As President Obama visits the Middle East, there is a heightened alarm for his safety.  True, militants in that area of the world call for special protection.  But extreme self-centered people or warped moralists exist worldwide, including the U.S. 

First, Barack Obama conducts his daily, regular life more as a normal guy than past presidents who took on inflated or imperial lifestyles.  This means a visit to a fast food or modest restaurant exposes him to great danger.  He will be protected more in the Middle East, but the nature of the man is out among the people.

Second, the proliferation of guns worldwide puts a U.S. president near such weapons at any time.  Unfortunately, it is the crazy American love for guns that results in American gun manufacturers flooding the world with weaponry.  We in the U.S. should be ashamed.  Similarly, U.S. militarism has resulted in weaponry made available, new or discarded by the military, for any group or individual.  Too often, it is American-made weaponry that supplies the terrorists.

Thirdly, all religions give birth to extremists, twisted moralists, ego-crazy activists, fundamentalists, etc.  We only have to look to what recent "Christian" terrorists have done.  A physician is gunned to death inside a church in Wichita, Kansas.  Rush Limbaugh's rantings almost invite someone to take a shot at President Obama.  Right-wingers continue to lambast Obama, some of it inspired by bigotry, some by trying to take political advantage of a contrived issue, some of it twisted moralizing about Obama's faith.

The world needs a living President Obama.  He gives every evidence of being a very special leader.  We do not need another martyred president like Abraham Lincoln or John F. Kennedy.

And in 1991 Clarence Thomas was put forth by a Republican president as a minority Supreme Court judge   to garner black support by conservatives (never mind that Thomas sold his soul to the right-wing).

And Ginsberg and O'Connor were nominated, one by a Repubican and one by a Democrat President,  to have women on the Supreme Court who supposedly understood women's issues (and to hopefully gain female support for the respective party).

And so it has gone from the 20th century to today, as nominees were put forth for the Court who understood especially certain issues related to gender, race, etc. ... with lots of political hopes thrown in.

But wait!  In 2009 we can't do any of this for a Latina nominee!  Heaven's sake, Sonia Sottomayor expressed words about insights a minority woman with an underprivileged background might have.  "Decent" right-wingers are "protecting" the average American from insight.  We are told we need neutral judges on the Court . . . Like Scalia?  Like Thomas?  Huh?

C'mon, let's get real.  Sottomayor brings to the high bench better credentials than any of the current Supreme Court justices had when they were nominated.

Republicans: get over your continued narrowness and overwhelming political posturing!

Right-wingers: haven't you already done enough to capsize the ship of state with your greed?

"The real fight today is against inhuman, relentless exercise of capitalistic power. . .The present struggle in which we are engaged is for social and industrial justice." -Justice Louis D. Brandeis

"We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." -Justice Louis D. Brandeis

"Many people consider the things which government does for them to be social progress, but they consider the things government does for others as socialism." -Chief Justice Earl Warren

"Most middle-class whites have no idea what it feels like to be subjected to police who are routinely suspicious, rude, belligerant, and brutal." -Dr. Benjamin Spock

Let's take the three hypocrites who now lead the Republican Pary one by one.  Sarah Palin is left out because the GOP decision-makers have decided to keep her out of the major spotlights because she tends to put her foot in her mouth regularly (not to mention the chauvanism of the Republican Pary).    So, let us review some things about each of the three acknowledged right-wing leaders...[remember, that the most damning thing about them is their phony high moral countenenance]...

Rush Limbaugh.  His criticism of the liberals and his so-called adherence to the law was certainly challenged when he tried to enter the United States from Mexico with illegal drugs in his possession.  Oops.  Of course his irresponsible statements hoping the President of the United States fails, no matter what the circumstances or consequences, should once and for all make a mockery of everything he says.  But it hasn't, and he remains a stalwart in Republican circles.  It is difficult for an old rake to turn over a new leaf.

Dick Cheney.  Do I really have to go into detail about this slithery monster?  He sold out the nation's future energy policies in secret meetings with energy CEOs, some of whom have already been indicted and found guilty.  He manipulated billions of dollars being spent on his war in Iraq so that it went to his former employer Hallliburton (who gave him a fabulous going-away bonus).  He lied and lied and lied and lied and lied to the American people.   He is at least partly responsible for the disasterous  foreign policies in the Bush years, including the illegal war in Iraq.   His continuous criticism of gays, though he has a gay daughter, is certainly an embarrassment for normal fathers ...but not for this lying hypocrite.

Newt Gingrich.  He led the parade to impeach Bill Clinton for being intimate with a young worker in the White House.  Problem is, Mr. Gingrich himself was also fooling around with young 'uns when he was Speaker of the House.  Not only that, but he had the total lack of propriety to tell his then-wife, who was in the hospital having just been diagnosed with cancer, that he was leaving her.  When it comes to scum, he personifies it.  Ironicially, the guy in the House (Henry Hyde) who led the impeachment trial admitted that he was an adulterer in his forties, but that he termed a "youthful dalliance."  Further irony, when the immoral escapades of Newt became known to all, he stepped down from being Speaker of the House, and the guy whom the Republicans chose to replace him had to withdraw when it was found that he also was an adulterer. 

Next?

"We have among us a class of mammon worshippers, whose one test of conservation or radicalism is the attitude one takes with respect to accumulated wealth.  Whatever tends to preserve the wealth of the wealthy is called conservatism, and whatever favors anything else, no matter what, they call socialism." -Richard T. Ely

NOTICE!!!: Please keep your comments relative to the specifics of my blog.  I am ashamed of the personal attacks on people who comment below.  Please, let's keep this commentary open for free expressions related to my blog.  If you have a political opinion in general, go elsewhere to express it and/or get your own blog.  Thank you.

Watching President Barack Obama give a speech and respond to questions from the audience in Green Bay, Wisconsin was electrifying.  His comfort zone with the office is truly amazing.  He has wit, insight, intellect, background, stats, style, and relates to people from all walks of life.  And his humor is always present.  He is very special.  I  hope enough people give him a chance to right the ship of state before judging him.  He has inherited a horrible legacy from the past several presidents.  There was a steep nosedive haunting the office of President when he took office just a short while ago. 

Tackling all these delayed issues head-on takes guts, folks.  It would be easier to do what recent past presidents have done and simply pass the ever-growing problems on to the next president.  He has chosen not to do that.  We shall all have to make sacrifices if we are going to get out of this abyss in domestic and foreign policy matters.

As he offers his own plans in health care, economics, war, budgets, policy, etc., he always allows the door to be open a little and asks his opponents to come forward with a different plan that may be better.   All this change is a shock to the system in the U.S.  We have waited a long, long time for a man of this quality to fill the Office of President of the United States.

President Obama, as an American, I step forward in your support.  Let's all bring some badly-needed hope to the table.

After oh, so many years of Tommy Thompson giving away the store to big corporate interests, what we have now is giving it away to a different set of interests.  Bringing a majority into the Wisconsin legislature, the Democrats have had a marvelous opportunity to save the state from the horrors of Tommy Thompson's giveaways, and to re-establish the stable, responsible government of past Democratic majorities.  Instead they dropped the ball badly, and sold out to special interests and parochial segments of the state.

Governor Doyle is worse than no help.  Wisconsin voters elected the wrong Democrat.

What we need are brave, intelligent, and honest Democrats and Republicans to serve Wisconsin.  Instead we have weak, unintelligent, self-serving, and pitiful "leaders" in Madison.   Corporations and big business even buys the Wisconsin Supreme Court today.   Straightening past sell-outs at the the national and state levels will require special talent and even altruism.  Altruism is now anathema in politics.  Elected officials today are low-level and selfish.  Altruism has always been uncomfortable for elected officials, but now it seems like a distant dream that may have occured in the long ago.  We may have a man who knows and follows some altruistic principles in Barack Obama, but we do not have it in the Democrats in the legislature nor in Governor Doyle. 

Shame on them, and shame on us, the voters!

"There are always too many Democratic congressmen, and too many Republican congressmen, and never enough U.S. congressmen." -Laurence J. Peter

"There are some politicians who, if their constituents were cannibals, would promise them missionaries for dinner." -H.L. Mencken

We go along in life, holding fast to those things that support our belief system, rarely questioning what we are told that way.  As a result, whether left-wing or right-wing, we become robots.  If you challenge or question those hard-wired belief systems, people will come up with some cockamamie comment to tell you why you are wrong.  Common among such cranks are the Bible-totters who do not question anything in that heavily changed and manipulated book through the years.  And the FOX News loyalists who actually believe what they see and hear there as truth.  Or the Constitutional freaks who have no idea what is meant in the Bill of Rights or individual rights and equality.  Some pins in their balloons...

The "Windy City" of Chicago is NOT called that because of the wind.  It is because of long speeches in the railroad city that held many conventions in the 19th century.  The Chicago Tribune dubbed it.

Our inefficient and ineffective healthcare system is the costliest in the industrialized world, yet we rank very low in outcomes.  Only the U.S. government can change the greedy profits of drug and insurance corporations, to say nothing of too many physicians who play the game for money.

Many hospitals, built on charitable donations from religious or service organizations, have been taken over by greedy entrepreneurs who are bleeding every last nickel out of them, and building hospitals even where there is no shortage.  The greed machine rules healthcare in America, and this is the only country where people go bankrupt because of medical bills, even with insurance.  The govt. is badly needed.  There is no logical way anyone can defend the healthcare system we now have in the U.S.

Of the thousands and thousands of physicians, hospitals, clinics, etc., some defenders of the system point to the Mayo Clinic or Boulder, Colorado as examples of low-cost healthcare.  Out of all those doctors, hospitals, and clinics, they can point to only a handful?  Atrocious.  Barbaric.

A recent study once again found that people who go to church regularly are more apt to support the use of torture by the government.  If you cannot see what this means, then I leave it to the enlightened.  We have plenty of acts of terror by "Christians" regularly in the U.S.  Again, if you have to have this pointed out to you, you are living in la-la land.

One of the slickest lies presented by these "believers" is that where the death penalty was instituted, those states had a drop in crime.  What is not told you is those states without the death penalty had a greater drop in the crime rate.  Summary: the crime rate has gone down in recent years, regardless of the death penalty, advocate gun laws, etc.  Distortions like this are lies, but people believe them.

Adam was the first man?  The name Adam is derived from earlier Semite language that meant "man" in the general sense.  It was a story to give a then-thought-to-be plausible explanation for the history of mankind.  Adam was not a name, it was originally meant as a symbol or representation.  Of course these early stories and myths were passed on in oral tradition, much like the mythology of aboriginal explanations and stories.  Many of the earliest Torah stories are also found elsewhere, including among tribes in the Arabian Peninsula.

Both JFK and Reagan were far more ill than reported during their last years in the White House.  Reagan, especially, was very ill and did not have control of his thought-process.  So, imagine who was in control.  There is a very hideous cast of characters in that administration who had major in-put when Reagan no longer held forth.  The trading of arms with Iran was, as low as the U.S. gets, to raise secret money for the Contras who were attacking an elected government in Nicaragua.   The Reagan and Bush years found a torrent of un-democratic endeavors by the American administration.  Sick.  Debasing.  Yet you believed.

No right-winger, Bible-thumper, or greedy capitalist is going to believe the above or will simply state the old delusions and lies and distortions.  But maybe, just maybe, it will cause them to dust off some brain cells and start thinking.

The celebration of Father's Day takes on many different styles, many different emphases.  This year we have a special example in that our President has presented us with a wonderful example.  While holding the most important elected position in the world, Barack Obama has taken the time for his family.  He has remained as a human being, with normal activities, and being an American father as much as is possible carrying his position and responsibilities.  No one can doubt that a terrible burden was unloaded on him when he took office, more than presidents usually have to deal with and confront. 

Without missing a heartbeat, President Obama took on the overwhelming burden left behind by a series of horrible presidents.  He met the challenge head-on.  He fit into the office of President of the United States in remarkably smooth transition.  We have a President in whom we can be very proud, and it is especially important to realize this on Father's Day.  His interactions with his wife and girls is exemplary.

On this June, 2009, we can proudly lift our heads as Americans again, celebrate the wonderful father in the White House, and be proud of the way our nation is finally being led with honesty and sensitivity.

Happy Father's Day to President Barack Obama and all American fathers!

It is good that we have finally come to recognize and salute the heroes of World War II.  It is good that we have commemorated the sacrifices made by the military men and women in Vietnam, and to build a monument and traveling monument to them.  We have not done as much for the men and women who stood in for all of us in the Korean War.  We certainly owe all these brave men and women a tremendous debt of gratitude.  We should do everything possible to acknowledge and express appreciation to the men and women who represented the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

However there is a large number of men who have become the unrecognized, unreported, undocumented, and erased from our history.  I am refering to the conscientious objectors who number in the many thousands from all of our wars, past and present.  True, some did not report for their own fear or their own personal reasons.  We have split hairs about all this and divided our nation over them.  But in recent years, we have simply swept them under the rug.

Especially during the Vietnam War, there were those who did not report for military duty because they felt that war was wrong.  To a great degree, they were right.  We had no business to "invade" a nation that we promised open and free elections.  As the elections were getting put in place, it became clear that Ho Chi Minh, a communist leader, would easily win an election in the combined north and south.  We sent in huge numbers of military men and women, tremendous amounts of military equipment, and supported some very terrible South Vietnam leaders.  In the end over 50,000 Americans were killed in Vietnam.  Those who saw that war as un-American, un-democratic, and loaded with lies from our own politicians and military leaders, acted in a way they thought right.   President Kennedy, and to a greater extent, President Johnson poured all this manpower and these supplies into a hopeless cause.  Nixon and Kissinger only added to this build-up and they lied more than anyone about the Vietnam War ...and "peace."

What do we do with the men who failed to report during the Vietnam War?  Some went to Canada, some went to Sweden, some went to prison,  some went elsewhere or lost themselves anonymously in the U.S.  Their lives were forever changed.  We should come to grips with this sad chapter in our history.  Of course there are those who simply dismiss them as traitors.  Of course there are always Americans who are heroes at home, or think all problems are to be solved militarily, or have some pseudo-heroic response to everything.  But in the objective, clearer perspective, when is it time to simply ask the U.S. the question: what do we do with this history and these men?  In some ways, they were right, our nation's leaders were wrong.  We have had enough of that in the past 8 years.  Let's be honest, and let's take a fresh look from the perspective of time.

What do we do with an honest, objective history of those who refused to serve in the military during the Vietnam War?

There was a time in America when conservatives and liberals could discuss politics, religion, economics, healthcare, welfare, etc. in adult, objective ways.  No more.  Surrendering to religious fundamentalism and greed-capitalism, the once proud Republican Party no longer exists.  Though carrying the same name, it has now been taken over by screaming, fanatical, religious, and big corporate interests.  Right-wingers are now the party of witch-hunts.

Perhaps the sickest part of the right-wing is their self-righteousness.  I've been condemned for using the blog title "A Sinner Observes."  Of course the unintended implication is that my critics are not sinners.

After sitting in loud, arrogant judgment of Bill Clinton and John Edwards, these pious conservatives soft-pedal the adulterous acts of conservatives like Henry Hyde, Newt Gingrich, Mark Sanford, Ensign, Vitter, Foley, Craig, and the list goes on endlessly.  Politicians of all stripes can be dogs, but the self-righteous ones are really scum. 

Sadly, many modest people, people of limited means, people who otherwise are objective in life, turn to hurling stones and yelling names and trying to out-shout anyone who smacks of anything short of right-wing loyalism.  And they have submitted to listening to religious zealots and big corporate lobbying machines in criticizing programs and ideas that may actually help them.

We have the leader of the Moral Majority sermonizing in the most bigoted manner.  We have Pat Robertson suggesting that the U.S. government should kill the democratically elected head of state in Venezuela.  We have a weeping Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, who once judged every non-pentecostal for moral sins, now asking forgiveness for engaging a prostitute on the streets of Shreveport, Louisiana.  We have the mighty Roman Catholic Church involved in pedophilia worldwide and trying its best to keep it under wraps.  We have people preaching about the inerrancy of the Bible who have no idea about the many edits and mistakes that took place in re-copying that book, written long after Jesus of Nazareth.  And through all this mythology and self-righteous arrogance, we have sinner politicans acting for all the world like they are pure and untainted.  Sad.  Sick.

Today's right-wing will tell you that unless you are a full-fledged patriot, you are un-American or worse.

"...another Negro hung naked from a tree.  In the background a Klansman held aloft a large American flag." -Jacob Javits   [Think, people, THINK]

"It is my conviction that God ordained segregation." -Reverend Billy Name Hargis  [THINK!]

"I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them.  There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves." -John Wayne [THINK!]

And now we are faced with a tremendous debt that started with deregulation of big corporations during Reagan, and brought to a head during Bush.  To the right-wing, always willing to blindly trust the corporate line, they think we should not regulate greed-capitalism.

"If all I'm offered is a choice between monopolistic privilege with regulation and monopolistic privilege without regulation, I'm afraid I have to opt for the former." -Nicholas Johnson

During my study for a M.A. in history, a major part of my work focused on the Middle East.  I wrote a major paper on Western World imperialism in that area, including, of course, Iraq.

As soon as the neo-cons and their unenlightened-uninformed President Bush lied to Congress and the American people and invaded Iraq, I immediately wrote and spoke out strongly against it.  Bush and the right-wing toy soldiers ignored any wisdom and history concerning Iraq, and ordered OTHER Americans to invade.  How low can you go?  Think of what the neocon lies have cost us.  We now know that some of the neocon leaders had been planning to invade Iraq long before 9-11 occured.

On June 30, 2009 a new holiday was officially established in Iraq: the day the Americans relinquished their military control to the Iraqis.  This change was scheduled by the Bush administration so they cannot blame what will happen on Obama ...but they will contrive some way to blame him.

The right-wingers told us we were liberating Iraq.  Dick Cheney had said we would be celebrated by the Iraqi people as great liberators and that people would line the streets to cheer the invaders.  Instead thousands of Americans lost their lives, the invasion plummeted the national budget into the mess we now have, and the people of Iraq instead cheer our preparation for leaving their country.  There have been celebrations in the streets, a holiday established, festive fireworks, etc.

Hold on!  Not so easy!  The Bush administration's invasion and occupation in Iraq opened a can of worms that will result in a long-term disaster.  Many dangers lie ahead.  Shiia-Sunni-Kurd fighting, Arab-Kurd incompatability, factional sectarian infighting in the military and police, internal squabbling over oil, desire for an independent Kurdistan, greedy outside oil corporation interference, remaining terrorist violence, corrupt political leaders, divisional influence from Iran and Syria and the Saudis, unfamiliarity with democracy, old Baathist problems, old Red Guard problems, ad infinitum.  All these and more conflicts were easily anticipated BEFORE we invaded Iraq.  Unfortunately we had all those non-combatant "heroes" in the Bush administration with no experience concerning the area and what war meant, no sense of history, no idea about geo-politics, no realization about imperialism in Iraq and how the U.S. would be perceived, etc.

Now we have another long-standing mess created by the Bush administration to go with the economic mess left behind.  The errors and stupidity of the neocons knows no bounds.