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Rallying point

Just a week out from the election, the campaigns are getting nastier and nastier and more overtly racist. At the same time, it is getting more and more dangerous to show up at a campaign event to oppose one of the tea party's favorites.

In the midst of this overheated atmosphere, Jon Stewart will bring his "Rally to Restore Sanity" to the nation's capital this weekend. Stewart must be a cockeyed optimist to think that he might be able to make Americans stop and think about how crazy they have become and how it might be a good idea to take it down a notch and actually think before they speak or act. But if anybody can do it, my money is on him. Maybe that makes me a cockeyed optimist, too.

This once-great nation is poised to fall into third world status unless we learn to behave like adults in our political lives and live up to the responsibilities of doing the things that make a great nation. And, yes, that includes taxing ourselves to provide a social safety net for those who need it and to create and repair the essential infrastructure of the country. It also means behaving like adults on the world stage and learning to talk to our enemies instead of always trying to convert them at the point of a gun.

It's an awfully big task for one short Jewish comedian, even if he is the most trusted man in television "news". Our hopes and best wishes go with you, Jon. In a dismal time when it is hard to see a future worth striving for, you have become our beacon. You are our rallying point. Make it good.
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