Here's what I think

We've got a great country.

We're not going to lose it after all.

Waiting

We're coming down to the wire, election day will come and go. Soon. And I'm hoping that this country has enough of itself left to do the right thing.

Humor helps

This, from Dave Barry, reporting from Minneapolis ahead of the start of the convension, makes me giggle:

The big ''buzz'' here is of course John McCain's choice for running mate: Sarah Palin, who has been governor of Alaska for two years, before which she was mayor of the Alaskan city of Wasilla, which has the same total number of households as John McCain.

And he suggests this campaign theme for McBush:

"What, YOU Never Made a Mistake?"

I Hope

Like millions of Americans, I watched each night of the Democratic Convention. Loved the speeches by Michelle Obama, Hillary, Bill, Joe Biden, even Bo Biden was great, Ted Kennedy. But it was Barack Obama's speech on the last night that gave me hope:



Then, giving rise to even more hope, Senator McCain named his VP pick, showing in one fell swoop that (i) he has bad judgment, and (ii) he thinks all women are the same as long as they have vaginas. Someone needs to tell him that women have brains and can actually tell the difference between Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin.

These are just my opinions but I suspect they are shared by millions of Americans. Thus, hope.

Yay!

I'm happy about Obama-Biden. It pleases me that Obama was strong enough to choose another strong individual, someone not likely to become a wall flower. We need that in this time, I believe. To voice my support, I went to the Web site and submitted another token payment, bringing my "grand" total to $40. It's only a gesture, I know this, but it makes me feel less helpless, waiting for November. I'm also playing phone tag with the neighborhood Obama campaign people. I've never done this before but feel it's time to work for what I believe.

This song reminds me of how I feel.

'nuff said

Thanks to TPM for leading me to this.

Obama's Speech

Talking Points Memo reports that new Gallup Poll numbers show Obama is overtaking Hillary, 48% to 45%, although he has yet to make up the numbers he lost after his former pastor started speaking out.

They speculate that this is due to Obama's speech. If you missed it, you can watch it here or read the full text here.

I can't remember another speech this good. I remember Kennedy's one line from his inaugural address, but I don't remember anything else about it. This one, Obama's speech, sticks with you.

It's the war, stupid

"Hillary, Obama, Hillary, Obama" is what I was saying to myself standing in line at the primary voting booth a month ago. After considering all the arguments for each, I still wasn't sure who I was going to vote for. I was really thinking that we'd be ok either way, Obama or Hillary, but today I'm thinking I was wrong.

I'd written to Hillary (ok, her email reader) a few months earlier, telling her that I would not vote for her unless she apologized for her vote on Iraq. I told her that if I could tell it was a mistake in the first five minutes of listening to W explain his reasons for going into Iraq, why couldn't she tell it was a mistake? But at the last minute, I decided to vote for Hillary. Here's what I was thinking:

• She has the most experience on a national level going back to serving on the legal staff of the Watergate impeachment hearings and including her time in the White House.


• Just as I consider her experience as First Lady to be worth considering, I also think having Bill back in there can't hurt. (Ask yourself, are we better off with Bush than with Bill? I don't think so.)


• There was something about seeing Oprah, Caroline Kennedy, and Maria Shriver cheering on Obama that got to me. What is it about women? Must we always be the good woman behind a man?


• You can actually list things that Hillary has accomplished, especially if you look at children's issues, and you can't do that with Obama, or I haven't seen it.


• I thought she didn't apologize for Iraq because her campaign marketing staff decided it would be a sign of weakness to do so.

So, I voted for Hillary and I sent her another email that said while Obama can motivate people I don't think motivation is what we need. I think we need someone who will get up every day in the White House and think about what can the President do that day to help Americans.

Then, Hillary blew it. She said this week that only she and John McCain are qualified to lead the country in times of crisis. John McCain, the guy who thinks we should stay in Iraq 100 years if that's what it takes. Hillary thinks he's more qualified than Obama. Obama, the guy who said at the start that Iraq was a mistake?

Today it's clear to me that Hillary hasn't apologized for her vote on Iraq because she actually believes she was right. (Duh. That's what she's said. I'm the one who rationalized it for her, made it ok in my own mind by thinking not backing down was just a campaign ploy.) It's not that she's afraid of looking weak. It's that she's a hawk.

Sorry, Hillary. I pick Obama over McCain and Clinton. Actually, I misspoke. I should be apologizing to Obama. And after Hillary's self-destructive statements this week, I think I'll get a chance to make things right by voting for Obama in November.

I need to keep focused on peace. It's the war, stupid. Go, Obama!

Peace and love

I've been talking about growing up in recent posts on my other blog. Lessons learned later rather than sooner. And today, with Dr. King's birthday, I'm reminded of earlier lessons.

When I was in elementary school, well, actually we called it grade school, the Weekly Reader came out once a month. It was the beginning of my love for newspapers and magazines. For various reasons, I grew up in a house without television, so my view of the world came from listening to radio, looking at the pictures in Life and Look, and reading the Weekly Reader.

There was one Weekly Reader that was all about Martin Luther King. The teacher talked about civil disobedience and peace marches. I was amazed and took the newspaper home for my dad to read because he'd been talking, ranting, for quite some time about how King was starting another war, trying to overthrow the government. So I handed the paper to my dad and was amazed when he pushed it aside. Wouldn't even read it.

I'd expected him to talk about it in the way he'd explained the World Series to me when I'd asked why it was called that if we never played England or France. Or why we loved Harry Truman so much if he dropped the bomb on all those people in Japan. But this was different, an issue that made him so angry he couldn't speak to a ten year old. I still remember that day because it shifted the world as I knew it, the world in which my dad was always right.

Now, of course, I can see that he was afraid. Of someone he didn't know. Of losing his opinion. Or of having to admit his opinion wasn't based on fact.

These words of Dr. King's, from the acceptance speech he gave for the Nobel Peace prize, are about the absence of that fear.

Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Sometimes I feel hopeless, as if there's nothing we can do given the disconnect between our leaders and most (over 60% if current polls are accurate) of us here in America. Dr. King's words are a reminder to me that peace is not so much about the laying down of arms as it is about opening our hearts to people of other lands, other races, other religions.

This is something I can do.

Ok, but he's a Republican

In the WSJ, there's a great Peggy Noonan article, Mormon in America, about Mitt Romney's speech.

This is my favorite part of his speech:

At the end, he told a story he had inserted just before Thanksgiving. During the dark days of the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia, someone suggested the delegates pray. But there were objections: They all held different faiths. "Then Sam Adams rose, and said he would hear a prayer from anyone of piety and good character, as long as they were a patriot. And so together they prayed." At this point in Mr. Romney's speech, the roused audience stood and applauded, and the candidate looked moved.

How could you not applaud that? GWB could copy that, wouldn't hurt. (Sorry for the mixed-Bush-impression.)

My problem isn't with his being Mormon, belonging or having belonged to that church myself (as I've discussed here on my other blog).

My problem is with Romney's position on the issues. Check 'em out. See what you think.