As It Should Be

Sometimes things just work out better. A softball team playing a brand new one with little equipment and no experience stops the game and uses the time to help out the new team.

Nice Change of Pace

Talk about a 180 from before:

Mr. Obama walked into a meeting room in the basement of the capitol at 12:17 p.m., greeted by a moderate burst of applause from the audience of dozens of House Republicans. After a short while, another round of applause could be heard in the hallway outside the closed-door session taking place in Room HC-5. The loudest applause, attendees said, came when Mr. Obama decided to let the questioning go on, even though that meant senators would have to wait for him a while longer. The questioning lasted an hour.

“We had a wonderful exchange of ideas and I continue to be optimistic about our ability to get this recovery package done to put people back to work,” Mr. Obama said, speaking to reporters as he left the House meeting.

As he moved to a similar meeting in the Senate, he added, “I recognize that we’re not going to get 100 percent of support, but I think everybody there felt good that I was willing to explain how we put the package together, how we were thinking about it, and that we continue to welcome some good ideas.”

Maybe it won't last or maybe it's not sincere, but I think and hope that it is.

Flava!

We Finally Win One

The fifth presidential election of my voting life proved to be the charm. Granted, the first three votes I cast were never going to win (Paul Tsongas, my brother-in-law, Ralph Nader) but I was sure that the Shrub's mistakes would cost him the 2004 election. Unfortunately John Kerry had to be an überweiner and run a lousy campaign. That one really stung.

So it was with a jaded eye that I went to the Majestic (the old vaudeville theater) in downtown Madison to watch the election returns with like-minded citizens. They projected MSNBC onto a large screen and when my roommate, his girlfriend, another friend, his girlfriend, and I arrived, the anchors were pretty much just chattering as only a handful of states were called. We took our position near the back, got some drinks, and waited. Not many people were there, but slowly the crowd filled in.

As usual, we engaged in our sarcastic jokes and and whitless banter.

Then more results came in: Kentucky, New Jersey, Delaware. None of those were surprises. The surprise was the how close both Virginia and North Carolina were. I never suspected that North Carolina would ever go blue this election and of this writing it is still up in the air. Yet my roommate was sweating just the same. I knew how this election was going to end, but I couldn't quite sense it given the last few years.

Then Michigan went blue and the growing crowd cheered loudly at the news. While I was in line for a second round, the engineer brought down the music that was playing during the commercial break and put up the broadcast volume. The crowd went silent knowing that's when the talking heads called states. A face came on the screen and said "We have another state went for Obama ... Ohio. The dead silent crowd erupted. No Republican has ever been elected president without taking Ohio and its 20 electoral votes. That was the clincher for Obama and the death knell for McCain. Still, my lingering doubt was still napping on the sofa.

An hour later, when the West Coast polls closed, they called some state, maybe Colorado, for Obama, and then obligingly covered California in blue. We had elected Obama the 44th president of the United States. None of us in my group could quite believe it, even though the result was pretty clear for the past couple of weeks. The crowd went crazy and the cheer didn't die down for another half hour when McCain walked out to give his concession speech.

About half the crowd started booing. I yelled "SHUT UP!" as loudly as I could. The election was over. Even Grant let the soldiers of the Army of North Virginia keep their rifles, swords and horses after four bitter years of fighting. Now was the time to bury the hatchet and appreciate that democracy had worked once again. McCain gave a beautiful speech that made all of us recall the McCain of 2000 that each of us would have voted for had he made it out of the primaries. He was gracious and uplifting. It gave the feeling that maybe the old McCain would return as an elder statesman in the Senate, one that would be blessed to have him.

We waited a while for Obama to get to Grant Park for his victory speech. The screen showed images from around the country. One black woman was curled up in the fetal position crying, not believing the country whose Constitution once would have counted her as three-fifths of a person would elect an African-American as President. There were lots of cheering faces of all colors. The one that struck me the most was of a crying Jesse Jackson. Here is a man who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. for civil rights in 60's watching all he worked for bear fruit.

Barrack Obama's speech is one for the annals of the United States. He said all of the right things and he said them with sincerity. For the first time in my life, I not just felt, but actually sensed that the country was moving forward. I'm no idealist nor am I prone to fanciful thinking. I’m an optimist by nature, realist by nurture and pessimist by experience. It’s just feels like the world is new, like Christmas day when I was a kid. The anticipation is gone and the presents are open so I can just enjoy. I’m giving myself a couple of days of that before I let the reality back in.

Now if only that fucking Proposition 8 had gone down in flames....

Oh, sorry. Old habits die hard, if at all.

Thanks For Noticing, Mr. Obama!

Time To Vote

I want to promote Brendon Etter for Mayor! Considering that the last people to comment on my blog were Brendon and Michael Kirby, creator of "Brendon Etter For Mayor" on Facebook, I'm sure my endorsement will ring far and wide.

Pollyanna Has a Nervous Breakdown

Normally I'm a Pollyanna. I see problems and believe that they'll get better with enough effort put into the solution. From time to time, my optimism fails me. This post is just one piece that has me worried, but it illustrates my fears pretty well.

On a Scale From One to My Ass Is Sore

Back in the Fall of 1996, I went with my friend, Mike Wolfe, to catch a new art house flick. After the movie, I created a new scale on how much I hated a movie. A one meant that it was so/so and I wished I hadn't paid to see it. The worst grade was My Ass Is Sore, that meant I lost interest in even loosely following the film and instead focused on my aching posterior. Of course the film in question received the prestigious MAIS award.



Today, the director of said movie died. I don't wish anyone any misery, so I'm not reveling in it. I'm just glad that I won't have to give out another MAIS.

Serenity

Every so often, I dig through my own blog's archives searching for what I was think at such and such a time. Sometimes I find patterns or remember a funny, but forgotten story. So in the interest of sanity (now and in the future), I'm writing down moments when all is calm.

- Sitting in the Kohl Center watching a game.

- Watching an NAG production.

- Getting lost in a book or article.

- Walking around an unfamiliar or semi-familiar city.

- Sitting on a boat on a lake up north.

- Walking around all bundled up when it's below freezing.

- Half sleeping while watching some movie I've seen twenty times.




I know there's more, but I forget at the moment. Anyway....