HUH!?!?!?! What am I missing? Oh right, the myth that Republicans will keep us safer (COUGH)…

Has this nation gone completely mad!?! Have political correctness and hypocrisy reached such lofty levels of dissociation with reality?

Thankfully, General Clark refused to apologize for his statement on MSNBC’s "Verdict." But I was rather disheartened that the Obama campaign believed there was something to apologize for.

Here’s just one example: According to a friend in a recent email, “I was in the car most of the day and listened to Kim Komando and some NPR, but Prairie Home Companion is still a bit too corny for me so I went to right wing radio to see how they are attacking. They are still in lock step that we must drill for oil everywhere and the democrat caribou huggers and Florida beach selfish idiots are responsible for the high gas prices which [sic] are wrecking our economy. That implies that the crisis is of supply and demand yet I see no gas lines anywhere which tells me that the problem is deregulation of the futures markets and speculators. Still this is the right wing mantra since they just have no spaghetti that sticks against Obama.”

Before I became involved with politics and the political blogosphere, I spent a lot of time studying metaphysics and various religious belief systems in an attempt to learn more about who we are and the nature of our true potential. In the process I reaffirmed for myself what metaphysics has long known, that everything is energy, essentially slowed down to create matter and the physical reality we identify with and take for granted. Thoughts are energy, and the circumstances we create in our lives reflect those thoughts most often dwelled upon.

This being said, why do we so often feel powerless to have any real affect in the larger world, and continually sense that we don’t really count or make a difference? This feeling is especially acute in the arena of politics and government. During an election, and especially after one, our ability to influence change appears to rapidly diminish. Having minds that are often noisy and scattered, we habitually remain blithely unaware of just how very potent our thoughts really are, and unmindful of our power to influence events.

Talk vb 1 : to deliver or express in speech : UTTER 2 : to make the subject of conversation or discourse : DISCUSS (~business) 3 : to influence, affect, or cause by talking (~ into agreeing) 4 : to use (a language) for conversing or communicating : SPEAK ~ vi 1 a : to express or exchange ideas by means of spoken words b : to convey information or communicate in any way (as with signs or sounds) 2 : to use speech : SPEAK…

Do talk and appeasement mean the same thing? Obviously not! In actuality, they are not even close in meaning, yet the political dialogue of the last few days has been saturated with some people attempting to equate them for us dummies. Gratefully, these few have been called on it, and with great umbrage!

Finally the time rapidly approaches to address the real question, namely, is America ready, willing, and able to vote for a Black male as President of the United States? An election process beginning as the search to pick the most qualified candidate for president must inevitably end by testing the climate of racism in America. Ironically, the Democratic theme during the primaries as well as the upcoming national elections will be the necessity of change, an obvious approach after seven long and seriously flawed years of the Bush Administration and an enabling Congress. Any Democratic candidate would be running on a platform of change. Ironically, Barack Obama represents a whole lot more than mere political change. He is a Black man in a nation that historically and presently continues to be a hot bed of racism and discrimination. America, ready or not, has reached a critical nexus point in its history, and racism can no longer remain on the back burner.

For everything about America that is great, as we enter the 21st century it is a nation still divided by prejudice, bigotry, hatred, and discrimination, all triggered by a mindset which allows people to deny their own insecurities and fear in order to justify a need to find someone to feel better than.

Though greed and the thirst for power (so often driven by that same insecurity) have always been part of the equation, it’s disturbing that a philosophy such as, “it’s okay to screw others as long as there is a good chance you can get away with it,” basically an acceptance of corruption, has become so prevalent in present day society. The corporate mentality of bottom line profit economics and people be damned has certainly played a huge role in encouraging such thinking. Greatness must be earned on a continual basis; it's not just a label to stick on a lapel, like a flag pin.

Notably, there was no mention of the white communities’ resistance to such change in many places. Professor Ghica states, “We all remember the “School busing;” What a failure that was with the black community adamant against its implementation.” What’s missing is the fact that in many cities across the nation, it was quite often the white community that protested school busing.

It’s mainly been the right wing media attempting to turn his statements into something else – ranting in anger before a congregation, or crossing to the other side of a street out of fear, are only different faces of the same coin. Perhaps the Post agrees with remarks by conservative pundit, Pat Buchanan who referred to Obama’s statement while on MSNBC on March 21, by saying, “it ghettoizes him, takes him back to his base.” For all the Post’s admirable attempts to print opinions from all sides of the political spectrum, it still remains far to the right itself, often employing right wing spin to make its case, one often molded to fit its own bias.

Did we honestly expect to get through an election cycle that has an African-American male running for President without the issue of race surfacing sooner or later? And is it not better to have it come out now, while we are still eight months out from the national election? That many are shocked, or say they are, both by some of Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s statements, and Obama’s post-Wright speech are either not really paying attention to life on the planet and in their nation, or they are simply disingenuous.

Just as I was beginning to suppress the gag reflex at the sight and sound of George Bush, along comes a new aggressive, insulting, “fighter,” Hillary Clinton, someone I had always liked, who is now making me cringe while doing her best Karl Rove impersonation. Any phone call she might answer at 3:00 AM in the morning, brings up the image of “bait and switch” used car salesman – not a fighter, but a slick-meister, or political doppelganger.

It’s been a shocking decade or so of politics. Just as the sun is hopefully setting on the absolutely worse Administration in American history, and when hope is high that an era of Republican leadership, with all its despicable political games, corruption, and ineptitude might finally come to an end, and that finally the Democrats will have a chance to change things for the better, along comes a person who employs the same dirty politics, and seems equally focused on gaining power by any means possible.

As I look back at the very short history of so-called “civilized” mankind, I observe that history and mythology are replete with archetypical heroes, many or most whom were warriors, and again, most often in the military sense of the word – soldiers, battlefield commanders, and leaders. This was often back in the days when such leaders actually stood at the head of their armies and navies, and didn’t just sit in an office thousands of miles away and send others to do their fighting for them.

One must take it on trust that many religious extremists are conservative, only because they say they are. I don’t agree it’s a given that someone who is very religious is by nature conservative. It’s not my opinion that traditional values of any sort automatically qualify as being conservative. Yet even so, those on the religious right don’t seem to require anything from their politicians other than that they talk about religion a lot, as if that in itself means much of anything in general, nonetheless confirms their conservatism.

The only real issue is that humankind can only exist on this planet in a very narrow range of conditions, and the planet is quite capable of altering those conditions in a relatively short time when stressed!

The consequences of not getting this potential crisis, in the event it is real, are too irrevocably horrible to contemplate, and that is why everyone should be paying close attention! If global warming turns out not to be a threat (and most reputable scientists agree it is), the worst we might do is clean up the planet. If it is real, we as a species are toast! One doesn’t have to be a scientist to grasp the ramifications.

There are those who believe gradual warming won’t be so bad (great for that sun tan, and summer vacations in northern latitudes), and others have noticed that some places are actually cooler than normal. Getting sidetracked by local anomalies, instead of focusing on the true long-term trend, is simply a form of denial concerning the eventual consequences.