So, my wife and I asked around to see who wanted to go and got a friend who last December exclaimed, "Do you really think America's going to elect a black man president? Really?" She's not racist, she just thinks the rest of the country is. But she's all excited about Obama now.

We drove from Kalamazoo to Battle Creek. Got in line at 1 p.m. (News later said some arrived at 2 a.m.) It was a small crowd then at C. O. Brown Stadium, a minor league ballpark. But it grew to 16,000, with the line going way back to the street, hopefully to where the 10 twits with the McCain signs were protesting. For comparison, George W. Bush, as president running for reelection in 2004, got 10,000.

Sun, heat, body-temp bottled water, melting power bars and nuts, sweating crowds, lack of a clear view of the podium, and waiting, waiting, waiting -- I had warned that "History isn't easy," but my people grew tired of my foreboding proclamations. And I would have liked to tell the kid next to me that sweats in such an environment make you smell like a well-used dog bed.... but such negativity just wasn't appropriate.

We got in at around 5 p.m. to stand around on the field for another three and a half hours before the warm-up acts.

I kept getting this chill (the Matthews "thrill up my leg"?) as I looked around. This is history. It's freakin' amazing. There are a lot of various peoples in south Michigan, it often seems like there is too much self-segregation of races and classes, but they were all there, packed together and sweating but happy to wait for Barack Hussain Obama. (The many hardcore Republicans of the area probably weren't there, but the local news did interview a Rep. lady who decided Obama is best for the nation.) Whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, hippies, seniors, farmers, workers, students. Talking and joking with each other, all upbeat despite the heat and the wait.

This is what it could be, in the utopian, idealistic vision of America. I don't think that an Obama administration will magically bring it about, but I know it would take a few steps, at the least, in the right direction, instead of continuing the leisurely Bush/McCain stroll in the wrong direction.

We then got some choir singing, pledge of allegiance taking, star spangled bannering, etc. I've never been flag-wavingly patriotic, but I've been thinking how I could be, if the country got together to form a government that works for the voters' best interests instead of yanking voters' chains and working for the "free market's" best interests. As Obama said that night, letting the nation degrade is "un-American." Hell yeah.

Then came some local politicians, followed by Senator Debbie Stabinow, and the guy trying to get to Washington from Battle Creek, <a href="http://www.markschauer.com/">Mark Schauer</a>. (<a href="http://www.markschauer.com/node/1272">Here</a> he is with the special edition Frosted Flakes box with Obama and Biden, "They're Great!" There's some wordage from the media about the box on that page, as well as more info/news reaction from the event.)

Then Joe hit the podium. Biden got a rockstar treatment (if you think Obama's pick was just a boring old Washington guy, know that many just don't have your reaction). He got on the basic themes we heard from the convention. Places like Michigan got knocked down, but we gotta get back up again. But John Sidney McCain the III won't help us get back up.

Then Obama showed up, and the place went nuts. He quieted them down, and did his thing.

Like the convention speech, it wasn't the "soaring rhetoric" that all the talking heads say he's built his early campaign on. Obama told us what's wrong, why and how we need to fix it, and that McCain isn't going to do jack because "he just doesn't get it."

I tried to capture as much of it as I could on my bulky camera's movie function. Wasn't easy holding the camera above my head and looking up at the screen to keep the guy in the white shirt targeted, but that was the only way to see the next president of the United States.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZA4SZEbLEs">Here's the best clip</a>, taken as he built up to a kick-ass ending. Kick-McCain-ass, showing his skill at <i><b>barackarate!!!</b></i> "And I am going to change our foreign policy, because I am tired of listening to folks who talk tough and act dumb!"

Our state unemployment rate is 8.5 per cent, and our auto industry is status-quoing itself into failure. Note in the above clip one of Obama's strongest moments of the night, where he compares the goal of getting alternative fuel vehicles built here in Michigan with Kennedy's goal of getting to the moon.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/EdisonForChange">Here are where all the clips will be collected.</a> As soon as I get them up. Hey, it's Labor Day. Sunny. What am I doing at this computer?

He's the hot topic of the day! People are searching him out on Google!
The name made my brain itch. Yeah, all I gotta do is search for Bill Ayers on my computer.
I talked to Ayers in 2002. We had a long talk. It was my job to do so (no, I'm not a terrorist or radical).
From my detailed notes I found buried in an old file on my computer:
He had written his book, "Fugitive Days: A Memoir." Lucky him, it came out around September, 2001.
He didn't see himself as a terrorist or an ex-terrorist. And he wasn't exactly proud of the Weathermen times of 30 years back.
Ayers told me, from my notes: "The coincidence of the book and the events of September were in many ways terrible, and I was accused of being an unrepentant terrorist again and again, which I consider wrong on both counts. I was never a terrorist and I'm sorry about a lot of things."
"The timing of the release was unfortunate, but in some ways had a positive aspect in that it forces open some questions that need to be talked about. For example, what is terrorism? Certainly what we witnessed on Sept. 11 was an act of pure terror, that is innocent people were targeted for the purpose of intimidation and influencing policy and was carried out by a group of right wing fundamentalist thugs, and in some ways they archived what they wanted, which was to inch us closer to world war, and create the kind of dry, arid society they have in mind. It was a horrible, horrible event, and in many ways, set the world back."
About the Wethermen's use of bombs way back when: "Well, here's the thing... There's no question that we crossed some lines and took certain risks for ourselves and others that are worth debating and discussing But we not only intended not to kill or hurt anybody, but we never did...."
"So there's one chapter that's gotten quoted quite a bit in the media, where I describe a rather flamboyant and outrageous action that the Weather Underground undertook, which was to put a small, one and a half pound bomb in a pipe in the Pentagon that went off in the middle of the night 30 years ago. What I describe in that chapter is a group of young Americans, the Weather people, slightly off-the-track, despairing but determined to go through that action. And I describe another group of young Americans, also off-the-track, also despairing, walking into a village in Vietnam (My Lai) and killing animals, looting, maiming, burning buildings and killing 347 people, mainly women and children, and I raise the question, what is terrorism?"
He talked to me how the Weathermen were basically brainwashing themselves. They tried protest, got clubbed in Chicago '68, saw Nixon get elected, saw the war and the draft drag on, but nothing they did seemed to do any good. So they turned radical, and convinced themselves that they needed to do destructive things.
What he learned from the experience: "We have to resist the kind of dogmatism of our own thinking, we have to resist the sense of self-righteousness, which is portrayed in gaudy detail in the book, the sense of getting ourselves isolated in a little cell of our own creation where all we hear is each other's echoes, and then we start to elevate tactics above strategy and above principal, and that's a disaster. You must act, but you must doubt."
More from my notes: He is one of the co-directors of the Small Schools Workshop in Chicago, and has worked together with a WMU (Western Michigan University) professor on putting together the Gear Up program, which obtained a $14.5 million dollar federal grant to work on school restructuring in schools including Battle Creek, Bangor (two Michigan towns) and three districts in Chicago.
At that time, early 2002, Ayers was a Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago, author of bunch of books on education, and an education reformer who was dubbed Deputy Mayor for School Reform in Chicago under Mayor Richard Daley Jr. (son of the Daley of '68).
So, anyway. There's what I found in my computer. Trolls, I know the exact thing you're going to pull out of what I got here. First one to get it gets my special prize.

Michigan -- my state. The Great Lakes. Motown. The polite yet brutally honest people. We are a hearty people, I tell my wife when she complains about the winter weather.

Our political environment can be rather funky. We have a Canadian Democratic female governor. Senator Levin is ours, Senator Stabenow, too. We've voted against Bush every chance we got, even in the 2000 Republican primary when we thought McCain was a straight talker and not a lying hypocrite.

We also have the DeVos family, powerful Republicans who made their money off the scheme known as Amway. Betsy DeVos, 2004 Bush-Cheny "Pioneer" and all-around uber-Republican, is the sister of Erik Prince of Holland, Mich. Prince is the founder of Blackwater USA.

Gerald Ford also came from Michigan, but he was a moderate Democrat compared to those people.

We gave the country Michael Moore and Ted Nugent.

So, the question of our Democratic primary is a complex one.

In January, in crappy winter weather, we went out to vote. The results:

Hillary Rodham Clinton - 328,151 - 55.3%
Uncommitted -  237,762 - 40.0
Dennis J. Kucinich - 21,708 - 3.7
Christopher J. Dodd - 3,853 - 0.6
Mike Gravel - 2,363 - 0.4

Some names were missing on the ballot. Also, there was no campaigning.

Yes, we were bad. We wanted an early primary so we, a large state going through rough times with a population of 10,095,643 hard working folks, could have an impact.

We're sorry. It'll never happen again.

So... could we have a do-over?

The funny thing is, 40%, 237,762 people, bothered to come out into the snow to vote for "Uncomitted." There was an effort at the time, strictly via web and word of mouth, to get Obama supporters to vote for Mr. U. The thinking was that if the delegates were seated then the uncomitted would maybe go to the Obama side. This cockamaimie plan managed to motivate 40%, back in the time when Obama was still an underdog.

Governor Granholm, when asked if she'd support a do-over, said "No." Rather bluntly dismissed it. Turns out she's a Clinton supporter, also.

I can see the point in not spending more state funds on another primary -- we are broke. Would there be any way to get the party to fund a primary or caucus?

I put this all out there because I hear rumblings about getting my state to matter again. Because I feel like John Travolta, all "Boy In The Plastic Bubble" like. This is the first time I really wanted to do something to choose the Democratic candidate. I can put my hand against the plastic, and you can put yours up on the other side, but can we really touch?