[Vision2020] A Start

[Carl Westberg]

Point well taken, Melynda.  My posting this morning was made without 
realizing the impact of yesterday's voting on you personally.  I apologize.  
I'm also more than delighted that you're not going anywhere.  It's my 
hometown also, and it would be much poorer without you and Joan.  Besides, 
Joan has convinced me to co-host a weekly program with her on KRFP (Radio 
Free Moscow) starting in January.  Be warned.                                
                                                                             
                                                                             
                                                                             
             Carl Westberg Jr.

>From: "Melynda Huskey" <mghuskey at msn.com>
>To: "Vision 2020" <vision2020 at moscow.com>
>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] A Start
>Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 14:18:48 -0800
>
>Tom and Carl and Dick, and the various folks they've quoted, all suggest 
>that we need to find common ground, allow the President to lead us, get 
>ourselves together.  For some people, maybe that's possible.  For me, 
>looking at 11 successful anti-gay initiatives around the country supported 
>by a President who wants the U.S. Constitution amended to harm my family, 
>it's hard to imagine how that might work.  The President, and most of his 
>supporters, have made it painfully clear that they don't want me, and Joan, 
>and our kids, and the other millions of gay and lesbian citizens and their 
>families, in their world.  In fact, they used those anti-gay initiatives as 
>a way to turn out voters.  Gay and lesbian families were demonized to get 
>white Evangelical voters to the polls.  Is it surprising that we're not too 
>eager to get in line behind the men who sold us down the river?
>
>Luckily, I'm not discouraged.  We're not going anywhere.  This is my 
>hometown, even when it descends into a nightmarish imitation of national 
>hatemongering and dirty tricks--and what a pitiful spectacle, to see 
>Barrett Schroeder, whom I have met with pleasure at a local Republican 
>fundraiser after helping his dad beat back a weirdo challenger in the 
>primary, accusing Shirley Ringo of evil attendance policies, or Tom Trail, 
>for whom I have had a great deal of respect, hawking his Christianity as a 
>qualification for public office.  How awful to know that someone tried to 
>discredit the MCA by making threatening phone calls apparently on its 
>behalf.  This *is* my country, whether it wants me or not.  And pretty 
>soon, when our Middle Eastern wars claim the lives of too many U.S. men and 
>women, when more of us are poorer than ever before, when Social Security is 
>gone, our national debt is unimaginably large, and we're divided by class, 
>by race, by religion, by language, by sexual orientation . . . something 
>*will* change.
>
>I can wait.  And in the meantime, I can try to clean up Moscow a little, 
>and see if we can't get some hungry people fed, some poor people clothed, 
>and some freedom proclaimed to the captives here and abroad.
>
>Melynda Huskey
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Tom Hansen
>Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2004 12:47 PM
>To: vision2020 at moscow.com
>Subject: [Vision2020] A Start
>
>You are absolutely correct, Carl.  We must look to tomorrow as a united 
>people.  If President Bush is true to his word, he will find a common 
>ground for both liberals and conservatives.  This country desperately needs 
>someone to provide solidarity not in spite of our differences, but because 
>of them.  It has always been the case that our differences are what makes 
>this country strong.
>
>Don’t get me wrong.  I am not suggesting a national “group hug”, 
>merely an understanding by each of us that those attributes that divide us 
>should be fostered into a bond that unites us.
>
>Simply put, you cannot unite the whole by segregating its parts.  In the 
>interim though, keep your powder dry.
>
>Take care,
>
>Tom Hansen
>
>A good friend will come and bail you out of jail.  But a true friend will 
>be
>sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
>
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