This is simply amazing to me. Ever since the Town Hall today - since Henrietta and Julio stood up and spoke their hearts - these two are headliners. As if the media had never seen a real person.

Tweety just said it, straight out: This President has taken us out of Washington. These are REAL people. The Hardball icon seemed astonished that these "real" people could talk and that one expressed themselves differently that he did. Earlier, one of the simpering MSNBC anchors gave Julio a solid thumbs down, stating "You wait all day to see the President and THIS is how you act?"

Well, yes m'am, it is. Millions of "us" out here - millions with heartaches and joys that you know nothing of - and just a few of you in your echo chambers. After eight years of being shut out, penned inside fences, unseen and unheard - our cries and our plights falling on deaf, uncaring ears - we have a President who cares. This excites us. We may shout. More often, we may weep.

Barack Obama hears us. He heard us all along.

Now, you will hear us. All of us.

I flew 3,000 miles today, from deep inside "McCain Country" (East Tennessee)to the beautiful blue state of California; and at each and every airport one thing became stunningly obvious: Obama Unites.

People gathered round each of two big screen TVs this morning at 6 a.m., in one of the reddest of red states, watching CNN rerun the Florida Rally from last night featuring The Big Dog. They did not sit. They stood, rapt in their attention; occasionally laughing, often nodding heads in agreement and most noticeably, smiling. They reluctantly moved away only when the plane was boarding, and then they moved slowly. It was evident, something was happening. There was something different in the air.

"I like your pin." If I heard it once I heard it a thousand times as people noticed the black & white HOPE pin with a picture of Barack on it. From there, people just wanted to talk. They wanted to smile, to connect with another human being. It was as if they realized they didn't have to hide their excitement any longer, or worry that the other person supported the campaign of Fear and Hate. If there were those around who did not share the excitement, they were eerily quiet today. Maybe, just maybe, Love and Hope does win.



In Dallas, once more, people gathered in the lounges around the scattered TVs showing CNN. Obama comes on, a snippet of a speech, a news item, they look up. They pay attention, they smile. In the bookstore, a gaggle of people gathered around to discuss my "Hope" pin. Friends made, numbers exchanged, strangers united through Hope - the Hope that Barack is bringing. A waitress gives me the thumbs up sign, an extra bottle of water to take on the plane. She says only, "When you come back through, we'll celebrate."

By the time I reached California, I'd lost the irrational fear of being tarred and feathered by hate-mongers. Instead I was bouyed up, floating along in a sea of humanity and realizing this is only the beginning of the reconnection of the American people. We can see the end of it - that long tunnel of greed and war and hate and fear, of animosity nearly a decade long. Moving into the light, people want only to know others will be there to take their hand, to share the journey.

Obama gives us permission to look at each other again; to share our stories as Americans, united in our struggles and working together for solutions; to give and relish in the giving; to strive together for a more perfect Union. He tells us, it's OK to smile with each other; we're not strangers anymore. The long national nightmare really is almost over. Breathe.

"Thank you." The voice of the African-American woman at the rental car counter. "For what?", I say as she hands me my keys. "For not being afraid to wear Hope", she said, and smiled. Overcome with emotion, as I am often these days, I shook her hand; patted it gently and the silent look that passed between us said, "We're going to be alright."

Finally. We ARE going to be alright. There is something stirring in the air. It feels like Hope.

(I first want to apologize for posting about this topic yet again, after so much has already been said. But I have to get this off my chest.)

It takes awhile, they say, for the result of a debate to settle in. A bit of time for the words and images to weave their way into our souls and deposit there a lasting image – the impression we then take away for all time. I guess that is why the pundits get it so terribly wrong so very often. They’ve allowed no time for the settling. And anyway, they see what they want to see, what they’re told to see; and from there, try to influence and mold what we see.

I’ve been mostly sad today. I left the TV off. And I didn’t know why until I watched a re-run of “To Kill a Mockingbird” and was dumbstruck by this line, this scene:

“ Miss Jean Louise, stand up, your father’s passin’.”



The people relegated to the balcony stood in unison as Atticus Finch passed. A silent gesture of respect, of honor, to a man who struggled to do what was right, no matter what the personal cost. A man who fought for principles greater and far beyond himself.



And I cried, realizing then that I was thinking about Barack Obama and how hard it must have been for him to stand on that stage and talk to a man who refused to even acknowledge his presence. Who refused, out of a meanness of spirit unfathomable to me, to look him in the eyes, man-to-man; human being to human being, Senator to Senator. I realized then why the picture of him hugging Michelle afterward touched me so. She alone would understand how that hurt him. A hurt he would likely never voice to anyone but her. Yet he stood there, for 90 minutes, without acknowledgement from his opponent. Stood there brave and calm and unflinching, fighting for us and for the principles he believes in.



I turned, as I so often do, to “Dreams from my Father”, to Barack Obama’s own words to try to find some meaning, some salvation; perhaps to assuage my own guilt over the affront I felt was afforded to Barack Obama. And I found, in pages 156-158, words he wrote about people on the South Side – how they felt about accomplishment and the obstacles they had to overcome to be accepted; and how often they were not accepted.

“So, despite the deserved sense of accomplishment these men and women felt, despite the irrefutable evidence of their own progress, our conversations were marked by another, more ominous strain. The boarded-up homes, the decaying storefronts, the aging church rolls, kids from unknown families who swaggered down the streets – loud congregations of teenaged boys, teenage girls feeding potato chips to crying toddlers, the discarded wrappers tumbling down the block – all of it whispered painful truths, told them the progress they’d found was ephemeral, rooted in thin soil; that it might not even last their lifetimes”. (snip)



“As it had for the men in Smitty’s barbershop, the election had given these people a new idea of themselves. Or maybe it was an old idea, born of a simpler time. Harold was something they still held in common: Like my idea of organizing, he held out an offer of collective redemption.”




Even after this, when the man who refused eye contact stumbled painfully upon a name, this remarkable American said to him with a soul full of humility and compassion, "That's ok John, that's a hard one."

That is the mark of greatness. The man who stood there without being acknowledged, unflinching and without a spark of bitterness in his heart, is the next President of the United States.

It’s about Respect. It’s about Hope and the Future of a nation. It’s about the struggle for Human Dignity throughout the ages.

It is, most of all, about Equality.

“Miss Jean Louise, stand up, your father’s passin’.”

Only under the Bush administration can a substance banned from public sale and labeled a terrorist explosive agent be permitted in the WATER YOU DRINK.

Rocket Fuel: A Terrorist Explosive, But Good For YOU !



WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Environmental Protection Agency has decided there's no need to rid drinking water of a toxic rocket fuel ingredient that has fouled public water supplies around the country.

Sen. Barbara Boxer said the EPA was walking away from "a widespread contamination problem."

EPA reached the conclusion in a draft regulatory document not yet made public but reviewed Monday by The Associated Press. The ingredient, perchlorate, has been found in at least 395 sites in 35 states at levels high enough to interfere with thyroid function and pose developmental health risks, particularly for babies and fetuses, according to some scientists. The EPA document says that mandating a clean-up level for perchlorate would not result in a "meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction for persons served by public-water systems."

The conclusion, which caps years of dispute over the issue, was denounced by Democrats and environmentalists who accused the EPA of caving to pressure from the Pentagon.

"This is a widespread contamination problem, and to see the Bush EPA just walk away is shocking," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, who chairs the Senate's environment committee.



(credit to KDR for the subtitle)

Dear Sarah,

From one woman to another, one mother to another - get out now. Save yourself, save your future, save your family.

I know you thought you'd ride the Republican wave to the top. I know that Power is a very hard thing to say no to. It's the shiny bling bling. It's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It might have looked like the answer to prayer, your big chance. But it's not too late to summon the courage, the integrity, to JUST SAY NO.

There is nowhere for you to go but down. You will not win this election. You will never be VP, most certainly, never be President. It isn't God's Will. It's nothing your Pastor can pray you into. It simply isn't in the cards for you. And worse than that.. this is going to ruin you and your family. If you love them, if you cherish your children, leave now. Show them what True Courage is - give them an example to follow.

You were not ready for the Big Leagues and they're using you. They lied if they told you they could protect you. We've all caught on - the media has caught on - and if you think it is bad now, you've seen nothing yet. You will be made a laughingstock. Keith Olbermann is writing checks based on your lies. This is something you will never live down. There will be no future for you in politics. Like those who have been savaged before you, this is the end. Your name will be a postscript, a punchline, for many election cycles to come. Most likely, your future in Alaskan politics is now lost to you. This is a gig from which you cannot recover.

Henry Wallace retired from politics and spent many of his remaining days tinkering with egg and corn yields on his New York farm after being pushed into the VP slot by FDR. Spiro Agnew and Dan Qualye... nuff said. But you won't even make it that far, Sarah. Your defeat will be blistering and unrecoverable. You won't go down in a blaze of glory.. you'll just go down, like the Titanic.

You have this one remarkable opportunity to show your children, show the world, what Integrity is.

You must realize, you must understand by now, this is not what you signed up for. Tell your children: "I am not going to lie anymore.. not for Party, not for John McCain, not for Anyone." Tell your children: "I thought I was ready; I thought I was doing the right thing, but I realize now this is wrong." Tell your children:" I love my country and my country is in real trouble.. your futures are at risk..this country needs more than I can give."

Sometimes, Sarah, you have to fall on your sword.

Sometimes, Sarah, those who sacrifice for the greater good DO reclaim a spot in history. This, you can do.

Henry Ward Beecher said: "It is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich."

There is a chance here for greatness, but it will not come from the road you have chosen; it will come from choosing a much harder, less-traveled road. You have it inside you to seize this opportunity. For your children, for your country, for your legacy, for history... Sarah, just say "Enough."

.. less than 24 hours after McCain proposed this to a cheering audience of Texans.

Governor Crist of Florida has also, just now and miraculously, come out in favor of lifting the moratorium on off-shore drilling. This is the next Gas Tax Holiday, folks. Only bigger. They're going to tie it to National Security. The oil industry is NOT going down without a fight. Talking points below.. right wing sites were ready for it.

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/06/...

As Americans pay more for gas than ever under this Congress--
Democrats continue to vote against drilling and oil exploration.

Over the past 30 years:

Democrats have blocked the development of new sources of petroleum.
Democrats have blocked drilling in ANWR.
Democrats have blocked drilling off the coast of Florida.
Democrats have blocked drilling off of the east coast.
Democrats have blocked drilling off of the west coast.
Democrats have blocked drilling off the Alaskan coast.
Democrats have blocked building oil refineries.
Democrats have blocked clean nuclear energy production.
Democrats have blocked clean coal production.

67% of Americans support offshore- 64% say it will lower gas prices.
Rasmussen reported:


A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey—conducted before McCain announced his intentions on the issue--finds that 67% of voters believe that drilling should be allowed off the coasts of California, Florida and other states. Only 18% disagree and 15% are undecided. Conservative and moderate voters strongly support this approach, while liberals are more evenly divided (46% of liberals favor drilling, 37% oppose).

Sixty-four percent (64%) of voters believe it is at least somewhat likely that gas prices will go down if offshore oil drilling is allowed, although 27% don’t believe it. Seventy-eight percent (78%) of conservatives say offshore drilling is at least somewhat likely to drive prices down. That view is shared by 57% of moderates and 50% of liberal voters.
Barack Obama opposes drilling for oil.

In related news... Al Gore’s home consumed 10% more electricity this year than last.
<snip>



(This is no coincidence coming the day after Al Gore Endorsed Obama)

Bush Began Hinting at this Prior to Leaving for Europe

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page...

"The United States has an opportunity to help increase the supply of oil on the market," thereby easing gasoline prices for hard-working Americans," President Bush said on Monday.

He reminded Congress that he has proposed opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Continental Shelf to domestic oil drilling -- something that would "help us through this difficult period."

Citing concerns about the environment, the Democrat-led Congress has so far refused to go along with domestic oil drilling.

"We remind our friends and allies overseas that we're all too dependent on hydrocarbons, and we must work to advance tech that help us become less dependent on hydrocarbons," Bush said on Monday as he headed out to Europe.

<snip>

List of Big Oil Lobbyists Funding McCain's Campaign: http://mccainsource.com/corruption?id=0014

In 1983, I decided to become a community organizer. There wasn't much detail to the idea. I didn't know anyone making a living that way. When classmates asked me what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn't answer them directly. Instead, I'd pronounce on the need for Change. Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds. Change in the Congress, compliant and corrupt. Change in the mood of the country - manic and self-absorbed. Change won't come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots.



I couldn't really blame them for being skeptical. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I can construct a certain logic to my decision, show how becoming an organizer was a part of that larger narrative starting with my father and his father before him, my mother and her parents, my memories of Indonesia with its beggars and farmers, my father's death. I can see that my choices were never truly mine alone - and that that is how it should be, that to assert otherwise is to chase after a sorry sort of freedom.



Lying in bed at night, I would let the slogans drift away to be replaced with a series of images, romantic images, of a past I had never known.



They were of the civil rights movement, mostly the grainy black-and-white footage that appears every February during Black History Month - the same images that my mother had offered me as a child. A pair of college students, hair short, backs straight, placing their orders at a lunch counter teetering on the edge of riot. SNCC workers standing on a porch in some Mississippi backwater trying to convince a family of sharecroppers to register to vote. A county jail bursting with children, their hands clasped together, singing freedom songs.



Such images became a form of prayer for me, bolstering my spirits, channeling my emotions in a way that words never could. They told me that I wasn't alone in my particular struggles and that communities had never been a given in this country, at least not for blacks. Communities had to be created, fought for, tended like gardens. They expanded or contracted with the dreams of men. I saw the African-American community becoming more than just the place where you'd been born or the house where you'd been raised. Through organizing, through shared sacrifice, membership had been earned. And because membership was earned - because this community I imagined was still in the making, built on the promise that the larger American community - black, white and brown - could somehow redefine itself - I believed that it might, over time, admit the uniqueness of my own life.



That was my idea of organizing. It was a promise of redemption.



In six months, I was broke, unemployed, eating soup from a can. I had all but given up on organizing when I received a call from Marty Kaufman. He explained that he'd started an organizing drive in chicago and was looking to hire a trainee. He'd be in New York the following week and suggested we meet at a coffee shop on Lexington. He offered to start me off at ten thousand dollars for the first year; the salary would go up if things worked out.



After he was gone, I took the long way home, along the East River promenade. The old fluted park lamps flickered to life; a long brown barge rolled through the gray waters toward the sea. I sat down on a bench, considering my options and noticed a black woman and her young son approach. The boy yanked the woman up to the railing and they stood side by side, a single silhouette against the twilight. The boy took a few steps toward me.



"Excuse me, mister, " he shouted. "You know why sometimes the river runs that way and then sometimes it goes this way?" I said it probably had to do with the tides. The answer seemed to satisfy the boy and he went back to his mother. As I watched the two of them disappear into dusk, I realized I had never noticed which way the river ran.

A week later, I loaded up my car and drove to Chicago.



(excerpts from Chapter Seven of "Dreams From My Father" by Barack Obama, pp. 133-143)

Note: Chapter Seven has been heavily snipped and edited for posting. This book was written in the early 1990s and published in 1995, yet note how many of Barack Obama's ideas have come to fruition; how he has taken his dream of grassroots organizing on a community level and applied that to the nation. His dream has become a reality. His dream has become Our Dream.

It doesn't really matter what your opinion is of Eva Peron or her politics. In sum, she carved out a place for herself in history that has made her the stuff of legends and myths. As with all great people, she was posessed of traits both good and bad. The adoring throngs saw what they wanted to see, as did her detractors. Some of the similarities between these two women are remarkable, and if you've studied Evita, you'll see them.

Most of all, however, it was the pose Hillary struck today - and this photo - which brought Evita to mind. What Legends will be written of Hillary? She's been given a clean slate today, I think, and I hope she writes her own story to be remembered for generations.





Women's suffrage

On February 27, 1946, three days after the elections, a political speech was given in an organized act to thank the women for their support of Perón's candidacy. In that opportunity she called for the equality of men and women and suffrage for her fellow females of the nation.

The Argentine woman has surpassed the period of the civil positions of a guardian. The woman must affirm her action, the woman must vote. The woman, moral means of her home, must occupy the site in the complex social gear of the town. It requests a new necessity to organize itself more in extended and rejuvenated groups. It demands it, in sum, the transformation of the woman concept, who has been increasing sacrificadamente the number of her duties without requesting the minimum of her rights.

Female suffrage caused controversy, but the Congress was pressed to pass it. The Senate sanctioned it on the 21st of August of 1946, and it was necessary to wait for more than a year before the House of Representatives could sanction it on the 9th of September, 1947. Law 13,010, established the equality of political rights between men and women and universal suffrage in Argentina. Finally, Law 13,010 was approved unanimously.


Peronist Feminist Party

Eva Perón also created the Female Peronist Party, which was the first large female political party in the nation. Navarro and Fraser write that by 1952, the party had 500,000 members and 3,600 headquarters across the country. In the election of 1952, this base of support won Perón the election by sixty-three percent. Navarro and Fraser also write that Evita has often been given credit for gaining for women the right to vote, but that this is not the case. Nor was Evita, even by her own admission, truly a feminist. And yet her impact on women in Argentina, write Navarro and Fraser, was great.

"Yet Evita's effect on the condition of women in Argentina and on their political life was decisive; what she accomplished here was as important as anything else she did. A mass of women who cared little about women's rights and were indifferent to the concerns of middle-class feminists had entered politics because of Evita. They were the first Argentine women to be active in politics, they gave Perón a large majority in 1951 and they remained loyal to him and what they saw as the principles of Peronism long after their inspiration and figurehead had died."

Eventually, she declined the invitation to run for vice-president, saying her only ambition was that in the large chapter of history that would be written about her husband, she hoped that in the footnotes there would be mention of a woman who brought the "hopes and dreams of the people to the president", who eventually turned those hopes and dreams into "glorious reality". In Peronist rhetoric, this event has come to be referred to as "The Renouncement", portraying Evita as having been a selfless woman in line with the Hispanic myth of marianismo. Most biographers, however, postulate that Evita did not so much renounce her ambition as bow out due to pressure from her husband, the military, and the Argentine upper class, who preferred that she not enter the race.

"'I will come again, and I will be millions,' Evita had said in one of her apocalyptic last speeches just before her death; but even she could not have foreseen her sudden transformation, from Latin American politician and religiose national cult figure to late-twentieth-century popular culture folk heroine.... In her own country her story is at last part of history, arousing the sort of peaceful controversy one might expect from so astonishing a career. In the rest of the world, however, she has attained the condition of apotheosis — becoming a deity in the new world pantheon of electric celebrity."

<snip>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Per%C3%B3...

Yes.. YOU.. You know who you are.



Today was an historic day. It's been a long time coming. There have been a lot of hurt feelings, a lot of resentment building up. There is no way, however, that we move forward or heal by continuing to pick apart, dissect and over-analyze. Hillary Clinton was brilliant today - she was a Shining Star of the Democratic Party, a role model for women everywhere, and she demonstrated her true grit and courage.

It had to be hard for her, God, you know it did. And yet there she was, glorious in defeat, heralding the Way Forward, the Path to Unity for all of us.

To those of you who criticize her for this, for some imagined slight, I say Shame on You. Get behind her, get in line with all of us, or get out of the way. This is not to say that there will not be difficult days ahead. This is not to say we won't disagree, ever again. It is only to say we now have to face those days together.

Today, I salute Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton and the 18 million supporters she brings with her to our very large and soon-to-be united Democratic Table.

Thank you Hillary, for leading the way.

Mayhill Fowler Does It Again - Records Bill Having Meltdown

Remember Mayhill? You may know her better as the woman who recorded an Obama fundraiser and broke Bittergate. Today, she somehow got in with a bunch of voters and managed to ask Bill a question about the Vanity Fair article. It is not clear whether the former President knew she was a reporter/blogger. Bill answered.. vituperatively. Audio will be out tomorrow. The evening shows tonight have been all over this. It will be covered extensively tomorrow. Already there is speculation that this may further damage any small chance Hillary might have had to be part of Obama's ticket. The most remarkable thing to me about this tirade is he accuses Obama of planting Fleiger.. and he expects someone to apologize to him for Whitewater.

Snippets from Mayhill's article below:



Editing to add: I'm sick of Mayhill Fowler and her "scoops" and I understand fully why President Clinton is angry about the Vanity Fair article. I think the VF Article was timed to ultimately do damage to Hillary's chances for the VP spot. I think that is wrong and underhanded and despicable. I don't like those tactics, not when they're used by the Clinton Campaign on others and not when they're used by the media - even against a candidate I don't particularly support. Wrong is wrong and that was wrong. However, Bill's accusation against Obama was uncalled for.. and it is damaging to Hillary as many of his outbursts have been.

Clinton urges Bredesen to Wait Until the Convention to Endorse

In yet another instance of the mixed signals being sent by the Clinton Campaign, reports surface that she is resigned to Obama clinching the nomination, however, she continues to call Super Delegates and ask them to hold off on their endorsements until the convention.





The rhetoric is being ratcheted up on the Sunday Talk Shows by her surrogates, using inflammatory language such as "stealing delegates" and "hijacking democracy". They still cite the bogus popular vote argument, flawed in more ways than just the math. Their goal at this point, as it becomes even clearer, is to damage Obama's status as the nominee (remember the "illegitimate" comment by Hillary on the Infamous Blogger Conference Call). The DNC is working mightily to put forth a face of Unity even while the Clinton Camp slams their own party rules as undemocratic and rejects the rules that have guided Democratic Primaries for decades.

Nothing good will come from this. I truly believe she has no idea what she wants, other than to hold the Democratic Party hostage to her own damaged ego. If their latest faux outrage and talking point is based on four (4!) delegates, I say give 'em back to her and let the air out of their latest excuse to divide this party.