me

Open Letter to the Republican Party (by Frank Schaeffer)

Dear Republican Leaders: The Republican Party has become the party dedicated to sabotaging the American future. Check out the sermon I just delivered about the Republican Party on CNN when being interviewed by D.L. Hughley -- and/or read on.



You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home. You combined the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to light a fire that has consumed America. Now you have the nerve to criticize the "architect" America just hired -- President Obama -- to rebuild from the ashes. You do nothing constructive, just try to hinder the one person willing and able to fix the mess you created.

I used to be one of you. As recently as 2000 I worked to get Senator McCain elected in that year's primary. (McCain and Gen. Tommy Franks wrote glowing endorsements regarding my book about military service, AWOL.). I have a file of handwritten thank you notes from Presidents Ford, Reagan, Bush I and II. In the 1970s and early 80s I hung out with Jack Kemp and bought into his "supply side" myth and even wrote a book he endorsed pushing his ideas.) There's more, but take it from me; my parents (evangelical leaders Francis and Edith Schaeffer) and I were about as tight with -- and useful to -- the Republican Party as anyone. We played a big part creating the Religious Right.

In the mid 1980s I left the Religious Right, after I realized just how very anti-American they are, (the theme I explore in my book Crazy For God). They wanted America to fail in order to prove they were right about America's "moral decline." Soon after McCain lost in 2000 I re-registered as an independent in disgust with W. Bush. But I still respected many Republicans. Not today.

How can anyone who loves our country support the Republicans now? Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan defined the modern conservatism that used to be what the Republican Party I belonged to was about. Today no actual conservative can be a Republican. Reagan would despise today's wholly negative Republican Party. And can you picture the gentlemanly and always polite Ronald Reagan, endorsing a radio hate-jock slob who crudely mocked a man with Parkinson's and who now says he wants an American president to fail?!

With people like Limbaugh as the loudmouth image of the Republican Party -- you need no enemies. But something far more serious has happened than an image problem: the Republican Party has become the party of obstruction at just the time when all Americans should be pulling together for the good of our country. Instead, Republicans are today's fifth column sabotaging American renewal.

President Obama has been in office barely 45 days and the Republican Party has the nerve to blame him for the economic and military cataclysm he inherited. I say economic and military cataclysm because without the needless war in Iraq you all backed we would not be in the economic mess we're in today. If that money had been spent here at home on renovating our infrastructure, taking us toward a green economy, putting our health-care system in order we'd be a very different situation.

As the father of a Marine who served in George W. Bush's misbegotten wars let me say this: if President Obama's strategy to repair our economy, infrastructure and healthcare fails that will put our troops at far greater risk because the world will become a far more dangerous place. So for all you flag-waving Republicans who are trying to undermine the President at home -- if you succeed more of our troops will be killed abroad.

When your new leader Rush Limbaugh calls for President Obama to fail he's calling for more flag-draped coffins. Limbaugh is the new "Hanoi Jane."

For the party that created our crises of misbegotten war, mismanaged economy, the lack of regulation of our banking industry, handing our country to rich crooks... to obstruct the one person who is trying to repair the damage is obscene.

Just imagine where America would be today if the 14 to 20 million voters -- "the rube base" who slavishly follow the likes of Limbaugh -- had not voted as a block year after year thus empowering the Republican fiasco. We would have a regulated banking industry and would have avoided our current financial crisis; some 4000 of our killed military men and women would be alive; over to 35,000 wounded Americans would be whole; we would have been leaders in the environmental movement; we would be in the middle of a green technology boom fueling a huge expansion of our economy and stopping our dependence on foreign oil, and our health-care system would be reformed.

After Obama was elected, you Republican leaders had a unique last chance to send a patriotic message of unity to the world -- and to all Americans. You could have backed our president's economic recovery plan. Since we all know that half of our problem is one of lost confidence and perception, nothing would have done more to calm the markets and project resolve and confidence than if you had been big enough to take Obama's offered hand and had work with him -- even if you disagreed ideologically. You had the chance to put our country first. You utterly failed to rise to the occasion.

The worsening economic situation is your fault and your fault alone. The Republicans created this mess through 8 years of backing the worst president in our history and now, because you put partisan ideology ahead of the good of our country, you have blown your last chance to redeem yourselves. You deserve the banishment to the political wilderness that awaits all traitors.



My favorite line from the video interview is definitely the "There's a 100 decent citizens on this train, and there's just the one asshole at the front molesting women, and That's what the Republican party is right now".

I could go on but, really, his open letter says exactly what my sentiments are.
me

A President I can Believe In

So I got this invitation in the mail today…

…from The Presidential Inaugural Committee in Washington D.C.

…and it's written in beautiful typefaces (both the envelope and the invitation inside)

…and it's printed on recycled paper, with soy ink, done with Certified Wind Power.


Yep, this is a president I can believe in.
me

Looking ahead to 2009: The Year of Change

(Originally posted on FarukAt.es)

For many people all around the world, if they had but one word to pick to reflect upon the year 2008, that word would possibly be “Change”. It was, after all, the word that Barack Obama ran his historic campaign on, and his election was a celebrated event all across the globe. But did 2008 really represent Change for America, or for you for that matter? It certainly didn’t for me.

At the end of 2007, which was a fairly decent year for me—I moved from Europe to California in 2007, fulfilling a nearly-lifelong dream of mine—I had looked ahead with great enthusiasm to 2008 and was hoping for it to be a year of change for me. I’d planned to get my sites up and running, start some more pet projects (more websites), get started with more actual, concrete Django development and a whole lot more.

Almost none of it happened.

2008, it turned out, was a pretty mediocre year for me. It ended up being a year that, for me, would be captured much more accurately in the phrase “The Promise of Change” rather than just the word (and any actual) Change. Oh sure, there was plenty of change in my life throughout 2008: I moved to San Francisco, I dated and eventually broke up with a really fantastic girl, I changed departments at work, and made tons of great new friends. 2008 wasn’t exactly static for me, but it exhibited almost none of the things I’d hoped for at the end of 2007.

So here comes 2009: for Barack Obama, it’ll be the year wherein he gets his chance to truly bring about the change he’s promised. As for myself, I intend to follow his example in my personal life and bring about some change as well. What 2008 taught me, more than anything else, is that change typically doesn’t come to you — when it does, it’s likely a negative kind of change rather than a positive kind. Positive change is something you bring upon yourself, through aggressive action and undertaking. It’s the only way to grow in life at the fastest possible rate.

Over the course of the next twelve months, I plan to bring about change not just in my own life, but also in yours. We’re living in a world that is connected internationally through the World Wide Web, but our society and our culture still thinks far too domestically and inwardly in comparison. There is still a great deal of intolerance and misunderstanding about other cultures, other religions, other sexualities, other people—and it’s time we change that. Throughout 2009, I’ll urge you to join me in a series of independent efforts to spread more global awareness on a series of subjects. Obama may be President of the most powerful country on the planet, but it’ll take all of us to truly change the world.

Let’s make 2009 become the Year of Change.