'bye

Mexico. Two weeks. Heaven. Not nearly enough. At least this time I won't have to fake an English accent when folks ask where I'm from. For the first time in eight years, I'll be able to say with pride Si! Soy norteamericana. El presidente Barack Obama? Muy bueno! Hallelujah.

it's gonna be okay. really. i can feel it.

Late to my email, I found this note from a friend:

Hey, I see you've had a blogging spurt. And I read your post about your election anxiety.

I saw Barack yesterday. And Bruce Springsteen too. I waited for hours on sore feet and did some more fancy footwork and utter guile to get a place just 30 feet away from the stage.

You can read about it here.

A memorable night for 80,000 in Cleveland

I'm hear to tell ya, it's gonna be OK tomorrow. Really. I can feel it.

Check the video I shot of Bruce singing "This Land is Your Land." And he sang the banned verse. And there I was looking at all these white, black and brown faces waving flags and having such a great time and the tears just fell like rain. I can't even think of it now without tearing up. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen or experienced. For one brief shining moment I believed again. I waved my flag and noted the irony. This country, despite all the bullshit we've had to swallow in the last eight years, is still fundamentally full of enough good people to bring it back.

I wish you could have been there Lynette. You would have been bawling along with me, I guarantee it.

I saw the best of America last night. I think we'll see the best of America tomorrow too.

You take care, Keith

Read Keith's post and you'll never doubt that things can change in this country. Amazing. I really, really have hope today.

did you ever?

Did you ever think this day would come? The end of this interminable campaign, of course, but even more astounding, did you ever think the day would come when this nation would allow a black man to get to this point?

I didn't. I can still hear the pundits and the talking heads pontificating about whether or not America "is ready." I remember feeling despair at the beginning, knowing how desperately we need a change of government, feeling frustrated and hopeless that the Democratic candidates were unelectable. Female, black, Mexican-American, new agey woo-woo kooky. It's a measure of the toll the Bush administration has taken on my psyche that I would look at what was a very fine ~ exceptional ~ slate of candidates and find them lacking because they didn't fit the mold.

On the other hand, I'd look at, and listen to, the candidates on the other side and my heart would sink even further. The sameness, the tired arguments, the overemphasis on national security, the very white, very middle aged, very pompous sameness.

As a social democrat, none of these people came close to my vision of effective government. Such is life in America. We take what we can get, and my support went first to John Edwards, then to Hillary Clinton, and finally, after the Rev. Wright thing and after his glorious speech on race, to Barack Obama. I am happy with my candidate. I am inspired by him and he makes me feel hopeful, comforted. I haven't had any Kool-aid in years. I am simply capable of hearing what he is saying.

And what he has said to me is that he also has hope and that he believes in this country and the people in it. I believe we can make things better here, I do. Barack Obama is brilliant and an effective motivator, a consensus-building candidate who inspires and brings people together. It's not "just words" when those words change hearts and minds and attitudes.

But more than anything, I remember how things were when I was little. I remember "colored" and white waiting rooms at the train station. I remember colored and white water fountains. Schools were separate and terribly unequal. In my little town, all ~ all ~ African Americans lived in Dixie Hill, the lowest lying area of that county, right next to the Arkansas River, which flooded every spring. I remember the absolutely casual and accepted expressions of racism. And I remember too well the hot rage that simmered after the Civil Rights Act and into the '70s.

It is amazing and affirming and awe inspiring to see this happen. I believe that Barack Obama is a rare candidate, a once-in-a-lifetime combination of intellect, temperament, and ability. But that doesn't change the fact that this election is historic and glorious. It won't fix things and it doesn't make up for our sordid past, but it feels magnificent and it makes me so very, very happy.

When I voted, I thought of my grandchildren and how even at 10 and 8, they have been aware of and involved in this election. They will come to adulthood in a world where a man like them ~ of mixed race ~ can take the highest office in the land with overwhelming support. I can't think of that without crying. I know it will happen. We will make history. Si, se puede.

associations

Elizabeth Hasselbeck, the darling of the wingers, tips her elegant nose up just a hair and pronounces "we are who we associate with." Sarah Palin asserts that Barack Obama's association with '60s radical William Ayers somehow taints Obama in 2008. A real estate developer now in trouble with the law is evidence, by virtue of association, that Obama is not what he seems. Rashid Khalidi, a New York born professor and a Palestinian activist, is framed as a terrorist and contact with him is evidence of Obama's lack of fitness for the office he seeks.

Seriously? Are these people fucking serious? I am a 51 year old white woman living smack in the middle of the buckle that holds fast the Bible belt's grip on this country. I am smart, educated, fiscally sound. I own my own business, I have stepchildren and grandchildren. I am respectable, honest, reliable, decent. I help others at every opportunity. I care about my community and my neighbors. Despite my rage over the winger occupation of my country, I am patriotic as all hell and my anger ~ despite my expressions of frustration ~ will not find expression in violence or destruction of property.

In my 51 years, I have associated with child molesters and rapists. I have worked closely with ~ and loved ~ gangsters of all kinds. I have loved and buried two precious young men who were Crips and one who was a Blood. Most of my dearest friends are recovering alcoholics; some aren't recovering and I love them still. I hang out with drug addicts who don't use anymore, with ex-cons who've gone straight. I know people and have employed men who are now in jail on murder charges. My youth was spent in the company of ecoterrorists and activists of every stripe. I used to work for ACORN.

My family is thick with Republicans, God help me, but populated, too, with Democrats. Among my kin are radical farmers who drove their tractors to Washington to protest farm policy. Two of my relatives are the most despicable kind of neo-nazi anti-semitic haters. My cousin won American Leatherboy 2005 and another cousin was Miss Kansas. Every morning that I work, I hug the barber next door to my shop, a Korean war veteran and a raging right winger.

One of my dearest friends is a drag queen and he's gorgeous. I hang out with gays and lesbians and radical feminists and churchgoing folk. I have photos of my younger self taken with a group of young men who lived in my building, guys who cooked for me the most divine and exotic feasts every weekend. I didn't know at the time they were PLO; I don't know that it would have changed how I felt about them. They were ~ they are ~ dear to me after all these years.

One of my most precious friends is a poorly controlled schizophrenic. My beloved Pam still struggles to overcome the narcotics addiction that sent her to prison three times. My husband used to be a hippie. One friend from high school became a witch; another a prostitute. The guy I ate lunch with every day is a judge in Dallas. Another old friend is a CNN reporter.

Are we really the company we keep? Or is the company we keep evidence of our humanity, of our ability to look at what matters in other human beings? I wouldn't give up a single moment of my life or the people in it, good or bad. I know people who live lives tightly constrained by their views of other human beings and I know they're missing out. No question.

I am more frightened by leaders who surround themselves with people just like them than I am by the prospect of a leader who has vast, wide-ranging associations. A healthy interest in others, in other ways of living, in different beliefs and attitudes and behaviors is evidence to me of a sparkling and solid intellect and is something to emulate, not condemn.

It is evidence of a willingness to look beyond the superficial into the soul, the heart, for the thing that connects us all. I am connected, by my humanity, to the gangster, the rapist, to the schizophrenic, the drug addict, the church lady. I am connected to the terrorist, to the professor, the right winger and, of course, to the lefties who speak my language. The hardest thing for me is to let go of my anger over what has happened, to be open to what might happen in the future. In that, I have an example in our next president. Kindness, generosity of spirit, a spiritual view of other human beings. It's a happier way to live, and more hopeful. I'm trying. You?

barack obama touches my heart

I haven't experienced this with politicians before. Oh, I've heard rousing speeches and speeches that excited me or stirred some patriotic urge. But I haven't encountered a politician who reaches right into my soul and makes me feel . . . comforted. That's it, he comforts me. He speaks to me in ways no politician ever has. Maybe it's life experience and where I am at this point in George Bush's America. I don't know what it is, but when I hear his calm voice telling me his plans for this country (and I'm smart enough and informed enough to know that his plans could work), I feel better.

Watching what is widely known as Obama's Infomercial last evening, I found myself in tears from the waving wheat. Inside of me is still that child who recited the Pledge of Allegiance every morning before class at First Lutheran. The one who felt that the possibilities for my life were countless and that optimism and hard work would always be rewarded.

Hearing from the couple who'd planned a comfortable retirement, then had to refinance their home to pay for medical bills just wrecked me. When the 72 year old man put on the Wal-Mart cap to go to work for his wife's car, to save their home, I wept. Hard.

My house, too, was paid for. My retirement was secure and then Mike got sick. I'm a can-do all American gal, so I buckled down and started a business so I could take care of him. And I worked 100+ hours a week for four straight years. Forty hours for the health care we desperately needed and the rest to cover the copays and deductibles and "experimental" drugs that were the only cure for him. American dream turned nightmare.

It shouldn't be this hard. I have worked since I was 14 years old. I had a great retirement planned until the stock market bottomed out. I am still comfortable, relatively safe, safer than most I know. And I have health insurance ~ $1500 a month in health care costs ~ and I am fortunate.

My sweet friend Crixi van Cheek, who's had more than his share of health care nightmares to deal with, said this about the Infomercial, being billed by the right as just another slick marketing tool:

We watched sitting at the kitchen table. On the same day that the doctor told me I may need more surgery on the same day that Aetna denied coverage for more chemo and told me my co-pay would be over $4,000.00. And I watched that man on TV and I cried because despite the circumstances of my health, our finances and utter wreckage of the Bush years he provides hope.

Thats enough. Just give me hope.

And that's enough for me too. Give me hope. Barack Obama did that last night and I can only trust that he touched others as well. Hope. A little bit of help. It's all we need.

i. can't. fucking. take. it.

Six more days? How many more days? Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, TUESDAY. It's unbearable.

I have a romping case of Election Related Anxiety Disorder and I need something, some massive doses of valium, alcohol, some fucking thing to get me through Tuesday and what I hope will be, what must be, the beginning of getting this country turned around. I compulsively check HuffPo, Wonkette, Talking Points Memo, Kos, Americablog, Shakesville, Jack & Jill Politics, Joe.My.God, Digby, knowing if disaster strikes, they'll hear it first. I've taken ~ God help me ~ to checking Free Republic, that maniac Malkin, the Fox News website, Town Hall, always with a sense of impending doom, as if the rantings of lunatics could somehow reassure me.

Are you feeling this? I am losing my mind. Mike too. We're constantly running each other down throughout the day to share the latest positive (sometimes negative) indicator. The polls in . . . The turnout in . . . Flyers in Philly telling Dems to vote Wednesday!!!! Could all the polls be . . . What will we do if . . Rachel said. . . In 2004, the polls at this point . . . Oh God, now there's a tape! a video! can you bear it? How fast can we get that house in Mexico? What will we do . . . They can't win again, can they? CAN THEY???

CAN THEY????

Do you think they can pull it off again??? One more election stolen by the rat bastards who promised a permanent Republican majority eons ago, back in 2000, when the abominations of the Bush administration were only neocon wet dreams?

I am terrified. I can't sleep. Lordy, I can eat though, my constant companion in times of unbearable stress. I wish I could drink ~ just one after 26 years, wouldn't that be okay? just to get through? ~ or pop a pill or just have someone put me to sleep for six days. My 1st grade biracial grandson comes into the warehouse after school all riled up. "Grandma! If that old white man wins, he's gonna make all us black people slaves again!" Even the children. I reassure him. I can't reassure myself. Six days. I can't bear it. Can you?

So I take a deep breath and remind myself of the outpouring of support we're seeing across this nation, of the unprecedented turnout and the stunning level of involvement in the Democratic campaigns at every level, and I think that we can. We can do this. They can't take it away, not this time. We can make this happen. Right? Right??? Tell me we can do this.

Donna Brazile: "I'm not going to the back of the bus!"

Love this woman. Love her. "I am not going to the back of the bus. I am going forward." I hope we are all going to go forward in this country.



Hat tip to Jack & Jill Politics.

israelis for obama

This brought tears to my eyes. Maybe you too. Pass it on. If you feel like it. I wonder if it's even possible to bring this country back. We have deindustrialized this nation to the point that we do nothing but churn money. We produce almost nothing. The end goal of money churning, of course, is to get most of the money in one spot. I think that's been accomplished, ergo no more money to churn and all of us dumb bunnies sitting around thinking "what the hell happened?" Retirement account statements ought to be appearing in folks' mailboxes over the next few days. Yippee, eh?

pssssst! c'mere, i've got the latest on obama! have you heard this???

And here it is, from Pandagon:

As a fellow Middle American, let me step up and say this: if you believe that Obama is a Muslim, unpatriotic, a terrorist, not born in America, any of the various rumors floating around about him, you are an ignorant, bigoted asshole giving in to the worst temptations of society - no matter how coddled you are by people unwilling to offend you lest they seem like the sort of elitist who doesn’t obsess over whether or not Negroes with funny names are going to kill you in your sleep. Facts don’t seem to work, so I’m more than willing to try abject shame for your unrepentant dumbassery.

with some affection, but a lot of disgust for the "unrepentant dumbassery" of my fellow citizens, from a real upper south middle American. Stop being such fucking racist assholes. Stop it.

barack obama's baby mama

Seriously. But we haven't got any racial issues in this country. Move along now, nothing to see here. Hat tip to Salon.