we believe in you…
Archive for October, 2008
dance
as though no one is watching you,
love
as though you have never been hurt before,
sing
as though no one can hear you,
live
as though heaven is on earth…
- unknown –
another monday
10.27.08 at 1:58 pm in life, in the news
watching reese w
in a movie i have never seen
best laid plans is the name
she was very young
vivi has her face
its wild 2 see
i am trying to stay away from the news
as we near the finish line
the noise distracts me
i believe
the real housewives of atlanta
ok – how have i missed this little diddy
nay nay – kimmie and big poppa
botox and boobs and buying
hard to imagine
like life on another planet
the family tragedy of jennifer hudson
no words will do
a grief 2 hard 2 comprehend
Guns and domestic violence are a lethal combination – injuring and killing women every day in the
United States. A gun is the weapon most commonly used in domestic homicides. In fact, more than three times as many women are murdered by guns used by their husbands or intimate acquaintances than are killed by strangers’ guns, knives or other weapons combined.i Contrary to many public perceptions, many women who are murdered are killed not by strangers
but by men they know.
• Nearly one-third of all women murdered in the United States in recent years were murdered by
a current or former intimate partner. In 2000, 1,247 women, more than three a day, were killed
by their intimate partners.
• Of females killed with a firearm, almost two-thirds of were killed by their intimate partners.
• Access to firearms increases the risk of intimate partner homicide more than five times more
than in instances where there are no weapons, according to a recent study. In addition, abusers
who possess guns tend to inflict the most severe abuse on their partners.
• In 2002, 54 percent of female homicide victims were shot and killed with a gun.
peace in
peace out
i/we love you cw – be safe and well – come back to us soon. i wish you love and peaceful healing. remember hydrate and breathing most essential. i am here if/when you need to communicate. may you always walk in peace – love and beauty…
blessings – palestar
Don’t bank on a Goldwater rebirth…
Nick Bryant | October 25, 2008
WHAT price, at this time of tumbling markets and soaring Democrats, for that most tarnished of political brands: Republican senators from Arizona with a penchant for daredevil aeronautics and devil-may-care linguistics?
The last Republican presidential nominee to hail from the Grand Canyon state, Barry Goldwater, brought rich new meaning to the term maverick. At the Republican convention in 1964, the former air force pilot not only delivered the most sharp-edged acceptance speech of modern times – encouraging delegates to remember that “extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice” – but commandeered a plane so that he could buzz the convention hall below.
Come November, Goldwater nose-dived again, suffering the Republican Party’s most crushing defeat of the post-war era. Up against Lyndon Johnson, and the memory of Jack Kennedy, he won just six states and received just 38.5 per cent of the popular vote.
Over the next 10 days, John McCain will be trying hard to avoid emulating his one-time mentor: he does not want to become the second Arizonan to be buried in a Democratic landslide. But he has never sought to camouflage his admiration for Goldwater or his friendship, partly because he understands the hugeness of the debt that modern-day Republicanism owes him.
Goldwater is often called the most successful loser in US presidential history, for in his 1964 defeat the seeds of Republican revival are to be found. The so-called grand old party has since won seven out of 10 presidential elections, compared with just two wins out of eight in the previous 30 years. It is tempting, if pre-emptive, to ask: would Republicans speak with such reverence of McCain if he, too, suffers a lop-sided defeat?
A prime architect of modern-day Republicanism, Goldwater helped engineer a geographical shift in the power base of his party, from the midwest and northeast to the southwest; from the country and gentlemen’s clubs to the boardrooms and ranches of the sunbelt. Since the mid-1960s, every Republican president has come from the arc that stretches from Texas to the Californian coast: Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and the Bushes, whose relocation from New England to Texas testified to the south-western shift in the party’s centre of gravity.
Goldwater can also claim much of the credit for that great historical anomaly of post-war US politics: the process through which the party of Abraham Lincoln established a stronghold in the states of the old Confederacy. Through his shrill opposition to the civil rights reforms of the mid-’60s, Goldwater harnessed much of the anger of former southern Democrats, the so-called white backlash, and won five southern states as a result. Early in his campaign, and before the assassination of Dealey Plaza, bumper stickers appeared in the south reading: “Kennedy for King, Goldwater for President.” The southern strategy came to be perfected by Nixon and Reagan, while the Bushes also benefited from the simple electoral fact that the once solid Democratic south had become reliably Republican in presidential elections.
By vanquishing the then New York Republican governor, Nelson Rockefeller, to win the party’s presidential nomination, Goldwater also brought about the ideological defeat of liberal Republicanism. After 1964, the party shifted to the Right, and its winning candidates have appeared before the electorate as conservatives. The Republican Party also became a Republican movement, anchored initially by the belief in smaller and less intrusive government and the need to check the spread of communism. Goldwater lent the party crusading zeal, even if, as a fervent libertarian, he bridled at its tight embrace of social conservatism and spoke out in favour of gay and abortion rights.
Goldwater’s contribution to modern-day Republicanism did not end there.
In the gloomy aftermath of the 1964 defeat stood one bright talent: a former movie actor, with a folksy turn of phrase and a fervent anti-communism, who travelled the country delivering sparkling speeches on the candidate’s behalf. Just two years later, Reagan became the governor of California, with his mind already set on a run for the White House. With good reason, it is often said that Goldwater actually won the presidency, but in 1980, with Reagan at the head of the ticket.
So if McCain does go down to defeat, will his legacy to the Republican Party be anywhere near as rich? Will he be such a helpful loser?
The answer, surely, is an emphatic no. McCain would leave the Republican movement lacking ideological coherence and intellectual self-confidence, problems that the very un-Goldwater response of bailouts to the financial crisis have only served to aggravate.
The party is also in urgent need of fresh talent. Though Alaska Governor Sarah Palin gave McCain a rousing convention as his vice-presidential running mate, she has contributed to his campaign troubles. So it is hard to cast her as the saviour of the party, much less a Reagan in the making. The devoted enthusiasm for Palin among evangelicals in the party also speaks of a wider, strategic problem: of how to placate the religious Right while at the same time appealing to the independent-minded moderates who tend to decide American elections.
So just one electoral cycle after Karl Rove talked ambitiously about creating a permanent Republican majority, the party requires another period of renewal and introspection. Yet the party, if he loses, is unlikely to look to McCain for inspiration. In defeat, this modern-day Arizonan maverick will be no Goldwater.
Nick Bryant is a former BBC Washington correspondent and author of The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality.
[karl rove has a very dark soul/essence]
Dedicated to all my friends who are joyfully all shapes and sizes
all colours – all genders – all knowing and loving – giving.
I want you ALL to know that I love you in many different ways
and I am so very grateful that you are in my life. You honour me by being.
Stay safe and well.
Vaya con Dios…Palestar
