Obamatopia

It is hard not to to listen to the whole of Sen. Obama's speech in Berlin and feel almost a little disoriented, in that this has come to pass in our time.







There is no audicity where hope is concerned here...











I get the feeling that things are truly possible... for our country, our planet, our future.









It doesn't hurt that Obama is possibly one of the gifted orators of our time.

It may take more time than I have left on this planet to process the headiness of the possibility of humanity today.





When I think of where we have come from, in my lifetime, to where we are now (even if it remains but a possibility), it's a good thing.











Maybe --just maybe-- the promise that this election holds for us may come to pass.




I'm certainly not going to take it for granted that it will happen. Nor be devastated if the real evildoers among us keep us from reaching that goal. At least I can see it is possible.

This is probably as close as I came come to that sense of wonderment that Europeans felt in the past when they realized that the optimism and "can do" of the American spirit wasn't just hollow air.

McCain can't have it both ways

First, Sen. McCain lambasted Sen. Barack Obama for a lack of foreign policy experience. Then when Sen. Obama draws a crowd of 200,000 in Berlin, he snidely says, that he'd go to speak in Berlin, too, but he preferred to spend his time in America's heartland campaigning.

I'd thought that it would be fitting for McCain to have a post in the Obama cabinet as a show of bipartisanship, most fittingly as Secretary for Veteran Affairs. Yet now that he's letting the far right dictate more of his platform, and spoken out against gay adoption (among issues), perhaps it would be time for him to consider retiring from politics altogether.

Help save the last tattered shreds of your democracy

The California State Legislature is about to balance the state budget by taking funds needed to run libaries. Our education programs have yet to recover from the last time they did this kind of circumvention of the people's will with taking funds from vital programs.

The Republicans want to concurrently allow tax loopholes for the wealthy and to offer unjustified tax rebates.

Call the Governor at (916) 445-2841, Assembly Speaker Karen Bass at (916) 319-2047, Senate Pro Tem Don Perata at (916) 651-4009; and call or email your State Assemblymember or Senator ...today!

Kay Ryan, our new Poet Laureate

Photo by Alan Dep

There have been Obama magazine covers, and then there have been Obama magazine covers

It's not that Obama supporters don't have a sense of humor, nor the ability to appreciate satire, but at some point, as good an artist as Barry Brill is, he might want to consider that just maybe he might have missed the mark with his New Yorker cover.

The day my heart doesn't miss a beat when a police car slows down as it approaches me, or I can put the memories of the 60s behind me (not all the them; just the scary ones).

The bad news is Cody's bit the dust; the good news is so did Jesse Helms

Not only did Cody's finally give up their long struggle to stay afloat, but two other California independent bookstores, Acres of Books (with over two million books!) in Long Beach and Libreria Martinez in Santa Ana, are in danger of shutting their doors.

If there are no more independent bookstores, don't presume you're always going to have the right to read whatever you want. That would make a fine scorched earth exit plan for the Bush administration, if independent bookstores were to disappear. Humans aren't that far behind the polar bears when it comes to treading water this summer.