Informant38

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation - not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over 200 years ago: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

African Americans represent 12.7% of the US population, 15% of US drug users (72% of all users are white), 36.8% of those arrested for a drug-related crime, 48.2% ofAmerican adults in state, and federal prisons and local jails and 42.5% of prisoners under sentence of death.
African American women (with an incarceration rate of 205 per 100,000) are more than three times as likely as Latinas (60 per 100,000) and six times more likely than white women (34 per 100,000) to face imprisonment.
The United States imprisons African American men at a rate four times greater than the rate of incarceration for Black men in South Africa.
In 1986, before mandatory minimums for crack offenses went into effect, the average sentence for an African American convicted of a drug-related crime involving crack was 11% higher than for whites. In 1990, four years after the implementation of harsher federal drug laws, the average increased to 49%.
Due to felony convictions, 1.46 million African American men out of a total voting population of 10.4 million have lost their right to vote.
One in three black men between the ages of 20 and 29 live under some form of correctional supervision or control.
African American children (7.0%) were nearly nine times more likely to have an incarcerated parent in prison than white children (0.8%).

That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
That is the true genius of America - a faith in the simple dreams of its people. The insistence on small miracles. That we can tuck in our children at night and know they are fed and clothed and safe from harm.

About 43 percent of women prisoners in California state facilities are drug offenders. The majority of these are single mothers, most of whom are expected to resume caring for their children at the end of their sentences. Withholding contact for a year is likely to make that difficult and crucial reunion even more challenging.

But then I asked myself: Are we serving Shamus as well as he was serving us?

I thought of more than 900 servicemen and women - sons and daughters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors, who will not be returning to their home towns. I thought of families I had met who were struggling to get by without a loved one's full income, or whose loved ones had returned with a limb missing or with nerves shattered, but who still lacked long-term health benefits because they were reservists.

Civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq
Min 11336 Max 13305

We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States.

After a coup d��tat forced President Jacobo Arbenz from office in 1954, military governments ruled Guatemala for over three decades. During this time, the country�s Native American majority (consisting of 60 percent of the population) was subjected to acts of terrorism, displaced from its land and, in about 140,000 instances, murdered.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

In the end, that's what this election is about.

Palestinians who were killed during May 2004 reached 129 people, which increased the Palestinian loss of life into 3,851 victims (including an estimate of 500 unconfirmed victims of the uninvestigated Jenin massacre). The number of Palestinians who were injured during May 2004 reached 1202 people, which increased Palestinian injuries to 37,254.
The total number of Israelis who were killed during May 2004 was 15, which increased the total number of Israelis killed by the end of May 2004 to 872 (888 according to AP calculations). The total number of Israeli injuries during May 2003 was 15 which [put] the total Israeli injuries about 2,906.

Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?

Nowhere in Obama's speech, "delivered with an almost immaculate balance of passion and restraint", is there any recognition of a people outside the boundaries of America, geographically or socially. Just us.
Any time someone appeals to your selfishness, chances are good they don't have your best interests at heart. America's fate is being decided now, and it's tilting exactly the wrong way, and yes it's a good thing to unite, to transcend, but uniting all of us is beyond the abilities of the Democrats, or the Republicans, and it isn't something either of them wants anyway.
What they want is a critical mass, a sizable minority, enough weight. Which is sensible, but it has no more moral color than a swarm of bees or a pack of feral dogs.
Pragmatism is more cynical than anything I'm putting forward here, it's just unintentionally cynical. Since the only moral compass most Americans have now is based on intentionality, that seems tangential, even trivial.
But what I'm saying really is, destroying the world by accident is no better than doing it by intent, no different at all.
Watching someone kill themselves slowly through bad habits or quickly with a shotgun is different in each case, for the watcher as it is for the actor; but in the end they're dead, and that's the real issue.
Pretending Kerry's going to alter the fate of the world, or the US, for the better, or for some undefined general good, is no more or less a symptom of denial than pretending terrorists hate "us" because we have freedom and democracy and they don't. As opposed to hating us because we're killing their children.

"If you have any question about what John Kerry's made of, about his leadership ability, about his strength and his courage, just spend three minutes, three minutes with the men who served with him 30 years ago who still stand by his side. They saw up close when their lives were at risk that this man is a leader, that he has courage, determination, and he would never leave any American behind."

OK. But Americans isn't the issue. The biggest threat to the well-being of America, and Americans, is our damaged reputation in the eyes of the world; the thug profile, as the dumb enforcer and tool of greed. Saying Kerry will take care of Americans is good, but at the expense of what? The children of the world? Or just the Muslim world? It's a bad bargain, even for pragmatists. Short-term gains won't work.
That's an appeal to selfishness. Like somebody telling you how much money you'll make. "Just sign here, and don't worry about those people outside the gate. We'll take care of them."
How about sacrifice? How about it isn't going to be fun, it isn't going to be profitable, it's going to hurt and people are going to be uncomfortable at best and suffering terribly at worst, but there is no other way. How about that?
You can't say that in the consumer hell America's become. But it needs saying. Because anything else is a cheap and tawdry lie. There is no easy way through this now. And real people with brown skins are dying, today, to make Americans feel safer, even as the lives of the next generations of Americans are threatened with almost certain disaster, a direct result of the craven selfishness driving the decisions this generation now makes. Or has made for it.