But it was a different story last night, when he secretly met at the Vatican Embassy in Washington with 5 victims of priest sex abuse

Then I told him that he has a cancer growing in his ministry and needs to do something about it and I hope he hears me right… and I touched his heart and he nodded.

Bernie McDaid – Sex Abuse Victim

The Pontiff left behind the raw emotion of that meeting for a more scholarly address at the United Nations. Raising concerns that a handful of nations have too much power and then speaking in English offered a solution to poverty and conflict.

The promotion of human rights remains the most effective strategy for eliminating inequalities between countries and social groups.

Pope Benedict XVI

The Pope has two more days in the U.S. including a mass at Yankee Stadium and a visit to Ground Zero.

First Southwest was forced to ground planes following revelations the company had skipped mandatory inspections. Then it happened with American Airlines as well. The stream of forced groundings has left hundreds of thousands of travelers stranded and with few options.

Many are pointing the finger at the FAA for allowing airlines to police themselves. Southwest airlines flew 46 planes on more than 60,000 flights without performing FAA mandated inspections for fuselage cracks. At American, FAA orders to check wiring on MD-80s dating back to late 2006 went unheeded, forcing the grounding and cancellations of thousands of flights this month. Now Congress is asking why the FAA isn’t noticing that airlines are ignoring mandatory inspection orders.

About a decade ago, Congress allowed the FAA to begin letting airlines largely police themselves. The number of field inspectors was slashed, and now inspectors say they spend 70 of their time at their desks, instead of under or inside of airplanes. Worse, many complain the FAA’s relationship with airlines has grown too cozy.

Tom Brantly, President of Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, says that “inspectors are being forced to change inspection data in FAA databases, reprimanded or removed from oversight responsibility of a carrier and encouraged not to pursue enforcement actions.”

In 2005 the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General found that the FAA failed to complete 26% of their planned inspections. This current crisis is prodding many in Congress to rethink the entire system. Many feel the FAA is treating airlines as the customer rather than the flying public…the taxpayers who foot the bill.

Related
Behind Air Chaos, an F.A.A. Pendulum Swing (NYTimes)

President George Bush announced that after the surge ends this summer there will be no further troop withdrawals from Iraq. The president’s announcement virtually guarantees that the US will be keeping 140,000 troops in Iraq until he leaves office next January.

Accepting the advice of his top commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, Bush will freeze troop levels in Iraq after the 20,000 to 30,000 surge forces arrive home in mid-summer. At the same time he bowed to pressure from leaders at the Pentagon to reduce the strain on weary soldiers and their families. 15-month deployments will be cut to 12, with an equal amount of time spent stateside before returning to the war front.

Standing before the press in the Rose Garden yesterday, Bush stated that “with the surge a major strategic shift has occurred. It is clear that we are on the right track.”

That was not an opinion shared by the Democratic leaders. Rep Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker, responded that “[Bush] is just dragging this out so he can put it at the doorstep of the new President of the United States.”

By any measure the surge has reduced violence in Iraq, both against American forces and Iraqi civilians. But it’s a fragile situation that could worsen in an instant. So far, the war has cost more than 4,000 American lives and $500 billion tax dollars.

With a promise dating back to the invasion five years ago, Bush stated that “ultimately we expect Iraq to shoulder the full burden of these costs.” The lack of Iraqi support for the costs is proving to be an embarrassment for the administration, with Iraq’s oil revenues expected to hit $100 billion this year alone.

Related

Al-Maliki Against Proposal To Delay U.S. Troop Withdrawals (RTTNews)

Sen John McCain recently openly embraced the endorsement of Texas megachurch leader John Hagee. Televangelists and the Republican party normally go hand-in-hand, but this endorsement is causing McCain considerable heartburn.

At a recent campaign stop McCain appeared on stage with Hagee and praised the Televangelist:

I’m very honored by Pastor John Hagee’s endorsement today, He has been the staunchest leader of our Christian evangelical movement in many areas, but especially, most especially, his close ties and advocacy for the freedom and independence of the state of Israel.

McCain has been openly courting Hagee’s endorsement since the two of them appeared together at the Christians United for Israel meeting on January 29, 2007. The pair had a private breakfast together to discuss Israel and John McCain’s candidacy for president. Hagee emerged from the meeting pleased with the conversation and sent a missive to his supports stating:

Senator McCain’s comments concerning Israel are on target! He gets it!

Hagee is a staunch and vocal supporter of initiating a proxy war with Iran through Israel. He comes to this position through the belief that doing so will bring about the apocalypse allowing the Jews to burn in hell for eternity.

This can only make one wonder…What exactly does McCain "get" about Israel?

This is only one of the many controversial positions held by Hagee. Here is a collection of his greatest hits:

The Catholic Church

Hagee regularly refers to the Catholic Church as "the great whore" and "the apostate church." In the video above Hagee forecasts impending doom for the church, prophesizing that "this false cult system" will be "totally devoured by the anti-christ."

Hagee has also linked the Catholic Church to the Holocaust, writing:

“Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews.” – Jerusalem Countdown (revised edition, 2007, p. 114)

Anti-Semitism

Hagee goes on to blame the Jews for their own persecution, explaining that the Holocaust was part of a devine mechanism to punish a wayward people.

"It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God’s chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day….

How utterly repulsive, insulting, and heartbreaking to God for His chosen people to credit idols with bringing blessings He had showered upon the chosen people. Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come…. it rises from the judgment of God uppon his rebellious chosen people." ( "Jerusalem Countdown: A Prelude To War", paperback edition, pages 92 and 93 )

Homosexuality

Hagee appeared on the September 18, 2006, edition of National Public Radio’s Fresh Air where he was posed the question "Do you still think that Katrina is punishment from God for a society that’s becoming like Sodom and Gomorrah?" To which he responded:

All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are — were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know that there are people who demur from that, but I believe that the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment. And I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.

Slavery

Hagee held a high school fund raiser in 1996, where students participated in a mock slave auction to raise money for the senior class.

A March 7, 1996, article (accessed via the Nexis database) in the San Antonio Express-News reported that Hagee was going to “meet with black religious leaders privately at an unspecified future date to discuss comments he made in his newsletter about a ’slave sale,’ an East Side minister said Wednesday.”

The Express-News reported:
Hagee, pastor of the 16,000-member Cornerstone Church, last week had announced a “slave sale” to raise funds for high school seniors in his church bulletin, “The Cluster.”

The item was introduced with the sentence “Slavery in America is returning to Cornerstone” and ended with “Make plans to come and go home with a slave.” – MediaMatters

Harry Potter

Not even Harry Potter can escape the wrath Pastor Hagee.

"As millions of people anticipate the release of the latest Harry Potter book and film, we’re reminded once again of Satan’s ongoing attempt to deceive and destroy. The whole purpose of the Potter books is to desensitize readers and introduce them to the occult." The New Republic

McCain has said that he is "very honored " to receive the endorsement of Hagee.

What exactly does McCain find so honorable about being endorsed by a hateful, intolerant, bigot?

Related

McCain, Parsley, Hagee, and Apocalyptic Foreign Policy (Washington Post)

Jewish Leader Calls Hagee ‘Extremist’ (Washington Post)

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part — through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk — to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign — to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together — unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction — towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners — an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts — that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country — a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems — two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way.

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth — by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.
In my first book, "Dreams From My Father," I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters … And in that single note — hope! — I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories — of survival, and freedom, and hope — became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about … memories that all people might study and cherish — and with which we could start to rebuild."

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety — the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions — the good and the bad — of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother — a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America — to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through — a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination — where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments — meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families — a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods — parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement — all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it — those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations — those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

n fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience — as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze — a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns — this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy — particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction — a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people — that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances — for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs — to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives — by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American — and yes, conservative — notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country — a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen — is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope — the audacity to hope — for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination — and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past — are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds — by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand — that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle — as we did in the OJ trial — or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina — or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation — the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today — a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."

"I’m here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

With 21,000 employees in Iraq, KBR is the largest Defense contractor in Iraq. Thanks to a Cayman Islands tax shelter, it isn’t paying payroll taxes. From the Boston Globe :

Kellogg Brown & Root, the nation’s top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven.

More than 21,000 people working for KBR in Iraq – including about 10,500 Americans – are listed as employees of two companies that exist in a computer file on the fourth floor of a building on a palm-studded boulevard here in the Caribbean. Neither company has an office or phone number in the Cayman Islands.

The Defense Department has known since at least 2004 that KBR was avoiding taxes by declaring its American workers as employees of Cayman Islands shell companies…

Other top Iraq war contractors – including Bechtel, Parsons, Washington Group International, L-3 Communications, Perini, and Fluor – told the Globe that they pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for their American workers.

KBR has become infamous for their graft, incompetence, fraud and even the gang rape of employees . Cheney’s old company not only defrauds the US Government through their contracting methods, they simply refuse to pay taxes as well.

In a bid to disassociate itself from the constant stream of bad press surrounding KBR, Halliburton arranged an IPO and sold off a minority stake . Declaring itself no longer tied to KBR, Halliburton neglected to mention that only 20% of KBR was for sale.

Halliburton has long used shell companies in the Cayman Islands to allow them to do work for countries otherwise unavailable to them. As 60 Minutes uncovered, they funnel contracts for work in Iran, Libya, Burma, Azerbaijan and Nigeria through their offshore offices. Contracts that would result in federal charges had they not been stamped with a Cayman Islands postal code.

Halliburton Products and Services, Ltd., is wholly owned by the U.S.-based Halliburton and is registered in a building in the capital of the Cayman Islands – a building owned by the local Calidonian Bank. Halliburton and other companies set up in this Caribbean Island, because of tax and secrecy laws that are corporate friendly.

Halliburton is the company that Vice President Dick Cheney used to run. He was CEO from 1995 to 2000, during which time Halliburton Products and Services set up shop in Iran. Today, it sells about $40 million a year worth of oil field services to the Iranian government.

Defrauding the government, trading with the enemy and abusing it’s employees. These would be grounds to launch criminal proceedings against any company, let alone the single largest U.S. military contractor. Incredibly that has yet to happen. From CBS News :

According to Cheney’s 2001 financial disclosure report, the vice president’s Halliburton benefits include three batches of stock options comprising 433,333 shares.

After leading the country in two wars, Cheney’s stock options are now worth over $16,800,000.

I suppose that’s one way to avoid prosecution.

From Hillary Clinton to John McCain:

"I think that I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. Sen. John McCain has a lifetime of experience that he’d bring to the White House. And Sen. Obama has a speech he gave in 2002."

From John McCain to Hillary Clinton:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Back in 2005, you said, “I have no doubt that Sen. [Hillary] Clinton would make a good president.”

MCCAIN: Well, look, here’s — Sen. Clinton and I are sitting next to each other, and we’re asked, “Would she,” quote, “be a good president?” She would be a good president in the respect that I think she has integrity, I think she has all of the qualities that are necessary , but she has a very different philosophical view, the liberal Democratic view, than I have, which is conservative Republican.

From Bill Clinton to both John McCain and Hillary:

"She and John McCain are very close. They always laugh that if they wound up being the nominees of their party, it would be the most civilized election in American history and they’re afraid they’d put the voters to sleep because they like and respect each other."

These are curious things for campaigns on opposite sides of the aisle to be saying. Why would they be advocating the other’s candidacy? Their campaign advisers might have something to do with that.

A Mr. Mark Penn is Hillary Clinton’s Chief Strategist.

Mark Penn is also Worldwide President and CEO of Burson & Martseller .

Burson & Martseller owns BKSH & Associates Worldwide.

A Mr. Charles Black is CEO of BKSH and he is also a senior advisor to the McCain campaign.

Business before politics, it appears. While Charles Black is operating as a volunteer to the McCain campaign, he considers McCain a client. Undoubtedly Mark Penn would like to make that a paying client. To what lengths would a lobbyist for Blackwater go to achieve that, I wonder…

"I must say, I’m a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

"It must be exciting for you … in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You’re really making history, and thanks," Bush said.

I seem to remember another war that Bush thought was romantic and just. It actually happened back when he was younger and not employed in the White House too.

Then as now, he didn’t actually fight , but he sure liked pretending.

Ferraro was an early supporter of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and earlier this week she made the following statement to a newspaper reporter in in Torrance, California about Clinton’s opponent, Senator Barack Obama.

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

Let’s see if we have this right. The "concept" is, that it is an advantage to be a black man running for national office. And it appears that carrying the name Barack Hussein Obama, rhymes with Osama, is the equivalent to having the key to the Oval Office.

Ferraro has since resigned her position as a fundraiser for Sen. Hillary Clinton. However she remains unapologetic and claims the Obama campaign is painting her out to be a racist.

At his core, Barack Obama is a brilliant, motivating, articulate agent for change with a dynamic ability to work a crowd. Whether you agree with him or not, he has a well-reasoned platform that appeals to millions. Ferraro seems to be forgetting two white men who had the same precise qualities.

Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

So, what might Ferraro be suggesting? There can only be two answers. One is that Obama has managed to coalesce the African American community into a dynamic effective voting juggernaut. Well, that’s true. In most states, Obama is winning between 65% and 88% of the black vote. But as of the last census in 2000, African Americans only made up 12.3% of the U.S. population. Hillary Clinton has an equally strong constituency among Latinos, 12.5% of the population, so this is a ridiculous argument.

It seems likely that Ferraro, 24 years after her electoral debacle, is harboring latent resentment that a woman is again on the verge of losing the opportunity for high office. Yet, by any reasonably objective standard, Hillary Clinton has done remarkably well.

The odd twist to all of this is that the arguments Ferraro is making about Obama, actually work better when applied to Clinton. No one can argue that her name recognition and national stature haven’t been dramatically enhanced via marriage. For those non-believers lets toss out a few other names. Murray, Boxer, Feinstein, McCaskill, Landrieu, Cantwell, Hutchison, Collins, Dole and Snow. They are all women currently serving in the Senate.

All of them have vastly more actual on-the-job experience than Senator Clinton, but none of them are nearly as electable on a national level. So, who’s the lucky one?

His latest on camera outburst at a New York Times Reporter

Sometimes only four letter words can express your point, even when you’re sitting on the Armed Services Committee.

Upbraiding a participant in a Town Hall Meeting

A news report on his tirade directed at Sen. Conryn.