As senator, Hillary supported many initiatives that were struggling and small and needed a helping hand. This is one of those stories. Here is a special message and video from Hillary for America.
When news outlets pair the name Hillary Clinton with the word fundraiser in their headers, the implication is that the funds are being raised for her and for her campaign, but that is not necessarily the true story.
Those of us who have had the privilege of having met Hillary Clinton know that she is warm, generous, and encouraging. Always gracious, she is open, welcoming, and a cheerful good sport. Participants in the Chappaqua Summer Scholarship Program had their chance to meet and greet Hillary on Sunday upon completion of their summer courses.
Hillary stepped off the campaign trail for awhile today, and into the charged situation in Flint, Michigan. This morning on TV she spoke knowledgeably about the dangerous effects of lead poisoning as well as the structural challenges involved in making the pipelines safe again. If any other candidate for president knows as much as Hillary does on this topic, that individual has been remarkably silent on the subject.
Two days after publishing an Easter Sunday Op-Ed in the New York Daily News addressing gun violence, Hillary Clinton visited a Baptist Church in Milwaukee today to participate in a forum on the subject.
At Rancho High School in Las Vegas, Hillary made clear her determination to effect immigration reform and a path to citizenship for Dreamers and, importantly, their families.
This event is a perfect example of Hillary’s early campaign strategy. Rather than doing the speaking, Hillary is hearing the stories these Dreamers have to tell. For those who still do not get it, statements from her will not proliferate right now. She is busy doing the listening. Read more >>>>
Actually, I have a lot more. That was only a sample. And there is this.
Hillary Makubikwa, 18-months, meets her namesake on May 10 in Louisville, Ky. (Michael Davidson/Clinton 2016 campaign)
In the United States, people will tell you they come by their children’s names any number of ways. And, each year, parental notions of originality are dashed when the Social Security Administration’s most popular names list makes it clear that millions of parents also thought that Emma, Noah or Olivia was distinctly made for their little one too.
But the United States is home to people who hail from many nations and where pieces of other cultures thrive. For instance in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a Central African nation riddled by armed conflict, widespread sexual violence as a tool of war and less-than-democratic elections, there is a tradition of giving children a first name which captures some aspect of what you hope they will be, what kind of personality, habits and abilities they will demonstrate.
And on Tuesday, all of that collided briefly with a singular moment in American political history.
A 1973 suit against Trump and the Trump Organization claimed that superintendents at Trump properties would mark African American’s applications with a ‘C’ for ‘Colored’ and other racial codes.
Gideon Resnick
12.15.15
When an African American showed up to rent an apartment owned by a young real-estate scion named Donald Trump and his family, the building superintendent did what he claimed he’d been told to do. He allegedly attached a separate sheet of paper to the application, marked with the letter “C.”
Some of the recovered emails that the FBI investigators combed through had what could have been noticed or missed depending upon how far down a chain of emails you scrolled or how quickly your eye scanned the text. (c) To discern the marking you had first to know what it indicated and second had to read carefully and thoroughly through the email chain since the marking might have appeared in an early version of an email and might have been removed in later texts, or the marking might not have been removed when it should have been. Did you see it? In testimony to the Oversight Committee, FBI Director James Comey stated that paragraphs or sentences bearing this mark were not offset with indentation.
Today, following the Supreme Court’s deadlocked decision in Texas v. United States, Hillary Clinton issued the following statement:
“Today’s deadlocked decision from the Supreme Court is unacceptable, and shows us all just how high the stakes are in this election. As I have consistently said, I believe that President Obama acted well within his constitutional and legal authority in issuing the DAPA and DACA executive actions. These are our friends and family members; neighbors and classmates; DREAMers and parents of Americans and lawful permanent residents. They enrich our communities and contribute to our economy every day. We should be doing everything possible under the law to provide them relief from the specter of deportation.
“Today’s decision by the Supreme Court is purely procedural and casts no doubt on the fact that DAPA and DACA are entirely within the President’s legal authority. But in addition to throwing millions of families across our country into a state of uncertainty, this decision reminds us how much damage Senate Republicans are doing by refusing to consider President Obama’s nominee to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. Our families and our country need and deserve a full bench, and Senate Republicans need to stop playing political games with our democracy and give Judge Merrick Garland a fair hearing and vote.
“This decision is also a stark reminder of the harm Donald Trump would do to our families, our communities, and our country. Trump has pledged to repeal President Obama’s executive actions on his first day in office. He has called Mexican immigrants ‘rapists’ and ‘murderers.’ He has called for creating a deportation force” to tear 11 million people away from their families and their homes.
“I believe we are stronger together. When we embrace immigrants, not denigrate them. When we build bridges, not walls. That is why, as president, I will continue to defend DAPA and DACA, and do everything possible under the law to go further to protect families. It is also why I will introduce comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship within my first 100 days. Because when families are strong—America is strong.”
If it had been a soccer match, Twitter might have exploded with tweets of “Own Goal!” At the MSNBC/Telemundo Town Hall last night, Bernie Sanders scored one for Hillary Clinton’s incrementalism. Here is the exchange.
QUESTION: (SPEAKING SPANISH)
Yes, my question to you, sir, if you become the president of the United States, what would you do about the bars my husband — I’m an American citizen, my girl is an American citizen. My husband was here 18 years. I tried to bring him out of shadows, how you said, and I petitioned him.
And they gave him a 10-year bar. He has been in Mexico doing his 10 years, six years now we’ve been separated. My little girl was in kindergarten when he left, the one in the…
QUESTION: The other one was in middle school and now she’s going to graduate high school this year and her dad is not here to see that.
What would you do to bring my husband home?
SANDERS: I’ll tell you what I would do. What you just described is unacceptable, and should not be happening.
My immigration policy is to unite families, not to divide families. When I was here in Las Vegas a couple of months ago I heard a story. A young man who was in the United States military. While he was in the United States military his wife was deported. Can you believe that?
QUESTION: (OFF MIKE) Yes. (INAUDIBLE…)
SANDERS: … Clearly those not the policies that I want to see, and I will change those policies.
QUESTION: How long — how long, when you get there, how long will it take to change those policies because I’ve been waiting six years…
SANDERS: … That I can’t tell you.
QUESTION: … Six years of my life.
SANDERS: I can’t, you know — we will use our executive office and power as much as we can. Hopefully we’ll have the cooperation of the United States congress.
QUESTION: Thank you.
The Great and Powerful Oz has spoken! (Feel the burn, Bern?)
After leading hordes of hopeful Millennials along the Yellow Brick Road for months nurturing a belief system rooted in cultural revolution and promised instant gratification, the man behind the curtain was forced into a corner where he had to admit that he has no magic powers and change takes time.
Much of the Millennial discontent with Hillary Clinton’s complex platform lies in their impatience with her steadfast stance that we should not sweep away accomplishments of the past seven years in favor of an improbable chance of replacing them wholesale in a magical moment of fantastical bipartisan cooperation. No matter your age, mental or chronological, Hillary Clinton speaks to you as an adult to an adult. Reasonably.
I understand that somebody asked Senator Sanders a question because her husband was in Mexico — I don’t who asked that question. And I want to tell you, I will end the three and 10-year bar provision so that you do not have to face that ever again.
TODD: Let me follow up on something. I’ve asked you a few times about the prioritization of immigration reform.
CLINTON: Right.
TODD: And when I’m talked about — asked you about your first 100 days priorities, you’ve mentioned a lot of issues, and you haven’t put immigration reform first. And some immigration reform advocates are concerned that if you don’t put it first, that the same thing that happened in ’07, the same thing in ’10 — how do you prevent that if you don’t make it first? As you know these legislative lifts are hard? And the concern is if it’s not first, it may not happen. What do you say?
CLINTON: Well, when we both had a chance to vote on comprehensive immigration reform in 2007, the bill that Senator Ted Kennedy championed, I voted for it; Senator Sanders voted against it. So I know how important it is to put together a coalition.
If I’m fortunate enough to get the Democratic nomination, I will immediately begin working on the priority legislation that I want the Congress deal with right away, and immigration reform will be among those issues.
Now for me the way that Congress works, and I think my friend Congresswoman Marcia Fudge is here somewhere.
CLINTON: There she is. Thank you.
The way that the Congress works, there are a bunch of committees, and the committees have different jurisdiction. So if you’re dealing with immigration reform you go to one committee, if you’re dealing with equal pay for women you go to a different committee.
So what I want do is get my priority legislation ready to go, begin working even with Democrats in the Congress during the general election. I also want to do that for nominations, because I want to get the judges I want to appoint, I want to get the other important officials appointed.
So I’m not going to waste a minute. That’s why I want to get this nomination as quickly as possible so I can gets to work on being your president.
If a Republican has the mike in this election cycle and immigration arises as a topic, we are going to hear about a wall or a fence. Donald Trump intends to build a wall that, in his world, Mexico will finance. On State of the Union with Jake Tapper, Governor John Kasich (OH) referred to a fence. At the Thursday night debate, Kasich called it a wall, “Mr. Trump is touching a nerve because people want the wall to be built…” Meanwhile, Marco Rubio changed it to a fence, “I also believe we need a fence. The problem is if El Chapo builds a tunnel under the fence….” All conveniently forgot or ignored that the 9/11 hijackers and the and potential “shoe-bomber” arrived by air, and recent terrorist activity has come from domestic residents and citizens.
New Englander, and Poet Laureate of Vermont (although his farm stands in Derry, NH) , Robert Frost had some hardscrabble experience with both walls and fences, referred to interchangeably here.
The Robert Frost Farm in Derry, New Hampshire, where he wrote many of his poems, including “Tree at My Window” and “Mending Wall.” – Wikipedia
Mending Wall
Robert Frost, 1874 – 1963
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Yes, maybe, and the only ones tunneling under Frost’s walls, presumably, were moles. The Great Wall in China has served two purposes, as a defense, and now as a tourist attraction. Then there was this wall.
Frost was honored to craft and read a poem at the inauguration of a young president in 1961. Some of us remember how he struggled against the wind and bright sunlight in his presentation. (I was in tears for him).
This is the poem he intended to read.
Dedication
Summoning artists to participate
In the august occasions of the state
Seems something artists ought to celebrate.
Today is for my cause a day of days.
And his be poetry’s old-fashioned praise
Who was the first to think of such a thing.
This verse that in acknowledgement I bring
Goes back to the beginning of the end
Of what had been for centuries the trend;
A turning point in modern history.
Colonial had been the thing to be
As long as the great issue was to see
What country’d be the one to dominate
By character, by tongue, by native trait,
The new world Christopher Columbus found.
The French, the Spanish, and the Dutch were downed
And counted out. Heroic deeds were done.
Elizabeth the First and England won.
Now came on a new order of the ages
That in the Latin of our founding sages
(Is it not written on the dollar bill
We carry in our purse and pocket still?)
God nodded his approval of as good.
So much those heroes knew and understood,
I mean the great four, Washington,
John Adams, Jefferson, and Madison
So much they saw as consecrated seers
They must have seen ahead what not appears,
They would bring empires down about our ears
And by the example of our Declaration
Make everybody want to be a nation.
And this is no aristocratic joke
At the expense of negligible folk.
We see how seriously the races swarm
In their attempts at sovereignty and form.
They are our wards we think to some extent
For the time being and with their consent,
To teach them how Democracy is meant.
“New order of the ages” did they say?
If it looks none too orderly today,
‘Tis a confusion it was ours to start
So in it have to take courageous part.
No one of honest feeling would approve
A ruler who pretended not to love
A turbulence he had the better of.
Everyone knows the glory of the twain
Who gave America the aeroplane
To ride the whirlwind and the hurricane.
Some poor fool has been saying in his heart
Glory is out of date in life and art.
Our venture in revolution and outlawry
Has justified itself in freedom’s story
Right down to now in glory upon glory.
Come fresh from an election like the last,
The greatest vote a people ever cast,
So close yet sure to be abided by,
It is no miracle our mood is high.
Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs
Better than all the stalemate an’s and ifs.
There was the book of profile tales declaring
For the emboldened politicians daring
To break with followers when in the wrong,
A healthy independence of the throng,
A democratic form of right devine
To rule first answerable to high design.
There is a call to life a little sterner,
And braver for the earner, learner, yearner.
Less criticism of the field and court
And more preoccupation with the sport.
It makes the prophet in us all presage
The glory of a next Augustan age
Of a power leading from its strength and pride,
Of young amibition eager to be tried,
Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,
In any game the nations want to play.
A golden age of poetry and power
Of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.
This is the poem he recited from memory that day.
“The Gift Outright”
Poem recited at John F. Kennedy’s Inauguration
by Robert Frost
The land was ours before we were the land’s
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she will become.
That young president visited that infamous wall and had these words to offer.
I am proud to come to this city as the guest of your distinguished Mayor, who has symbolized throughout the world the fighting spirit of West Berlin. And I am proud — And I am proud to visit the Federal Republic with your distinguished Chancellor who for so many years has committed Germany to democracy and freedom and progress, and to come here in the company of my fellow American, General Clay, who — <
— who has been in this city during its great moments of crisis and will come again if ever needed.
Two thousand years ago — Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was “civis Romanus sum.”¹ Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is “Ich bin ein Berliner.”
(I appreciate my interpreter translating my German.)
There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world.
Let them come to Berlin.
There are some who say — There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future.
Let them come to Berlin.
And there are some who say, in Europe and elsewhere, we can work with the Communists.
Let them come to Berlin.
And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress.
Lass’ sie nach Berlin kommen.
Let them come to Berlin.
Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect. But we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in — to prevent them from leaving us. I want to say on behalf of my countrymen who live many miles away on the other side of the Atlantic, who are far distant from you, that they take the greatest pride, that they have been able to share with you, even from a distance, the story of the last 18 years. I know of no town, no city, that has been besieged for 18 years that still lives with the vitality and the force, and the hope, and the determination of the city of West Berlin.
While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the Communist system — for all the world to see — we take no satisfaction in it; for it is, as your Mayor has said, an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together.
What is — What is true of this city is true of Germany: Real, lasting peace in Europe can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice. In 18 years of peace and good faith, this generation of Germans has earned the right to be free, including the right to unite their families and their nation in lasting peace, with good will to all people.
You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main. So let me ask you, as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.
Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we look — can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.
All — All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin.
And, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner.”
Many remember Ronald Reagan asking Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down that wall. Some believe it fell because he said that. Some believe it fell because of prayers we said at the end of Mass for many years as instructed by the Virgin at Fatima. The most likely reason was the fault in Communism, the system so failed that it had to build a wall in the first place to keep its people in.
Hillary Clinton led the U.S. delegation to the 20th anniversary of the fall of that wall that some of us remember being built upon blood – literally – on the blood of the people who tried to escape.
Hillary Clinton is not and never has been about building walls. She has always been about tearing them down.
When it comes to our neighbor to the south, she holds Mexico in such high regard that after her first, quite extensive tour as secretary of state through Asia, her next official visit was to Mexico.
On her second day there, she surprised the rector at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe with an early morning visit. The Basilica is the heart of Mexican religious life. Hillary wanted to see and to understand, and she understood the power of the gesture.
So while the GOP continually speaks of walls and fences, Hillary has shown herself to be a builder of bridges and relationships, One of her final acts as secretary of state was to welcome Patricia Espinosa’s successor to the State Department.
It is up to Americans to decide what they prefer: candidates who want to wall us off and isolate us from the world and the world from us physically, militarily, and economically with unilateral sanctions already proven not to work, or a candidate who builds and nourishes healthy relationships around the globe with friends and partners and who knows how to negotiate with those who disagree with us.
It is our choice. It is your vote! Be informed. Use it wisely.
Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton stands on stage as she is introduced before addressing the 2015 National Immigrant Integration Conference in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, December 14, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Segar
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, right, holds hands with Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., after speaking during the 2015 National Immigration Integration Conference in New York, Monday, Dec. 14, 2015. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton meets with members of the Suarez family, a mixed status immigrant family originally from Honduras now living on Long Island, New York, before addressing the 2015 National Immigrant Integration Conference in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, December 14, 2015. At left is Marcy Yonaly Suarez and on the right is Angie Suarez. REUTERS/Mike Segar
Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton stands beneath a banner as she is introduced before addressing the 2015 National Immigrant Integration Conference in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, December 14, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Segar
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, right, meets with members of the Suarez family, including Marcy Yonaly Suarez Canales, left, before speaking at the 2015 National Immigration Integration Conference in New York, Monday, Dec. 14, 2015. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton addresses the 2015 National Immigrant Integration Conference in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, December 14, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Segar
Democratic Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton took aim at some Republicans candidates, saying “they are saying some very hateful, hurtful things” about Muslims. Rough Cut (no reporter narration).
Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton reacts before addressing the 2015 National Immigrant Integration Conference in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, December 14, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Segar
Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton addresses the 2015 National Immigrant Integration Conference in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, December 14, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Segar
I don’t know if my grandparents ever became citizens. I don’t think my grandmother lived long enough to. So, though they came legally, in a way my mom and her three brothers were “anchor babies” who conceivably might have been sent to Austria-Hungary in the middle of a war when my grandmother died, and my grandfather had to put the boys in foster care (i.e. public assistance). Had that happened, three guys who fought fought in WW II on our side could have ended up fighting on the other side. Our side also would have missed out on one machinist – my mom.
You reap what you sow. The U.S. invested in them, and they paid it back and forward. That can be multiplied by millions from Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Germany between 1900 and 1910 whose children formed “the greatest generation” and fought the biggest war.
If a Republican has the mike in this election cycle and immigration arises as a topic, we are going to hear about a wall or a fence. Donald Trump intends to build a wall that, in his world, Mexico will finance. On State of the Union with Jake Tapper, Governor John Kasich (OH) referred to a fence. At the Thursday night debate, Kasich called it a wall, “Mr. Trump is touching a nerve because people want the wall to be built…” Meanwhile, Marco Rubio changed it to a fence, “I also believe we need a fence. The problem is if El Chapo builds a tunnel under the fence….” All conveniently forgot or ignored that the 9/11 hijackers and the and potential “shoe-bomber” arrived by air, and recent terrorist activity has come from domestic residents and citizens.
New Englander, and Poet Laureate of Vermont (although his farm stands in Derry, NH) , Robert Frost had some hardscrabble experience with both walls and fences built beautifully by Fencing Builders, referred to interchangeably here.
The Robert Frost Farm in Derry, New Hampshire, where he wrote many of his poems, including “Tree at My Window” and “Mending Wall.” – Wikipedia
Mending Wall
Robert Frost, 1874 – 1963
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Yes, maybe, and the only ones tunneling under Frost’s walls, presumably, were moles. The Great Wall in China has served two purposes, as a defense, and now as a tourist attraction. Then there was this wall.
Frost was honored to craft and read a poem at the inauguration of a young president in 1961. Some of us remember how he struggled against the wind and bright sunlight in his presentation. (I was in tears for him).
This is the poem he intended to read.
Dedication
Summoning artists to participate
In the august occasions of the state
Seems something artists ought to celebrate.
Today is for my cause a day of days.
And his be poetry’s old-fashioned praise
Who was the first to think of such a thing.
This verse that in acknowledgement I bring
Goes back to the beginning of the end
Of what had been for centuries the trend;
A turning point in modern history.
Colonial had been the thing to be
As long as the great issue was to see
What country’d be the one to dominate
By character, by tongue, by native trait,
The new world Christopher Columbus found.
The French, the Spanish, and the Dutch were downed
And counted out. Heroic deeds were done.
Elizabeth the First and England won.
Now came on a new order of the ages
That in the Latin of our founding sages
(Is it not written on the dollar bill
We carry in our purse and pocket still?)
God nodded his approval of as good.
So much those heroes knew and understood,
I mean the great four, Washington,
John Adams, Jefferson, and Madison
So much they saw as consecrated seers
They must have seen ahead what not appears,
They would bring empires down about our ears
And by the example of our Declaration
Make everybody want to be a nation.
And this is no aristocratic joke
At the expense of negligible folk.
We see how seriously the races swarm
In their attempts at sovereignty and form.
They are our wards we think to some extent
For the time being and with their consent,
To teach them how Democracy is meant.
“New order of the ages” did they say?
If it looks none too orderly today,
‘Tis a confusion it was ours to start
So in it have to take courageous part.
No one of honest feeling would approve
A ruler who pretended not to love
A turbulence he had the better of.
Everyone knows the glory of the twain
Who gave America the aeroplane
To ride the whirlwind and the hurricane.
Some poor fool has been saying in his heart
Glory is out of date in life and art.
Our venture in revolution and outlawry
Has justified itself in freedom’s story
Right down to now in glory upon glory.
Come fresh from an election like the last,
The greatest vote a people ever cast,
So close yet sure to be abided by,
It is no miracle our mood is high.
Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs
Better than all the stalemate an’s and ifs.
There was the book of profile tales declaring
For the emboldened politicians daring
To break with followers when in the wrong,
A healthy independence of the throng,
A democratic form of right devine
To rule first answerable to high design.
There is a call to life a little sterner,
And braver for the earner, learner, yearner.
Less criticism of the field and court
And more preoccupation with the sport.
It makes the prophet in us all presage
The glory of a next Augustan age
Of a power leading from its strength and pride,
Of young amibition eager to be tried,
Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,
In any game the nations want to play.
A golden age of poetry and power
Of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.
This is the poem he recited from memory that day.
“The Gift Outright”
Poem recited at John F. Kennedy’s Inauguration
by Robert Frost
The land was ours before we were the land’s
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she will become.
That young president visited that infamous wall and had these words to offer.
I am proud to come to this city as the guest of your distinguished Mayor, who has symbolized throughout the world the fighting spirit of West Berlin. And I am proud — And I am proud to visit the Federal Republic with your distinguished Chancellor who for so many years has committed Germany to democracy and freedom and progress, and to come here in the company of my fellow American, General Clay, who — <
— who has been in this city during its great moments of crisis and will come again if ever needed.
Two thousand years ago — Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was “civis Romanus sum.”¹ Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is “Ich bin ein Berliner.”
(I appreciate my interpreter translating my German.)
There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world.
Let them come to Berlin.
There are some who say — There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future.
Let them come to Berlin.
And there are some who say, in Europe and elsewhere, we can work with the Communists.
Let them come to Berlin.
And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress.
Lass’ sie nach Berlin kommen.
Let them come to Berlin.
Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect. But we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in — to prevent them from leaving us. I want to say on behalf of my countrymen who live many miles away on the other side of the Atlantic, who are far distant from you, that they take the greatest pride, that they have been able to share with you, even from a distance, the story of the last 18 years. I know of no town, no city, that has been besieged for 18 years that still lives with the vitality and the force, and the hope, and the determination of the city of West Berlin.
While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the Communist system — for all the world to see — we take no satisfaction in it; for it is, as your Mayor has said, an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together.
What is — What is true of this city is true of Germany: Real, lasting peace in Europe can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice. In 18 years of peace and good faith, this generation of Germans has earned the right to be free, including the right to unite their families and their nation in lasting peace, with good will to all people.
You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main. So let me ask you, as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.
Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we look — can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.
All — All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin.
And, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner.”
Many remember Ronald Reagan asking Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down that wall. Some believe it fell because he said that. Some believe it fell because of prayers we said at the end of Mass for many years as instructed by the Virgin at Fatima. The most likely reason was the fault in Communism, the system so failed that it had to build a wall in the first place to keep its people in.
Hillary Clinton led the U.S. delegation to the 20th anniversary of the fall of that wall that some of us remember being built upon blood – literally – on the blood of the people who tried to escape.
Hillary Clinton is not and never has been about building walls. She has always been about tearing them down.
When it comes to our neighbor to the south, she holds Mexico in such high regard that after her first, quite extensive tour as secretary of state through Asia, her next official visit was to Mexico.
On her second day there, she surprised the rector at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe with an early morning visit. The Basilica is the heart of Mexican religious life. Hillary wanted to see and to understand, and she understood the power of the gesture.
So while the GOP continually speaks of walls and fences, Hillary has shown herself to be a builder of bridges and relationships, One of her final acts as secretary of state was to welcome Patricia Espinosa’s successor to the State Department.
It is up to Americans to decide what they prefer: candidates who want to wall us off and isolate us from the world and the world from us physically, militarily, and economically with unilateral sanctions already proven not to work, or a candidate who builds and nourishes healthy relationships around the globe with friends and partners and who knows how to negotiate with those who disagree with us.
It is our choice. It is your vote! Be informed. Use it wisely.
At Rancho High School in Las Vegas, Hillary made clear her determination to effect immigration reform and a path to citizenship for Dreamers and, importantly, their families.
This event is a perfect example of Hillary’s early campaign strategy. Rather than doing the speaking, Hillary is hearing the stories these Dreamers have to tell. For those who still do not get it, statements from her will not proliferate right now. She is busy doing the listening.
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"... ratify the Law of the Sea Convention, which has provided the international framework for exploring these new opportunities in the Arctic. We abide by the international law that undergirds the convention, but we think the United States should be a member, because the convention sets down the rules of the road that protect freedom of navigation, provide maritime security, serve the interests of every nation that relies on sea lanes for commerce and trade, and also sets the framework for exploration for the natural resources that may be present in the Arctic." -HRC, 06-03-12, Tromso Norway
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