Significant Minnesota Business Leaders Support Obama

Will more business leaders come out for Obama?
by Charlie Leck

This week, four well-know community business leaders came out with endorsements of Barack Obama’s efforts to become President. I think there are others who will soon follow. They are aware that Obama will raise taxes on businesses, but they also know Obama will stimulate the economy, get people working again, reduce the national debt and generally benefit business.

Robert Pohlad, Chairman and CEO of PepiAmericas, Inc. and President of Pohlad Cos.
Ed Phillips, Chairman and CEO of Phillips Beverage Company
Robert Ryan, retired vice president and CFO of Medtronic
Lois Quam, Managing Director of Alternative Investments at Piper Jaffray

The endorsements were announced at a press conference at the Minnesota State Capitol on 9 September 2008. Read the full story in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

I Cheered and Cheered for these Republicans

These three guys are Republicans the way they were meant to be!
by Charlie Leck

I’ve written here often about the old, grand and glorious days of the Grand Old Party – the Republican Party when it was honorable and devoted to fair and clean campaigning, and to debating on the issues themselves and not on matters of character.

Well, yesterday, while driving along in my car, I listened to three of the finest Republicans that Minnesota has ever known, speaking about the state of politics today and how they would attack the current, desperate problems of our nation.

I had to pull the car over and completely stop, because I found myself clapping and cheering. Their speeches were incredible. Oh what I’d give to have Republicans like these guys again. Would that ever make politics and campaigns fun again? If guys like this beat you, you didn’t get maudlin and down-beat about it. You knew they were worthy and they would serve with fairness and distinction.

If you want to hear fine Republicans – who call themselves Progressive Republicans, talk about politics the way it ought to work, please go to the Minnesota Public Radio web site and listen to their brilliant speeches. You won’t be sorry.

Come on back, y’all hear?

A Last Christmas

It was a perfect Christmas Eve day!
by Charlie Leck

It was the kind of wintry Minnesota morning my sister liked. She figured if you were going to leave the warmth of Texas in December, to come to l’etoile du Nord, you should experience it as legend tells it. The snow fell heavily outside and we sat at the counter in the kitchen looking out at how it piled up in the yard. The house was very quiet, matching the silence of the falling snow. We could hear the fireplace in the dining room crackling and the warmth from it seeped out to us. My coffee was too strong for her, so I offered to dilute it with some hot water. She consented.

Sixteen years before this day, on a Halloween afternoon, we had stood in this same kitchen, unpacking the cartons that had been brought in from the moving van, and watched the snow fall so heavily. Over thirty inches piled up before it stopped. We were stranded. No one could come in and no one could go out. My wife was away, in New York. It was just my sister, the children and I. She was intensely happy. She was in charge of our safety! In command! What stories she would tell her friends when she returned to Texas.

Now, in the last year of her life, we knew it would be a white Christmas. It was only a day away and this promised to be a heavy snow that would pile up somewhat extravagantly. She smiled out at the cleanness and purity of it all. It was as if God were blessing her with this stunning gift. She was pleased even though a sad thought revealed itself in her eyes. She knew this would be her last Christmas.

Coming to Minnesota had been a desperate act for her. What could she do? Her days were running out and she still had things about which she needed to worry! There were so many loving deeds yet to be performed. She brought with her a grandchild about whom she was so concerned. The youngster was tangled in confusion and was struggling intensely with life’s seeming meaninglessness. My sister knew she didn’t have the time to rescue the kid. She was trying to pass the child off to me; however, I didn’t know how to love the way she did. I didn’t have the gift that Jesus had given her. I wouldn’t take the bait.

“Have I been so wrong?”

Her question was asked in a soft, quiet way; perhaps it was in a pleading manner. I took a long sip from my big coffee mug.

We had avoided the question for so many years, but she remembered the hours long, long ago when we would debate her total fidelity to her Roman Church. Childishly, I would argue with her about it. I read a number of anti-catholic diatribes and I memorized checklists about the errors and foibles of her faith.

“Incense is an abomination to me, sayeth the Lord!” I quoted the prophet.

I read the Bible devoutly as a youngster. Some old, faithful women in my church (Sunday school teachers), told me I must. I read it to find signals that the Catholics were all wrong, that they didn’t get it.

On that snowy morning I wished that she wouldn’t remember my foolishness, but the question hung there in the silence and beauty of that winter day.

“No,” I said very softly, “you weren’t wrong and neither is your church. The only thing they mess up on is this exclusivity stuff. Others will be there with you. Mother and Father! Buddhists and Jews will be there, too. Muslims! And, Frank and John and I will come along shortly. That’s the only thing they mess up on. All the rest is silliness. Faithfulness is all that counts. That we love the way he asked us to. That’s all that matters. You did it all so well. You were a faithful servant. No one was better at caring for those in need.”

She looked out into the brilliant, bright, snowy day. She nodded her head almost imperceptibly, a smile on her lips and a huge tear crawling down her cheek.

“I see angels,” she whispered.

“Hundreds of them,” I replied. “They are surrounding us with love.”

Now, as I write this on a summer night, there are billions of stars twinkling across the heavenly sky. I think of her almost every day and thank God for giving her to me. From out there among the stars she still watches over me and all those she loved so much.

One of my favorite pictures of my sister, Jean,
along with our son-in-law, Warner Bruntjen.

x

Will America Vote for Hatred or Hope?

The Republican Party is damaged and now controlled by bullies and hate-mongers!
by Charlie Leck

The Republican National Convention was pure Karl Rove, pure nasty and completely divisive. It tells us a great deal about the once proud Republican Party. It’s been taken over by hate mongers who believe that one should do what it takes to win – whatever it takes.

Jay Rosen, in the Huffington Post, calls the Republican Party “a damaged brand.” The longer it remains damaged, the easier for the mavericks and bullies to control it. It’s amazing how the jerks who control the Grand Old Party can bring Christian conservatives and the spirit of hatred together! Amazing!

As the NY Times, in an editorial, said of the convention, “Mr. McCain allowed the practitioners of the politics of fear and division to run the show.” The Times got it right – probably better than they know.

John McCain is not in charge of this campaign. As a matter of fact, it is out of his control. The big-nasties in the Republican Party believe McCain is not up to the task of organizing and directing a national campaign. They don’t believe he is even up to the task of controlling those who do organize and direct it.

If John McCain is incapable of controlling those who direct his campaign, how can he run a nation as complex as the USA? The simple answer is that he cannot. If McCain is elected President, the job will be done by the powerful, repugnant people who will surround him.

The recent convention was a massive attack on Barack Obama’s patriotism – McCain called it an attitude of “me first and country second!” Mr. McCain should apologize, but he won’t. I think this will be the basic theme of his campaign and that’s why they chose the running mate they did. She’s capable of grasping such a simple concept and she’s mean enough to repeat the mantra over and over again.

The next two months will be a time of vicious and unprecedented attacks by the Republican Party on all the devils they have created in the minds of the America people.

Here is what I hope Americans will vote against! I hope they vote against meanness, divisiveness, negativism, and hatred. I hope they will vote against bullies.

Americans should vote in a spirit of hopefulness. Americans should believe we can be a great nation again.

I remember a day in America when Democrats and Republicans did not fear losing an election. They knew, win or lose, America was going to be governed well and that it would remain a beacon of hope and pride for all the nations of the world. How sad that that day is past and appears irretrievable. How sad!

Sally and George Pillsbury (yes, of the famous doughboy family) are colossal Republicans – as deep-seeded as they can be. They are also great and important Minnesotans who have given massively to the good of this state they love so much. Mrs. Pillsbury speaks of her party being taken over by conservatives and she’s not happy about it. Yet, she still believes a comeback is possible because the people who have left the Party can be lured back if the GOP can return to its roots – “small government, personal freedom and individual responsibility.” And, those great old Republicans believed that government, though small, should be exceedingly effective at what it does. Mrs. Pillsbury hoped the revival would take place right here in Minnesota, at the Republican National Convention. I don’t think she foresaw an ultra conservative like Sarah Palin being put on the ticket. Nor did she foresee John McCain slip/sliding toward the very far right.

I’m afraid the dream that George and Sally Pillsbury have for a reform of their party has been put on hold. If the McCain-Palin ticket wins this fall, I don’t think the couple will see the return of the GOP to its former place of dignity in their lifetimes.

There’s not going to be a return to small government under McCain/Palin. They promise it, but it won’t happen. Just as George W. Bush promised it and then ran up a massive debt that will take generations to pay off. Just as Bush grew government to its largest size in history, so will McCain continue that trend in his attempt to rebuild America’s military might. And, George and Sally Pillsbury won’t see a return to personal freedom either. Under McCain there won’t be the right to choose for women; and neither will gays gain the freedoms for which they dream. And don’t hold your breath for an increase in individual responsibility either. But, here’s what you can look forward to – more and rapidly growing deficits.

Mrs. Pillsbury, bring you family on over to the party of the people. We’ve got much more in common with you than does John McCain and Sarah Palin. I promise! By just speaking up and asking Republicans to vote sensibly, you could put Minnesota on the Obama victory list.

I have two brothers who are loyal Republicans. They’re loyal because they remember the Party of our father – the Grand Old Party of Ike, Tom Dewey and Barry Goldwater – even the Party of Dick Nixon and Ronald Reagan. They can’t admit to themselves that that Party is gone and the Grand Old Party is really out of existence. They are not hateful and mean guys, but they choose to continue their loyalty to a Party that is controlled by such people.

In recent days I’ve stumbled upon an interesting blog that I want to keep checking out for a while, to see where it goes. It’s called ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE and it’s written by Charlie Quimby a Minnesota guy who spends a great deal of time in Colorado as well. The purpose of the blog is to investigate “how people can disagree and still build a decent world?” I suggest you spend a week or two looking at the blog with me and we’ll give it a review sometime later this month. Let me hear your reactions to it after you’ve read a few postings.

Come on back, you hear?

Do You Know What We Don't Know about Iraq?

The Bush administration’s “Iraq Plan” is not public knowledge! Read about “Enduring Camps!”
by Charlie Leck

This is a reprint of a blog posted here on 24 April 2008. One of my readers, in whom I place a great deal of trust, strongly urged me to repost it at this particular time in the campaign. The blog might have some effect if you will email this site to friends, asking them to read it, and ask them to email their friends about this craziness. I'll leave this blog posted for two days, so folks can easily find it.

Many have been critical of the Bush administration for not having created an exit strategy for the Iraq War. Turns out we were wrong to criticize. The Bush administration had and has no intention to leave Iraq.

What fools we are!

Read the following from AlterNet and you’ll see just why John McCain could say so lightly that we may be in Iraq for 100 years. That’s the plan, you dummy!I’m left aghast by this information and wonder how I missed it and didn’t catch any of the hints.

All of this will explain why it is so vital to the conservatives that they win the next election. They will pull out all the stops to do so – I mean all the stops! They have a 100 year plan to protect.

The following is only a little bit of an outstanding article by Tom Engelhardt. He writes a blog regularly at Tomdispatch.com. Try your best to read the entire article.

“No, there was never an exit strategy from Iraq because the Bush administration never intended to leave -- and still doesn't: Critics of the war have regularly gone after the Bush administration for its lack of planning, including its lack of an ‘exit strategy.’ In this, they miss the point. The Bush administration arrived in Iraq with four mega-bases on the drawing boards. These were meant to undergird a future American garrisoning of that country and were to house at least 30,000 American troops, as well as U.S. air power, for the indefinite future. The term used for such places wasn't ‘permanent base,’ but the more charming and euphemistic ‘enduring camp.’ (In fact, as we learned recently, the Bush administration refuses to define any American base on foreign soil anywhere on the planet, including ones in Japan for over 60 years, as permanent.) Those four monster bases in Iraq (and many others) were soon being built at the cost of multibillions and are, even today, being significantly upgraded. In October 2007, for instance, National Public Radio's defense correspondent Guy Raz visited Balad Air Base, north of Baghdad, which houses about 40,000 American troops, contractors, and Defense Department civilian employees, and described it as ‘one giant construction project, with new roads, sidewalks, and structures going up across this 16-square-mile fortress in the center of Iraq, all with an eye toward the next few decades.’

“These mega-bases, like ‘Camp Cupcake’ (al-Asad Air Base), nicknamed for its amenities, are small town-sized with massive facilities, including PXs, fast-food outlets, and the latest in communications. They have largely been ignored by the American media and so have played no part in the debate about Iraq in this country, but they are the most striking on-the-ground evidence of the plans of an administration that simply never expected to leave. To this day, despite the endless talk about drawdowns and withdrawals, that hasn't changed. In fact, the latest news about secret negotiations for a future Status of Forces Agreement on the American presence in that country indicates that U.S. officials are calling for ‘an open-ended military presence’ and ‘no limits on numbers of U.S. forces, the weapons they are able to deploy, their legal status or powers over Iraqi citizens, going far beyond long-term U.S. security agreements with other countries.’"

And read to about the new embassy we are building in Baghdad. Holy, friggin’ fiddlesticks! Can you believe this?

“No, our new embassy in Baghdad is not an ‘embassy’: When, for more than three-quarters of a billion dollars, you construct a complex -- regularly described as ‘Vatican-sized’ -- of at least 20 ‘blast-resistant’ buildings on 104 acres of prime Baghdadi real estate, with ‘fortified working space’ and a staff of at least 1,000 (plus several thousand guards, cooks, and general factotums), when you deeply embunker it, equip it with its own electricity and water systems, its own anti-missile defense system, its own PX, and its own indoor and outdoor basketball courts, volleyball court, and indoor Olympic-size swimming pool, among other things, you haven't built an 'embassy’ at all. What you've constructed in the heart of the heart of another country is more than a citadel, even if it falls short of a city-state. It is, at a minimum, a monument to Bush administration dreams of domination in Iraq and in what its
adherents once liked to call ‘the Greater Middle East.’“Just about ready to open, after the normal construction mishaps in Iraq, it will constitute the living definition of diplomatic overkill. It will, according to a Senate estimate, now cost Americans $1.2
billion a year just to be "represented" in Iraq. The ‘embassy’ is, in fact, the largest headquarters on the planet for the running of an occupation. Functionally, it is also another well-fortified enduring camp with the amenities of home. Tell that to the Shiite militiamen now mortaring the Green Zone as if it were ... enemy-occupied territory.”

Go view the MSNBC video on this compound. It will astound you. The reporter concludes the piece by saying the compound “makes it look like the U.S. will be occupying Iraq forever.” That’s the plan!There are 27 buildings built on 104 acres and would house up to 600 people. It has a huge swimming pool, gyms, lockerrooms and elegant dining facilities and conference rooms. It has so far cost over 700 million dollars. Now, the administration, before even moving in, wants it enlarged so that it can house the Iraq Commanding U.S. General and his troops – up to 2,000 more. Before this change it was estimated it will cost 2 billion dollars a year to operate the facility.

Are we crazy, or what? If you don’t think the neo-cons are out of control, your brain has gone fluffy.

Please, send this link to the AlterNet article on to your friends. This is insanity!

The Kinder, Gentler People

Illustration above has been edited from the original posting... "swishy" was, indeed, the wrong word!

There are signs of a gathering support for Obama
by Charlie Leck

A week or so ago, I posted a comment sent to me by an old fellow in Denver, claiming that America’s rube (redneck) population wanted nothing to do with Obama. I fear he is correct. The best Obama’s campaign can do is hope this segment will vote heavily for Ron Paul or, more likely, not vote at all. It is unfortunate that there is such a large segment of the population that does not insightfully keep up with a campaign like this and does not seek to really understand the candidates (the operative word here is ‘really’).

Recently, a fellow at my golf club sent a rather curious mass email out to dozens and dozens of people, saying things about Senator Obama that were just downright ludicrous, appalling and untrue. I couldn’t remain silent, so I sent a follow up newsletter to all who received the original, asking them to understand the fiction and the hatefulness of the message they had been sent.

“Vote for John McCain, if you wish,” I told them, “but, for heaven’s sake, do it thoughtfully and hopefully; and certainly not because you receive such slanderous, hateful messages.”

Many of those people replied to me and thanked me for ‘speaking up.’ And, many of them indicated they would vote for Senator Obama.

The original sender of the message also replied: “Charlie: I read EVERYTHING...just to see what all the different corners of our society are thinking. I think its [sic] important to do that to better understand how diverse our country really is. And, overriding all of that, is a thing called FREEDOM OF SPEECH. We don,t [sic] have to take it all as the Gospel.....rather recognize that its only an opinion.”

However, when one sends such messages off to dozens of people without comment, one is propagating these seeds of untruth and hatefulness.

A day later or so, I was at a cocktail party thrown by this swishy set who had received that email. Several people stopped me, again to thank me for replying to the message of murky pessimism with a message of optimism and positivism.

Identified now as a clear Obama supporter, people approached me to chat in that context. I was overwhelmed by their open attitudes and how seriously they were taking the campaign and how they tended to lean toward supporting the Senator from Illinois. What I noted especially was that the younger they tended to be – and there weren’t any kids here – the more seriously they were taking Obama. These younger folks were the ones with children who were soon going to have children who would be saddled by the enormous, significant financial and environmental problems they will inherit from the policies of years of neo-conservative leadership. These were conservative people, but they were insightful, responsible conservatives who understand that wise investment brings return and that America, for the last 8 years, had stopped investing in its future.

I have a feeling that some surprising individuals are going to be marking their presidential ballots for Barack Obama – and, I think the numbers of them may be staggering. Let’s hope so.

Calm Before the Storm

Bringing home Jasper!
by Charlie Leck

This afternoon, Anne and I will pick up Jasper (two year old black Labrador) and bring him to his new home. Neither of us slept very well last night and this morning we both confessed to extreme excitement and anticipation. We admitted also to feeling foolish about acting like 10 year olds, but that’s just the way it happens to be.

I am realizing that I have a quite different life ahead of me than the one I’ve so enjoyed the last couple of years. I turned 68 yesterday, and one of the privileges of being this old is the enjoyment of lots of private and quiet time. Since our last old dog wandered off to the stars, I’ ve pretty much been able to use my time just any way I wanted to. Nature’s urge to rush to the bathroom is the only demanding moments I have any more. If I felt like sitting down with a book and reading for 3 hours straight, I did it. If I wanted to watch an afternoon baseball game on TV, I did it. Or, I might choose to go hit golf balls or practice my putting. More relative to you, my readers, I had plenty of time to post my near-daily blogs.

Of course, I mustn’t forget to also admit to the freedom to take an hour nap in the afternoon if I chose to, which I did almost every day. There’s something deliriously wonderful about retirement, except, on the other hand, it also reminds one of the ever decreasing distance to the stars.

Perhaps a cyclone is coming; yet, perhaps not. It won’t be like having a puppy, now will it? I’ve given myself some good verbal tongue lashings about this coming event. The dog will require and deserves plenty of attention. One reason I’m getting it is to motivate myself to get out and do more walking. So, I’m planning on two or three thoroughly enjoyable walks down the driveway each day – the driveway being a quarter-of-a-mile long, and up and down rolling hills, out to the city street. That will be a half-mile right there. If I then turn and climb the little hillock toward the highway, I’ll push the round trip to more than a mile. Two or three times a day? That will be good for me. There are also trails we keep cut through the woods and fields for the fox hunters and I’m betting a lab would enjoy walks like those.

My point is, this critter’s main chore, to earn his keep around here, will be to get me up out of this chair at my desk and launch me out into the world again. In return he’ll get more than room and board. We want him to find this a pleasant and loving home. We want him to have fun and get plenty of the exercise he needs. We’re committed to giving him plenty of scratching, petting, pampering and playing.

Yesterday I picked up what advertises itself, on its extravagant packaging, to be the world’s best dog toy. Being a gullable sap, I asked myself, “Why not the best?” Now, we’ll wait and see.

Tomorrow, as you probably guessed, you may expect some photographs of the new member of the family.