May 26, 2012

Joe Biden's from-the-heart remarks to families of fallen troops. Must see.

He is the Real Deal.

"It was the first time in my career, in my life, I realized someone could go out -- and I probably shouldn't say this with the press here, but no, but it's more important, you're more important. For the first time in my life, I understood how someone could consciously decide to commit suicide," the vice president said at the TAPS National Military Survivor Seminar and Good Grief Camp in Arlington, Va., according to Politico. "Not because they were deranged, not because they were nuts, because they had been to the top of the mountain, and they just knew in their heart they would never get there again."

Biden then gave a painful account of the day of the incident, which took place just weeks before his swearing in as a first-term U.S. senator.

"I was down in Washington hiring my staff and I got a phone call, saying that my family had been in an accident," he said. “And just like you guys know by the tone of the phone call, you just knew. You knew when they walked up the path. You knew when the call came. You knew. You just felt it in your bones: Something bad happened. And I knew -- I don’t know how I knew, but the caller said my wife is dead. My daughter is dead. And I wasn’t sure how my sons were going to make it. They were Christmas shopping and a tractor trailer broadsided them.

"In one instant, killed two of them and, well..." Biden said, his voice brimming with emotion.

After completing his own chronicle of grief and dealing with tragedy, the vice president ended on a positive note, encouraging listeners to stay strong and understand that the darkness cast by the death of a loved one will lift.

"Folks, it can and will get better," Biden said. "There will come a day -- I promise you, and your parents as well -- when the thought of your son or daughter, or your husband or wife, brings a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye. It will happen."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57441915-503544/biden-recounts-personal-loss-shares-anguish-with-military-families/

May 20, 2012

All my life, the cries for War have come from the privileged.

It was so with Vietnam, where Mitt Romney "served" in France, Rush got by with a boil on his butt, W. had connections and Dick Cheney had better things to do. But they sent my peers to the slaughter, happily (caveat: draft #247, second year of the lottery. I was lucky, but then I didn't cheer for that war. Instead, I protested. Had hair then).

Skip forward to now: The drumbeat for attacking Iran is growing, and it's the same privileged class that is front and center to send the children of other folks to die (see, Afghanistan). Mitt Romney's five sons will, of course, continue to live their lives of unimaginable privilege.

These are the same folks who insist on more tax cuts for themselves while cutting Medicaid and ending Medicare and Social Security for the rest of us. The same warmongers who would cut food stamps, end unemployment benefits and double the tax burden on students while cutting taxes for the Kochs. And don't get me started on the environment or the Supreme Court.

They are Killers. "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

I have never seen a more concerted, boiling cauldron of hate in all my years. Thank you, DU, for being an oasis of sanity in this unraveling world. Stop the wars. I have seen enough.