Something I would love to hear Obama say

It's from here: It's the response to the monumentally insulting celebrity charge. Anyway, this is what Anonymous Liberal says he should say:

"My opponent has taken to calling me a "celebrity" in all of his commercials. The suggestion, I can only assume, is that all of you (gesturing to the crowd) show up at events like this and donate your time and your money to this campaign because you're all adoring groupies who are obsessed with me. Now, that would certainly be flattering if it were true, but I'm not going to delude myself. The reality is I can't act, I can't sing, and my personal life is incredibly boring.

The truth is that no one would be paying any attention to me at all if I wasn't talking about things that really matter to a lot of people. You're not here tonight--and you're not watching at home--because you want to be entertained. Lord knows there are plenty of things that you could be doing with your time right now that would be far more entertaining than listening to me. No, you're here tonight because you love your country and you're concerned about the direction it's been heading over the last eight years.

You're not here tonight to see what kind of outfit I'm wearing or to hear my latest hit single--and if you are, I think you're probably going to be disappointed. No, you're here because you want change, you want a government that fights for people like you and not on behalf of powerful special interests; you want a government that keeps you safe by pursuing a rationale foreign policy abroad and keeps your family secure by creating jobs, ensuring access to affordable health care, and fighting for energy independence.

That's why you're here. That's why you're volunteering your time at record levels. That's why you're contributing your hard-earned money in record amounts.

So remember, when John McCain and his surrogates call me a "celebrity," they're not insulting me; they're insulting you. They're insinuating that you are a mindless groupie rather than a concerned citizen, a fan rather than a voter.

But it's not going to work. You know why you're here, you know why you're watching, and you're much smarter than they give you credit for."

Gives me the chills.

A sign of the times

As a new American, I feel I can ask this question, is this the American we want to live in? This person was ticketed for trespassing on government property because of a sign in her hand. Aside from the very legitimate question she asks at the end of the video, a better question occurs to me: doesn't the first amendment protect things like this?

Dueling quotes

"Every nation has its war party. It is not the party of democracy. It is the party of autocracy. It seeks to dominate absolutely. It is commercial, imperialistic, ruthless. It tolerates no opposition. It is just as arrogant, just as despotic, in London, or in Washington, as in Berlin. The American Jingo is twin to the German Junker…. If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another."
--Robert M. La Follette

John McCain quotes:

September 2002: "Success in Iraq will be fairly easy."

March 20, 2003: “But I believe, Katie, that the Iraqi people will greet us as liberators.”

April 9, 2003: “It’s clear that the end is very much in sight.”

April 23, 2003: “There’s not a history of clashes that are violent between Sunnis and Shiahs. So I think they can probably get along.”

December 12, 2003: “This is a mission accomplished. They know how much influence Saddam Hussein had on the Iraqi people, how much more difficult it made to get their cooperation.”

March 7, 2004: “I’m confident we’re on the right course.”

October 31, 2004: "I think the initial phases of it were so spectacularly successful that it took us all by surprise.”

December 8, 2005: “I do think that progress is being made in a lot of Iraq. Overall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course. If I thought we weren’t making progress, I’d be despondent.”

January 4, 2007: Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) claimed that he knew the Iraq war was “probably going to be long and hard and tough,” and that he was “sorry” for those who voted for the war believing it would be “some kind of an easy task.”

August 18, 2007: It’s entertaining, in that I was the greatest critic of the initial four years, three and a half years. I came back from my first trip to Iraq and said, This is going to fail. We’ve got to change the strategy to the one we’re using now. But life isn’t fair.

January 4, 2008: We'll stay 100 years.

January 4, 2008 (later): Make it a thousand, no... A MILLION!

May 15, 2008: Okay, okay, make me President and we'll be leaving by 2013, when have I ever been wrong before?

May 27, 2008: "I will never surrender in Iraq, my friends, I will never surrender in Iraq." (to protesters demanding "End this War!") So ending the war means "surrender"...at least until 2013.

Link

Matt's an American!!!

Next time you eat apple pie, think of me.



If you read this blog, I'm somewhat of a political junkie. so i did this to vote. Now I can. And while this wasn't as big a deal for me as it was for someone from, say Bosnia (there were two people there from Bosnia), it's still a big deal. Autumn and Rhona came with me. I can vote. And I will vote. In everything -- school board meetings, here I come.

Matt Taibbi on you and I

Matt Taibbi started the Buffalo beast and then bolted from Buffalo. Too bad. But we can still read his articles, and still think for a few minutes, we had him all to ourselves.

Check this out. This is the American electorate, Generation Squeeb.

My vote might count

I got my interview date with the nice people at Homeland Security. At this point, I will go in there and answer any questions about my thoughts, feelings and desires. I have no idea what we'll talk about in there. Perhaps they'll ask me why I want to be a citizen. Really, I want to be a citizen for a couple of reasons.

1. To vote. I've now lived her over five years, and in those five years I haven't voted. Can't. And I used to vote in everything. Local, provincial, federal, gimme a vote and i voted. Soon, I'll be a voter again.
2. Curling. Hey, what the heck. You never know. Rockstar on.
3. Why not? I live here. Might as well get the membership card.

All this assumes they let me in, of course. And that's no gimme.

An endorsement for a person who can speak

This is the end of Obama's speak from last night. Holy crap, we're due a person who can speak like this:

"This was the moment when we tore down barriers that have divided us for too long; when we rallied people of all parties and ages to a common cause; when we finally gave Americans who have never participated in politics a reason to stand up and to do so," Obama said. "This was the moment when we finally beat back the policies of fear and doubts and cynicism, the politics where we tear each other down instead of lifting this country up.

"Years from now, you'll look back and you'll say that this was the moment, this was the place where America remembered what it means to hope. For many months, we've been teased, even derided for talking about hope. But we always knew that hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path.

"It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it.

"Hope is what I saw in the eyes of the young woman in Cedar Rapids who works the night shift after a full day of college and still can't afford health care for a sister who's ill. A young woman who still believes that this country will give her the chance to live out her dreams.

"Hope is what I heard in the voice of the New Hampshire woman who told me that she hasn't been able to breathe since her nephew left for Iraq. Who still goes to bed each night praying for his safe return.

"Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire. What led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation. What led young women and young men to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedom's cause.

"Hope -- hope is what led me here today. With a father from Kenya, a mother from Kansas and a story that could only happen in the United States of America.

"Hope is the bedrock of this nation. The belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.

"That is what we started here in Iowa and that is the message we can now carry to New Hampshire and beyond.

"The same message we had when we were up and when we were down; the one that can save this country, brick by brick, block by block, calloused hand by calloused hand -- that together, ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

"Because we are not a collection of red states and blue states. We are the United States of America. And in this moment, in this election, we are ready to believe again."