RUINEDNATION

I will make no bones about it, I am going to vote for Obama in November. Yes, I am a democrat but I also feel it’s time to put someone in office who is going to give speeches that inspire. In fact, I would like to see someone in office who can actually speak in complete sentences. For 8 years now we’ve been bludgeoned over and over in incoherent sentences about fear, terrorism, fear, terrorism, and did I mention fear. But it seems like they forgot that there is an actual country to run. Wall street may have been “drunk” but Bush has been asleep at the wheel for two terms now. And don’t see things getting any better with John McCain aka Sir Crankypants. He is starting to remind me of Waldorf and Statler from The Muppet Show but not as funny.

While Obama is giving speeches about personal responsibility, energy ideas, improving relations in world at large, McCain goes around complaining about the press (well maybe you should get a better event coordinator - really a German sausage house, really), having people on his call Americans “a nation of whiners” (I know Graham was let go), called Social Security a disgrace, silent when asked about why should insurnace companies pay for Viagra but not pay for contraceptives and repeats “Obama voted against the war” over and over and over and over. Well guess what, Sir Crankypants, he wasn’t the only one. Oh I forgot we’re still playing the “A vote against war is vote against America” game. Damn, I just voted against America. Is it my turn again? Ok……Oops, I did it again. Wait is that McCain’s new favorite song. Oh, nice ad. I like the fact that you blamed Obama for over 20 years of bad energy policies coming home to roost. Wait, how long has McCranky been a senator?

During the spring my wife and I went around to some of the monuments and memorials and I stuck by some the quotes at some of them here’s a short list of the ones that really got to me:

Theodore Roosevelt Island:

“The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased; and not impaired in value.”

“Conservation means development as much as it does protection.”

“A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy.”

Frankin Roosevelt Memorial:

“Men and nature must work hand in hand. The throwing out of balance of the resources of nature throws out of balance also the lives of men.”

“In these days of difficulty, we Americans everywhere must and shall choose the path of social justice,the path of faith, the path of hope and the path of love toward our fellow men.”

“I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

“We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all our citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.”

“The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, or one party, or one nation. It must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world.”

These are the things that I would like our next president to say and feel, as it is my view that the president sets the tone the country and we need someone to inspire and give us even a glimmer of hope.

Actions may speak louder than words but there can be no action without the words.