#619 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #44. Four years later, Barack Obama, the expense of "Citizenship"

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UPDATE Sep. 8: If you wish to watch the President Obama speech, here’s a link provided by a friend.
Watching and listening to President Obama’s speech tonight at Charlotte I kept thinking back to one of the last campaign events we attended on October 13, 2008, at Macalester College in St. Paul MN.
The event was a campaign rally, and the featured guest was Michelle Obama. We were guests of the Paul and Sharon Miller family of Northfield, whose daughter Natalie had been chosen to introduce Michelle Obama at the rally.
As I recall, Natalie was chosen to introduce Michelle because of her family message: a need to do something about access to health insurance for all in this country. Natalie made her case well in the introduction of Michelle Obama at Macalester that day. The largely student audience was with her.
Health insurance reform with access for all was a top priority need.
Natalie’s parents had good reason to be very proud. She did a masterful job, far better than my attempts at photography that afternoon. Here are a few that more-or-less turned out that afternoon.
(click to enlarge.)

Natalie greets Michelle Obama as she comes to the podium October 13, 2008


The Millers and Grandma after the speech, October 13, 2008


Similarly, Michelle Obama was outstanding. Natalie watched the speech with the rest of us.

Michelle Obama October 13, 2008


Michelle Obama October 13, 2008, Macalester College St. Paul MN


Natalie and Sharon Miller, October 13, 2008


I don’t remember the specifics of Michelle’s message, but I do know that the general message to the students was “cell phones up”: “if you want Barack Obama to win, you have to get out and go to work”.
Cell phones went up that afternoon, and as we all know, people got to work, and President Obama won by a landslide.
It was a cooperative effort.
But it was not long after the election that I began to notice something that has dismayed me during Obama’s entire first term:
The ink had hardly dried on the newsprint of the reports on the 2008 election, and Obama’s friends were criticizing him for what he hadn’t done, or done enough of, for their particular issue.
It was if they had hired him to do their bidding: “don’t bother me for any effort on my own part. I have my own life to live.”
There were few “cell phones up” after the election, or in the subsequent, so far, 3 1/2 years.
My small e-mail list knows that I started noticing this attitude problem even before the President took office: “I voted for you, now it’s your problem. What are you going to do for ME?”
Passage of the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – in early 2010 was one of the signal accomplishments of any President and Congress in any time, but there was wailing and gnashing of teeth…even among Obama’s supporters: “too little”; “the wrong stuff in the bill”, etc., etc., etc.
In 2010, a good share of those people who elected Obama stayed home from the polls, with the resulting landslide of the angry tea party types in the 2010 election.
To me, the troubling fact of 2010 was solely that: Democrats did not vote.
Which leads to the present day:
I was at a meeting this evening and got home just in time to watch the entirety of President Obama’s speech.
I felt the speech was, from Obama’s rhetorical standards, good, but not great…
UNLESS one looked at the content of what the President was saying to every one of us.
As I translated what he was saying, I’d summarize it this way: “This Job Wasn’t, and This Election Won’t, Be Easy…I Need Your Help For the Long Haul.”
The cost of citizenship is far more than just voting for one person, then expecting him or her to do our heavy lifting.
Get on the court.
For other posts of a political nature at this blog, simply enter Election 2012 in the search box and click enter. Especially note yesterdays, here.
UPDATE: September 7, 6 a.m. My favorite blogger, Just Above Sunset, summarizes what was said about the most politically newsworthy item of the day, most every day. Here’s his summary of what was said about last night at the Democratic Convention.

#618 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #43. Why I’m strongly supporting President Barack Obama for Reelection, and the Democratic Party in the November election.

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UPDATE 10:30 p.m. CDT September 5, 2012: Watch or read President Clinton’s address if you can. Link is here. This is a long speech, very on point.
Useful information resources if you are interested: Republicans should stop talking about the Moocher Class from Bloomberg News here and Economics for Voters here.
See postnote at the very end as well.
Two months from today – Wednesday, November 7 – we Americans will wake up and learn what we decided on November 6. I use the word “decide” deliberately. The word “decide” differs from “choice” in its finality. Decide is directly related to words like suicide, homicide, etc.*
As I reflect back over 50 years of eligibility to vote – I always vote – I see this as the most important election of my life. It is an election with huge long term consequences, especially for the people who think that buying the Republican siren song will serve them well.
I enthusiastically support President Obama for these reasons:
1. President Obama inherited the disastrous consequences of, particularly, 2001-2009 policies, and took on the task of getting the nation back on an even keel. He has succeeded beyond all odds. Against all odds, he advocated working together – negotiating and compromise. This was a major strength, in my opinion, even though some of his friends thought he’d sold out, and his enemies considered compromise a weakness to be exploited.
2. From day one his Republican adversaries made their number one objective making Obama fail. They announced this publicly and from the very beginning, they played it out in all of the ways they could muster in both U.S. Congress and U.S. Senate and Republican-controlled state-houses and legislatures. [Update Sep 8: How they did this is shown here.] They have tried to disappear the consequences of their own being in control of the government in the disastrous years of the first decade of the 21st century.
3. The Republicans failed in their efforts to make President Obama fail. Today, we are not where we’d like to be, but by any measure we’re far better off than we were four years ago when we were on the verge of collapse. By most any measure we remain an exceedingly wealthy country. There seems to have been one overriding objective of Obama’s enemies since he took office: to keep unemployment above 8%. They considered this is a winning number.
4. Unfortunately, people’s memories are very short; and we tend to be short-sighted. I am very concerned by the combination of very big money and the absolute lack of honesty in the media advertising onslaught to come in the next two months. This is the first election where, it appears, there is almost no interest in fact-checking, and lying is expected and accepted. We are seeing the reality of Newspeak (George Orwell’s 1984). Both sides manipulate information, but the Republican propaganda machine has been perfected, is far worse, and is far better financed than the Democrats. It is a dangerous development.
A little history:
Four years ago, September, 2008, no one, including the then-George W. Bush administration, could deny that our United States was on the verge of financial and industrial and real estate collapse. The reckless policies of the 2000s were coming home to roost.
As a nation we had lived on a credit card, where debt didn’t matter. As many know, life on a credit card is easy and fun…until the bill comes due. The people who gave us the credit card in the first place are now blaming Obama for the consequences.
2008 – four years ago – was a frightening time. For the first and only time ever, in 2008, I took steps to try to get my small 401-k account insured against the free-fall then occurring in almost the entire Financial and Big Business sector.
Here’s my graphic of who has run things in Washington since 1977: President, Congress, Senate (each has their roles, as set by the Constitution of our country); and their own internal rules: Congress 1977-2011001. I think this division of powers (and responsibilities) is important to understand.
We are the ultimate ‘politicians’, and we are reflected by whom we elect to office. Before you judge the current situation as “their” or “his” fault, consider reflecting on the recent past preceding 2009 and your personal role in it.

Minnesota State Fair Sep 1, 2012

Minnesota State Fair Sep 1, 2012

Then there’s the matter of political parties and the other offices.
I’ve always been Democrat (DFL, Democratic-Farmer-Labor), or at least so inclined. I’ve always felt that the Democratic Party has most in common with the ordinary people of this country, people like myself, or what is called the 99%. This year more than ever is a year to vote Democratic…unless you’re very wealthy and have only an interest in greater wealth.
But it isn’t that simple. My political hero and in a direct way mentor was former Republican Governor of Minnesota Elmer L. Andersen. I have had a great deal of respect for other old-line Republican lawmakers.
Elmer L. passed on eight years ago, but were he still alive he would have suffered the fate of moderate Republican leaders by being purged out of the Republican party, or at least made irrelevant by a more radical right wing.
Today’s Republican Party is a radical version of Republicanism, and until the moderates regain some control of the party activities, it is not a party to be trusted.
In many ways, todays Democratic Party resembles the old moderate Republican structure. Progressives don’t like to hear this, but I think I’m pretty accurate. The Democrats represent the center.
Those who vote Republican just because they’ve always voted Republican are making a huge mistake, in my opinion.
Those inclined to vote for certain losers or solely on their own specific single issue(s) just to make some point or stay true to their own ideals are making a mistake. Third parties as often hurt the so-called “lesser of two evils” than helping the third parties cause. In a diverse society, single pure ideological issues are easy to promise and almost impossible to attain.
On November 6, vote, and vote well informed.
* – NOTE: There is an “end-game” referendum aspect to this particular election. For many years an oft and publicly stated goal of powerful anti-tax leader Grover Norquist and his acolytes has been to shrink the size of government (at least the aspects of government he doesn’t like) till it can be “drowned in a bathtub”. How to do this? Very simple (it’s already been done). Make the government seem unwieldy and dysfunctional and unresponsive, de-fund it (the big tax cuts of 2003), make the citizens angry at it because they can’t get services they need, and they see the gridlock in Congress…and use this frustration to take over that very government. This strategy is very close to paying off for Norquist and his ilk. If he succeeds it will be a day most of those voting for it will come to regret…but by then it will be too late. Sure, this is speculation, but it is informed speculation from watching the political propaganda process for over 40 years.
POSTNOTE: I write often about political topics. This is #43 in the last several months, all of which relate to 2012. To see a list of the others, simply enter Election 2012 in the search box and click enter. A list will come up. The 42 previous posts relate to an assortment of topics. There will be many future commentaries as well. Check back once in awhile.

#612 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #38. Joe Biden, Pat Kessler and Niall Ferguson

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Today, I decided to attend the Vice President Joe Biden event at the Depot in Minneapolis.
I’ve attended these kinds of events before, so I knew exactly what to expect. It took an hour out of yesterday to pick up the ticket, then four hours today to drive over, stand in line, stand inside waiting for the Vice Presidents half hour speech, then drive home afterwards. I was there for the entire event.
It was a good day. I’m tired.
(click on photos to enlarge them)

V. P. Joe Biden, August 21, 2012, The Depot, Minneapolis MN


There was nothing unexpected in the vice-president’s remarks. I heard Pat Kessler of WCCO-TV report live back to the Noon News on ‘CCO that Biden was in the Cities to “fire up the troops”, or words to that effect.
Of course, motivating supporters is a totally appropriate use of time for a candidate. Kessler, who is my favorite local TV reporter on political matters, was stating the obvious.
(Like all the camera people and reporters, Kessler was “penned in” the press area, certainly not roaming the crowd. I watched Pat as he did his work, writing his notes, walking around in the ‘pen’, contemplating his thoughts.)

Pat Kessler reporting at noon, August 21.


I wondered how much time Kessler’s piece would get on the WCCO-TV evening news. Back home I watched, and he got about three minutes, only perhaps a minute of which was about the event in which I had invested five hours of my time. This is not a criticism. He was doing his job. And he does it well. He always seems fair, and cares about getting his information right, and conveying it in as objective manner as possible.
But if TV news is where people get a lot of their political news, they certainly get no depth of coverage at all. Maybe 20 minutes of that half hour news program is advertising; the rest divided into the traditional “news, weather, sports” with perhaps some special features thrown in (the State Fair is coming up and ‘CCO will do the news from there….)
Back home, I picked up the mail which included, this day, Newsweek’s August 27 edition, with President Obama on the cover, and the cover article, “Hit the road, Barack. Why We Need a new President” by Niall Ferguson.
I’d gotten a preview of this article the previous day through two commentaries challenging Ferguson’s methodology and his interpretation of facts. You can read them here and here. UPDATE Aug 22: Another one, from Business Insider, came today and is here. And another, here.
Because Ferguson is a writer of some prominence, and because Newsweek remains a magazine of some credibility, Ferguson’s printed words get credibility that apparently they don’t deserve. Likely very few of the Newsweek readers get the benefit of a critique of Ferguson’s objectivity. The choice is to accept his opinion or not.
Back to the Depot and V.P. Biden, I think most of us felt it was time well spent. But it was tiring.
Well before the invocation opening the gathering, I struck up a conversation with a lady who was sitting on the floor near the media platform.
She was surprised that there were no chairs (it is the usual for these kinds of events).
At the same time, so far as I know she stayed till the end, and she was a supporter. It was just too tiring.
I ran into one fellow I knew and we had a good conversation about things political; and it is always interesting to just people watch at events like this. I become aware of how diverse the scrum is that goes by the name “Democrat” at such gatherings. (And you also notice people who are quite obviously not Democrat, but they are at such meetings for reasons of their own.)
In the long line before entering the old Depot, I got to thinking about the time in 1960-61 when I first came to Minneapolis, via the Soo Line, for a student union conference at the UofM Farm Campus in St. Paul. I was a college senior at the time, and I’d never been on a jaunt like this before. The bustle of the twin cities was new to me.
Where Joe Biden was speaking was where I and my fellow students had debarked from the train from Valley City ND over 50 years ago, sometime during the transition period from President Eisenhower to President Kennedy. A memory from that era is here: Politics 1960 vs 1996001
Things have really changed….

The line into the refurbished Milwaukee Road Depot August 21, 2012


There’s about two months till the election.
Get engaged.

Message t-shirt seen at the Joe Biden event


Portion of Milwaukee Road Route Map 1954, seen at the Hotel which now occupies the former Depot.


The old smokestacks from the days that the Depot welcomed coal-burning steam engines.

#587 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #27. "Obamacare" or "Obama cares"

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UPDATE: 23 comments below. A second post on this topic, with additional comments, is accessible here.

Dick and Barbara Bernard as Godparents, March, 1965, four months before Barbara's death.


I’m publishing this a few hours before the Big Release of the Supreme Court decision on what has come to be known as “Obamacare”.
I have no prediction.
All I know is the reality, learned at too young an age, about what it means to be desperately ill and uninsured.
Perhaps someone will read this, and get the message and maybe even change their mind about “Obamacare” (which I deliberately choose to label “Obama cares” in the headline.)
Forty-nine years ago, in mid-October of 1963, fresh out of the U.S. Army, I began teaching school in a small school district in northern Minnesota. Medical Insurance, then, was strictly an elective affair. You wanted it, you got it on your own, and you paid for it.
I was 23 years old. I signed up for doctor but not hospital insurance.
My new wife was even younger than I, also a first year teacher in another school district.
Two weeks after I started teaching, Barbara, already feeling ill, went to see the doctor (a few miles north, in Canada), found out that her kidneys were not working right. She had to resign from teaching two months into her contract. She was pregnant. We began a new unplanned-for life.
Three weeks later, President Kennedy was assassinated.
Those years you couldn’t say “Time out. I think I’ll take some of that hospital insurance now.” Besides, her kidney condition was “pre-existing”.
We struggled on through almost two years of hell.
There is no heroic way to describe it. We just plodded on through it. At the end of May, 1965, she collapsed in a coma at home. She left our town in an ambulance to Bismarck ND; then, in a few days, on to Minneapolis.
At University Hospital they admitted a non-resident patient with no insurance and no ability to pay.
And on July 24, 1965, in Minneapolis, far away from our North Dakota home, Barbara died at University Hospital, not living long enough to receive a kidney transplant, a procedure then in its infancy.
July 29, 1965, on a blustery hilltop in Valley City ND, Barbara was laid to rest. Son Tom, one, was there, as were friends and family.
I came back to the Twin Cities to start the new job I’d received three days before she died. In the fall, as I was preparing to file for bankruptcy, North Dakota Public Welfare came through and paid most of the major medical expense we had incurred. Our bills, while equivalent to over two years of my then-salary, were minuscule compared to today.
My son and I lived with a kind family who provided babysitting for my son, and a room for me, and I worked much of that first year at two jobs. And ultimately survived.
It wasn’t until many years later that I learned that the day after my wife was buried, July 30, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare Act into Law. Now, 47 years later, I have a certain amount of seniority in the wonderful Medicare program.
And we wait for a ruling, momentarily, where some people are hoping that “Obamacare” will be tossed on the trash heap, and the health safety net, complicated enough as it is, will be made even more fragile.
For years I’ve heard all the arguments about why there shouldn’t be some significant version of National Health. Lately I’ve had to endure a TV ad of some supposed family physician lamenting the evil of Obamacare: that some of her patients might not be able to have their appointments with her anymore; and further asserting, without any supportive data, that Obamacare will drive up health care costs even more.
And I think back to those years of 1963-65, when I was in my twenties, and my wife was dying without insurance, and we were broke.
Whatever happens with the Supreme Court today, the reality will remain, for me, that everybody in this wealthy nation of ours deserves the best in education and health care, regardless of their means.
I’ll be interested in the ruling today….

Dick Bernard and Barbara Sunde, wedding day, June, 1963


Relevant and related to this post: here.
UPDATES:
1. Sue: Thanks so much for sharing this story…
2. Molly: powerful post, Dick, thanks. And I’m reading this just below a headline which says that SCOTUS did NOT destroy the ACA… praise the Lord! (…as flawed as it is…) whew.
3. Deborah: dick -Your story is so touching and so very sad!. You are no doubt thrilled at the announcement today from the Supreme court.Thousands of people who would have died or lived a deeply compromised quality of life can today breathe a sigh of relief!
4. Jeanne: Sorry Dick but I beg to differ. I don’t think anyone wants people not to be able to receive affordable medical care.
I have a genetic condition myself.
However, the federal government has not been known to produce positive results.
Our countries understood that the more control that is given to a government the more they can dictate and put power in the hands of one or a few persons.
Our freedom is being taken away.
I will be forced to support things that are against my conscience. If Obama can do that to one group, he can do it to you too.
Yes our health care system needs reform. But not this way.
5. Carole: thank you for this. i am celebrating.
6. Melvin: You have a wonderful gift of writing. I can’t wait to read your book. Thank you for always sharing more of yourself. I know you are touching people’s hearts and minds, which results in human transformation. Keep sharing your wisdom and understanding. It is making a difference!
7. Joe: That was a very powerful message. Thanks.
8. Kathy: Well we can celebrate this small piece of evidence that not EVERYTHING is predetermined along partisan lines.
Thank you for sharing the touching tribute to Barbara and congratulations on your own healthy survival.
9. Carol: I was in the dentist’s chair this morning and Dr. _____ said “I loved your letter in the Bulletin yesterday.” (Gotta love your dentist when he reads your letters :\ Then he went on to complain about that exact commercial you referenced (I haven’t seen it), and he said that he was going to have a very bad day today if they overturned Obamacare. Almost immediately his assistant read scrolling across the computer screen that the Supreme Court had upheld it. We high-5’d (about all you can do with your mouth full of stuff 🙂
10. Susan: What a great ruling! Who’d’ve thunk that Roberts would ended up being on “our side” of the decision?!?
11. Alan: There must still be some people in certain news organizations that declared “Dewey Beats Truman” in 1948 (remember the headlines in the Chicago Tribune?) The first news flash about Obamacare was that the Supreme Court struck it down!! So who won? WE THE PEOPLE WON!!!
Thank you, Mr. President for caring enough to finally see that ALL Americans will have health care. As far as I am concerned, you should be President for Life!!!
12. Christine: Extremely relevant and interesting and moving. Thank you Dick for sharing this with as many people as you can. It shows one of so many examples of why everybody should have the right to be treated with no restrictions of revenue or pre condition or anything at all.
13. Mary: Thanks for sharing these hard memories.
14. Leila: Thank you for sharing this story, and especially the photographs. Barb and I were friends, so they are even more meaningful to me.
15. Debi: What a sad story. Made me cry. Glad that no one will have to face the same difficulties now.
16. Bruce: The best thing about ACA is that it codifies universal coverage into law. Now let the states take us all the way there by implementing a true not for profit Health Care System. Relevant links here and here. Canadians got universal, nonprofit health insurance one province at a time. Let follow the Canadian model and let the states lead the way to real Universal Coverage.
17. Harriette: I just don’t know what to say. I’m glad you’re in my camp. I prize our email acquaintance. You must send this to the Obama people.
18. Madeline: I was certainly happy and relieved that the Affordable Health Care law was upheld by the Supreme Court today, but I have two comments, below. As Ted Kennedy said, “take what you can get.” I think it is a step in the direction toward universal single payer health care.
1. Justice Roberts had already done his dirty work with “Citizens United,” which could make it very difficult for Democrats to win at every level in the Nov. election, and which could put this new law in serious jeopardy. He could side with the liberals on this issue, hoping to make the Court look less partisan, and because of Citizens United, he probably thought he risked nothing. Besides, some of the justices are aging, there may be appointments necessary in the next administration, and if a Republican is elected president, those would likely be conservative.
2. I watched Ch. 5 news around 5-6 pm and again caught coverage at 10. There was a significant difference between the reporting from the dinner hour and the 10 pm report. They obviously had been fed some Republican lies in the meantime which they were expected to present as the “Cons” against the “Pros.”
Peace,
Madeline
[T]he right “recognizes something that few on the left recognize: that campaign finance law underlies all other substantive law.” Mother Jones:ort How to Sweep Dark Money Out of Politics, Undoing Citizens United, the DIY guide
19. Kathy: At 9:15 [a.m.] Fox was yelling “Health Care Ruled Unconstitutioal//we knew it, we knew it..CNN was saying the same thing …It was a 50 page decision..and Fox misread it and had to correct their err…I was listening to NPR and they were copying CNN and then they realized it was incorrect.
20. Norm: Stuff happens!
May remind some of the more senior seniors of a similar mistake headline in 1948 stating that Dewey Defeats Truman with a similar reaction from HST to that of President Obama!
Kind of surprising that CNN didn’t check things out better but less surprising that Fox News did it as well. On the other hand, one of my brothers insists that Fox News is the only accurate news source around so…
21. Jim: I have a sister that claims CNN is a left-leaning lying news source. Only Fox News can be trusted. I’d imagine that she believes that the ACA was struck down but due to a White House deal with the devil was made whole again.
22. Kathy: Rachel Maddow [MSNBC] said President Obama was watching CNN when they said Health Care had been defeated…until a female lawyer came in later and gave him 2 thumbs up..
23. Jeff: Count me in the group of shocked. Although I think Roberts was looking for a little “liberal love”. And he is getting it, along with scorn from the Right wing…. This too shall pass. He personally has presided over the most corporation friendly court in many years, liberals who are praising his decision here ought not get so overdone with praise. Just sayin.

#578 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #23. Politics of Losing…and Winning

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The weekend just past was hot, at least as for us in this area. The temperature was in the low 90s till Sunday night rainfall moderated it.
Some of our grandkids were involved in post-school year athletic activities.
Over at the local high school, first-grade Ben competed in several events, including successfully passing the baton in the second leg of the 4×100 race. That afternoon, 10 year old Parker was part of a team that played five baseball games in a tournament on Saturday and Sunday, and won third. We saw the third game. He’s a good competitor, Parker is. (see photos, click to enlarge) His team is a good one: they work well together; there’s a sense of co-ownership which you can “feel” as a spectator. They’re a team.

Ben passes the baton at the end of the second leg of the 4x100


Parker on first.


Sunday we missed another grandsons baseball game because of a competing event: another grandsons 12th birthday party. Ted’s cake was decorated with the symbol Pi (of 3.1416). His gig is numbers and math. His sister, Kelly, showed off some pottery she was making in some summer class.
And on it went. It was a good weekend.
I contrast this with what we witnessed again this weekend: the lose-lose talk of politics as war.
The Republicans are proclaimed to be riding high because of Walker’s win in Wisconsin; and a verbal gaffe – a single sentence – of President Obama was expertly snipped out and exploited by his enemies this weekend. Unfortunately, contemporary Politics is Civil War, and I think the piece I wrote a few days ago is worth reading and sitting with as you ponder the next few months of bloody battles.
Politics is a team activity. We are all in teams: a country, a state, a legislative district, a local community. We cannot survive as a bunch of individuals who choose to watch the game, or not, and then decide at the last minute whether or not we should even show up to mark a single ballot for some candidates on November 6. Politics as Civil War, which is what is has become, is not healthy to Team U.S.A., Team State of Minnesota, Team World….
This weekend there were two particularly impressive competitors I saw.

Fan at Parker's game going around showing us the score.


Finishing the race


The little girl, doubtless somebodies sister, wasn’t content to just sit on the sidelines, but felt a need to participate in some way in the game she was watching, and her way was to help announce the score to the rest of us.
But it is the boy in the last picture that wins my prize: he was dead last in his 440 heat, way dead last. But he had absolutely no intention of dropping out, of quitting.
I saw him afterwards, and he was still tired. But he wasn’t a defeated tired, and that’s a critical distinction.
He’d run the race, he’d finished, and of all the competitors I saw this weekend, he’s the one who won top prize in my book. He’s the winner.
There is a huge amount of stake in the 2012 election. Those little kids in the above pictures, and their cohort, everywhere on the planet, are the ones who will benefit, or be damaged, by our wisdom or stupidity; our short or long-term vision for our future.
At the very least, get on the court, and stay there till the finish line. Politics is not a spectator sport.
For other entries on my view of Politics this season, just enter Election 2012 in the search box.

#570 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #17. A Funeral

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A couple of weeks ago I attended the memorial service for a former colleague of mine. He was 78 when he died, and the memorial service was in a small city outside the twin cities area.
John had been my colleague for 24 years. I didn’t know him well, as we were among about 40 staff people in a state-wide organization, and other than relatively frequent staff-meetings, he & I didn’t have any day to day relationship. He was from another part of the state. But we were part of the same staff group and saw each other frequently.
John’s was an open casket funeral. We were there, family and friends and colleagues. A Methodist minister officiated.
(click on photos to enlarge)


We’d seen the obituary before the funeral, and it mentioned John’s “significant other for 37 years, Oliver…”
I asked our colleague who I was riding with, “was John Gay?” Yes. Obviously he was. I’d never noticed anything. He was simply ‘staff’ like me.
With John’s casket was a military-folded American flag, recognizing his military service. He’d been a Marine in the Korean War years. For nine years he had been a public school teacher before he was a union representative.
I’d guess there were about 30 of us at the service, mostly family members.
It was a very nice send off for John.
I noticed in the obit that while John grew up and went to college in Iowa, and had lived for almost all of his work life in Minnesota, that his burial was to be in a rural Norwegian cemetery in eastern North Dakota.
As is my tendency, I asked a stupid question of Oliver, his partner: “why is the burial to be in North Dakota?”
Oliver replied politely that the cemetery was his families cemetery, and he and John had bought adjoining plots some years earlier. It was a matter of fact answer. I felt foolish.
They’d loved each other for 37 years, why wouldn’t they want to be buried together?
John’s funeral occurred at the very time when the issue of Gay relationships is under the spotlight in the United States. In the last few days President Obama has weighed in, powerfully, on the issue; and North Carolina has enshrined anti-Gay marriage language in their State Constitution.
Such a matter is pending in Minnesota in the Fall election as well, and politically savvy people are calling the Gay issue a wedge issue….
As the casket was about to be closed, Oliver said the final goodbye to his partner. I don’t recall ever seeing such a tender farewell from one to another. It was a gentle, powerful moment.
Perhaps, just perhaps, John’s death on April 29, might be part of the death of the anti-Gay hate campaign that has been so useful to so many for so long.
One can hope.
TWO VIGNETTES plus two other points:
1. My Aunt Jean passed away in 1994, and I volunteered to give my friend, Fr. Paul, a ride to the memorial service.
Paul had married Uncle George and Aunt Jean in 1944, and had baptized me in 1940. In his later years, he and I had become good friends.
During the long drive from his home to the place of the memorial service, Paul began to reminisce about his growing up, seminary, and his many years in the Priesthood in North Dakota. By all accounts, he was a very faithful Priest, a very good man. We talked about many things: about the loneliness and isolation of his profession, and of how he and his colleague Priests coped, and of occasional serious lapses. Priests are human, after all. He allowed me to tape his reminiscences.
There was only one point at which he became visibly agitated about anything, and that was when he talked about homosexual relationships. “I just don’t understand that”, he said. And on we went.
It has occurred to me that it was not homosexuality of someone else that was Paul’s problem; it was Paul’s unwillingness to understand it that was his own perception problem. So it goes for those who rail against it. It is not a religious issue so much as it is an understanding issue.
2. The Catholic Church hierarchy (happens to be my church too) is in the forefront of the marriage/man/woman campaign. It is not quite as simple as the Bishops and Cardinals ‘teach’.
I have the marriage contract of my first Bernard ancestor in Quebec in the year 1730 (in its entirety here: Quebec Marriage Cont001)
The document speaks for itself. Quebec was a Catholic country: non-Catholics were not welcome. So this civil contract did in fact require marriage in the Catholic Church. But the civil contract was entered into two weeks before the religious marriage, and they were separate and distinct entities. Even in an all Catholic country, there was separation between Church and State. In the Bernard-Giroux case, the marriage in the church happened two weeks after the civil contract of marriage. Would there have been a valid civil marriage if one or the other of the couple died before the religious bans? Doubtless that happened more than once.
3. I keep thinking of my classmate, Jerry, who died in 1993. We were simply classmates in a tiny school (senior class of nine) and it wasn’t till years later that I learned he was Gay, from his Aunt. Recently I googled his name, and up came a short obituary of him. It would seem appropriate to add this web reference to Jerry, which speaks well for itself. I particularly note the anonymity of the two brief tributes. That is how it has been, to be Gay in our society.
4. A longer summary of the current political conversation about the Gay Marriage issue is here.

#551 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #8. The un-Civil Political War of 2012.

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The main front-page headline of today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune is pretty clear “election 2012 Ad blitz targeting Obama is on its way”*.
Karl Rove and Company is baaaacckkkk, big-time. They were preparing for the Main Event, and here they are.
There are no surprises in the article (click on the headline to see the entire article). There will be hundreds of millions of dollars spent with a single objective: to smear and thus help defeat President Obama and Democrats in November. It is coordinated and it will be vicious beyond any previous precedent. Big, big money will be funding this stuff for the next six months. Buyer beware.

“Obama” is really used as the symbol of people like me: “liberal”, “Democrat”, “union”…they and words like them are all “hate words”. (In a few days I’ll be writing about that business of “hate words”. Stay tuned. The subtext will be “Using the Middle Class to kill the Middle Class”.)
Nothing we’ll see in the barrage of ads (and “forwards”) will be any surprise to me. There is no intention at conveying “truth” in any sense of that word. These “ads” will doubtless include those barrage of “forwards” that I get most every day. (I always look at these forwards, since I want to see how the “truth” is destroyed.) I’ve written about this before, most recently March 24, 2012. It is so rare to receive a forward that on balance is “true”.
I also look at the truly vicious stuff that comes from the “Tea Party” internet structure. I’m a glutton for punishment, I guess.
As for me, I happen to be a retired Teacher Union representative who’s a very moderate liberal Democrat who has a great deal of respect for President Obama, (though I supported Hillary Clinton until she conceded the nomination in 2008.) My best prominent political friend was a former Republican Governor of Minnesota. I’m reasonably well informed person on politics, and reasonably active in the local level of the political conversation.
If you are at all interested in my perspectives, check in once in awhile and simply put the words Election 2012 in the search box. You’ll find anything I’ve been writing about the topic (there have been 7 preceding items.)
If you aren’t interested, fine. Not so fine if you believe the ad barrage, as you will be lied to, constantly, from the comfort of your easy chair. If you are unsure what to believe, reluctantly I would say, believe nothing when it comes to political argument. There is truth out there, but it won’t come from the “forwards” or the ads.
More on this topic in the next few days.
Note: June 27, 2011, I did a directly related post to this one. It is here. I note that in that smear campaign, $20 million was said to be involved. In the one now beginning, the amount will be over $200 million, and national, and this is months before the big and vicious onslaught in the fall.
Caveat Emptor.
* – I’ve subscribed to the Minneapolis Star Tribune for many years. In the most recent years it would likely be most accurately described as moderate conservative Republican in orientation.
UPDATE APRIL 11, 2012
1. From Willard Shapira, Roseville MN: The election of 2012 is nothing less than a no-holds-barred battle for control of America now and the foreseeable future. Civility is out the window; anything goes when the stakes are this high.
2. One of this mornings e-mails was a “forward” from a valued long-time friend, with this question: “Is this true?”
The text, much in very large print, all capitals and screaming color, was
“Shocking News from ABC’s Diane Sawyer”
“Biggest travesty of all times…
The entire e-mail, along with the video, follows my response:
“I appreciate your asking.
I looked at the piece, and I checked Snopes, Nothing about Chinese building American bridges there, possibly because this is a brand new piece.
Here is what I noticed:
1) This is probably a brand new piece of propaganda, and it very likely is a ‘cut and paste’ job using ABC footage and website. It says right under the video that it was aired in September, 2011, six months ago, and the video itself probably used footage even older. But surrounding the video is current news. For someone like you or I it would be almost impossible to discern the “truth” of this apparently very real piece of film. It is probably gross misuse of ABC’s rights, but ABC won’t pursue – too hard. And you can’t attribute this “forward” to anyone specific (typical of such forwards).
2) The piece emphasizes three STATE projects, California, New York and Alaska, but its clear intent is to blame OBAMA and put him and GOVERNMENT in cahoots with CHINA (see the second sentence.)
3) There is something unstated here: these are very big business contracts. As you know, “states” as entities don’t build anything. They let contracts to profit-making concerns who are constrained only by state and federal law. Business (and we consumers) do a LOT of shopping in China.
If one were to dig at all, one would find this to be far, far more complicated. If something surfaces on Snopes, I’ll let you know.
That you would have received this on Monday doesn’t surprise me at all, actually.
Here is what I wrote on Monday on my blog post (you’ve been reading the post I refer to).
After sending my response, I thought about this some more, and added this:
I think about this kind of stuff, quite a lot, actually, and it occurred to me after sending my response that I had left out perhaps the most important piece of data: in my state, and at the national level, and probably in most states, the real ‘driver’ of public policy for the current Republican party is Big Business. One of the main mantras I hear all the time is “get government off our back”, in terms of regulations, such as fair wages, who we can buy from, etc., etc. So, with the bridge example, the prime contractors go where they can get “whatever” cheapest…but continue to blame “government” for the problems.
Prove me wrong on this one. I think it will be difficult to do so, since, as I say, I hear it all the time.”
The “forward” continued.
Diane Sawyer reporting on U.S. bridge projects going to the Chines….NOT Americans.
The bridges are right here in the U.S. and yet Obama has approved for Chinese contractors to come in and do the work. What about jobs for Americans???
Watch this video. It doesn’t take long to view.
This one should be tough for the supoorters of the current regime to swallow…AND it comes from ABC NEWS.
U.S.A. Bridges andRoads Being Built by Chinese Firms. Shokcing to say the least! This video is a jaw-dropper that will make you sick. (It was also shocking that ABC was actually reporting this story.)
The lead-in with Obama promising jobs in the U.S. by improving our infrastructure is so typical of all his promises! Our tax dollars are at work – for CHINA!!!
I pray all the unemployed see this and cast their votes accordingly in 2012!
Click here: U.S Bridges, Roads Being Built by Chinese Firms Video – ABC News
PLEASE pass on to everyone.

#544 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #5. Health Insurance responsibility for all?

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UPDATE March 29, 2012: If you are interested in the ‘national health care’ issue, “My favorite blogger” (see below) has perhaps 10,000 words of summary about the three day circus surrounding the Supreme Court earlier this week (A normal newspaper column is perhaps 600-700 words. My comments below are about 500 words). I’d appreciate your reading my comments, and if you read nothing else, note the first and last full paragraphs of the final (March 28) post of Just Above Sunset. Here are the links: March 26, March 27, March 28. These will take awhile, but are worth the time, and Just Above Sunset is worth subscribing to (it is free, one per day).
My 500 words: If you looked at the subject line and have read this far, you’re interested in and literate on the debate which has culminated in oral argument at the U.S. Supreme Court this week.
My favorite blogger, Just Above Sunset, summarizes at considerable length the views on issues of the day, and his morning post late yesterday, “The Supreme Court Disaster”, as the day before and (probably) tomorrow, will cover all manner of definitive speculation about everything related to the case. Everything said by anyone may be meaningful, or, as easily, meaningless. We don’t know.
But the issue is of huge importance, regardless of the ultimate ruling, and I decided to weigh in with the following comment on this piece of text nearing the end of the March 27 Just Above Sunset post: “But Paul Waldman points out something far more absurd, that Americans want something for nothing.”
So true, so very, very true. We Americans generally have one priority: ME, NOW. Makes no difference our ideology: ME, NOW. We’re used to demanding our way, or no way. I’M RIGHT. YOU’RE WRONG.
My wife and I are senior citizens, with accumulating seniority on Medicare. We both have pensions and we’re on Social Security. We live modestly, but don’t have to live frugally. We’re in reasonably good health. We’re the very fortunate ones in this society.
Today (March 28) we visited the tax man. We itemize: in the medical box is $12,705.66 in premiums and out of pocket expenses for a great assortment of insurances and expenses which we feel are necessary, including Long Term Care. Even Medicare has a premium, automatically deducted from our Social Security. It isn’t “free”….
We have no complaints.
I frequently think back to another day, back in 1963, when I got out of the Army and began teaching school. My new wife had also just begun teaching. We were just beginning our life together. She was pregnant with our first child.
I was back home for less than a month when she began to feel sick. She went to the doctor, and had to quit teaching. It was a steady downhill slide from there. She died of kidney disease two years later, only 22.
We had no hospital insurance. Group insurance was unusual in 1963.
Individual insurance was available. Like today’s kids, we couldn’t imagine ever needing insurance at our young age. By the time we did, it was too late. (Most likely, then as now, my wife would have been un-insurable due to her pre-existing conditions we didn’t realize existed.)
We were saved by public charity (several public and religious hospitals), and later I was saved from bankruptcy by public welfare, and embraced by a caring community.
The hell we went through long ago – our son just turned 48 – created my attitude forever. A caring society matters far more than the “free” individual.
But concepts like insurance for all are abstract concepts for our “me, now” generation. We are an immensely wealthy society (even with the laments about unemployment), and we have difficulty imagining that the others, and the future, matters.
Those wishing for the defeat of “Obamacare” might be careful what they wish for.
(I prefer it be called more accurately “Obamacares”.)
Dick and Barbara Bernard March 1965. Barbara died four months later. We were sponsors at a Baptism of our friends first child.
Photo is of Dick and Barbara Bernard in early March, 1965. Barbara died four months later. She was very ill. We were sponsors at a Baptism of our friends first child.
For access to other Election 2012 posts, simply enter the words election 2012 in the search box and dates/titles of other items will appear.

#541 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #3. A blizzard of insanity: the internet Lie machine.

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The ‘ink’ had not even dried on Election 2012 #1 when in came a “forward”, containing a piece of video purportedly proving that President Obama was born in Kenya. There he was, on videotape, President Obama himself, saying he was Kenyan at a public meeting with real people who looked like normal white people. They were his words. His voice.
The forward-er was someone I only very recently had heard from via e-mail. Except for Christmas cards, we really weren’t in touch. The correspondent said in that earlier e-mail that the President lies, without evidence. Well, apparently here in this forwarded video, was the evidence….
It was easy to dispatch this one, as it is most all of the internet lies circulating constantly. As we all know from watching those cute TV ads of babies talking like businessmen, the insurance companies talking duck and gecko, etc, experts can cut and paste both video and sound, and mix them masterfully, and this they had done with the so-called President Obama video. But many people don’t seem to grasp the obvious with the political stuff: that their hates and fears are being manipulated and massaged by liars who are, in turn, accusing the hated other of lying. So it goes. Lies work. All one can do is respond.
Computers and the internet are marvelous – and dangerous – things. They’re dangerous in the hands of the small Army, largely older people like me, who share the garbage I’ve come to call “forwards”.
This seems a good time to dust off and send the following, which was gathering dust in the ‘draft’ bin of my computer, and which I’d dealt with on-line a few weeks ago. The inquiring e-mail came from a good friend in London, England, who’d gotten a “forward” from his wife’s grandfather in the U.S. Here is what I said about this topic, then:
“My usual source for checking stuff like this is www.snopes.com.
[Yours] is the first international version of passing on the big lie(s) that I’ve seen.
Snopes had nothing I could find on either of these – perhaps I keyed in the wrong search words, or perhaps this is so completely outrageous as to not be worth the time.
My guess: the data is made up, a very, very common strategy. It is extremely time-consuming to validate/refute “data” like what [was forwarded]. The beginning premise is that the reader hates Obama (or liberals, or socialists) and will buy anything that verifies his/her point of view.
I actually don’t mind getting this kind of stuff (I call it “forwards”), and when I do I make it a point of responding.
Things I look for:
1. Is there some kind of reasonably plausible source of origin (who originated the e-mail in the very beginning of its travels)? The answer is always “no”.
2. These things live on by being passed from (usually) one senior citizen (like me) to another…. They’re usually from men, but they sometimes come from women too.
3. Is there some kind of reasonably safe link to check the data? For instance the websites for [the purported source of information, in this case], IBD [International Business Daily] or WHO [World Health Organization]. The answer is always “no”.
4. Does snopes have anything to say about it? Often they do. I would guess that well over 90% of the stuff that is out there is either false or so massacre’d (misleading) that it may as well be false.
5. The right wing has taken to trying to discredit snopes as being a left-wing tool, and if you want an interesting take, go to a competing fact checker, www.truthorfiction.com, and type snopes in the search box. I happen to know that the person who founded truthorfiction is a minister in southern California. I know that because a number of years ago I heard him interviewed on a Christian radio station I happened across when on the road. He and I actually shared a couple of e-mails back then. His debunking does not change the senders mind. They’ll believe whatever they want to believe. Sometimes the “data” will include a supposed link to Snopes, proving it is correct. They really don’t expect people to go to Snopes, after all, they’ve already made up their mind, and the link itself may not be valid (or if you go there, Snopes says it is false.) But you have to go there, and few do.
6. I do think that it is worthwhile (even if it seems a waste of time) to challenge the one who forwards the item, and if I’m lucky enough to have an open cc list, I’ll respond to them, too. Every now and then somebody will write that they were glad I spoke up. Other silent ones get this garbage as well. But the human tendency is to start believing the unbelievable if it is repeated often enough, and that is a conscious and deliberate strategy.
I’m actually glad you sent this on, and I’ll pass it on the group for their information. And if anyone in the group wants to add to my list above, please do. Feel free to send my item to your relative if you wish.”
“Election 2012” posts will appear periodically between now and November. Simply enter Election 2012 in the search box, and you’ll see where the others are located.
The Video and response links referred to in first two paragraphs: video; here’s the truth: here and here. (Truth or Fiction’s opinion of the video is here.)

#538 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #1 "The Road We've Traveled"

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For subsequent posts on the topic of the upcoming election: simply enter Election 2012 in search box. Election 2012 #2 is here.
This morning I watched the new 17-minute video recently released by the President Obama Reelection Campaign. It is here.
Whatever your preconception of the President (I have huge respect for him and what he’s accomplished against overwhelming odds), I’d encourage to watch the entire video, and share it. The person who forwarded the video to me, a retired person from a large corporation, said this about the video: “Every American should see this video. Please share it.”

Minneapolis MN Feb 2, 2008, photo by Dick Bernard


Minneapolis, February 2, 2008 photo by Dick Bernard


Of course, being American politics, not every one will be enthusiastic about this video. From even before the President was inaugurated, Rush Limbaugh has been on record “I hope he fails”, as has the leadership of the Republicans in U.S. Congress and Senate and Governorships and state Houses and Senates, and, of course, Fox News and right-wing talk radio. It hasn’t worked, though it’s been a powerful and constant drum-beat. So be it.
Nonetheless you owe it to yourself to watch the video, and ask yourself if we’re better (or worse) off now than four years ago, when our national House of Cards was collapsing around us. It was a terrifying time, coming to a head in September, 2008, right BEFORE the 2008 election.
I’m formally, on this blog, a “moderate, pragmatic, Democrat”. That’s how I tagged myself when I opened for business here three years ago. I’m comfortable with the label. It means I get confronted, from time to time, from both poles of the political spectrum (who in many ways seem like “peas in a pod” (albeit with diametrically opposed points of view on issues).
I’ll post from time to time on this topic at this space, perhaps once every week or two. Just enter the words “Election 2012” in the search box.
If today is your last visit, consider printing out a one page document I first generated in April 9, 2009, just weeks into the Obama presidency; and added a small revision August 12, 2011. It is a helpful base for assessing who’s been responsible for what, since. Here it is: Congress 1977-2011001
It is a given that we despise Politics and Politicians, and many despise Government itself.
What is essential to note, in my opinion, is that we ARE all of these things: politics, politicians and government itself.
If we despise them, we need to take a look at ourselves, not someone else.
UPDATE March 18:
Judy Berglund: The Obama tape [linked in this post] is excellent.
Bob Barkley: This will continue your Obama support level.
Bruce Fisher and Corky Marinkovich have also added comments at the comments section of this blog.
From Harriette Ternipsede, an album of photos from Peter Souza
From Jacob Grippen, A sign of the times, by a deaf student who met the President March 14, 2012.