OBAMA, MOORE, AND THE DNC

A response to a friend about Obama:

Yes, I felt the same way. Out of the blue, a brilliant contender appears. And I agree with one of the pundits, who later said he will--not may, but will--be our first black president. He was positively mesmerizing.

And how about that Theresa? Forget Hillary for prez--I'd go for Theresa, after hearing that quietly powerful speech. I've always liked Hillary, but I never heard her tell an asshole reporter to shove it. So she can be VP.

We were lucky enough to get in to see Howard Dean, Michael Moore, Robert Reich, Carl Pope and others in the first day of the Campaign for America's Future's "Take Back America" forum. Dean and Moore were absolutely incredible. Dean spoke for 30 minutes, and got us all pumped up--much better than he did at the convention last night, or even during his campaign. Reich was his in his usual bright, witty and feisty form, and then Moore took us over the top. All the media--dozens and dozens--were surrounding him and the stage while he lambasted them repeatedly for their impotence, cowardice and co-option over the last four years. We jumped out of our seats applauding at least a dozen times. I missed the Boston Social Forum, so it was a thrill to be in ballroom full of progessives, on the floor and at the podium.

Inerestingly, though, among all the speakers at that event and at the convention itself, Moore was the only one who even mentioned the equal marriage issue, with a comment that anybody ought to be able to be with anybody, nobody's elses business, etc. Clearly "they" have decided to strategically ignore this issue this week.

Moore revealed another reason for Disney's refusal to distribute his film. It turns out one of the Saud family's richest princes (Moore named him, don't remember the name) bailed out EuroDisney to the tune of $300 million a while back. Another good point that he made, that maybe you have thought about but I confess I hadn't, was that all of the polls that claim the country was 50/50 divided did not poll that "other 50%," that portion of the populace that doesn't vote. The pollsters poll "likely voters." When the opinions of that "third 50%" were taken into account, there was no 50/50 split--a majority of the people supported traditional liberal/progressive positions, and are looking for standard bearers to represent those positions, not be Repub lite yet again.

As many times as I've seen Moore on TV being interviewed or on talk shows, his talk--not a speech-- yesterday was light years more insightful, informative and inspiring--and funnier--than I have ever seen from him.

As we exited, we were video-inteviewed by a French TV reporter, who asked us about Kerry distancing himself from Moore and the movie, and yada yada about the campaign moving rightward as a strategy, whether we thought that was true and whether it was a good idea. We told him to shove it and go eat some freedom fries, you cheese-eating surrender monkey. No, actually we told him that we all felt that taking the advice of Clinton (even though his speech seemed to belie his backroom DLC-centrist maneuvering) and the DLC and moving to the center or rightward was a big mistake, and used Moore's comments as support for that conclusion, and by the way we love France but honi soit qui mal y pense, eh, cochon?

What a day.

I expect CAF will have these talks available recorded or transcribed on their website at some point: http://www.ourfuture.org/

Meanwhile, Amy Goodman has compiled them all, and many others, for downloading in transcript, audio or video format. At least she did. Now I can't find them on her website: http://www.democracynow.org/index.pl