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I love wolves ... they are mystical, intelligent, social, spiritual, and great singers. They, unfortunately, have also been the most maligned and vilified of animals. Killed mercilessly and driven to the brink of extinction in the U.S., they were finally put on the Endangered Species List some years back and re-introduced in some regions. They began to recover and, once again, could be sighted in some areas of our country. Then George Bush, as one of his parting shots before leaving office, removed them from the Endangered Species List, opening the way for their mass murder again. Sadly, President Obama has not reversed this decision. Rather, his Secretary Of The Interior, Ken Salazar, has ignored public sentiment to restore the wolf’s protection. For the record, cattle ranchers have always had the legal right to kill any wolf who poses a problem to cattle... so there is no need for the wholesale killing (by shooting from planes, poisoning, trapping, and other horrors) of wolves. I’ve twice written to the president, asking him to intervene and have also written to Salazar.If you care about these magnificent animals, please contact a wolf protection organization and write to the president. One pro-wolf organization is "Mission: Wolf" at http://www.missionwolf.com/. Others can be found on the Internet. Please, please help protect the wolf.
"It truly was remarkable to me, more than anything else, to watch the world celebrating with us and welcoming us back into the global community's embrace. It was like 'ding dong, the witch is dead' all over again. I never felt so good about my vote as I did this time. I knew I'd really participated in a very historically significant event." Those are the words of my friend, Sanman, a person I consider to be most wise.
Election night numbers felt like a miracle unfolding – at long-last, the eight-year pall was lifting and hope was becoming a reality; and then came that wonderful, defining moment when Obama was declared the president-elect! What an inspiring way to, at last, unite all Americans ... with pride and honor! It feels good.
There is an incredibly huge cauldron full of Bushist wrong-doing that now needs to be tackled, dumped out, fixed, renovated, reversed, cleansed, healed. The reeling and sinking economy, the chasm between the rich and the poor, the fractured health care "system", the ill-conceived war, the pulverized environment, the jobs that need to be brought back to the U.S.; all these are in the emergency zone, crying out for help. Obama has the intelligence, courage, leadership, and ethics to meet the challenge. It is monumental in size and scope. He deserves and needs the full support of each and all of us. Think about it. I am thinking about it. I’m very thankful our country now has a chance to save itself. Thanksgiving has, for me, renewed significance this year!
I encourage you to vote and to vote early, avoid the election-day lines. I voted for Obama. I voted for Obama because I feel that those of us who didn’t put Bush into office deserve an intelligent and caring president who will try his utmost to give us a chance for economic, ethical, environmental, and health-care respite, restoration, and renewal. We need him to help us rise out of the quagmire (actually a hellish cesspool) that the present administration has sunk us into; eight years of horrible damage in every category. Actually, at this point, probably almost everybody in our country deserves a respite, restoration, and renewal. I say "almost" because I still see vehicles with the "W" bumper stickers on them. These next eleven days will probably see a lot of dirt flying out of the McCain camp, more phony stunts like Joe the plumber. It is sad that a significant number of our citizens seem to fall in line behind such gimmicks to manipulate the rank and file. It would be nice (and healthy) if each of us, as Americans, could and would raise his/her self-image as a person (and realize our individual and collective potential to be part of the process of making things better). If enough of us do that, together we really can have the vision of a better country and a better world.
In a recent post I wrote "the truth will speak for itself" and now I add, "I hope it will have more than a few who will listen".
As a person who leans away from corporate and conglomerate power, dogma, and narrow-mindedness...and toward tolerance, compassion, the freedoms of the individual, and diversity, I take strong exception to the (predictable) slurs currently being perpetrated about Senator Obama and his family of origin – and intended to put him on the defensive about religion. To begin with, he says he’s Christian and there is every reason to believe that he is. It is very disheartening that a candidate could be harassed on the basis of religion, by persons who are opportunists with an agenda. But I’m just getting started. Has a sizable portion of the critical mass of our country drifted away from or allowed itself to be hoodwinked away from the freedoms cited in our Constitution? I hope not. The authors of that fair-minded document carefully worded it so we would understand that a person of any religion ... Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Unitarian-Universalist, Baha~i, Mormon, Wiccan, even Atheist, and any I may have left out ... can be elected president of our country if he/she is deemed to have the good judgement, ethics, intelligence, fair-mindedness, conscience, compassion, reasoning skills, courage, and statesmanship to effectively lead our country and be our talking head to the rest of the world. That a candidate now could be expected, indeed required, to produce acceptable religious credentials (acceptable to right-wing zealots and media) denotes danger to the freedoms of the entire U.S. population, not just non-Christians.Currently, the struggle for religious supremacy between extreme Christians and extreme Muslims is mucking up the whole of life for everybody and, in unvarnished truth, is driven by the lust for power. In its extreme, dogma is dangerous. Our Constitution calls for separation of church and state for very sound reasons!
The Democratic contest has gone on long enough. It’s time to nail it, name the nominee, and prepare for the change our country desperately needs (no McBushes, please). Obama has my vote.
