Which Christmas Carol Do You Like The Most?

Earlier I asked which carol you hate the most. Now for those who like Christmas Music, which one do you like the most?

What Christmas Carol do you hate the most?

THANK YOU NELSON MANDELA

for your incredible courage. For enduring those years of isolation. For suffering the beatings and torture for the cause you believe in. For showing the world the strength of what is right and just. And most of all, for doing all this with out overt bitterness and with incredible grace. May you rest in peace! Mike C

"We will never be young again" Thank you John F. Kennedy!

As Mary McGrory waited at Andrew's Airbase with Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the coffin holding John F. Kennedy, descended from Air force One and she turned to him and said "O we will never laugh again" and Moynihan replied "Heaven's Mary, we'll laugh again. We'll just never be young again" and how profound that statement was.

And yet in the moment of those shots, in some ways the youth of the soul of America was killed. The promise and the hope of what Kennedy was trying to ignite stirred the hearts of many. His exhortation to "Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country" was a touchstone of many who entered public service. He exalted the nobleness of serving others. His actual legislative accomplishments may have been few in the 1,036 days of his presidency, yet his mark on the tone and tenor of the nation was enormous.

For me personally, it was profound, I had gotten up early in the morning as a small child and saw him in that most famous speech in Berlin and a month later we had moved temporarily to Tacoma, Washington and in September I saw him again at Cheney Stadium. So to me he was real and it was the first REAL person I knew who had died in my life.

And then it was gone, in a few years that nobility of service would be replaced with cynicism and doubt. It was the explosion of the crime surge, it was a time when the right silently worked to take over the nation.

Sadly 17 years later Ronald Reagan completely reversed the tone Kennedy had set. While he didn't have the guts to directly say it, his subtle under text was that "I've got mine, so too bad for you" and that is when this country really went into decline.

So for establishing the Peace Corps, promoting literacy and the arts, for setting in motion the landing on the moon and for yes in the words of that song: "For one brief shining moment...." Thank you John F. Kennedy

We are better nation for it and for your time spent on this earth!

should Bashir have apologized to Palin

over the "Shit in her mouth" comment

DEATH PENALTY I taught a peace and justice class this morning

and the discussion was about the death penalty. This is at a fairly liberal congregation and I was surprised at how evenly split the class was about it. How do you feel about the death penalty?

Question: Should convicted felons be able to vote

after they have served their sentence? after probation or parole?

for my 10,000th post! Thank you DU

For giving me a place learn, to discuss, to vent and to laugh!

I have told some of my story and plan to tell some each 5,000 posts. If it doesn't make total sense it is because this is my third language and I still have some trouble with written communication.

The reason why I am a liberal:

I was born to a mother who was born in Frankfurt Germany 10 months after Hitler took power. Her neighborhood was obliterated by allied bombing. My first memory of being cognizant of a war having been waged was sitting on a street trolly in March of 1962 when all of a sudden it and all traffic came to an absolute stop, everyone ceased talking and there was total silence in memory of the ones who lost their lives in the bombing of 1943. And I became anti war and didn't even know it.

My mom was removed along with all children from the major cities by Hitler in the winter of 1943. There was no transportation and because of the long walk into the Bavarian Mountains she got frost bite which turned to gangrene during her pregnancy with me. In order to save my life, she had her leg amputated with just local anesthetic. I watched her struggle through all her life with severe health problems, having a stroke at 39 and dying at 51. So at 15 I was made a foster child and a ward of the state. I remember the snickers of the kids when they saw her artificial leg. and yes it made me anti war!

I had a father who served in World War II, Korea and finally Vietnam. When the Gulf of Tonkin happened the first thing out of his mouth was that we were lying. He was sent to Vietnam and was shot and killed a week before my 7th Christmas. It definitely made me anti war.

When I was 3 months old, I contracted a case of encephalitis in Frankfurt. It left me in the hospital for six months, two in intensive care. My parents bill was under 200.00 it left me with a deep commitment to universal healthcare.

Because of this I always knew, even from early childhood, that political decisions have direct ramifications upon the individual.

And the liberals (through out my life) have always been more cautious in going to war, been more anti war than the Republicans.

Because of my parents death, I was given War Orphans Indemnity Compensation and it enabled me to attend college. Because of that I am indebted to the US public for my education. It gave me the ability to travel all over the world to sing, speak and teach. It also enabled me to have the skills to run for US Congress and event that changed my life to this day.

This coupled with the liberation theology education I had as a child has made me a liberal. Not a progressive but a LIBERAL!

I fully believe in education for all, health care for all, a strong huge safety net, a rising tide that lifts all boats, the right of a strong union to check management and civil rights for all classes. The first thing my parents did when we came to America was take me to the Statue of Liberty and made me memorize Emma Lazerus' quote: "Give me your tired your, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, send these the homeless tempest tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

Thank you DU for a place for hardcore liberals like me to vent...and as the Rev.MLK Jr. said: "The arc of the moral universe tends to bend toward justice" So keeping working folks...and lets laugh and share in the struggle together.

I know it's three years away but:

who do you think is going to win the Republican nomination?

You know what's sad?

when I was a kid I never once heard the term "lockdown". With in the past 7 days I have heard it 5 times. We have got to do something about our gundamentalists and gun fetish culture!