A New Dawn
Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the great island of Nantucket! Great to be with you on this Wednesday morning, the twenty sixth day of January, 2011, and as we awake to a new dawn once again, a day to start over, welcoming you and me to the first day of the rest of our lives, I’m sure we all heard what our President had to say at the “State of the Union” last night in Washington D.C.. There were heroes present, as Gabby Giffords watched from her hospital bed with her husband at her rehab hospital in Houston, with her condition going from “serious” to “good”, heroes such one of the members of her staff who was on the scene that horrible day, giving her life saving first aid that saved her LIFE. There was an integration of law makers that although, perhaps, made the atmosphere a little less impassioned, provided a much needed symbol of what and how our nation’s leaders should behave in public. “Champion science fair winners, not just the winners of the Superbowl”, was a line that received thunderous applause. Winning the future, however, is going to take more than representative Paul Ryan’s view of the country, as his rebuttal to the President’s fine speech, left little in the way of substance and quite a lot in the way of “business as usual”. I was impressed that he mentioned Gabby, but then launched into the famous republican talking point #4001 “we have to do something about our out of control spending”… I wonder, as he spoke of his children, if he, and his kids, KNOW, the FACTS of what has transpired over the past thirty years in this grand nation of OURS? Create jobs? Multi-national corporations, most of whom are OWNED by the top one percent in this nation, have shipped millions of American jobs overseas, taking away generations of good paying occupations and careers from people who worked in plants all over the country, say, for example, the mid-west… jobs that will never return, and for what? In a word, PROFIT. Then, like it was on cue, he explained the LIES the republicans continue to spin about the new health care LAW–a LAW that the bi-partisan Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, along with every credible economist out there worth his or her salt, proven through REAL math, explained will SAVE billions upon billions of dollars over the course of the next ten years, not to mention taking care of the over 50 million AMERICAN CITIZENS who are currently without it, and, moreover, outlawing insurance companies, who are in business of health care profits, as opposed to “health care”, from denying coverage to the over 128 million Americans with pre-existing conditions. There is no doubt that individual LIBERTY, that he spoke of, is not defined as “limited government”, but freedom from the coming global PLUTOCRACY, cloaked under the guise of “Fiscal Responsibility”. For how can you borrow 700 billion dollars from China to pad the bank accounts of extremely wealthy individuals, the top two percent, who have seen their income rise by 278 percent in the past ten years alone, while the rest of the nation’s working poor, the former middle class, sit in a stagnant pool of muck, where their wages have remained flat line, while food prices, the cost of medical care and the fact that there are no jobs out there has pushed them to the brink of poverty and despair…how can you call yourself “fiscally responsible?” How can you square that? Do you know nothing of carpentry? Couple that with the fact that you want to take away social programs such as Social Security, putting grandma in a more difficult position than she is in already with her fixed income, cut medicare and medicaid, again sticking it to the poor and indigent, the people who need it the most, how can you square that with the fact that your party, over the course of the past ten years has engaged in two unfunded wars, put together a deal with medicare FOR big pharmaceutical companies, all unpaid for, and still cry wolf? Limited government has helped the poor, Mr. Ryan? Really? What country are you living in? Another partisan response, when President Obama was anything but. “Help provide a safety net for those who cannot provide for themselves.” Those were your words congressman, and we will remember you said them. Cutting taxes is your plan, your road map, and as we wrap our heads around your fuzzy math, we will see, through your actions, now that you OWN part of the responsibility, what kind of American leader you “think” you are. 18 percent of the American people want you folks to waste the time repealing the health care law. As I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again, “Is that all you’ve got?” Dirty pool, Mr. Ryan, dirty pool. Our “Sputnik” moment is here and it is NOW. Technology, innovation, clean energy solutions, EDUCATION and a new air of humanity, dignity and Love for our fellow man IS our moment, our sputnik moment, and it will prove more important, down the line, than even the momentous moment of Neil Armstrong landing on our moon and stating the famous words, “that’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Let this nation move forward, not backwards, and let the real adults in the room teach the children in that same room what is RIGHT and what is WRONG, for deep down inside, we all know the answers to those simple truths, about ourselves, each other, this great nation of ours, and indeed the world at large. We can, and we must do better, and with a little LOVE, and some tenderness, we will reach that mountain top that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of, and see a new dawn in this country and a new future for our future generations. Have a beautiful day everybody and may the GRACE of creative intelligence always be with you. PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M
