Greetings from Birdland....

Ive been home and puttering around with my animals and the winter babies which are always a surprise and always my favorites. Why do lovebirds and finches have babies in the winter? I dunno but they make great Christmas gifts!

Eggs are everywhere here, and Im in awe of the structure of the thing and how it works...Whole Foods is offering some local ostrich eggs for $39 each. They apparentlyhave more yolk than white and scrambled serve 20 people! I am tempted, but I have the shell of one already and I dont know what to do with the luminecent green and dark, dark Maran browns, and pinks that I have...I get the occasional huge mishapen egg with 2 yolks and also a few tiny ones per week from my tiny hen. Ive been giving them away and eating some...my mom feels sorta funny about eating them, because she knows the chickens, but my grandfather, who sill is convalescing in manhattan, loves them.
















Thanks to Jill, who knows me too well, for sending me the above from I can Has Cheezburger.
My hen, Yellow, is a lutino like the above and I'm hoping that the eggs that she is sitting on now contain at least one like her!
In any case, Ive been oddly quiet these past couple of weeks due to loose ends that have been festering around here, oral surgery and the like, and also my lack of inspiration...no, not really that I guess, because my brain is telling me things...maybe its the follow through. Ive been asking myself if I can go on writing about what is happening right now, because I'm, on one hand feeling so relieved that the grownups are in charge that I could cry, but on the other, I feel so wrung out and burned and angry at the Bush people, and the rich folks in America who are so hell bent on saving a couple thousand dollars that they would throw their entire society under the bus.

Ive spent so much time in the past eight years in awe of how horrible and idiotic half of All Americans are, and how really scary the neocon party is that I don't know if I have anything else to say until the pundits stop commenting on how gracious George Bush and his family are being.
well, they live in our house, and they must see that the American people WANT this...they must see that they had better fucking be nice and welcoming because the Obamas have the wind at their back and you either get on board or get out of the way.

Of course, things are fucked up. I cant imagine how all of this is going to get done...and with only a few weeks left, Bush is running around the world telling everyone that Iraq is going really well. Im traumatized at what this guy and his people did to our country, and how helpless it made me feel. I guess what I hated the most about it all was how it brought out the mean and greedy side of people. If our leaders are not reminding us that we have to care for eachother as one nation, then we slip into this every-man-for-hisself mentality. Maybe that is something that is just a hard cold truth about human nature, but its supposedly one of the urges that we fight against in order to for a more perfect union. Spoiled Americans...thats what its about...and everytime I think of a story or a commentary, I just go...later...later...later...go out with the chickens now...sit with your dogs now....try to pay the bills!

So, here in chilly CT, trying to thaw out the frozen hose and counting the most beautiful eggs from my chickens, Im going to probate court tomorrow morning because my nasty neighbor complained abut my roosters months ago...very nasty... I had too many from the spring batch and hadnt moved them along quick enough because my grandfather got sick...oh well...boo hoo...and this guy never once spoke to me; just called the city. He sold his house and is leaving, thank god! Its a case which Im winning anyway, and its all very mundane. I'm happy here, though it seems that Im always caught in complex issues and fighting against all the stuff that I tend to amass around me. I will probably die alone with 6 or 7 dogs surrounding me and all of this really cool stuff.

Criminal: Dont hate me because I crow a few times during the day (and never before 9AM)














Fighter of hawks, protector of his girls...known to strut down the middle of the street stopping traffic and refusing to move! Its Woostie! He is actually a big baby and I hug and kiss him as much as I can catch him...He puts up with me.




That all said, my baby lovebirds need homes. They are for sale for a reasonable price... and lovingly hand fed and socialized. Each one has only to bond to a forever human and all will be well...they need a cage, some good seed, dishes, toys and perches. Most of all they need companionship and they like to get out of the cage and hand aroudn with you.

Here are the babies. They are approx. 5 weeks old and 2 are a light moss green, 1 is olive. They are weaned and eating seed and snacks...and cuddling, fluttering, getting into trouble.
Lovebirds are the some of the funniest parrots in that they get into everything and shred the paper ...hell, all paper...but mine like to read the paper with me! They go from little devils that are hilarious to sweet cuddly balls of fluff. 2 lovebirds in a cage will bond to eachother and become cage birds. I lovebird that hold alot will bond to you and ride around on your shoulder helping you do everything! Please contact me if you ar ein the tristate area and are interested in one. I am more interested in good homes where they can live fantastic lives than making seed money...
If I cant place them, Ill keep them....its not like I have too much going on...right?...
Look here for some great stories about the most fantastic small flock of lovebirds. This guy captures so well what they are like and how much one can love a small animal...how they capture your heart and change your life...

We Needz uz each a Furevr Home!

Connecticut's Questions and the Hidden Agenda Driving Them. No to Question #1. Jim Himes for Congress! Midnight in the land of the Flip Floppers!

I know I shouldn't rely too much on my own personal experience, because I live in this southern CT to NYC liberal bubble, and I know that the democratic party in this area doesn't really bother much with the workaday signage and campaigning; we live blue here. The big push in these parts is to have calling parties to call voters in swing states to talk with them, and its not beyond the candidates to stop in to attend high roller fund raising events in tony houses in Greenwich or Rowayton.

I'm usually happy to do the calling thing, and even happier to speak with the bunch of neighbors here who have McCain Palin signs out, because I can say that I'm their neighbor....whatever, I suppose we're all neighbors in some higher sense...but CT. swings blue, so even if we have red voters, its not a strong focus. People don't want to be called, and its so seldom that someone has a question that one can answer.

In any case, I'm troubled, as usual, that the local party hardly bothers to put out signs or rally us generally more than to ask for money and a little bit of volunteerism. Its always the same crowd running things and it smacks of the local PTA where a few alpha moms run the show. I'm still pissed that so many "dems" supported Lieberman after he jumped from the party, and that Lamont's organization was sent to a back room as if we was the independent candidate!

The McCain signs are an annoyance and an emotional drag, as things like this always are when the aggressively stupid or the just plain greedy, insist on their point of view with the bold surety that Fox News is the only network that tells the truth unvarnished. Humvee drivers who seemingly want to project an image that they perceive as being very American, but which comes off as just plain idiotic; the silly young men who drive by my bumperstickered car giving me the finger, as if their vote means anything in this county or state...the young man who last night sat around a firepit at a Halloween party up here, and said with all authority that he is just worried that Obama doesn't have the "experience," which I read as "he's black," readying himself for the vote that is not gonna serve him in his construction job and middle class life where he is unable to buy a house in the town he grew up in or even afford healthcare. These things trouble me, but its not about wining CT for the democrats; Its about the American psyche and how twisted America has become about our collective place in things.


The problem that I see right now is that Chris Shays signs that are everywhere. I believe that alot of people are voting for Shays because hes a hometown boy and pretends to be a liberal. That's, um, liberal republican, and hes really only as liberal as his BFF Joe Lieberman is a democrat! These guys are strong supporters of the Bush agenda, even now, and they really don't represent CT., so much as they represent the last bastion of cronyism that is dying a terrible wheezing death around this state.

I worked hard on the Lamont campaign to get rid of Joe Lieberman, and during that time I had the opportunity to speak with Shays at a town meeting and then on a conference call. My issue was not only with Lieberman changing parties after he lost the primary; he started his own party with the dismissive attitude that he was doing this because we didn't know what was best for our state. The whole thing boiled down to the war in Iraq; Joementum had gone to Iraq with Shays some 14 times,becoming one of the biggest defenders of Bush and his war, and he and Shays were the token liberals in the push to victory. Its well known that Joe Lieberman will do anything for the adulation of having the senate floor erupt in cheers as he returns from his fact finding missions ready to advise and instruct or from his close bid with losing his seat, only to be voted in by Ct's republicans who shunned their own candidate because Lieberman was representing them just fine!


The soft spoken Shays has some sharp claws, and skirts the issues that are important to his constituents, while hiding behind the "liberal" label. Its long past the time when Shays should have retired his seat and moved on. Diane Farrell almost unseated him two years ago, and he retained the seat by a slim margin mainly with a last minute flip flop on the Iraq war. Shays claimed that a trip just weeks before the election changed his mind; this after so many, many trips and the fantasy ideals that were put forth even as the entire country crumbled and people died needlessly.

Last week, the Stamford Advocate had a front page story in which Chris Shays threw McCain under the bus in the service of his own re-election. This is the Chris Shays that I know. He flip flops at the drop of a poll number and heaven forbid that reality ever take hold; until recently he was parroting the republican talking points about the economy. Worst though is that he boasts that CT is the first state to provide health insurance for all of its children. Well, its a horrible system with little coverage, and its not working! Having talked to him about this personally, I can say that what he does is to just deny that its true or possible that providers won't take the state insurance. Shay's modus operandi is that when he is confronted with a problem he acts like it is merely a personal problem of the questioner and he refers them to a staff member who will discuss it in private.

But this is an undeniable problem across the board in CT, so even if his staff were to take me into an office and out of the town hall, so that he could move on to other issues, they couldn't solve the problem that I have to drive 2 hours to get to a specialist for my son....or that it took us an entire year to get a surgery approved, only to have it canceled on the night before because it was suddenly denied again; oh they had approved the surgeon but not the hospital!! By the time this orthopedic surgery was performed on my son, he was the oldest, biggest kid that this surgeon had ever done this procedure on! Now we will probably lose our coverage anyway because our provider, a subsidiary of Blue Cross and Blue Shield, is opting out of the state's program, and our Dr. barely takes what we have...no one will take the alternatives. I'm looking into private insurance and its going to probably be a grand a month for a family plan if I can even find one that will take us! The issue is that the paperwork involved for a tiny reimbursement is not worth it to many doctors who have full time staff trying to deal with the bureaucratic nightmare that is this program (and unregulated health insurance in general!) I've heard lately that some doctors don't want the responsibility of prescribing drugs to children for a gross payment of maybe $19 per visit, which is much less when overhead and man hours processing the claims is taken out! The hospitals with the clinics for the poor, who have the "A" type of insurance, have a deal with the state and they also have institutional insurance and rotating doctors in clinics, so the responsibility is much less.

So, its not about my personal medical issues, as much as its about the boasting that goes on with Shays and Lieberman around this being such a great program. It's the kind of thing that might make them eligible for a task force on national health coverage in a bipartisan position...and I don't think that this plan should be used as anyone's blueprint for how health care should be taken care of in this country. What is really reprehensible is to do this experiment on children...the very poor kids who go to the hospitals tend to get OK care because they have the clinic doctors available. But we cant all go to the hospital clinic, can we? And we make too much money to be in the "A" program, so we pay a premium, which disallows us from a level of service that poorer people have...and no pediatricians or specialists are taking this insurance around lower Fairfield county anyway....so...I would very much NOT like to have the liar Chris Shays walking around Washington DC, misrepresenting what he's done here. It sucks, and along with just about everything else in this region, the move is to push the poor out and make room for more high rises (Trump has a tower going up in downtown Stamford) and mansions. And of course, foreclosures are at an unprecedented high....while Shays claimed that the economy was stable, until he just changed his mind a little while ago.

Jim Himes, who is running against Shays, is an experienced businessman who has worked successfully in business, but his most important work has been in the not for profit housing and financial support sector:

After over a decade at Goldman Sachs, Jim devoted himself full-time to pursuing business-oriented solutions to the problems of urban poverty. Jim found an ideal role with Enterprise Community Partners, where he has run their Northeast operations since 2004. Under Jim's leadership, Enterprise worked with private, public, and community organizations to address complex issues of urban poverty. At Enterprise, Jim developed an innovative program to provide tax preparation assistance and financial services to low-income families at very low cost. Jim led the way in financing the construction of thousands of affordable housing units in the greater New York and Northeast regions, often using new green technologies to achieve energy efficiency and reduce utility costs.

Himes is not a career politician and he is not steeped in the rampant cronyism that has overrun this state. He has spent years developing ways to help lower income people handle their finances and to find affordable housing. He may enter on a junior level, and I'm hearing grumbles from people who feel that he will not be able to get a foothold or be heard on anything important... But, my feeling is that we are going to see an unprecedented turnover of power and faces in this election, and granted that Shays will have to go at some point...besides that he doesn't represent what the voters of his state want, and he lies and flips whenever its convenient...and we always have Chris Dodd, who is the strongest representative that we could hope for!

Shays was so wrong about the war, and even when specialists were telling him and Joe that what they were seeing was not as it seemed, they both insisted that because Baghdad looked better to them in their military security caravan, that it must be so. Shays has been wrong on the economy, on insurance for our children, on federal eavesdropping and privacy issues, and on medicare...he has sided with Bush in just about everything and changes his mind back and forth...I don't want it anymore. Its time for him to go!

Connecticut needs a congressman like Himes on board, and the American house needs this kind of new upcoming public servant working hard to get us back on track and to help America work again. This country is just not feasible for so many people anymore, and the Bush administration has managed, unbelievably, to fulfill its objective, which was to funnel all of the money upwards to a rare few, while the middle class crumbles, and the legions of the voiceless poor grows. Leaders who have been complicit with that movement should have no place in our government going forward. Shays is a lifetime politician who began his career as a young man in my district in North Stamford. Back in the days when the residents of this part of CT were more interested in how a representative might do in bringing funds to our state and our city, the largely democratic population here felt that Shays was liberal enough to represent us. But, more recently, Shays has been singing the Bush line, and that is not working for any of us on any level. And thus the flip flop of this past week...its vintage Shays and I hope that the voters don't fall for it.

There are Shays signs all over the place in Stamford, and its more likely due to the organized republican party getting the signs out, rather than being representative of who is going to vote for the entire republican ticket. There are way more Shays signs than McCain Palin signs, leading me to think that his independent campaign is more organized, and as has happened in the past, democrats will leave the line for the congressional seat vote. I don't encourage that, because it causes confusion, and even with the new ballots, alot of people may lose their votes by making silly mistakes while trying to serve someone that they are familiar with. That is no reason to make decisions about our children's future; no reason at all.

For CT voters who will be faced with 2 questions about the state's constitution,(those of you from towns with other questions about budget concerns and marching bands are on your own!) I have this to say: They vaguely word the first question to be about having the ability to edit the sate constitution in the upcoming term. The answer would be no, because hidden in that simple question is the stated objective to make gay marriage unconstitutional in CT. It is not the time to mess with any constitution for anything.

The time now is to change our leadership and stop worrying so much about what your neighbors are doing in their bedrooms in private. If people want to enter the unholy alliance of marriage, then that's their problem. I don't recommend it personally, but hey, it makes some people feel more secure; so go for it! Just sign a pre-nup so we don't have more backup in the court systems in this state. My question of the secretary of state is why is this aim on stated in the ballot question?

The second question is about young voters who will be 18 on election day and should they be allowed to vote in primaries when they are 17. I don't understand this or what it represents in a real way. It is supposed to encourage young voters to get involved earlier, but I'd be more in favor of lowering the entire voting age so that voting could be something that becomes part of high school curriculum and then we can bring back civics class and poli-sci and all that! The red flag there is that it also involves opening up the state constitution for editing, and its worded strangely, as these things always are! So, I say no right now, unless I get a compelling reason not to. My son just shrugged...it makes no real sense as a half measure regarding the primaries...like, why then don't we allow driver's licenses to people who will be of age when they can afford their car? I don't know if that is the equivalent, but I'm in favor of an across the board lowering of the voting age rather than this confusing half measure as part of editing our constitution...its all about gay marriage....keep that in mind. So, to question 1, vote NO!




c/p Brilliant at Breakfast

Jon Stewart and Barack Obama on the Bradley Effect ....Scary Socialism!....and also, Why Would Anyone even Want to be President?

Last night Jon Stewart interviewed a relaxed and happy looking Barack Obama. What has struck me this past week besides my PTSD from the Bush Administration, and fretting over the reports coming out of our good friend Brad's blog about the voting situation, is that there is a certain sour grapes feeling emerging from the right that no one would want this horrible state of affairs now anyway. (...just some ongoing wingnuttia on Hardball; to which I think that even Tweety said to whichever wingnut it was, "well you'd take it if you could, right?")

Woe is to the President that has a House and Senate fully in line with him, because then the blame cant fall anywhere but on that one party. I suppose that some sort of investigation and...er...impeachment might have laid the blame for alot of this on the correct shoulders, but that was not what the party wanted to focus on. So, the American short memory will ensure that the democrats get all the blame for things not moving forward fast enough or things overlooked in the coming years. There will be blame for sure, even if its the American people, so trained in their responses and set in their imperialistic ways, regardless of if their dominion is a mobile home or a mansion, unable to effect and allow change for fear of losing a few dollars here or there. Hey, you save in the long run with preventative care, but most people seem to want the payoff now!

My favorite part of Jon Stewart's interview with Barack Obama last night was that Obama makes it clear that now is the perfect time to effect change, if you're really in it for the right reasons. Presidential politics seems to have morphed into a game where the aim is to cause only enough waves to profit your friends, and emerge with a fine legacy or at least a compulsion fulfilled, regardless of if anything got better in the process. Its all about who gets the blame and who gets the cash. There are two types involved in this mess as far as I can see: the type that sees that there is more looting to be done before its time for the rapture, and the type that is actually a public servant and embraces the hard work of trying to put this thing back together. I could count the uninformed, the dreamers, the anger management problem folks, the risk takers and the gamblers who think that one more lotto ticket will put them up in that high bracket that Obama is attacking. Everyone can get whipped up into a frenzy by Donald Trump when the possibilities being real, but when you look around the Hyatt ballroom and realize that its full of suckers just like you with a pile of bills on the table at home, reality and logic have to take over in the world of grownups.

I believe that Obama is in this for the right reasons. And even though I haven't been his staunchest supporter along the way, I think he shows a great understanding of the hysteria that has gripped the country, and may be able to bring some calm and rational behavior to this situation. I sure hope so because I'm tired, I cant sleep, and I don't know if I can live here if McCain Palin get into office.




Americans of a certain stripe seem to forget the society part of our country; how our technological and intellectual advances were made possible by sacrifices of others who emigrated here or slaved away in factories to make a penny. This stuff isn't taught in school in any real way anymore, but the idea that so many American view the waxing and waning semi-socialist way that this country has run from the get-go as some sort of dictatorship, is just laughable.

So worried is the right about redistribution of the wealth that they forget that the only reason that they were able to earn that money was on the shoulders of everyone who came before, settled this place, fought in wars, invented and designed and worked their asses off in order to give Joe the Plumber the opportunity and the right to spew his nonsense. Call it greed or ego, but Americans are not all that special that we just deserve a chance...and God didn't just give us this fertile land; we took it from the Native Americans in grotesque and horrible ways that we are supposedly still repaying (though, last I looked, we still hold the principal of that, and its counted against the national debt...) Hoarding all of our money in the mattress with that smaller government or whatever it is they are calling it, and no standing army, would leave guys like Joe the Plumber out in the cold if his house catches on fire or he should need the police...or even if he drives down a road or highway to go to his non-job where he spins his web of lies.

I want to know what part of the infrastructure of America, physically and socially, the McCain campaign thinks is not some part of redistribution of wealth. I also want to know what part of the fire and police departments they want to privatize and outsource, because the failing infrastructure of the entire country should indicate how well that works! ...bridges and tunnels and highways and parks? How about the national forests?...come on!

I want to know how Halliburton would run social services? This is not how America was designed, and if what was once a village based economy, where each neighbor could rely on another, has grown to include an organized bureaucracy with which we imperfectly get help when we need it, I would have to say that it may be worthwhile for one of these guys to stand up and say that America is semi-socialist and that unregulated capitalism doesn't work!

A friend taking a friend in if their house is destroyed...is that socialism? Bringing a casserole when a community member loses a loved one...is that Socialism? Helping a friend with a sick relative....the list goes on, and its not considered wrong or strange in smaller view. Churches and social groups collect dues or contributions that go towards running an infrastructure; is that socialism? Its when the population grows and progress moves in such a way that we lose our tribal and family ties; when we begin to rely on the market of a bigger structure than just the farm fields, that we need more of a main structure into which everyone contributes. With proper representation there shouldn't be a problem. Its only a problem if it becomes a talking point and is misused to the point where the word has no meaning anymore. Rather than talking about it so much, I wonder how much time any of these disgruntled wing nuts in my town actually get involved in cutting down on overspending or bureaucracy! Ill tell you, its usually only involving something that effects their bank account or their backyard.

Up the road from me is the old town of Bedford Village, NY. I often take my dog Lola to the green, which, as part of the historic preservation of the area, has a plaque that notes that local farmers shared this village green for grazing their cattle. I'm sure then that they also worked on the green and reseeded it, as good neighbors banding together through hard winters and hot summers. Through history there have been cooperative efforts on the part of Americans, which can be seen in the endless piled stone walls around, here made of the stones that tough Americans plowed up from this rocky place, in order to grow crops. The stone walls built all over the Bedford town square and all roads coming and going from it, were not brought in from Home Depot; they were part of a cooperative where everyone gave time and whatever they had to better the whole. Its only now, in the twisted minds of these wing nuts, that we are seeing some deep rooted form of hate that throws the poor, and anyone else outside of some perceived lucky group, under the bus.

The horrible thing is that Americans likely need to have some tragedy, like the great depression with no social net, or children dying because roads are not maintained, to see that regulation is necessary. The greater good can only be served by Americans remembering that we are all the same, and if our weakest part is really our strongest as a society, then we have been neglecting that part too long. There is a greater good, and if life is fleeting for us , we still have the responsibility of every American since the beginning of this great experiment to leave something to our children; some foundation to stand on for their own dreams.

Ive been avoiding alot of this, and spending time with my birds because I find that I am just really...upset...worried. but I will be making some calls and doing something this weekend...and Im trying to not get my hopes up or take anything for granted in this. Anything can happen, and as much as Obama should have the numbers down...look at BradBlog for some scary facts that will give you pause.

Here is my friend Susan hobnobbing with the actual Barack!...um...or a reasonable depiction of him!...close enough! You go girl!

c/p Brilliant at Breakfast

Obama The Grown Up ...Moving Forward and Healing America in a Contentious Enviornment

I've got to admit that during this campaign I haven't been as taken with Obama as some people have. I find myself too disappointed in the process as its been to believe in promises anymore. Maybe its age but these days I hang back with my heart until I see it all in motion. I'm not a true believer in a system being played as if any pure theory of government works without some overlap. The truth of political campaigns is that they are full of empty promises and ideas until its clear that the bodies are all in place and the votes are there to support a promised agenda. Even then, these plans, in the best case scenario, go into working mode with, hopefully, enough representation from the other side to balance, but not enough to stop progress. Somewhere along the line the spinners have convinced the American people that there isn't tremendous room for shaping the ideas that are set forth in these lofty speeches.

It seems to me that a President Obama will certainly go into office and get to work disassembling alot of what the Bushies have put in place, (a huge job,) but beyond that there is no guarantee that anything being said now will emerge from the process looking exactly like it does in the campaign promises. Those promises are merely outlines of ideas after all, and once the new President has spent 100 days putting things right and assigning committees to work on these ideas, they may turn out to be pretty different than what is being proposed in the heat of battle.

Of course, its by these beginnings of ideas that we get the idea of who the candidate is and what his direction is...right? Obama's ideals are hopeful and almost old fashioned in that we haven't heard much along those lines lately, This is the stuff that is so unusual in the climate that we've been living in as to elicit cries of socialism; surely dirty, right? It sounds that way, anyway...Or maybe it's a good overlapping part of any successful capitalistic government? Yeah, Obama is hopeful... and I feel almost hopeful...But its all promises, promises, promises to me until I see him actually get to work.

There is something so off about anyone wanting this job at this point in time. Wanting to drag their families and friends through the hazing and nonsense indicates something that used to be called public service but is now more akin to craziness. There is a fine line between being compelled to this kind of visible public service and pure narcissism, and in times like these, when things are so bad, the stakes are high, the candidates are bound to exhibit certain extremes of personality. What is it that the American people need at any given point? A cartoon cowboy full of swagger? A Lifetime movie of a POW?

John McCain certainly is extreme; the way he has plodded through his life is scary-reminiscent of a textbook narcissist, or the ones that too many of us grew up with, who also suffers from a range of battle related disorders. Being such a basic life failure in school and the military, and then only succeeding in government on the strength of his worst failure, must create a tremendous emotional split, and having to embrace his worst life experiences as his greatest triumph could only be repeated trauma...but the whole persona is built on that war hero so, what can he do?

Saturday's New York Times has a scathing article about Cindy McCain, who, even as a reportedly cold hard bitch, has seemingly done her time. My god, is this the 1950's in Stepford, or is she just really hardened by a life that was privileged and yet lacking in some crucial elements necessary to become a whole person? Maybe after enough years of decorating house after house and buying car after car you become the cunt that he says you are. I feel sorry for her, but as my Mom just said, this is no first lady of the United States! It sort of lays to rest all the worry about Michelle Obama, terrorist, in that at least she has some affect and empathy for the little people. Poor Cindy, Shes got to take that sack of pathology home after this is over and try to go on....and I don't care how rich she is, its not gonna be easy. Oh, I know they have separate lives, but he's sick and close to the end of being functional. I also believe that he may be at the end of his ongoing government aspirations on any level; even Arizona is not all so find of Johnny anymore, and he is not young enough to wait for the conservatives to swing around again.

Who are any of these candidates beyond what we project onto them? Why is it so easy for ad-men like Rove to write the outline of of what we take in? Maybe its the decline of the culture pushing our expectations into the gutter; we've grown so accustomed to being shown titillating pictures and uncovering dirty secrets, that without dancing girls and Jerry Springer fights we hardly even begin to show interest. Its a cruel realization that the National Enquirer usually does have the story first! Its a cruel realization that if there is a staffer to fuck or a bathroom to cruise, our leaders are there; truth: marriages end and everyone has cellulite and even celebrities look washed out without makeup. There are no statesmen with dignity, ethics, and morals, out there, as my Grandpa often says.... but actually Grandpa, there never really have been. Its all the morass of humanity come home to roost when the facade of civility gets wiped away by a public eager for scandal and a press that has an ever tightening bottom line. Society has changed; and it will likely change back again and again before this planet flicks the likes of us from its overburdened surface. We are always in a state of flux, but the question is that in the ongoing liberalization of our society how do we treat each other and where is the line between self realization and working together for the good of all?

The shocking Palinesque fringe underground and their forebears have been kept and fed not only by the likes of the Bush regime, but really since the beginning of social history as a part of the human condition. Nothing surprises me anymore, but this circus is a little further out there than I could imagine things flying, even after what we've witnessed in this country in the past 8 years. I suppose that remote areas spawn the more extreme belief in magic that alot of the reported religious practice is based on, and while not talking up the rapture and/or handling snakes, its a wonder that spaceships don't land and spirit the whole bunch of them away.

Yeah, I'm knee jerk opposed to any sort of evangelical movement because it takes spirituality and belief in God and removes the personal relationship and social responsibility of the individual in favor of the direction of the preacher and the movement of the group as a whole. In that atmosphere, even the most absurd becomes acceptable, and the reasoning and questioning part of any healthy spiritual quest is removed in favor of memorization of talking points....its a wonder that the recent powerbrokers in DC have made good use of these groups; they come as a fully formed army and they are very suggestible.

I know that they get the Internets out there in Alaska and in places like the wilds of Montana, and it seems odd to me that there isn't more dissent; I really don't believe that Alaska is full of Palin-like people, but it does also seem that remote rural areas of this country need services and education immediately; that certain areas in the deep south could really benefit from children's programs aimed at literacy and some vision of the big world that is out there. How can any young American citizen participate fully in our democracy if they don't understand how they fit into the their community, state, and the country, much less the world. It seems like its a huge disservice to all taxpayers to not educate everyone about civics, philosophy, and decision making. Maybe some people in some communities wont grasp the larger picture, but at least offering the knowledge might open some minds that might otherwise have remained closed...and really, its not like everyone in rural America is gonna rise up and participate, but they might participate locally or in their own families to the extent that they can. What is the fear out there of educating people? Oh yeah, they might not just lay down and take it.

On the heels of the presidential debates and alot of ugliness that has been shaken loose by the level of the McCain campaign, I have become more and more appreciative of Obama the grownup, who somehow manages to stand back and just watch, sorta shaking his head and smiling, as gramps McCain sprouts horns and snakes crawl from his mouth. I suppose that there is nothing more gratifying at this point than standing back and watching the old coot twitch, and unravel himself. Rather than taking him apart, which would have been just a little too easy, Obama just looks at it happen, as if he is in as much disbelief as every other right minded American has been all along.

These wingnuts need to be allowed to speak their minds, because apparently, after the past 8 years, there are enough levelheaded Americans, from all walks of life, who have finally and at long last, had enough. This is the time to examine whats in the snowball that Rovian political spin has been rolling downhill. Hearing it spoken is all we really need. Why any citizen might vote republican this time are clear cut and range from laziness to stupidity to selfish greed. I have searched and searched for some positive reason besides tax cuts which are, for the rich anyway, merely an immediate band aid representing more of a rollback than a proper cut. The recycled plans the McCain cites were largely already out there and rejected, and experts have explained why, regardless of how little people want to know of facts. There is no victory and no winning the Iraq war, and letting McCain follow his heart in replaying some shattered memory of his own past is crazy-suicidal for this country... And the way in which he might rip the throat from anyone who disagrees with him brings us full circle back to the sick old man who needs to go home to one of his houses and retire with whatever honor is left. Need I go on? The health plan, our right to privacy, the constitution, the power of the executive....my god, can we afford another moment of this social and political backsliding? THIS episode may be merely a blip in history but it sure hurts here on the ground.

I am in awe of the raw, sensational, crudeness of this underside beast unleashed seemingly by the dying gasp of the facade of a campaign that was built on a foundation of the ugliness of the depths of human depravity, living in some underground cave coveting it's Precious-rightfully-theirs. From the depths of Gollum's cave comes the fairy tale that even greedy-badness has a Smeagol side, fondly remembering friendship and love, softening at the edges before the ring snaps him back to the reality of losing this coveted thing.

The story can be read on the grimacing face of John McCain during events longer than a few minutes, and as he starts to lose it, blinking and wincing, trying to keep the man behind the curtain hidden, its so clear that he is spinning out of control, if not for a cadre of handlers who must have a hell of a job getting from point A to point B in one piece. In his face its apparent that this country has somehow lost an intangible element of reality versus the lies that we need to hear to make the way we've been living over the past 8 years OK. I'm afraid that whats gone on will make it impossible for even a middle of the road liberal politician to do much of anything in the next term...but then...but then, even in my fugue state of driving around looking at the houses and cars behind the McCain lawn signs and wondering what went wrong there; what goes on in those houses that allows those people to be so blind and hateful?... I'm feeling the hope of the landslide and trying to not be hurt by every McCain sticker and sign out there. Because there is really no excuse anymore...as if it could be simply "taxes" or "I'm so selfish that I don't give a crap about anyone else," because that's the way its been shown to us on TV...he's a hero and has experience...we're afraid?I'm tired of excuses based on weakness and fear.

When did it become OK to not care about our neighbors? When did it become OK to question the patriotism of others because they have different ideas than we do?...when did it become OK to shut down the exchange of ideas that allows the democratic ideal to flourish? And when did it become OK to loudly proclaim that fantasy and lies are reality and truth, forget questioning because they won't answer questions (insert wink and head tilt here.)

I look at the McCain signed houses around here and examine the houses and cars trying to figure it all out. Downtown I see families with kids getting out of Hummers or Porsche SUV's and I wonder what went wrong there. What message is anyone sending by having a vehicle that costs so much, is a "war" vehicle, burns unnecessarily large amounts of fuel, and yells aggressively to the community a message that I cant quite fathom. I want to take the hands of those people and ask them what the problem is...were they abused somehow? have they felt attacked during this obviously profitable time for them? What is it...whats happened? Because, they couldn't have been so short sighted to have thought that any of this could possibly go on, could they?

The past 8 years have been full of so much backsliding on hard won social progress, and if our society is to continue at all we have to get back on that track. It involves maybe a little bit more insight and courage than we are encouraging our kids to have via education, and that may be what was the plan. But if logic at least prevails, a society that cares for its weakest members and provides preventative care also saves money in the long run, (that's after the rapture, for any fundies out there... the left behind will need something to rebuild with, afterall.) The windfall may very well be over for this select few and it may be a time when America reconnects with the middle class; America is a country of the middle class and for the middle class, and the promise of being able to own a little piece of it and get your kids some bit of education is not yet cold in the ground...Maybe this Obama guy with his calm demeanor and no nonsense attitude can get some of that back.

The political seasons pass and it could well be that those who profited on what amounts to alot of destructive ugliness over the past 8 years, had better have socked away the nuts for a long winter. We could be hitting some lean times, and the coming times may require that you put your hummer in the garage and take your aggressive public stance underground where those like you will sleep and regain strength for the next go round. Its time for the middle class to rebuild our country and to try to find their hearts under the hard shell built up after too many days of hard work to try to make ends meet in the trickle up economy of yesterday. Its time to bring the jobs back home and invest in our education system so that we have American workers that can do those jobs.

Ultimately I find myself liking the fatherly Obama, all full of hope and ideals, all sacrificial and willing to give his time and energy to the thankless next 8 years, which heaven knows can go either way. Just that smile and shake of the head shows us all what we know; that this is all bullshit, and it has been bullshit for too long, and now there will be people in charge who are grownups, and who know whats gone wrong...I hope so anyway. I assume nothing anymore...I count on no one.... But, since I first saw Obama speaking to a full stage of democrat candidates over a year ago, he has matured and grown into the stature and body of President of the United States. I can see it now, but I'm not over the moon because realistically, any movement is gonna take time, and the American attention span doesn't lend itself to anything less than a speedy and full recovery complete with flat screen TVs and trips to Disney Land. I really long to breathe a sigh of relief and just retire from all of this thinking about the country and the state of things, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

That One...Yep, I'm Voting for Him....

h/t Oliver Willis...Like Kryptonite To Stupid
and
They Gave Us a Republic

And So, it's Biden....Barack Makes His Choice...and it's Good!

Onward and upward; I've got to say that this choice is encouraging to me. Biden has some fire in his belly and he is not afraid to use it. This is around the boldest choice I've seen Obama make in this thing.
I'll be interested to hear what everyone thinks of this pair.
I,for one, am relieved. The guy is vetted, he tells it like it is, and he is fucking angry about the crap thats been coming down the pike from the Bush administration.

A good thing about sleeplessness and insanity is that youre up at all hours when these things come out. So much for the nifty cell phone Obama-text that I was supposed to get...oh well...better luck next announcement.

Cornell West on Bill Maher: The "Elitism" Label

I'm cleaning out the drafts folder left over from a week of dismay and complication, so bear with me:
According to Cornell West on Bill Maher last week....

In order to call someone an elitist we have to define what we mean by "elitism." An Elitist is either someone who knows more than you in the face of relative ignorance, or it's someone who is "arrogant, condescending, or haughty towards everyday people..."


So, according to West, we are watching the spin on something that can be manipulated either way.

In my horrible paraphrasing and limited understanding, (in good company because Maher was pretty blown away too,) which is apparent from the clip below, and which I hope everyone will watch:
What standards have we got concerning the concept of truth?
If understanding truth is considered actually allowing suffering to speak,
then understanding justice is what love looks like in public.

And...Then,what suffering voices did we hear in this primary debate?
what questions and concerns about justice are manifest in the debate? Understanding this includes the questions askedand the answers given....
So according to West, and regarding Obama;
Is he smart enough?
Is he dumb enough?
When we accuse anyone of being too elite are we asking if maybe they don't know just a little too much? And if that's the case, then don't we want someone who knows a bit too much? Or is that an attitude problem?...and where do we hit the "uppity negro" concept?
Isn't this whole thing, tearing the party apart, some incarnation of a deep feeling of "how dare he aspire to the highest office in the country!"




Is there compassion informing our expertise? Because expertise without caring is empty. And at this point, I'm trying to figure if who the candidate is, isn't the very thing that might make it possible for America to get back on track.



c/p on Brilliant at Breakfast

The Silence of John and Elizabeth Edwards...New York Magazine's John Heilemann on Who Councils Hillary and Whatever Else About the Rest of It....

This week's New York Magazine has a piece by John Heilemann , and Ive been turning the thing over and over in my head since I found it in the mailbox, and shortly thereafter got a call from my Mom who, upon receiving hers, was excitedly reporting to me about how this little piece contains some answers about the silence of John and Elizabeth Edwards. Mom was saying that clearly he and Elizabeth had had some sort of falling out with Obama and that Elizabeth really, really hates Hillary.

Obviously she had just glanced at it, because the gist was really more about who councils Hillary and who is powerful enough in the democratic party to grab control of what seems to be a runaway train. The fact that Elizabeth Edwards finds Obama's health care plan to be not as good as Hillary's and that Obama had been supposedly "brusque" or rude to the Edwards' immediately following his withdrawal from the race, comes off as the gossipy headline but isn't the real story here. This is the sort of thing that you do find from time to time in New York Magazine, in that it can run with the more lurid lead, even in the face of a more substantial story, and people who do what my Mom does, which is to read the first paragraph and then scan the rest, can miss the point. And this is a kind of misleading journalism that is based on what the journalist can glean through his instant message interviews with party bigwigs, and just his gut, is a little misleading. I like Heilemann, but it seems that he is about opinion. Even as it seems like he is on the inside reporting real news, when you look through his columns, they are really opinion pieces, wrapped in whatever connections he has. I'm not saying hes wrong, but I read New York Magazine with a grain of salt, and I hope that everyone else does too.

Well, today Elizabeth Edwards responded to Heilemann's piece on Morning Joe. In her usual dignified way, she attacked just the gossipy parts and left the rest alone...though if Joe had been a better reporter he might have dug a little. The thing is that I don't think that he wants to go there; not really. Elizabeth stated that she didn't find Obama rude and actually found him quite charming. She did confirm that she doesn't like Obama's plan, and prefers Hillary's, and then she left the question of her storied open dislike for Clinton hanging.

Heilemann's in print guess seems to be that Elizabeth may be the reason that Johnny has not made an endorsement. Y'know, I'm pretty interested in knowing what the hell is going on in the Edwards camp, but this reaching and turning some vague snippets into a story that ends with sentences like "Maybe that's why he...." is a little pathetic. The piece implies, or rather states, that Edwards endorsement has been held up by how nice one or the other of the candidates was to him on the day of his withdrawal. Isn't that silly? Does that make any sense? These people are politicians, and yes they have big egos, but they also have thick skin, and there is no way that an entire strategy could come down to how one or the other acted towards him on that one day.

In going over how badly Obama did with the Edward's, Heilemann pushes the envelope further into concern for his diplomatic prowess, in comparison to the story that Hillary was all over them and was almost, maybe able to win Elizabeth over with her kindness and ass kissing. So, then...he goes on to say that if its true that Obama failed to impress Edwards, he doesn't have the diplomatic skills to run the country! And McCain does? Clinton does? Bush does? I dunno...
I suppose that this is one area that Hillary has more experience than the average politician, because she traveled alot as first lady and was around the necessary niceties in diplomatic exchange, but I'd hardly call Obama a slouch, and certainly not because of this! But Heilemann must know that the art of ass-kissing is a very ass-specific endeavor, and best carried out by people who are very adept and the bend over and twist. I find this all a little embarrassing and rather condescending to the Edwards and everyone else involved in this farce of a democratic process...especially the main stream media.


The real point of this story is that Gore and Edwards are the most powerful people in the democratic party right now and...who is going to stop Hillary??? He eventually wends through the merits of Pelosi or Reid talking to her and how much weight or clout Terry McAuliffe or Stephanie Tubbs Jones might have. But ultimately, it appears, that even here, in the lap of gossip, Hillary listens to no one but herself....and that, my friends, is the real reason for everything that is happening.


We're fighting for our lives here, people, lets try to focus on McCain and his lies, lies, lies!
Its apparent that this thing is gonna go all they way because the M$M needs to sell soap, and the daytime drama market is just not cutting it.

c/p Brilliant at Breakfast

Dick Morris Calls Obama THE Democratic Nominee...Pundits Call Speech THE Most Important on Race EVER!

This story is THE biggest story out there. Like Rachel Maddow, I am tired of the race issue and I didn't want to give more time than necessary to any more divisive issues in the democratic party, but this speech was important and challenging. Every one of us should sit and listen to this speech and think about what Obama is saying. Clearly, the ideas that he brought to light are unsettling for some and unpalatable for others. For many, many others, what Obama talked about today is a way of life and a reality that needs to be brought to light. No one else could have made this speech...and I'm glad that he was forced into it. I think that those who would use the pastor story to call Obama out, bit off a little bit more than they bargained for.

The hyperbole coming from the cable news shows on this story is incredible: Chris Mathews thinks that it was one of the most important speeches on race since MLK jr's Dream... others are saying that it is the most important speech in their lifetimes. The pundits have embraced Obama after this "historic" speech, which was, according to them, earth shattering and something that surely has changed everything.

I was watching the speech this morning when I realized that Marc Maron and Sam Seder's Vod-cast was on...so I switched over to find Sam and Marc talking about how the speech was on and maybe they should watch it and then continue the show. At which suggestion, Marc brought his laptop over to his TV and we watched the rest of it sorta together through Marc's web cam...if that makes sense. What was great about watching it that way was that we got the little asides from Maron during, and then immediately afterwards we got a great assessment of Obama by both Seder and Maron. Check it out here. And be sure to catch Maron on one of the simulcast First Freedom First; Separation of Church & State events on March 26th, 2008.

So, having been in so much of a liberal bubble during the speech, I ran out to the dentist where I found that working people on the street were pretty much still repeating the network news talking points about what the pastor had said. I figured that the turning point would be more around the evening news and how this speech is going to be handled for the wider audience with a shorter attention span.

Sure enough, alongside the cable pundits going bonkers, the network news channels began at 5 PM reporting it right up front. How it plays will become clear only after a few days...but it seems like largely this thing is being embraced as the beautiful speech that it was. The only problem that I see is that it was very long. YouTubers had already chopped it into 2 minute sound bytes labeled with names like "Obama on the Pastor," "Obama on Race," immediately afterwards. How the thing plays in bits will probably be more important for all current intents and purposes. If this speech is something that school children will listen to is something that history will decide, but its too bad that it is so rare that we talk about anything real that is happening right in front of us anymore. Its too bad that its a historic moment in that someone stood up and spoke the truth. If Chris Matthews could predict the future, we have seen an MLK jr. who has outspoken the great speakers of our time. It seems that largely, except for some clearly sour grapes reporting, the talkers believe that Obama is the next President. (after some sneering mention of McCain's skewering on Letterman last night...which is something I will have to look into.)

Over at Faux News; Obama the next President?....not so much. The plastic sneering talking heads were going through their paces in their full and expansive glory.
Dick Morris, all in-your-face, said that though he was fascinated by Obama's ideas about race and society, he is not any more interested in his ideas about politics than he is interested in his hairdresser's. His hairdresser apparently talks about politics while she cuts his hair, but he doesn't listen to her any more than he would to Obama. Stupid, silly, little man; don't you see that it's the people on the street that reflect what is going on with people in real life? Dick Morris said that there is no doubt to him that Obama is THE democratic nominee...and that this issue is going to dog him and be the subject of "swiftboat like" attacks. Don't say that Dickie didn't warn you. He is probably onboard as a mercenary to position that attack as I write this. What a horrible human being Dick Morris is. He makes me want to spit...and that's not because I'm so in love with anyone that he has smeared; its because of the way in which he sell his skills to the highest bidder or the devil.

The anchor, another mean looking ken-doll who's name I didn't care to catch, acted as if he was breaking a huge story in which Obama said that he was not in the pew during any of these speeches, and then saying that OH MY! He WAS!! The "I didn't know about it" defense has gone out the window, according to Brit Hume. What a great bunch of journalists these losers are... I have to take anything they say with a grain of salt because I know how much they lie. And, speaking of liars, Brit Hume was immediately brought in to talk about how Jesse Jackson had been in and had talked to him about the skill necessary for a black man to go between the establishment and the streets. He went on to say that Obama was particularly adept at it.

This may be an Achilles heel in the making. Its reminiscent of Obama claiming that he had tried drugs and then his friends saying that they never saw him with any drugs; so is he a lair trying to pretend that he has street cred and is the way that he moves between the two worlds so adeptly a plus or a minus when its examined? Should he have stood up and told the reverend to stop that language? Or is it OK to just see what people are saying and to take that with him into the other world as information gained while living his other life? How are people going to feel ultimately, to have to come to terms with the fact that for anyone who is not exactly in the middle of the mainstream there is quite a bit of bluffing necessary for any sort of public relations mastery.

See, most of us move between worlds with no problem; ist second nature and part of our survival mechanisms. Part of growing up is learning how to act in school versus home, and how to be cool to your friends but not to swear in front of grandma. The problem is that when a person of color who might have, in another time been suspect, uses that particular talent to integrate into white society, it can be unsettling. Is he a spy for the other side? Have we uncovered a fiery and dangerous side to Obama that we don't want in office? These are some of the gut feelings that are going around. Its so clear...and this is one of those psychological knee-jerk things that is going to have to play itself out.

Obama did alot of good today with his "ground-breaking" speech. Not only did he do much to explain his seat in that pew for all of those years, watching one half of the American experience rehashed, but he did much towards opening up our own fears of the anger that exists hidden, sometimes not so well, in the black community. Hopefully this discussion will go further than we have previously gone in coming to terms with what we all feel about our shared history.

c/p Brilliant at Breakfast

Barack Hussein Obama Speaks, March, 18th, 2008

Its a proud day to take the name Hussein to your blog...Lets all listen to these words very carefully and then hope to God that the democrats will sit down and figure this thing out according to what the majority of the people want.

As Prepared for Delivery...

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories tha t we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicia ns, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committ ed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

c/p Brilliant at Breakfast