The Clarion Call: Suffice it to say I have gone from such happiness, hope and joy in 1968 because I thought MY generation and my politics influenced by the notable progressives of that time were going to change, in humanitarian fashion, everything and remake a more peaceful humane world. I was convinced in my naive youthful mind it was going to finally be better . In some ways it has gotten much better but now one would almost never know it. This is the worst time I have ever experienced in my historical memory. My father and mother always, of course, talked about the Depression era and World War II as if it was just another time that everyone got through because they had faith in our country and their (and my) hero FDR. Even though they were Jews and knew what was happening to their people in Europe they were never afraid as they iterated to me so many times because the protective rock this country was they knew would protect them.

Would those Republican Tea Baggers who have ice water in their veins have done and put through what they have put this president through if he were white? I think not. I think when race is the issue there is a poison so deep and such a fundamentally malignant cancer which still even nearly 150 years AFTER the Civil War eats away at this country's body politic. It has made this so called cradle of liberty a shameful hypocrisy in the eyes of the world.

Ben Afleck's movie The Town which these sick bastards used to inspire their Congressional Republican members said it all. The Town was a viciously violent film as you probably know. When Afleck comes to his friend and says in such a controlled emotionally charged and violent fashion "We're going to hurt someone. I need your help. I can’t tell you what it is. You can never ask me about it later” said it all. These wingnuts KNOW they are going to hurt so many people in their country but they do not care. They KNOW what they are doing. They tied the debt ceiling to the eviscerating spending cuts of our nation's economic life blood because they KNOW draconian spending cuts will NOT create jobs, will ruin the nascent economic recovery initiated by this president to cure the illness and near death experience the previous Republican administration made. These Republican actions will hurt the Democratic base, kill labor and create a recession if not a depression and finally even kill the most vulnerable sick and elderly among us because and the Republican Majority Leader McConnell has said the Republicans' main goal is to effectively unseat this president.

I am convinced that so many Republican racist comments shown in the news, by Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Ed Shultz and others have proven it is the black president and the country’s historically racist core that these Republican snakes are using to capture it all -- the House, the Senate, the Presidency, our Social Security, our Medicare/Medicaid and our economy. It WILL hurt EVEN the Tea Baggers who carry their water because most of them occupy the middle and blue collar rung of our economic strata too. When the Republicans are through they will have nothing left of this nation except to stuff VAST amounts of other people's money into a few pockets which their insatiable greed desires. This is with whom our president must govern. Other social issues are lighter fluid which have been an accelerant used to ignite this explosive fire and hold a nation captive.

Yes, I can criticize the president for being naive as to with whom he thought he would compromise and for alienating some of his faithful base BUT the hateful things these Republicans have done now loudly and clearly comes to represent the Republican vehicle of choice to unseat our first black president and secede from ALL the hard-fought civil liberties and economic security human beings have gained over centuries.

We must be the fuel that lights OUR own progressive and Democratic fire. This is OUR clarion call. We must during the next year harness our own anger, capture our own fervor, and promote our own enthusiastic progressive ideals whether through minority encouragement, gay rights enthusiasm, women's choice to control their own bodies and the HUGE impact of the labor movement -- moderates and progressives alike -- so that we bring ALL those who journeyed to the polls with glee in 2008 make that same journey enthusiastically again and show up to vote in great numbers for the president’s 2012 reelection. This is MANDATORY, this is LIFE SAVING, and this is VALUE PRESERVING if we want the good part, the humane part, the empathetic part of our nation we all love to prevail.