Obama is a transcendent figure. In DC, my hometown, that night, everyone poured out on the street. It was a city, the nation a polis. We are citizens again.

The Greek influence so heavily woven into the founding doctrines of the US was simply Greek: one viewed things as -- "on the one hand" followed always by "on the other hand." Both sides are sought, balance the guide. "Bend not break" said the chrous in Antigone.

The Rovian Republicans who sought to be the permanent party and force are now split, and trying openly and hard to shake off the Frankenstein monster they courted and fed, the Christian Right.

What beats our heart beats all hearts: Love. Eros quickening.

And here, what I hope is my final blog...

What Obama did was amazing: he created the community we'd lost. How many emails and calls did we get from other volunteers? And places were created in every state and *in small towns* where we could MEET. The local Dems here didn't pay for Rocky Mount's Obama office. The local people did it out of their own pockets. We went around party politics and met as citizens, as "community." Who financed this victory? We did. This is beyond party, beyond corporate power. Obama is brilliant, a uniting force. That's why I say -- transcendent.

http://themoonsfavors.blogspot.com/2008/11/how-these-gibbering-numbskulls-came-to.html

Read more »

watch

http://themoonsfavors.blogspot.com/2008/10/note-to-joe-plumber.html

I read comments like this on the net:

    All this talk about taxing big businesses is nothing more than (Obama's) way to get to the middle class. You see it's a downward spiral effect. Who's giving you that paycheck? Yeah, that's what I thought.

"Giving" me the paycheck? You mean -- pay for work is a handout?

Think. Who makes this money for big business? Who does the work, keeps things going, figures things out at the actual physical level? Who makes it so THE BOSS, the company, the stockholder gets paid? The worker. And happy they are to do so if they can live on their wage, put a roof over their head, food on the table, and care for their kids. Happy they are to commit decades to a company that responds fairly to them.

A strong, healthy, well educated workforce is essential to any business.

Joe the plumber wants to expand and grow his business, and worries he will have to pay more taxes under Obama once he makes over 250G -- which most small business don't. But if Joe the Plumber wants to expand, he has to hire workers. What kind of workers does he want? Healthy, educated, workers; people he can trust to do the work, who believe in his experience and leadership, things essential in a boss.

Naturally, Joe the plumber wants his crew to get to work on time. Rain, snow, sleet. So he, as well as they, depend on good transportation, good roads and good public maintenance of roads. Good health care delivery so that his workers can come to work strong an give him their best. Smart workers, well schooled workers. The best he can afford.

We could go on. But think about it, Joe. This is what taxes are about. Making the country run, making the good workers good so they can make all that wealth.

Makes perfect sense that the more wealth a company makes, the more it depends on all the things taxes go to pay for.

And this is what Obama told you about sharing the wealth, the three words that McPalin have blasted everywhere. Did you listen? Get the rest of that idea? Obama told you we share the wealth so we all can grow -- because, as a business, YOU NEED PEOPLE TO BE ABLE TO PAY YOU FOR YOUR SERVICES(you and your worker, that is; the people who actually go out on the truck for you to the job and actually DO the WORK).

Socialism? Where? This is foundational, defining to whatever our country has been, what's made it grow. Is that socialism? Working together to meet our needs as a nation? What a big umbrella of a word you make it.

Country first? Sure! How can we spread Democracy to the world if we are not strong at home? The strength of a nation is its workers, not just its executives, its stockholders. Though they all -- by taking care in their investing, by not empowering things that do harm (such as? tech that pollutes, that takes its profits upfront and yet are not held accountable, for instance; mortgage brokers who make bad loans, thinking of profit only; we could go on, but you get the idea), pave the road to the future.

You know, money isn't equal really -- not in actual life. What's $1000 to someone making $20,000 a year? What's it to someone making a million? It's all relative, all changing, based on things that change.  

Actually, most of our taxes go for arms. (Don't believe me? watch this. You'll like it.) But is it so bad to help take care of the needy, the wounded soldiers, the elderly  (I know; it's not fair that we age and die, but what can you do?), the sick, ... the roads, the bridges, the schools that make life better for us all? Things that are necessary to live?

We're so disconnected from our needs, from seeing what shapes our world. I hope most of all that we connect with it again, plan and envision together. That's the strength of a nation. Of a whole planet.

Obama sees that.

McCain just wants to win, to be executive in chief of the wars he sees no way around. And Palin hasn't any idea about any of this. Palin serves an enraptured cult of twisted prophecy that has made the Bible into a magic book. You really want that in charge of the bomb? What were you thinking, McCain?

Must say, that's one terrific picture of McCain leading off AEI's David Frum's WaPo piece  Sorry, Senator. Let's Salvage What We Can.  And, oh, it feels good to read the numbers, that the Republican's haven't been this bad since Watergate. It tells me to put my feet up, relax. All the things Obama warns us about in his two little word speech: New Hampshire.

Don't listen to polls, Obama warned. Keep coming. Just keep coming.

I'm also thinking back a few weeks to Rove saying Obama had the election bagged. If that doesn't make you smell something rotten, you don't know Rove. And then we have Bobby Kennedy's Block the Vote in Rolling Stone, and reach for the antacid.

These dark times, this loss, these last eight years...

And now, Palin  and the talk of the  Republican bubble becoming so inflated it bursts the party in two. Well. At least the Fundi End-timers will be a hobbled minority. So it comes as almost a relief to think of the GOP being led by plain old cloth coat conservatives.

Except that they stood by and let the Paul Weyrich's and Falwells in. That they stood by and embraced Newt's take-no-prisoners Contact On America. (Newt, fond of psychohistory... and Palin a sort of Frankenstein monster of following that logic out. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy yields Self-Fulfilling Prophet.) That they stood back and said little or nothing as Tom Delay simply refused to bring matters to floor and table as he wholesale bullied us out of the Constitution.

So. Today we have Mr. Frum in that same Sorry Senator (McCain) piece projecting the sickness onto the Democrats. He says   

First, with the financial meltdown, the federal government is now acquiring a huge ownership stake in the nation's financial system. It will be immensely tempting to officeholders in Washington to use that stake for political ends -- to reward friends and punish enemies. One-party government, of course, will intensify those temptations. And as the federal government succumbs, officeholders will become more and more comfortable holding that stake. The current urgency to liquidate the government's position will subside. The United States needs Republicans and conservatives to monitor the way Democrats wield this extraordinary and dangerous new power -- and to pressure them to surrender it as rapidly as feasible.
Second, the political culture of the Democratic Party has changed over the past decade. There's a fierce new anger among many liberal Democrats, a more militant style and an angry intolerance of dissent and criticism. This is the culture of the left-wing blogosphere and MSNBC's evening line-up -- and soon, it will be the culture of important political institutions in Washington.
Unchecked, this angry new wing of the Democratic Party will seek to stifle opposition by changing the rules of the political game. Some will want to silence conservative talk radio by tightening regulation of the airwaves via the misleadingly named "fairness doctrine"; others may seek to police the activities of right-leaning think tanks by a stricter interpretation of what is tax-deductible and what is not.

and so forth.

I take a deep breath. And see it's all ready begun. Even as your party prepares to lose, it's the same old projection and doublespeak. The same old promise of opposition.

Let's be fair and balanced, Mr Frum. Let's be really honest. Really focused. Let's remember, and take a good look back at what got us here: Your willingness to use a means to an end.  Open mind and read
THE MISERY OF BEING A HOUSE DEMOCRAT.

A "fierce new anger" among Democrats is not simply your vile old Democrats.  It's the rational anger of a  whole nation that has been hijacked.  Are you and your fellow think tank conservatives going to continue to be part of the problem? Or will you roll up your sleeves? 

Please.

the moon's favors

Last night was worried (make that all caps) about the whole economic mess, the election, etc., and (being human) made a little wager with the gods. It involved the cat toy I had in hand and the blue and white vase in the dining room corner where I keep such things. Wager: If I get this in with one toss, all will be well. (Duh!)

Well, soon as toy left hand I regretted it; bad toss, not even trying, and it's dangerous to make wagers with gods. And sure enough, the thing -- a little glow in dark ball with yarn tails -- hits the floor, not even close. And just as fast it rebounds and goes in.

Thank (YOUR THEORY HERE) we don't have to make our hearts beat or the earth move or the sun rise. Thank it for the best laid plans that oft go astray.

Faith. Maybe something in my files: That 'Mystic Mem'ry' (and that's Orphic language, fellow navigators, water brothers, and beloved) Tolkien writes of... we keep forgetting and remembering. Art never forgets, and it's the heart of Tolkien's LOTR, and modern works like the movie Adaptation... those bees that look like the orchids they make love to: all they do is follow their heart... all they do is what Nature made them to do, and they do it without any knowledge but love.

Nature is wise, wiser, wiser than any of us. Follow the heart. It's what you were born to do. All the rest is a flash in the pan. Because, as the great biologist Lewis Thomas taught us, symbiosis--not unbridled competition--is the principle of what endures. As in YES WE CAN.

When you've studied biology, macro and micro, you find you fall in love with such things. Everyday, steeped in soulful colloids sleeping on the brink of life: impregnate them with -cides and -stats, and they become battlegrounds of the chosen stillborn, poppy fields of abjuration... Romantics, all, deep in the blood agar agar. :)

night:
Yep. Josh's YouTube in "MCain's Legions" takes me back to 2000 and the KC Freepers... hard to think that this is now, this is STILL, that this cult of FOX tv / mall church faithful seem all the more disinformed, cultist, and hateful:

.

*********
day:
Yesterday, we got to see Obama in Roanoke, and even in the rain the event was full of sun. Well organized buses took us for a short ride from the easy to find parking lots. People were helpful, friendly, with not one hateful shout, though I did see a kid with an anti-Bush button on his cap. Did notice, however, that Roanoke's finest -- the police -- looked angry and not so helpful. I asked one big burly blond if I could go into the rally through the doors he seemed to guard. "Can you?" his smart reply. "I don't know. Can you?" So I was sure to smile at him (my best smile, my grandmother Mitchell's) and thank him afterwards, how nice it all was, so orderly, etc.

The crowd was happy, responsive, Webb's warm up terrific. And Obama? Courageous and made for this time, he makes me believe the yes of yes.

Afterwards, I talked to a lady from a German newspaper about what strikes me most of all. This:

McCain has told us we will have more war; that war is inevitable. He says this easily, this man who sings Bomb, Bomb Iran, thoughtless as a robot about what bombs do to the innocent, the collateral, the inadvertent targets. Clearly, alternatives to war are very secondary thoughts. War comes easy for McCain, and he wants badly to be commander and chief of it all.

And Palin. She terrifies me. It's more obvious evey time she opens her mouth that she doesn't know what she doesn't know. The world is a little one-layer cake for her, all so simple. So neat. Most of all, she embraces a cult church in love with End Time Theocracy. For her, nothing must stand in its way.

In short, McCain-Palin truly believe they know the future and that they have the ready made answers to take us there.

Obama is so different. Equipped with deep intelligence and a necessary humility, he understands that no one knows the future. His genius is in bringing people together to solve problems. That's what a leader does.