Late at night, when the work in the studio is done and Aaron Copland is playing into my soul from the monitors, I let my mind and heart wander. Tonight, after a slug-fest with a song, in multiple time signatures, that shows real likelihood for kicking my too-creative-for-my-britches arse, I listen to THE AARON, and humbly feel the world around me here, near the base and in the shadow of Mt. Tom: Coyotes, sage, skunks, sleeping humans, a thin-but-bright autumn moon, the upper elevations on the Sierra Crest, a few miles away and ten thousand feet above, still being tickled by flurry-remnants of the early season system that moved out this morning. The stars… the amazing infinite.

And the shift in the political wind is as tangible as any other thing in the natural world around me.

I feel Boone, my beloved late mutt, decomposing in his beautiful grave a mile-point-five West-Northwest. That, I can understand. He talks to me from beyond the grave all the time, but not nearly as loudly as my Dad…

To put this piece in context, my Dad (capitalized as always) bears some explaining: Oklahoma dust-bowl Depression-era kid, one of nine kids in his generation on a failing, starving farm, to South Pacific Navy WW II vet, to doctor of public administration, to true community leader, progenitor of many sensible things around us, from the three-tiered higher educational system in California, put in place based on recommendations from the think tank he chaired at UCB, and which has been copied by many other states, to consulting with Truman about a socialized national health care system and (maybe, who knows) almost having had a hand in bringing it about, had Truman’s efforts not been thwarted (as were the Clintons’)… this was still early on in Dad’s career.

Later, in the sixties, angry at drug abuse due to the unintentional O.D. of one of his sons (not me and not fatal, thankfully), he put the might of his balls and brilliance to the task of creating a new paradigm for treating drug abuse, on the community level, the law-enforcement level, the family level, and of course on the medical level. Because he lived, countless Americans have educations; because he lived, countless in the East Bay Area survived drugs; because he lived, I’m a “poet.”

Poetry isn’t really my thing, of course; my thing is Music (also capitalized)—the better, the better. What I am conjuring is one of my favorite quotes, from John Adams, the paraphrasing of which I learned at my Dad’s knee fairly early on: “I was a soldier, so that my son could be a farmer, so that HIS son could be a poet.” My Dad, both soldier and farmer, was greatly imbued with that perspective, and fought his entire career for its realization, in every area his career could touch. There is so much of what America really is in that quote, and in the history of my Dad’s life…

This country, more so than any other, makes possible the “provisioning” from generation to generation, and from culture to culture, like putting so many layers of duff over rocks, so each new generation can be more focused upon creating things like better diplomatic ties, better civil rights, better education, better health care, or the poetry (read: ARTS) to which Adams refers, rather than protecting themselves against those dumb stones. Each generation and their culture builds on bedrock, duff and ashes laid down by the ones before; it’s always been so, in every human culture. Every generation’s broken bones become the soft, moldering tree-branches underneath, in the duff, for the next. If pressed to provide a poster child for this phenomenon, I have two: Barack Obama, and my Dad. In no specific order.

In recent decades our country, famously, has seen too much anti-leadership, too little inspired guidance from those who actually see the way ahead. Too many pretenders to the oval; too few of the real thing. In due testimony to the resilience of America, we’re still here… but really, looking just a few decades ahead through the lens of potential, only just by a fingernail.

Now, we have a leader at the helm who can move the tiller for our children, who can lead us away from the edge; who will take us in the right direction. You know, that direction we NEED to go in.

God damn it, Dad, I wish you could have lived to see this. I see so much of you in this man, and I hear so many of your perspectives, your wisdom and even your voice in his words. He’s the real thing, Dad. We have another chance; it could work this time, really. You belong in his administration.

I guess, though, if I give it a moment’s thought… really, you are.

Those of us old enough to have seen this before know it for what it is: The times, they are a-changin’. We smell it clearly: The laying-down of a NEW high-water mark.

To those of you who are young, but have good instincts and are well-nostrilled and can smell it on the wind; I assure you: You’re not making this up. It’s real. Our country is moving toward a change greater in magnitude than the Clinton era was after Reagan/Bush-the-first. Remember that wild swing of the pendulum, from hard right to “sort of left?” It felt like liberation for every living thing on the planet, which in fact it was. But you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Anyway, I wish you were here Dad… but again, I guess if I give it a moment’s thought… really, you are.

On this Halloween’s eve, in a country perched on the brink of salvation or of oblivion, as my brilliant daughter prepares to go home from a hard day’s work to have a Halloween party one day early with her college student friends—like too many full-time college students these days, her friends are all working tomorrow night—I breathe, steel myself and summon my resolve. We’re all doing the same here in America and on Earth; I can feel it in the air like when the wind gets sucked out of your lungs as the floor drops away in the fun-house centrifuge. Everyone’s inhaling, leaving a vacuum of breathless expectancy in America, and around the world. Never before has the whole planet been so keyed-in to a presidential race here. We all know why.

We’ve come a long way in my fifty years, we Americans, and we’ve improved some, but we’ve also allowed ourselves to take some gloriously wrong turns—wrong turns that our children, and theirs, will be paying for. We’ve allowed ourselves too much complacency when we regard what our leaders have been getting away with: The crimes against humanity and the international community just to line their pockets; the tampering with the Constitution, the politicizing of the High Court, and of the Department of Justice. This complacency is not what Americans are revered for; this is not the American public—Right nor Left—that I was raised to be so proud of, though I’m still proud of America.

And I say, enough.

Evil is what happens when good people do nothing. America has plenty of good people… a vast majority, in fact. So let’s unite, already, and do something.

I’ve always attached a reasonably high regard to the Baby Boomers; we accomplished so much in the 1960’s for civil rights. We elevated the mean level of public awareness—for a year or two—and changed the whole current of American thought. We hit the streets and voiced outrage, not apathy, and shat out Nixon and his goons like the disease-carrying turds that they were. We also brought about a musical revolution and pioneered lots of cool technical stuff; ideas upon the shoulders of which we all now build other, further, loftier ideas, everywhere on Earth, and will for all generations to come.

On this eve, though, nearing an election more fraught than any before it with the potential for victory or failure to save the future of not only America but of the planet that America tends to lead, I’m reminded of all that we’ve screwed up. Reminded of all that we’ll leave as a twisted, dangerous legacy to our children if we fail to unify America, and bring about a fundamental change in Her direction.

Republican, Democrat, Green, Peace and Freedom, Libertarian, whatever your race, religion, orientation, level of education or level of health, listen to me: THIS IS OUR CHANCE. Please join with me in saying, “ENOUGH!”

That we’ve allowed ourselves to lay in a burning house for too long HAS to be something that we all are aware of; it has to be. We all knew, every one of us, that we’d arrive here in wars over oil if we didn’t change the road we’re on. We knew this decades ago. Hell, even I knew it in the early seventies, and I was just a kid. We knew of the need for other, more sustainable and less poisonous sources of energy. Every one of us has always known that. Yet we’ve allowed ourselves collectively, as a nation, to repeatedly buy into the oil-in-charge-of-Washington model that got us here, where we all knew we’d end up. Well, we got what we asked for: WE’RE HERE.

ENOUGH, ALREADY!

That we cannot afford to stay on this road should be obvious to all… it’s obvious to our children, and they’re just kids. It’s their future, not ours. Their country, not ours. Their expense, not ours. Their health, not ours. Their planet—and not, going forward—ours.

We owe some accountability to our children in choosing a leader based on cold hard facts, for once. Based upon realism, pragmatism and upon the issues… not on the outrageous BS machine of the US corporate news agencies, nor along party lines, nor race lines, nor simply out of a lack of awareness of these issues… nor from simple apathy, nor a failure to believe in the electoral process. It is, after all, what We The People make of it. I hope our children know that too.

We owe it to our children to choose our president according to who will put us upon the road WE ALL KNOW we need to be taking.

We owe it to our children and their world to not be ignorant, but to be researched. We owe it to them to not stay on this road with yet another four years of money-hungry, oil-crony administration. To not dig ourselves deeper into debt with China (an anti-human rights, anti-environment country), to buy oil from Middle-Eastern countries. We owe it to our kids, not just ourselves, to believe that change, REAL CHANGE, is truly possible, and that more war is not the answer. We owe it to the next generation of us to vote as if the emergency is NOW, because it is.

This is the fork in the road, everyone: RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW. Now is the time for all Americans to stand up and say, “ENOUGH!”

As Americans, we don’t all have the same ideals, nor the same beliefs… but we all have the same interests and needs. We need better schools, not more ignorance. We need to lead the alternative fuel technology revolution, not follow it. We need to resume our role as the world’s conscience, not her bullies. We need to focus our military on Bin Laden and Al Qaida, et al—not another war in Iran or another hundred years in Iraq. We all need to create a better future for our children, not a bleak landscape of smoldering shreds of what was the American Constitution.

Redneck, Bleeding Heart Liberal, Veteran, Evangelist, Black, Latino, Native, Blue Collar, Doctorate, Artist, Educator, Fisherman, Dog-Trainer, Scientist, Preacher and Trucker: We ALL need ALL of these things; our common interests vastly outweigh our differences. So please, let us all join together in the name of shared interests and needs, in the name of our children’s future, and as one-time moral leaders among nations on planet Earth… say it with me:

“ENOUGH!!!”

I’ll say it again: We owe it to our children to choose our president according to who will put us upon the road WE ALL KNOW we need to be taking.

Don’t make this another wrong turn, America.

Unite, and vote for Barack.

Thank you.

A fellow patriot

PS: Take a moment, and watch this video… it has nothing to do with Barack, but it has everything to do with everything. It’ll put your heart in the right place, whoever you are.

Regarding the illegal and unconstitutional arrest and imprisonment of American journalists outside the RNC in the last couple of days, and the raids on their rented accommodations to confiscate their gear and recordings:

I got an email from my good friend C., a smart guy, a fellow liberal involved with the campaign, who said he’s confident that we’ll “win by a landslide.”

Well, yeah, we sure as hell should… BUT:

If you’re like me, this is the same ol’ daily news; just more girls getting their heads cracked by riot police in the name of “defending liberty.” I first saw this up close at age ten, on the UCB campus in ‘68, and it’s amazed me that it’s never really become a thing of the past in American life. And while many countries in the civilized world have since grown up, there is still a tendency in America for the balance of power to tip in favor of organizations who embrace violence and force, and against those who embrace communication and reason. We can change that, but not through over-confidence.

In such an unthinking country, we can’t rest on our laurels, and be self-righteously “ho-hum” about anything, even if we know we are right, especially now. Not about this all-too-familiar continuation of past police tactics outside an RNC (never forget Chicago ‘68), nor about the most pivotal election in our lifetimes. This, of all times since I’ve been born, is the TIME FOR AMERICAN LIBERALS TO GROW SOME F***ING TEETH.

More importantly, WE CAN’T BE COMPLACENT. Yes, we should win by a landslide. Yes, the glaring wrongness, the screw-the-constitution-in-the-name-of-personal-gain pathos in the GOP that is counter to everything that is truly American SHOULD be obvious to all, but I’ve learned—we’ve all learned, I hope—to underestimate neither the ignorance nor the gullibility of the American voting public, nor the power of misled (or stolen) votes.

A landslide is what should happen, but unless we hit our fellow Americans on the head with bumper-sticker simplicity—the equivalent of beer cans and baseball bats—we may very well lose.

We’re up against the Republicans, who are superior tacticians, and who do not have the disadvantage of being driven by what is best for the many. They get that Americans are dumb, they steal any election that’s close enough for the masses of sheep to buy it, and in their vanguard, marching next to their drummer-boy, they have a soccer mom, buddy. And while that might make their ticket cute but invalid in a sane universe, this is America. Our countrymen always choose the right thing, but only in the rare instance that they’re made aware of what the hell it is. Unfortunately, they won’t get it from CNN, that’s for sure, so we had all better BE THE VOICE OF WE, THE PEOPLE.

Take this election seriously, not for granted, and don’t be afraid to lead your fellow countrymen to understanding—even if you have to hit them over the head with the Constitution, like house-training a puppy with a newspaper.

The release last week of an intensively researched report on the Bush administration’s campaign of deception leading up the Iraq War made a good-sized stir in the blogosphere, if not in corporate media circles. Although the study generally refers to the 935 documented de facto lies as “misleading statements” or “false statements,” the subtitle of the report more than hints at its condemnatory nature.

Entitled “The War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War,” the report was a collaborative effort by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism. I’ve skimmed through the report on the CPI web site, and I must say that it’s quite impressive in its scope and thoroughness. I encourage everyone to read through the report and its supporting materials. Particularly useful is the 380,000-plus-word online database, which allows us to search through speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, etc. by Bush administration officials, including the Liar in Chief and the Vice Liar in Chief, and the other major players we’re all acquainted (and surely disgusted) with.

The database search tool is quite sophisticated, for example allowing us to search by keywords, the various players in The Lying Game (my own characterization here, not the authors’), various subject areas (including a global “False Statements” category), and custom date ranges. Pretty damn nifty! (I did a search on “uranium + yellowcake + Niger” using the False Statements selector, which was very instructive.)

Nine hundred and thirty five lies sounds like a pretty impressive number—and it is—but consider that the report focuses solely on false statements by George W. Bush, the Vice Liar, and six of the administration’s top officials (National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan), on at least 532 separate occasions, and during the two years following September 11, 2001.

I know that the continual avalanche of lies coming from this White House over the past seven years has certainly had a numbing effect on many citizens. Speaking for myself, when I started this blog I was mad as hell and determined to expose and denounce as many of the lies as possible—until I realized that the task is simply too gargantuan for any regular working person like me (and a few willing assistants) to keep up with. And it never stops! Sometime last year, Bush Fatigue set in, and I had to back away from the torrent of mendacity and take frequent sabbaticals from it all.

So, yes… It’s been a mind-and-spirit-numbing seven years, and if we were able to do a completely exhaustive study of all the lies foisted upon We The People by this criminal administration, and tally them all up, it would surely be an overwhelming total. Clearly, we as a nation have never had to endure such a mountain of dishonesty as we have suffered under the Bush II regime.

At any rate, looking at just this two-year period, and just these eight criminals, and just this one lying campaign (deceiving the nation into an illegal, unjust war for Iraqi Oil and American Empire), how do these players stack up in terms of their lying prowess? Let’s see…

#1, the Champion Liar: George W. Bush: 260 lies or false statements
(We don’t call him the Liar in Chief for nothing!)

#2: Secretary of State Colin Powell: 254 lies or false statements
(He certainly carried the football.)

#3 (tie): Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: 109 lies or false statements

#3 (tie): Press Secretary Ari Fleischer: 109 lies or false statements

#4: Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz: 85 lies or false statements

#5: National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice: 56 lies or false statements
(C’mon, Condi! You could ’a done better than that!)

#6: Vice President Dick Cheney: 48 lies or false statements
(Guess he was too busy “working in the shadows.”)

#7: Press Secretary Scott McClellan: 14 lies or false statements

Particularly instructive in the report is a chart (below) that documents the escalation of lies as the buildup to the invasion of Iraq mounted, and the tapering off of the lying campaign (they were just busy lying about other things) once the invasion began and following “Mission Accomplished.”

Clearly, this was orchestrated deception, as the data shows, and I think that if we search our own memory banks, we will recall the pattern of escalating mendacity that we observed as little King George’s deadline for invasion approached.

I don’t fault the researchers’ choice of language in using descriptors like “false statements” and “misleading statements” instead of “lies” (the more plain-spoken alternative that we can be freer to use here in the blogosphere). After all, this is a professionally researched academic work, and so it was important to preserve a tone of professionalism, rather than injecting a more opinionated characterization.

However, I found a video on the CPI site which is, I think, very instructive in showing the careful dance that politicians will do, when dancing around questions of truth, “misleading statements,” and outright lies. Here, Bill Buzenberg, Executive Director of the Center for Public Integrity, interviews former Representative Lee Hamilton, who co-chaired the 9/11 Commission, and elicits his reaction to the War Card report. More instructively, the CPI’s Buzenberg has to persistently tease out Hamilton’s opinions regarding the extent and degree of deception and outright lying that took place, and it’s interesting to observe Hamilton’s reactions:

(Direct link to video here)

Yes, it’s a careful dance they do in Washington. Dance around the truth, hem and haw, and “fiddle while Rome burns.” But as far as I’m concerned, and especially when it comes to this administration, a lie by any other name is still a LIE. In the end, it all comes down to motive, and when we consider the motives ($21 trillion in proven Iraqi oil reserves, for one), “orchestrated deception” is an apt description.

I think most citizens, if we’re paying attention, can clearly see the naked corruption of this Emperor and his court. And I hope that we are mad as hell, and won’t take it any more!

I’ve recently heard from a few friends who are considering candidates of choice in the primary elections, who seem to be leaning somewhat in the direction of Ron Paul. I have a few thoughts on this man as a candidate for President of the United States.

I do think Ron Paul is fantastic when it comes to defending the Constitution, and pretty good on foreign policy and war, BUT (and this is a big “but”) when it comes to social policy, and policy on regulating and controlling corporations’ vast and dangerous influence, he’s a DISASTER!

I heard an interview with Congressman Paul recently on Air America Radio. On the issue of corporate media concentration and the death of real news in the U.S., he basically said that he doesn’t see any problem—nothing that “the marketplace” can’t sort out. Questioned further about the overwhelming representation of the corporate agenda in corporate media, he said (I’m paraphrasing), “Well, you do have the Internet.”

Oh, brother! As if we should be satisfied with having the average citizen’s concerns and point of view relegated just to the Internet! This completely ignores the fact that the Internet is an active communications medium, and broadcast media are primarily a passive channel… and most Americans have for decades been content to get most of their “news” from broadcast media (primarily TV).

Sure, you could say that people should take a more active role as consumers of news—and they should—but when the hard working wage earner comes home from a hard day in the “salt mines” (whether it’s a blue collar or a white collar job), it’s so much easier to just turn on the TV and collapse into the recliner with a nice cold beer. And because the corporate media news moguls know that they’ve got a more or less captive consumer audience (OK, yes they can switch the channel… but the next channel is just as corporate-brainwash as the previous one, and the next, and the next…) Well, it’s so easy to use that powerful and passive medium as a corporate brainwashing tool, to convince Joe Six Pack to support government policies and politicians that aren’t working in his best interests.

In the same interview, Ron Paul suggested that we should “trust the market” to do what’s right—thus negating the role of government regulation in the public interest, which is to protect the less powerful citizen from the imminently more powerful corporation (which, by the way, has been deceitfully given the rights of “personhood” by U.S. courts). This is a familiar mantra coming from Mr. Paul. SORRY, but I’m not buying this boatload of crap!

“Trust the market,” indeed. What did deregulation of corporate media get us? (Thanks, but no thanks to Bill Clinton for that!) What did lax oversight of the mortgage banking industry get us? What did look-the-other-way, see-no-evil lack of oversight of the Pentagon’s contracting processes get us? (Multi-multi millions and billions of cost over-runs and outright fraud on the American taxpayer, that’s what!!)

Remove environmental controls on polluting industries such as coal fired power plants, and what do we get? Record high, highly toxic levels of mercury in the air and watersheds of middle America—that’s what we got. And now it’s in the breast milk of millions of moms, and in their children.

I’ve never understood this faux-altruistic ideology of Libertarians and Repub-libertarians, the idea that government regulation is the big evil we have to fight, and that if we just leave the poor corporations alone, they will do “the right thing” and we’ll all be living fat and happy in the Land of the Free. Sorry, but I never bought it, and I’m still not buying. Maybe it’s nice to hearken back romantically to the days of yesteryear and the hardworking, industrious American farmer and the American craftsman, who ran their small businesses on an ethical bedrock, on a strong handshake and a direct look in the eye. Nice sentimental stuff, for sure… but it doesn’t apply to today’s corporate monsters!

To be fair to Congressman Paul, he does have a record of opposing government regulation when it becomes intrusive on certain citizens’ rights. Case in point: He opposed and spoke out against a bill that was passed by the Senate Commerce Committee last year aimed at “universal filtering” on the Internet. Good on yer, Mr. Paul, for that one.

But protecting the civil rights of citizens, as opposed to supposed civil “rights” of corporations ain’t the same thing, simply because corporations wield infinitely more clout than just about any citizen. It’s a tempting idea for some, I guess, to try to be egalitarian when it comes to defending rights, but we all know what happens (if we’re paying attention) when big business is given free reign by government.

Look at the mess our nation is in now. A federal government in bed with giant corporations and multinationals—a veritable orgy of corporate/government incest. Skyrocketing, perilous national debt. Our nation led to war against a nation that posed no threat, with a web of lies as the rationale, and the real agenda (lust for Iraqi oil—$21 trillion in proven reserves!) being the giant elephant in the living room that no one in the corporate media or in government (except a rare few) will dare to speak out about. The Bush administration has gutted federal regulatory power over corporations, and what do we get? Certainly not “the right thing.”

Ron Paul’s defense of the Constitution is admirable and inspiring, and I wish more Senators and Representatives were as passionate. But his laissez faire defense of corporations—and via his anti-regulatory ideology, a further enabling of their poisonous stranglehold on our government—this is inexcusable, for someone who calls himself a patriot.

The United States of America was birthed in opposition to Empire, and now we have become the very same dark force that our forefathers fought against. These corporations and their bedfellows in government need to be reigned in. As I’ve said before, American capitalism is now a runaway train with no brakes. Capitalism, in order to work for everyone in our nation, must have some brakes on it.

It’s time to put the brakes back on this train. I don’t see any indication that Ron Paul is the one who will take the lead in doing so.

peace,

steve

Ron Paul

Whoever decided to call this country, specifically, “The United States of America” was truly prescient. They were on it enough to see the potential for divisiveness in the future (maybe owing to slavery), and put that word “United” right there in our very NAME. Thanks, whoever did that; we probably owe you our lives as a nation, many times over. (The Civil War comes to mind, but I digress…)

On this night, the word “United” stands out in my mind, and my heart, as I listen to a true leader calling upon his countrymen to believe, and to unite. Fighting John Q’s propensity toward apathy, ignorance, skepticism, division and racism, Barack Obama has managed to light a flame of what can only be true patriotism… a lonely candle in the dark at first, maybe, but it’s growing. And there was light, and it was good…

It embarrasses me as a patriot sometimes, the way we allow ourselves to become divided every time the goddamned wind blows. What with as many blowhards as we have pretending to the throne, it’s easy for us all to forget what REAL leaders look like, and it’s way too easy for us to celebrate our differences, instead of the bedrock American values we have in common, like a belief in the Constitutional rights that so much blood was shed for, and a healthy future for our children, and their planet.

We’re all Americans, when you get down to it, and that’s saying quite a lot. That means that I (bleeding heart liberal who’d like to see socialized health care, along with high taxes [gasp] to pay for fluffy things like education, specifically ARTS) would willingly give my life defending the right for an inbred, illiterate hillbilly redneck son-of-a-bitch to attack everything I believe is good in the Constitution. Yeah, being a patriot is a bit of a trick, but do it we must, or we’re not truly Americans. Uniting with my fellow redneck Americans would seem an insurmountable goal, IF I put my views before my patriotic DUTY to understand the Constitution.

That’s a big “IF,” and that’s just the point being made tonight by a true leader: Unity’s not really a tricky thing, when you look at it through open eyes. We’re not all that different, we Americans; our similarities so far outweigh our differences that infighting among people behind the Statue of Liberty is absurd enough to make me question whether or not I’m dreaming. I’ve felt that way since childhood.

I do hereby submit that all Americans believe in freedom. That means, folks, that all Americans believe in defending everything that must be defended in order for freedom to exist. Well, OK, past that point our respective roads fork, of course, and we start bickering about shit like the true definition of the word “freedom,” but these really are minor nuances compared to the first two sentences of this paragraph. I’m just holding a few truths to be self-evident here, folks, like my compatriot Barack Obama.

I, a true liberal, one of those rare ones with teeth, live in one of the most redneck towns (according to statistics) in these United States. Yet I am embraced by this community, and I embrace this community in return. Why? Reasons more powerful than feel-good hug-your-neighbor platitudes; I’m talkin’ physics and math. Basically, like I said last paragraph, our similarities far outweigh our differences. Simple as that.

Check this out: A guy who can think but can’t lift heavy stuff is not as powerful as he could be if he could lift heavy. By the same token, a guy who can’t think but is strong is way more powerful if allied with a guy who can think. Unity. Teamwork. Geez, folks, wolves get this; they’re smart, yeah, but are they smarter than humans?

We The People can do this, I promise you. Dare to believe in unity.

Yeah, we’re all different, but we all have our strengths and weaknesses, abilities and disabilities, just like countries do. People and countries are far more powerful as members of a team (duh). As Americans, our strengths lie in Unity (capitalized), not divisiveness. This goes not only for all of us as a nation, but for all of us as a species.

If you want to see what real leadership looks like, listen to this man speak (without a teleprompter), and ask yourself if you wouldn’t feel good with him leading these UNITED States.

I, for one, do hereby dare to believe: This guy could sketch a Gettysburg Address on a train, on a napkin. This is what real leadership looks like. Listen to this man speak:

>> View video on MSNBC.com (Opens in separate window.)