,000 in purchasing power, the highest level in the OECD. However, the poorest 10% of U.S. citizens have a purchasing power of $5,800 per year – about 20% lower than the average for OECD countries.

The main reason for widening inequality in America is that the distribution of earnings between rich and poor in the United States has widened by 20% since the mid-1980s, more than in most other OECD countries. This is partly because the level of spending on social benefits, such as unemployment benefits, and family benefits, like Medicare, is very low – equivalent to just 9% of household incomes, while the OECD average is 22% of household incomes.

This widening inequality causes a low level of social mobility in the United States. Children of poor parents to be less likely to become rich, much less middle class, than children of rich parents. Wealth is distributed much more unequally than income: the top 1% control some about 33% of total money in the U.S. The top 10% hold 71% of the wealth. This is just the opposite in countries such as Denmark, Sweden and Australia where social mobility is high due to a low inequality level.

In nearly all countries studied, the gap between rich and everyone else has widened over the last 20 years, even as trade and technological advances have spurred rapid growth in their economies. In a 20-year study of its member countries, the OECD found inequality had increased in 27 of its 30 members as top earners' incomes soared while others' stagnated. Rising inequality threatens social mobility: Children will have great difficulty doing better than their parents; the poor will no longer improve their lot through hard work – in fact, hard work will barely keep their heads above water, if at all.

Why is the gap between rich and poor growing? Wages have been improving for those people who were already well paid, while employment rates have been dropping among less educated people. Also, there are more single-adult and single-family households than ever before.

Who is most affected? Statisticians and economists assess poverty in relation to average incomes. Poverty among young adults and families with children has increased. On average, one child out of every eight living in an OECD country in 2005 was living in poverty. In the U.S., the trend is exactly the opposite: Child poverty – that is, children in a household with less than half the median income – has fallen since 1985, from 25% to 20% but poverty rates among the elderly increased from 20 to 23%.

What can be done? In some cases, government policies of taxation and redistribution of income through programs such as Medicare and Social Security have helped to counteract widening inequalities, but this cannot be their only response. Governments must also improve their policies in other areas. Active employment policies are needed to help unemployed people find work. Access to paid employment is key to reducing the risk of poverty, but getting a job does not necessarily mean you are in the clear. The OECD found that over half of all households in poverty have income from work. Therefore, education policies should aim to equip people with the skills they need to find better paying jobs in today’s labor market.

What will happen if the next decade is not one of world growth but of world recession? The widening gap between wealthy households and all other income earners in countries such as the U.S., Canada, and Germany, has potentially ominous consequences if the global financial crisis sparks a long recession. With job losses and home foreclosures skyrocketing, many of these countries now face a deep recession that could last as long as five to ten years.

Oxford University economist Anthony Atkinson said it well:

"If a rising tide didn't lift all boats, how will they be affected by an ebbing tide?"

Bitter fruit

On November 4, an electoral landslide wiped out many of the few remaining Republican moderates in Congress, widening the ideological divisions that have contributed to partisanship and gridlock on Capitol Hill. According to Pew Research, the Grand Old Party’s (GOP) national membership has shrunk to about 27% of the population.

So, what happened? Why did the Republicans lose? There are many reasons, but to name a few: racially tinged character-assassination ads that the majority of the nation saw through, lack of a real plan to help the middle class, different and conflicting messages every day or so, and the Sarah Palin pick. Once Palin was added to the ticket, Christian right leaders climbed on the band wagon and swung into action. They pursued a culture-war strategy focused on hot-button issues such as abortion and gay marriage. To mobilize their base, they also engaged in an ad campaign that played upon intense anger and fear in relation to Obama.

When the Republicans signed off on tactics used by Karl Rove and company, who led them into a harsh “either you’re with us or against us” far-right mindset, there was a lack of compromise, a lack of inclusion, and a lack of tolerance. The Republican base had already subscribed to the belief that government should reflect the views of “real America” which was code for white, Anglo-Saxon, evangelical protestant. Today, although a majority of Americans live in big metropolitan areas, Republicans espouse the belief that “real America” is small-town or rural and, above all, white and aim their election strategy toward that group. It’s called the Southern Strategy.

The Southern Strategy was crafted by Richard Nixon in the hopes of luring the southern white working class away from the Democratic party. He used anti-civil rights rhetoric and racist imagery to achieve this. The 1968 presidential campaign offered the GOP the first opportunity to run the "Southern Strategy." The Southern Strategy worked so well that it has been in continual use by the Republicans since then.

This crisis in the GOP has been building for over 40 years. It goes back to when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Johnson knew that the vestiges of segregation was so entrenched in the South that white southern voters would change to the Republican party once it became clear the Democrats favored black civil rights. He said that the law would cause a generation of Southerners to move to the Republicans. Ever since then, the party has depended upon the Southern strategy of racist rhetoric and fear to stay in power. Subsequent elections proved Johnson right: the South turned Republican.

Since the mid-1990s the GOP became completely dominated by Southerners. In 1994, Newt Gingrich of Georgia ushered in his "Revolution." By 2000, Southern Republicans controlled the House of Representatives with an iron hand under Tom DeLay. From 2000 to 2006 Southern Republican rule was complete: DeLay in the House, Frist in the Senate, and Bush 43 in the driver's seat. Just before the 2006 Congressional election, Republican corruption and connections to Abramoff, a high powered lobbyist, was made public. This allowed the Democrats to win a simple majority in Congress in 2006 – although not enough to be veto-proof or filibuster-proof.

It appears that the Republican party will now become more extreme – leaning ever further to the right. The spectacle of the McCain campaign drove out many Republican moderates and intellectuals -- people like Andrew Sullivan, George Will, David Brooks, and Christopher Buckley. This will pose a dilemma for any moderate conservatives that might remain. These moderates had spent the Bush years in denial, closing their eyes to the administration’s dishonesty and contempt for the rule of law. Some of them tried to maintain that denial through this election season, even as the McCain-Palin campaign’s tactics grew ever uglier. Now, moderates’ eyes are wide open and they are leaving the party in droves. The number of voters who call themselves Republicans is at a 28-year low of just 27%.

The GOP has exploited race and hot-button social issues for so long that it has whittled away its numbers to the point of becoming a regional party. After losing the presidential election, what remains of the Republican party will become so heavily identified with social and cultural stands -- and so thoroughly right-wing evangelical -- that it will be on the losing side of the demographic changes that are taking place in this country. They will continue to look backwards to what was, instead of embracing the country’s diverse future. They refuse to admit that the nation is becoming more diverse, more tolerant, and more reflective of a 21st Century multicultural society.

The Democrats’ landslide was not only brought about by the Republican use of the Southern Strategy, but also by a majority of the American electorate finally realizing that Republican policies had run the country into the ground. Bush and his gang of neo-cons, who in their zeal to set up a democracy in the Middle East, engineered a foreign policy that so strained the military it undermined America’s ability to finish the war in Afghanistan or be prepared for any other crisis. But the nail in the GOP’s coffin was the total collapse of the tenets of supply-side, trickle-down economics that are at the core of conservative ideology. Wall Street loved the laissez-faire atmosphere that the Republicans in charge of the Securities and Exchange Commission gave them. Wall Street ended up crashing and then begging Congress to shore up their losses with an infusion of hefty amounts of taxpayer cash. The financial system has collapsed to the point that even Alan Greenspan, the preeminent deregulator, now believes the government should stimulate economic growth and improve stability in the private sector through better regulation.

Even with the handwriting so obviously on the wall, the GOP base is in denial, refusing to believe that average Americans would reject their cause. A recent poll found that Republicans, by a margin of more than two to one, believe that McCain lost “because the mainstream media is biased” and the economic collapse, not because the nation grew weary under the burden of neoconservative policies.

The GOP’s long transformation into the party of the way-too-far right seems likely to accelerate as a result of the McCain defeat. The "values" wing of the Republican party will continue to dominate the Republican primaries so that any future GOP presidential candidate will have to pass the evangelical litmus test. It's a recipe for the party to nominate one Sarah Palin after another – and continue losing – just like in Oregon where the party moved to the right in recent years, nominating cultural conservatives, and losing badly for offices at all levels.

With the Obama campaign turning Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada to the Democratic column, the Republican party is in danger of becoming a permanent minority. Their cultural ideology will keep them relegated to the Deep South and parts of the Mountain West. There are now no Republican congressmen left representing New England and much of the Northeast. In the Northwest, their numbers are shrinking. For a second straight election cycle, not one single incumbent Democratic senator lost his seat in Congress.

Here’s the reality: an Election Day poll by the Center for American Progress and the Campaign for America's Future asked whether Republicans had lost because they were too conservative or not conservative enough. By a 20 point margin, voters chose “too conservative.” Seven out of ten said they wanted the Republicans to work with Obama and “help him achieve his plans.”

What happened in this election was, in the eyes of many political analysts, an inevitable backlash after a decade of Republican rule in Congress, during which many of the leaders came from Southern states, and GOP policies were designed to appeal to the party's extremely conservative elements. What remains of the Republican party will be the hard right subculture that attends rallies where crowds chant “Vote McCain, not Hussein!” while harboring frightening fantasies about Barack Obama’s socialist or Marxist or Islamic roots. It will be the party of Saxby Chambliss, the senator from Georgia, who, observing large-scale early voting by African-Americans, warns his supporters that “the other folks are voting.” These remaining Republican ideologues lean so far to the right that they are unable to abandon their cultural war and move to the middle where they need to be to win elections.

The Southern Strategy has finally born its bitter fruit.

We are one nation

America eventually comes back around to and lives up to its ideals. It is so thrilling to be alive to witness one of those moments. This election was a referendum on the neoconservatism that has guided American politics since the age of Reagan. Indeed, future historians may well view Barack Obama's victory as the end of the age of Reagan and the beginning of something new.

America can justifiably claim that the election outcome was a clear repudiation of conservative economic ideas and absurd claims that a more egalitarian* approach to growth constitutes "socialism." This rejection of far right ideology, the failures of the Bush administration, the shifts in public views on the economy, and the Iraq war have led to this watershed moment.

Unlike Ronald Reagan in 1980, though, Obama didn't run on an ideologically distinct platform. His victory is not a mandate for a new era of neoliberalism. Obama ran on tax cuts. Although he will end our presence in Iraq, he did not campaign on taking U.S. foreign policy in a dramatic new direction – he has been as hawkish as John McCain on Afghanistan. He did not advocate bold new social initiatives. He did not propose a leftist philosophical approach to governing, unless, after living eight years under the Bush philosophy, you consider competence to be revolutionary.

Obama’s win does not represent an embrace of neoliberalism, but rather a repudiation of the Republican Party’s harsh, far-right leaning conservatism. The far right neoconservative rulers and their wealthy friends have been sidelined. Obama will strive to govern from the middle and be everyone’s president.

The president-elect magnanimously reached out to bruised and battered conservatives in his victory address, quoting Abraham Lincoln, "We are not enemies, but friends." If Republicans will accept his extended hand of friendship, we now have an opportunity to rebuild a government tuned to the people – all the people, not just a selected few.

“… 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.” Abraham Lincoln

We are one nation, under God. We are not enemies. Let’s end the division and work together.

Yes, we can!


*Egalitarian: affirming, promoting, or characterized by belief in equal political, economic, social, and civil rights for all people.

Holding my breath

Our nation is just one day away from the most historic election in our history. It appears that we are about to elect someone who represents everything that the next generation believes in – a more equitable and caring society – and, no, I do not mean socialism. Tomorrow we will find out if America is truly ready to choose a better destiny. Will we stand up and say ‘we can do better’ and provide opportunity for all citizens, not just the wealthy? It appears that the answer is yes. According to the polls, we will wake up on Wednesday with Barack Obama as President-elect of the United States.

And yet, I am holding my breath.

It’s skepticism: a realization that those Republicans who have held power during the last decade or so, have done so by dishonest means such as voter suppression or ‘fixed’ voter software programs on the Diebold machines. It’s a fear that they will somehow steal the election once again; that Obama doesn’t really have a chance. He will have to win by a larger margin than what is being predicted in order to overcome the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters. I fear that the better tomorrow, the tomorrow that Obama promises – a country where all citizens are given access to healthcare, where all students can afford to go to college, where energy independence and cleaning up the environment is not only talked about, but acted on, and where the middle class is given the support they have needed for so long – will be snatched away.

It’s the fear that things will not change – cannot change. Perhaps I am holding my breath because, for those of us who are not wealthy, things have been so difficult for such a long time. It’s the knowledge that the GOP does not care about all citizens, but only those with money – the more money you have, the more they care about you. The rest of us are unimportant except for our taxes that help finance wars and shore up banks. It’s because I know that I pay more taxes, percentage-wise, than my very wealthy friends and family members who have tax shelters and lots of other “deductions.” It’s the fear that an unfair tax system that gives huge breaks to the wealthy and places a heavy burden on the middle class can never be changed.

Maybe it’s the awful pictures of death and abandonment of those too poor to own cars and drive away from Katrina. Maybe it is the recent stories of people losing their homes because they were duped by mortgage brokers who told them they could afford the bigger house, or others who have lost everything because someone in the family got very sick and insurance didn’t pay for much of it, or those who have lost loved ones in an unnecessary war. It is the pain of these failures, and more, that shows just how important tomorrow’s election really is. Maybe this is why I am holding my breath.

But it’s more than that. There is something even more ominous that has me scared. To remain silent would mean to pretend that this is not on the minds of millions of Americans everywhere. In the past there were people like Bobby Kennedy, and his brother, John, who stood for a more caring and equal society, who stood for change, and had their opportunity taken away from them prematurely. There were others, too, like Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln, who tried to create a better society, who believed that we are all responsible for our brothers, but paid the price with their lives. I cannot shake this fear that even if Obama wins the election, that something will happen to him. Because he represents change for this country, and a loss of power to the right wing, I am terrified Obama’s chance of leading America to a better place will be taken from him – that several of the haters will get together and take his life, and, in doing so, crush the newly hopeful spirit of this country.

Like John F. Kennedy, Obama will ask our nation to do great things because he believes we can. Given the chance, he will cause many to roll up their sleeves and go to work on rebuilding our infrastructure, designing new ways to meet our energy needs, and creating a more equitable society. Given the chance, he will stand up for the poor and help the middle class get back on its feet. Given the chance, he will stand up for equal rights for all, not because he is a Democrat, but because he is an American, and as Americans we should want nothing less. Given the chance, he will lead us to being a better people. Given the chance, Obama can lead our nation into one of the greatest chapters in its history.

I am holding my breath because Obama’s opportunity to be the leader we so desperately need may be snatched from him and from us.

May God protect him.

Why Obama?

After many essays saying why I am against McCain, it is time that I give reasons why I am for Obama. I am not just voting against McCain, but, instead, I am actually for Obama.

Here’s why:

Obama has demonstrated time and again that he has a steady hand and calm demeanor, proven by over twenty months of running for president against tough and experienced opponents. During this long campaign, he has been vetted by serious challenges, such as the constant character assassination attacks, and yet allows the attacks to roll off his back, staying consistently calm and even. He has managed to keep a tone of optimism in his campaign at a time it would be very easy to be downhearted, worried, nasty toward his opponent, and pessimistic about our future. That optimism alone goes a long way in demonstrating the kind of leadership our nation needs. He knows the language of reassurance that Americans so desperately need to hear. He shows the kind of leadership, intelligence, and skillful communicating that will be needed as America deals with our standing in the world and the historic economic crisis.

Obama is Reaganesque in his attitude and demeanor. Those of us who remember the 1980 campaign recall how the Democrats portrayed Ronald Reagan as an inexperienced cowboy, as a racist—as a lot of bad things. They did this because their own president, Carter, was unpopular, so they wanted to create doubts about the interloper from the West. In the end, the nasty approach didn’t work because Reagan had a calming presence, and an optimistic outlook at a time Americans weren’t feeling too good about themselves. Obama’s speeches repeat Reagan's soothing wisdom that there are solutions to our problems, although not easy ones, and show Reagan’s vision of American exceptionalism. The parties of Reagan and Obama are reversed, but the dynamics are similar. Obama is calm, solid, and reassuring. This comes naturally to him, just as it did to Reagan.

But it is not just his calm, even temperament and his speaking ability that draws me to him. It’s his stand on the issues that will affect me, our country, and therefore the world:

1. On the economy: If you study and compare their economic plans, Obama’s plan is much more geared to help the middle class and small business, whereas McCain’s plan is geared to help big business – such as his wife’s big beer distributorship – and his wealthy friends. Obama only would raise taxes on individuals and businesses netting more than $250,000 after deductions. This affects very little of the population – only about two percent of small businesses in the country fall into the over $250K category. Obama is also proposing a tax credit for offering health care to employees and elimination of capital gains taxes on startup businesses. He is proposing eliminating income tax on the first $50,000 of a retired couple’s income.

McCain’s plan mostly helps the wealthy and does little for the middle class. He has offered to help refinance all bad mortgages at the now lower home values, and, of course, using taxpayer money to pay the banks the money they would lose. Even this idea helps the banks more than it helps the middle class. Most of the middle class, the ones who have played by the rules and have always paid their bills on time, the ones who have been struggling to keep their heads above water for the last eight years, are not helped at all by the McCain Economic Plan.

2. On choosing running mates: Obama has demonstrated sound judgment in selecting as his running mate Sen. Joe Biden, whose experience and knowledge of foreign policy prepare him to step in if, need be as chief executive.

McCain's selection of Sarah Palin, by comparison, may have shown political savvy for that moment. At the expense of offering a vice president the Republican base could rally around, he selected an individual in whom a lack of knowledge to take over as president has become embarrassingly obvious, as evidenced by answers given during unscripted interviews. In the selection of Sarah Palin, instead of choosing one of the many accomplished women in the Republican Party that could have given his candidacy a stamp of seriousness, McCain has shown a reckless gambling attitude in his decision-making process.

3. On health care: Obama wants to continue our current employer-based system by requiring large companies to offer health care. For those people who cannot get health insurance through an employer, he would like to allow them to buy into a national insurance cooperative that offers coverage similar to that for federal employees.

McCain would give a $2,500 refundable tax credit to individuals and $5,000 to families in order to purchase a policy on the open market, but, at this time the average policy costs $12,500 per year. Then, he would tax the payments that businesses and their workers make toward employer-sponsored health insurance. This would cause a hefty tax increase that would likely cause employers to drop the insurance plan and force more people to buy on the open market. He wants to allow people to go to any state to buy insurance. This would likely cause most insurance companies to move to the state with the least regulation.

4. On Iraq: McCain did push the Bush administration to put in more troops – now called “the surge.” But the fact that surge was a success in reducing bloodshed does not vindicate the wrong decision made in the first place to invade a country that was NOT behind the 9/11 attacks and did NOT have weapons of mass destruction. Iraq has been a huge diversion from Afghanistan where the real terrorist threat resides. The Iraqis do not want us there. It’s time to start handing more responsibility to the Iraqi government and begin slowly pulling out. Obama understands this about Iraq and pledges to give Afghanistan the attention it deserves.

5. About ability: Barack Obama has consistently shown his intellectual strength in problem-solving. He went to Harvard on merit scholarships, not on racial-based quotas. Having the intelligence to get into Harvard without a rich daddy (unlike Bush at Yale or McCain at Annapolis), Obama graduated near the top of his class. While there, he was elected the first black editor of the Harvard Review by the mostly white Harvard student body. That says a lot for Obama. On the other hand, McCain got into Annapolis because of who his daddy was, partied all the way through college, and graduated fifth from the bottom of a class of nearly 900 students. As a retired teacher, this speaks volumes to me.

6. On who has a better moral compass: Barack Obama is a committed Christian, husband, and father. (No, he is not a Muslim.) We know he has not strayed from his wife, because if he had, it would have been dug up by the Republicans and flashed throughout the media for all to see. In his campaigning tactics alone, in the lies and sleazy tricks used, McCain has shown he is not a moral person. But there’s more: McCain is a know womanizer who left his permanently injured wife for his extremely wealthy mistress. And, even more disturbing, The New York Times and Time Magazine have done investigative reporting (Google: New York Times + McCain gambling), with witness statements and pictures, on McCain’s love of gambling regularly at the craps table in various casinos. Interestingly, McCain’s gambling has not been reported in any of the Republican-leaning media – obviously because they do not want the Republican base to know. But even if someone refuses to believe that McCain is a regular casino gambler, his gambling traits show up for all to see in the way he makes his decisions.

My choice has been made easier by the kind of campaign McCain has run. McCain has failed to sound any consistent themes; has been all over the map during the crisis over the federal bailout package; and now has come up with a socialistic $300 billion plan to refinance all distressed mortgages at new lower house values with the government paying the banks the difference, without any description of how he would pay for it. As the global economy went into meltdown, as the Dow went into free fall, McCain staged a pretend campaign suspension, including a suggestion that he would not attend the first debate until the problem was fixed, so that he could fly into Washington and save the country by brokering a deal between Democrats and Republicans. He brokered nothing. In fact, Republican Congressmen, as well as Democrats, said that he got in the way.

Despite promises he would not go negative, McCain has allowed his campaign to attack Obama's character with tenuous associations and outright lies . The McCain strategy recently took on a decidedly dangerous turn as desperation has turned into full-scale panic. McCain supporters are increasingly out of control. At recent McCain/Palin rallies, people in the crowd were heard shouting, “terrorist, treason, kill him, off with his head” in reference to Obama. Since the economic bailout was passed by Congress, all John McCain has wanted to do is link Obama to an aging radical regardless of the fact that their relationship amounted to just crossing paths while serving on the same charity board, on which, by the way, several Republicans have served. McCain and Palin continue to hammer away at Barack Obama’s very minimal relationship with 1960s Weather Underground radical William Ayers. Ask them about the economy and they bring up Bill Ayers. Ask them about Iraq and they talk about Bill Ayers. Just like Sarah said in her one debate, “You can ask me anything you want, but I am gonna talk about what I want to talk about.”

McCain really would be more of the same: On Face the Nation, he said that he agrees with the Republican ideology. Having voted with the Republicans over 90% of the time (McCain has acknowledged this data), McCain would be little change from what we have endured for the last eight years. Eight years of the Bush administration have left our country weary of Republican neo-conservative ideologues.

Obama has given many people hope for a change – a chance to go down a new road. Obama’s rhetoric is not just empty words; what he says is obviously carefully considered. In the debates and during his campaigning, Obama has been the voice of moderation, combining common sense and compassion on issue after issue. When the subject turns to foreign policy, supposedly McCain's strong suit, Obama gives no indication that he will have to learn on the job. The strengths of Barack Obama, whose rise to prominence is not a fluke or national infatuation with a “rock star” but, instead, his remarkable skills -- a keen intellect, and ability to compromise when necessary, noble intentions, moral character, and the wit and grace to express them in ways that have inspired millions across the country – are exactly suited to these fearful times. These strengths give Obama the capacity to grow into the office.

On the other hand, John McCain, whose behavior, as the campaign progressed, in my opinion, has shown the beginnings of character changes that often accompany old age: the obviously simmering anger during each debate, the "that one" comment at the second debate, and the "my fellow prisoners" comment at a campaign stop. In all his campaign speeches, at least in the many to which I have listened, when he isn’t smearing slime all over Obama’s character, it’s always about I, I, I, me, me, me…and rarely speaks about what he will do for the middle class. That is because his policies will mostly help the wealthy and do very little for the middle class.

Our new President will face a series of challenges including the crisis in the financial markets, the rising costs of entitlement programs, a huge national deficit, an unpopular war in Iraq, the war on terror, and a growing strain upon the nation's health care system that will make it difficult to deliver on many campaign promises. Our next president must have the kind of qualities that Obama has demonstrated in his long, unusually tough, and historic fight to lead the United States of America in order to set the right priorities. If Obama does win, I believe he can steer us through the economic downturn, get the Iraqis to take charge of their country, and start putting the culture wars behind us. There is no guarantee that he will be able to clean up all the mess that Bush is leaving behind, but I am absolutely convinced that he is much more likely to do it than his opponent.

Although endorsements generally serve as an informational shortcut for voters, when you're voting in a local race, and you have no information about the candidates, you might well go with whomever your local paper decides to endorse. In a race like Obama-McCain, on the other hand, you already have all the information you could ever want, and probably have already made a choice. With that said, Powell has approval ratings as high as just about any public figure in America. On Meet the Press, Colin Powell had harsh words about the far right path the Republican Party has taken in recent years. In announcing that he is voting for Obama, his endorsement was eloquent, unequivocal, and because of his role in the Bush Administration, genuinely newsworthy.

Powell said, “We have two wars. We have economic problems. We have health problems. We have education problems. We have infrastructure problems. We have problems around the world with our allies. So those are the problems the American people wanted to hear about, not about Mr. Ayers, not about who's a Muslim or who's not a Muslim…to focus on people like Mr. Ayers, for the purpose of suggesting that somehow Mr. Obama would have some kind of terrorist inclinations, I thought that was over the top. It was beyond just good political fighting back and forth. I think it went beyond. …we can't hold our elections on that kind of basis. ...that kind of negativity troubled me – and the constant shifting of the argument. I was troubled a couple of weeks ago when in the middle of the crisis, the [McCain] campaign said, ‘We're going to go negative,’ and when they announced, ‘We're going to go negative and attack [Obama's] character through Bill Ayers." Now I guess the message this week is ‘We're going to call him a socialist, Mr. Obama is now a socialist, because he dares to suggest that maybe we ought to look at the tax structure that we have.’ I don't want my taxes raised. I don't want anybody else's taxes raised. But I also want to see our infrastructure fixed. I don't want to have a $12 trillion national debt, and I don't want to see an annual deficit that's over $500 billion heading toward a trillion. So, how do we deal with all of this? [Someone has to pay for it.]”

Powell continued with, “...it was in the period leading up to the conventions, and then the decisions that came out of the conventions, and then just sort of watching the responses of the two individuals on the economic crisis. It gave me an opportunity to evaluate their judgment, to evaluate their way of approaching a problem, to evaluate the steadiness of their actions. And it was at that point that I realized that, to my mind, anyway, that Senator Obama has demonstrated the kind of calm, patient, intellectual, steady approach to problem-solving that I think we need in this country."

Well said, General Powell, well said.

During the campaign, McCain, the experienced candidate, has not embodied the leadership Americans deserve. He has shown a lack of class, a get-down-in the-trash-to-fight attitude, in contrast to Obama's classy consistency and calm.

Quite frankly, I do not want a President with whom I would feel comfortable having a beer. I do not want someone who is like me. Because he will have to deal with a dangerous world, I want a President who is much more intelligent and very much calmer than I am.

That is why I am voting for Obama.

Is Obama’s tax plan socialism?

Republicans have been pounding the socialism theme in recent days. Critics point to Obama's plan to raise the top two tax rates on the wealthy as clear evidence of his socialist bent. However, Len Burman, the director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, said that while Obama “would make the tax system more progressive overall, it would not be a radical shift.” In fact, the top two rates would only go back to where they were under Clinton.

In the United States, people often confuse socialism with communism. Thus, when a political nominee of one party accuses his opponent’s ideas of being socialist, many people are thinking “communism,” causing the accusation to be political poison.

As a history teacher, I always made it a point to teach my students the difference between capitalism, socialism, and communism:

• Communism is a social and economic system in which all property, including means of production, is public (owned by the government), not private. It should not to be confused with socialism.

• Socialism, in its pure form, is an economic system characterized by government (public) ownership of all means of production including major industries (manufacturing, services, and energy), banks and insurance companies, agribusiness, transportation, the media, and medical facilities. People may own private property.

• America's democratic capitalist system is not close to socialism. It also has never been a purely free market; rather, it has always mixed a little socialism with capitalism, and has done so since the progressive income tax was introduced 95 years ago. Under our tax system, the wealthy have always paid higher income tax rates than those who are less fortunate. It's a form of sharing the wealth.

Obama’s plan does not begin to qualify as socialism. The Obama plan is traditional progressive taxation, just like what we have had in the United States since the beginning of the income tax. We've had a progressive tax system for some time, and both Republicans and Democrats have bought into it. McCain's angry denunciation of socialist wealth-spreading ignores the fact that the country has always had a progressive tax code.

The new round of socialism accusations was triggered by Obama's comment last week to "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher in Toledo, Ohio. Joe told Obama that he hoped someday to buy a plumbing business and asked, "Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" (see my Joe the Plumber post to see why Obama plan would actually help Joe.) "It's not that I want to punish your success," the Illinois senator told Joe. "I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you (those making less), that they've got a chance for success, too. My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody. ... I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." McCain has pounced on the “spread the wealth around” comment and taken it completely out of context, charging Obama with socialism. It’s a last ditch effort to energize his failing campaign.

Key Bush administration tax cuts are due to expire Jan. 1, 2011. Obama wants to end the breaks for most individuals who earn more than $200,000 and families that make more than $250,000, and give a tax cut to those families whose net income is below $250,000. The McCain plan gives very little help to the middle class, gives a further tax cut for the wealthy, and more tax cuts to the wealthy corporations who are raking in billions of dollars in profits. Obama's position would restore the top rates to where they were under President Clinton, when the economy boomed.

McCain once said, “I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle-class Americans,” in voting against the 2001 Bush tax cuts. McCain himself once seemed to embrace the sensible notion that those who reap the greatest rewards should contribute more back into the system.

To further the hypocrisy, the McCain-Palin ticket is deriding the Obama tax plan, even though giving a refundable tax credit, a "socialist" idea, is also a major part of McCain's health care plan. McCain has been touting the fact that he would outfit "every single American family with a $5000 refundable tax credit" to help with insurance costs. “Refundable” means that everyone gets the money, regardless of whether or not they have paid income tax.

Presidential campaigns are full of hypocrisy, of course, but I can't remember the last time a candidate was this brazen about it. It makes you wonder what McCain thinks about the public's power of comprehension. He obviously thinks that most of us are not able to figure things out for ourselves.

If anyone wants to talk “socialism,” President Bush and a lot of other Republicans, including McCain, backed a massive federal government rescue of ailing financial institutions this fall, one that's committed well more than $1 trillion so far to "private" banks. The government will take partial ownership of the nine biggest banks, a degree of socialism. But this bailout was necessary to save our financial system. It was Bush – with McCain claiming a central role in the drama – who pushed the nearly trillion-dollar government plan to save ailing financial institutions.

I have heard these two statements made in the last week by wealthy individuals:

"Obama wants to talk about giving pieces of the pie to everyone, but he never wants to talk about growing the pie," said one, "I don't want to share my pie. If I earn it, I want to keep it."

"I make over $250,000 a year, between my wife and I," said a contractor, "I don't want to share it with anybody."

As any parent understands, sharing is not the most natural of human instincts. But government is fundamentally about sharing for the common good; taxes are, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, the price of a civilized society.

Next time there is a pothole in the road in front of your house, who will pay to fix it? Perhaps it will not be fixed for a long time because the county treasury does not have enough money to fix roads. Why is that? We Americans need to find the ability to move beyond the self-centered "no new taxes" debate and have a credible discussion about how to raise the revenue the country needs to make investments for the future in infrastructure, schools, and so forth, even as we provide for our aging population.

In ancient Athens, Greece, the cradle of democracy, with its complete commitment to political equality, taxes were only paid by the wealthy, with ordinary citizens exempt from tax; yet every man had a vote in everything done by the government. Now that’s a thought, isn’t it?

Let me end with this:

“For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.” Luke 12:48.

Obama and ACORN

We know election day must be getting close when Republicans start screaming about voter fraud – just as they have in several previous elections. Study after study, and major nationwide enforcement efforts by the department of justice and other enforcement agencies in the states have never, ever produced any evidence of anything more than a handful of cases of actual voter fraud. The failure of many US attorneys to actually find cases of voter fraud to prosecute was the motivation for Karl Rove to push a scheme to fire nine of them and the resulting scandal ultimately led to attorney general Alberto Gonzalez's resignation.

The more accurate accusation would be voter-registration fraud, rather than the voter fraud accusation against Acorn by the Republicans. There appears to be plenty of checks in place to guarantee it doesn't turn into actual voter fraud. For voter fraud to occur, the organizers of such an effort would need hundreds if not thousands of people to participate in a massive conspiracy to show up at the polls claiming to be someone else (a felony) who had been fraudulently registered and placed on the rolls. In several states, they will need to have a government issue photo ID with that other person's information (another felony).

My research has shown Acorn to be mostly a good entity. Acorn’s goal is to register young, first-time voters and disenfranchised voters. Although some paid overeager, and some dishonest, field people working for Acorn may register cartoon characters, dead people, and so forth, to vote. It is unethical, but it does NOT becomes fraud unless a person tries to vote under one of the fictitious names, which rarely happens.

Acorn is uniquely susceptible to registration problems because it pays $8 per hour to the unemployed, including the homeless, to register people. It is too easy for those inclined to do so to go home and copy names out of phone books, etc. I can understand why they do this – to give unemployed or low-income people a paying job – but it opens Acorn up to fraud perpetuated against them since they end up paying for sham registrations. Acorn administrators believe that the multi-layered system of flagging questionable registration forms and then having the voting agencies provide further checks is adequate protection against actual fraudulent registrants ending up on the voter rolls. Voter registration fraud very rarely leads to actual voter fraud.

These attacks on voter registration drives are more rhetorical than physical, unlike several decades ago, but the point of contention is the same: the ability of Americans of color and college-age students to cast a ballot. Republican officials know that this election cycle has seen an unprecedented surge in new voter registrations and that those registrations have been disproportionably Democratic. So, to counter the huge number of Democrat registrants, Republican operatives have spread stories about Acorn turning in thousands of fraudulent registrations, but they know Acorn is required by law to turn them in – and they know that those registrants will never be added to the voter rolls.

Voter fraud and voter registration fraud are two different things, but are being deliberately combined for political purposes. Voter registration fraud is real, but the kinds of allegations about Acorn are not true. Here’s why: Organizations that engage in voter registration drives are required by law to submit every registration form that they receive, no matter how obviously fraudulent the information. That rule is in place as an extremely important protection for the process so that organizations are not able to go on a mass registration drive and then throw out all the Republican registrants or Democratic registrants before they submit the forms to the state government. Acorn, and all other voter drives, are required to flag the forms that they believe are invalid. So, if Acorn registers 100,000 people in Ohio out of which they identify 5,000 registration forms that are phony, they have to turn them in anyway with a cover sheet on each one that is suspect.

Acorn is trying to weed out these dishonest people, often turning them in for prosecution, so do not throw out the baby with the bath water! According to Bertha Lewis, Interim Chief Organizer of ACORN, the majority of the 1.3 million newly registered voters for this year are low- to-moderate income people, 60-70 percent are African American or Latino, and over half are under the age of 30. Lewis said the ultimate goal was to change the face of the electorate and permanently empower the Americans who are most affected by policy decisions.

The accusation that Obama is connected to Acorn appears to be an effort to tie Obama to potentially fraudulent voter registrations. It is a false accusation. Obama was never an Acorn community organizer. Acorn never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee, although some Acorn employees did attend his training sessions on how to do voter registration. Acorn was not part of Project Vote in 1992 when Obama ran the successful voter registration drive.

The Wall Street Journal had this to say in 1992 about Project Vote: "Voting experts at the Democratic National Committee point to surging registration in several big cities, such as Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia. Most of that work has been done by the nonpartisan Project Vote, a voter participation organization based in Washington, D.C. Its director, Sandy Newman, says his group has helped to register 150,000 new voters, almost all of them black, in Pennsylvania; 110,000 in Chicago; 70,000 in Michigan; 40,000 in Ohio; and 160,000 (with the help of the New York Public Interest Research Group) in New York City. With the exception of New York, where Mr. Clinton holds a big lead, these are all battleground states, and most of these voters will cast their ballots for Mr. Clinton." [Wall Street Journal, 10/30/92]

In 1995, in his capacity as an attorney, Obama represented Acorn in a successful lawsuit ALONGSIDE the U.S. Department of Justice against the state of Illinois to force state compliance with a federal voting access law. Barnhill Attorneys Obama, Judson Miner, and Jeffrey Cummings were listed as Counsel for Acorn, with Obama listed as lead attorney, when the Illinois State Board Of Elections attempted to dismiss the U.S. District Court’s order in Acorn v. Edgar in November 1995. For his work in helping enforce the law, called “Motor Voter,” Obama received the IVI-IPO Legal Eagle Award in 1995. The payment to the Acorn affiliate was reported in campaign filings, although they had to be revised because of an error.

A more serious issue than voter registration fraud is the many battleground states that have broken federal law by purging their voter registration lists less than 90 days before an election. There is lots of evidence out there that "database matching" produces a lot of false negatives even when done legally, with people who are legitimate voters not getting "matched." This adversely affects low-income and black voters who move often. There is also an effort to keep college students from voting near campus. These legitimate voters, many newly registered, will show up at the polls only to be turned away. That is why, just last week, the US Supreme Court ruled against the Ohio GOP lawsuit that would have forced the Secretary of State to set aside all new registrations until they could be checked against the state driver’s license database. This could be fraught with problems such as if you recently moved, you would not be allowed to vote, or if you are a college student, your college address would not count. Students would have to travel back home to vote, an impossible situation for most.

My question is, why do we, as a free country, need voter registration? We should be able to show up with a driver’s license, or other state ID, which is matched to a state identification database and vote – no registration required. VOTING SHOULD BE A BIRTHRIGHT! But for this to work, of course, some states that give illegal immigrants a driver’s license would have to stop doing so.

McCain is perpetuating deceit that is damaging to our democracy because it calls into question the legitimacy of our election process. They are raising the specter of imaginary voter fraud to further their efforts to disqualify a large number of those registrations through cumbersome requirements that elections boards cannot complete by November 4 to fix a problem that does not exist.
McCain’s and the GOP’s deceit could present a real governing problem for Obama. Should Obama win, a large percentage of the country’s low-informed voters could think that he is a terrorist supporter who conspired to steal the election (a Manchurian Candidate).

And McCain claims to put country first. Yeah…right…