As i continue work in this new year and decade, I have come to two realizations. First, that I haven't answered this simple question: WHAT DOES "BEING HAPPY" LOOK LIKE? Second, that I haven't answered the question out of sheer terror. Not because I am afraid of happiness but because the prospect of CHANGE gives me chills, makes me sweat and shake in fear.

CHANGE makes me quake in terror, a nobody and a single soul. It's made me realize how awfully discombobulated a whole country looks like trying to embrace the true meaning AND practice of CHANGE.

It's hard for me to articulate what change, happiness, fulfillment and joy look like, in actions before it actually becomes a feeling. How can I expect 300 million other people to have that answer and make it happen?

So, as I retreat to a quiet corner to think "what will make ME happy and fulfilled in my own life", my first impulse is to just sit by the window and look at the blue sky.

Barack Obama has a rash of rich, white, tax-evading people trying to work for a black man.

Timothy Geithner, may had gotten away with an "I'm sorry" but not Tom Daschle :

His withdrawal came just a few hours after another Obama nominee, Nancy Killefer, said she was withdrawing her nomination. Both had controversies with taxes and cited distractions over that as reasons for withdrawing.

[...]

"I read the New York Times," Daschle told Mitchell, adding: "I can't pass health care if it's too much of a distraction ... so I called the president this morning."

Dude paid over $130k in back taxes and interest just like that. How many people in this country can do that? Entitlement wasn't Obama's motto. It was CHANGE which on the day of his inauguration became "A new era of responsibility". There was no way this dude was going to get away with entitlement. Especially after Nancy Killefer just withdrew her nomination for failing to pay employer taxes on a paltry $900+.

What the hell is wrong with Barack.

Change is in the air! Today, one of the worst eras in American history will come to a close (lasting legacy of economic depression aside), and a new, almost certainly MUCH better era will begin. It is time to celebrate.

How will you celebrate the end of the Bush regime and the beginning of the Obama Presidency? With the passing of one very depressing era, and the start of a new, very hopeful one, I am considering several ways to commemorate the event.

Perhaps it is time to show my pride as a liberal American. Be PROUD to be a liberal American. Our nation was founded on liberal principles and we should remind everyone around us that it is PATRIOTIC to be liberal.

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My regular readers will know that I usually give my thoughts on the ambiguous meanings of Thanksgiving, and this year is no different. I think, though, that the election of a black man named "Barack Hussein Obama" to the Presidency gives us a bit of a good feeling this year that the often ambiguous ideals of America, celebrated in holidays like Thanksgiving, are closer to fulfillment than ever before. This year my thoughts on Thanksgiving are not that much different than last year's (unlike my recent Columbus day diary, which had some new info), but my thoughts this year do have a certain sense that America has taken a huge, historic step forward in fulfilling the ideals it was founded on. The election of Obama as President has caused even people like Black Nationalist Muhammed Yungai to reassess his generally angry feelings towards the US:

And now we have a President Obama! The mold has been irrevocably broken! The possibilities of opportunity in American life have been exponentially expanded.
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LAST WEEK we watched a young man (whom one person wrote me and called "arrogant") engage the democratic process as he questioned Hillary Clinton during her Town Rally at the South Eugene High School (April 4, 2008). The bold student wanted to know if when all was said and done the Senator was more interested in her own candidacy than preserving or encouraging the viability of the Democratic Party's eventual as-of-yet-unselected nominee. In Part 4, this conclusion to our four part series, she responds.

(Please excuse the audio buzz that can be heard for aprx. the first 50 seconds.)

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

The latest video by Oregon's Official MTV Choose or Lose Street Team 08 Citizen Journalist, Nezua.

Clicking the picture above will take you to the video page.

Crossposted to The Unapologetic Mexican and OpEdNews.

Barack Obama: Barack Obama Last night I collapsed with exhaustion after spending several days coughing my lungs out. My son "Thing 2" probably saw it on my face when he asked me to snuggle with him in bed. I just passed out.

The last thought on my mind was --and I was thinking about this because I had every intention of blogging it-- that Edwards was going to win Iowa with Obama coming in on second. This was purely based on gut instinct and the kind of grassroots work I have seen unfolding from both campaigns. Hillary Clinton's campaign is too corporate, too top down and for that matter completely open and vulnerable to grassroots upsets.

And it showed last night.

Interesting piece of trivia : I should have known last night that Obama was going to win. I received a bulletin saying that Iowa had decided to lower the caucusing age to 17. Yes. 17 years-olds were voting last night at the caucuses. It may well explaining the huge turn out as well as the 57% of under 30 voting for Obama.

Here's the bulletin put out by the Maryland Democratic Party :
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