Sunday, March 23, 2008

Carry Ad - Obama

Barack Talks About The Differences Between He and Hillary

From what I can tell the big difference between Barack and Hillary according to him is that you have to change the problems by changing the causes instead of regulating the results. Sounds good to me. I agree with him when he says that "she doesn't believe in bottom up democracy - and if you don't believe in that then you're not gonna change Washington."



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Barack Obama and Project Vote

An effort to register over 100,000 new voters. Obama after getting out of school when he could have done much more (for himself) with his Harvard education spent time in Chicago getting voters registered and to the polls. He didn't do this with all sorts of fanfare or for a bunch of money. He did it because he believed in it. He continued further beyond just getting people to register to vote he helped call people and motivate them to actually come out and vote. He is ready to bring the message and do the work. I think it is important to remember that Barack is not all talk. He is more than a great orator as some people claim. He is the guy who has privilege and an interesting balance of not having it. He participated in his life in grass roots efforts to help people in this world. These are the things that I hear people who don't support him complain about. They complain about him not having any experience and him being all talk. I don't believe that at all. I think that the unique experience that he has over other politicians is that experience of living in both worlds. Most politicians live in a world of privilege and have their entire lives. Barack is not different accept that he has also lived in a world outside of privilege. He has taken his privilege and tossed it out the window until bed time so that he could go into the projects and be on the same level as the people. What is the benefit to that? The benefit is that he is able to see things from the point of view of the people instead of simply a politician. He speaks from the point of view of the people and that is what we like about him. We know he hears our voice because he has come to our neighborhoods when it wasn't a direct political or financial benefit and he hung out with us and told us how much he cared and that he believed we deserved to be heard. He is still saying it today and those I've spoken to who don't support him can only seem to come up with arguments that he is all talk or that they don't connect with what he says. Odd that the same things he says are things I've heard the people who claim a disconnect say when we are simply sitting around drinking coffee and talking without the benefit of an election coming up. Now all of a sudden when it is black against white and boys against girls they can't seem to see past the colors and genders to actually listen to the fact that he believes in the same things they do and the difference between he and Hillary is that he has been seen in the neighborhoods working when it wasn't benefitting him immediately or directly in that moment. Hillary shows up for sound bites and photo ops ever since I've known about her. Where are the videos on You Tube of her hanging in the hood without the media on a day when there was no election for her or someone related to her?



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Sunday, March 09, 2008

A Touching Military Story From The Past

As an example of how we should be for those of you who read or will read the post below this one I decided to post this story. This is a story about a man named Fred Hargesheimer who later became First Lt. Fred Hargesheimer who served in WWII. Hargesheimer is now 91 years old and has led a very full life that will touch your heart if you have one.
First of all, this guy clearly grew up with a proper teaching of how we should treat others, and how to survive while keeping those values. Secondly, he was clearly exposed to people after learning this lesson, who had learned the same lessons in their lives.
This man served during WWII and was a pilot flying a P-38 on a photo reconnaissance mission from his base on the main island of New Guinea tracking ship movements around Japanese occupied New Guinea 700 miles from North Eastern Australia. During that mission he was shot down by a Japanese fighter that riddled the back of his plane with bullets until the engine burst into flames and Hargesheimer knew to bail out. He pressed the ejection button but a malfunction caused by the bullets, prevented him from ejecting properly. He then had no choice but to unsnap his safety belts and attempt to push the cockpit open so that he could eject. When he did this he was immediately sucked out of the plane and into the air. This was his first lucky encounter with someone who was taught honor, maturity, values and respect growing up. The Japanese pilot who could have easily plummeted him with a few more bullets and killed him did not believe that to be an honorable way to kill someone. He could not bring himself to kill defenseless enemy fliers.
Hargsheimer then floated helplessly to the ground into another world of danger. A jungle filled with poisonous insects, wild boars, alligators, leaches and malaria filled mosquitoes, headhunters and enemy Japanese soldiers. He managed to survive in that environment and just when he was likely about to give up and let himself die alone out in the jungle to weak to go on some islanders who had seen him go down in the distance and had been looking for him since found him. At first he was afraid and then they presented him with a note from an Australian soldier who had also been rescued by them that said they could be trusted. They then took him to their camp and began to celebrate the fact that he was saved. This experience was a bit scary to him what with the stories of headhunters etc. until he heard them singing a song the tune of which he recognized.... Onward Christian Soldiers. This brought him much relief and he began to befriend them.
He learned their language and endured many things with them. He was a part of their community for some time and eventually Japanese soldiers infiltrated the camp looking for any soldiers they may have been harboring. He was led into the woods by one of the villagers and had no choice but to climb a eucalyptus tree and endure the night. While there he was snapped up by swarms of mosquitoes and contracted malaria. He was taken back into the village where he suffered the symptoms of malaria and was nursed back to health by the villagers one of whom saved his life by feeding him the only thing that seemed to stay in his system... breast milk.
He was eventually saved and taken home where he married and had children.
He convinced his wife to allow him to spend the family's vacation money on a trip back so that he could thank those who saved him. She agreed and he took the trip. He was greeted by singing villagers at the shore in a touching reunion. He stayed for weeks realizing that there were things that the villagers needed trying to help as much as possible. He went home and raised money for them and came back and built a school, he came back and forth building libraries and churches and more. Eventually his efforts made it possible for the community people to get jobs and improve their welfare and survive. They praised him and made him a chief. He went back and forth for years making his last trip last year when he was 90 years old. After doing so much for these people who had done so much for him he began to contemplate the man who had shot him out of the sky on that fateful day. Was he angry? No. He wondered why that man did not shoot him while he dangled helplessly from his parachute so he tracked the man down through searching historical records and found him. The man's name was Mitsugo Hyakutomi of Yamaguchi, Japan. He found out the man had Alzheimer's and could therefore not tell him the story of why he was not shot while floating helplessly in the parachute, but the man's wife wrote him a letter explaining that he had told her of his belief that it was dishonorable to shoot helpless people and therefore could not bring himself to shoot down helpless enemy flyers. Now this is a great story. This is a story of what life can be like with proper teachings of courage, honor, commitment, maturity and respect before becoming legal adults - without the media twisting the truth - without soldiers compromising security and safety by bragging about and collecting trophies from war. War will happen and it will always be bad for those in it, but that does not mean it has to be so bad afterward. Those of us who are veterans now understand the difference and hope for a better transition into civilian life. With proper teachings growing up we can deal with what comes in our adult lives with honor and maturity and respect - and with proper teachings growing up we can understand that the fight against negatives should come after we return from something negative and not in the middle of it when that fight can be detrimental to our survival.

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What Our Veterans Need - The Opinion of A Veteran

Because I am a military veteran as was my grandfather before me I have an interest in the military, war, patriotism and the general protection of our country. Of course the other half of me has a bit of conflict with current day soldiers as compared to those great soldiers of the past. Some things have improved and some have gotten worse. For instance now women can serve and risk their lives if they choose to do so, and there is much less in the form of sexual harassment now as compared to how it would have been for women in the service in the past. At the same time the men of the military have gotten much softer in current years as compared to the past. In the past there would have been much less of the mom fighting Congress for better treatment of her baby. I understand the plight of the mother but a soldier has to be tough and that can't happen with his mommy running behind him trying to save him from being yelled at and knocked out in boot camp while being trained. Now because the men of the war have not ever been taught to deal with their issues by their mommies or how to be a man by their daddies they are taking pictures of themselves torturing prisoners as if it is something to be published or bragged about proving they have no regard for confidentiality and should therefore have any rights to current or future secret clearances permanently removed. In addition to that you see videos of them on You Tube throwing helpless puppies off of cliffs. The list of cruelties goes on and as a result we will have more mommies fighting to soften the military. Why? Because of men who have grown up to become men only in physical nature but who lack true manhood in their behavior. My grandfather (who served in WWII) would refuse to tell stories of what he had done, what he had experienced and would refuse to teach anyone else his hand to hand combat trainings (unless they had also served in the military). This was because a part of him was a properly trained soldier who knew that the rest of the world couldn't handle the truth of war. (if it wasn't true - you wouldn't see people fighting against soldiers instead of for them in our own country) This was also in part because he was taught to be a REAL man and not brag about things that were not worthy of bragging about. The price he paid for this was not small. Yes he came home and was married and had a child and a good life, but he also had enough un-lockable truths within him to cause him to cope with alcohol. He drank himself to death in the later years of his life. Now as an adult and as a female veteran looking back at what my grandfather went through, what I went through and what people are going through today I can say that the place we need our mommies and daddies to take care of us is before and after our military time. We need support before we ever join so that we grow up knowing what privacy is about, and what safety is about and what true equality is about. We need to grow up with a deep level of respect for ourselves, our families and other human beings regardless of circumstance, gender, race etc. We need to grow up learning how to separate feelings from reality - meaning we don't always have to like what we do but sometimes we have to do it because it is our job, and just because our job has us making decisions that may not benefit everyone and in fact may hinder someone it does not mean that we have to think less of that person whom we are forced to hinder. (ie. just because you had to fire your neighbor does not mean that you cannot help him out after work, have him to dinner and play on the same baseball team as he does) When we cannot separate our emotions from our jobs it brings too much emotion into our jobs and causes all sorts of problems which may be simple annoyances in the corporate world but in the military it results in public humiliation of ourselves and others and publication of confidential dealings via the torture pictures etc. that we have seen. And it causes men to try to shut off their hearts as they toss puppies off of cliffs. If it wasn't for lacking lessons before the corporate world or the military world we wouldn't have these problems and if we did they wouldn't cause a mass public effect like war time media publications of negative acts by soldiers or negative behaviors by the thieves of Enron, Bank of America, and other companies with inhumane and negative practices. The other place we need our mommies and daddies is after the military. We as soldiers and veterans in general should be provided with more benefits after leaving the military, we should be provided with better exit training so that we can more easily go back into civilian life, and we need to be provided with exit counseling that is permanent and free to all veterans at the licenced therapist of their choice as opposed to only at the VA. We need our families not to fight for our rights in boot camp or during war but for our rights when we come back from war or when we are done with our military service. We need our families to protect us from employers who don't realize the sacrifice we've made or the qualifications we have because they are too busy looking at our ages, genders, and at the negative media about soldiers. We need our families to protect us from the media publishing all of these negative incidents that happen during war that only serve to taint America's point of view of us when we come back from serving our country. These negative things happen and they are just that - negative, but that is what happens during war. War is not preschool or church it is war. You cannot have it both ways where you thirst for violence in war movies but expect real soldiers to be fluffy little wimps who are rendered helpless by being forced to think humanely when that type of thinking can be detrimental in the middle of a war. Get over it people - it's war not playschool. Your good hearted help in the middle of our wars has only served to make things worse instead of better when we are back. What we need is a plan that will educate young mothers to teach their children proper values and lessons in maturity, honor, peace, equality etc. - a plan that will have our schools not undermining those important lessons in growing up and becoming mature - a plan that will provide much needed exit counseling, job placement, individual and family/couples counseling for military veterans and their families. Help us with that if you are interested in making this world better, making wars better, and making after wars better. You cannot expect us to treat others with respect if you can't bother to teach and provide the opportunity for your own child to do the same thing you wish people would freely give to them.

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