and $25 a month since sometime last year....and I kick him a little bit every time I get pissed off at Clinton or McCain or traditional media.  

His message may be one of unity, but he's benefited from quite a bit of my anger.

Can't afford to give much.  If only there were a really wealthy person who supported the candidate I like who would give me a bunch of cash so I could keep a few bucks and donate the rest to a candidate of my choice.

Of course, no Democratic candidate for president would use a tactic like this, right?

Just sent off my third $100 contribution. It's tax season, but that speech, and the one today on Iraq, call for some support.

And it may prevent me from buying that Prius I've always had my eye on...actually who am I kidding - I can hardly afford a blender on grad student pay :-)

I skip meals for Obama.  That's how important this is to me.

I forgot to add this to the laundry list of things that Hillary needs to come clean on immeadiatly:

~ The $$$ donor list to the Clinton Library and the Bill Clinton foundation.

Unlike her false claim, Hillary is Far from being "vetted"....

PLEASE, can we just stop this? Can't we follow Senator Obama's example? Does there HAVE to be something WRONG with Senator Clinton to allow us to be able to prefer Senator Obama? Can't we please stop cutting down another Democrat in order to lift Obama up?

I'm going to have to diary this because it is getting to me. We give the Republicans mojo when we dump on each other.

Stop. No more. It's tempting, but Senator Obama just showed us how we don't have to do it. Y'all just go look at his speech one more time and then come back and if you can't show Hillary some compassion and respect (no matter how you feel about her) then you just don't talk about her at all.

I'm so serious. Do y'all want to win in Novemeber or not? The internicine slicing and dicing has got to stop.

But discouragement is a form of denial about the huge forces we are coming up against.  We are in denial about how hard it is to cause humanistic social change and evolution.

The first thing that is brilliantly clear to me is that all the stuff thrown at Obama is really not because he is black, it is because he is a true, true evolutionary leader who has inspired millions with his message of equality and the embedded powers will use whatever they can to destroy him.  And race is a convenient wedge issue, appealing to the fears of the ignorant.  They want things to stay the same, thank you, as they continue to rape and pillage our material world and our human rights and freedoms.

We both have got to get realistic about the entities with which we are dealing.  Raw, entrenched, monied, priviliged, power is not going "to go quietly into that good night,"  and release from it's tight claws, equal access to goods and services and rights that they enjoy.  Frankly history is on their side.  It takes enormous strength to get them to share any of the wealth of life and liberty with the populace.  Just look at how enormous the struggles in our history have been with the great movements led by the visionaries of our time, such as the Dalai Lama-(let's pray for him right now;) Martin Luthur King, Ghandi, Mandela....  In all cases, it took a life-time.  But that in itself is misleading, because that life-time was supported by life-times before, that prepared the way.

We each need to find ways and truths and beliefs that will be genuine and sustaining in the fight for greater equality and democracy. And I think that that is one of the benefits of the discourse on this website.  And certainly part of that is finding ways to realistically assess our opponents and what they do and how they do it.  Senator Obama has revealed himself very skilled in that art.  We would serve him well to develop our skills in that direction as well.

There are others on this site who are veterans of the political process who have attained a realism without poisoning cynicism, from whom we can learn.

My life has exposed me to a wide variety of social ills in many countries and it overwhelms me at times.  But then I think about how small my own life is from one perspective, but from another, how important that I, in whatever small way I can, carry the torch of the humanistic beliefs that I have.  That you also have, that we all have here.  That's why we're here after all; not only to share ideas, but mainly to support each other.

It seems to me that politics is a blood sport and the winner will not be the one 'who has earned it' but frankly who has outwitted and outplayed his/her opponent.  Obama's genius is that he has taken that fight out of the gutter to a new playing field, by his superior ability to outwit and outplay his opponents to date.

The Movie, "Amazing Grace" re. William Wilberforce who dedicated his entire life to get England to stop slavery, although a wee bit idealized, certainly has many parallels to what is going on now.  And of course, as many on this site have described, the HBO miniseries on the life of John Adams is very powerful stuff, describing many of the struggles for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that we all are fighting for now.  They are both very inspiring to me.

Peace.

naked in the forest, burn flesh from unknown origins, and make all sorts of wierd symbols in the ground and on trees, and there'll be the missing white girl virgin on the altar...and we'll be shown all this on some grainy video from telephoto night vision camera, and then they'll zoom in a tall black man with a long knife visible only from the rear angle.  Yea, sort of like like that Bohemian Grove thing where the world leaders gather to 'Sacrifice Care' and engage in debauchery of the sort the young Ms. Dupre hasn't even thought of yet.  Just need David Gurgen to do some quotable commentary on it to give it that official pundit seal of approval.