The United States of America was founded by men who were unknown in most of the world.  To be sure, they were all white, male landowners.  The new nation announced lofty ideals committed to democracy, as long as these goals were for white men who owned land.  Nevertheless this new nation experienced a leap forward in establishing democracy drawn up by an amazingly talented and brilliant group of men.

What percentage of this effort was an altruistic desire to found a republic of the people, and what percentage was to get these landowners and businessmen free of the yoke of British taxes will always be a topic of debate.  What eventually evolved through amendments and dramatic demands by women and people of color is a building-block in the march of democracy.  We are proud to celebrate this march that began in the 18th century and followed a bumpy road of reluctant democratic inclusion, greed-capitalism, bigotry, militarism, selfish lobbying, insensitivity for the underserved, imperialistic-like foreign policies, ad infinitum. 

We have had to deal with the KKK, the Know-Nothing Party, slavery, religious fundamentalism,  Jim Crow laws, prejudice, economic setbacks, child labor exploitation, politicians purchased by corporate power, imperialistic treatment of Mexico and its land, pollution, unfair labor practices, a failed "war on drugs," a civil war, climate change, national disasters, wars, a Native-American holocaust, etc.

As citizens of the USA we celebrate those who gave and sacrificed much in these battles: those who served in the military service, civil rights warriors, fighters for women's rights, organized labor pioneers, explorers, sensitive business people, and good neighbors.

The toughest part of our move forward in America has always seemed to be in those areas where we need to share our wealth, give equal rights to all people, serve as a peaceful democratic beacon, and flesh out words such as freedom and equality.

As we work and serve freedom and equality, let us stand up and celebrate the United States of America.

""Our country...when right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right." -Carl Schurz [a Wisconsinite]

OK, she just doesn't want to cheat the people of Alaska as a lame duck governor.  So resigning her governorship is kinda natural, I guess.  Sarah Palin is just trying to help the people of her state.

No matter how legitimate the questions and confusion are, Mrs. Palin will be certain to say that she is held to a different standard.  Wow, is that not true.  If she were held to a different standard, her naive comments on world affairs would have been lambasted.  Instead the press kind of gave her a pass, with only some little mention when she made the gaffs.  And those gaffs were astronomical.   "I can see Russia from Alaska."  Wow, is that insight, or what?  That definitely means she is suited for the top office in the most powerful nation in the world.

Here are some of the reasons she stepped down.  She needs the money.  She is in debt to lawyers for around $500,000.  More legal fees will be in the works if she stays on because there are many ethical questions looming about her and her "service" as governor.  She has been reprimanded several times, but her conservatives like to say "she has been cleared."  She has been cleared of going to prison or being kicked out of office, but she has been reprimanded for unethical conduct. 

She has grandiose ideas about her future.  She is positioning herself among the conservatives who love her.  Don't underestimate this stuff.  Many people scoffed at a Ronald Reagan presidency and look what happened.  But Reagan, who was mentally and ethically challenged, could memorize lines and fill the position of President much like an acting role.  So he "looked" presidential.  Mrs. Palin will now set out on a course that will show her readiness for greater things, like the presidency.  She will have to learn and act out her scripts like Reagan did.  And she will need better script writers than those she has used thus far.  But it is possible for her to go far as a politician because her party is desperate for a candidate who can finally stay morally unsoiled.  It is OK for someone like Gingrich or Limbaugh to speak for the party, but their sleazy personal lives are not for winning the top office.

Be ready, if your area can afford $50,000 to $100,000 a pop for a speaker, she is now available. 

The question is: are voters, other than conservatives with blinders, ready for her?  To me, she looks very much like a disaster waiting to happen.  But after Ronald Reagan was elected president, I do not count anyone out of such an elected position.

With the passing of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, we are again reminded of the horrible mistake the Vietnam War was.  Democratic Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson had him serve as a front man in Vietnam.  Because of his sterling leadership as head of Ford Motor Co., it was thought he would make a great leader in the Pentagon.  He served longer than any Secty. of Defense.  Decisions made in Vietnam were absolutely atrocious.  Johnson may have played a key role in keeping that war going, but McNamara must certainly at least share in the historical debacle.  We should have learned that corporate leadership does not necessarily translate into public service.  And most of all, we should have learned that the U.S. should not engage in imperialistic-like wars.

Did we learn our lesson?  Absolutely not!  Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush are Exhibit A in showing how international militarism and colonialism to force our ideas on sovereign nations are not only destined for failure, but are morally and ethically wrong.  America should be better, consider its international calling to be purer than that.  We have often and long been misled by military adventures and corporate military pay-offs.  The quagmire we are now bogged down with in Iraq and Afghanistan is corporate-military adventurism at its worst.  And it has left our economy in ruins.

During both of these administrations and both of these Defense Secretaries, millions -- yes, millions-- of lives have been lost, including far too many Americans.  Yes, we should have retaliated after 9/11, but the retaliation should have been to get Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.  The Bush-Rumsfeld team not only missed their chance to get bin Laden in Borah-Borah, they invaded Iraq.  What a mess!  What a loss of life!  What a economic disaster!  What lies!  And how long it has taken and will take to straighten out.

You think the election of Barack Obama has put an end to this military adventurism and international activity?  Read the following about where we are now in this military madness...

"Obama is sending more than 20,000 additional troops there [Afghanistan] and, for the first time next year, the annual cost of the war in Afghanistan is projected to exceed the cost of fighting in Iraq." -www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/21/senate-passes-913-billion_n_206589.html

I ask you, as fellow Americans, where is all this military adventurism taking us?  The budget for the Pentagon is a sin.  And we have found new ways to make our military adventurism even worse.  We now use "military contractors" who are really mercenaries to fight our battles and fly under the radar to American citizens.  There are more "military contractors" in Iraq than soldiers.  What have we become?

Endlessly we go on about this and that related to health care in the U.S.  Much of the argument has been clandestinely posed for us by insurance and pharmaceutical companies who know their greedy profits may be called into question.  Health care should be a right guaranteed to all Americans ...all Americans.

It is repugnant to think that there are Americans opposing universal health care or some similar one payer system that gives every citizen a right to equal and good care.  It is shameful that we have allowed these medically-related behemoths to manipulate us into acting selfishly.  We should not be in competition with each other to receive care.  When it comes to our health, it should never be a question of whether we have access to preserving and treating it with the best this nation has to offer.  Nothing less should be acceptable.  Only in the U.S. among ALL industrial nations is bankruptcy common and caused by medical costs.  The inhumanity of it!

You can split hairs all you want about the intricacies related to health care, but the overriding thing is that it should be available to all, rich or poor, all races, all ages, all locations, all Americans.  There are times when the American spirit of individualism is good, but this is not one of those times if it comes to the detriment of any one of our fellow citizens.

The overall cost of health care would be reduced immensely with a one-payer system.  Period.  A universal health care system would mean all Americans would be covered.  Period.  Removing the profit motive from health care is the democratic and moral thing to do.  Period.  However we do this, it should be done now, with this Congress, with this President, within this year.  To wait is an inhumane act.

We Americans pay TWICE as much for health care as any industrial nation, and every imaginable statistic clearly shows we die earlier, have more serious diseases, and simply are not getting good health care.  Think of it: DOUBLE the cost of what social democracies pay with far worse results.  In large measure it is because good health care cannot be afforded by far too many of our citizens.  This is an insult to any thinking American, let alone Americans with a conscience.  Contact your senator and respresentative and tell them that for once you would like to see them act out of conscience --to do the right thing-- and not to puppet what their big corporate insurance and medical vote-purchasers want.

Be an true American, support universal health care.

As the right-wing continues to move the goal posts everytime Obama does something correctly, let's be honest  in how we got here...

George W. Bush lied and deceived and illegally invaded a sovereign nation, Iraq.  There is no excuse for this, and certainly not just because we don't like the leader or we want their oil.  Look around the globe and realize it is not difficult to find a horrible national leader.  And there is oil in many nations whose leaders are reprehensible.

George W. Bush's administration inherited a huge budget surplus from the Clinton administration.  Bush immediately started spending money like a drunken sailor and in an extremely undemocratic move, lowered taxes primarily for the rich.  He told us that this would lead to more jobs and a stronger economy built upon the rich investing their money.  Look around you, how do you like the Bush legacy?

Even before 9/11 there were spooks in the administration who wanted to invade Iraq.  They lied to Congress and they lied to the American people.   How wonderful it would be, they told us, to have a trusted democracy in the center of the Middle East.  Look at today's headlines, do you really think Iraq is moving toward a true democracy?

The oil in Iraq would pay for the war they told us.   It has now cost the U.S. almost $3 trillion dollars.   Oil in Iraq dwindled to a trickle of its former output.  And clean water and electricity, commonly provided throughout Iraq, became rare indeed for the average Iraqi citizen after we invaded.   It still is.

We would be welcomed as heroic liberators in Iraq they told us.   Iraq established a national holiday when we left the cities.  Iraq cannot wait for us to leave completely.  Liberators?  We are seen as imperialists.

In the process, the Bush administration severely damaged the U.S. image in the world.  We were seen not as a bastion of democracy but as an overly-ambitious pariah.  Nobody wanted to cooperate finally with the U.S. [until Obama took office].

Thousands of Americans died in Iraq.  And many more thousands were wounded, many severely.  We will be paying for the horrible tragedy that has rendered these brave men and women physically and mentally disabled, many with scars that have not even yet appeared.  The cost of all this is astronomical and cannot even be guessed at.  This cost is ON TOP of the $3 trillion.

We were on the verge of capturing the man most responsible for 9/11, bin Laden.  But the U.S. military, was led by such brave heros as Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.  What a marvelous military record those three brought to their military leadership!  And they let bin Laden escape when surrounded.

The years 2001-2008 will go down as very dark days in American history.  And we have been straddled with the legacy of the horrid Bush administration.  We will be paying for the debts, not only financially but in ruined lives, for decades and decades.  The damage done is terrible.

When the OSS morphed into the CIA in 1947 it was difficult to set up guidelines for a secret service functioning in a representative democracy.  Secrecy is what struck fear in the minds of Americans.  Lots has changed since then.  We have had ebbs and flows of secrecy and illegal actions by the CIA.  While Republican administrations seem to lean in the direction of using secrecy and manipulating the CIA to use this secrecy to advance Republican agendas, it has not been limited to GOP presidents.

A Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson, enlarged American involvement in Vietnam, even using lies about the Gulf of Tomkin to justify our expanded role in military operations there.  In truth, this lie was inside action to prevent the Vietnamese from holding their promised elections because Ho Chi Minh would have won handily.  And a so-called democratic nation, the USA, acted to prevent democratic elections.  And what followed in Vietnam were a long series of lies and secret operations by both Johnson and Republican President Richard M. Nixon.  Henry Kissinger, serving with Nixon, seemed to relish secret actions.

Serving as chief of staff with GOP President Gerald Ford, Dick Cheney used secret power, and thought that the executive branch of government in the U.S. did not have to bother to get Congress to approve actions.  It was the beginning of Cheney's long trek to promoting executive power, free from Congress. 

Ronald Reagan could not get Congress to approve financing the Contras in Nicaragua, so Reagan traded with Iran [that's right, IRAN!], to sell armaments and use the money to fund the Contras.  Like in Vietnam, we were told the Nicaraguan government was terrrible and would cause problems all over Latin America.  Well, we now know that Nicaragua never became this monster.  And we now know that Vietnam is not the monster we were told we had to attack.  And in the process we financed illegally some atrocious people in both Vietnam and with the Contras.  These were low points in American history.  Interestingly, all through the Iran-Contra affair, Congress was vehement in criticizing Reagan.  But one man in Congress sided with the executive branch's use of secrecy and lies: Dick Cheney.

Now we find out every day some new secrecy that was not only illegal but downright anti-democratic that Vice President Dick Cheney used to foster Bush administrations plans without Congressional approval.  There is no question that Cheney has trouble with democracy and democratic institutions.   It is apparent now that Cheney has no qualms about using torture.   It is clear that Dick Cheney has no respect for the U.S. Constitution and uses whatever means he chooses to foster secret and illegal actions.  He is a disgrace to American values and American law.

What to do with Cheney now?  Is he a war criminal?  Is he guilty of breaking U.S. laws?  Certainly he broke U.S. laws in approving torturing of men held captive from 2002-2008.  And there are many in the international community that want Cheney tried as a war criminal.  Newly-elected Barack Obama is trying to put a lid on Congressional and Justice Department probes, and Obama wants to move on, to move past investigating the Bush administration.  Once again, the Bush administration has put us in a terrrible bind.  Is it a desire to see Cheney punished that motivates so many to demand he be investigated?  What to do with this unsavory character who played such an important role in recent American history?   Lying is his modus operendi.  Secrecy is his method of operation.  Sinister is the man.  Should we simply let him fade off into the sunset?  Have we learned from any of this?

Let's stop and take the time to celebrate the wide diversity in America.  Our democratic Republic was founded on principles that freed us from the tyranny of royalty, specific religion, bigotry, etc.  A nation that declared through its Constitution that it would protect the rights of the minority, even the minority of one.

I salute, welcome, warmly greet my many American citizen-friends...  Euro-Americans, Native-Americans, Semites, Arabs, Hispanics, Chinese, Indians, Asians,  whites, blacks, reds, yellows, browns,  Eskimos, Moslems, Jews, Christians, pagans, witches, Deists, atheists, B'hais, animists, gays, straights, cross-gendered, developmentally-challenged, the poor, common people, the rich, capitalists, Marxists,  Buddhists, Shintoists, Sikhs, tall, short, thin, fat, blondes, brunettes, redheads, baldies, and the wonderful blend of all these groups and groupings.  I'm glad you're here.

We have civil law to protect you, even if you are different than others.  No group has preference over the other when it comes to the civil law we have established in this noble experiment called the United States of America.

Each of you will be tested and challenged for your beliefs, each of you at some time in your life will be confronted with someone who thinks their heritage or belief system is superior to yours.  But the U.S. Constitution seeks to protect you from the tyranny of religion, the despotism of narrow thinking, the horrors of bigotry.  Too many of us never see the Constitution for what it truly is: protection for all of us from the tyranny of even the majority.  Look at the Statue of Liberty, read its inscription.  But even those of us who think of ourselves as true Americans want to build fences instead of extending a welcome hand.

Read Thomas Jefferson.  He knew well the danger to our Constitution lies in the attempted brute force of the majority against the rights of the minority.  Read Jefferson carefully and thoroughly, and you will be armed with the freedom he expresses and will help guard you from the assault of the majority or some group that perceives itself to have a corner on truth.

Hold your head high.  Study the Constitution.  Enjoy its freedoms.  Obey the law and be a tolerant American to your fellow man and woman.  This is truly what the U.S. is and we should celebrate the wide variety of ingredients that comes to make us what we are.

With the passing of Walter Cronkite, I am reminded how much worse and less professional news reporting has become.  "Uncle Walter" was trusted because he was objective and honest.  He also had some historical understanding and knowledge of the back-story in the news he reported.  This is gone forever.  And he acknowledged in his later life that news reporting and journalism no longer served the public as it once had.

I doubt that most people reporting the news today even know what professional journalism is.  Imagine, for example, FoxNews billing itself as fair and balanced.  And aside from token and promotional tours, where have the current news anchors ever served?  Former ABC anchor  Peter Jennings at least spent some time in the Middle East as an on-the-spot reporter.  Where have Brian Williams or Katie Couric served?  More importantly, how "trained" has the American public become to spin-journalism, bias-journalism, shallow-journalism, etc.?  Those couplets are contradictory.  Journalism is something far different.

Nothing more clearly points this up than the "special news" stories reported locally and nationally.  Often we see local TV stations reporting how they helped someone get medical treatment that they had been denied.  Thus these people come begging to the TV station, and then the clout of the station is used to get them help.  It never occurs to the TV station that the far bigger story is that an American citizen has to beg to get healthcare and/or medical help.

Imagine how long the Rwanda genocide took place before American media picked it up!  Actually, far too much foreign news reporting is done for American media by foreign journalists and news organizations. How many times do you hear an American network news report from a foreign location being posted by someone with a British accent?  That's because the American networks have only sparsely  placed  foreign reporters.  The BBC and Independent Television News [ITN] have to do the work that should be done by American television.  American journalism was once held in high esteem worldwide.  No longer.

Walter Cronkite was a UPI reporter during World War II.  He knew his news, he lived the news, he cut his teeth on doing a professional, on-the-spot news report.  And then Edward R. Morrow, a giant in the field of network news, hired Cronkite at CBS.  Walter Cronkite, by his own admission, was not a TV news reporter or anchor, he was a journalist.  He wasn't hired for his handsome face.  How different things are today.  Today's news anchors look like they came out of central casting.  After a couple tours to Vietnam he told his nightly news audience, which was huge, that he thought we should get out of Vietnam.  Imagine that happening today!  Who from the networks stepped forward to say that our adventure in Iraq was illegal and doomed for failure from the beginning?  People who know Middle East history knew.

The result of all this change is that today we have news reported for ratings and story selection based on how it shows flames or explosions or car chases.  There is no depth in today's news reporting.  Today's news reporting presents itself as fair and balanced when it hosts people whose professional income is based on how they play to a particular audience.  If you have a Republican commenting on a subject, somehow magically you have balance when you also present a Democrat.  We now have professional political commentators who know little or nothing about the subjects that they are hired to comment about.  Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Morrow are absent from professionalism they represented, and now we have news-for-ratings.  Where in the hell is journalism?

In a recent article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, it was pointed out that nationally about 6% of Americans do not believe the U.S. landed a man on the moon.  They see it as a hoax.  No matter how many facts are obvious, many still cannot believe the truth.  Surprised?  I'm not.  Consider some of the things Americans believe that are NOT true, and in most cases, far more that 6%, and in many instances it is a large majority.

Iraq was involved in the terrorism of 9-11. 

As is required by law, Congress declared war in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq.

Universal health care is a bad thing and will negatively effect my personal medical care.

Pharmaceutical corporations price drugs so high so that they can use the money for experimentation.

Fox News is "fair and balanced."

The Bible was written in Latin.

There is one, true "translation" of the Bible.

The infallibility of the Pope was always part of the Catholic Church's dogma or doctrine.

Clergy celibacy has always been a part of Catholic belief.

Our taxes are higher than in other industrialized societies.

The "Virgin Mary" was over 18 years old when she was pregnant with Jesus.

Jesus had no siblings.

Because of the wind, Chicago is called "The Windy City."

Barack Obama is a Muslim.

From Day One of the invasion of Iraq, I predicted that it cannot end with an organized democracy and/or stable government.  Most people with any background knowledge of the area knew this.  Iraq was never a true nation; it had been cobbled together by European colonialists, primarily Great Britain.

However the problem was greatly enhanced by the fact that the invasion was of a sovereign nation.  And the war that we started was never officially declared by the U.S. Congress as is required by law.  We were lied to by the Bush administration henchmen.  The old excuse that we thought they had Weapons of Mass Destruction is beside the point.  We had them boxed in in Iraq, and the embargo was working.  But I repeat again: the U.S. Congress did not declare war, and that makes it illegal.  Besides, Iraq had nothing to do with the terrorism of 9-11.

While we are celebrating the "relative" calm in Iraq since the U.S. turned over its military control in the cities, we ignore many facts in the process.  For one, the terrorists are waiting for the U.S. military to leave before it unleashes its major offensive.  More importantly, nothing has changed.  The nation of Iraq is still disasterously splintered into three parts, and many more minor parts.  And it has been for hundreds of years.  The Sunni Iraqis see the current government as being a Shiite government.  And Iraq's Shiite government is very cozy with Iran.  It is a real mess.

Meanwhile there is an election to take place in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.  We will soon afterwards hear cries of the unfairness of the election.  The Kurds are not ready to join the Iraqi government in Baghdad.  They look for the day when there will be a separate nation of Kurdistan, representing Kurds from Iraq, Iran, and Turkey.  This is a brewing, serious problem.  And the Kurds no longer have U.S. protection.  Unrest in Kurdistan is a certainty.

We proudly pointed to the "coalition" of nations that joined us in the invasion of Iraq.  Some coalition.  Nations in this "coalition" began jumping ship almost from the beginning.  And though the Bush administration begged some of the nations to stay on, their disregard for Bush aided them in their decision to walk away.  Even the British left Basra early...yes, even the British!

We have little idea what happened in Iraq.  The Bush administration hid many, many things.  The prison torturing was only the tip of the ice berg.   The neocon henchmen have left their brutality all over the world, as they used whomever and whatever to practice the most undemocratic and uncivilized actions.   Now mass graves of dead Taliban people have been discovered.  Who massacred those people?  Probably one of our "allies" in the north of Afghanistan, one of the sub-national tribal groups.  This is just more grist for the mill for the terrorists in recruiting new fighters.  As it becomes clear that our own CIA covered this up, it will be more trouble.  The people who are responsible for these atrocities should be put on trial!  Now!

The Bush administration left the U.S. in a mess.  We are aware of the financial mess in the U.S.  We are not as aware of the mess in the Middle East which will take generations to mediate and settle.  The image and reputation of the United States has been soiled terribly by the neocons.  Let us hope that these American terrorists never return to power in Washington.

While the Republican Party has traditionally been in the hip-pocket of big business, money plays such an important role in getting elected in the U.S., that Democrats are also acting like corporate puppets these days.  Whatever happened to voting one's conscience?

"Conscience is the still, small voice which tells a candidate that what he is doing likely will lose votes [and/or financial support]." -Laurence J. Peter

"Every Republican candidate for President since 1936 has been nominated by the Chase National Bank." -Robert A. Taft (a leading Republican in the 20th century)

"Though I believe in liberalism, I find it difficult to believe in liberals." -G.K. Chesterton

No person with a conscience can tolerate the fact that our current health care system does not cover almost 50 million Americans.  And even those who are insured, find to their surprise that many illnesses or emergencies are not covered by their insurance policy.  And even if you are covered, your care is far worse than in Europe and Canada.  And no matter what, bankruptcy from health care is unique to the U.S.   Health care is a right.   It is one thing to have an honest opinion on specifics of a major health care overhaul; but it is unconscienable to simply try to block reform so your political opponent cannot win.  That is tyranny.  And that is exactly what Republicans are trying to do with Obama's call for health care reform.  Sad.  Shameful.  Disgusting.  Sinful.  Ignorant.  Pandering.

Too many Democrats who get support from corporate giants and political action committees from the Right, are too scared to support anything that is labeled negatively by neocons.  Words like "socialism" are tossed around without any idea what the word or the connotation means.  Average Joe's and Jane's are buying the greed-capitalism that sustains this tyrannical set of lies and misrepresentations.  Just because these sorts of lies and distortions work in the U.S., does not mean they are right.  It is a joke to label the national media "liberal" when it is owned by huge corporations that have specific agendas that do not conform to democracy.  Greed-capitalism has gripped America and is destroying it.

Here is the true bottom-line about health care in America.  It is far worse than in other industrialized nations with universal, one-payer health insurance.  Insurance companies still flourish in these nations.  Given the choice between what we have in the U.S. and what they have in "socialized" nations, the latter will always vote for what they have as opposed to the costly mess we have in the U.S.  And our health outcomes are far, far worse than in western Europe and Canada.  FINALLY: we cannot sustain our current health care system, it costs far too much with worse outcomes.  Our current system, which costs far more than in Europe and Canada, will bankrupt the U.S.  We have lousy health care and it costs us much more than other industrialized nations with worse outcomes.  We need change and we need it now!  Get Kohl and Feingold and our congresspersons off of their duffs and vote for an Obama plan.  Otherwise we are headed for real [not imagined] disaster.

We have listened to the neocons and right-wingers continue to call our attention to the scuzzy and immoral actions of Teddy Kennedy and Bill Clinton.  They hold onto this like a lifeline, but fail to tell the rest of the story. 

It seems the neocons have quickly tried to forget the plethora of immoral acts by Republican elected officials from coast to coast, both heterosexual and homosexual out-of-wedlock "secret" trysts.  It seems that the right-wing makes some extremely selective times and places to shake their fingers at Democrats.  Who led the impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton?  Newt Gingrich and Henry Hyde.  Hyde reluctantly admitted that he had committed adultery in his forties, and had the gall to call it a "youthful dalliance."  I wonder how his wife felt about this "dalliance."   And even while chastising Clinton for his secret "episodes" with a Washington intern, Newt Gingrich was doing the same thing with a young woman working for the government in D.C.  But Newt's immorality goes way back, and includes cheating on at least one of his wives, probably more, and asking for a divorce from his wife as she lay in a hospital bed having just found out she has cancer.  How absolutely revolting can one get?  Newt is now a GOP presidential hopeful along with the intellectual wizard, Sarah Palin.  How's that for a pair of.........well, you finish the sentence.

Now the right-wingers have focused on where Barack Obama was born.  They have moved past trying to destroy honorable men like John McCain when he ran against George W. Bush, and John Kerry when he ran for President.  It isn't enough for Rush Limbaugh to state early in Obama's presidency that "I hope he fails."  Oh no, the right-wingers are comprised of some real nutcases, described as such by responsible Republican Party leaders.

As over and over and over and over it has been proven that Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, the right-wing never lets facts get in the way of low-brow, destructive actions.  In an Associated Press column by David Crary, he puts it in perspective.

"Theories that Obama was born abroad abounded during the presidential campaign, even after an official Hawaii birth certificate was produced, along with August 1961 birth notices from two Honolulu newspapers.  Numerous lawsuits and ermergency appeals were lodged challenging Obama's eligibility to be president, and all were rebuffed."

Nevertheless, Limbaugh and some right-wing officials continue to beat this dead horse.  "Some who had initially dismissed the claim as a laughable political sideshow now wonder whether it has gotten out of control.  'I've stopped laughing,' New York Daily News columnist Errol Louis wrote. 'Too many political and media leaders are deliberately fanning the flames of ignorance and fear, and they should be ashamed."

Don't take my word for this latest action being horrible.  Read what conservative blogger John Hawkins wrote on Townhall.com: "He [Obama] has a significant number of conservatives wasting enormous amounts of time on a side issue that can never bear any fruit and, as an added bonus, it makes them look somewhat unhinged to many Americans.  When your political enemies are making fools of themselves, why stop them?"

Responsible Republican elected officials are fearful of criticizing these loony attacks because they know that they represent a large part of the GOP base.  This is today's Republican Party.