Obama's Night

Wow,

First off, Gov. Richardson was great.

Then they lead up to Sen. Obama with a group of warm ups,

1. The woman from North Carolina, with her and her husband losing everything to illnesses and HMO's screwing them was a powerful talk.
2. Mr Barney Smith, lifelong Republican and his Marion, IN losing their factory jobs to China, and him losing his healthcare, his job, savings and everything. Then he closes with we need a President who'll put Barney Smith ahead of Smith Barney! Dang, if the GOP had any sense, they'd have at least bought this guy off, thrown him $300-400k just to shut up.

Then Obama's speech. Home Run, game changer, last second clutch shot to win the championship. If Sen. McCain can't match this level of thinking, speaking and understanding of the 99.8% of America who make less than $5 mil a year, then he isn't qualified to win.

The DNC Convention, days 1,2, and 3

Wow
First night Michelle Obama.

• Nice speech, good intro to who Barrack is
• Not a forceful advocate, but she's the future First Lady, not a political hack
• She killed the rumors of crazy BS the Fox News mouth breathers push

2nd night, Sen. Hillary's speech

• What a great speech
• forceful message, did everything to unify her party behind Barrack
• The part on Underground Railroad, Keep Going was great
• If this Hillary had been on the ground in Iowa and New Hampshire, running with nothing to lose, full out advocate for the progressive, Democratic ideas, this would be her nomination, not Barrack's

3rd nite, Pres. Bill Clinton

• Great speech
• Great advocate
• Powerful stuff on the economy. I can remember when Americans used to grow jobs here
• Foreign policy stuff was strong too.

3rd nite, Joe Biden

• Great speech, kept it short, he wasn't the didactic, wordy intellectual he normally is.
• Nice job of laying out Bush's and McBush's failures of the last 8 years on foreign policy
• Great family, the son Beau getting shipped out to Iraq next month is a perfect backdrop for the entire Iraqi FUBAR occupation.

Other highlights

• 2nd nite's Gov. Schweitzer - MT was great. He was my top pick for VP. Intelligent, down to earth, homespun, pro level story teller.
• 3rd nite, the set of former military speakers was great. The retired Admiral who has left the GOP was great. Tammy Duckworth was great.
• 3rd nite, the Spielberg/ Hanks soldier's video was good.

Obama Party, from 08-02-2008

So, I got the pleaseure of attending one of the Democratic Party's Obama get together, up in AZ-01. We had a great time, watched some silly YouTubes, and got to hear from Flagstaff's candidate Howard Shanker.

Shanker gave a quick stump speech, and then fielded a handful of questions, which he really has the most progressive stances of any of the field. He wants Universal Healthcare. He wants to return America's reputation on the world stage. He wants to return to a responsible budget.

Shanker also wants to abandon the idea of a wall across our southern border, because of the basic economics; as long as there is a market for that labor, they will come, over, under or around that wall. The other little problem is that the wall will cost about $1 trillion, and we'll probably need to find some cheap labor, who is willing to work out in that hot sun... hmmmm... Maybe we could hire some of those Mexicans?

Shanker's idea is to reform our immigration policy with immigrants paying us a fee instead of coyotes $3000, and enforce our workplaces, and more interior enforcement, then we can focus on drug smugglers, and terrorists.

We had one gentleman, who of course had a hardline, build-a-wall mind, and unable to understand the economics of labor markets. If people are willing to hire illegals, and the wage is high enough, they will come.