Amen.

Thanks. As always, Rec'd.

Very nice, Chrono...well said. Glad you're feeling "idealistic." Feels good, doesn't it?

I am right there with you. Blown away but really not surprised. A leader and an example for us all.

I will share again that I saw an old clip of Joe Biden where he talks about how to recognize a leader.

'A leader changes attitudes' he said.

I have never seen a leader like Senator Obama before but I recognized him as such the first time I saw him.

Good post Chrono!

What I noticed was how he avoided easy generalizations and pat attacks. He appealed to the best in us; both practical and idealistic.

Thanks, everyone! For your recommends and your comments. Greatly appreciated, as always. =)

I liked Senator Obama's speech -- as an effective and necessary political device. I mean that as a compliment. He faced several political challenges that he met as well as anyone could have expected. He had to both rebut specious Republican attacks on himself as well as reframe his own attacks upon the opposition in terms that will make it difficult for McBush and the Geriatric Old Poops to respond. If he wins election because of this pragmatic political speech, then he will have plenty of opportunities in his inaugural addresses to make the truly historic connections that he just couldn't provide in this instance.

He spoiled things a bit for me by engaging in sophomoric cold-war platitudes about "Russian aggression" (inexcusably uninformed and needlessly belligerent); and his "rebuilding the military" canard (when our Warfare Welfare State needs dismantling) practically guaranteed that America will never have the fiscal resources available to solve the social and economic problems he said he wanted to address. (The Clinton prosperity of the 1990s, after all, derived principally from the once-in-a-lifetime "peace dividend" accruing from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the downsizing of American military spending.)

I do realize, however, that with McBush pounding on him as insufficiently militaristic and far-too-closet-Muslim to ever kiss Israeli asses with the required devotion, that he had to cave in and pander to the country's endemic debilitating imperialism. So, again, I had my down moments with some things in his speech, but overall I think he did himself and his party far more good than harm.

As a lifelong student of both semiotics and rhetoric, I had really wanted Obama to do a Marc Anthony drubbing of Julius Caesar's assassins by calling out McBush -- repeatedly -- as an "honorable" man who did such horribly dishonorable things. So I listened hard for echoes of "friends, Romans, and countrymen: I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him." Barack Obama didn't make the rhetorical connection as elegantly or as forthrightly as I wanted him to, but I do think he came pretty close without having to answer for true literary and rhetorical brilliance. Americans would never stand for having a president that accomplished.

As a late-breaking aside: the unforced McBush implosion in picking an Alaska non-entity beauty-queen governor for a running mate today pretty much hands the election to Obama and Biden if they only continue to appear reasonable and competent over the next sixty days. The Obama acceptance speech will wane for a few news cycles in importance, but it will return for positive comparison with whatever drivel pours from between McBush's drooling lips in a few days.