I've been very happy, almost euphoric, for a couple of days.  All of the work has paid off and America has a transformational presidential nominee--a godsend during this very bleak moment in our history.  

He is Senator Barack Obama.  I teared up reading diaries and comments from African-American Kossacks this afternoon.  

This is a great opportunity for Americans to wrest control of our country from lobbyists and the passive wealth-building (but active oppression) of power-elites.

Senator Obama and his team won because they worked harder and smarter, and picked themselves up with ever increasing resolve when they were made to stumble.

Let the GOP run against that.

Let's make a toast to Senator Barack Obama, our 2008 Democratic Nominee for President.  

Then let's get back to work--as hard as he, his family, and his team have--to frame the arguments, win the discussions, and get out the vote.

Voting prayer (as it were) after the jump:

The sort of thing you're about to read is what happens when you like poetry and politics way too much. And, it must be admitted, when you're married with a kid and you don't have the raging social life you used to have on Friday nights.

If you're one of those who holds T.S. Eliot as sacred writ, my apologies: I beg you to consider that I only messed with the first couple verses of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Much as it gave me the giggles, I couldn't bear to profane it any more.

Maybe it'll lighten your mood. Or you can throw tomatoes at me through the ether. =)

LET us vote then, you and I,
When the evening news is spreading lies
to the patients etherized upon a fable;

Let us go, through a certain half-deserted mind,
The muttering unkind
A mindless knight in one-night crack-ho tails
And cornpone restaurants with taco-shells:
Sheep that follow like a tedious dittohead
Of insidious portent
To feed you all a dose of healthy koolaid...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and drink this sh*t...

In the gloom, warmen come aglow
Talking of Guantanamo

The yellow blog that wipes its back upon our window pains,
The yellow news that rubs our nose in blue dress stains,
Licked its lips upon the money of the evening news,
Lingered upon the fools that stand to gain,
Let fall upon his face the pretzel that falls from skies,
Slipped by the congress, made of sullen lies,
And seeing that it was a soft September morn,
Turned around the plane, and fell to Sleep...

This morning -- this Father's Day -- I read the excellent diary on DailyKos by TeacherKen called The coming deluge. Read it. Rec it up. The title references the coming deluge -- the coming flood -- of soldiers returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan fiascos, and of the largely unreported and untreated incidences of vets returning with PTSD.

Our government is failing them.

We can't let that happen, and we cannot allow our government to ignore it. History is repeating itself, and the public was almost duped again. Almost fooled again. Almost.

       It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence—
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness—not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination—
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness.

The words above, from "Dry Salvages," the 3rd of the "Four Quartets" of T. S. Eliot, seem appropriate to my current state of  being.  This is a personal reflection on the world as I experience it.  Stop reading now if that doesn’t interest you.

Where does one go from a world of insanity?
Somewhere on the other side of despair.


Despair comes from all levels of hell. I started out writing this diary today because my youngest daughter said, "why don't you ever write anything about me, Mom?"

Quotations liberally taken from T.S. Eliot - The Family Reunion

more below...

It's the middle of the night here in now-rainy Seattle. My first diary in a long time (none of them very good), but bear with me as I ramble about what "whimper" really means and how overwhelming the need to whimper can become.

Apologies to T.S. Eliot. I excerpt from "The Hollow Men". So shoot me.

more below, or deeper, or not...

In Iraq, We murdered 100,000 civilians and are keeping another 14,000 prisoners while at home, we keep stealing the Native Americans' land.

Pollution soars to crisis levels while Bush rapes our land.

The world's rivers are dying while the EPA is raising the threshold for reporting certain chemical waste from 500 pounds annually to 5,000 pounds.

TS Eliot said it best:
(under fold)