When I was born Roosevelt was president, when I was in 1’st or 2’nd grade we had the Dewey/Truman election, we voted in our classroom, I voted for Dewey, I hoped I was right in that vote cause our family was Republican and I knew I would be quizzed when I got home. Sure enough I was and got lots of praise for voting the right way…everyone was positive Dewey would win and what an upset that was.
I was alive when Truman dropped the bomb on Japan, I wondered what was so great about all of that, (there was a big picture in the paper of the mushroom cloud and everyone oohed and ahhed over that, everyone said it was good so I believed them..Later on I came to understand it was not good, no matter the US rationale for same.
I was in grade school when we got under our desks at school for the survive the bomb blast drill. Try growing up with that threat hanging over your head every day. We lived in fear and dread to hear that siren go off, when it was drill day. We all lived in dread and tried to be happy, but it was hard and we mostly thought we didn’t have long to live.
I was just 20 or so when Kennedy was president, he brought with him the dreams and we loved him for that and we had hope for a little while till the Cuba thing. Then he was murdered, I just starting out in my life when his was ended, it was the darkest day I’ve ever seen in America, up to and including the present. The nation was in dark morning for weeks and months.
Then came Bobby, MLK and many, many others, they came, they rose up and they were gone, in an instant and we were left with their words and their dreams, and we dreamed the dreams, we still try to, we still try to hold onto them, but they seem always to be fading.
I was taught how great this country was and then I grew up to find out more about slavery, about the Native American, the Hawaii takeover,Mexico, and more and more and more and more and more, all the way up to Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and of course Bush.
Now I can hardly muster an ‘I love this country’.
But yet I do not want to see it fail although there is a part of me that thinks (like AG) it needs to all fall down before it can be built up again.
There is knowledge in living through history, that can not be found in merely reading it. I haven’t lived too long in the grand scope of things, but the 65 years that I have, have been quite something and some would say the most exciting of all the years of this country.
I have to say that this election, far out excites any of the elections I have been alive to witness, it is simply stunning.
We have our hopes and dreams again, we think we might have a chance, some think with Hillary,some think with Obama, I think we need both of them. I know it will be a hard thing to decide, it will take a long time and I think we need exactly that, we need to take a long time to figure this one out and no one should begrudge the time it takes.
I can remember conventions when the nominee was fought out there and were they ever exciting, even for a 17 year old, even for a 21 year old or whatever exact age I was.
Lately they all have been cheerleading competitions, not very interesting at all.
So I guess I just want to say, I’ve seen a bit of history in my life and I say just wait, you are gonna see a grand thing play out here.
The blog bitterness does not spill over into the real life so much, most folks are not tainted by what we see on the blogs, so it will be worked out, maybe not to the liking of this site, but it will for the most part be the will of the people, not withstanding some of the people will have more pull than other of the people.
Now if it’s true as AG say, we got no say, then why are we arguing anyway…I still think we do if the machines work, I still think we have a chance, one last chance before it all falls down.
And I especially think we have a chance, just like AG says, with Hillary and Obama on the same ticket, I so wish we could have co-presidents right now, but absent that I’m not sure which way I would run the ticket..
In my measure of the past in the nomination area, this one isn’t so bad at all. Scorched Earth, please.
I just wish the bitterness would subside, let them fight it out, lets worry about McCain for a bit.
I think I am channeling AG as I started this as a comment on his diary and it got way too long.
Let me end this by say, dear God, please Bless America, we need it.
And best wishes to all of you.
Nice diary Diane. As most know, I have lived through the same time period as you. It has been pretty amazing.
My only wish is that our two candidates would turn their questions and comparisons towards McCain. Give him all the scrutiny and heat they can muster. I am not fond of the inner party wars. They don’t help anyone, regardless of who “started it” or what circumstance. We bloggers sound like a bunch of grade school kids trying to justify throwing sand in each others faces.
Beyond that, I think we have two strong candidates. I think we can each choose and or justify our alegence to one or the other by many means. I just hope for more civil conversation and discussion by those on either side of the coin.
There are things I like about both of them. How it will all play out, I don’t know. But I would really like each campaign organization to focus on the Republicans and their candidate and making it very clear why we need Democrats in the White House, Senate and Congress. I think the party loses if this he’s worse than I am, she’s worse than I am nonsense continues on to the convention. I think most American’s have had enough of the nasty stuff over the past nearly 8 years. It is pretty sad when the conventional wisdom is, “yes, but the nasty stuff works.”
Hugs to all
Shirl
Thanks Shirl, for commenting.
Right now as you know I am involved in a family crisis with my daughter trying to end a marriage and it’s kind of hard to focus on politics, when the crisis swirled to the top today.
The worry about a pretty crazy type of man to say the least who has previously hurt her is dominating my thoughts today.
Love you tho.
Diane, I hope everything works out for your daughter.
thanks, I am beside myself today, we are trying to get a restraining order and she is very emotional and lots of road blocks and I don’t drive, so it’s hard, I can’t eat myself and my heart is beating way too fast.
She is going to change her locks tonight, I’ve told her to call police with the slightest reason, but she’s afraid and I am too. Locks won’t keep him out tho, he is one of those that gets that super strength when angry.
This has been a long time coming, 17 years, we knew from the beginning they were bad for each other, but she would hear nothing else at the time.
Then a few years ago, I found out that he was guilty of some other really bad things that she kept secret, cause she was afraid, that I could have used to put him in jail then.
Also it brings back all the emotions and feeling I had going threw those times myself. Harder part is 3 kids one of which is a baby, which he is trying to turn against her at the same time.
Thanks for caring.
That’s really scary. My sincere best wishes that your daughter comes through this emotionally and physically whole.
Thank you so much.
I am sorry to read this, Diane. I hope that everything works out well for your daughter.
thanks Boran I missed this comment yesterday and today I am happy to report that things went to calm last night so maybe I can relax today, but the thing is this buy is manic/depressive or bi polar, I think and you never know when he will flip to the other side.
All the positive thoughts from here seem to help, so thank you everyone who sent them.
Diane
my thoughts are with you and your daughter.
Thank you Steven, we need them, your thoughts that is, gosh it’s so darn hard to stay strong for your children, when I just want to dissolve in a heap myself.
Best to you!
I don’t want to see the Clinton’s anywhere near the government, because they proved, in their time in office, that they are a big part of what’s wrong with DC.
They have a closed clique – the public is not welcome. That’s why she didn’t even ask her public for money – she was relying on her insider buddies to come through for her. Surprise. That’s why when I walked into their campaign office in Los Angeles in 1992 to see what was going on, I was looked at like some slime, not as a potential voter.
While in office, they managed to bungle gay rights on day one. Then Hillary spent the next year failing to get us ANY kind of health care, let alone single payer.
And then, they lost us the Congress. We’d controlled the Senate for YEARS until they came to power. Suddenly, while the media discussed Marsha’s new haircut during OJ’s trial, the Republicans slipped into power.
One of my co-workers, a staunch Democrat, today was talking about Bill Clinton. He said, referring to Monica Lewinsky, the cigar, and the stained dress, he wanted a president that had more self-control than a four-year-old. Me too. I was disgusted. In the business world, if anyone had done such a thing on company time, they would have been fired. No questions.
I wasn’t upset over the infidelity. That’s between him and his I-can’t-afford-to-care-because-I-want-to-run-for-president wife.
But what he did on “company time” in the space we pay for was inexcusable, and a sign that the man in the White House was not mature enough to be our president.
They had sleazy business dealings that were the source of one scandal after another. I mean, not all those scandals were concocted by the right. There was a grain of truth in all of them.
The biggest scandal was the one never admitted to, because it was a bi-partisan one: Mena, Arkansas, where a company called Park-on-Meter built parking meters and missile nose cones. In those missile nose cones, tons of coacaine flowed into the country, thanks to the CIA and the pipeline created during the Iran-Contra affair. Clinton and Bush were both covering that up, so neither used it against the other.
These are not two equal candidates.
There is one who is new enough not to have massive scandals and baggage, and a second whose baggage outweighs that of many who have served at least as long in public office.
I will protest as loudly as possible any such pairing. The Clintons are not good for the country. And the Republicans will see to it that we fail if she’s part of the ticket.
Whatever, I am not up to commenting more about this today.
Thanks for you comment tho.
And Diane, I just read your diary again, and it is beautiful. That’s a lot of history to live through. I’m younger, but my parents are older, and have told me quite a bit about their experiences of all of this. They were older than you when Kennedy was killed. And I can remember seeing my mom on all fours on the floor in front of the TV wracked with a grief I’d never seen before when she saw Bobby’s head bleeding on TV.
I didn’t understand, but I wanted to.
I think I’ve spent a good part of my life trying to understand who the people who were cut down in the sixties were, what they were trying to do, and why some felt they had to be stopped by any means necessary.
I’ve also learned some very ugly history about our country along the way. What we did in Chile, in Guatemala, in Brazil, and British Guyana. What we did in the Congo, in Indonesia, in Iran, in Iraq. No wonder “they hate us.” And it has nothing to do with our freedoms. It’s our USE of them that gets people. Rich people complain about this or that while they spend more money in an hour than some people will make in their entire lifetimes. This is not right.
I have no hope at all that a president can fix all of this. I only have hope that a president can remind us what the rest of us can do to start to fix this.
I don’t think they are equal either.
One is strong in some ways that the other is not. They are different.
I understand your strong support for Sen. Oboma. What I don’t understand is your inability to tolerate those who have so far made a different choice.
Frankly, having been around this planet for a very long time and having been an observer of history as well as a participant in it, we have never elected a president in this country that hasn’t had many things of questionable or down right disgusting nature in their lives somewhere along the way. Usually we don’t hear about it until later.
There is plenty about what FDR did that would be scandalous today and probably then, but I don’t regret that we had an FDR that was elected 3 times as president.
None of us here on this earth are PERFECT, not even the very likable Sen Oboma. And I predict that if he becomes President, he will make some mistakes. . .he is after all human. None of the candidates are pure, none of them can yet walk on water, none of them show me all the things I want to see in a president, a leader, but I will take what is the best from each of them and weigh it against what I feel would be best from my perspective.
So far as I have been able to ascertain, no one has ever been elected to any office at any level of federal, state or local government that doesn’t owe a lot of favors to a lot of folks. It is in repaying those favors that people often go astray.
I do not excuse the things that any of them do or have done. I just know that we aren’t going to find PERFECT anywhere among any of them. With all his failings and scandalous behavior, I think JFK was a wonderful asset to this country. I wouldn’t want to have passed him by for the job either.
You should continue to support your candidate. However, I personally would rather hear what Sen Obama has done, will do, wants to do, plans to do, than what Sen Clinton has done, might have done, it is speculated has done, rumored to have done, etc. Her love of John McCain is enough to turn me off to her candidacy.
At this point I do not support either one of them. I will have to see who can convince me to vote for them in November. . .so far, I am not convinced.
The point is – she has a long record, and it’s not a good one. He has a short record, and it’s okay. Not spectacular, not bad. I know full well he may turn out to be as bad or even worse than Hillary.
But I already KNOW she’s bad news. I don’t yet know that about Obama, so I’m going to give him the shot.
As to the good things he’s done – see my diary where I talked in depth about his record – Why I’m Supporting Barack Obama.
I also encourage any still undecided to read the articles at the end of those links. These are pre-campaign articles, for the most part, and discuss his record in a critical depth we haven’t seen since before Iowa.
And I agree with you. Clinton’s twice now promoting McCain as better than Obama to me is her ticket out of my party. I don’t condone that behavior.
Even I, who can’t stand her, won’t say she’s worse than McCain. That she will stab her fellow runner in the back (and then claim to want him on her ticket) shows she’s only loyal to herself. That’s a sentiment we’ve already seen in the White House for the last eight years, and look what THAT got us.
I really admire how seriously you have investigated the candidates and the energies you have put into participating in this whole election process.
If I may ask, cause I would benefit from your sharing your thought process as well as your conclusion, if for some reason, Clinton is the nominee in the general election, what would you do?
I really admire how seriously you have investigated the candidates and the energies you have put into participating in this whole election process.
If I may ask, cause I would benefit from your sharing your thought process as well as your conclusion, if for some reason, Clinton is the nominee in the general election, what would you do?
Here’s why I will find it hard to vote for Clinton. I fear she will take us to war in Iran. I fear that about McCain too. But I fear it re Clinton more. McCain at least has been known to stand up to his own party. Clinton, on the other hand, has been known to cave into the Republicans.
The single biggest reason I’d have trouble voting for Clinton:
She didn’t learn from her Iraq vote.
(The second single biggest reason is she made that vote without getting the data first. That’s just criminal, in my opinion. But aside from that.)
She made a big mistake in Iraq. BUT SHE DID IT AGAIN WITH RESPECT TO IRAN. She didn’t learn her lesson! Either that or she was naive enough to believe the same lies a second time, either of which are good reason to fear her in the White House, answering that phone at 3am.
I could go on and on, and will, no doubt, if sanity doesn’t prevail.
But in a nutshell. That’s it. She either made a politically calculated vote twice, one of which cost over 600,000 Iraqis and US soldiers their lives and many more hundreds of thousands grief in their wake, or she’s just too dumb to be president.
Oh, I understand the reasons it would be difficult to vote for her, hence my question: If Clinton somehow becomes the nominee, what do you think you would do?
I truly don’t know. I’ll have to see what happens between now and then.
And you know – this is still bothering me, hours later. I wrote earlier today of my call to the Clinton campaign, and how the woman who answered basically said well if it’s her and McCain, would you vote for McCain? It galled me that she considered my vote a given.
I have always voted Democratic. I had hoped to until I die, assuming my party never went too far off the rails. But the reason I vote Democratic is those candidates typically represent my positions better. I have never considered myself someone who would vote for a Democratic simply because they had a D by their name. My vote still has to be earned. I don’t want it taken for granted.
Hey diane – I thought of you recently as I passed through Somerset county. It was gorgeous – a wonderful wintery palette.
Not yet time for maple syrup, but soon. 😉
Oh how nice and maple syrup, boy that brings up some memories and I bet it was all beautiful.
Somerset Co. has or used to the maple festival every year and one year it was in Meyersade, my town and I was a princess.
Now why doesn’t that surprise me?
I hope you included that in every resume/job application you’ve ever had to complete! 😉
you are experiencing. I can empathise being afraid of someone. The amazing thing is that in most cases the police will do nothing until someone is seriously hurt. May the Universe provide your daughter with good enery and protective angels. I am sure Shilstar can keep an eye out hey?
I will answer tampopo’s question to lisa…NO I wil not vote under an circumstance for Hillary. We don’t need another republican in the WH with their finger on the button and the other hand in the till. These people make me sick.
Three months ago I would have challenged you for this response. But for the first time in my life, I understand it, deeply.
The fact that Obama even CHOSE Samantha Power to be his top foreign advisor was amazing, and an insight into his mind. Here was a man who chose a woman who put Darfur at the top of issues to be addressed. A woman whose life was about compassion.
It’s no wonder a woman like that would see Clinton as a monster. Clinton is so far off the scale from where Samantha was.
I’m really sorry she’s gone. But I hope if he gets elected she’ll be back in some capacity. Hers is a voice that needs to be heard.
I had not heard that about S.P. – It helps explain things.
As I said in the diary, I was born into a Republican and Protestant family, in a solidly republican hamlet, in southwestern Pa. In my youth, I was forbidden to associate with children of Democrats and later on with Catholics…
My father did one great big favor for me tho, he told our family that my sister and I were not to be forced to go to church or to do anything in that area we didn’t want to.
So when sis and I were teenagers in the 50’s we went to all different churches, including catholic, I later even had a catholic boyfriend which they reluctantly accepted. I eventually came to reject all formal religions and consider myself a spiritual person without the ties of a religion, I believe in a higher power, the All That Is. I raised my 5 children that way, unfettered by dogma.
When I was about 15 our mother, sis and I took a bus trip to visit a relative in Baltimore, I sat next to a young black man during that trip, first one I had ever met and we talked and talked and had a delightful time, but he told me he was going back down south after having lived in the North for awhile and he was fearful to be going back to segregation. I didn’t quite understand it then, but when I got back home I learned lots about it and it broke my heart. I spent a lifetime learning and reading about slavery, about segregation, about the bitterness of the south, I still have bad feelings about southern states as a result of that.
Being an avid reader, I read Gentleman’s Agreement and Man in a Grey Flannel Suit in my teens, books about Anti-Semitism, I then became an advocate against discrimination of any kind..
In my 20’s I read books like Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and soon was immersed in the Native American situation and that broke my heart again..
In my 30’s I read many, many books about the Holocaust the 2nd world war and that disturbed me so much I can not bear to read anymore about that, ever, I simply cannot take the pain.
In my 20’s I lived in Hawaii and soon learned all about the takeover of the Us of that most beautiful place on Earth, the destruction of the culture
This country, indeed this world has broken my heart many times, it is not the world or the country I wish to have or live in and I wish I could erase all the bad feelings I have about it, but alas I can’t.
Now my wish is to see some peace in the world before I die, to see some surcease of the pain and acknowledgement of wrong doing for all the suffering the US and other nations have imposed around the world, I am so hoping it will be coming.
Sometimes I think all of the governments of the world need to fall and to be built again, that would be the harshest way of doing it, but such a cleansing is sorely needed, even tho it will be like the world taking a bath in lye.
All well, enough of this, I must get on with the day,.
Best wishes to all.
Diane, thank you for a wonderful diary, and thanks to the commenters for what has to be the most civil dialog I’ve read on the blogs between Clinton and Obama supporters – despite strong feelings on both sides – in a long time, if ever. Truly a credit to the frog pond as a special place.
Why thank you, that makes my heart sing a little this morning.
I agree – this is a special place indeed.
Diane I was born in south central Pa.(my name is a clue) born in 1959 read Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee when I was a senoir in highschool. That book opened my eyes, story after story of betrayal and genocide. I had a liberal Uncle who influenced my politics I supported McGovern in 72, although I was only 13. Never looked back. I work and live in Northern Virginia these past 25 years nave met, befriended and am neighbors with a kaleidoscope of people.
I know my country will never be perfect but I want to be proud of it. I read Tom Jefferson and Tom Paine’s words and I see what they thought could be achieved. I’m still proud of them giving us this forum of democracy. But I have learned respect and pride have to be earned. We can’t keep repeating the sins of Wounded Knee in different times and different places. We can’t enslave and kill people and expect them to like us. We cant disenfranchise our own people and expect them to be proud. We have to realize “we are the hope that we seek.” It starts right here, right now.
Cool diary thanks Diane. BTW I was raised Catholic and raise my son without religion. I tell him if he wants to pick one he can do it on his own time and terms. I have none, there is nothing I can see, but I really like your term “The all that is.” That pretty much sums it up.
Hi, thanks for the comment and the kind words.
About the religion thing, my kids are agnostic, they say the best thing I ever did for them was ‘not’ to give a religion..
Salunga, what is the clue there, is that a town name. I don’t recall it, but I don’t remember a lot about Pa. I left there just about when you were born, and a lot of things are fuzzy. In my childhood our favorite game to play with grandmother was name the counties of Pa, the States and capitals, and the Presidents.
Even though she was lifelong Republican as all of my family were, I think today she would be a Dem, I thought about that so much in the last decade especially.
My first chance to register, I did independent. I did not want to be bound, it wasn’t until about 92, with Clinton, that I fully came over to that side.
Are you male or female, just curious, can’t tell with your name.
Virginia is just a beautiful state, lucky for you to live there, of course Pa, is too and my state for the last 40 something years has been Southern California. Love it hear but I do wish for a bit of weather from time to time, of course we always have the nearby mountains, but I won’t make the trip anymore, it’s too scary for me…the mountain roads with the drop offs, that is.
So many lovely comments in this diary, I would have liked to reply to them all, but I don’t think I can manage it at this time.
Thanks to you and to everyone who participated in this diary.
Name of a small town where I lived in my first year. On reflection guess its not much of a clue. 🙂
I was raised Catholic too, but found in time I just couldn’t believe the words I was supposed to say in church, and stopped going back. I do value my early religious training though – it helps me understand all religious people on some level.
If I had had kids, I don’t think I would have raised them in the church, but I would have encouraged them to go with friends just to see what it was all about.
I just want to take this opportunity to thank you for your comments in this diary, sorry that I was indisposed during most of the time this diary has been up and thank you for the kind words you wrote upthread.
My husband was Catholic, their father, he left the church after returning from Vietnam and he did not want to burden them with the guilt that he acquired from his long years in Catholic schools and church. The sin thing was very hard for him for a long time.
However, they were and always have been free to pursue whatever they wished, we never stood in their way, they have chosen not to. One daughter did have a foray into a Protestant church in her teens, but it seems that was mostly due to her best friend at the time and a lot to do with the social aspects to be found there.
Interestingly, my daughter’s now boyfriend’s sister has recently joined the Catholic Church, she’s in her mid 20’s and was raised Protestant.
I hold no bitterness, just a great deal of shame for what we have become as a people. The other night I forced myself to read 90+ mostly winger comments on a state property taxation story published online by an Indianapolis newspaper. The aura of rancor and greed at places like that gives me strength to continue working as an activist, despite the obvious shortcomings of my own chosen party. The stench of bile on the other side is overwhelming. At least with the Dems there’s an occasional island of sanity, like those you’ve mentioned.