Andrew's Tiki Lounge

Reflections on the infernos of Southern California

Some of my most vivid memories of growing up in Southern California involve raging wildfires closing in -- like giant nooses -- on two different places where I lived as young boy. Watching the bright orange flames leaping upward, sending ominous columns of black smoke into the sky, created memories that all these years later are not easily forgotten. Luckily, my family dwellings were spared, but I'll never forget the feeling of hopelessness as I watched the raging flames coming within yards of where I called home.

These memories came back to me, triggering a flood of different emotions, as I watched the news footage last night of different parts of Southern California burning in massive fires.

The tally is haunting. More than a thousand homes have been destroyed. Over 20,000 acres have burned so far in the fires. And they are exceedingly difficult to contain. California's firefighters are out in full force with protective gear, bravely battling the flames wherever they burn.

As one woman who witnessed the wildfires spreading in Orange County told Reuters: "I'm just seeing a lot of burned fields, smoke, burned down houses. This is crazy knowing this is my community and it looks like a war zone."

At one mobile home park in Los Angeles, fires wiped out more than 500 trailers and only 134 residents are accounted for.

 

It is difficult as a Blogger to know how to weigh in on these sorts of tragedies. Sadly, you can't comment on every natural disaster occurring around the world -- even if you have a Blog that is solely dedicated to that topic. There are just too many of them. The earthquake in May in Sichuan Province, China, for example -- a 7.9-magnitude monster -- was so destructive that the Chinese government is still not certain about the death toll. By July, the official state-calculated death toll climbed to 69,227. Amazingly, it might even be slightly higher than that.

Blogging on disasters is hard. The outcome is so tragic. It is difficult to find any rays of hope. Plus, Blog Entries on disasters are not conducive to the sort of pithy statements that are such a vital part of the Blogger's shtick. You can't really take a decisive stand, other than stating the obvious ("Disasters are horrible," or "rescue workers are heroic and deserve our support.")

Plus we all relate to different disasters in different ways. For me personally, the fires resonate so deeply because my own personal memories of similar blazes from my childhood are so powerful and intense.

The fires in Southern California present a surreal and horrific landscape -- not unlike the tragic images captured on film after Hurricane Katrina. You can't help but hold out hope that somehow the destruction can be contained as soon as possible and that people can return to their normal lives. But so many people have lost their homes and belongings. And then there are the many poor souls who have perished in a fiery death.

Disasters give us pause to reflect on our own lives. Even as we sympathize with the victims of these large-scale tragedies, we can find ample reasons to be grateful for our own blessings. And we can appreciate, at an even deeper level, the beauty of life and all it has to offer.

 

Images courtesy of Reuters.

A new movement, an old struggle...

First the bad news: Proposition 8, a constitution amendment rescinding same-sex marriages, was passed by voters in California this past Election Day.

Now the good news: The passage of Prop 8 has triggered a New Civil Rights Movement in America. 

What a great moment -- an inspiring moment -- to see the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) joining in on the struggle to support same-sex marriage by filing lawsuits against Prop 8. It is appropriate that an organization on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s is once again in the trenches, fighting for equal rights again. 

And how encouraging to see protests occurring in more than 200 cities, in all 50 states, with shows of solidarity occurring in a number of countries abroad. 

We're seeing marches. We're seeing boycotts. We're seeing men and women -- gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and yes, heterosexuals -- joining together to fight for the right of all men and women to enjoy equal rights in America. 

The protests are too numerous to count. People are mobilizing, and not just in California. They're mobilizing in Oklahoma, Utah, in Michigan and Kansas and Oregon, in Montana and North Carolina and right in the heart of Georgia. You name the place -- people are protesting there: in Canada and different parts of Europe, there are shows of support. 

There is a movement underway. It is a powerful movement. People have been inspired by Senator Barack Obama's grassroots campaign. They're taking a page out of the book of the millions who mobilized for Obama. Now people are mobilizing against the bigotry that fueled the passage of Proposition 8. 

It is inspiring to read about people who've never gone out to protest before in their lives and who are now out in the streets, speaking out against the travesty of Proposition 8. 

Already, some have suffered in a backlash against anti-Prop 8 protests. In Fresno, California, Robin McGehee, who sends her son to St. Helens Catholic School, was forced to resign as head of the local Parent Teacher Association (PTA) because she attended a candlelight vigil protesting Proposition 8. Her forced resignation was supported by a priest from the Diocese of Fresno, who said that she had violated church teachings. 

But the men and women who are struggling against Prop 8 are committed to the cause. Threats and intimidation can't stop this movement. Narrow-minded spiritual leaders can't stop it either because homophobes do not have a monopoly on religion. There are people from all religions and all walks of life joining this struggle every day. 

When the Republicans across the nation went down in defeat on November 4, many right-wing pundits insisted that America is still a center-right nation -- whatever that means. But this mass movement shows that America has another side: It is also a nation of progress, of equal rights, of high ideals and of decent folk.

The struggle against Prop 8 is not just a struggle for the rights of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people. It is bigger than that. It is an effort to reclaim the soul of America -- to press the nation to live up, at long last, to its highest ideals. President-elect Obama taught us a lesson that we desperately needed to re-learn -- the same lesson the Civil Rights Movement taught us over four decades ago -- that the people, united, can win great victories. 

This is but a new chapter of an old, old struggle. 

Above: An anti-Proposition 8 protest in Sacramento (courtesy of the San Francisco Chronicle). 

Bill Ayers gets his say Friday on Good Morning America

It's great to see Bill Ayers -- who spent years fighting the good fight against war, injustice and poverty -- finally getting his say. The former Weatherman -- who, as we all remember, became the "bad boy" of the McCain/Palin Smear Machine -- will be appearing this Friday on Good Morning America to talk about the revised and updated version of his memoirs and, hopefully, to set the record straight about the many lies and distortions spread about him by the extreme right-wing. The Chicago Tribune ran an excellent story about Ayers today. He now admits that the Obamas are family friends, but he also rightfully accuses the GOP of McCarthyist guilt-by-association smear tactics. Ayers, unlike the narcissistic Reverend Jeremiah Wright, kept quiet during the campaign, despite an avalanche of hate mail and even death threats that came to his office at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Right, sadly, is still trying to drag Ayers' name down into the mud. "Will ABC Grill or Toss Softballs to Terrorist Bomber William Ayers?" asked a headline on the right-wing website NewsBusters. A more appropriate question is: Now that the Right has gone down in shameful defeat, will they continue to wrongly vilify a man who is an honorable and productive citizen of American society? 

The Future of American Conservatism

 

It is interesting to survey the reactions of different conservatives to Barack Obama’s Nov. 4 victory.

A number of conservatives have expressed a willingness to give President-elect Obama the benefit of the doubt. "I am happy for President-elect Barack Obama, and for many who supported him," said South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. But he also added, "Republicans have campaigned on the conservative themes of lower taxes, less government and more freedom -- they just haven't governed that way. America didn't turn away from conservatism, they turned away from many who faked it."

San Francisco-based writer Cinnamon Stillwell says she was “relieved” that Obama won, even though she backed McCain. As Stillwell writes:

The past eight years have been defined largely by Democratic and leftist opposition to George W. Bush and to all things deemed Republican. As someone who rallied to Bush's side after 9/11 and supported him in the 2004 election, only to find myself deeply disappointed both in his second term and in the arrogance and complacency of the GOP, I've grown quite weary of the partisan culture wars. So it's with great relief that I contemplate a forthcoming Obama term in which Democrats control the White House, Congress, and possibly the Senate, and therefore have no one to blame but themselves.

These sentiments are shared by countless conservatives. It is interesting to see how conservatives -- many of them once such ardent Bush backers -- are now distancing themselves from his failed presidency, the way many Democrats sought to distance themselves from Jimmy Carter's four disastrous years in the White House. 

Some conservatives have also accused the McCain/Palin Campaign of not being conservative enough. In this assessment, both Bush and McCain betrayed conservatism and its core principles. Henry Olsen, vice president of the American Enterprise Institute, posed the question in the Wall Street Journal: "What would Reagan do?" His answer:

This is not the first time that conservatives and Republicans have stared into an electoral abyss. After Barry Goldwater's crushing 1964 defeat, most political observers thought the only future for the GOP was to become a centrist party only slightly to the right of Great Society Democrats.Ronald Reagan didn't agree. In a trenchant column penned in the Dec. 1, 1964 issue of National Review, he argued that Americans had rejected only a false vision of conservatism as a radical departure from the status quo. Conservatives, he said, had only "lost a battle in the continuing war for freedom." Voters would rally to the conservative banner once they realized that Democratic liberals were the true radicals.

Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks predicts the GOP will move right over the next several years. He envisions a battle between "Traditionalists" who want to steer the party increasingly rightward and "Reformers" (he considers himself in the latter category) who want to see the GOP become more of a "big tent" party like the Democrats and step up appeals to moderate voters. He writes: "To regain power, the Traditionalists argue, the G.O.P. should return to its core ideas: Cut government, cut taxes, restrict immigration. Rally behind Sarah Palin."

Surveying the other side, Brooks writes, "The other camp, the Reformers, argue that the old G.O.P. priorities were fine for the 1970s but need to be modernized for new conditions. The reformers tend to believe that American voters will not support a party whose main idea is slashing government. The Reformers propose new policies to address inequality and middle-class economic anxiety. They tend to take global warming seriously."

A few days after the election, activist Brent Bozell, who represents the far right wing of the Republican Party, recently held a meeting at his home in Stanley, Virginia, to discuss the future of the conservative movement. A number of prominent conservatives, including R. Emmett Tyrrell, Richard Viguerie and publisher Al Regnery were there. The outcome of the meeting was predictable: The GOP needs to move to the right. Far, far to the right. 

It turns out that conservative Republicans are not plagued by the same self-doubts as liberal Democrats. In the past, Republican defeats have pushed the party to the right end of the spectrum. If the meeting at Bozell's house is any indication of things to come, activists in the Republican Party will redouble their efforts to push for an even more conservative agenda.

In the past, Democrats failed to watch the American Right and take its many different factions seriously. David Brooks is quite correct to insist that the so-called Traditionalists -- such as Brent Bozell -- are not going to sit idly by and allow the the Reformers to build a more moderate party. They are already inventing a narrative: Sarah Palin was a martyr, much like Barry Goldwater, sacrificed by the centrists in the party when they realized that defeat was inevitable. Only by recapturing the Right and forging an agenda that out-Reagan's Ronald Reagan himself, they reason, will the GOP make a comeback, like a phoenix rising up from the flames.

And, sadly, there is always the risk that the voting public -- plagued by historical amnesia -- will forget the monumental disaster that was eight years of George W. Bush. 

Speaking of Old Dubya, imagine how the poor guy must feel right now. Democrats have bitterly opposed him. His ratings have bottomed out with the American public. And conservatives insist he is not one of them. At this rate, in another ten years, he runs the risk of becoming an elder statesman.

Under the Radar: the KKK still alive & well...

The Ku Klux Klan comes and goes. At times, the organization thrives. At times, its membership plummets. It is impossible to predict when the Klan will fade away and when it will make a comeback. 

This hate group, founded in Pulaski, Tennessee, on Christmas Eve 1865, has fallen in and out of favor ever since it began, but it has never been fully exorcised from the American scene. There have always been hate-filled racists who keep the organization afloat through thin times

Now the Klan seems to be making a comeback, which isn't surprising. Barack Obama's historic victory last week is stirring the hornet's nest. And they're plenty ornery. 

The latest:  A female KKK recruit from Oklahoma was shot during an initiation rite in the swamps of Louisiana. Apparently, the Klan took her to a campsite accessible only by boat when she had a change of heart and wanted to leave. Leader Raymond "Chuck" Foster pulled out his .40 caliber handgun and shot her. Police raided the Klan camp after a group of the white supremacist morons went into a convenience store and asked the clerk for advice on getting rid of bloodstains. The clerk, knowing the men were with the Klan, immediately called the police. 

There are numerous places where the Klan is engaged in similar recruitment drives. In Kentucky, the Southern Poverty Law Center is fighting a noble struggle against one of the largest chapters of the Klan in the United States, going after the organization for its members' involvement in the beating of a teenager. 

The Klan activities are small. For example, an anti-immigration Klan rally in Donalsonville, Georgia, last month drew about 100 protesters. 

But in the case of the Klan, their bite is much bigger than their bark. These are fanatics. And we saw with the pre-Election assassination scare involving white supremacists who wanted to kill Obama that these thugs mean business. The assassination scare heightened anxieties about the prospect of Obama being assassinated, which is an often unspoken and ever-present fear among a number of Americans. 

The Klan needs to be monitored carefully. They are America's answer to Al-Qaeda. This cancer must not be allowed to spread. For too long, KKKers have been written off as marginalized nuts. But it only takes one of these fanatics to get to our president-elect with a gun. Better to eradicate this evil now than let these reprehensible extremists get within a mile of Obama. 

Barack Obama and the Baby Name Craze...

 

Did you hear the latest? Apparently, Barack Obama has already inspired parents to name their children after him.

It's a great idea. After all, Obama is one of the most inspirational political figures of the last half century. It only makes sense that Moms and Dads across America would want to name their babies after him. 

Other presidents in American history to inspire baby names, according to the New York Times, include Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. 

Here are some politicians that probably won't inspire baby names:

1. George W. Bush: "Dubya, eat your carrots or you can't go outside and look for Saddam's WMDs!!!"

2. Richard Nixon: "Dick, I told you not to go playing around that old Watergate Hotel!"

3. Joseph McCarthy: "Joe, quit investigating little Helen for her communist affiliations and come home for supper at once!" 

4. Sonny Bono: "Sonny, quit playing golf in Palm Springs and eat your Brussels sprouts..."

5.Herbert Hoover: "Little Herbert, quit digging that hole deeper and deeper and leave the economy alone and put away your bicycle!"

6. Larry Craig: "Knock, knock, Larry! You've been in that bathroom for over an hour! What are you doing in there, anyway?"

7. Newt Gingrich: "We're taking you to the doctor, lil' Newt. You lean waaaaaayyyyyy too far to the right." 

8. Dick Cheney: "No, Dick! No, no, no!!! The kitty cat doesn't belong in the microwave!!! No! She doesn't belong in the clothes dryer, either!!! What's gotten into you?"

9. Bill Clinton: "Lil' Billy, have you seen my cigars?"

10. Sarah Palin: "The world is full of nasty kids, Sarah. Watch out for the gotcha media, people who pal around with terrorists and anonymous McCain aides!" 

Franken Watch: Oh so close...

Comedian, author, liberal and Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken is only 221 votes (out of 2.9 million cast) behind incumbent Republican Norm Coleman in Minnesota's race for the United States Senate. There will be a recount (when a victory is one by less than one half of one percent, a recount is mandatory). Of course, it goes without saying that this Blogger is keeping his fingers and toes crossed for a Franken victory in the recount. A victory for the outspoken humorist is not outside the realm of possibility. But there were some important factors working against Franken, especially his dark comedic past, which included a lot of crass humor that Republicans used against him.

Hopefully, a recount will work in Franken's favor. If, knock on wood, it doesn't, then we can hope that this experience will not scare Franken away from fighting the good fight through humor. Lord knows we could all stand to lighten up and not take things so damn seriously.

Today, OpEd News published a short piece by Eric Nelson pointing to voting irregularities in the Minnesota elections.

This just in: An Associated Press report (in today's Boston Herald) noted that Norm Coleman's lead has slipped even more. Now he is ahead by 204 votes. As Franken put it last week: "Let me be clear: Our goal is to ensure that every vote is properly counted. The process dictated by our laws will be orderly, fair and will begin in a matter of days. We won't know for a little while who won the race, but at the end of the day, we will know that the voice of the electorate was clearly heard." This is the closest Senate race in Minnesota's history. We can only hope that when the recount is finished, comedian Al Franken will become Senator Al Franken.

Stay tuned...

Kristallnacht 70 Years Later (part 2): Keeping the Memory Alive

Yesterday, I posted on the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass), the German pogrom that saw the murder of 91 Jews, the destruction of 267 synagogues and what many Jews see as the start of the Final Solution. 

Kristallnacht lasted a few days. By the time it was over, German Jews -- who had already been subjected to years of oppressive Nazi race laws -- were stunned and bewildered with the ferocity of the attacks. Sadly, the rampage was an omen of much worse things to come. 

Today, 70 years later, the most important tribute we can pay to those who perished at Kristallnact and in the Holocaust is to simply remember them. 

This is why the accounts of survivors are so important -- survivors like Dr. Margot Segall-Blank (left). Her ordeal was featured today in a haunting Boston Globe story. Segall-Blank now lives in Brookline, Mass., and to mark the 70th anniversary of Kristallnact, she spoke at the Hebrew College there as part of a program called "Remembering Kristallnacht: Standing Together 70 Years Later." 

Segall-Blank was just a little girl when Kristallnacht occurred, yet she still recalls the horror of seeing her beloved synagogue burned to the ground. She said, "We got to be about half a mile away and saw smoke and smelled smoke. I saw the Nazi boys in their brown shirts waving swastika flags and singing, 'Death to the Jews.' "

Lucky for Segall-Blank, her family escaped Nazi Germany in 1941 and they settled in Australia. In the early 1970s, she relocated to the United States. 

Elsewhere, survivors recounted their own personal ordeals during the Night of Broken Glass. Hans Bensinger (right), who spoke at the Jewish Community Center in Louisville, Kentucky, last night, shared his memories of Kristallnacht. Not only did he see his town's synagogue damaged, his father was taken away and sent to the concentration camp at Dachau. 

Bensinger (according to the Louisville Courier-Journal) told those present: "The real horror was the realization that we as humans had been degraded and scorned with no rights, no future, no defenders and no savior in sight."

John Lawton now lives in Ohio. At the time of Kristallnacht, he was 15 years old. He shared his memories with listeners in Ohio 70 years later: "Two blocks from our home was a Jewish temple. The Nazis had blown it up. The upstairs women's section and everything collapsed except for one small area of an apartment where the non-Jewish caretaker lived. That illustrates it was done by a trained demolition team." 

We are fortunate to have so many people who share their memories of Kristallnacht. All over Europe, Israel and North America, the remaining survivors are speaking out. But time is working against them. The day will come when we will not have living people who can speak at these sorts of events and bring their vivid memories to the attention of the public. We owe it to those who perished to preserve their memories and continue to tell their stories. Even if the stories lose some of their power because they aren't told by the people who lived through the ordeal, they still must be told over and over again. 

We owe an enormous debt to the survivors of Kristallnact. It takes tremendous courage to go out in public and keep the stories of that horrific pogrom alive. 

Above: Mickey Dorsey, who helped liberate a concentration camp, lights candles of remembrance at one of countless ceremonies remembering Kristallnacht, this one in Charlotte, North Carolina. 

Kristallnacht: Seventy Years Later (1938-2008)

Today is the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht -- the Night of Broken Glass -- an orgy of mayhem, murder and destruction as Nazis burned Jewish homes and synagogues, murdered some 90 Jews and deported countless others to concentration camps. Many Jews regard this horrific pogrom as the beginning of the Holocaust. 

Across Europe, lights in synagogues remained on all night to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the event. German Chancellor Angela Merkel paid tribute to the event with other Jewish leaders at the largest synagogue in Germany. 

In Israel, a joint statement was issued by Social Affairs Minister Isaac Herzog and chief rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar. It read, in part, "The Nazis' objective was to darken Israel's eyes and turn off 'the light of the world,' the light of the Torah and prayer that shone out of synagogues and midrashot [centers for Jewish learning]. As such we call on all of the people of Israel, in the State of Israel and in the Diaspora, to light candles and leave lights on in synagogues and midrashot in order to remember and to remind future generations never to forget the cruelty and evil actions that befell us." 

To mark the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Los Angeles Times ran a fascinating story about Israeli writer Yaron Svoray who has been digging in a local dump near the worst areas of the pogrom to unearth fragments of Jewish and Nazi objects. Finding these artifacts is part of an effort to piece together the horrifying history of Kristallnacht. Svoray's efforts -- and the work of others like him -- is essential to keeping the memory of this horrifying event fresh and relevant to people around the world. To quote from the Times story:

The items Svoray found last spring, including the bottle with the Star of David, were taken to the Ghetto Fighters' House museum in Israel, which documents Jewish resistance to the Nazis. Museum officials examined the pieces and pronounced them genuine prewar objects, although lab results of some kind would be more conclusive, said Simcha Stein, the museum's director. "I was so excited," Stein said. "It was like a scream [from the past] in front of my eyes."

For decades after World War II, there were numerous Jewish survivors who told stories of Kristallnacht. But with the passage of time, many of those survivors have died off.  Charlotte Knobloch, head of the the Central Council of Jews in Germany, was six when she witnessed Kristallnacht in her hometown of Munich. Speaking to a crowd at Berlin's Rykestrasse synagogue, she said, "It is our responsibility to keep the memories alive. Six million children, women and men must never be degraded to a footnote of history."

Not only for the sake of world Jewry, but for the sake of all humanity, Kristallnacht will never be forgotten. The shattering glass, the burning buildings and the screams of anguish reach across 70 years and remind us of the vicious disease of anti-Semitism. Fighting that evil is not just the job of Jews. It is our shared responsibility as human beings. 

"No one yet knows what awaits the Jews in the twenty-first century, but we must make every effort to ensure that it is better than what befell them in the twentieth, the century of the Holocaust." - Benjamin Netanyahu 

Vindication: George McGovern lives to see Obama's victory

A lot of us are still coming down from our November 4 high. Last week's election thrilled and inspired. Where to begin?

One of the happiest stories of the election -- missed by much of the mainstream media -- was that George McGovern, the 86-year-old elder statesman of American liberalism, was alive to witness it.

Just as Barry Goldwater inspired young conservatives in 1964 even in defeat, McGovern inspired a generation of youthful liberals in 1972, even though he, too, lost in a landslide election. If you get a chance, read Bruce Miroff's stunning book The Liberals' Moment and you'll come to understand -- and appreciate -- the overwhelming challenge that McGovern faced when he ran for president 36 years ago. 

True, his campaign was fraught with shortcomings -- too numerous to list here. But McGovern fought a noble fight and his story remains inspirational, close to four decades later. Yes, he went down in a landslide defeat, like Goldwater. But unlike the right, which quickly rebounded from the Arizona senator's 1964 defeat, liberals made the mistake of doubting themselves. 

Since the 1970s, liberals have been plagued by self-doubts and, worse, a lack of confidence. The emergence of Obama as a genuine liberal -- and, yes, I do believe Obama is the real deal... a fighting liberal for the 21st Century -- shows that McGovern was not wrong to fight nobly for liberal values in 1972. It was those centrist Democrats who abandoned the language of hope, who forgot about the forgotten people, who tried to out-hawk the GOPs (I hate that term hawk, actually -- the hawk is a noble bird) who were wrong. They steered the Democratic Party to one defeat after another for 36 years.

Obama rescued the fighting liberal tradition of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and -- yes, I know some of you veterans of the anti-Vietnam War Movement might not want to hear this, but you're going to hear it anyway -- most of all, Lyndon Johnson. Obama turned the Democratic Party back into a genuine "big tent" party that unites centrists, liberals and the left. This is all part of the Obama Miracle. 

An important figure in that "fighting liberal" tradition for over a half century has been Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. 

Thank God that McGovern was able to witness the Obama Miracle (sadly, his wife Eleanor, also a great fighting liberal, passed away early last year). 

Recently, McGovern told his hometown newspaper in Mitchell, South Dakota: “I felt the principles he was pressing were the same ones that I advocated in ’72."

McGovern is right. So are all the men and women who refused to give up on the fighting liberalism for which he stood, even though the dominant conventional wisdom often rejected it. 

Just because the nation was not ready for McGovern's liberal vision in 1972 did not make it wrong. 

Luckily, McGovern -- who has a Ph.D. in U.S. History -- has been able to take a broader view of the American past, which has strengthened -- not diminished -- his commitment to liberalism over the decades.

As McGovern told the Mitchell (S.D.) Daily Republic: "Now we can truly say all people are created equal. We don’t even use Jefferson’s quote, ‘all men are created equal.’ It’s ‘all people are created equal,’ and that’s the great dream of America, that any citizen of this land can aspire to the highest office."

By the way, recently McGovern -- along with his good pal Bob Dole -- was awarded the prestigious World Food Prize. The two retired politicians, both defeated in landslide elections, have gone on to do great humanitarian work in the area of feeding the world's hungry children. The World Food Prize was established in 1986 by Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug in Iowa. Since 2000, the George McGovern-Robert Dole International Food for Education and Nutrition Program has worked to provide 22 million meals to children in 41 different countries. 

Is it any wonder that Senator George McGovern remains such an inspiring hero to those of us who have remained faithful to the spirit of fighting liberalism for so long? His reward is more than just living to see the Obama Miracle. He helped pave the way for Obama's triumph. More importantly, his hard work as a public servant for more than a half century has improved the quality of life for millions of Americans.