We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America. – Barack Obama, 2008
When he said that five years ‑‑ five days before the election four years ago, most of America didn’t even pay attention. Most of America didn’t even know what that meant. And when we started pointing out, this guy is going to fundamentally transform the United States of America, I said you will come to a day where you won’t even recognize this country anymore. You will wake up in the morning and you won’t recognize it. Have you felt that way yet? Because I have. I hit the wall to where I really truly do not recognize my country anymore when we left the guys on the roof painting the enemy. With a laser in Benghazi and the president saying “No.” When we said, no, you know what, we’re not going to go after the Black Panthers,” I didn’t understand my country anymore. When the president said the cops acted stupidly, when the president said, you know, Trayvon, he could be my son” with absolutely no evidence, nothing, I didn’t recognize my country anymore. When I can see this media spin, and I mean, we’ve all had this conversation ever since we were young. If you’re a conservative, you’ve had this conversation for a very, very long time. I mean, they’re all liberals. The spin is out of control. But not like this. When they will cover, when they will take a man like Jack Welch and throw him under the bus because he said there’s something wrong with the jobs numbers, they’re cooking the books. I don’t know how they are a he doing it but I’ve been in the business long enough to know they’re cooking the books. It’s not 7.8 unemployment, they’re cooking the books. And they go and throw the man, a legend like Jack Welch and throw him under the bus and then not report that ADP ‑‑ this is the payroll service. They feed in some of the stats to the labor department. They’ve just announced that, oh, they changed the way they calculate unemployment. And it looks like that may have affected their number. It looks like unemployment was cut down by a third to half. Oh, so you mean Jack Welch is right? At the same time the president is saying, “Oh, by the way, we may not have those labor statistics this week. We may have to wait until next week after the election because of Hurricane Sandy,” and nobody says anything. I don’t recognize my country anymore. When I see people standing in record numbers twice in one year at the mall in Washington, when I see people reading the Constitution, when I see people arguing about the Constitution, when I see people having real debates, when I see people leaving the parties because they say, “I don’t want anything to do with the pears,” you know what, the Republicans had their chance; they blew it. I think they’ve sold us out. When I see conservatives say that, I don’t recognize my country anymore… in a good way.
Look what’s happened to us since the president of the United States said those words. Fundamentally transform the United States of America. We’re five days away again. The exact same spot four years later. We will fundamentally transform back to our values, our traditions and our principles. Upon this, upon which this nation was founded. And I’m not saying we’re going to go back to George Bush. I don’t want to go back to George Bush. I don’t think you want to go back to George Bush. But that’s the choice in five days. To go back to something that makes sense. Real transparency. The truth. Not a bunch of these cronies in Washington, not a bunch of bogus facts and bogus jobs where we all know it’s not true. But closer to the way we were on 9/11, after the attack, closer to the way we were on 9/12. To where we all started to break through our fear and we just did the right thing, Republican and Democrat. Are we going to go there, or will Barack Obama finish the job he started and close the book on what we have always known as the United States of America, one that never gives up, one that never sits down, one that never says, I don’t know, I’m too tired; I don’t know, we’re just an oppressor nation. Are we going to believe the lies that have been told to us? Because that is the choice, and I know that seems radical, at least it does four years ago when we were saying it, but I think we’ve made a very good case. And the easiest way to make this case is just to paraphrase President Obama: Let me be clear, as I’ve said in the past, judge me by the people I associate with.
Who I associate with on economic policy, I associate with Warren Buffett and former Fed chairman Paul Volcker. If I’m interested in figuring out my foreign policy, I associate myself with my running mate Joe Biden or with Dick Lugar, the Republican ranking member on the Senate foreign relations committee or General Jim Jones, the former supreme allied commander of NATO. Before debating healthcare, I talked to Andy Stern and SEIU members. Before immigration debates took place in Washington, I talked with Eliseo Medina and SEIU members. – Barack Obama
You notice that there is, you notice that there is a difference between the president, the way he is even speaking. Because the way ‑‑ the man wears a mask. He will say one thing to one audience and another thing to another audience. And when he’s speaking to mainstream America, he sounds just like you. But when he’s speaking to radicals and labor unions and revolutionaries, all of a sudden he’s got a whole different sound to him. Because the president is a fraud. Who does he associate with? Radical, revolutionary Communist Van Jones. Marxist professors. Radical anti‑Israel buddy Rashid Khalidi, Marxist spiritual advisors Jim Wallis, Jeremiah Wright, you know the list. And it is excruciatingly long. And yet today we have another one, one that we were told to dismiss, the civil rights icon, the man who delivered the benediction prayer at Obama’s inauguration, Joseph Lowery, a man who gave a prayer that day that we all said, “Now wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.” But everyone told us, “Dismiss it.”
“We ask you to help us work for that day when blacks will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yella will be mella, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right. ” – Lowery
When white will do right. We were told he’s just a quaint little old man and, sure, he’s living in the past because I haven’t grown up in this world that President Obama keeps saying we are in. One of the most controversial prayers at any inauguration, ever, and we were told dismiss it. And it’s very clear from this that he doesn’t believe that whites have ever or could do what’s right. But this past weekend, it rears its ugly red again. Racism again. Lowery said that when he was a young militant, he believed that all whites were going to hell. Then he mellowed with age and decided only most of whites were going to hell. There is your mellowing according to this radical. That the president chose as the person to give the benediction to bring us all together. Who did he choose? Someone who said, “Well, I used to believe all whites go to hell. Now I only believe that most whites go to hell.” Does this sound like your pastor, your priest, your rabbi? Or does this sound more like Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright? Now he’s amended this again. He told a rally at St. James Baptist church in Georgia he’s back where he started. He’s back to saying, “You know what? I now believe that all whites are going to hell.
Now, I understand people tell me that he was a valiant warrior and a just cause. He may have been a warrior in a just cause, but I’m sorry if you are a warrior in that just cause and you believe that all whites were going to hell. You are not a valiant warrior. That’s not Abraham Lincoln. That’s not Martin Luther King. That’s not Gandhi, that’s not Jesus. I don’t know who that is, but that’s not valiant. And let’s be clear about that. Just because, just because you’re for freeways, and one of the greatest advocates of freeway systems was Adolf Hitler doesn’t make him a strong, valiant advocate for the international highway system. It goes without saying that if it were a clergyman that Romney had invited to pray at one of his events and that man later said all blacks are going to hell, the outcry would be vicious and deafening as it should be. It would cost Romney the election. And there would be, there would be no question of age. Do you remember Jesse Helms? There would be no question of, “Well, he’s just an old man. He’s just no questions asked. It would be over. This is why Romney is going to win, because there’s enough Americans that are tired of the double standard and they won’t accept it from Mitt Romney, either. If Mitt Romney gets in and he has the double standard and he says, well, hold me to a different standard, which I’ve never seen him do before, Americans won’t put up with it. We’re tired of it. We’re tired of the lies, we’re tired of the deceit, we’re tired of the double standard. We’re tired of being told and taught that we’re something that we’re not.
Now, our children are being taught this in school and we better grab onto our children, we better grab onto them fast. It was Karl Marx that said you give me one generation and I’ll change the world. They almost have that generation wholly purchased now. And it’s been done through our indoctrination of our school systems and through our television, through our movies, and it’s got to stop and we’ve got to stop it right now. And that doesn’t mean we have to round people up or have hearings or anything else. Get your kids out of school. You find a different way to educate your children. You stop giving your hard‑earned dollars and your hard‑earned time to those media corporations that are lying to you. That are teaching and filling your kids’ heads with lies and deceit. How many of us even trust Disney anymore? Everybody was so excited about, “Oh, Walt Disney, they just did Star Wars.” Great. Do you trust Disney? Because I don’t. I don’t ever sit ‑‑ I don’t ever sit my kids in front of a Disney, the Disney channel and think, “Okay, they’re safe.” Not even ‑‑ not even for a second. I don’t like my kids watching the Disney channel. Believe me I’ve worked for Disney ABC. I know how that game is played. I have good reason not to trust Disney ABC. And so do you because you’ve seen it.
The reason why Mitt Romney’s going to win is because I’ve seen what happened with Chick‑fil‑A and there wasn’t a single labor union bus involved in that. That was just moms and dads and people who go to church together and people who are just regular people who said, justify is justify. They may not have even agreed with the guy at Chick‑fil‑A but they knew he had a right to say it and they were sick and tired of it. Sick and tired of it. I am sick and tired of being told what the white man is. I am sick and tired of being told what this country is and is not. By people who have no idea what this country is and is not. They don’t even have any idea what this country was at any given time. They can’t tell you about Abraham Lincoln’s real feelings. They can’t tell you about George Washington and his real feelings. They can’t put it into any historic context at all. They live in a bogus plastic Eurocentric world. And most Americans do not. Most Americans are not radical. Most Americans are good, decent, honest people who are now being told “You didn’t create that. You didn’t build that. You’re no different than every other country.” Then why? Then why have we been so different? “Well, because you’ve been stealing it from the other countries.” Really? We’ve been stealing it? We have lifted more people out of squalor worldwide than any other institution, any other country in the history of the world. There has never been a country like the United States of America and there never will be. Never. The world will weep when the Western way of life is washed away. It’s time to stop ignoring the obvious. It’s time to take Obama at his word and judge him by the people whom he associates, associates with. Radicals. Radicals. Muslim Brotherhood radicals. Barack Obama has always and continues to associate with radicals, always. He’s comfortable in their company but he is not comfortable with anybody from the TEA Party. He is not comfortable with anybody in a tricorner hat who says “I understand the founders; I like the founders.” He is not comfortable with them but, boy, he is comfortable to have them work in the White House if they’re a Communist revolutionary. He is comfortable with radicals because he himself is a radical. America, listen to these words once again.
We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America. – Barack Obama, 2008
And this time our founders have hope for real change.
Hope lies in dreams, in imagination and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality. -Jonas Salk, inventor of the first Polio vaccine.
Cancer is non-partisan.
It doesn’t care whether you’re pro-life or pro-choice; it doesn’t care what you think about tax rates; and it certainly doesn’t care whom you vote for.
That’s why it strikes me as odd that some people seem to have an issue with my attendance at an upcoming educational conference hosted by a non-profit group that is working on the world’s most promising cancer treatment.
It’s pretty incredible that some people are so blinded by their political ideology that they can’t even see how small and petty they’ve become. Here’s a simple formula to help them: Life > Voting records. Every time; no exceptions. In fact, there is probably not a political issue that Keith Olbermann or Bill Maher and I see eye-to-eye on, but if either of them were supporting research related to cancer or ALS or diabetes or Alzheimer’s—or any other life-altering disease—I would be happy to stand by their side.
I learned a long time ago that it’s not worth trying to change the people who think this way. It’s better to leave the small problems to the small-minded and instead focus on our dreams. Like, for example, curing cancer.
With that in mind, I’d like to introduce you to the group that is hosting me at this conference, a group that, I believe (even though they will never say it themselves), is trying to cure cancer, not just treat it.
It all started when John Kanzius, a former radio engineer, was diagnosed with leukemia in 2002. He began to receive treatment, including chemotherapy, and was shocked by its brutality. The hair loss, the fatigue, the nausea, the crippling numbness and nerve damage.
He was also shocked by the faces of the children around him. Kids of all ages bravely receiving treatment for a disease they never asked for. Bald heads, pale faces—hope and courage overcome by poison infused into tiny veins.
Week after week John Kanzius took all of this in and thought to himself: There has got to be a better way.
But there wasn’t.
Chemotherapy, as many cancer patients already know, is a double-edged sword. These toxic chemicals are the only thing keeping many people alive, yet they are also the only thing making them wish they were dead. The irony of most cancers, especially at their early stages, is that the disease itself often causes people no pain or quality of life issues. Instead, it’s the poison we use to treat them that makes most patients miserable.
There has got to be a better way.
John Kanzius didn’t know anything about cancer. Or chemotherapy. Or medical research. But he did know about something else: radio waves. He remembered back to the first time he’d climbed a radio tower. His companion had warned him to take off his watch and leave his keys in the car. Why? Because radio waves, while harmless to the human body, would heat metal almost instantly.
Now, years later, sitting in a chemo chair with an IV dripping poison into his veins, Kanzius thought back to that strange quirk of nature. If radio waves could heat metal while leaving the rest of the body untouched, then perhaps they could also kill malignant cells while leaving the healthy ones untouched.
And so he began to experiment. He set up a transmitter in his garage using a couple of his wife’s pie pans, stuck a metal probe into a raw hotdog, and blasted it with radio waves. The metal probe got warm; hot enough to start to cook the hotdog next to it, while the remainder stayed cold.
A big idea was born. A better way.
As John’s disease progressed he eventually began to receive care at M.D. Anderson in Houston, one of the world’s premier cancer centers. He explained his radio wave concept to his oncologist, who in turn introduced him to Dr. Steven Curley, who was, well, skeptical. But the more John talked about the science behind his idea, the more Dr. Curley came to believe that the logic was sound. The doctor eventually made a solemn promise to John: no matter what happened, he would see the idea through to human trials.
John Kanzius died in 2009, but his dream never has.
Today, 23 doctors, researchers and chemists staff a lab dedicated to research of the Kanzius Noninvasive Radiowave Cancer Treatment at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Five more are at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. It’s cutting edge technology, and it’s all funded by a tiny little non-profit based in Erie, Pennsylvania called the Kanzius Cancer Research Foundation (KCRF).
Three new radio wave generating machines have recently been delivered to Dr. Curley’s team. These are far more advanced that the earlier versions and have tables that can support up to 800 pounds—more than enough for human trials. The early test results, using these machines and targeted nanoparticles, are beyond promising, but there is still a long way to go. And they need our help.
If you believe that real innovation (Dr. Curley won a Tribeca Film Festival Disruptive Innovation Award earlier this year) should be encouraged, then I ask you to join me in helping to push this technology forward. You can do that by making a donation to the Kanzius Foundation, or, even better, by joining me for lunch at their first national FACES conference in Erie, PA on Saturday, October 27. Dr. Curley, along with other Kanzius researchers, will also be there and will provide the latest research updates.
It’s easy to sit back and complain about chemotherapy, about how cancer has robbed so many of their hopes and dreams, about how it’s left so many children without parents and parents without children.
It’s a lot harder to do something to change all that.
I don’t know if radio waves are the answer. I don’t know if they’ll try this on humans one day and realize that it’s a complete failure. But I do know two things: First, if this idea fails, someone will pick up the pieces, make a slight course correction, and take the next big step. And second, I want to be a part of it. I want to help make cancer history.
Updated: Glenn read his op/ed on radio this morning and we have added the clip above.
Editor’s note: On Friday, Muse frontman Matthew Bellamy gave an interview toThe Observer where he criticized conservative politicians in America for requesting to play their hit song “Uprising”. Glenn has been a vocal fan of the band, but when Bellamy was asked about his conservative following in America he called it “weird” and claimed that right-wing libertarians were hijacking his songs and the “conspiracy theory subculture” to take down Obama.
Dear Matthew,
I read your comments in the Guardian via Rolling Stone last week and feel like with a little work we could better understand each other.
As uncomfortable as it might be for you, I will still play your songs loudly. To me your songs are anthems that beg for choruses of unity and pose the fundamental question facing the world today – can man rule himself?
In the Venn Diagram of American politics, where the circles of crimson and blue overlap, there’s a place where you and I meet. It’s a place where guys who cling to their religion, rights, and guns, connect with godless, clinched-fist-tattoo, guys.
You seem to have a pretty good grasp of comparative U.S. and European politics, but maybe there’s a pattern that you’re underestimating. Throughout history, leaders have used music to lull young people into a sense of security and euphoria. They’ve used artists to create the illusion that they can run a country that keeps all the good and wipes out all the bad. Think Zurich 1916. Think artists getting behind guys like Lenin and Trotsky. Think of pop culture’s role in the Arab Spring. The youth rises up, power structures crumble, and worse leaders are inserted.
America, on the other hand, does not rely on leaders — we rely on the individual. Our country was built on the principles of mercy, justice, and charity — we ultimately believe that man left alone is good. That is a primary reason I disagree with Chomsky and others that you’ve touted.
American Libertarians understand that smaller government gives people freedom — the freedom to earn or lose, eat or starve, own or sell. The potential for wild success and happiness is tempered by an equal chance of failure. And it is all up to the individual to take control of their destiny.
This has been a debate since the founding of America, one that has often gotten confused. Even during the revolution — a period filled with the greatest minds to ever discuss the idea of freedom — there were the divisions that continue today. Robespierre or George Washington. OWS or the TEA Party.
Thomas Paine didn’t see the difference at first either — sometimes the difference is too subtle.
Yet the question is an easy one: Do you believe man can rule himself? Or does he need someone ruling over him to force him to be good and charitable?
That is the fundamental divide and everything else follows. Even though faith was important to our American patriots none of them forced Paine to believe. He chose his course and in the end is remembered as a critical patriot in establishing man’s first real freedom.
They understood that we don’t all have to be in the same boat. But rather, focused on the star chart: Are you headed toward freedom or despotism?
The power that American Libertarians like me want to pull down is power that limits the individuals right to roam and create.
Matthew, I realize that converts are pretty hard to come by when the stakes are so high and the spotlight so bright, but I thank you for singing words that resonate with man in his struggle to be free.
I wish I could leave well enough alone and just be quiet…
…but I’ve had recurring nightmares that I was loved for who I am and missed the opportunity to be a better man.
While I was on vacation one of my producer’s took their kids to water park and came back with some unusual photos…
“We thought it was cute when Canon said, “I pet the turtle Mommy”. But upon further review…. (seriously, we discovered these while reviewing the pics on my camera!)”
We are now only a few days away from Restoring Love in Dallas, TX. It’s going to be an amazing week filled with music, service, faith, history and inspiration. For those of you who will be with me in Texas, you’re going to have the opportunity to roll up your sleeves alongside amazing, like-minded people from across the country during the events and the day of service. And for those of you who cannot join us in Texas, you’ll be able to watch exclusively on GBTV Plus.
We have arrived at a critical point in our nation’s history. We are being presented with a choice, and that choice is far bigger than whether you pull the lever for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. Don’t get me wrong, the election in November is by far the most important we have seen in our lifetimes. But we can only fix Washington if we first fix ourselves.
Today our nation faces a choice between transformation and restoration. There are people in this country who want to see America transformed, who want to see it become something different than what it has always been. They don’t want America to light the way, but fall alongside other nations on the global playing field. Whether they realize it or not, this transformation fundamentally changes America’s unique and historic role in the world from a beacon of freedom to something far, far less.
We choose a different path. We choose restoration.
For the past three summers, we have been on a journey to restore the values and principles that made this country great. Honor. Courage. Love. It began on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where hundreds of thousands of people came together to show the world that we weren’t looking to Washington, DC for answers, but to one another and to God. The journey continued last summer in Jerusalem, where we declared that no matter what our leaders may say, “We the People” will never abandon our allies in a time of crisis.
On July 28th, the trilogy of events that began with Restoring Honor and continued with Restoring Courage comes to a close with Restoring Love. But this event is only the next step for the movement of peace and freedom that began on 8/28/10.
At Restoring Love, you will join individuals from across the country as they come together to serve their fellow man. You will connect with history that has been long forgotten. You will see amazing musical performances from artists that will inject “goodness” into the mainstream culture. Most importantly, you will find the tools, the strength, and the inspiration to move forward in fixing yourself and this great country.
This hasn’t been an easy journey. Those who want to transform this country have a nearly hundred year head start. But we are so close to turning things and we cannot stop now. We will restore America – and we will do it together.
It will be love that holds us together through the next phase of this journey.
Whether you are with us in Dallas, TX or at home watching on GBTV – don’t miss a second of this extraordinary event.
Be a part of history. Be a part of the movement to restore America.
Have a question for Glenn about Restoring Love? Tweet them using #RestoringLove or email RestoringLoveQuestions@gbtv.com. If your question is about what to do with extra tickets to Restoring Love or how you can still get tickets, Glenn gives you more details here. If you want to know more about how to watching Restoring Love on GBTV go here.
