for the content of his character

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All weekend I have been fuming about the travesty of the Obama Administration while the glow of quite possibly the greatest American hero of all time has not faded from our hearts. When I fume, I can't speak. I have avoided listening to Martin in honor of his birthday or his holiday because it makes me cry and cry and cry. Never fails. You almost can't say the word "dream" around me at any time of year without me going all verklempt. It's been that way since they killed him. But maybe you want to listen.

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love, 99
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world gone mad

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What you get when you scream "racist" at people and plant fake racists at their rallies to try to smear them for your political gain. Yessir. It's what you get. Martin would be appalled, and not as appalled by Beck's twisted observance as with the low tricks used on our brothers and sisters.

Beck: Help us restore traditional American values
By PHILIP ELLIOTT and NAFEESA SYEED, Associated Press Writers – 27 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Conservative commentator Glenn Beck and tea party champion Sarah Palin appealed Saturday to a vast, predominantly white crowd on the National Mall to help restore traditional American values and honor Martin Luther King's message. Civil rights leaders who accused the group of hijacking King's legacy held their own rally and march.

While Beck billed his event as nonpolitical, conservative activists from around the nation said their show of strength was a clear sign that they can swing elections across the country and much of the country is angry with what many voters call an out-of-touch Washington.

Palin told the tens of thousands who stretched from the marble steps of the Lincoln Memorial to the grass of the Washington Monument that calls to transform the country weren't enough. "We must restore America and restore her honor," said the former Alaska governor, echoing the name of the rally, "Restoring Honor."

Palin, the GOP vice presidential nominee in 2008 and a potential White House contender in 2012, and Beck repeatedly cited King and made references to the Founding Fathers. Beck put a heavy religious cast on nearly all his remarks, sounding at times like an evangelical preacher.

"Something beyond imagination is happening," he said. "America today begins to turn back to God."

Beck exhorted the crowd to "recognize your place to the creator. Realize that he is our king. He is the one who guides and directs our life and protects us." He asked his audience to pray more. "I ask, not only if you would pray on your knees, but pray on your knees but with your door open for your children to see," he said.

A group of civil rights activists organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton held a counter rally at a high school, then embarked on a three-mile march to the site of a planned monument honoring King. The site, bordering the Tidal Basin, was not far from the Lincoln Memorial where Beck and the others spoke about two hours earlier.

Sharpton and the several thousand marching with him crossed paths with some of the crowds leaving Beck's rally. People wearing "Restoring Honor" and tea party T-shirts looked on as Sharpton's group chanted "reclaim the dream" and "MLK, MLK." Both sides were generally restrained, although there was some mutual taunting.

One woman from the Beck rally shouted to the Sharpton marchers: "Go to church. Restore America with peace." Some civil rights marchers chanted "don't drink the tea" to people leaving Beck's rally.

Sharpton told his rally it was important to keep King's dream alive and that despite progress more needs to be done. "Don't mistake progress for arrival," he said.

He poked fun at the Beck-organized rally, saying some participants were the same ones who used to call civil rights leaders troublemakers. "The folks who used to criticize us for marching are trying to have a march themselves," he said. He urged his group to be peaceful and not confrontational. "If people start heckling, smile at them," Sharpton said.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia's delegate to Congress, said she remembers being at King's march on Washington in 1963. "Glenn Beck's march will change nothing. But you can't blame Glenn Beck for his March-on-Washington envy," she said.

Beck has said he did not intend to choose the King anniversary for his rally but had since decided it was "divine providence." He portrayed King as an American hero.

Sharpton and other critics have noted that, while Beck has long sprouted anti-government themes, King's famous march included an appeal to the federal government to do more to protect Americans' civil rights.

The crowd — organizers had a permit for 300,000 — was a sea of people standing shoulder to shoulder across large expanses of the Mall. The National Park Service stopped doing crowd counts in 1997 after the agency was accused of underestimating numbers for the 1995 Million Man March.

It was not clear how many tea party activists were in the crowd, but the sheer size of the turnout helped demonstrate the size and potential national influence of the movement.

Tea party activism and widespread voter discontent with government already have effected primary elections and could be an important factor in November's congressional, gubernatorial and state legislative races.

Lisa Horn, 28, an accountant from Houston, said she identifies with the tea party movement, although she said the rally was not about either the tea party or politics. "I think this says that the people are uniting. We know we are not the only ones," she said. "We feel like we can make a difference."

Ken Ratliff, 55, of Rochester, N.Y., who served as a Marine in the Vietnam War, said he is moving more in the tea party direction. "There's got to be a change, man," he said.

Palin told the crowd she wasn't speaking as a politician. "I've been asked to speak as the mother of a soldier and I am proud of that distinction. Say what you want to say about me, but I raised a combat vet and you can't take that away from me." It was a reference to her son, Track, 20, who served a yearlong deployment in Iraq.

Palin likened the rally participants to the civil rights activists from 1963. She said the same spirit that helped them overcome oppression, discrimination and violence would help this group as well.

"We are worried about what we face. Sometimes, our challenges seem insurmountable," Palin said. "Look around you. You're not alone."

Beck paced on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and spoke through a wireless microphone headset. "For too long, this country has wandered in darkness. ... Today we are going to concentrate on the good things in America, the things that we have accomplished — and the things that we can do tomorrow."

In one of his many references to King, Beck noted that he had spent the night before in the same Washington hotel where King had put the finishing touches on his "I Have a Dream" speech.

Clarence B. Jones, who served as King's personal attorney and his speechwriter, said he believes King would not be offended by Beck's rally but "pleased and honored" that a diverse group of people would come together, almost five decades later, to discuss the future of America.

Jones, now a visiting professor at Stanford University, said the Beck rally seemed to be tasteful and did not appear to distort King's message, which included a recommitment to religious values.

Both groups heard from members of the King family.

Alveda King, a niece of the civil rights leader, appealed to Beck rally participants to "focus not on elections or on political causes but on honor, on character ... not the color of our skin."

Martin Luther King III said at the site of the planned memorial that his father in 1967 and 1968 "was focused on economic empowerment. He did not live to see that come to fruition." King added, "We have made great strides, but somehow we've got to create a climate so that everybody can do well, not just some."

Beck had appealed to those attending not to bring signs with them. But Mike Cash, a 56-year-old Atlanta businessman, found a way around that. Over his polo shirt, he wore a T-shirt that read "Treat Obama like a used tea bag, toss him out now!"

"I wouldn't have missed it (the rally) for anything," said Cash, who drove up with his family. "We are here kind of protesting about our government, too. I'm a businessman and I'm worried about taxes going up."

Many in the crowd watched the proceedings on large television screens. On the edges of the Mall, vendors sold "Don't Tread on Me" flags, popular with tea party activists. Other activists distributed fliers urging voters "dump Obama." The pamphlet included a picture of the president with a Hitler-style mustache.

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Associated Press writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Hope Yen and Tom Raum contributed to this report.

___

Online:

Beck rally: http://www.glennbeck.com/828/

Sharpton rally: http://www.nationalactionnetwork.net/

Martin Luther King memorial: http://www.mlkmemorial.org/

I would give ANYTHING to have Martin back for even a moment.


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a man dies

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Deep down in our non-violent creed is the conviction there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they're worth dying for. And if a man happens to be 36-years-old, as I happen to be, some great truth stands before the door of his life—some great opportunity to stand up for that which is right.

A man might be afraid his home will get bombed, or he's afraid that he will lose his job, or he's afraid that he will get shot, or beat down by state troopers, and he may go on and live until he's 80. He's just as dead at 36 as he would be at 80. The cessation of breathing in his life is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. He died....

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.
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We always quote these guys, play videos of them, remind each other of them, maybe even obsess on them sometimes... and yet... and yet... we don't find that much courage and heart... don't take their counsel.

We don't.

When will we?
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and dance to THIS, dammit, DO it!

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What is WRONG with us? Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.
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can't stop crying

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I'm listening to Peter B talk to some guy about Inside the Mind of Obama and they're talking about Obama with mention of Martin liberally mixed in. It just makes me cry. It is infuriating that Obama should be the vessel into which we must pour our love for Dr. King. He is beyond unworthy. He is unworthy of Caroline Kennedy's endorsement. He is unworthy to lead. And it makes my heart squeeze in my chest to hear people speak Martin's name in a discussion about George W. Obama. I've blasted my contacts out in my effort to persevere.

If you have Real Player, you can hear the whole Mountain Top speech at the image link. Better to hear than discussions re the inside of Obama's slinking treasonous mind.

It's storming out pretty damn hard again. So. If I seem strangely absent, I probably am.
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No. Really. Remember the tornado scene in The Wizard of Oz?

There were a few moments of blessed sunshine this afternoon, the herald of the next wave....
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martin

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I wish we had you and the holiday....
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the audacity of hubris

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As I may have mentioned, I am unable to listen to Obama's speeches anymore. They very quickly turned into sounds that made my insides trade places as badly as when Dubya ever opened his yap, and, indeed, looking at him is as injurious to my system now too. In fact, I think I would rather listen to Dubya about now, amazing as that sounds. But I've been forced to hear some snippets of that travesty in Norway the other day, and the fucker invoked Dr. King, whose corpse he is unfit to emulate, and in such a way as to attempt to diminish those precious utterances from the life of an historically great soul. Obama tried to put them in the service of the slaughter he insists on reifying in some beyond-American-exceptionalism kind of "change" and I "hope" he gets blasted by a bolt of lightning the next time this pusillanimous little murderer dares allude to any hero... except maybe if we find him groveling at their graves, pleading with the cosmos for forgiveness for this stinking audacity... and probably not even then.

He thinks the arc of the universe bends toward justice with the use of drones to bomb innocents to Kingdom Come, and giving torturers a walk if they tortured for us, and feeding us to plutocrats to keep them as fat as ever can be, no matter WHAT suffering we must endure, or for how long, toward that end. If there ever existed a man LESS deserving of any use of Martin's authority, I can't think who that might be.
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i think dexter must have been adopted

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I don't know about you, but Spielbergizing Martin sounds perfectly horrifying to me.

A big thumbs down for the prospect of turning Martin into schmatz. I don't want sappy music rising in the background, nor any cutesy scenes stuck in between, some of the greatest moments in history, thank you. No!

should be headlines across the globe

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it's very windy today

Everything is rattling and whistling and blowing. I really, really do not like the wind. It's still full out summer but the wind is blowing in gusts up over 70 miles an hour. Yesterday the wind only gusted. I mean there was no wind except a few times some very strong gusts came out of nowhere. The day before was dead calm and gorgeous all day and all night. People were walking around in their bathing suits and shorts and tank tops.

Everyone's arguing over the climate gig. Everyone in the Bay Area is fed this stuff about El Niño for when it rains too much and La Niña for the draughts in between. I was born here. We didn't have these weird weather patterns until after the late seventies, and they get worse and worse and worse with the passing of each year.

Saturday was just an unbelievably beautiful day. No smog. 78 degrees. Perfectly clear. Sparkling. The horror of it was it was 17 January. Otherwise it was the kind of day that lifts everyone's hearts, and it lifted mine. Trying to discuss the horror of this wonderfulness where it absolutely doesn't belong, some old guys still insist that everything we do is "of nature", "of planet earth" and so natural, and if nature decides to do mass extinctions, it will, it has, it does, and we are assholes for fretting about it, as if there's something we can do or not do to affect it even minutely. Others just keep grabbing resources harder and faster. Only some of us really want to work on cleaning up our acts and seeing if we can slow or reverse the course of the buildup to the next ice age, whatever causes it, before the mass extinctions set in for real.

I want to try to rest from my fury over the murderating fucks of the world for a little while. There are thousands and thousands of opinion pieces on the pig-hearted extermination of Palestinians available online. Click the Palestine Blogs link in my sidebar: they come out with stultifying regularity. I don't know if there are even any particulars we haven't found out about yet that can make it worse than it has been... an even younger baby mutilated worse? a saint nailed to a battering ram and squished on the apartheid wall? I don't know. I just know the government of Israel, the backers of the government of Israel, here forward to be called "Usraelis" by me, wherever they are found, seem to me to be pernicious weeds and I wish someone would tend this neglected garden.

I wish millions of someones would do the damn work to make it clean physically and spiritually again. All that mumbo jumbo they clang bells over every Sunday, all that ripped-off mythology about snakes offering apples and banishment from Eden. Earth is Eden. We weren't banished. We are banishing Eden.

Why do you persist in thinking someone ELSE is going to fix this?

If you never watched Zeitgeist or Zeitgeist: Addendum [2 hours each], you should definitely do so. Soak up the parts where he shows that Christianity, and just about all of all other religions too, are just restatements of ancient mnemonics for following the cycles of the earth and heavens and lots of mundane rules to follow to keep decency and order, helping ancient peoples do their planting and order their actions to fit the weather patterns, to keep track, to keep their places, to stay alive. Religion isn't worth anything for any of those things any more, and it would be far better if it were.

The humidity here at the beach within eyeshot of San Francisco is almost as bone dry as the Sahara right now. Has been for a few days. This never happens. This is how the northwest coast of South America turned into desert. This state of affairs, all the off season conflagrations in California, this stupidly low humidity smack dab on top of the ocean, keeps up, we are desertifying our world, just as humans desertified the Gobi and the Sahara, only with the help of the internal combustion engine... oh, oh, and cow farts and sun flares....

My friend Billy insists that Nostradamus predicted that after the year 2000, maybe 2012 if the Mayans were more accurate, Atlantis would reëmerge... which says to me that the poles are moving again and Atlantis is under the ice cap of the South Pole. If Nostradamas was really just extrapolating from the trends he saw all around him, from the state of all the astronomy stories at his time and the way people treated them, then maybe that is the kernel of this prediction, if it even was a prediction, if there actually is a lick of sense to that complete jumble of indecipherable blather as so many insist there is.

If everything people made out of all the attempts to keep them oriented to space and time and cycles and decent behavior has gone the way people like Nostradamus felt it would, the Middle East will go up in the flames of manmade hell, and no amount of my agonizing will prevent it. The heedlessness out there is enough to turn everyone's bones to powder.

Do watch those Zeitgeist videos... especially the second one, if you're just too pressed to cut out an entire four hours. It doesn't have to be this way. We can indeed turn our attention to weapons of mass creation instead of this ceaseless greed, hate and the delusion of me, me, me, me, me, me, me first. You are a fucking figment of an imagination poisoned by sick conditioning. ALL you have to do is drop it. WHAT is important enough to you to drop it?

Is there anything in the world, anything in your poisoned liberal and conservative and independent hearts that would make you forget about your own fucking lives to REALLY get down to the business of making this world, everything we touch, into something better? Something that is not heinous suffering, punctuated with little spikes of fun, from start to finish? WE MADE THIS WORLD! It only takes changing our minds. Why do you continue to submit to the hypnosis that raised you, and why do you keep letting them heap more of it on you even when you know for sure it's a pack of lies?

What the fuck is wrong with you?

What the fuck is wrong with you?

This is my tribute to my beloved Martin on his day.

So let me be clear: WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?

[Update: 1pm, Pacific Time, the wind has dropped, the temperature has gone up from 72 to 78, and the humidity is down to 10%... just in a few little hours.... I'm trying to remember if ever in my life, let alone during winter, I've seen the humidity on the coast drop below 50%.... I must have, but I think records are being shattered every minute of this week for wind, for heat, for dry air....]

i know how he feels

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martin, marley and don't forget malcolm

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i added parenti to the beautiful speech buttons

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For those of you who don't know, I revamped this place a while back, and I moved all the beautiful speech buttons off into a post so I could keep adding to them without further bogging down the loading time. Since no one ever spoke more beautifully than Martin, I have a picture of him speaking in the sidebar for you to click whenever you want. It takes you to some of the prime examples of beautiful speech I run across. This could well be the most important feature of my blog. So you don't want to be oblivious to it.

martin's dream

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No matter what, though, I can't stop wanting it for Martin.

[I went into town. The coffee shops are full of people yakking about our first black president. I don't even know if a black person lives here. Haven't seen one in three years. Heard the video clerk married one, but I have never seen one. Dund madder. We're abuzz about this wonderful thing. Spindly old coot, smacking the counter top, rattling our spoons and toppling his toast, saying, "I'm going to live to see a black president!" The mien of pride and cynicism and glee all warped around his toothless mouth, a complexity of expression only available to seniors.

I listened again. I'm deciding Obama meant that * has fucked over Georgia with his moves in South Ossetia and pissed off our friends in the European Union. I'm deciding he meant that, without explicitly saying that, because everyone knows that's what has happened.... That was the one line that woke me up in the speech, the one I had to go to the transcript to absorb, and listen again to make sure. I think he was saying without saying that * is the culprit and McCain's attachment to it is a bad thing. If that isn't what he was saying, don't wake me up yet. Okay?

I want to be happy about how many people are happy, and the dream, and the other dream of making those criminals go away, for a few hours....]

i find i can't stop crying

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DON'T FUCK IT UP AMERICA....

Video of full Obama nomination victory speech is linked below:

Tonight, after fifty-four hard-fought contests, our primary season has finally come to an end.

Sixteen months have passed since we first stood together on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois. Thousands of miles have been traveled. Millions of voices have been heard. And because of what you said - because you decided that change must come to Washington; because you believed that this year must be different than all the rest; because you chose to listen not to your doubts or your fears but to your greatest hopes and highest aspirations, tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another - a journey that will bring a new and better day to America. Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

I want to thank every American who stood with us over the course of this campaign - through the good days and the bad; from the snows of Cedar Rapids to the sunshine of Sioux Falls. And tonight I also want to thank the men and woman who took this journey with me as fellow candidates for President.

At this defining moment for our nation, we should be proud that our party put forth one of the most talented, qualified field of individuals ever to run for this office. I have not just competed with them as rivals, I have learned from them as friends, as public servants, and as patriots who love America and are willing to work tirelessly to make this country better. They are leaders of this party, and leaders that America will turn to for years to come.

That is particularly true for the candidate who has traveled further on this journey than anyone else. Senator Hillary Clinton has made history in this campaign not just because she's a woman who has done what no woman has done before, but because she's a leader who inspires millions of Americans with her strength, her courage, and her commitment to the causes that brought us here tonight.

We've certainly had our differences over the last sixteen months. But as someone who's shared a stage with her many times, I can tell you that what gets Hillary Clinton up in the morning - even in the face of tough odds - is exactly what sent her and Bill Clinton to sign up for their first campaign in Texas all those years ago; what sent her to work at the Children's Defense Fund and made her fight for health care as First Lady; what led her to the United States Senate and fueled her barrier-breaking campaign for the presidency - an unyielding desire to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, no matter how difficult the fight may be. And you can rest assured that when we finally win the battle for universal health care in this country, she will be central to that victory. When we transform our energy policy and lift our children out of poverty, it will be because she worked to help make it happen. Our party and our country are better off because of her, and I am a better candidate for having had the honor to compete with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

There are those who say that this primary has somehow left us weaker and more divided. Well I say that because of this primary, there are millions of Americans who have cast their ballot for the very first time. There are Independents and Republicans who understand that this election isn't just about the party in charge of Washington, it's about the need to change Washington. There are young people, and African-Americans, and Latinos, and women of all ages who have voted in numbers that have broken records and inspired a nation.

All of you chose to support a candidate you believe in deeply. But at the end of the day, we aren't the reason you came out and waited in lines that stretched block after block to make your voice heard. You didn't do that because of me or Senator Clinton or anyone else. You did it because you know in your hearts that at this moment - a moment that will define a generation - we cannot afford to keep doing what we've been doing. We owe our children a better future. We owe our country a better future. And for all those who dream of that future tonight, I say - let us begin the work together. Let us unite in common effort to chart a new course for America.

In just a few short months, the Republican Party will arrive in St. Paul with a very different agenda. They will come here to nominate John McCain, a man who has served this country heroically. I honor that service, and I respect his many accomplishments, even if he chooses to deny mine. My differences with him are not personal; they are with the policies he has proposed in this campaign.

Because while John McCain can legitimately tout moments of independence from his party in the past, such independence has not been the hallmark of his presidential campaign.

It's not change when John McCain decided to stand with George Bush ninety-five percent of the time, as he did in the Senate last year.

It's not change when he offers four more years of Bush economic policies that have failed to create well-paying jobs, or insure our workers, or help Americans afford the skyrocketing cost of college - policies that have lowered the real incomes of the average American family, widened the gap between Wall Street and Main Street, and left our children with a mountain of debt.

And it's not change when he promises to continue a policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians - a policy where all we look for are reasons to stay in Iraq, while we spend billions of dollars a month on a war that isn't making the American people any safer.

So I'll say this - there are many words to describe John McCain's attempt to pass off his embrace of George Bush's policies as bipartisan and new. But change is not one of them.

Change is a foreign policy that doesn't begin and end with a war that should've never been authorized and never been waged. I won't stand here and pretend that there are many good options left in Iraq, but what's not an option is leaving our troops in that country for the next hundred years - especially at a time when our military is overstretched, our nation is isolated, and nearly every other threat to America is being ignored.

We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in - but start leaving we must. It's time for Iraqis to take responsibility for their future. It's time to rebuild our military and give our veterans the care they need and the benefits they deserve when they come home. It's time to refocus our efforts on al Qaeda's leadership and Afghanistan, and rally the world against the common threats of the 21st century - terrorism and nuclear weapons; climate change and poverty; genocide and disease. That's what change is.

Change is realizing that meeting today's threats requires not just our firepower, but the power of our diplomacy - tough, direct diplomacy where the President of the United States isn't afraid to let any petty dictator know where America stands and what we stand for. We must once again have the courage and conviction to lead the free world. That is the legacy of Roosevelt, and Truman, and Kennedy. That's what the American people want. That's what change is.

Change is building an economy that rewards not just wealth, but the work and workers who created it. It's understanding that the struggles facing working families can't be solved by spending billions of dollars on more tax breaks for big corporations and wealthy CEOs, but by giving a the middle-class a tax break, and investing in our crumbling infrastructure, and transforming how we use energy, and improving our schools, and renewing our commitment to science and innovation. It's understanding that fiscal responsibility and shared prosperity can go hand-in-hand, as they did when Bill Clinton was President.

John McCain has spent a lot of time talking about trips to Iraq in the last few weeks, but maybe if he spent some time taking trips to the cities and towns that have been hardest hit by this economy - cities in Michigan, and Ohio, and right here in Minnesota - he'd understand the kind of change that people are looking for.

Maybe if he went to Iowa and met the student who works the night shift after a full day of class and still can't pay the medical bills for a sister who's ill, he'd understand that she can't afford four more years of a health care plan that only takes care of the healthy and wealthy. She needs us to pass health care plan that guarantees insurance to every American who wants it and brings down premiums for every family who needs it. That's the change we need.

Maybe if he went to Pennsylvania and met the man who lost his job but can't even afford the gas to drive around and look for a new one, he'd understand that we can't afford four more years of our addiction to oil from dictators. That man needs us to pass an energy policy that works with automakers to raise fuel standards, and makes corporations pay for their pollution, and oil companies invest their record profits in a clean energy future - an energy policy that will create millions of new jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced. That's the change we need.

And maybe if he spent some time in the schools of South Carolina or St. Paul or where he spoke tonight in New Orleans, he'd understand that we can't afford to leave the money behind for No Child Left Behind; that we owe it to our children to invest in early childhood education; to recruit an army of new teachers and give them better pay and more support; to finally decide that in this global economy, the chance to get a college education should not be a privilege for the wealthy few, but the birthright of every American. That's the change we need in America. That's why I'm running for President.

The other side will come here in September and offer a very different set of policies and positions, and that is a debate I look forward to. It is a debate the American people deserve. But what you don't deserve is another election that's governed by fear, and innuendo, and division. What you won't hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge, and patriotism as a bludgeon - that sees our opponents not as competitors to challenge, but enemies to demonize. Because we may call ourselves Democrats and Republicans, but we are Americans first. We are always Americans first.

Despite what the good Senator from Arizona said tonight, I have seen people of differing views and opinions find common cause many times during my two decades in public life, and I have brought many together myself. I've walked arm-in-arm with community leaders on the South Side of Chicago and watched tensions fade as black, white, and Latino fought together for good jobs and good schools. I've sat across the table from law enforcement and civil rights advocates to reform a criminal justice system that sent thirteen innocent people to death row. And I've worked with friends in the other party to provide more children with health insurance and more working families with a tax break; to curb the spread of nuclear weapons and ensure that the American people know where their tax dollars are being spent; and to reduce the influence of lobbyists who have all too often set the agenda in Washington.

In our country, I have found that this cooperation happens not because we agree on everything, but because behind all the labels and false divisions and categories that define us; beyond all the petty bickering and point-scoring in Washington, Americans are a decent, generous, compassionate people, united by common challenges and common hopes. And every so often, there are moments which call on that fundamental goodness to make this country great again.

So it was for that band of patriots who declared in a Philadelphia hall the formation of a more perfect union; and for all those who gave on the fields of Gettysburg and Antietam their last full measure of devotion to save that same union.

So it was for the Greatest Generation that conquered fear itself, and liberated a continent from tyranny, and made this country home to untold opportunity and prosperity.

So it was for the workers who stood out on the picket lines; the women who shattered glass ceilings; the children who braved a Selma bridge for freedom's cause.

So it has been for every generation that faced down the greatest challenges and the most improbable odds to leave their children a world that's better, and kinder, and more just.

And so it must be for us.

America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.

The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment - this was the time - when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals. Thank you, God Bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

Watch Full Obama Speech on C-SPAN

forty years without you

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❝ I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. ❞

[...really griping my cookies to be older than the peace symbol....]

listening to nitwits talk about martin

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Maybe it's from listening to survivors bestow Kennedy-tude on an unworthy successor -- though I suppose they're not likely to find another more fit in the time they have left on earth -- and maybe I'm too touchy, but I wonder can I ever listen to anyone on the subject of Martin without wanting to smack them? I've been listening to Chris Lydon interview Reverend Haynes about his days with Martin and, beside the truly annoying and almost ceaselessly whining dog in the background, Lydon liked to have hauled me off my chair with irk a few times.

At one point, referring to the bit linked with Martin's picture here, he talks about having watched and listened to this over and over and over and trying to fathom what must have been in Martin's mind. So unfathomable to him it seems. And the Reverend had to mention that Martin always knew he was in danger of being killed at any moment. I submit to you that Martin had been told in no uncertain terms that he would be assassinated if he did not immediately sit down and shut up. He did not, and he looks in each moment in this clip as if he were expecting the bullet to enter his face while he issued these immortal words. Lydon wondered too about his swift and purposeful departure from the podium. He was getting out of probable rifle sights, you dimwit.

He stood up and said maybe the most deeply meaningful words spoken in history, knowing they might very well be his last, they might very well not even get all the way out, and Lydon yimmers his mystification about it to Martin's old friend tonight in front of someone who would have given her life to save him then and would still give it to bring him back now.

I was fifteen when they murdered him. He'd been my hero already for some years. He was the one who put the truth in front of me so I could know it, answered my bewilderment over coming face to face with darker strangers who seemed to both hate me and fear me, even as a very little girl. He spoke of the same country the Kennedys did. He spoke to all humanity, for blessed once not to one side or the other of one made up thing or another. I haven't even been able to think the words "I have a dream" without tears welling and my fist shooting up to pump the air since he first said them to the world at the Lincoln Memorial.

There's another netcasting guy who has pissed me off so badly I want hotly to do something so violent upon him in person that he will never open his mouth in public again. Bob Kincaid. He's so fixated on dissing "the religion industry" he does stuff like insult Islamic women in their "beekeeper suits" -- which I understand is a Robin Williams joke and it was funny as that, once, but not as a habitual (no pun) mode of talking about them -- and then goes on to mention that he does think well of Dr. King... "even though he always talked about his invisible friend".

Well, I'm sorry, Bob, but I've never had an inclination to religion in my life, not even as a credulous small child in Sunday School, but I can tell when someone is speaking the truth... with whatever terms he uses to express it. That you are too thick-witted to discern Martin would have known far better than you how to say what needed to be said doesn't let you off the hook for your filthy mouth. He was talking about actual reality to a world inured to putative realities, and he had to use the language that brought his audience to the level on which they could hear it... hear real truth. He was speaking to our truest selves, that which people call "spirit" or "soul", and in his time, in his school, with his people, that was how you addressed the unsayable in words. It still is for many, no matter if there are literally millions misusing the terms.

But that's not even it, is it? You're so busy portraying yourself as an iconoclastic bugger you take no heed of the transcendental insults you sling as you go about your merry self-portraiture to the few marveling at the vocabulary of a hillbilly talking into a mic. Problem is: We should call you "Moe".

My heroes were murdered one by one. The men that I most admired, slaughtered for wanting my health and well-being over the profits of plutocrats. I was asking my teachers why all the great men in history had been murdered or killed themselves. Why do the beautiful almost always die before their times? Why is the penalty for genius death? How could such great love be met with such coldness, such vicious fear, such seething hate? And they were picking off the living heroes as though they were yanking off my limbs right in the here and now, not just in my history books.

Even so, I would have as many heroes as beings and die instead. What's wrong with all these so-called talkers? These so-called bloggers? These so-called media people? Is their vision so blurred, their intelligence so muddled they cannot come up on the truth or even the subject of heroes who knew and told and lived the truth without exposing only their stunted wits and vital ineptitude? This seems like sacrilege to me.

We need those heroes back! Not their lineage bestowed in the hope of encouraging some charming dope to greatness. It would be enough to just have our dead heroes be left whole until at least we've grown real ones again to take up their cause, but everyone who tries to get on the subject just keeps blowing it so badly! Not even real enough to come up to Martin's knees, for crying out loud. How are we going to grow heroes if that is the best we can do?

i have a dream

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Can you stand to listen to somebody talking about the killers? Two hours in two parts: one and two....

Bill Moyers puts in his 2¢ worth....

happy birthday most beautiful hero

Don't listen to those poseurs invoking your name to get elected. Feel the intent of those of us who really love you and know from the clouds and the blades of grass that our dream is yours.



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It may be cold to tack this on as an update, but it is what it is. And, actually, what it is is a way to make this post without upsetting Agent BB2 when he opens this page. He can't take getting smacked in the face with Clinton, and this way he has a moment to gird himself before the fateful frightful sight.

Click this picture of our candidate harpies:See what I mean? I'm gonna hate having either of these for president.

truth

55 minutes

Well worth your time.