What Bothers Me Most About West Virginia...

I know West Virginia is over so we should get over it. Honestly I thought Obama would lose by 25-30 points anyway so I carried no illusions as to how the end result of the contest would go.

What bothered me was the level of racism and ignorance these people carried. A lot of this is Hillary's fault. She has purposely had her team running the Republican racist playbook and now there are large misconceptions that Obama is a Muslim or that it is in a White person's interest to vote white. Hell even a ton of mis-spelled "Hussein" signs made it out.

In the year 2008 you should be openly shamed and looked down upon for racist views. However Clinton's supporters felt no such shame and had no problem saying they would never vote for a Black man to TV crews. You've seen the one I posted earlier but this one is FAR more disturbing.



What's worse is that by playing this card the Clintons have once again deliberately sabotaged the Democratic Nominee's chances in November. Whites told exit pollsters and the media that if Obama was the nominee they would vote against their own interests just because McCain was White.

From ABC NEWS:

Racially motivated voting ran somewhat higher than elsewhere: Two in 10 whites said the race of the candidate was a factor in their vote, second only to Mississippi. Just 31 percent of those voters said they'd support Obama against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, fewer than in other primaries where the question's been asked.

Indeed, as noted, among all West Virginia primary voters, only 49 percent said they would support Obama vs. McCain, far fewer than elsewhere and one of many signs of antipathy toward Obama in the state.

It drives me nuts that White people could sit back and say "we need someone that represents us" as if we have never had ANY Whites in charge ever.

I mean who were these fucking guys?


In a way this makes me wish Bill Richardson were the VP. Obama also has problems with Latino voters (for similar reasons actually) and Richardson puts a lot of Southern states like New Mexico and Arizona a bit more in play.

It's disheartening to know that next week Hillary's racism machine will ramp up one more time to draw out the worst of the worst in Kentucky. We'll be having this nauseating discussion again and people knowing that the media is airing all of their comments without the critical eye they should have on this topic, will be further emboldened to show all the forms of racism on TV they can.

It's like Martin Luther King Jr. never lived and the Civil War never happened. All that we need these people to do now to show how disgusting some Americans are is don their KKK robes and burn crosses on Obama's front lawn.

It is a disgrace to modern day America that were are the most hateful, ignorant country in the world.

-Rp

Racism - The Underbelly of American Society

I found this image on a blog that appears to be anti-Obama and in fact is attempting to turn racism on its head by making the argument of "Why is it that only Whites can be racist?".

While it is true that all races can be racist towards one another and that there are lingering divides in this country it seems some people, that blogger included, are taking the wrong approach in this election season. They are embracing racism by pointing fingers and saying everyone else does it rather than universally denouncing and rejecting it.

Certainly there is inherent racism from parts of the African-American community towards Whites. We also must remember that many in the White community that have worked so hard to devalue them in society, first as slaves then as citizens without the right to vote and later as citizens who were given far less advantages than their white counterparts.

Also Whites still openly are racist towards Hispanic immigrants (legal or otherwise). It makes it very difficult to see racism coming from the other side when Whites still perform this practice so openly.

For instance look at the Confederate Flag. Every white politician that goes to South Carolina panders and agrees that the flag should be flown. Southerners write off what is rightful Black anger on the issue and claim the flag is a symbol of Southern Pride and nothing else.

Of course African Americans know better. They know that the Confederate Flag was flown as a symbol of secession from the Union mostly because the Confederate States refused to end slavery. It is a symbol of the South's unwillingness to treat Blacks as equals or even as people but rather as worthless slaves.

Even when some Whites battle for equality through protest and government there is always some member of their peers more than willing to battle against the rights of "colored people".

Certainly there have been racist minority groups but none of them had the power of a group like the KKK nor were they a part of the government in the same way during any period of time. That David Duke could actually run for office and garner national support after his KKK ties were revealed says a lot about the lack of speed in which our country has moved on civil rights and equality. He may not have won but for anybody to support him proved discouraging in how Americans saw the concept of freedom and liberty.

It's happening again. Maybe local and national news programs are ignoring it, but it's out there. Burning the embers of anger and hatred that lie beneath the surface of our country. Racism isn't shouted in the streets anymore. It's whispered in small settings amongst friends or talked about with family or emphasized in a secret voting booth.

The Obama campaign has attempted to address these issues head on. They carry no illusion that this can be solved in a single campaign cycle. But the question is, at this juncture, we as a society have not moved past this?

What makes Americans so much more stubborn or ignorant than our European counterparts? Surely racism exists in those locations as well but at a far smaller amount and it is openly discouraged.

It seemed we were making amazing progress on this issue until Ronald Reagan came into office. Then they started a "War on Drugs" which was clearly a codeword for "War on Blacks". They penalized crack smokers at three times the rate of an upscale white cocaine user. The prisons began to fill with majorities of young black men who never had a real future for themselves once getting out.

They began a three decades long defunding of the Public Education system, a system which most African Americans send their children to. They continuously cut welfare benefits (Bill Clinton and the GOP's Welfare Reform was devastating) purposely aiming to cut blacks off the rolls and claiming that they were having children for benefits and defrauding the system. They went on the attack to try to eliminate Affirmative Action.

Ronald Reagan and his minions made racism acceptable again. They didn't call it racism. The word "nigger" was never uttered. It was a different type of racism. It was now loading the terms "lazy", "freeloader", "scam artist".... they made all blacks out to be looking to game the system and steal whatever they could get their hands on from the honest hardworking white taxpayer.

The reality couldn't have been further from the truth. The real thieves were the Corporate Elite. Reagan, the Bushes and Clinton all looked out for corporate friends that kicked back their success to the President and their closest advisors. It was never citizen welfare that was the problem, it was corporate welfare... to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, that was killing our economy and hurting taxpayers.

It wasn't the black "criminals" that was a danger to America it was the White Collar criminals like Enron that put thousands of employees out of work and out of life savings or the War Profiteers that sent poor white AND black soldiers to die for their financial gain.

But if you keep repeating that it's those people different than you that are dangerous it's easier for Whites to feel a justifiable reason to be an isolationist.

For example, last year I worked out in a rich White suburb and most of my co-workers were upper middle class White suburbans. We got word that our office might be moved downtown in the city which was far more Afro-centric in ethnic makeup. My co-workers, all of which were White, began panicking and worrying that they would be mugged, their cars would be broken into or stolen, they would be raped. The hysteria was amazing.

Their department ended up staying put but I ended up working downtown. My new car was never broken into, I never witnessed a single crime and in fact I made a lot of friends from diverse backgrounds.

I push this a little further and believe this is the problem with Suburbs and Rural areas in our country as a whole. Being isolated from people on a regular basis allows you to build up false biases that are not based on reality but rather on comfortable theories that makes you feel justified in not living in the city or reaching out to people different than yourself.

It's easier to judge other ethnicity's than it is to understand them. Most people feel that their viewpoint, since it is easiest for them to understand, is the viewpoint everyone should have and if they do not then there is something wrong with them. Being isolated in areas where people are spread further apart and do not face the same hardships as neighbors of a different background that would live closer to them prevents people from truly knowing and understanding the experiences that their counterparts from different backgrounds face on an every day basis.

We as Americans have closed our minds to the plight of others because we believe too much in our own righteous views to allow for a convergence of attitudes.

'We are born here and have a right to be here... Immigrants should wait their turn or be deported.'

'Most people are straight so homosexuality is a sin and they should never marry or have children.'

'Christianity should be the official religion in this country and anybody who disagrees with our religion or God should not be elected to important offices.'

'English should be the official language since it is what most of us speak. Learn it or go home.'

These are all examples of overt ignorance towards other people's beliefs or personal cultures.

Our lack of willingness to open our minds is the primary culprit here. Can we move past this? Can we finally stop spreading racism by whispering things like "blacks only look out for blacks" and such?

It's not apparent that without new leadership that is open to changing the language of American racial discourse that we can ever make such strides. When we had leadership willing to work for change, change happened. When we were granted the rule of the puppets of White Corporate Elite, Blacks were subjugated to being nothing more than criminals or athletes in society.

This article from MSNBC in particular disturbed me most (emphasis added):

Racism alarms Obama's backers
Candidate's foot soldiers encounter name-calling, vandalism, bomb threats

-snip-

For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

-snip-

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"

Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across "a lot of racism" when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: "White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people."

What kind of nation are we that this kind of behavior is still prevalent even after all of our struggles? Was not a war that nearly split the nation enough? Was not the civil rights battles that saw losses of important leaders and jailing of thousands of citizens enough? Wasn't the passage of over 40 years enough for us to finally get it?

What is liberty and justice for all if all is but a meaningless term shadowed to mean "a few"?

Our country deserves better. Our fellow man deserves better. Our children deserve better.

Equality for all or equality for none.

-Rp

As Hillary fights for nothing in West Virginia, her supporters' true colors come out...

Amy Poehler's spoof this past Saturday on SNL caught a lot of heat from Hillary supporters. In it Poehler who has played Hillary this campaign season declared herself a sore loser, said her supporters were racist and that she had no ethical standards.

It seemed to be the racist comment that really got stuck in the heads of the Hillary Supporters as the most offensive line. The problem is that her campaign has basically been running on desperation so long now that they might as well have put "VOTE WHITE" on her campaign signs.

Don't believe me?

Look at how the xenophobia ramps up when her supporters use Republican tactics to label him a "muslim" by tossing his middle name in there. Hillary basically perpetuated that myth with the infamous, "as far as I know" line which everyone knew to be bullshit.

That once again is a reminder of the third tenet of Poehler's satire, that Hillary has no ethical standards and will say anything to get elected.

Mathematically she has no chance. At this point she's just adding to the campaign debt she hopes the Obama campaign will pay off for her and she's only running out of spite to hurt Obama and further her chances for a 2012 bid. Although if Obama loses I am fairly certain that the spin Clinton wants, "he wasn't strong enough to beat McCain" will not trump the spin that "Obama was weakened because of how Hillary played dirty". Democrats will renounce her next bid well before Iowa, if she even gets that far.

There is only one place Hillary is winning, in her own head (oh and on that insane delusional fantasy site hillaryis44.org).

Want more proof that her VOTE WHITE campaign is working? Watch this news clip from West Virginia.



Then there was this from Bill Clinton:

"Hillary is in this race because of people like you and places like this and no matter what they say," Clinton said. "And no matter how much fun they make of your support of her and the fact that working people all over America have stuck with her, she thinks you're as smart as they are. She thinks you've got as much right to have your say as anybody else. And, you know, they make a lot of fun of me because I like to campaign in places like this, they say I have been exiled to rural America, as if that was a problem."

They try to pretend that because they are white that somehow makes them the every-man. They play down to people and try to do what Bush and Rove did which was to lie and act like you were a simpleton who can relate to them on their level and have a beer with them. Instead of telling them the truth... the truth being that instead of giving a fuck about someone having a beer with you, you need to have a leader who is smarter than you and as smart as can be to understand more of the world than you or your friends do.

You need to have a President who can figure things out like our economy and gas prices and the environment and yes how to bring our troops home safely. You need a smart president who can get us the health care we need and who can make peace with our neighbors and for Christ's sakes can read and understand intelligence briefings to protect us from attacks.

We need to look rural, country, uneducated, yes White voters in the eye and say... look, I care about you but I care about all of us and we need to have someone who is incredibly intelligent in there to fix things. A common guy just can't do it with how bad Bush has fucked up.

Nobody wants to do that because it implies that a certain part of the electorate are dumb. But it can be done in a way that is not as harsh and spells it out. Do we want four more years of disasterous gut instincts and same wrong headed decisions or do we want four years of turning this thing around?

Vote with your head not your gut.

Oh and stop being fucking racist. It's the 21st century damn it! If Adams and Jefferson had had their way slaves would have been given freedom in the Declaration of Independence. If they can figure it out in 1776 then some Americans are really too slow for words.

If we vote this November and Obama loses because he is black, than we should be shamed by every other country in the world as a complete and utter embarrassment and unworthy of the liberty our forefathers wrote of and fought for. Since we ourselves have no idea what the meaning of the word is if we're still so fucking ignorant as to vote for someone not based on their positions and principles but rather the color of their skin.

Shame on any person who votes based on skin color. May you get the misery you deserve from your vote.

-Rp

Which is the bigger Clinton Gaffe?

In a matter of 24 hours the Clintons both made complete asses of themselves in Pennsylvania and Indiana. It's not hard when the basic premise of your campaign is a lie. After all a First Lady is not more experienced than someone who was in the State Senate and their actual Senate experience is close enough to be negligible at best.

Think of it this way, if Nancy Reagan or Laura Bush went from being first ladies and got into the Senate, served just over a single term and decided to run for President, would they be qualified? If you make the argument that Hillary was more involved in her husband's presidency than they were in theirs, why does her schedule as First Lady not indicate such? It seems she was given the Healthcare issue to handle and after she dropped the ball she presumed the role of a regular First Lady.

One thing she did do as First Lady though was support NAFTA. These free trade agreements have hurt America greatly in outsourcing good jobs, strengthening the economies of other countries (see the growth of China and India among others) and weakening our own economic stability.

Bush took the Clinton's theme of free trade and put it on steroids by expanding free trade to any place that would sign a pact. In the meanwhile millions of good paying factory and production jobs disappeared. However Bush kept artificially inflating the unemployment numbers by saying tons of jobs were created while refusing to indicate that most of these jobs were seasonal, through temp agencies, or just low end jobs. Workers who worked at a factory and made $20+ an hour were now working 2-3 jobs at $6-8 an hour. Of course that made it appear like three jobs were filled rather than one. And of course nobody counts the depressed who stop claiming unemployment or have stopped looking for work because of the weak market.

So when Mark Penn, Clinton's PR guy with a mostly Republican tied firm, decided to go and talk to Columbia about a free trade agreement... even though his candidate is losing and primed to lose the Democratic Nomination it of course caused a little uproar in Pennsylvania where they have been hit hard by such free trade agreements (well not too much uproar after all the Clintons convinced the media to become Obama attack dogs and they largely have been off the hook for some time).

He resigned from his position (although still receives the boatloads of money the idiot Clintons are paying him) but the scandal shouldn't go away so quickly. Sure, the Clintons would have you believe that this was independent of the campaign but of course as is the case with everything in her Rovian Campaign, dig a little and you get better answers...

Like GAFFE #1.

Clinton laughs off Colombia questions

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (CNN) – Hillary Clinton used her trademark laugh Thursday to deflect a question about the $800,000 her husband earned in 2005 giving speeches for a Bogota-based group that supports the Colombia free trade agreement — the same trade deal she currently opposes.

Asked by CNN if those earnings represented a conflict of interest given that she has dipped into her family's pocketbook to pay campaign bills, Clinton threw up her hands and laughed loudly for several seconds.

"How many angels dance on the head of the pin?," she responded, continuing to giggle. "I have really, uh, nothing to … I mean, how do you answer that?"

The New York senator explained there are different sides to the argument over trade, and re-emphasized her own opposition to the trade deal, assailing the Colombian government's "outrageous" record of "targeting labor leaders."

"I am against the Colombia free trade deal," she said. "It doesn't matter who talks to me. It doesn't matter any circumstances. I have been against it. I am against it. I will be against it absent the kind of changes in behavior that I have been calling for from the Colombian government."

Earlier in the press conference, describing her husband's advocacy for the trade deal, Clinton said: "Everyone is free to express their opinion."

I'll add this to provide more of that "Ready from Day One" leadership that means you're not ready to answer tough questions from day one:



So that brings us to the other Clinton gaffe of the day. Bill Clinton comes off as less and less Presidential now that he's campaigning so negatively for Hillary. The Bill we see these days is an angry, belligerent old man who is afraid that the status quo that he now embraces but once fought against, will lose out of his wife isn't in charge of it.

That's truly a shame.

In Bill's quest to regain power (at least for his wife) he has pretty much killed any credibility to his silly claim that he was the first "black president". After all a Black President wouldn't invoke Jesse Jackson as an insult to downplay a black candidate's chances.

And a black president wouldn't say this about a black candidate. GAFFE #2:

"Next, We'll See Him Run an Ad Saying: Vote For Me, I Don't Steal Cars."


Here's the video so you can see for youself:



Even if it was in response to an anti-oil company ad Obama ran it is in ridiculously poor taste.

Of course a black president would also be smart enough not to sign a Republican Welfare Reform Bill that attacked the poor for needing assistance at the same time as corporate welfare and corporate overseas tax shelters are okay.

But yet Bill Clinton had no problem with that either.



I guess he's a rich white old guy after all. And a foolish one at that.

-Rp

All he has is a speech.

I have on several occasions posted great speeches in American history including some from Kennedy and Eisenhower. I had planned on posting the infamous MLK "I Have a Dream" speech as well.

Barack Obama made a great speech today that while current already stands up to the best campaign speeches ever made and addresses one of the most difficult topics that any American Presidential Candidate has ever addressed prior to being elected in such a position.

Regardless of your take on the significance of the speech (and there were haters on TV today like Tucker Carlson, Dan Abrams, Joe Watkins and yes Rush Limbaugh who was ridiculous about it) the vast majority of pundits and writers immediately proclaimed how important and how well delivered the speech was.

Allow me to use his speech to expand the context to a larger topic.

We constantly are bombarded with the whole "post-9/11 world" commentary when we try to present hope as an option. It is an easy response to somehow explain why we must be perpetual cynics and militarily aggressive towards friend and foe from now on.

It is an obvious oversimplication Americans make because in facing reality we must face our own roles in the motivation for an attack on America. If we say to ourselves, "they hate us for our freedoms" that sounds a lot simpler than saying, "they hate us because we have meddled with their freedoms".

In continuing our ignorance towards our role in negative events we never seem to change the course of the discourse and thus we create divisions in America. Divisions that shall never heal because over time those pre-dispositions that were created based on emotional response and simplicity over fact have hardened into false concrete patriotism. Patriotism where America is never questioned and anyone who dare to delve into such a difficult to accept topic as the role of American interventionism are labeled traitors, treasonous, part of the 'Blame America First' crowd.

Our inside questioning of our role in our problems is but a tiny microcosm of the American attitude towards larger problems.

Race is one of these larger problems. Concrete divisions have formed from over 200 years of verbal, mental, emotional and very physical conflicts on the role of race in our culture.

Just as we would like to use a positive light and give nothing but blanket support to America in justifying all of her actions, we want there to be a positive light in terms of racial relations in America. Unfortunately our best wishes that racism would just go away haven't come true due to our own cemented attitudes. Here are some generalizations, while not completely true, that have helped create negative perceptions amongst the different groups.

For a lot of White America, blacks are gaming the system. Welfare was a scam in which black women would just have child after child to collect more free money and benefits from the government. Affirmative Action was set up to give undeserving blacks jobs that more qualified Whites deserved. Blacks statistically were more likely to be in prison than Whites so they are all rap listening, gang member thug criminals who deserve their fates. And when reparations were brought up it was all a scam to steal even more money from the hard working whites (in contrast to lazy blacks).

Not to mention Whites feel threatened by the inevitability of their own soon-to-be minority status due to the rise of population of hispanics in America (which explains such negativity towards immigration but this is a different issue altogether).

There's a ton of generalization in these paragraphs. Unfair stereotyping is part of how America works.

For Black America the system is set up to keep them down. Their ancestors were brought here as slaves, raped and tortured in their own right and they had to fight for another 100 years after the Civil War just to reach a modicum of racial equality. Whites want to keep blacks poor and white congressmen target social programs that would most help poor blacks when they need it most. Their schools are given less money and the inner city is allowed to rot while all the development projects are set up for the White Suburbs.

Hurricane Katrina had a direct impact on a large black community and it was clear that Bush and other White politicans manipulated the system to take public housing that was perfectly fine from Blacks to give to big business friends. All the while poisoned, toxic FEMA trailers were given to those displaced Blacks. A White police force and justice system works against blacks (Rodney King, etc) while it protects rich White folk. One only need to look at the sentences of crack users versus the much higher cost cocaine equivalent.

There are a lot of truths and untruths in both paragraphs. Either way these are attitudes cemented by years of arguing and mistrust. Simplified stereotyping is easier to do than addressing the difficulties of the situation.

So many times it is easier to brush off the opinion of those who oppose your own than to face your own factual shortcomings.

It is the American ego that believes we must never be wrong and never admit defeat. It is this reason that our history books are whitewashed to leave out American-made atrocities because we fear our children will not see America under the same blinded patriotism that comforts us as adults in the face of very real earned criticisms from native and foreign sources.

That same ego that allows George W. Bush to refuse to admit any mistakes when countless have been made under his watch or that allows Hillary Clinton to feel vindicated by not admitting the mistake of nor apologizing for her vote to authorize war in Iraq.

No matter the ideology, no matter the race, no matter the gender, no matter the topic the one American experience we all share is one where we have not faced our greatest challenge today.

That challenge, examining our own attitudes.

Whether it is our attitude towards how we handle foreign policy and if we can, like JFK, speak to those who oppose us with an open mind and empathy for their positions or it is our attitude towards people different from ourselves that we encounter on a daily basis be it different gender, race or sexual orientation, we have to begin to take a deeper examination of ourselves if we want to change for the better and make progress for the future.

And that is what this is all about. Future generations as well as our own. Do we want our children to continue to have division over gender or race or sexual orientation? Do we want them to pit one religion against another even in the face of uncertainty over the legitimacy of any of them? Do we want to teach our children intolerance of opinions differing from our own so that they cannot understand or deal with people of different cultures that disagree or clash with our own?

For many, many centuries in history such ignorance or blatant dismissal of the beliefs or opinions of others has created clashes of civilizations which has cost millions of people their lives. Dating back to the Roman Empire, through the Crusades, through the Civil War and even up to Hitler and beyond we have long been lacking in a serious understanding of our differences and confronting these differences in a calm, constructive manner that can draw a peaceful coexistence and a consensus amongst the parties.

This is in essence the specific idealism that drives liberals and progressives.

It is not an over-optimistic view or a pie in the sky dream, it is an easily achieved reality in which all it takes is the judgment to listen and take account of all the differing views on every issue.

Nobody believes that this is the end-all, be-all to conflict. That the whole world would be solved by this simple solution. Again that's a simplification that the cynical or warmongers choose to make to keep you from credibly making such a peaceful argument to the people.

If it were that simple there wouldn't have been broken treaties in the past and there would have never have been war. Many times in history there have been summits where the parties involved sat down and attempted to reach accord.

The difference is that the motivation in reaching such an accord must be pure. If you're sitting down to game your peers for what you can get out of them or are looking for lip service and nothing more than your path is set already and you know the future result of breaking the agreement.

When I listen to Barack Obama I hear this kind of judgment. The kind of open mind that can sway the pessimistic and make the real progressive changes that affect the attitudes of foreign leaders and foreign citizens towards us.

And ultimately I come back to the reason for Obama's speech. The fact that he is willing to take political risk to open up such a deep wound in America and discuss this from all points of view points to the fact that he will have such courage to discuss similar hard headed differences of opinions we have had with many of our rival nations.

Race is our great divide. Race relations have improved quite a bit over the past 50 years but there is still deep resentment and a lot of cemented attitudes based on stereotypes, innuendo and emotional reasoning. We use those attitudes to openly discriminate against one another and because of our self-justified reasoning for these beliefs, most of us don't even realize we are doing it. Without a doubt though, we are.

We have been waiting for someone to bring both sides together to open this topic up for discussion. The discussion can create more depth in our understanding of one another and actually could begin to bring about a stronger trust and accord between blacks and whites.

Will this change overnight? Nobody including Obama believes it will. But it's finally a step in the right direction.

If we elect Obama this November, I believe we will be making that step in the right direction. He won't eradicate anti-American sentiment overnight. The damage Bush has done to our image in the Middle East and in the World may take generations to overcome. But he can take the deep divisions between us and our enemies and bring them out in the open. He can use an open mind, an attentive ear and solid judgment to come to agreements that bring us closer to accord with those who have viewed us as evil or the enemy.

In doing so we will have saved a lot of young soldiers their lives. Saved a lot of Middle Eastern citizens theirs. And hopefully put a lot of bomb manufacturers out of business.

All it takes is an open mind and judgment. It's no easy feat but it seems finally we have the candidate who has the courage to take on difficult topics and broach them in a way that is fair-minded and open.

This is real change.

Let's stop talking about some comments by a minister and start talking about what truly matters. Change in every aspect of America.

Obama is that change.

-Rp

Here's the speech.