Read what my medal says: "Courage". Ain't it the truth? Ain't it the truth?

Thank you Senator Clinton.

I thought the speech yesterday was wonderful.

Not because you conceded. But because you insisted we're all in this together.

At times watching that speech I was moved to the point of tears, but I do have small confession- there were a couple of occasions when my mind wandered and I focused on the enthusiastic crowd of your supporters and thought of John McCain of all people.

I don't think he and his Republican party, George Bush's Republican party, have a clue what's coming at them.

There is a tsunami of change sweeping over this country.

It will be a hell of a lot of work and a tough fight to win the presidency. It's for means certain. I'm realistic about that.

But I still hold out hope that together as Democrats Americans we can end this horrible period in our country's history.

Do you remember the sorry everybody photo pages where we left our apoligies to the world at the results of the 2004 elections?

We -Hillary Clinton and all of her loyal supporters and everybody else who wants to undo the Bush presidency - have a chance to make it up to the world.

Thank you for that Hillary.

What we were after now was the old surprise visit.

Canvassed for Obama with my oldest daughter this weekend.

We live in a moderately rural Oregon town of about 7,000 people. Roughly 15 minutes East of us is a city of 100,000 people. However if you head West up the mountain it's pretty much the boonies; farms, horse ranches and lots of single wides with trash on the lawn.

We drew a walking list a little West of town. Although there's lots of Obama support in that direction we did pass this sign that had been defaced on our way out.

I assume it was just kids but it's disconcerting just the same.

Canvassing works a little differently in Oregon because of vote by mail. What savvy campaigns try to do is identify their supporters and then make sure they get their ballots in. We can actually collect ballots while hitting these targeted voters. This is the biggest thing I don't like about vote by mail, btw.

It went pretty well overall. We had some healthy discussions with supporters of senator Clinton and senator Obama alike. The only bad exchange was with a guy that was pissed off we were bugging him about politics at all. Nobody forced you to register to vote and your certainly weren't forced to register as a Democrat, jerk.

I was so proud of my daughter. She had been up all night at an 8th grade graduation dance/ karaoke/ party thingy run by her school and I had offered to let her stay home and sleep but she really wanted to do this. She basically collapsed when we got home.

It also gave us a bunch of time to talk about the campaign and I did a lot of of listening. One of the things that impresses me about my daughter's view of politics is how mature it is. She realizes politicians aren't perfect. She brought up the fact that Obama himself mentions that fact repeatedly. She doesn't expect Obama is going to get elected and fix everything magically.

The other thing that repeatedly impresses me about her is that even though she's grown up in this rural town which is sorely lacking in diversity, she still has her head on right when it comes to this stuff. Most of her friends support McCain.

I'm so proud of her.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.

What's important to us?

That's the question we've all had to ask ourselves again and again for over a year now as this presidential primary has dragged on longer than a Bergman film. It's the question we use to check ourselves against the candidate we support to make sure they conform to our own values in the leadership they espouse.

I don't think it's too much of a leap of faith to say that most of us who consider ourselves progressives answer that question with some more nuanced and detailed version of the following --

• Ending the war in Iraq and focusing on the projection of influence through diplomacy and the return of our international prestige.



• Appointing progressives to the federal courts, especially the Supreme Court.



• Working to fix our broken health care system.



• Returning the role of science and education to the forefront of our national priorities.



• Tackling the economic challenges of the middle and lower classes of the United States.



• Taking seriously the threats to our environment and enacting appropriate energy policy to save same.



• Returning some sense of a constitutional government to the United States.
  

These are just some of the things we as progressives hope will come to pass under a Democratic President. These are our dreams.

My list of progressive dreams is by no means comprehensive. For example; on our side of the aisle there are those whose biggest dream is that we will someday have a woman or a black man sitting in the Oval Office. To these progressives all the other progressive dreams are secondary to seeing this worthwhile goal realized.

How can we take issue with that? The hope that someday a woman would break the through the ultimate glass ceiling in the Oval Office or an African-American would put the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow by taking the oath of office of the presidency has been at the forefront of the the progressive movement since this country was founded. I would go so far to argue that this is why this country was founded, even if our leaders have spent every day since then denying that truth.

It is to our great shame as a nation that these final barriers to the presidency still exist in the 21st century. We lag behind Pakistan (PAKISTAN!) in our gender bias towards who will lead this country. It's been thirty years since the other great English-speaking democracy has had a woman at it's helm. For all of our talk about the great melting pot of the United States the portraits of the faces of our U.S. presidents since the inception of this country are embarrassing in their lack of diversity.

In his wonderful speech on race in Philadelphia Barack Obama returned again and again to the idea that "my dreams don't have to come at the expense of your dreams." For the most part I agree with that sentiment.

But there is a blind spot to Obama's formulation. The biggest dream of the grandchildren of suffragettes and slaves cannot both be realized in this presidential election. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama can't both have the nomination. Somebody's going to have to set aside their dream for now.

In a year where the Democratic candidate for the presidency is a virtual shoe-in, you could see why this idea is doubly difficult for many of those who see their dream just out of reach. This could go a long ways towards explaining why this campaign has gotten so ugly these last few months.

This idea became clear to me in an exchange with the the fabulous BAC last month. She's fought tooth and nail for Hillary Clinton this primary season and you couldn't find a bigger Clinton booster on the net. In her comment section I glibly wrote something to the effect that "we'll see a woman as President in our lifetime." BAC responded something along the lines of "in your lifetime, maybe. I'm getting up in years."

This broke my heart. I realized that in arguing for Obama, I was asking BAC not just put her dream on the back burner but in a sense to give up that dream. At least the opportunity to see it fulfilled with her own eyes.

As this primary winds to an end I would ask you to please keep BAC in mind in your discussions with friends and family, or your posts to your own blogs. It behooves those of us who supported other candidates to demonstrate a bit of magnanimity in light of the gravity of what we're asking of Clinton supporters. By all means celebrate Barack but don't tear down Hillary. She represents a hell of lot more than a gas tax holiday to millions of people. Please remember that.

Ask yourself what's important. Most of us as progressives, Clinton and Obama supporters, would answer with the same checklist of dreams. We want to fix all the garbage from the Bush years. We want to heal this country.

We are family, after all.

Magneto's right: there is a war coming. Are you sure you're on the right side?

Well, at least Oregon matters for the first time in my lifetime.

I kind of wish it didn't. I have a very bad feeling about where this thing is going.

Hope I'm wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.

(Today's quote/ pic is for ladybug)

This is a time for serious people, Bob, and your 15 minutes are up

Did you watch the debate last night?

Did you see it?

Did it finally sink in with you that either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton will be the next President of the United States?

Did it hit you that the next president will begin pulling our troops out of Iraq?

Will appoint Supreme Court Justices who don't take the constitution to be silly-putty?

Will see science as something to be supported not subverted?

Will finally try and do something to fix the health care mess?

We're going to have a president who can ride a Sedgway without falling off, can string together more than one sentence without coming across as a total idiot and won't be challenged by the push/ pull factor when opening a door.

We're going to have a president who, by the very act of their swearing in, will send the message to the world that when America talks about things like opportunity and equality it's more than just talk.

We're going to have a President who, when they get a briefing saying "Bin Laden determined to attack in the United States," will do something about it.

Cynic all you want. Lord knows I've done my own share of that. You wouldn't have to read far through these pages to find instances of me tearing into both Obama and Clinton. They are politicians after all.

But when I watched that debate last night I couldn't help but see IT. It was standing squarely in the middle of the stage behind Obama and Clinton and it was impossible to miss.

It was hope.

One cannot be betrayed if one has no people.

None of the above?

Obama promises a world filled with puppies and daisies in his NC victory speech because, goshdarnit, we just all have to get along and things will go swell.

Clinton breaks a promise all the Democratic candidates made not to try and seat Florida and Michigan delegates since the states bucked the national party by moving up their primaries. Huh. Didn't see that coming.

Edwards is running for Attorney General in an Obama White House. I'm sure that's great news to all of us who donated for a PRESIDENTIAL run and to get away from this sort of bullshit politics. Of course this rumor comes by way of the Great Satan so take it as you will.

McCain will skip Bush's State of the Union. Other Senators are heard to mutter "lucky" in a Napoleon Dynamite voice. He's also still nuts just in case you were wondering.

Romney asks advice on the Middle East from the one man less qualified to give it than George Bush. The only thing Cheney is qualified to advise anyone on is how to shoot a man in the face without killing him.

Huckabee stumps for the "Fair Tax." He's also pushing to be declared Emperor of the Moon and for a harem made up of biological clones of Jessica Alba. The man's full of great ideas.

Giuliani who?

Is it any wonder Americans prefer "American Gladiators" to politics? At least Gladiators is honest about the snake oil it's pushing.

So vote once, vote tuh-wice, for Bill McKay... you middle-class honkies.

Dean's thoughts on what's taken as conventional wisdom on the candidates for President-

"Oh noes, not the brier patch!" This one is my favorite. The CW happens to be that Hillary Clinton can't win in the general because conservatives hate her and will turn out in droves to vote against her.

This is just stupid on so many levels. Conservatives will hate whomever the Democratic nominee is, whether it's Hillary or not. Are we supposed to believe that people who spent the 90's watching Jerry Fallwell's "Clinton Chronicles" and the last Presidential election shouting down John Kerry as a cowardly traitor are going to approach the next Democratic candidate for President with an open mind? Who cares what those loonies think?

"My life's an open book." The inverse of the above. The CW is that the thousands of faux scandals during the Clinton presidency some how inoculates Hillary from the revelation of any more skeletons in her closet. Really? Look up "swiftboating." Republicans have learned they can just make shit up about the Democratic candidate and the lazy media won't call them on it.

"Bygones by bygones." Apparently Barack Obama candidacy is about some sort of kinder, gentler liberalism. Or something. How this translates into governance is increasingly to appear to be more attempts to reach out to the 28%ers and try and compromise. Not gonna happen. If the last twenty years have shown us anything they've shown us those people could care less about what the rest of the country thinks.

"The Gipper redux." The only thing Fred Thompson and Ronald Reagan seem to share in common is their chosen profession. The thing that helped Reagan paint-the-pig of some truly horrible, regressive policies was his sense of humor and sunny disposition. Thompson, on the other hand, is dour and grouchy. I knew the Gipper and you, sir, are no Gipper.

"Nyah, nyah - pubs keep the White House." As usual the CW is that the uber-man the Republicans nominate will take the White House as they've done in the last four out of five elections. Whatever. Put aside the dubious nature to a couple of those "wins," the biggest problem that the Republican candidate will face is that they have to run so hard right to win the nomination there's absolutely no way they can get all the way back to the center by the general election. I have a hard time seeing how they can overcome the disadvantage inherent to the fact the base of their party are insane.

"The Road to the White House runs Center/ Right." Nope. The road to the White House runs through America.