Nov 22 - Reminder of JFK. We need another one in 08

I still remember what I was doing on this day in 1963 – the day JFK was assassinated and our world changed forever. I was a 14-year old student in class in Rockwell, Iowa. We were stunned when the news came – that the President had been shot and killed. One kid laughed, but only one. I’ve since learned that some people laugh inappropriately when nervous. All I knew then was how mad it made me to hear someone laugh. All of us were in shock. The whole country went into shock that day. I always remember all these things, and JFK, every November 22. It’s one of those special dates that is branded in your brain, like the day in April when my father was killed in an auto accident just before finals at UT.

Remembering November 22 also reminds me how pitiful our leadership has become. Politicians have replaced statesmen. Respect and intelligence have been replaced with dogma and picking loyalists over competence. I miss having a JFK in office. He represented someone vastly smarter then us – smart and witty at the same time. I no longer feel our leaders are smarter than us, or witty. JFK brought us hope and color visions of space and community. Today, it’s all about fear and refusal to talk—while the Middle Class is abandoned. Even Ronald Reagan talked to the Soviets, the axis of evil at that time. Our leadership has wrecked our budget, allowed lobbyists to double in two years after more than 200 without them, and has put too many incompetents in key positions that are costing too many innocent people their lives. One example: Mr. Bremer was sent to Iraq but no one bothered to read former Sec of State James Baker’s (Baker Institute) paper on how to run post-conflict Iraq. If he had, he would have NOT fired the Iraqi army -- and sent them home with their guns to kill our own troops. Apparently not even the President read it. If he had, why did he allow it? The President has attacked Syria over the latest assassination in Lebanon. Yet he says nothing about Russia’s Putin -- who is doing the same thing as journalists are killed along with his critics and private enterprise and American oil investments are being confiscated by the State Look into his eyes again George. He’s still ex-KGB, and he didn’t fall off a turnip truck.

I feel like our team is still sitting in the turnips. I miss JFK. In 2008, we need another leader of that caliber. We need a fresh, global Presidential team with a real strategic plan to address the burning global issues that affect our future. I want to hear McCain’s plan, Mr. Giulani’s and Mrs. Clinton’s, etc.

I want to know who would be on their team and what they can do to correct the mess we are now in, now that we are trillions in debt and trapped in Iraq…Who is the next JFK for America?