carrie sheridan's Blog

howard dean - who we owe a LOT to -

carrie sheridan — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 01:48:24 EST

when i was in NH in december 2007, the base of support for barack was dean 04 people -

in columbus ohio, a big barack volunteer and i wistfully talked about how we were dean people and i told him that i still had a dean 08 bumper sticker somewhere...he's who i wanted for president until the end of november/december 2007...

HE seeded the "You Have The Power" -

we owe HIM for his 50-state strategy and for his statesmanship and tireless service to America...

i expected that one of the first appointments announced would be Howard Dean... and maybe i've missed it but i haven't seen anything...

the obama organization does almost everything right - they amaze us mostly...

so why aren't we paying homage to a true American hero who has changed this country for the better... Howard Dean??

61% think barack will win on nov 4

carrie sheridan — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:07:13 EDT

poll cited by bill schneider on cnn -

61% - more than people who say they are voting for him...

barack has their Vote of Confidence... well-deserved...

the poll was 50%, neck and neck, prior to this economic mess -

no more sarah palin bashing?!

carrie sheridan — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:38:35 EDT

we're winning this thing, guys... this is increasingly clear -

and we could jump the gun and start acting like gracious winners...

sarah palin is no threat to us or what we hope to do for America -

and to waste these FABULOUS 4 weeks in any negativity - when we can be connecting with our fellow americans who ARE aligned with us or who want to believe but are having trouble making the leap...

if it were the last day of your life, would you spend/waste even a nanosecond of that 24 hours even thinking of sarah palin? nada... if it isn't worthy of our last hours, it isn't worthy of any of our hours that always COULD BE our last...

better to focus on what we CAN do - new innovative, ingenious ways to bring our country back from the brink...

forging bonds with each other in a Kinder Gentler country...

i am sickened by what i've seen of both mccain and palin but i prefer to spend my time reaching out to my fellow americans and trying to think of What We Can Do, what we can reasonably do...

and i must say that watching her little girl piper licking her hand to smooth down the hair of her baby brother as palin was delivering her convention speech... and then last friday seeing that little girl carrying that baby off the stage -

i can't hate or mistreat the woman who gave birth to these children...even if/when she is hateful and mistreating to us...

i read afterward that 90% of down syndrome babies are aborted after the amniocentesis test... i don't know if i could have or would have done what i think is The Right Thing and "gone through with it", having a choice Not To... but i admire her for it and was touched beyond words by the sweetness between her 2 youngest children...

forgive them because they know not how awful what they are doing is -

and, please, let's not waste a minute of this great 4 weeks - a time that, at 56, i canNOT believe i have lived to see - the amazing grace of the obamas and the powerful experience of community they have jumpstarted for us -

let's LOVE this next wonderful month...

and brace ourselves for the blowback/payback on november 5th - because a LOT of repubs aregoing to be riproaring mad and burned up... we are gonna pay for the win -

but til then? it's all good -

fired UP!

yard signs on busy streets

carrie sheridan — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:19:44 EDT

if we could start planting some yard signs -

"FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS VOTE REPUBLICANS"

in the yards already sporting obama signs on busy, heavily trafficked streets...

i've been talking to americans on the ground in NH and SC and NC and VA and OH -

and i see a crying need for us to reach out to a lot of our fellow americans, esp the salvageable repubs...

if we can demonstrate a warm affection, a sense of humor... that'd go a long way to defusing the eruption and blowback/payback i see coming on november 5th... and that i have experienced a little with my obama bumperstickers and buttons...

google Friends Don't Let Friends Vote Republican" - there's a yard sign for $20, bumperstickers...

i joke with repubs that we're gonna have to tie them up to a chair on election day and let the air out of their tires -we gotta do what we gotta do - and it'll be fine, they'll see... it usually brings a sweet smile [NEVER A VOTE!] and that's a start...

if we could be gracious winners... and start the hard work of truth and reconciliation now...

barack and michelle have done their part - they coulda torn their opponents and critics a new asshole 1000 times and instead they have kept their peace...

we need to try hard to bring our repub americans around... we want to be inclusive and part of the One Nation under God that barack has called us to?

$20... if you go up to the door of anyone who has planted a yardsign - and ask them if they'd be willing to add this,another one... if they can spot the $20 cost or not...

like johnny appleseed - planting a warm communalism???

fired UP!

FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS VOTE REPUBLICAN

carrie sheridan — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:03:54 EDT

online, you can get yardsigns and bumperstickers and buttons -

our repub fellow Americans, some of them, are SPITTING MAD...

if we could reach out to them, keeping our peace, showing a warm sense of humor...

so if you can buy a yardsign or a few for $20 online... and drive around to wherever you see an OBAMA 08 yard sign up and go up to the door and ask that person if he/she/they'd be willing to add this sign too - as a community outreach ----

ESP on busy streets that get a lot of traffic ---

if, like johnny appleseed, these could start popping up between now and nov 4 -

it'd show we have a sense of humor and we want the divisions to END after a legit win on november 4...

let's be gracious winners? starting now?

i tell salvageable repubs [and even die hards] that we're gonna tie our repub friends to a chair on election day and let the air out of their tires... cuz we gotta do what we gotta do...

it almost always brings a smile - and relieves SOME of the tension - the repubs are increasingly mad and it's not just their team losing - it's having to face how wrong they've been, how they were duped and sold a bill of goods... pretty hard stuff, esp for the older ones...

let's TRY to be what their nice speeches promised:

a kinder gentler nation

a shining city on the hill...

separation of church and state

carrie sheridan — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 21:58:03 EDT

for Roman Catholics and evangelicals and everyone who is dealing with fellow members of our churches who are trying to overlay belief and personal principles onto a secular government...

how about if we had bumperstickers made

CATHOLICS for OBAMA and for

the separation of church and state

or next to a CATHOLICS FOR OBAMA 08 bumpersticker,

put one CATHOLICS for the separation of church and state -

this can be done - google custom bumperstickers... there are a few companies - they have templates and ship right away, even just 1 or a small quantity... the quality is excellent - you can have car magnets made too if you don't want to paste something on your car...

i think we want to ask our fellow citizens to think! not to assume we are as reflexive as they are...even Jesus didn't try to legislate sex lives... and how WOULD abortion laws be enforced... are we going to add a whole 'nother layer of law enforcement - do females have to report a pregnancy within X days like registering for the draft? are we going to make people PROVE their miscarriages Were REALLY miscarriages? dear God - what are people thinking...

and what WOULD Jesus do? what He did... He persuaded and he showed love and he tried to illuminate... NOT legislate, not arrest, not cast out of a secular society...

barack winning is only the beginning of a LOT OF outreach we need to do to our fellow citizens who are racist or intolerant or selfish or bullying or whatever we see... we need to do what we can...

this thing is won - but there is a lot to do to fulfill the promise of all of us increasingly coming together as Americans... all of us, Americans...

Sarah Palin in George W. Bush in a dress...

carrie sheridan — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 01:02:07 EDT

david brooks nailed it that she has the same "brashness and excessive decisiveness" -

but i have bristled at how The Left went after her as not being a feminist - she is exactly what the woman's movement wanted - a woman who has fulfilled herself in a marriage and family and career and community according to HER dreams for herSELF... conservative Jewish and Catholic women, women who stay-at-home OR forego marriage and family... these are all the right choices for individual women - and it has nothing to do with ideology...

it was awful to see Obama people going after her like Rush or Hannity go after our prominent people... i hope that stops...and we let palin be palin

biden says I'm Not The Guy -

carrie sheridan — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:54:32 EDT

it HAS to be richardson - governor kaine in VA is great but doesn't have the foreign policy experience -

AND hillary went to NM but i didn't see that she is going to VA...

nader said barack would pick hillary as JFK had to ask LBJ - canNOT imagine that -

he mentioned sam nunn, too

biden just returning from Georgia -

carrie sheridan — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:52:25 EDT

2 day [fact-finding, on the ground?] trip?

that DOES suggest it's biden for VP - for the foreign policy angle [even though richardson is as good and as well qualified on that] -

gotta be richardson or biden...

wondering What Would Barack Do?

carrie sheridan — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:23:26 EDT

after i saw that hillary clinton was in NM on sunday and barack doing a town hall in NM on monday, i thought Of Course... she is there to heal the whatever rift [or pretend to, more precisely] -

mark warner is the keynote and that is such a sure and necessary win for the senate seat in VA -

patti solis doyle appointed as the chief of staff for a VP when there wasn't one yet -

it all added up - which is very barack. nothing is a great surprise - they're playing chess while most of the rest of us are playing checkers - and they're mostly WAY ahead of us As We Want A President To Be...

but also they are reliable and even predictable... steady. Nothing will seem a surprise or so unexpected, etc... not from an obama administration that Includes The People and proceeds forth doing what is right for the people by a value-laden decisionmaking process with certain predictable elements to it -

a good ticket, i think -

howard dean looked positively euphoric on saturday - he's worked so hard, so much of this is possible because of him - we owe him immeasurably and it was so sweet to see him enjoying himself after putting in a killer 3+ years laying the groundwork for this -

A Great American, howard dean -

bill richardson as VP -

carrie sheridan — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 21:00:20 EDT

barack is holding a town hall meeting in New Mexico tomorrow; hillary is there today -

mark warner is giving the keynote address and also is 40 points ahead of the repub in his senate race in virginia...

_______________

surely, tom ridge is mccain's smartest choice - that's the bumper sticker of 2008 - President Ridge [or Romney]???

given that john mccain has outlived his dad and grandfather by 10 and 20 years - and had more stress and a life-threatening bout with malignant melanoma -

just the facts -

let's remember FDR as we

carrie sheridan — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 20:27:09 EDT

recall JFK and RFK and MLK this convention season -

republican "nice speeches"

carrie sheridan — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 20:26:03 EDT

and nice platitudes...

Morning In America [myth while the reality was that the country and its companies and communities were Carved Up and jobs shipped overseas and the rich got richer and there was NO trickle down in the voodoo economics that started the Era of Greed Run Amok]

Shining City on The Hill

Kinder, Gentler Nation [still waiting - that was promised by George HW Bush mouthing peggy noonan's words in august 1988, fully 20 years ago when we couldn't imagine how greedy and selfish we were YET to become in america]

1000 points of light - ditto

_____________

last night, john mccain saying we are a beacon of light - maybe for an admiral's son, the son of an heiress, the husband of an heiress ---

but not for the Americans i talk to - the obama supporters are trying to do what they can - others are scared to death or too much in need in a land of PLENTY...

it is the REPUBLICANS who do the Nice Speeches and no action -

john mccain said last night that he wants to inspire a generation to join the Peace Corps, the initiative of a Democratic President Kennedy

or Americorps... which the Clintons promoted and supported heavily 15 years ago ---

SO... which party is known for the Nice Speeches? and which is known for memorable oratory then

fighting smears -

carrie sheridan — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 20:06:52 EDT

i have been to NH, SC, NC, Northern VA and now OH...talked to hundreds of people in parking lots and grocery stores...everywhere -

and i have seen that smears are irrelevant. truly.

the people who need to think badly of michelle - are just deflecting politically incorrect not wanting to vote for barack [for a VARIETY of excuse/reasons] -

muslim, pledge of allegiance [it wasn't that - it was the star spangled banner], elitist --- it's all excuses tacked on to someone Who Wasn't Going To Vote For Barack anyway.

honestly... you can show someone ABSOLUTELY how false something is, they move to a different baseless complaint -

and so i realize that all our talk about hope and change to believe in and believing in our ability to make change --- we gotta Walk The Walk on this one --- and as i have struggled with my own moments of fear or clenching or anger at What The Other Side Is Putting Out -

i realize i gotta believe. i gotta believe in other americans. i gotta believe in whatever has brought all of us here and is gonna take us OUT [which is God to many people but not many others] -

i gotta believe in The Good - the triumph of good because evil is always repulsive once it is clear that is what it is - we all shrink back from The Bad...

i am going to always try to recallibrate back to faith and hope and believing - even with the negativity...

i am going to honor those who gave so much 40-50 years ago in the struggle for civil rights - to manage the negativity that is far less dangerous or threatening as we get the negativity of anti-obama citizens who are enraged because they know The Gig Is Up...We Won't Be Fooled Again...

i am going to remember to keep the faith, keep hope alive, believe in my fellow americans as i believe in my own efforts...

i am NOT going to give into fear... i am not going to worry - i am going to be happy in the community of now, the wonder of this time and that i have lived to see it and have been free to be part of it -

20 january 2009: An End To An Error

carrie sheridan — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 19:39:56 EDT

bumpersticker seen in walmart parking lot in columbus OHIO, available on www.northernsun.com

not inflammatory, just wry...

barack nails it again with rick warren -

carrie sheridan — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 21:02:54 EDT

he brings it on home so many times -

and we all need to give OUR all too -

the vietnam sad thing about how "All Gave Some, Some Gave ALL" -

we need to be doing our citizenship, civic part -

esp with school starting, if you can give some money to the best teachers at the local schools to make sure that all kids have a cool outfit or cool school supplies or sneakers or WhatEVER this season - in the name and cause of Americans and obama supporters coming together to make america everything we all can be and should be and were meant to be -

the hillary camp needs to knock it off -

carrie sheridan — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:31:43 EDT

they look childish whiners - they coulda won if the edwards extramarital affair had come out in iowa or NH, if michigan and florida yada...

NO - 1/2 the country hates the clintons and Loves To Hate them... you cannot bring a country together with leaders who are so flawed and can't run a decent and civil campaign -

NO ONE wants a leader whose call is That It's Time For A Woman - it is never the time for A woman or A black or A anything - not in big jobs that matter - it has to be the best human for the job - and hillary had a resume and a LOT of pork for NY state - but notsomuch else - and she had shameless moments that the dems should not have stood for from january 7 -

and she's helping her supporters nurse their feelings of oppression, etc - at a time when EVERYone is oppressed by the terrible last 8 years - not women first or even most - EVERYone is suffering - the poor the very most, the sick and disabled... a lot of women are doing very well and have done well with affirmative action etc since 1972 - it is NOT a woman thing - it's a poor thing...

i hope the DNC and obama campaigns tell the clintons to shape up or be scaled back to almost no role at the convention -

no one likes a junior high queen wannabe...no one likes someone who can't Get Over It. the country was not screaming for hillary - it wasn't going to happen...and she couldn't have gotten anything done with 1/2 the country hating her and following bill clinton everywhere -

we didn't need clinton drama anymore - we have plenty else to deal with -

WHEN did mccain put country first since 1981 or so?

carrie sheridan — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:24:19 EDT

i'm sorry - i've just finished 2 mccain books - the timberg book and mark salter's ghostwriting - and i think mccain has been mostly for his own ambition since running for congress and winning -

the commerce committee, his own fundraising [maybe he can claim not asking for pork barrel projects in arizona BUT HE SURE HAS RAISED A TON OF MONEY IN EVERY ELECTION - and are we to believe those people want NOTHING in exchange for their financial support???]

mccain can't even run his own GOP and didn't stop the NC GOP bad ad that a raleigh NC tv station refused to run...

and he can't even lead his own supporters and staff to knock it off on the bs tearing down of barack obama who attracts MILLIONS of people...a multiple of the numbers interested in seeing him...

even his own mom said the repubs would have to hold their noses to vote for him - and several repubs i've talked to are NOT into voting for him -

the straight talk and maverick is ALL talk - and i say this as someone who gave him money in early 2000 to beat back bush-rove...and rooted for him being a good candidate - then he caved in and stumped for bush in 2000 - when he could have put country FIRST instead of party and his own ambitions for now...

i'm sorry - i don't see it. it's mccain first ALL THE WAY - and his time was 2000 - it's way past - and reagan has shown us that maybe 70-76 is TOO OLD...reagan claimed not to know about iran contra - can't have a president who doesn't know these thins are going on right under his nose...

OBAMA CitizenWorks

carrie sheridan — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 15:42:25 EDT

we must support barack and michelle with our energy and resouces and ask EveryOne else we talk to to do the same -

ideally, 10% of our net money and 4 hours weekly or 16 monthly...

it can't be about him... and if we are doing more to start CHANGE NOW then the mccain yada about how barack has nice words will ring stupid because obviously there are millions of DEEDS to back barack up...

we gotta back him up... we gotta do it NOW and from now on...

that is what we do to win this election - and to win something that matters and starts a new start....

"AUGUST IS THE TIME TO TAKE OBAMA DOWN"

carrie sheridan — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 15:38:56 EDT

dick morris... who i have found to be ALWAYS RIGHT....

increasingly in the past 2 weeks, absolutely positively in the last week, i have seen more and more how people are truly scared of this economy, they're pulling in to take care of themselves -

and while this is so understandable and a natural instinct, i am SURE that this is when we must stay as generous as we can be with our time and our money and our resources...

when i asked people in the charleston area in the spring if they could give something to helping north charleston high school, people who TRULY were strapped or had little couldn't give cash - but when i would ask Do You Have AnyThing at home - a present you didn't like, something you bought and never wore, dishes, books, cds, an old tv, whatever extra... IN PERFECT CONDITION, first class all the way only - that you could donate... people brightened and said YEAH!!!

even if people just did that - all of us. Women have TONS of clothes, most unworn or barely worn... jewelry we never wore, bags that are in amost-new condition or could be cleaned up to be -

if we could ALL do what we can... donate items to a nearby poor school or high school for the principal and counselors and teachers to put in sortof a rewards store for kids to be able to choose something - kids who are good kids or who are trying or who do community service or who have brought up their grades or who just need a little SomeThing extra miraculously ---

i am CONVINCED this is what we need to do most for barack and michelle - we have to BE THE CITIZENS WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR.... we must step it up -

just when we are feeling we need all we have for ourselves... it isn't true, it's never true...

we must dare to stretch ourselves to hope a Little More - not for our own safety and security but for a safer and more secure country and world to END THIS FOREVER what we put ourselves through in ou overstriving for too much comfort for ourselves...

and we must start NOW -

even just $1 a month or an hour a week...but let us begin NOW... because august IS the month t to take barack down - mccain will flub and flounder by mid-end september - there is SO MUCH he can't say or won't say and he's playing only to win that he's going to be a confused mess in another 6 weeks or so, in the wake of a slumbering desperate convention that is lackluster at best and will be a ratings disaster unless people are watching it to be a kind of political Gong Show...

let's start now?

FOX mocks ~~~

carrie sheridan — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:30:36 EDT

let's head that bs off at the pass, too -

we're leaving ourselves wide open sometimes as latte-sipping, volvo driving, aged hippies, retro kennedy nostalgics...

OBAMA works must be OBAMA citizenworks... putting new programs in place that go past the election or even the next 4 years - a new way of being citizens in America requiring whatever we can commit to giving - 10 minutes a week or 1 hour a month, hopefully $10 a month EVERY month to something...

they'll mock barack and deride michelle [the question is did any of those who make her out to be terrible ever liked her and changed their minds... i doubt it] -

but if WE do OUR part, they cannot argue with citizen action and service projects and community outreach and a new commitment to ALL of the children our children go to school with ---

the best thing we parents can buy for our children is a better world and happier, more secure and grounded kids in their classrooms and hallways...

we only have 100 of these blessed days before barack wins big and then there will be BlowBack from the powers that be - they'll be furious because the gig is up - and we are going to quickly learn how really bad a shape the country is in, as bill clinton found out about the economy he inherited from "41"...

there'll NEVER be another time like this certainly in my lifetime but maybe ever again - a time of hope and when we can voluntarily and joyously step up and step it up -

i hope to God more and more of us set aside as much time as we can and devote the energy we can to this very very special 100 days when there COULD BE a groundswell of joy and renewal of our ideals and values...

ANTICIPATE THE HYPE ON HOPE -

carrie sheridan — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:21:44 EDT

we obama people have GOT to be doing good works, doing MORE in our communities starting NOW -

i've talked to enough different kinds of people from NH to SC to NC and now in NoVa and i am thrilled to see that a good 1/3 of people are lovely Obama People -

1/4 are die hard Won't Consider Barack, Michelle is awful...which is fine: we don't need them and those types can NEVER be brought around - it's a battle against a lifetime of inferiority and superiority and narrowmindedness and lack of perspective and possibilities and just bad stuff -

the thing that gets me is the Not Sure folks - barack just a few years from being a state senator, inexperience, talk is cheap but will the aging hippie flower children really put their shoulders to the wheel yada... just because we are idealistic and returning to our founding values, we're dismissed as immature, childish, lacking endurance, commitment, fortitude, stamina...

i'm tellin' ya, everyone, we have GOT to start CHANGE NOW in our communities, stepping up and stepping it up - to PROVE this is not all a bunch of nice feel-good hooey...

please, if each of us could do just one act of kindness, generosity each week from now to the election -

go through our closets and garages and get our kids to and give away some of our nice stuff that is overstuffed stuff for us but would be bare necessities for someone else...

WhatEver suits you - especially to start a new ongoing program in your community to help those who are struggling -

to buy a movie gift card and give it to the principal monthly for a kid who doesn't have the money to go...

for dancers or musicians or artists or martial artists to teach kids afterschool a couple of hours one day a week --- for kids who are nominated by teachers as deserving with good grades OR community service or something else...

i am scared at how we really AREN'T doing enough - and it isn't just enough to get barack elected... mccain will not do well in the election, i think barack will do very well... it's about building a groundswell, not just getting Our Guy IN and beating Their Guy...

we gotta start the change now - it's alarming to me, the complacency...

and it would surely make barack and michelle and The Two Davids and everyone feel so gratified for how much they have sacrificed and persevered in pretty rough waters...

anticipate the hype on hope - and pre-empt it - ask mccain nation to join obama people in making america a better place for everyone starting now - not in november or in january - but now - let's have a competition as to who can do the most good the fastest and biggest and mostest and longest...

Governor Richardson for VP?

carrie sheridan — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:48:55 EDT

dick morris on fox last night

and he thinks ridge rather than romney or pawlenty for mccain...

www.dickmorris.com is a must watch site

www.politico.com

zogby international is the only poll worth watching, to my lights, since they called the /NH primary right for Mccain winning big in 2000...

interesting - surely ridge is the MOST attractive VP candidate mccain could choose - i saw mitt romney in NH and he was so darned phony - ann romney seems lovely - but seeing mitt made me wonder if it's just too hard to follow a Great Man as your dad...he's too smooth and slick by half - and i believed and admired he had saved the Salt Lake City olympics -

also he had quite a nasty streak - saying about hillary that we didn't need an intern in the White House the day before the debate in PA when she then flubbed the immigrant/driver's license question that started her visible decline ---- she seemed unnerved that night in that debate...

Giving 10% of our time and 10% of our resources

carrie sheridan — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:59:43 EDT

as i see some people giving SO MUCH of themselves to this campaign - and others giving some but notsomuch...

and as i have been reaching out to people for 6 months now... i have seen that barack has his work cut out for him because too many of us Don't Get It yet. not really...

Suze Orman - the blonde financial wizard on tv, oprah's favorite money guru - wrote The Bible on money called 9 Steps To Financial Freedom - and she explains the value To The Giver of giving just 10% to others of both time/energy and money... the benefit of feeling wealthy enough to Do For those who have less, rather than grasping for ourselves, feeling we need all we have for ourselves...

John Edwards tried to get us to think about The Two Americas in 2004...

there are more and more stories in the press about how the rest of the world resents us, the US, for using up 25% of the resources when we are only 5% of the population - i remember DECADES ago reading that every Chinese person couldn't have a refrigerator, as we take for granted in the US, because it would put too much of a strain on the environment... and here we are.

are we in obama nation going to start voluntarily conserving, doing more with less materially... to stop excusing what is unabashed greed and grasping...

will we start thinking of how to reduce our individual standard of living and put the overage to helping those who have too little?

i'm in alexandria VA - a LOVELY wonderful place - talking to people about The Two Alexandrias...could a community as blessed and privileged as this is reach out to those who breathe the same air and walk the same ground and drive the same streets but who have Not Enough...

could we each decide what is a minimally acceptable standard of humane living... and then decide to reach out to make sure that everyone within an X radius of us is at that minimal standard -

could there be a groundswell of consciousness-raising and of voluntary sacrifice that starts change in our country NOW in the summer - those of us who have heard the call of barack and michelle to BE better and to DO better...

to start change NOW...

to prove to repubs and cynics and skeptics and those who would like to believe but just can't bring themselves to dare to hope one more fruitless time...

could we rise to the occasion individually and collectively to demand more of ourselves, to reach for something higher as a community of Americans...

could we set up trust/slush funds for teachers and guidance counselors to draw from to make sure that when they see a kid who needs something, they can just take care of it - or to offer an incentive for kids to bring up their school performance [make honor roll this term and you get an ipod]... not as charity... but because this is the kind of civilization we want to live in - and that we want for the kids who walk through the same school halls our kids do...

could each private school ask their parents to provide a slush fund for the poorest local school...to adopt a local poorer school...?

can we start thinking, all of us, about what our ideal society WOULD be like? and then take a step, try to figure how to manage even giving 5% of our resources, 2 hours a week to bettering our communities and country...

not as charity but as the cost of citizenship, in gratitude for Having More...

could we in obama nation make barack and michelle obama as proud of us as we have been of them so often in this campaign? could we surprise and delight them with taking this ball and running with it ourselves?

whatever it "costs" us will buy our ideals back... and if it is true that the secret to staying young is not losing one's ideals... then maybe THIS is the true Fountain of Youth...striving each day in some way to do something to make a little more heaven evident on earth?

5%... just 5%... is a good start?

buy a car magnet for $15 today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

carrie sheridan — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:28:04 EDT

this is a bargain - and even if you aren't going to use it yourself, give it to someone who will be THRILLED to put it on their car...

i'm tellin' ya... if you aren't wearing a tee shirt or hat or button... and don't have something on your car, you are missing out on so much fun...people smiling broadly at you, saying something to you, giving you a thumbs up -

you will Fall In Love with your fellow Americans...

i will post later a few paragraphs on the phenom of the Danish Resistance in 1943 - when danes throughout the country went up to jews/strangers on the street - and told them come with me and hid them so when the nazis got there to round up jews for the concentration camps, there were few...

heads rolled, all the local authorities were tortured and killed - but it is the bravest coolest thing i have ever heard of citizens doing...

we obama people do well to let each other know who we are and How Many of Us There Are...

and we need to start community service projects and outreach NOW... i am convinced since february that this is what we need to do to assure doubters and cynics that we are serious about change and it is starting NOW, not in nov or jan... but NOW...

if you think of something you'd like to do [particularly donating to local schools for the teachers and counselors to be able to fortify kids who need a special something]...then start something, even small where you are living... do it in the name of Obama and healing the Two Americas...

Mike McCurry or Charlie Rose for Meet The Press

carrie sheridan — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 11:45:37 EDT

after today's Usual Suspects/Usual Chatter...

after a week of countrywide mourning of the best, almost the only, valuable news program... and the shocking realization that there are not other great journalists in the pipelines at any of the networks yada...

it's clear that we need our Fourth Estate to get really good really fast - they need to get up to speed for a campaign that is smart and wise and visionary and knows how to get it done -

man, do we miss Tim Russert - maybe now more than ever -

in november, the world will ERUPT in joy and hope -

carrie sheridan — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:37:54 EDT

and for 2 months, we'll be Dancin' In The Streets... even the die-hard repubs will see this is a GREAT thing for America - probably the BEST thing since JFK's inaugural speech and the space program...

then on inauguration day, we will be so profoundly moved and feel as one with so many millions of others - it'll be so deep and high and mighty and all-pervadingly contagious -

even those who wanted a different outcome will, perhaps grudgingly, have to grant It's ALL Good...

as they see the world give us a clean slate and a new start to be the America they need us to be and the America we ourselves need to be -

but now to november - will be the BEST time...

"i think it's so groovy now... that people are FINALLY getting together... i think it's WONDERFUL now..."

Obama People are EVERYwhere!!!

carrie sheridan — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:29:18 EDT

slap an OBAMA 08 bumper sticker or car magnet on your upper left rear window and wear an obama button or tee shirt... and be prepared for smiles, thumbs up, responses...it's amazing -

yesterday, in a harris teeter parking lot in alexandria VA, i pulled my honda element into a spot, nose to nose with a car that had an OBAMA 08 bumper sticker visible in HIS rear window - THAT was a first: we were right next to each other...

people pull up alongside me and look over -

it's ALL good -

there are millions of us - and now we have a way to know how many of us are of one heart and one mind in helping America to be all we can be and should be and were Meant To Be... and we can be... starting NOW - starting with a friendly communal walk through life, feeling at home in the world with our fellow Americans -

life is good -

The Two Americas and community outreach/service

carrie sheridan — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:04:55 EDT

john edwards talked about The Two Americas in 2004 and again in 2007-8...

after traveling to NH in december 2007 and charleston SC in january 2008 and wilmington NC in march... when i arrived in Alexandria VA, i was truly stunned at the TWO Alexandrias ---

i'm persuaded this would be such an OBAMA Thing To Do - all across America, for those who have a little extra joy and hope and time and resources to reach out to those who are struggling in our own communities... to help make life [not easy but] less difficult for those who are struggling or suffering or need a break or encouragement or a pat on the back - to reach across to everyone who breathes the same air we breathe and walks the same land...

the first people i talked to in alexandria said sure/great...

the same for DC... we're characterizing this more as Let's Make Washington "the shining city on the hill" that reagan talked about and did nothing to achieve... let's go in like a SWAT team and try to make our capital city a model city for life in America... let's test out what works, what doesn't - in mentoring our kids, afterschool programs, reducing crime, affordable housing - the gamut...

barack has talked about focusing, finally, on the capital of our country...

as i meet obama people everywhere - in stores, at checkout lines, in parking lots, the library and bookstores... i am always impressed by how much we share a sense of possibilities that barack and michelle obama have provided a place to meet our fellow americans who share the same ideals and values of what america can be and should be and was Meant To Be...

for those of us who saw the John Adams miniseries on HBO, it reminded us of what our founding patriots fervently hoped and envisioned...

barack has sparked our desire for community OF americans and BY americans and FOR americans...

we may have to wait until january 2009 for barack to be our President... but between now and october, we can start to create change NOW... we can show those who want to hope/believe but who are not sure they can... and those who don't see the America we all imagine -

in each community, for us to get together and figure out how we would like to contribute our talents and time and resources and dedication - maybe it's planting wildflowers or donating books to the poorest school libraries or raising money for a First Rate weight room in the local high school so the kids can sculpt their bodies and build their strength and health...maybe it's passing around baby clothes and toys and equipment and books... maybe it's cleaning up trashed areas... maybe it's planting landscaping in the poorest neighborhoods to beautify the surroundings...

afterschool programs - if dancers and actors and musicians and artists and crafters would donate time to teach kids who love these things but who don't have money to afford lessons...

to endow slush funds for guidance counselors and teachers to draw funds to support kids who deserve or earn their community's backing in making a wish come true - or to fulfill a need...

maybe it's figuring out how to advance money for installing tankless water heaters or solar and geothermal and wind energy - a 0% loan for those who would do these things but for the lack of the upfront capital...

it's so exciting - while we register voters as we can, we don't have to wait for january 2009... knowing that in 5 months we will experience the most amazing thing globally as the world erupts in joy and renewed hope and common bonds when barack is elected in a blowout election... until then, let's get it started in our own backyards, reaching across to our nearest fellow Americans and find new and fast friends as a bonus...

want to fall in love with your country????

carrie sheridan — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 14:17:13 EDT

go out and register voters - wherever you usually go - OR venture to places you don't usually go -

you can get a pack of 100 forms at your local registrar -

wear an obama button or tee shirt [so that settles who YOU are for] -

and then as you go about your daily life and errands, ask people who look like they wouldn't feel bothered "are most of the people you know registered to vote?"

since they know YOU are for obama, they see you aren't trying to sell them - a surprising number of [the nicest, coolest, most wonderful] people are for barack - but even if they aren't - it's all good -

if not, i say I'm Just Asking Everyone to Learn About Barack before being sure they don't vote for him - especially [for me] his speech about war made in fayetteville north carolina the week after the speech on race -

AND i add, if there is time and someone isn't in a hurry, that even if you aren't sure about obama, you'd be SURE about the people who are drawn to this campaign - from every walk of life, all kinds of people, showing up to give, to contribute something... it's a beautiful thing and the obama campaign has given so many of us a powerful sense of community -

with other people who also want to make life less difficult for those who are struggling or suffering...

____________________

i am SURE that people will like the obama supporters more than the mccain supporters - by and large...

anyway, there has NEVER been such a great time to take a step, try something you may not have done before - if you feel nervous or shy, just remember that you are offering to help someone do something they may be wanting to do - AND any which way, they will be lifted by seeing YOU out there caring about this country and seeing you do what YOU believe in - the uplift of that is incalculable...

i also ask people if they know people who aren't registered - if they do, i give them forms to pass out to their friends, family -

AND leave some forms at mcdonalds, staples, the grocery, etc - ask someone who looks energetic and communal to make sure everyone there on all shifts is registered by october -

anyway, this is a gift that gives back much more to you than the investment of time - you'll love this country more - it's life-changing to feel so connected in humanity to others - but we need an excuse like this to get out from our tried and true daily lives -

if you are shy, go with someone else and encourage each other - they say you should try to do One Thing Every Day that you are afraid to do - i think that is good advice for expanding your life and your reach -

taxes are a Bad Word - it's the Cost of Doing Business

carrie sheridan — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:53:04 EDT

it's already started with how barack is going to raise taxes blahblahblah...

and it is time for the dems to stop using that word -

if we want emergency services [like paramedics to come immediately when we have heart attacks or are in car accidents] there is a cost to that service -

if we want courts, there is a cost to having that. if we want interstate highways and law enforcement agencies, that costs X...

barack is brilliant in proposing a $1000 tax credit - disproportionately helping the poorer americans... a drop in the bucket to the rich - to offset the FICA tax AND gas prices...

but it is time for us to stop talking about this Big Bugaboo of taxes. it costs something to have services, to have a country that runs reliably - power grids and roads and bridges and schools as a place for kids to go while their parents work to earn a living...

it isn't about taxes - it's about Financial Responsibility to PAY AS YOU GO - and it's the only way to run a sound economy - which neither Bush nor Reagan did - and clinton cleaned up some of it and now it's a mess and needs radical paying off of debt to foreign would-be competitors and opponents like china -

Serendipity in Obama Nation -

carrie sheridan — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:03:56 EDT

on the night of 21 december 2007, i drove through a blizzard from CT to laconia NH and arrived at the field office for OBAMA around 9:30 pm. The first person i met was eric - a poli sci major from UNC at Wilmington - who'd been working for barack in NH since september 2007 and i gave him a ride out to the house of the obama supporters who were putting him up -

i had seen eric again in passing at a first meeting of obama volunteers at the country library in wilmington in early april -

wanting to catch hillary and [mostly] barack speaking in real time last night, i ventured into the lobby of a comfort inn here in wilmington...

and who was working the front desk? eric! the PERFECT person to watch this with - someone who was in NH so many weeks ago - and in wilmington so many weeks since...

this, after registering some voters at Best Buy, Dillards, Moe's Southwest Grill...

as an obama supporter wearing an obama button and with an obama bumper sticker on my car, there is an AVERAGE of 3 great connections with other obama supporters as i go about my day, everyday...

we've all been passing each other in the aisles of the grocery store and on the roads we drive and standing next to each other in checkout lines... and we didn't know How Many Of Us There Are -

at 55, i have fallen in love with so many of my fellow Americans - this is the most powerful sense of community i have ever felt [and NEVER expected to see, let alone be a part of] -

life is good. God is good. and thanks always to barack and michelle for bringing us all together - and to the Two Davids and everyone who has done so much to make this happen for the rest of us -

First Alert on hillaryite anger/backlash

carrie sheridan — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 19:42:41 EDT

now that barack has won this thing - the militant hillary supporters are pretty angry -

one 60 ish woman passed my car parked next to hers in the marshalls' parking lot in wilmington NC and, noting my obama 08 sticker, snidely/angrily said she would NEVER VOTE FOR HIM...almost spitting...

i was taken aback by the force of her rage as if barack were some despicable person -

but when she added "hillary is a REAL woman" -

i am sorry to say i said "uh, no, she is the most publicly humiliated woman in American history and i guess i'm glad we don't NEED your vote... sorry you LOST" -

it was wrong of me - but after almost 5 months of seeing this attitude from a small % of hillary supporters that acts as if it would be the most horrible thing for barack to be our President... i just cut loose...

i realized we all need to keep our peace, WWBD [what would barack do?] and i have to be prepared not to lash BACK...

i hadn't anticipated that the hillary people are going to take their loss out on us just as hillary has flailed around, raging at whatever she can...

so be prepared for a possible onslaught - that will not diminish unless and until hillary CONVINCINGLY backs down -

otherwise, i hope the dems launch a better candidate to unseat her in 2012 - we don't need this kind of embittered divisiveness in this country - we have such terrible suffering to alleviate and injustices to make right - we don't have time for this kind of mean girls bullying and displaced anger...

boycott MAYFAIRE TOWN CENTER -

carrie sheridan — Thu, 29 May 2008 19:11:49 EDT

in wilmington NC -

at dillards, the belk on oleander and books a million, too - you won't risk the absurd experience of being harrassed for having obama stickers on your vehicle and out of town plates -

i am a 55-year-old Irish Catholic suburban matron with fair skin and auburn hair - completely non-threatening in my appearance in every respect -

my 2008 HONDA element has CT [yankee] plates and obama stickers [tastefully] on both sides and on the upper left corner of the rear window...

this is too convoluted a story to explain how BAD this experience was - not awful, or important just awful because it was so insignificant...but it was chilling because it was just these security guys trying to act like a SWAT team, hoping to create a problem, maybe even an arrest...

late last night, i was harrassed TWICE by an old barney fife type "security" man patrolling mayfaire town center... after shining his flashlight everywhere looking for drugs or what EVER... he sternly tells me that i can't be sitting in my car -

[i'd planned to drive to DC but decided to postpone leaving due to the steady downpour, not wanting to be on the highway... i had dinner at atlanta bread, browsed through barnes and noble until closing time and then gone to harris teeter for a couple of things for the drive to DC... i sat in the driver's seat in the POURING rain, NOT bothering anyone - no one was out in the rain anyway, trying to decide whether to start out for Washington DC or to wait til the weather cleared...here comes this senior citizen bully shining his flashlight into my car, into my eyes as though i might be a prized capture...

i was incredulous and explained CLEARLY that i had just been in the store and didn't believe i didn't have the right to sit there for a while resting...ok, sure - not to Spend The Night but i was wearing regular clothes and NOT pajamas - so what the heck was this all about???

but sure, it's private property, whatever, and i would move [being afraid of poorly paid workers who have a little bit of power and this guy would clearly LOVE to find trouble because it would make a good story in an otherwise tedious job - and if he can't find it, he'd like to make it] -

as i drove off, though, i thought "this is crazy" -

i was working on a design for a jewelry-quality OBAMA for America pin that men and women could wear on their suit lapels and dress coats... and couldn't sleep and wanted to hit Atlanta Bread for coffee and a breakfast bagel the minute it opened and use the open wifi to google personalized jewelry pins...

so WHY did i have to drive 5-10 miles to just park somewhere for a few hours? so i just moved over to the full but deserted Hilton parking lot, out of sight...not bothering anyone...

and sure enough, an hour later... here is barney fife again - WAY too excited to find me again! to possibly have a problem/threat on his hands... and he's going to show me who is boss - again, private property [i agree on this actually since i was not patronizing the Hilton - altho i also doubted they would mind but whatever...], again, he'll Call The Police...

and again i am incredulous, whoawhoawhoa... sure i'll move but exactly WHAT law are you citing? he tears off in his small truck, mad that i am, again, not deferential to this bs... i leave, no problem and go park under a tree...

i decide i am going to return EVERYthing i have bought at mayfaire and write to the center manager - this is [only] the 2nd very "southern" experience i've had in wilmington - but both incidents were a little too Southern Sheriff for my tastes - with no problem, but someone wanting there to be one... is this a revenue thing? a chance to harrass a northerner? whatever it is, i will NOT give my business to any business that hires or tolerates bullies or punks...

with a left foot fractured in 3 places and twice the size of the right foot, the orthopedist had told me to walk as little as possible - so the next morning, i'm in a handicapped spot in the midst of many empty parking slots near an ATM machine to check my bank balance, AND next to another empty handicapped spot -

and now here comes a real In The Heat Of The Night character ready to face off with me - i am NOT believing this - it's a nice morning, the mall isn't busy at all at 10:30 am ish - he's heard about me from last night...

he looks like he is lying when he says that someone needed this space and had called to complain that a non-handicapped person was in it [i show him my swollen foot and offer to pull out my medical record, xrays, etc - but that also sure, i'll move - but the doctor had said that he thought i could, and should, park in handicapped spots because i really am disabled temporarily... and for 5 weeks i'd done so with NO problem all over wilmington - even at obama rallies where the Secret Service and local police told me it was fine to park in the handicapped section even though those spaces were at a premium] - people could see my limping...

he says that i had "run" off last night from the Hilton parking lot when barney fife went to call the Wilmington Police - this is absurd and an outrageous lie and i tell hin that NO i had LEFT as i said i would - that actually, barney stormed off rather than answer my question of what law i was violating...but he knew i had readily agreed to move the car again. No Problem.

this guy, full of the power of harrassing a nice Old Bat Who Has Bought Many Products from 6 of the stores..out-of-state dollars for the wilmington economy,...

rather than scanning for robberies at the stores, a possible kidnapping in the parking lot - something that might be a REAL security issue -

here he is trying to tell me he can call the police and i can get a ticket - i reiterate that MY DOCTOR advised me this was easily in the spirit of the law - HERE is my obviously swollen foot... and what's with wasting police time - why doesn't he just ask me to move [to the empty spot Right Next to this one that is not handicapped!] -

he is looking everywhere at my car [the side double doors are open], trying to manufacture something he can plausibly detain, harrass me on] - noting things i'd temporarily put on the dashboard while rearranging the cargo area, he tells me i can get a ticket for that because it's obstructing the view while i'm driving [i am not believing THIS bs - since the car is obviously PARKED and the stuff is just thrown up there temporarily] - he starts to say that i am drawing attention to myself... uh no. with obama stickers on 3 sides of my care [tastefully], that is 100% assured the reason my car may stand out in a crowd -

he doesn't like that i'm NOT cowering adn he keeps trying to be intimidating, mentions again that he could call the police [ i say, isn't there a serial killer loose, the 2 women found dead in carolina beach - he really wants to waste police time to harrass an older woman who came down to register voters - not just for obama either?] -

this is too much - i'd just read again in a book of the Presidents about when the bodies of the 2 civil rights workers were found in august 1964 just before the unconstitutional Gulf of Tonkin resolution - and i just couldn't believe this scene in 2008 - a legitimate customer of the mall... known by a few people in the stores i'd been in, talking to people about the election, wilmington, the south, business, etc...

and i see that if this Good Ol Boy can find something to detain or investigate me or search my car, he wants to make his OWN day. He doesn't know that i actually know SomeThing about my rights, probable cause etc -

since i also see that he would love to trump something up to make my life difficult. No Officers of The Peace, these guys... This time, i AM clearing out before he comes up with some bogus something about the threat i constitute to the security of this upscale shopping center...

when he says you're probably not going to give me your name, i say no i'm not - there is no reason for you to even ask for it - and i am leaving and will be reporting these experiences to the center management - that if the goal really is security issues, maybe he should triage and prioritize risk assessment, etc...an older woman customer is someone the stores WANT on their premises...

after returning things, i go to the management - and get MORE bs from a junior exec... and a condescending i'm sorry you were "feeling" harrassed - i say i wasn't feeling it, i WAS... and these "security" people should be trained to ask questions first [ma'am, can i ask you what you are doing sitting in your car in the rain? ma'am, since you are in a handicapped parking spot, are you handicapped?]

rather than seeing a chance to play cop... trying to see if they can claim they are worried that i am running guns or drugs in order to create a major incident... with back up, even...

the woman says the guy didn't lie - that a tenant of an apartment over the stores had called her to complain about my being in the designated spot [the man said someone had called who needed the spot - she says the tenants get upset because healthy people use those spots (so it WAS a lie)...] - i suggest she call the tenant back and tell the person that while i didn' have a tag, i WAS/am in fact disabled and was not pulling anything [especially since there were at least 5, probablty 10 empty spaces all around me and plenty of parking everywhere at this non-peak shopping time]

she claims there are signs posted prominently, that they don't want people parking there overnight like they do in K-Mart - she's not voting for barack either clearly... i feel very American, not "northern" at all - but these people are making me feel from the north and i can't believe any of this waste of everyone's time - since there isn't a problem that day, making for a boring shift, wouldn't it liven things up to create a stir?

i know of 2 blacks - one from the islands, one from Africa - who were shocked at the way they were treated in the Carolinas and moved as soon as they could. i have had a .001% inkling as to what THEY must have encountered a few times over, that i only experienced twice here in wilmington.

people got all exercised over some of Rev. Wright's observations - but i think it was MILD - i can't imagine having 10s, 100s, 1000s of experiences like this over a lifetime - having to manage and get away as fast as you can from these people who need to feel mighty because they aren't - and who haven't earned a position of power in this society so they're going to do the bravado thing instead...

i VERY MUCH want NC to go blue in november - it'll change here as baby boomers retire and come down here for the weather and cheaper housing costs - and won't tolerate this strutting Feeling Superior With No Reason To yada -

all i can think of all day is WHAT must it have been down here in the south in the 50s, in the 60s...it's chilling to contemplate - truly chilling...

curious freudian slip from jonathan alter

carrie sheridan — Mon, 26 May 2008 19:04:58 EDT

in newsweek, talking about how hillary's LATEST power play is to try to force the Veep spot on the obama ticket [only SHE can imagine any of us would tolerate that - or that barack would want a clinton co-vice presidency... given their tendency to triangulate to avoid settling anything mano a mano - who needs these miserable people in the room?]

"JFK and LBJ were forced into a shotgun marriage that left neither of them happy."

honestly, with all hillary's freudian referencing of assassinations [in a year of the 40th anniversary of losing MLK and RFK].. when her opponent needed secret service protection early on - when she needs none [who cares about hurting hillary - she should follow richard nixon's example on this, as she does on so many things and dismiss her detail- she's in no danger. no one cares.] ---

and then you think - him JFK was cut down in LBJ country - LBJ tolerated the Dallas Morning News threatening one page open letter to the President - he NEVER spoke out against it to his fellow texans... and why not - our loss was his gain.

Ronald Reagan was almost killed by the youngest son of a Bush family friend and longstanding supporter - the hinckley and bush families were friends - neal "silverado" bush was going to dinner at the home of the older hinckley son the night AFTER reagan was almost murdered - the dinner was postponed...

but nah - you don't want a veep who wanted to be President and whose supporters may be connected to taking you out to promote their friend...

am i the only one who thinks neither clinton would be able to even fake a tear if something happened to barack? they'd think God was on their side to take out this real noble man so they could go back to spinning and manipulating and enriching and empowering themselves at the expense of Americans everywhere...

an editor should have changed "shotgun marriage" to describe JFK grudgingly having to invite LBJ to be 2nd banana in jonathan alter's column -

but in 2008, i would totally worry about the shotgun marriage of obama with hillary... thing is, we wouldn't have stood for the candidate of change being anywhere near the candidate of degrading others and lying all the time... even if he had been so inclined. which he Never Was, we can be sure...

harold ickes needs to be put on notice too that things have changed and his tactics won't be tolerated either - he'll be escorted out of the convention if he doesn't get noble FAST. times have changed - the new people coming into the party ONLY to support barack will not stand for democrat bs as usual that gave us a stupid and stale campaign in both 2000 and 2004...

we'll all HEAD FOR THE DOOR the minute we see the sameoldsameold - no can do.

an "intervention" for hillary -

carrie sheridan — Mon, 26 May 2008 18:52:52 EDT

as the repubs did with richard nixon in summer 74 -

we have to vet our own - and all anyone has to do is listen to keith olbermann's 11 minutes on the pattern of everything awful this woman has done and said over 5 months...he put it all together -

and if she didn't mean those things that way - she is ignorant or mentally ill. neither is likely.

of course she meant it when she said to andrea mitchell "some candidates haven't done the SPADEwork" on the night before she was expected to lose NH to barack by 20 points...

of course she sanctioned surrogate andrew cuomo, the Attorney General of the state of NY to say just hours later on primary morning that "other candidates can't shuck and jive their..." -

eliot spitzer isn't the only NY dem who has to go - cuomo showed he isn't fit to be the Chief Law Enforcement officer in a state that has some bad examples of bullying minorities and jailing them too often on too litlle...

hillary clinton doesn't have the judgment or manners or grace or concern for others - anyone can stay senator by getting tons of earmarks - it's the 2nd stage of selling the lincoln bedroom and coffee...

we need an intervention - the clintons can't come to the convention if they don't start proving NOW they care about the country first and the party second... we have had it with them - no one was even going to bill clinton's events - we're sick of them and aren't buying it anymore...

their loss is just that. THEIRS alone. it's a great gain for Everyone Else.

hillary and The Granny Gap -

carrie sheridan — Mon, 26 May 2008 18:45:33 EDT

jonathan alter in newsweek - describing hillary's base of senior women who didn't go to college who've decided that the light of their twilight years would be to see someone inaugurated in a pantsuit -

but they wouldn't have to live through the years and all the decades of repercussions of a[nother] bad clinton presidency - lies, manipulations, photo ops - doing a few right things and MANY MANY wrong things...

older women who want to believe their lives would have been better if...

maybe, maybe not - working women/wives/mothers have problems just as bad as days of old - they're problems all the same - just different - it isn't necessarily better now with divorce and working moms and it taking 2 incomes to live in a house...

very old women - and poor struggling single embittered women and bigots - were too much of hillary's base and she played them like a fiddle. and they don't even realize how they were played so cynically.

it made me so sad the last few months to see this -

the stupid idea that barack is "vague" -

carrie sheridan — Mon, 26 May 2008 18:39:37 EDT

newt gingrich in newsweek this week -

hogwash - hillary would micro-detail how she was gonna do XYZ - anyone who knows anything knows you set a goal -

on health care: we're going to lower premiums [by bringing more people into the insurance pool]

we're going to set it up to expand within the existing companies -

subsidize people so they can pay -

insure everyone who wants it -

then deal with the 15 million left THEN -

to be any more specific than that is a lie - you cannot coordinate with Washington, 535 members of congress etc according to YOUR plan - you work with them to do it in a way that includes everyone...

that is not being vague - it's not being stupid or deluded that everyone is gonna just fall in line...

gingrich references carter - that is not a good example- jimmy carter was an engineer by the book mentality and he did NOT know how to work well with others, he had trouble making decisions -

barack has worked in the state legislature and served constituents for years - he gets it -

barack has US behind him - the obama campaign will register millions and we will be weighing in throughout - this is OUR campaign, our cause - not just electing him to sit back and reap rewards [as the reagan voters did - they didn't want to give up AnyThing and weren't asked to] -

gingrich says you have to be specific and real. barack is one of the real-er persons to come to our attention ever. period. other real people are crazy about him [caroline kennedy, tom hanks, garrison keillor...] -

he won't be PREMATURELY specific - he is dealing with the issue at hand - bringing citizens into the fold so he rides into Washington as a leader representing millions, TRULY representing millions who feel a part of what he is doing the way we did with JFK and even more so with RFK and MLK...that's the power... the power of the collective - i don't know that washington has ever seen anything like it since FDR in 1933... even with JFK we were just enamored of him, of him and her - with barack we know what we are getting - and it's community - from coast to coast, it's community and common cause...

to end evil and violence and debt.

to make life less difficult for those who are suffering and struggling.

to make our schools America's outreach to its young - if each child can grow up with the advantages of the obama girls, we'll have a great country made up of all these talented, able, hard-working, dedicated great people - in science and business and the arts and everything, we'll be amazing ourselves AND each other by fulfilling our potential and making it reality...

to care for everyone so those of us who have more need not feel bad and tell ourselves we deserve more - because everyone will have enough and we won't have to pretend we don't know that or that it's those peoples' own faults that they have NOTHING. greed will not be good - it'll be seen as a cardinal fault and make us shun the outrageous extravagances and waste of usually vapid and often hollow people...

we will want the world to respect us - not hate us for taking more than our share day in and day out and year in and year out -

barack isn't vague - he'll get down to the specifics when it's time to act, solve and then move on to the NEXT pressing problem...

he'll be able, he'll get it done. we'll get it done together.

the repubs can't scare people about barack -

carrie sheridan — Mon, 26 May 2008 18:25:03 EDT

everyone is savvy enough at this point AND the real scariness is the awful state of our ship of state -

it was harder to beat back the clintons -

defeating mccain is Nothing By Comparison...

for barack, it'll be nothin' but net -

after reading the newsweek cover story on Team Obama this afternoon, it occurs to me that

even the repubs don't like mccain so much - as 95-year-old roberta mccain said "they're going to have to hold their noses and vote for him anyway" -

he makes no sense - repubs are supposed to be fiscally conservative - yet this VietNam vet gladly racked up a $1 trillion debt to invade iraq...

so what's his claim to fame/legacy??? participating in not one but TWO invasions [not wars - vietnam was no danger to us anymore than iraq was - saddam was too busy trying to avoid coups from within - he wasn't going to do anything to America that could blow all of baghdad to smithereens... come ON!!!!!!!]

a good song for mccain tv ads should be peter, paul and mary's Leavin' On A Jet Plane - that'd be the Hensley company corporate jet the mccain family uses...

nope, the son of an oil heiress and admiral and husband of a beer heiress and graduate of Annapolis can't tag barack as a limousine elitist - all the obama campaign has to do is pull up footage of the mccain family boarding and deplaning the family jet - MANY TIMES...

mccain's temper is well known and we'll see more of it [and i say this as someone who gave him money in january 2000 when i had no money and $50,000 of indebtedness - not as a supporter but as someone who wanted to support the candidacy of someone who MIGHT talk straight and to beat back the evil rove/bush machine] ---

cindy mccain doesn't look happy - she looks tight-faced, a lovely woman she shouldn't cake on the pancake makeup, her clothes are obviously RICH, she puts out recipes for passionfruit mousse... nah, i don't think they'd DARE play the elitist card on barack - not with a ranch in sedona and waterfront apartment on coronado beach.

john mccain doesn't hold up well -

there was SomeThing to the keating 5 misconduct -

but mostly mccain of all people should have spoken out against invading iraq as a VietNam vet who knew the costs, what is lost -

destroying a country to save it -

it is ALWAYS just going to be a few [glorious] months until our troops return triumphant -

the world hates a superpower that just invades any country it feels like with whatever bogus bs...

___________________

people don't love john mccain. they just don't. his time was 2000 - hillary's time might have been 2004 -

it isn't about being 70 - it's about being cast as a type...

____________________

also his sense of humor can be insensitive and awful.... Bomb Bomb Bomb... bomb-bomb iran to the tune of Barbara Ann. it's not funny. people are blown to bits, children... neighborhoods are destroyed -

an old pilot who was SHOT DOWN should know better - joking like this publicly OR privately borders...it's NOT ok. people being slaughtered in a fell swoop is NOT FUNNY. it's cold and crass... bordering on inhuman. let's bomb phoenix like we did baghdad and see how funny the mccains find that...

john mccain is a 5 note man - he is NOT an expert on stuff - he had to wear a bulletproof vest and be accompanied by security to tour a baghdad market for a photo op to show it was safer post-surge. we're past falling for that kind of thing...

the press won't like him or cover him favorably or even fairly.

the repubs have self-destructed in 2000-2004 - even repubs aren't donating or showing up at events - they are shell-shocked as a party...

the mccains have a dark-skinned adopted daughter from bangladesh so any racism just WON'T fly - bridget was on stage with the family in 2000 - and not seen this year - but the mccains can't let others place a race card as it was played on them in SC in 2000 -

if mccain can't control and manage his own party - like the NC state GOP - how can he run a country of dems, non-voters, libertarians... no, if he can't keep 527s who support him in line - he can't be the Chief Executive either. pretty obvious.

and a raleigh tv station refused to air the ad - showing more values and leadership than mccain for sure -

serving on a board with bill ayers, a neighbor - this is not a terrorist rebel now - he's a father-professor and they worked together on doing good... he was never convicted of anything SO he's never been proven guilty of anything - sure bombing buildings was bad - but is it worse than being responsible for several million Vietnamese killed? nah. our government did worse - yet we still hang out with them!

the hamas for obama bs was desperate - oh no - not one but TWO desperate opponents in 2008 - a weak field...

mccain is not a populist - never was, can't seem to be...

because of his skin cancers, he often has to wear a ball cap in the sun and it is just a scary image - fair or not, it just is -

barack should just be STRAIGHT OUT about tony rezko - when the obamas could afford a house instead of a 2 bedroom condo after he was elected to the senate - with a bestselling book, it made sense to buy a house that cost less than the book's income...

tony rezko as a friend helped him swing the deal by buying the vacant lot adjoining it - it was a good investment to own land to build on NEXT DOOR TO YOUR SENATOR... talk about access...

rezko helped him swing it. it's that simple. it wasn't corrupt - it was a friend's help.

most couples who are both Harvard Law School grads should be able to live in a $1.6 million house when they are 41 and 44. mansions in most of chicago go for a multiple of that - this was comparatively frugal actually.

i've seen for myself the problems of the Good Ol Boys here in NC who won't vote for a black. a sweet young woman working minimum wage at a convenience store in benson NC told me cheerily "You Cain't Change The South" -

i think barack and michelle will bring some of those people along to 2008 - anad we supporters can, too - to ask how long are you going to vote for people who play up to you and who destroyed the factories and companies and job base of this country and lead to corporate greed while you barely make it...

why not consider voting for a candidate and millions of people who want you to have a better life and more possibilities - if some of us are non-white - so what... we're good people, we're good company and we want to be good to you and we want you to be good to EveryOne. it's time to get over feeling superior to anyone. You aren't. we aren't. no one is. those days have been over since psychology became popular and explained why wholesale prejudices reflect badly on the bigots, not on the intended targets...

and no matter - there are more Not Them than there are them... barack will win handily. it's assured.

barack isn't "fortunate" to have these great senior advisers anymore than he's fortunate to have great followers he brings the best out in --- he's deserving, this is what he draws - the best in people AND the best people... the cream floats to the top. and it stays there.

axelrod and plouffe weren't genius - they are soulful men who crafted a campaign according to our ideals and values - PAY for it... include everyone. pretty simple stuff - not some great inspiration...

NH shouldn't have been a shock - people didn't want the campaign over before anyone even started paying attention [around december 27 maybe... 12 days] -

they didn't want hillary completely humiliated -

almost no one was voting for hillary - they were voting for "a" woman, the known quantity/generic democrat Devil You Know, the institution, the establishment... people don't love her -

and most curiously, since NH i have seen for myself that hillary supporters don't talk about supporting her - they aren't proud of it - they're closet supporters for the most part - it's astonishing and something some journalist should investigate and write on - i'd talk about barack and 1/2 hillary people would indicate they were for her but say NOTHING about her - the others would be quiet only showing they were NOT obama supporters -

where obama supporters say it loud and proud - it's a good thing to support obama - it means you want a better world and you know he is going to ask us to give stuff up, pay more taxes, sacrifice - and we're looking forward to it - being for obama is being a certified good guy who cares about others NOT SELF...

the obama people are having ALL the fun - the clinton campaign and rallies weren't fun or relaxed - the mccain town hall meetings are interesting but uncomfortable in a weird way - john mccain can be a broken record lauding vets predictably [who doesn't love vets - come on now - it's ALL the rage] -

barack knows that if this was meant to be it would happen - he knew this in 2006 and he was right... he's right about a lot of things that matter - iraq, not forcing everyone to have health insurance like some gestapo state...

he doesn't get rattled because he struggled with himself and the world for many years and solved the problems of being barack, of being a person in this world...

he fulfilled his God-given talents, married the ONLY WOMAN for him who has helped make him all he is... he's done good when he could over many years -

and it's all bearing fruit. now in 2008, he makes people happy. Wildly happy... by asking us to be better - and we DO feel better about the possibilities of being good and making a good country...

we can hardly wait...

a black man named George W. Bush (really!) ~

carrie sheridan — Sat, 24 May 2008 19:52:58 EDT

in a used book store in wilmington NC this morning, i was looking through a children's book by olive burt called Negroes in The Early West...

on pages 41-45 is the story of a black man named George W. Bush - there is even a pencil drawing...

i'll be sending this on to barack, of course ---

it's a small, totally interconnected world for sure - barack being related to cheney and brad pitt -

a black man centuries ago named... George W. Bush.

whose namesake years later would shake barack's hand... and then reach for hand sanitizer afterward...

from a patrician family that treats blacks and appalachians only in a token way - needing their votes, parading them out at conventions but sending minorities off to fight and die for a wrong war - while KBR employees make the Big Bucks as mercenaries...

_________

anyway, as they say...

You Can't Make This Stuff UP!!

hillary clinton is a mean, disturbed human being

carrie sheridan — Sat, 24 May 2008 19:39:18 EDT

anyone who hasn't seen keith olbermann's GENIUS 11 minutes putting it all together on the outrages of the hillary campaign... check out youtube -

barack and michelle were up against the worst when they were up against the clintons -

john mccain and swiftboating? i'm not the LEAST concerned -

i tried to tell bill clinton to KNOCK IT OFF on the afternoon of january 4... not even 24 hours after barack swept iowa...i tried to tell him we were all SICK OF their "meanness" and "manipulations" -

i can't even pretend anymore - i have met some lovely hillary supporters who didn't see what was going on, who didn't put it together - i hope they see now -

i think hillary cannot be re-elected to the senate in 2012 either - these people are awful...

i hope Kathleen Kennedy Townshend and RFK Jr drop their endorsements and back away from these clintons - they're awful people -

it's not only- not by a long shot - blacks who have been offended and hurt by the clinton calculations...

this is White On White - i'd sock either of them in the jaw if i had the chance and if i were a physical kind of person -

i hate their whole campaign - every single thing about it. it was awful. truly awful. and oftentimes, it was sick...

i'm sorry i can't be diplomatic any more - they have shown themselves to be AWFUL PEOPLE.

EveryThing Keith Olbermann said is true and has been a Long Time Coming -

www.DemocraticStuff.com

carrie sheridan — Sat, 24 May 2008 19:32:58 EDT

if you google barack obama - this is a sponsored link that shows to the right -

they have buttons, lapel pins [for you men - and women - who wear suits... or who don't want to put the heavier pin of the buttons through your clothing], bumper stickers -

buttons are $1

bumper stickers $2-3

lapel pins $4-5

___________________

my idea is to buy a bunch, sell them at a profit of $1-3 for each item and use that money to endow a fund to donate something to your local community in the name of obama -

especially books to a poor school library...

money for a local poor high school - for the teachers and guidance counselors to use to do things for poor students who could use something encouraging, a gift out of nowhere...

i'd like to see us all endowing funds at poor schools for kids to earn money or ipods or bikes or $ for clothes or iTunes or whatever... in the name of local obama supporters -

but you could use it for whatever is YOUR pet project - planting wildflowers somewhere, donating sports equipment to poorer high schools [a state of the art weight room for the boys would be great]...

_____________

i passed the 6th car i've seen this year with an obama 08 sticker posted in its rear window - and tooted my horn... it's the most fun to see OUR PEOPLE out on the roads, in the aisles at stores, in grocery checkout lines -

if we wear buttons or tee shirts or lapel pins -

and post bumper stickers and small flag decals on our vehicles - we'll all know who each other is and see how many of us there are!!!

i LOVE being alive now, being an American now - i have fallen in love with a few hundred of my fellow Americans that i never would have met - we've been walking by and driving by each other and had no idea there are so many of us - yearning for all the same things - the good, the true, the beautiful, the noble...

buy [and sell] buttons and tee shirts and bumper stickers and car magnets and lapel pins - declare yourself - and see the wonderful people who'll come up to speak to you - it'll warm your heart and make your spirit SOAR!!!!!!!!!

WHAT IF... RFK had been President from 1969-1977???

carrie sheridan — Thu, 22 May 2008 13:31:46 EDT

i'd never thought about this until Just Today... i don't think we'd have poor people - i do think we'd have had quality health care for everyone for at least 20 years - i think we'd have had much better schools - i think we'd have had more breakthroughs in science and medicine due to more funding for all worthy research - i think the world would like us more... and we would like ourselves more... i think we might have had a country we could increasingly have been proud of... what a waste, what a tragedy... the tenor, the backdrop of my life, of my generation's coming of age and adulthood could have been SO DIFFERENT... the Reagan era of greed could not have come to pass in a country where rich was defined as sharing our wealth so we could enjoy having more knowing that everyone had enough - we wouldn't have had this threatening Military-Industrial Complex based in the Brown & Root of the LBJ years that morphed into KBR that folded in Halliburton that has taken this country for a very expensive ride... wow... what a shame. what a Crying Shame.

Sen. Jim Webb - it's not race, it's culture ~

carrie sheridan — Thu, 22 May 2008 13:24:42 EDT

jim webb on msnbc last night talked about an article he wrote for the Wall Street Journal on the Scotch-Irish Americans in Appalachia... and how the results of the W Va. and KY primaries this month pointed up this isolated and hard-to-connect with/reach out to segment of our citizenry...

what's interesting is that. later last night, in reading a book of photographs on JFK from 1957-1963 [Remembering Jeck, phootographs by Jacques Lowe] on p. 111, i was amazed to come across:

"JFK was fascinated with such poor communities, often wondering what kept the people there and what could be done to improve their lives. He considered visits to hamlets like Ona [West Virginia]as part of his education for the White House."

p. 74, "After addressing a small and hostile audience of longshoremen in Coos Bay, Oregon, a forlorn Kennedy tours the docks, trying to make the best of a gloomy situation...Kennedy exploded and railed about the difficulties in reaching blue =-collar workers... Jack would eventually win over many labor supporters."

NOW... appalachia, poor white America reveres the kennedys perhaps almost as much as the previous generations revered FDR - i think rory kennedy did a documentary a few years ago?

so it isn't just Barack's "problem" - it's long-standing from 1960...

john and cindy mccain win the "elite" competition Hands Down...

the son and grandson of admirals, john mccain's mother roberta is heiress to an oil fortune...and his wife inherited a beer distributorship fortune...

cindy hensley was the only-child of a wealthy beer distributor in phoenix when john cain met her in hawaii in 1979...he signed a prenuptial agreement keeping HER money separate from his... and both of cindy mccain's parents died a few years ago. Her wealth is estimated to be $100-400 million in assets AND the mccains have been flying on the hensley corporate jet for years, probably decades...

of all the returning POWs in 1973, John McCain was the only one to become a Senator relatively quickly, with the help of the connections of his father-in-law...

____________________

MANY of us don't understand small-town America and certainly don't know Americans in the hill country of Tennessee, Kentucky, WV, etc...anymore than they understand urban Ivy-league educated populations in NYC or LA...

nothing wrong with that - it's not being uppity or elitist - it's just not familiar to us, that's all...

all these 48 years later, i believe that barack and michelle could tour these areas and get to know blue grass and rural realities and see how the dynamics of an insular community for themselves...

JFK was new to it all - people accompanying RFK to Mississippi witnessed how shocked HE WAS to see people living in such squalor and abject poverty...

there is no shame in these citizens not identifying or relating to a Harvard lawyer who grew up in Hawaii and is wicked smart... with a wife who is every bit his equal...

and there is nothing to criticize barack and michelle for either - they don't know Appalachians anymore than they probably know Brazilians or Russians or the French...

they just didn't get around to knowing these peoples YET...but they WILL... and i suspect many, many of them will come to like the obamas as much as we do.

meanwhile, if we could think about what WE can do to help these isolated people so that their lives are less difficult...

that's what i see so much as the promise of the obama campaign - the millions of us getting together to reach out and to contribute, and even sacrifice, for those who are suffering and struggling... so that we can proud of the basic dignity and standard of living of EVERY american...

we can do it. and we should. and we must pick up this thread where it was left fully 40 years ago - what we can imagine RFK would have done if he'd been President from 1969-1977.

WOW, i've never thought of that - what IF we hadn't had a president nixon and we HAD had a president Robert Kennedy... for 8 years...would we have WON the war on poverty... would we not have had the military build-up and expenditures diverting our resources from our own people, bankrupting the Soviet Union in their attempt to keep pace with us?

wow, what IF RFK had been President? how different would our lives have been, would our country be now?

UNITED WE CAN!

carrie sheridan — Fri, 16 May 2008 21:56:48 EDT

UNITED WE WILL!

UNITED WE WIN!

______________________

as an outreach to hillary supporters, i hope that we can reach out with new inclusive slogans and chants and cheers as democrats NOW...

it is not my nature, but i TRY to model barack's way of being inclusive, peaceable, reaching out... i find it so appealing and reassuring to see in him... and am trying to model it in my own behavior...

especially in speaking with hillary or mccain supporters - not to get into a My Candidate is Better Than Yours yada - but to be more inclusive and understanding of where they are coming from -

i developed a winning argument in citing how the thing about the obama campaign is the OTHER OBAMA SUPPORTERS who are wonderful people - showing up to give, to sacrifice, to be better Americans... and saying they'd LOVE the people i've met... that i have fallen in love with my country all over again and fallen in love with my fellow Americans - i feel a kinship, a true connection, with people who are different from me, who've had different experiences than me...

i haven't seen that in the mccain or hillary crowds... i DID see it in the edwards volunteers [altho not in all of the supporters - some/a third or so... seemed to be, unfortunately, people who didn't want to vote for a black man OR a woman or a clinton -

but the edwards volunteers - were like puppies in the same litter as the obamanians!

anyway, if we could model the inclusiveness and not meet the resistance of others who don't "get" what we get yet --- and who may never GET IT until we have demonstrated the real changes ---

it'd be a good thing - and it's easy to be able to speak with pride of the other obama people i meet - i LOVE them, we love each other - we are like long-lost family and didn't know there were/are so many of us out there...

write to John McCain - to have a NOBLE campaign -

carrie sheridan — Tue, 13 May 2008 14:12:31 EDT

i just emailed meghan mccain on www.mccainblogette.com -

i admired john mccain in 2000, gave some money to his campaign in NH to fend off the nasty Bush/Rove yada - to no avail, obviously in SC...

and admired the mccains incredibly when they just Took It in SC and stayed on the high road...

but after reading about vandalism in vincennes in the Wash Post -

that "Hamas Voted BHO" was written - that is from a nasty john mccain - not the john mccain of 2000...

and we Americans must let him know we want to admire him, not to see him be less than what he was, or seemed to be, in 2000 -

the world needs a noble America - in its campaign, starting NOW - not january 2009 -

" United We Can "

carrie sheridan — Fri, 09 May 2008 17:14:13 EDT

my obama buddy susan haig JUST came up with this Next Generation, phase 2 of

Yes We Can...

starting May 20 [the date barack sorta said this thing is over] -

i am digging the idea of the NEW inclusive slogan...

inviting the lovely hillary supporters and cool guys too - there were some very earnest wonderful young men volunteering for that campaign -

to join us in unity... What A Barack Thing To Do ---

___________________________

United We Can.

United We Will.

United We Win.

wonderful... just wonderful... the obama campaign fires up our imaginations and amazing creativity and what we live for -

thanks to Susan Haig in good ole North Carolina for this stroke of genius - brilliant in its simplicity. Positively inclusive and uniting... for One America.

no economic bailout for Hillary Clinton -

carrie sheridan — Thu, 08 May 2008 01:44:39 EDT

supposedly the hillary campaign owed $10 million to vendors for past events, services, goods...

in addition to the $6.4 million she personally loaned... and maybe another $5 million from before?

____________________

i am ADAMANT... these darned politicians spending other people's money -

if you don't have the money, You Don't Go To War so Americans can die and be stuck with the bills.

if you don't have the money, You Don't Keep Running For President. PERIOD.

Econ 101...

mccain misspent his campaign funds by the end of summer 2007 - now hillary - and these people want to run OUR economy? uh, NaDa...

no can do...

and it is time to GROW UP and face the mounting bills and debt... for a vanity campaign, hoping there'll be some May Surprise to torpedo barack obama.

this is cynical and sick... and the clintons ran a cynical and mean and divisive and incendiary campaign since january 4...

and we are NOT going to pay THEIR bill [no pun intended] -

the clintons AND mccain need to understand that when you run out of money, then you can't continue to run up a debt...

and expect US to bail you out...

not when you guys have access to $100 million and more...

STOP depending on the little people to pay for your private jets and 5 star hotel suites and first class all the way catering and wardrobe...

it's awful for hillary to beg the poor hardworking women [she said today this is her base as well as blue collar working white households] to give her money - while she has millions...

and that's why they haven't... they've fallen for a LOT but maybe they refuse to be victimized and taken advantage of...

if romney could pay his own debt, so can the clintons...

if she isn't willing to fund her own candidacy and be just $6 million poorer... then she isn't worthy to be leader of the free world... she's elitist and out of touch and can't manage Simple Math and fundamental economic principles...

while she games us on the wonder of a Gas Tax Holiday for the summer.

Bite Me.

I got to hug Barack in Raleigh !!!

carrie sheridan — Wed, 07 May 2008 11:41:35 EDT

and Michelle [for the 2nd time] -

anyone who hasn't gotten to a rally/event... you GOTTA go. it's the experience of a lifetime... it's just dumb luck that i got up close last night in raleigh - and it's NOT about that...

it's about meeting your fellow Obamanians... and, in the corniest way, "feelin' the love" - we are, most of us, like long-lost family... we are On The Same Page about everything that matters and have more in common with each other often than with even some of our own friends and family...

i've been to a hillary event once - and it is so different - militant We've Got To Win, it is time to elect "a" woman... the pushing and shoving to get up to hillary, to get something signed, to get a photo - yikes... it was dangerous, actually, as people stood on and climbed over the auditorium seats and one whole row was about to break its bolts...

at an obama event, there is hugging, you feel free to go right up to AnyOne there and start talking... you're all happy as can be, it's A Happening.

it's a political woodstock... we're all showing up to GIVE something, not to GET Something. This campaign and effort is not about getting anything - it's about giving and it will be about sacrificing and we all know that. We're here because we are already convinced we are going to have to be a Greatest Generation and fix this terrible mess, the misery, the tragedies...

everyone i have met in NH, in SC and now in NC... we hear the call to help make life less difficult for those who have it harder than we do - those who are suffering or struggling... we want to make it [not EASY as the repubs dis the dems about all the time but] less hard, less bleak, less dark, less alone...

it's an unbelievable experience of citizenship - i have Fallen In Love with my fellow Americans - at obama events and gatherings and also as i meet people because of the obama 08 button i wear everywhere or the bumper sticker i've posted in the upper left corner of my car's rear window... i meet people in parking lots, we start to talk... one day, the Obama Fairies made a visit in the Marshall's parking lot in wilmington NC... and [no doubt seeing my OBAMA 08 bumper stickers on the rear and side windows of my honda element} tucked 2 OBAMA HOPE bumper stickers in my windshield wipers...

that's what it's like to be an obamanian... almost Every Day, something sweet or wonderful happens... the more of us who wear buttons and bumper stickers, the more we will all know who each other is [like the secret handshake only not secret At All] -

meanwhile, i can't believe i lived to see such a powerful experience of community - it's a great time to be alive, to be an American, to be with other obamanians...

fired UP!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh Happy Day...

carrie sheridan — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:14:19 EDT

i have been happy.

happy since i saw barack's 2nd killer speech live on C-Span on saturday, january 5, 2008...

happy since working at the NH primary rally in nashua NH on tuesday, january 8th... i didn't know what to expect, i didn't even know if i would get IN... and then i was blown away to be in a sea of wonderful wonderful people - warm, generous, reaching out people... i realized This is a Political Woodstock!!

and i have been happy every day since.

in a way i have never been.

like michelle, i too am really proud of my country for the first time in my adult lifetime of almost 40 years... we always loved this country and appreciated our many advantages and privileges and blessings...

but America has fallen short of what we can be and should be and were meant to be and quickly CAN BE - those of us not reflexively nationalistic have been honest - we could do better and we paid a heavy price in death and disease and depression and dejection by not living up to our greater good for the greater good of all -

and i have been happy every day since january 5 - i cannot believe i lived to see such an amazing candidate for President... man or woman, black or white or other, dem or repub or other - it is so not about any of THAT...

i am happy to be alive in this world at this time. i am thrilled to be an American in this country at this time. my heart is full of love for the many obamanians i have met at obama events AND just in the grocery checkout line, in the parking lot, in the aisle of a store -

i feel at home in THIS world... there are enough people who share my ideals and values and want to SHOW UP to give... i can't believe it.

i had no idea there were so many of us. there are ENOUGH of us. i am heartened and infused with warmth and love and relief to fall in love with my fellow Americans...so many of them are dear and a joy or so darned funny and down-to-earth real...

barack and michelle have created a place and a reason to meet and come together -

there was a special on VH1 classics last night - IMAGINE, John Lennon - i think he'd have been thrilled to see this time come - all those corny songs from the 60s... they all sound right to me now...

in million-part harmony...

CHANGE starts NOW -

carrie sheridan — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:03:12 EDT

if we wear our OBAMA 08 buttons everywhere... and start connecting with the people we are passing through life with everyday -

we can ask Would You Be Interested in getting together with other obama people to do something in our area... 95% + people that i asked in nashua NH and in charleston SC brightened and said YES!

we exchanged emails and cell phone #s [in case anyone doesn't want to give their address or whatever although that was NOT a problem really] - and we can all start meeting up to join in a communal effort as Obama people...

if we donated our time, stuff, books to the poorest schools near us - slap an obama sticker on whatever is donated - some people offered to give whatever GREAT stuff they have and aren't using or don't need - from tools to dishes to great clothes - for an incentive/rewards program at the local high school for the teachers/guidance counselors to distribute...

if struggling kids saw that the adults are taking back the country EN MASSE - they'd feel more secure, i think, that Help Is On The Way. that this obama thing is FOR REAL and it's happening...

i think it's better than what each church does, women's group, civic organization - that's great... but something AMERICAN and collective is the energy that i have been missing for 40 years...

to see us all coalesce around our community values because we aren't just Baptists or parents of students or Junior Leaguers or whatever...

barack is right to draw our atttention to E PLuribus Unum... out of many, one -

it's the only way we'll fix the country and save the world... by being a resounding majority who have all come together for fundamental ideals and values...

because more connects us than divides us -

it is a privilege as obamanians to live out the call that barack and michelle have sounded to us - to BE the change they are leading us to... in this life and this world. NOW.

Barack, the leader for Baby Boomers to follow

carrie sheridan — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:55:12 EDT

so we can pick up where we left off in 1968, in 1970...

we just sortof dispersed after 1968 and woodstock and kent state - but most of us didn't lose our ideals...

now we are just old enough - AND just young enough - to pick up and to work smart toward what America can be and should be and was meant to be...

and what we need it to be - the country needs to get off medication and alcohol and drugs and the only way that can happen is if we create a community that doesn't make people want to tune out or turn away from... or needs prescriptions to get through the day...

we could have peace and joy and love - and it can't be a good life for any of us until it is a good life possible for all of us...

if we all just give 5% of our time and 5% of our money and resources.. to whatever cause we most ache over.. in the name of America, connected to other obamanians...

change can start NOW... a better life for us all can increasingly start now and build toward november and january...

we obamanians can SHOW the country that change HAS STARTED now...

a GREAT time to be an American - maybe the BEST

carrie sheridan — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:49:48 EDT

time ever...

since being in NH in january and then going to SC... barack and michelle obama have led me to the most powerful sense of community i have ever experienced in 55 years on the planet...

it's something i would have BET AGAINST as recently as december 2007 -

i was so crest-fallenly cynical since the spring of 1989 -

but i have been falling in love with my fellow Americans who see my bumper sticker and come over to me as i'm pumping gas... or who come up to me at the grocery store or TJ Maxx or Marshalls, seeing my OBAMA 08 button...

the people i now feel free to speak to as i go about my day - to ask "are most of the people you know registered to vote?" --- it gives me reason to talk to my fellow Americans...

and i want to register everyone - not just for barack. if they are for hillary or mccain or libertarian or nader, i say "barack obama is the first person to inspire me in 40 years and i just hope everyone learns about him and makes a point to read up on him before deciding not to vote for him"...

OR i will mention that 1/2 of it for me is meeting other obamanians who are showing up to give, to contribute, even to sacrifice for a better country, to try to help others, to try to make life less difficult for others...

i am not comfortable pushing barack anymore than i would push my religion - these are personal decisions and i am not SURE barack will be a great President just as i cannot be SURE there is a God... i am pretty sure, sure enough... but not sure enough to take responsibility for another's choice...

but this is a great time to be alive...

i learn from Barack EVERY day...

carrie sheridan — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:40:51 EDT

he handles everything brilliantly...

when he is just normal/average... i've learned that i can revere someone and still see him as just another human... after his amazing speech on the night of the iowa win, he was tired and just "ok" at concord HS in concord NH at 1 pm the next day... and as i left that rally in the gym and was walking to my car, i was smiling and shaking my head... blown away that there was no disappointment or letdown that barack wasn't electrifying or impressive... realizing that he was tired, naturally... and that he was Keeping It Real.

same thing with the debates - he didn't blow me away with his "performances"... debate skills are NOT what a President needs... he's a peacemaker, inclined to find accord and not to zap the other guy or find an opening to zing his opponents or competition... IT IS WHY WE LOVE HIM AND ARE SO FERVENTLY FOR HIM and FOR WHAT HE CAN DO FOR AMERICA AND THE WORLD...what he HAS DONE for america and the world already...

and what he has done for me personally...to lift me out of 19 years of well-reasoned cynicism is no small feat...

and we don't need to idealize him or michelle - their reality holds up... they can get tired, say something the wrong way... even say the wrong thing by my lights - and it's ok. it means i can trust that they are REAL and not performing, putting their game faces on, this isn't all strategized and programmed...

or when the media thinks he waits too long to pounce or whatever...on hillary or mccain or Rev. Wright... i think They Don't Get It Yet. that is why he is a statesman and noble man - he deliberates, waits to decide what is the right thing and then delivers it at the right time In His Own Time when he has satisfied himself... and i think he's almost always right - he is ALWAYS right on things that matter and matters that matter...

Barack is His Own Man with a powerful and powerfully loving woman behind him and at his side at every turn -

It Is Going To Take A While for America to realize what has hit us... it's taken me weeks to realize this has really happened and is underway and all the implications of all that COULD go right, all the wrongs that COULD be righted, all the misery that could be relieved, all of the tragedy that could be consoled or comforted...

and it stops me cold... and i know i don't even get 10% of the implications of barack and michelle obama... and it is going to take the country 5 months to get it, too - as week after week, more join our ranks and line up with our ideals and values...until there is a thundering vote in november... and a majority that has integrated into one voice, E Pluribus Unum for real... as barack is sworn in...

the work starts now - the internal work, too - as i try to be a good and faithful supporter - to not be angry or negative [always out of fear or pre-existing anger] - to conform to being the best i can be as barack and michelle have risen to the challenge of being the best THEY can be...

it is the best time to be alive and the best time to be an American....

Rev. Wright is Telling It Like It Is on many

carrie sheridan — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:01:44 EDT

things -

and asking us to think, consider some things - on others...

i am a 55 year old baby boomer Upper White suburban matron who grew up in a small army town in kansas and have lived most of my adult years in the Northeast...

i blame the national press for this bs - they print a "story" - not The Story and certainly not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth - no WONDER the candidates won't talk to them - it is a waste of time - they have an agenda which is their careers - not the best for their readers and viewers...

the best thing we can all do is turn AWAY from MediAmerica -

go to the original source yourself -

youtube

www.politico.com has great blogs that seem to tell things the way they really are happening

www.dickmorris.com has killer analysis of the politics always...

refuse to accept soundbytes anymore...

rev. wright was quoting an ambassador in the God damn/condemn America...

1-3 million Vietnamese died while we destroyed their country to supposedly save it -

now we have done the same to the iraqis who have fled their country, been killed, been forever disrupted... we destroy things to save them to get the contracts to rebuild them and fill our profiteering coffers...

to tax Americans so that there isn't enough money for quality of life - that would be the BEST WAY to spread democracy anywhere - make it more attractive here... in a true land of the free and home of the brave AND free SPEECH...

i admire reverend wright - he has more to shcw for his life than anyone who has dissed or criticized or mocked or derided him...

i don't think anyone should say anything against him who doesn't have as much to show for his or her life as he has to show for his...

"The Nomination Is OVER": dick morris 9:17 pm ET

carrie sheridan — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 01:11:01 EDT

on hannity and colmes, fox news...

AND that barack will win or lose by a wide margin [we know which THAT will be] -

i urge all obamanians to cheer and take heed WHILE we continue to do all we can - and then some - to fulfill the promise and hopes to realize The Dream...

dick morris has been right At Every Turn... he called the NH result exactly as i saw it being there on the ground from mid december to mid january...

and all along - he is worth watching - he has his own website [www.dickmorris.com] and newsmax carries him too [good to keep tabs on for Opposition Research/keepign tabs]...

www. politico.com - you can sign up to get daily updates from ben smith's blog covering the dem side of things - a Must Read from a conscientious journalist...

It's all good... and thanks always to Iowa. Iowa Changed EVERYthing... gotta love 'em... and i do for making this powerful experience of community a stunning reality for me in my 56th year...

It's All Over But The Shouting -

carrie sheridan — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:53:18 EDT

it started with Caroline and Edward Kennedy... and Bruce Springsteen -

and with Claire McCaskill and Governor Richardson and now Representative Clyburn and Howard Dean...

not only what they said... but How They Said It... how they endorsed Barack was eloquent and heartfelt and One For The Ages...

the clintons have finally GOTTEN THE MESSAGE that we are Sick Of It and to knock it off -

they have lost the black community who has seen shockingly how they were just being USED as a means to an end, not unlike monica lewinsky... and just as she was abruptly "That Woman", they were Those People... and bill clinton was NOT, in fact, our first black president... he was the warm up act...

and it seems clear that it WAS an act...it's chilling, really...what the clintons have showed themselves to be. i can't believe i defended them to my repub friends from 1994-1997... i can't believe those same friends were RIGHT and i was WRONG... quite wrong...

we all lost, though, because it is because of the clintons that we got Dubya as the front man for cheney, the oilman...

every time we get a President from texas from either stripe, we get an unnecessary war. that's my reluctant conclusion after reading LBJ biographies, reading about the bushes...

where ARE the eisenhower republicans? i think Barack is an Eisenhower Republican in every good sense... wanting to wage peace, not shoot em up...and run up a huge profit for the military-industrial complex... people who are greedy and who Want Theirs... not brave warriors who want to save the world...

so the hillary campaign has gotten the message to KNOCK IT OFF - and they are leaving it to mccain to pick up the BS bickering...

one down. one to go.

now it is Day One for us obamanians -

i hope those of us who are extroverted and comfortable doing so... will carry voter registration forms everywhere we go through october [when traveling, download the forms from the board of elections in whatever state/county you are visiting?!]...

i hope we'll wear OBAMA 08 buttons and tee shirts and hats...

and i hope we post OBAMA 08 bumperstickers in the upper left corner of our vehicle's rear window and put a small 3X5 flag decal in the upper right corner...

that way we all know who we are [i have had wonderful experiences of people coming up to me - and 2 days ago, i was only in marshall's in wilmington NC for no more than 20 minutes and when i got in my car, i saw TWO barack face peel-off stickers tucked into my windshield wipers...

there have been SO MANY sweet moments like this since early january... the obama fairies are everywhere!

[and i must add that in a Walmart parking lot in concord NH in january, someone took the obama bumper sticker off the window where i'd taped it and keyed my back hatch-door underneath where it had been... i'm afraid that was probably a hillary supporter - they were militant and sometimes rabid in NH before she "won" an equal share of delegates to barack]...

if we can start to think about what we can give -

can we give 5% of our time each month or each week or each day - to joining up with other obamanians to do some service project or community outreach in our towns and cities?

can we give 5% of our monthly income to whatever worthy cause we care most about - the homeless, hunger, disease, abuse, wounded warriors...

could we donate books to the libraries in the poorest schools nearest to us?

could we donate 5% of our "stuff" - to poor churches, to the local schools for teachers and guidance counselors to give out as a rewards/incentive program for struggling students...

could we donate our talents - 5% - hair stylists and manicurists and lawyers and doctors and dentists and dancers and artists...?

5%... leaving us 95%. WAY most.

could we? and if not, it's interesting to wonder why not... to have the courage to ask ourselves if we want to try to be heroes... we aren't being asked to throw ourselves on a grenade or to go into fallujah or to roam the hills and caves of afghanistan looking for the Bad Guys...

i wonder... can we all, as unified Americans, give just 5% of our overage [anyone who is just making it... that does NOT apply to you - although all the studies show that it is the working poor and Just Making IT who give to the poor in the highest %... that should shame the rest of us who have PLENTY and Then Some] -

i hope so much that we obamanians rise to become everything we can be and should be and were meant to be... just as barack and michelle have stood up and taken it and endured and prevailed for good...

so that america starts to be everything we can be and should be and were meant to be ---

so that we can all be resoundingly proud as we see ourselves realizing the dreams and living out the values... everyday... in every way...

i know i have met at least 200 obamanians since early january who are stepping up and are thrilled to connect with each other...

i think there are enough of us... to make change now. Day One is today... not January 2009...

Calling ALL Baby Boomers -

carrie sheridan — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:30:17 EDT

it is time to step up and to step it up -

we went through the whole anti-VietNam late 60s... we learned later about the BS of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution...

we knew --- or we should have known - we should have known more history about fascist techniques, about being blitzkrieged and railroaded...

we should have known the signs of being manipulated by advertising and marketing - if only in the repetitions of the Code Words by a small group who was risking NOTHING to invade a country that was too busy minding its own business to care about messing with a superpower that would nuke them if we wanted to... and certainly if we Had To.

we have a LOT of making up to do...

after 1968 and Woodstock and Kent State - we just dispersed - we bought organic and the right brands and the best labels and the cool cars and we got a lot of easy money as our real estate appreciated and our 401K plans did well.... in the 70s, there was a wave of journalism about how we might not do as well as our parents - but we did fine. financially, anyway...

service? notsomuch.

there's this big flap about the influence of pastors, priests and ministers on their congregants... but i don't think 10% of the people i know give 10% of their money to charity or to the poor or to their churches... i don't think 5% of the people i know do... i know because i've brought it up hypothetically and people look like they just got slammed with an unexpected repair bill and might not be able to afford it [without dipping into their investments or sacrificing a trip] -

we don't give 4 hours a week...

we don't give 10% of our income [not even net, forget about gross!] -

we have more rooms per house occupant than is conscionable... houses of 100 years ago were big enough but often there was a grandparent or an aunt also being put up there - now retired couples have 8 room homes and use no more than 4 enough to justify the drain on energy and resources...

but imagine the outrage if we asked every America who had more than 4 rooms per person to modify their home to make a separate living space for someone in need with only the most basic cooking and bathroom adaptations... and to ask that person to contribute time or reasonable rent to the larger community...

i've seen so many developments of McMansions from coast to coast... many of them with only an older couple living in them more than 320 days a year... but i am pretty sure we wouldn't take people in...

the depression seems to have been a kinder time -

i mean, really, would most people help someone who came to their door and just asked for whatever extra food they could spare?

so many of us have refrigerators and closets CHOCK-full/stuffed to the max... but would we worry, afraid that that person would come back and break in or hurt us?

what if - instead of buying alarm systems and paying a premium to live in gated communities, what if we had spent that same money in community support - to make life less difficult for those who are struggling or suffering...

everything is a business - safety and plastic wrap and child care and cooking - we hire everything out and wonder what they did BEFORE...

if cell phone transmissions ARE killing bees, bees we need for the Planet's Survival... would we give them up? would we even reduce our usage until we know for sure they are NOT killing the bees...?

just 10-15 years ago most of us did NOT have cell phones or satellite tv or wireless internet - would we balk at returning to the standard of living that was FINE just a few years ago, 4000 days ago?

Reverend Wright said some true things - we KNOW we stole this country from the Indians and that many of them would have shared the land [the land that there was plenty of for everyone to live on richly and grandly] -

we know that we bombed the hell out of Tokyo and Dresden... and that even if Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary to save OUR troops [and i tend to believe if it was a mistake, it was the better mistake to make - to be safer rather than sorry] - still, we perpetrated 30+ times the loss on the Japanese that they perpetrated on us at Pearl Harbor...

can't we admit that we perpetrated a horror - adding that it was in the hopes of preventing WORSE , MORE horrors...for BOTH sides...

__________________________

barack obama is the first leader who has inspired me since i saw Robert Kennedy talking to the crowd in indianapolis on the night Martin Luther King was gunned down...

i believe that he can lead us... and that we Baby Boomers can come together under the Obama tent to pick up where we left off in 1968, to dust off or take the tarnish off those ideals... to make a correction in the market of our VALUES... not our Net Worth... but our VALUES. what is priceless about life...

i believe that those of us who have enough, MORE than enough, need to rethink...

how do we look to those who are starving, or who need a malaria net or who are in danger or who are suffering emotionally or psychologically or mentally...

in a There But For The Grace of God go I consciousness, if i were one of those people in America or in the world, how would i feel if i saw how the greedy, wasteful Americans live...

as one Russian put it, "I want to live in a country where the poor people are fat"...

could we think of donating 10% of our time, even 5%... 1 day a month or 2 hours a week or 20 minutes a day...

could we think of donating 10%, even 5%, of our monthly cash flow... and contemplate... JUST TO contemplate making a 1-time donation of 10% of our savings/net worth...

could we think of giving away 10%, even 5%, of our goods and possessions - our GOOD stuff in NEW condition... if only just as an experiment to find out that it wouldn't kill us... and we might even feel lighter to have less "stuff" [George Carlin does a great riff on this] -

could we just spend a week or so considering this - what it would feel like, why it would be hard... what are we willing to do to save others - and maybe in the process, to save ourselves?

Dig It...

carrie sheridan — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:48:18 EDT

Rep. James Clyburn, majority whip of the House of Representatives - a hero of mine over many years as is john conyers, george mitchell - brave, wise, smart/sharp men who are our true patriots, who are kickass statesmen...

guys who know the score and have been trying to navigate/negotiate these dangerous waters for many thankless years [thankless except that i think their friends and families LOVE them]...

rep. clyburn came out and said what has been obvious to me since post-NH... the clintons have lost the black community [and i think it's for good...not just for now] -

i would add that they lost ME, a 55-year-old Upper WhiteSuburban Matron when hillary told andrea mitchell that some candidates hadn't done the SPADEwork -

this was monday, january 7... the front page of the NY Times featured a story of Bill Clinton being the aging elvis past his prime... and included my plea to Bill Clinton the previous friday, the day after barack won iowa, NOT TO BRING ON the clinton/shaheen machine on their opponents...

tuesday morning, january 8, clinton surrogate Andrew Cuomo, the Attorney General of the State of NY told a radio talk show host that other candidates couldn't SHUCK AND JIVE their way to the nomination...

as i told a dear black friend, this is an issue for whites... for White On White... what people like this will do to you, they will do to the rest of us NEXT...most whites are increasingly getting hip to this - that it would be better to have a class war and to STOP this absurd racial tension...

it's about oppression... the inhumane, depriving anyone of their dignity or an acceptable level of subsistence...

and we are all oppressed --- from the truly patriotic who went "to die for a lie" [as Rev. Wright so brilliantly says]... to the rest of us stuck with the bill...

while bush and cheney and rummy go off to live the Lush Life of golf and sport shooting and fly-fishing after getting rich off the US government and perks, etc...

here's the real divide: those who benefitted and those who it cost...

those who benefitted have to GIVE SOME of their ill-begotten gains BACK - with windfall negative bonuses or something -

it has been an OUTRAGE and we were too afraid of them to do anything til now because we didn't know that millions of us Get It and share our concerns... not for ourselves, but for others...

_______________

"It's all over but the shouting" -

www.politico.com features howard dean saying this morning on Good Morning America that hillary will know it's time to fold 'em in june...

after gov. richardson took the clintons on, then rep. clyburn - saying what many of us have wanted someone to say since early january...

but these are wise, reasonable, diplomatic men - in whom we can trust to lead and guide us to clean up the mess and chaos of the cheney/bush years...

and we owe them, barack, david axelrod, this campaign... so much for giving us this powerful experience of community and a chance to make things right...

hillary campaigns as she would rule...

carrie sheridan — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:22:44 EDT

she ignores, deflects and even lies...

she slammed Putin as having no soul [when Christians are warned that we dare not judge AnyOne else lest we be judged - this was one of the most shocking things i've ever seen a politician do or say in 40 years... it made me think the clintons need SERIOUS therapy/analysis - along with several other weird things like telling Iowans that she wanted a long-term relationship with them, not a one-night stand... i think the clintons are troubled people - she disses any state that didn't vote for her, plays to the lowest stuff - trying to get women to vote for a woman, people in scranton to vote for a candidate who spent some summers there 50 years ago... THESE are the reasons to vote for a President? no... this is why you root for the local SPORTS TEAM]

she can't manage the economy if she can't manage the MILLIONS of $$$ her campaign raised from early on -

she isn't worth a donation from someone else if she isn't willing to spend a sizeable chunk of the clinton millions in invest in her campaign - follow the money - if she doesn't put her own money where her mouth is and believe that is the best investment she could make in America - why should poor women contribute $5 to her campaign?

i'm sorry to be so negative - i truly am. i wish the clintons had turned out to be what i hoped they might be when i saw them standing in front of the State House in Little Rock on election night in 1992 - i hadn't voted for them or any candidate - but that night i rooted for them and i HOPED they would rise to the occasion -

instead, they dragged the country into their own strife and drama and mental ill health - and they are still doing it. these are deeply troubled people who have not lived according to the highest standards of moral conduct and The Bill Has Come Due and they are enraged that they can't pull anything over on us again, anymore... that we are Spun OUT and they have shown themselves to be out for their own power and greed - NOT for us...

she acts tough but isn't strong...

yeah she is resilient - not for US, for her own personal advancement...

if the clintons care so much about america, let them give 1/2 their wealth to worthy projects uplifting the poor - to college funds, etc...

they still have 2 big houses in wealthy areas paid for, hillary has fabulous jewelry and clothes, they travel like royalty, they have good salaries and pensions and health care - they could give away HALF their net income and still be sitting pretty -

meanwhile, i hope the Dems pressure them to start acting like statesmen... i hope all the SuperDelegates start to be TRUE FRIENDS to the clintons and to fellow Americans and put a stop to the lies and spin and BS...

Fired Up - and Keeping The Faith - as we all learn a lot from how barack and michelle and this campaign so wisely guide us through these dangerous straits...

bumper stickers, buttons and tee shirts -

carrie sheridan — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:54:48 EDT

put an OBAMA 08 bumper sticker in the upper left corner of your car's rear window -

wear an obama 08 button everywhere you go -

whoever you meet and comes up to you - ask them if they'd like to join you and get together for some service project/outreach in your community [almost everyone i asked brightened and said SURE!] - and exchange email addresses and phone numbers -

and get together and gain sustenance from finding so many like-minded, warm-hearted good and generous folks where you live -

it's a powerful sense of community - and we obama people can start showing everyone else that change is starting NOW... with obama nation - we aren't waiting til the election in november or the inauguration in january -

i believe this is the BEST THING we obama supporters can do NOW to show those who don't Get It as we do that this is for real and it's all good and their country, our country, can start becoming what it was meant to me, what we'd all LOVE IT to be, right now...

that it isn't just voting for barack - it's OBAMA nation, millions strong, united, picking up where we left off in the late 1960s to bring truth and justice and social justice and economic justice to our communities -

to ask those who have PLENTY in this country to live with less so that everyone can have ENOUGH... and for the Investment Class to be proud that their best investment is in other Americans and in providing resources so that we can feel good about leaving the world a better place than we were born into... not just for me and mine but for ALL of US together...

be as visible as you can be - when someone looks approachable, and like they wouldn't mind being bothered, ask "are the people you know pretty much registered to vote?" -

i've found this starts a conversation - even if someone is a republican or for hillary, they don't mind that question because there's no pressure to vote for obama -

i just ask everyone who is for the others to go on the website, to read about what caroline kennedy said or what bruce springsteen said or others in endorsing barack - because he IS such an unusual candidate...

and it's been the most profound experience of community i have ever had in 55 years - to meet my fellow Americans as i go about my daily life everyday...

i have fallen in love with this country and so many fellow citizens...

Try it - and see for yourself -

Carry Voter Registration Cards with you EveryWhere

carrie sheridan — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:32:55 EDT

wear an OBAMA 08 button.

put an OBAMA 08 bumper sticker in the upper left corner of the rear window of your car.

as you go through a checkout line at the grocery or any store, ask the person next to you breezily "are most of the people you know registered to vote?" - or ask the checkout person too as you are finishing your transaction -

i have found that everywhere - Boston Market, Stop and Shop, Macy's, Bed Bath and Beyond, Barnes and Noble... people are glad to be invited to talk about the election -

and this way, there's no pressure or "sell" - it's about community, not pressing for them to vote for OUR candidate... in hundreds of instances since december, every person has responded wonderfully, glad to have a chance to talk to another citizen...

sometimes, i've gotten "yes, but i'm voting for hillary", "yes, i'm a republican" -

and sometimes i'll say "i would just ask you to learn about barack obama or go to his website to see what he stands for before being sure not to vote for him" -

sometimes i say "the amazing thing to me is not just barack and michelle obama, but the amazing people i've met at the rallies - people who are all showing up to give something, not to get something... it's amazing the wonderful people this campaign is drawing" [and i leave it at that]

or also that i'm glad people are weighing in so that washington knows what we all think and feel...

_________________

yesterday, i was returning something to Marshalls, and when i got back to my car, the Obama Fairies had stopped by and put 2 OBAMA things inside my windshield wipers -

i realized they must have LOVED seeing my OBAMA stickers - we're out there, millions of us - and now we can start seeing how many of us there are -

it's the most powerful sense of community i've ever felt in my life - more than at church, or parent meetings at school...

it'll make you happy each and every day as you have a way to connect with other Americans -

the Hillary campaign playing the race and gender card

carrie sheridan — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:23:59 EDT

I saw for myself in NH how Hillary has persuaded some women that voting for her is a win for them... and, of course, it isn't...

yet, i see that this has played well among older voters who feel motherly toward her [i think that may be why she so often uses the phrase "since i was a little girl"]...

________________________

it's hard to see how much of the hillary vote [or, previously, the edwards support] was for white men who won't vote for a black men - for whatever their personal reasons...

i think barack can reach out to them when he has time to focus on what is probably the ONLY cross section of this country he does NOT know from first-hand experience...

i think some of them will realize that everyone who is in jeopardy economically has more in common with each other than any class or ethnic category...

i think these Reagan Democrats, some of them, will realize they were duped by Ronald Reagan's nationalism and that the country got carved up by corporate raiders in a Greed Is Good epidemic that swept this country in the 1980s...it may have Felt Good to get all Rah Rah My Country Kicks Butt...

but it cost us a huge debt for military might, a huge debt to bail out the savings and loans...

i think in 2008 Reagan Democrats might begin to understand the Reagan Bush flag-waving yada Didn't Add Up for them... or for any of us...

and that we are left with a punishing debt, that we probably need to buy bonds to get some of it back in this country [just like well-run companies often buy back their stock on the stock exchange, as amazon.com did in the last year...]

and they could see that Barack will be able to make the case to the Investment Class to invest in America and Americans...

that he isn't Like Them, but that he is For Them, as he is for all of us, as he is for the best for the whole world...

but he needs weeks and months for people to get to see him over time - to see that he knows first hand what it's like to be born to a poor struggling young single mom... to be part of the urban lower middle class [as his maternal grandparents were] and what it's like to be among the most distinguished and powerful people...

the ones who don't want to be brought around - mccain already has their support -

but there are enough of the rest of us who realize We Are All In This Together, sink or swim...

that a Rising Tide HAS to lift all boats... as the corporations and rich are experiencing that a Lowering Tide can sink the Big Boats for sure because they were sure it couldn't happen to them...

i think things are Bad Enough, that given some time, 4 months or so, many Americans will become comfortable with Barack and Michelle... they'll feel familiar, we'll feel we know them...

Dems will win in PA in november AnyWay...

carrie sheridan — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:04:55 EDT

as well as the other states that hillary has "won", mostly by a slim margin - and unimpressively when you consider that most of us knew almost NoThing about barack obama and absolutely NOTHING about michelle obama even 5 months ag...

whereas the Clintons are a Known Quantity since spring 1992 - 16 years... they have managed to keep themselves in the spotlight for 16 long years...

________________

I've watched Governors of New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania help the Democrat Machine pull out wins for Hillary Clinton. To me, it seems obvious those Governors will use their influence and connections and operation to Get Out The Vote for the Democrat in November -

this argument by the hillary campaign that she can win the Big States has seemed pretty dumb to me - Either Dem, Any Dem is going to win California, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire in November --- the Bush/Cheney administration has so boldly damaged this country and the fabric of our society...

so i've thought Hillary wins wherever any good Dem organization is already going to win -

if you see that new registrations for Republicans are a fraction of what there is for Democrats, and see the Repubs truly in disarray, without a rudder, with a compromise candidate [and i say this as someone who gave McCain $ in 2000 and Howard Dean $ in 2004 - as the candidates seeming to be most REAL in both cycles].

John McCain's time has passed and he hasn't been a straight talker since he fell in line with Bush after Rove/Bush savaged him in South Carolina in 2000...

John McCain is a military man who is wrong about Iraq and who WAS wrong about Iraq in 2002-2003 - a debacle that has threatened the ruination of our country and bankrupting of our people...

John McCain can be sharp and nasty - and i think we've had enough of incivility...

No More Debates - barack gets it right AGAIN -

carrie sheridan — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 16:06:16 EDT

enough of that bs... set-up...

i actually think it was helpful to get the bs out once and for all - from now on, barack can say [in lawyer speak] "that has been asked... And Answered... do you have another question that is NEW?"

it's not about mano-a-mano -

and barack's nature is that of a peace-maker, a uniter - not to contest and score points...

a good debater/advocate for one point of view is not what this country needs -

we need a JUDGE who can consider all passionately argued views who can glean the truth from the facts presented...

and that is the peace-loving, resolution-seeking Barack Obama... who wants One Country united around our highest ideals and solid time-honored values - like the Golden Rule...

enough of debates already...he is absolutely right...

barack and michelle Keep It Real -

carrie sheridan — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:12:07 EDT

watching barack in harrisburg PA on C-Span last night, what he said was lackluster, not rousing/stirring...sortof just like how regular candidates are on a regular day...

watching him and michelle and the girls on the night of the victory in Iowa, i was KNOCKED OUT by the light and warmth emanating from this wonderful family... and then BLOWN AWAY by what barack said and how he said it... i sat thinking I Have Not Seen Anything like this in 40 years since i saw on tv Robert Kennedy talking to the crowd in indianapolis the night Martin Luther King was gunned down...

i was 15 going on 16 in april 1968... and in my whole adult life, i had not been so stirred like that... until january 2008 ...

i went to Concord High School in New Hampshire at noon the next morning to see barack... and when he was just sortof a regular person, surely tired and besieged with new demands on him as The Victorious One... i was surprised to see i wasn't disappointed At All. i left the gym, shaking my head, realizing that this was AMAZING: a man who is both extraordinary AND ordinary... not someone putting on his Game Face for the cameras/public... someone who could have stunning moments... and average moments...

i liked him Even MORE.

then the next day, saturday, i saw barack give another AMAZING speech live on C-Span...

he was wonderful the night of the Nashua rally on primary night in NH [i will NEVER forget that night. NEVER. it was the best night of my life EVER, excluding times of personal happiness or triumph - i was as happy as i have ever felt in my life - not because of something wonderful happening in my own life - because something wonderful was happening for everyone everywhere... because i was in the company of a few hundred wonderful people who had all come to this one place to be part of contributing, giving, sacrificing for a better world for all... i loved it: barack, michelle, that night, the many warm and wonderful people i met who felt like family...]

then he was bone-tired at the rally at North Charleston High School in South Carolina a couple of weeks later...

then electrifying again in Columbia on the night of the SC win [it was thrilling to chant with the crowd "Race Doesn't Matter"] -

and so it goes with barack and michelle... they Keep It Real and i believe they will continue to do so - they know this is the only way this whole experience can be rewarding For Them -

and i think they understand that they will never disappoint us as long as they just Keep On Keeping It REAL...

what a time this is to be alive on the planet and to be an American...

carry Voter Registration cards with you EVERYwhere

carrie sheridan — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 13:58:14 EDT

if you wear an obama button and put one of the bumper stickers on the top left corner of your rear window [i also put ones on each side of my honda element, down low] ---

people will start a conversation with you... in line at the grocery store or WalMart... at the gas pump...when you're checking out at TJ Maxx or Macy's...

and it's this incredible experience of community - everything we idealistic Baby Boomers thought would happen in the late 60s and didn't...

in NH, in Charleston SC and now in Wilmington NC... it is UNbelievable - i've realized that we are all passing by each other like ships in the night with NO IDEA of how many other wonderful people are out there who share our ideals and values...

and barack and michelle obama have stepped up so that we are all drawn to them and in the process, they have led us to find each other...

anyway, i put an obama bumper sticker on my tote and got 150 voter registration cards [folded in thirds] from the local board of elections...

when i asked the late shift at krispy kreme and at taco bell if they were registered - the kids said no and then asked if i had any cards... and said they'd sign up their shift...

so, between now and october, if you are comfortable just speaking first

[i ask "is everyone you know registered to vote?" - it seems less threatening than asking them personally if they are registered themselves- and you still get the answer as to whether they are or not]...

everywhere you go, bring registration cards with you in your bag or a backpack... ask whoever seems approachable as you go about your day and strike up a conversation... and offer to register them there and then or give them 1-5 cards...

it's also a good idea to print up a handout of how to find out where to vote - online, a phone number to call - to make it as easy for people as possible...

and in the meantime, between now and November... be prepared to be BLOWN AWAY by how many of us there are - we just didn't know who each other is... it's a powerful experience of community and solidarity that has warmed my heart and truly made my 55-year-old spirit soar... as nothing has since 1968...

you will fall in love over and over again with this country...

the most important anniversary of MLK's death

carrie sheridan — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:21:07 EDT

40 years ago, we baby boomers were coming of age - as Dr. King was silenced and stopped from his war on poverty -

now, we are coming of Old Age - just as we were cresting adulthood in 1968, we are cresting leaving it and heading into seniority status...

while we are still Young Enough to have the energy to Do Something - we have a good 10-20 years in us to get a lot DONE, to leave behind a country in good shape for our children and grandchildren...

and yet we are also Old Enough , having lived so many years through the truth being exposed about the Gulf Of Tonkin resolution and from the Nixon tapes and enough about the "FIASCO" of the Iraq war and Cheney and Rumsfeld.

so that we know the score and the awful truths and Won't Be Fooled Again...

we can be Very Effective indeed with the savvy and experience - and with our ideals intact to energize us -

i hope my generation will pick up the cause that Bobby Kennedy picked up in the aftermath of Dr. King's death until his own death just 2 months later... i hope we'll pick it up En Masse this time... pick up where we left off... fully 40 years ago this spring...

on January 4, in durham NH, bill clinton

carrie sheridan — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 01:27:51 EDT

told me that the clintons were going to HAVE to go negative/get the word out against the republicans because journalists weren't doing their jobs in [as garrison keillor puts it] telling the truth to the American people.

of course, i was really saying many of us out here who even rooted for you from 1993-1997 are putting The Clinton/Shaheen machine on notice that we object to what thinking people everywhere expect you to do to take barack obama out -

not because you can, not because you will - but because we are SICK OF the clinton "meanness" and "manipulations" of anyone they consider an enemy to their cause...

everyone in that room at UNH saw the red-faced ex-President enraged at everyone but himself...and now, almost 3 months to the day later, the California superDs have seen the other BookEnd to what we saw...

it's the beginning of the end of the Clinton permanent campaign - and they know it - with Mark Halperin's postings and killer just-the-facts-maam tone...

no more comeback. no more reinventing oneself. nomoreNoMore.

during Holy Week, i saw a piece somewhere about WhatEver Happened To Sin? to the wages of sin? lying, demonizing victims...

the bill has come due on the clintons - there is video and there are documents to show us that they are liars, greedy, power-mad, arrogant... they didn't deserve the "roll of the dice" they got with 42% of the vote in 1992 [i stayed home as i have most of the 38 years i could vote - i rooted for them to be good and do well, but gennifer, inhale, draft, "charm" - it didn't move me]...

the democrats need to run as fast as they can away from these people - chelsea betrayed that same sharp edge in answering a fairly-phrased fair question about monica lewinsky -

we need a kinder, gentler nation. and we need it NOW.

and we need a good country, a blessed country that shares its blessings of, by and for the people...

so we don't perish from this Good Earth...

hillary owes $3 million; mccain owes $1.3 million...

carrie sheridan — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 01:11:58 EDT

barack had $31 million at the same time...

so... WHO can run the economy, would ya say?

now a part of this DOES include that many of us have volunteered and donated everything we can in terms of time and money and THEN SOME... but we'd all say, too, that we wouldn't have it any other way - and, hopefully, this President will inspire all Americans to do more than we can and THEN SOME... as we have already found to be worth doing,

So Very Worth Doing... especially when we see so many other of our fellow Americans with so Very Much Less, with intolerably less - in prosperity, in necessities, in hope, in joy, in possibilities -

white working class men -

carrie sheridan — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:23:41 EDT

barack understands The Struggle of this from watching his white grandfather struggling to support his wife in straitened circumstances when he was growing up from age 10 on up -

michelle understands that her dad's struggle was to be able to GET TO work - but she also "gets it" that if her dad's job had been eliminated, shipped overseas and the community or national leaders didn't do anything, it would have been a kick in the head...

he can talk about making no money out of Columbia when he went to Chicago... and realizing after a few years of community organizing that he better go all out to make himself marketable to make money to support a wife and family...

struggling black men can talk to working white men who don't have a lot of options - they both get each other's situation...

it is a management/labor issue, NOT a race or ethnic issue between whites and non-whites...

barack could easily be The Candidate of choice for all white working men who aren't prejudiced against voting for any black person...

does anyone else see this as clearly as i do? it's not about going to the bowling alley - or even to the hoops - it IS about what every man anywhere in the world needs from his society and chieftains in their leadership of a society to make sure every man has his dignity... a la Willie Loman/death of a salesman -

we canNOT tell any one You're On Your Own when they're in a pickle - just as we wouldn't want to be in that situation - and God Knows there is maintenance and repair and rebuilding to be done on infrastructure EVERYwhere from coast to coast... there are solar panels and pellet stoves and windmills to be manufactured, food to be grown and/or raised healthily... there is plenty of all kinds of work to be done in America...

it takes Presidential leadership to insist that there be a good living standard [maybe not in individual wages but in national subsidies or something] for everyone who works and has another dependent on him/her/them...

hillary is angry and mean and NOT tough At All

carrie sheridan — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:57:44 EDT

they're running out of bull... the idea that HRC can out-tough John McCain is absurd on its face -

the repubs would take her down in a New York Minute with all the true criticisms and points that dems and independents have of her -

the margin of winning the popular vote in texas appears to have been the Limbaugh footsoldiers - which makes it ludicrous - it was a draw in delegates -

hillary only wins where The Machine operates - the old tired Dems who brought us unelectable/unelected candidates for a LONG LONG TIME over many cycles - NH, California, Ohio... wins for The Machine turning out the vote of those who follow marching orders and expect favors later... ANY dem will win those states anyway... come on now -

hillary can stay in the race and should, of course - but start talking details, policy differences, talk at length about REAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS of the past and how she is SURE she can persuade the repubs to go along with XYZ...

hillary needs to stop selling herself - because we aren't buying. This isn't madison avenue or procter and gamble... this is OUR LIVES, the survival of the planet, the hope of our citizenry and innocence of our children that is at stake - and marketing techniques and sell and spin have had their day and THAT is over...

hillary clinton needs to GET REAL and then keep it real...

Tough and Tougher...

carrie sheridan — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:51:22 EDT

hillary clinton today saying she is tough enough for the tough-swiftboating repubs... Oh Please...

she fake tears up when she's about to lose in NH and is so mad she could spit -

the Repubs can take her down so fast... there are too many true criticisms of these clintons that their previous supporters heartily agree with ---

she canNOT out-tough John McCain. GET REAL. 5 years in VietNam, some in solitary - and her being upset at having to take the heat SHE DESERVES in providing cover and leading the Clinton attack machine against unfortunate women and against the better competitors who run against them... so exactly how is she tough when she thinks she ran under sniper fire when she actually sauntered across the runway in bosnia... john mccain was IN danger, hillary and chelsea and sheryl crow and sinbad were NOT...

david geffen said it for all of us - it's chilling how easily and often the clintons lie - and it's gone on so long at this point that it's starting to qualify as mental illness for anyone who's taken an Intro to Psych course in college - they lie, project, take NO responsibility, blame the victim, You Name It - chelsea's apple has obviously fallen straight down, due to the laws of gravity, under their tree...

hillary thinks she can outmccain John McCain - these are propaganda techniques and worked in 1933 in germany and won't last past june 10, july 10 2008 -

americans want a choice between barack who is running as a truly strong candidate/man/citizen/leader whose strength and power derives from adherence to ideals and values we share and that we want to LIVE... versus john mccain's strength -

THAT IS a real choice for the fall - 2 kinds of true strength -

hillary's kind of toughness in staying the course of her ambition No Matter What - that's toughness to ensure her own privileged circumstances - it's not strength for the American people - and it's not even so tough - let her sit down and answer for ALL of their public misbehavior and outright lies - her Freudian lapses [telling iowans that she wanted a long-term relationship with them and not just a one-night stand... sexual references are inappropriate and disturbing in political dialogue about the state of the country's economy, war effort etc - it was bizarre]

the clinton nastiness is far worse for their opponents than anything the repubs can throw at barack and michelle obama - willie horton or swiftboating or reverend wright [whi has the RIGHT to free speech and who has presided over a peaceable Christian congregation of 1000s for decades!] whatever - i am not the LEAST concerned.

and it's a real choice - romney will likely be mccain's attack dog [he rattled hillary the day of the philadelphia debate months ago with his public statement that we didn't need another "intern" in the White House - she blew the illegal immigrants/driver's license question and performed badly throughout that debate] -

i couldn't be LESS worried - the clintons aren't tough, they're chameleons... they are immature and they employ atwater-rove tactics - but in 2008, the winning strategy is a leader who can lead us back to being a Noble Experiment once again -

Clinton-McCain is NO choice at all

carrie sheridan — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 02:11:52 EDT

both old senators

both Washington insiders/players going back to the 70s

both bs on the war and their votes and what is going on

both insulated in privileged rich lives, having NO CLUE about us Little People

both having problems of temper [where barack has "a first class temperament"]

both old-politics style campaigners and dealmakers

both having problems raising money by anyone NOT in the establishment/with nothing to gain personally...

that'd be No Choice whatsoever - a real yawn from September - November - and wrong after that -

chelsea clinton should go back to day trading -

carrie sheridan — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 02:08:30 EDT

not playing a role as a sympathetic yada... Please Elect My Mom - softball nonsense -

it was a fair question - and it is time the clintons answered IN DEPTH now about what they put the country through in 1998 to maintain their position and political futures at all costs -

this is the Elephant/400 lb gorilla in the living room and it's ridiculous, that as we head into this week, the anniversary of the night MLK was gunned down, that we are NOT talking about "content of character" in this presidential election -

chelsea may want her parents back in the White House but the rest of us have had enough - and it was chilling to see how well she has picked up her parents' ability to go after a reasonable, fair questioner in a nasty, sharp way... to deflect their own wrongdoing - all the press about what a nice, poised young lady she is - i haven't seen it in Iowa or any time - at least the bush twins seem to have gone off to Do Good in the world - jenna was appealing on her book tour on the ellen degeneres show and on leno - in a way chelsea is not - that kid's had it ROUGH, to be sure... to be the only child caught in the crossfire of the clinton marriage and in their relentless drive for power and money...

bill clinton would not want a boyfriend of chelsea's to treat her as he treated Monica/"that woman" and he certainly doesn't want her future husband [if she dares to try marriage after all she's seen] to treat chelsea as he has treated hillary...

and they should be accountable for how they are NOT a role model family fit for the White House.

and i don't say this as an obama supporter - i've felt this way for TEN YEARS - and only committed to barack on 5 january 2008 -

hillary can't be McCain in a pantsuit -

carrie sheridan — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 01:59:55 EDT

that isn't a choice and it certainly isn't a brisk and invigorating campaign...

she loses HANDS DOWN in the bs "I'm prepared to be Commander In Chief on day one, answering the phone at 3 a.m." yada against mccain - especially now that her partial White House schedule is out [full of teas and cookies]...

that is NO CHOICE this fall - The Repub Pants versus The Dem PantSUIT with jewelry -

this year IS history-making for women but not hillary claiming to make history - the history making is in having 2 educated, accomplished prospects for First Lady in michelle and cindy mccain [she's a USC grad] - elegant, educated, feminine homemakers who loved and love being moms and reference it often and who have seen their purpose in a lot of things - professional/paid work and otherwise contributing to their communities or the world...

michelle obama, cindy mccain, nancy pelosi, claire mccaskill, governor silbelius of kansas - these are GREAT role models for women and girls - women who have lived lives of having it all - lovely, warm, smart, highly competent women...

now THAT is history worth making...

wear your button or tee shirt -

carrie sheridan — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:05:40 EDT

post an obama sticker in the upper left corner of the rear window of your vehicle - and a small flag decal in the upper right if you are so inclined [to head off pre-emptively the mccain camp trying to own the patriotism/flag yada] =

carry voter registration forms with you EVERYwhere -

people will come up to you - and say something -

__________________

you can ask everyone as you move about your life - checking out at the grocery or at LOWE's or WalMart - if the people they know are registered [makes it less personal] say something about why you think this election matters in a singular way -

i don't push barack anymore than i'd push religion - i think it's personal for each of us - i DO share my story if it makes sense - i DO ask everyone to check out the website and learn something about barack independently before they decide against voting for him, just to be sure to have an informed vote -

and i've found people respond to these "soft power" ways of congenially being Americans together really well -

of course, other obama-ites are THRILLED to find another -

others are glad to see ME enthused [for the first time in 40 of my 55 years] -

they stop to think a moment ABOUT whether it all matters, if it'd make a difference -

it creates a nice close encounter - rather than all of us just passing each other like ships in the night or cars on the track, all trying to get somewhere fast so we can do more in our stressed-out, too chockful lives...

Senator Chuck Hagel for VP...

carrie sheridan — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:59:27 EDT

i trust barack to make the inspired right choice for Vice-President -

and as i wonder if he'll pick a woman governor or sam nunn or chuck hagel - i keep coming back to chuck hagel - a man who always impresses me when i see him on tv and whose book i want to read -

the dems need to figure out that this election is ALL ABOUT

first-time voters

seldom/never vote

Independents

not party favors and who has earned the VP spot...

nada ---

we want to think globally because the world has shown us that this has been a GLOBAL PRIMARY and it will be a GLOBAL ELECTION...

and many obamanians are NOT dems... i'm a dem-leaning Independent who hated what the Gore tactics/ Dem Establishment did to bill bradley... and other things...

i will NOT be voting for any dem other than barack -

i liked the mccain of 2000 enough to give him money [a first for me - followed by giving $ to dean in 2004] - but he didn't stay true to himself OR to us since then -

2000 was his time

2004 would have been hillary's [she could have won then]

2008 is barack for me - or maybe No One and i'll return to sitting another election out -

michelle and barack's patriotism

carrie sheridan — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:53:49 EDT

ryan lizza of the New Yorker on Tim Russert today nailed it - that the clarification surrounding Rev. J Wright is as much about PATRIOTISM as about race or division or free speech [where DID the ideal of, and right to, free speech evaporate to?

and coming after the flap of michelle's truthful statement that she had never been really proud of our country in her adult lifetime [i feel the same way and am 11 years older than she is - i can date the last time i was really proud of my country to FORTY YEARS AGO, the amount of time that the Jews wandered in the desert is the same amount of time that i feel i have been crisscrossing the WasteLand of what America could be -

the America Ike tried to point us to in his Chance for Peace speech on 16 april 1953 -

the America that fought poverty at home AND abroad that MLK was eloquent and passionate about in the last year of his life -

the pre-Reagan greed years when many of us WANTED to go green and to live modestly in a way that honored God's Green Earth with clean air and water and no waste and no corporate profiteering destroying the environment and making us sick and dispirited and no waste and fraud poisoning the atmosphere in all other ways...

i'd love to see michelle and barack sit down for an hour with campbell brown and suzanne malveaux [so far, these are the ones who have impressed me most in the Usual Suspects journalism pool... they just HAPPEN to be women - i wish a man came readily to mind but one doesn't - there has to be SomeOne... he'll come to me - i greatly admire E J Dionne but i've never seen him interview anyone] -

and talk about their patriotism -

cindy mccain can say that she has always LOVED her country - michelle has too, i do too - but if she has ALWAYS been proud of her country - through the waste of war, the Keating 5 and everything that she knows goes on in pursuit and maintenance of power - while underprivileged children grown up in scarcity and lack and dismal surroundings, the children she loved to help over her adult lifetime - then this lovely woman isn't asking enough of us, just as the Bush administration and previous Repubs didn't ask enough of us -

i think America could have been AWEsome since 1968 - our schools could have been havens for all children who aren't getting the nourishment and nurturance and guidance and discipline and inspiration to learn about our fascinating world and life...

i think we could have had a green policy following the oil embargo of 1974 and Be There NOW instead of people morphing into SUVs and HUMMERS to go from their McMansions to the grocery store or mall...

i think we could have realized that the interdependency of community is ALL a jobs program - and that maybe we WANT our neighbors making our hot dogs and toys and manufacturing our steel... because they are nearby enough that we can traipse over there if we have a problem or complaint about something that is substandard or wrong or dangerous...

i think we could not have turned the need for shelter into a pyramid scheme of profiteering in real estate schemes and scams so that the price of housing just rose for everyone - NOT the rising tide that lifted all boats in a constructive way - everything costs a multiple of what it cost 30-40 years ago but is its VALUE more? nada...

women wanted the option to work and got it - so now that many young moms HAVE to work and some decide to work because they want a nice house AND a family and you can't have both without 2 incomes mostly...

we fell terribly short in 40 years - we dispersed into greed and 401Ks and whether we had the best wine and mustards and olive oils and Right Stuff clothes and cars -

with barack and michelle now, i truly feel the wonderful words "but i was so much older then, i'm Younger Than That Now" [bob dylan My Back Pages] - i believe it can work better now because i know that it HAS to - in 40 years, i feel younger about solving graver problems because i think we're taking them seriously and know we can't NOT...

michelle and barack discussing patriotism - the good life they have and want for EveryOne - with campbell brown and suzanne malveaux - beautiful, wonderful women... it'd be a Good Thing...

an idea whose time has come...

carrie sheridan — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 22:07:26 EDT

posted on the Wendy's sign, Route 17 in Mt Pleasant, outside Charleston SC tonight:

"Our New Spicy Baconator Will Fire You Up"

_____________

and the car commercial running with the music "signed, sealed, delivered, I'm yours...

"A More Perfect"... democratic party...

carrie sheridan — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 13:45:08 EDT

a REAL convention with many voices being heard, with real ideas being aired and discussed and debated...

imagine THAT! something riveting that would be worth watching - not because of the supposed suspense of who wins or who is veep - but because America is coming out from under a rock to be patriots, to exercise their free speech and to speak freely about lofty ideals and bitter disappointments...

It Could Happen.

"The Promise of Our Land, The Possibilities of Our Time" ...

carrie sheridan — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 13:35:44 EDT

for our people - and for all people everywhere who share our highest ideals and values, the principles on which America was founded for equality and justice and dignity and shared responsibility and shared sacrifice...

Yesterday, Barack Obama won the Presidency of the United States - as the press saw what the Clintons did to Governor Richardson, with the nasty Mark Penn dismissing him as "insignificant", an AVALANCHE of the stuff they've been holding back came crashing down on the clintons to signal to them that

It Is Over, dudes... Pack Up Your Tent and go back to a very private life because you are bad for America and you are trouble for Americans... and it isn't even a good story anymore...

so there was the photo proving that Hillary didn't dodge bullets when she deplaned in bosnia - she's greeted by a child. It couldn't have been, as she tried to sell, "too dangerous for the President" because there is chelsea standing next to her [not even the clintons would send their child to a dangerous war zone bill wouldn't go to?] -

there are the rumors about huma abedin popping up here and there since november 2007 - and the sexuality of these 2 should be private except THEY are the ones who have caused any public interest, wondering about What The Heck Is Going On Between These Two???

the truth that the February donations to the hillary campaign were from all the usual suspects/expecting favors crowd and were going to the general election fund [obviously, these Hillraisers had tapped out their $2300 maximum]

AND the campaign is actually $2 million in debt - owing "various vendors" -

so clearly she can't run the trillions in the American economy if she can't manage the few million of her own campaign - spending lavishly on Presidentlal suites for herself, paying $200,000 consulting fees to buy the support of key officials in key primary states, paying mark penn a king's ransom to spew...

nope, the clintons are too good at spending everyone else's money -

i STILL can't believe steven spielberg allowed himself to be a patsy to buy $4,900 of dishes for the clintons as they were leaving their mansion-living for the first time in decades... i call it the Spielberg China - at least nancy reagan bought dishes for the White House - and left them there!

It's all over but the shouting - and barack has won as i knew he would - once he won iowa, that was so improbable... i had faith in his destiny and in ours Ever Since...

that this has the hand of God in it and In God We Trust and we can see whose side God is on by where the waters are parting and where the dam is bursting...

it isn't just barack and michelle - they ALWAYS kick it back to us and they aren't wrong to do so - the most wonderful people gravitate to this campaign - people who've been trying every 4 years to elect a good candidate during their adult lives, people like me who haven't really believed in anyone since RFK speaking to the crowd in indianapolis on the night Martin Luther King was gunned down - i was 15 going on 16. now i'm 55 going on 56 -

and i couldn't be happier... now we have a shot, we stand a chance at pulling together to solve the monumental problems threatening everyone from so many directions - Al Qaeda is one -

but the greedy capitalists among us charging mafia interest rates to people are causing just as much distress more spread out - not to mention preying on college students to get credit cards their parents end up paying...

there's some pretty crass stuff going on out there - from unhappy rich folks who think that if they have MORE wealth, maybe That'll Do It... it won't. "When Will They Ever Learn?" Barack'll explain it to them so we don't have to keep trying to forgive them who know not what they do -

it's time for them to KNOW what they do - and to do Better. and to do Good -

"it's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life... for" America [thank you Anthony Newley] -

And "I'm FEEEEEEEEEEEEELLIN" GOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!" on this holy weekend for Christians everywhere -

The Dam has Burst is maybe a better way to describe

carrie sheridan — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 01:57:00 EDT

what i have been seeing and feeling today, since the Richardson endorsement...then reading ben smith's blog on The Politico [required reading] and the damning piece by mark halperin on the 14 reasons why hillary KNOWS it's over -

what a difference a day makes, what a difference this last day has made - and it's been 2 months plus in coming due - and it's not a moment too soon either -

there is a unity in the nation as the media, individuals everywhere are all coming out to do whatever it takes to get the clintons OFF the stage...

It Is Over - We're Not Going To Take It - We Won't Be Fooled Again - Enough Is Enough Is Enough -

an Avalanche is descending on the clintons in the last 24 hours

carrie sheridan — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 01:51:38 EDT

and It's Over -

they were given every 2nd, 100th, 1000th chance to be better and They Never Took It -

not even the "it's been an honor to sit next to senator obama" - followed by "shame on you, senator obama" --- making hillary clinton look positively BiPolar...

it's unbelievable - it's like the whole country has had it with these two - i'm so sorry for the poor unfortunate women who believed the promise that a vote for hillary meant any kind of redemption for them - i hope they see the opportunity to REALLY make history - and if not they'll see that barack and michelle obama really CARE about them and their plight and all the poor, working and non-working...

they don't know it yet, but they've been saved from the Bitter Disappointment so many others have suffered by supporting or associating with either clinton - you get dumped on your head as they Move On to their next advantage -

it's all over but the shouting -

"The Promise Of This Land" -

carrie sheridan — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 00:58:27 EDT

Barack and Michelle Obama will lead us to The Promise of This Land... with a view to The Promised Land Dr. King spoke of, for the last time, exactly 40 years ago next month - barack won the Presidency today - i am convinced of it. i KNOW it... with what Governor Richardson said and how he said it. with Mark Halperin's post on The Page on time.com - the post-mortem of the "death rattle" heard 'round the country of the dead-in-the-water hillary campaign - indebted, disgraced, nasty, petty, scrapping, low. unbelievably low. it is UNbelievable to me what the clintons and their desperado favor-seeking foot soldiers have said and done since monday, january 7 2008 - when hillary slipped in the word "spadework" to andrea mitchell after the fake cry that morning about how our country would slide if barack obama won - oh please... Just tonight, i feel relief that it's beaten back and It's Over. Any and all real friends of the clintons have got to mount an intervention and insist that they STOP NOW. Not because the country cares because we don't... they can't take the democrat party down - they can only continue to self-destruct and implode - the dems are distancing themselves Left and Right [so to speak!] - No One wants to have anything to do with punks or bullies or mean, nasty folks - and now it's onto The Promise of This Land... and so much hard work and sacrifice to right so many wrongs for so many people in so many places...

re: mccain and matching his public-financing -

carrie sheridan — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 23:51:27 EDT

i hope the obama campaign pledges to spend ONLY the equivalent of mccain in the general - BUT to keep its coffers privately financed - so that the minute 527s or WhoEver tries anything, there's a fund to swat that nonsense down immediately...

this to me is in keeping with the spirit of the pledge but also being smart about What People Will Do When They Are Desperate and Losing...

the repub party is in shambles, they won't be running against love-to-hate-her hillary clinton - who knows WHAT they'll do in the wake of atwater/rove ---

i hope, of course, that john mccain AND all the "kinder, gentler" repubs i know will insist on putting those days and those tactics behind us all -

the situation is too grave on so many fronts at home and abroad - these games and madison avenue manipulations are too juvenile for a time that requires the better angels and the high road from all of the grownups across the land...

so - to agree to a spending CAP - but to keep the resources At The Ready to dissuade the bad repubs...

lots of money is the Big Stick barack needs to continue to softly tell them "Don't Go There - it's not advisable"

"hillary thinks like a general" - hillary campaign pitch

carrie sheridan — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 20:13:38 EDT

well, that's no good.

because we need a President who thinks like a President...

a President who lives by President Eisenhower's values and pragmatism as laid out in his speech on "The Chance for Peace" given just 3 months after he was inaugurated...

the HRC campaign touts/lauds that generals say that hillary thinks like they do -

that's my definition of peril. that's what lead us into a rush to invade a sovereign country and destory it to save it - Just Like VietNam...

we need a President who thinks like a President, who has spent so much time with everyday Americans in Chicago for so many years that he doesn't need to go on a Listening Tour now.

He has heard the problems, seen the problems and he knows what he thinks are the right solutions according to his ideals and values...

it's all very simple. none of it's easy. it's simple and hard to do - and it'll be a great purpose that gives meaning to our lives to accomplish this -

i'm Fired Up - as i have not been in almost exactly 40 years, since i saw RFK speaking in indianapolis on the night that Martin Luther King was gunned down... i was 15 going on 16...

nothing has impressed me much since - so i am rested up, i saved my strength, i'm Ready To Go.

WOW... Governor Richardson just blew me away -

carrie sheridan — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 20:06:54 EDT

yes, it is time for "a new generation to lead the nation forward" - at 55, i'm a babyboomer like the clintons - and we blew it. We were the anti-VietNam generation and yet cheney/bush were able to blitzkrieg/railroad my generation into ANOTHER invasion of a soverign country in a civil war to destroy a country to save it... i was horrified in 2002-2003 as supposed patriotism ran amok, as french fries were dubbed freedom fries... we ALL know senator clinton voted for the war so she'd look able to be Commander In Chief, and not like some peacenik or Democrat dove type... ESP since her husband had dodged the draft... and bill clinton supported it to support her chances - and they've lied about it Ever Since... well, we blew it - 1000s of lives later and a trillion $$$ to boot - Our Generation Blew It. Plain and Simple. We have a LOT of making up to do and fixing what we broke and solving the problems we created and exacerbated and allowed... under the leadership of... Barack Obama... who has made NO SUCH mistakes.

OBAMAkids: "it's EASY being green"

carrie sheridan — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 20:01:18 EDT

change can start NOW - we don't have to wait to november and CERTAINLY not 10 months to "day one" in january 2009 -

us obama families can start NOW to learn everything we can to save energy, conserve water - as our patriotic duty to honor God's green earth!!!

so let us begin... now.

for people in colder climates, pellet stoves are an alternative to consider, especially if your heat source needs replacing anyway... there are some stoves that take corn,too, i think -

the clintons turned women against men, whites against blacks,

carrie sheridan — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 19:26:59 EDT

browns against blacks [in NV] and blacks against blacks [in SC] -

and i have seen enough - and mark halperin has summed it up on The Page on www.time.com -

if the clintons don't start bowing out now [and IMMEDIATELY stop any more talk that is unworthy of any public figure in America, including the dis to Governor Richardson as "insignificant"] - well, i hope the Dems put up a GREAT person for the Senate in NY state in 2012 -

people haven't cared what the Hillary campaign has to say about the obamas since at least the VA/MD blowout...

the media should have been outraged that in Bill Clinton's answer to my plea to STOP the "meanness and manipulations" on January 4, hours after hillary LOST iowa... that he said they HAD to do it because the press wasn't doing its job... why the press didn't bring them right up short and tell the clintons, "hey why don't YOU GUYS make sure you're doing your job of being statesmen - and let US worry about whether we are covering the news"

the NY state democrat party needs some peer review - whether it's AG Cuomo's "shuck and jive" slur or Ferraro's angry senselessness... bob kerrey... what is WRONG with these people... makes me glad i'm not a dem... i want to be independent from any of this kind of stuff -

barack and michelle can lead us to form "A More Perfect" democrat party - if so, i'll join. If not, i'll stay happily independent forever...

14 reasons Hillary Knows, or Should Know, She Can't Win

carrie sheridan — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 19:18:11 EDT

mark halperin,

on The Page on the time.com site -

a must read and, as the saying goes, "it has the added advantage of being true" -

It's all over but the shouting - the clintons need to Stop NOW - they are $2 million in the hole, no one is giving to their primary campaign anymore [better to give to the poor - the clintons have plenty of millions and let them spend it on themselves, like mitt - since spielberg and company bought their dishes and furniture and golf bags, etc as part of the "registry" when they left the White House in 2000 -

they lost because they deserved to lose - Iowa showed them that in January and again just recently - the rock anthem: "We Won't Be Fooled Again" -

The Pantsuit can't take on The Pants in the general election - it will NEVER be time to elect "a" woman to the White House just as it is not, and never will be, time to elect "a" black or "an" Asian...

that was the whole point of the idea of "the content of his character" - and many of us matured with the beacon of that concept shining light on who we decided to become...

Eisenhower, 1953, and "The Chance For Peace"

carrie sheridan — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:00:06 EDT

"The world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending

the swear of its laborers,

the genius of its scientists,

the hopes of its children."

1 bomber could have funded 30 new schools...

1 destroyer could have built homes for 8000 citizens...

Who Better to Make this case than General/President Eisenhower?

Who Better to show us the way to befriend those who would be our enemies than George Marshall and the noble genius of the Marshall plan to reach out and rebuild what was destroyed in the war that we WON. that we decisively WON.

as barack says, the heart of a child in Pakistan is to be won over - with peace and prosperity - a child who may grow to reject the radical or extremist he knows enough to report that person to authorities to pre-empt a terrorist or guerilla attack...

yes, we need Special Forces and more of them. we also need friends in the Muslim world who love peace and good for all men and will live, and die, for THAT.

Ike Got It Right in 1953.

Barack Got It Right in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and counting...

michelle obama and cindy mccain

carrie sheridan — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:57:32 EDT

i don't know so much about cindy mccain except what i saw on C-Span in 2000 and in some interviews, notably one with her husband on Tim Russert...

she looked lovely, dressed beautifully and expensively...

exuding class and style and a graciousness...

i liked that she had mostly stayed home with the kids and let john Do His Thing for a year in NH, holding many, MANY town hall meetings running for President for an improbable upset...

i believed that she cried when the rove-bush campaign did what it had to do to win in SC: unforgivably, trying to portray the non-white baby girl she brought back from a trip to work with Mother Teresa as her husband's illegitimate child from VietNam [never mind that the math on that didn't add up -

i will always honor john mccain for his reported response - to just take it and say nothing and stay on the high road...

and both of them for adopting this girl and raising her as their fourth child together...

the photos of her as a young woman show her to be just lovely - a real Sandra Dee... stunningly pretty, a dazzling blue-eyed blonde, she has a lovely voice and feminine demeanor -

and she's a stitch: at a press conference in sedona, after mccain's recurrence of melanoma in 2000, he joked about how she was checking out the life insurance policies and she laughingly mock-punched him - it was sweet and dear and FUN to see a couple behaving like that, not to add AFTER WHAT THEY'D BEEN THROUGH with getting Roved and then skin cancer again [which he earned by going to every door from sun-up to sun-down in his first run for Congress, like Dick Gephardt had also done in Missouri]...

she was real in 2000, not rehearsed, not BS, not playing a part but trying to be a good pol wife - i didn't see her say anything ingenuine to anyone at the usual events held in people's homes in NH or SC... she talked about being a stay-at-home mom, there was a snake for a school project that got lost in the car on the way to school and ended up coming out of the dashboard at some point - funny, everyday stuff...

i gave money to mccain in 2000 [and to dean in 2004 - the only 2 times i had EVER donated to politics in 34 years] but then was Not Happy to read subsequent requests to donate $64 for john's 64th birthday - and was put off by the systematic yada of all of that kind of thing... AND i hadn't liked his sortof falling in behind a lackey like george W. bush and their tactics - not unlike Bush 1's call for a kinder, gentler nation followed by Willie Horton/Lee Atwater - nastiness -

it was business - and poltics - as usual - which i thought mccain was making a refreshing break from, after his searing experience with the keating 5 -

now, cindy mccain looks not as happy, i read how she took time off in Southern California for herself - real time, a few months... that's the true-to-herself cindy mccain i saw and liked enormously in 2000...

the pancake-made-up, more stepford wife person i have seen standing on platforms - i don't know - i hope she's just an 8-year-older version of her 2000 self... that woman was winning [and i don't like Repubs as my default setting] -

the woman who jumped on, or was told to jump on michelle's statement that she was really proud of her country for the first time in her adult life by saying that SHE had ALWAYS been proud of her country... i don't know. i think the real cindy mccain who worked as a teacher with underprivileged children as a calling before she was married... that that young woman knew better and saw for herself how our country falls short. i think the inner cindy mccain would be the first to admit that she was born to exceedingly prosperous parents, born beautiful - that of course being an American worked for her in a way that it does for her children... and doesn't for all children, the kind of children she used to try to help, who desperately need America to be everything it can be for them, too...

i think any blue-eyed blonde american girl "whose Daddy is rich and whose Mama's good-lookin'" would, of course, admit it's Two Americas compared to the poor girls of color she worked with and the one she rescued from India...

just as michelle would be the first to point out that, in a princess and pauper way sortof, both of these elegant women have come from opposite material circumstances to have married exceptional men who may become President of the United States in 2009 -

and that this is the One America we all want for all Americans...

i think these two beautiful, elegant women: smart, educated, well-spoken, posied, easy and spontaneous - these women who have loved being mothers and making a home for their husbands first and foremost... i think that is as interesting to see in this year as it is to watch the men - for women and girls in this country to mark as a time for reconciling the best lives for women who want to be homemakers and wives to husbands who love and honor them and to have children they raise with these men... and who also want to manage that with purpose and a mission that fulfills them as individual souls...

AND, just for fun and sport, it'll be a boon for American fashion too - not unlike Jackie Kennedy or Grace Kelly or Princess Diana...Nancy Reagan was a fashion plate but she was older - michelle and cindy have a maiden quality to them, a youthful/vibrant certain SomeThing that is very feminine - these women who have obviously Enjoyed Being A Girl their whole lives...

Every Mother Is Our Mother, Every Child Is Our Child

carrie sheridan — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 12:59:21 EDT

this is the value i heard michelle obama talking about in iowa at the end of november that inspired me to stay up to watch the repeat on C-Span that night and led to my committing to support barack obama on january 5 -

the obamas want Every Child to be living in the security of love and comfort and challenge and possibilities and encouragement and development of the talents that their girls are growing up in -

and where that isn't happening, For WhatEver Reasons, the rest of us could step in and do for that growing heart and mind in the soul of a developing citizen - if their mom or dad can't do enough, For WhatEver Reason, that their community and country will reach over to help out - because we ARE family, the Family of Mankind, the Family of America...

So that the first time we pay any real attention to someone isn't after they have murdered a doctor's wife and two daughters in their own home in cheshire CT or gunned down the student body president at the University of NC who was pre-med and perhaps would have gone on to specialize in psychiatry to help struggling people...

until these perpetrators were given a fair shot at the better life that their victims were living at the moment their lives were cut short violently and terribly... we can't say that we have done enough about crime in this country...

where, as barack says, "we pass new prisons on the way to old schools"

Rev. Wright's statements did NOT start a fire

carrie sheridan — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 22:55:43 EDT

or revolt or rioting - why is everyone saying these are so incendiary or inflammatory - they obviously were NOT on the Church members who look like good people to me on the videos... who just look like fellow American Christians in a faith community...

the FRUITS of Rev. Wright's words and works seems to have been advancing his community and helping the world...

so he got carried away sometimes - the oppressed among us have a LOT to be mad about, and unfortunately they tend to take their anger and frustration out on each other rather than on those who don't care if they are suffering or struggling...

the clintons have crafted playing the race card in a coordinated offensive ever since hillary told andrea mitchell that "some candidates hadn't done the SPADEwork" [she's not a gardener - i challenge the clinton campaign to find Any Other Time mrs. clinton has uttered the word spadework - and i'll apologize for this observation]...

with bob kerry reciting the hussein yada -

with andrew cuomo saying "some candidates can't shuck and jive" their way to the nomination -

with the former Prez saying that of course barack won SC as jesse had...

Come On - the clintons have used and abused their staff, the Other Women and now, so obviously, the black community - they stand for No One but themselves and perhaps chelsea - the poor single unfortunate women who are buying the bull that a vote for hillary will redeem their disappointments and that a win for her would be a win for them will be just as disappointed to experience how there is no there THERE...

just as mrs. clinton changed her hairstyle so often almost as a what-do-you-want-me-to-be? now the slogans change weekly, if not daily - when i see cheap tricks like wearing turquoise jewelry in California and in Texas and photo ops with a little mariachi man brought on stage having no idea what the HECK is going on and why it matters...

to see her glamour shot, pausing as she deplaned to wave off somewhere to God Knows Who [probably no one really, like the St Patrick's Day parade bs] - was she trying to mimick the iconic Marilyn Monroe shots from the 50s when she went to entertain the troops -

what the heck are these people all about? i wonder at each new stupid, tricky-gimmicky turn - now senator clinton is "ready to bring the troops home" but they wouldn't have to be brought home if they hadn't been sent in the first place which she has more than 1/70th responsibility for since she was a high-profile senator in 2002-2003 and she and president clinton could have said Hey Not So Fast... what's the hurry, war is a serious thing As Our Generation Knows ALL TOO WELL with 50,000 Americans dead and a million plus Vietnamese... if we're gonna do this, we'll do it smart - like Desert Shield before Desert Storm...as George Marshall did in WWII -

meanwhile, let's debate on the floor of the senate the criteria for a Just War...

put a flag decal near your OBAMA bumper sticker?

carrie sheridan — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 17:07:38 EDT

i found a small waterproof FLAG decal at a Mailroom in Mount Pleasant SC for 99 cents - and realized, it'd be a good idea to put this on the high right side of my rear window where the OBAMA '08 th covers the high left...

and just above the OBAMA NH bumpersticker on my passenger backseat window - to sortof counter the Muslim yada and also to match the "I'm Proud To Be An American" reflexive Republicanism...

like Michelle Obama, i have NOT been really proud of my country in the 40 years since i was 15 in 1968... a woman sitting at the next table to me at the Whole Foods in Mt Pleasant SC was complaining about michelle's saying that to her mother as we were all eating dinner the other night... and i spoke up and said I feel the same way - and she said well, i'm... and i asked her [sincerely and non-combatively] "what is it about America that you have been proud of specifically?" and she went blank... and realized it didn't quite hold up - i explained that i can be too idealistic but i think the country could have been So Much More in our lifetime [she is 48, i'm 55] and that it is UNbelievable that the anti-VietNam generation allowed an invasion of iraq to happen on our watch, etc...

there must be a lot of people like Cindy McCain who'll say they've always been proud of America - but can they back it up? or can they admit that even privileged people in Arizona and SC must say the country has fallen short, way short of what it could have been and needed to be in so many ways...and that those of us who are drawn to the obama campaign want to make the ideals of America real and everyday in the land of the free and home of the brave -

the gender candidate playing the gender AND the race card -

carrie sheridan — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 16:57:57 EDT

does it get any nuttier than this???

any hillary event seems a throwback to the 70s feminista movement, which was NOT a women's movement acknowledging that we need the masculinity of men as much as they need our femininity - and that a division of labor and responsibility is a good thing -

single moms in droves now can attest to how it is NO FUN to have to bring home the bacon and then to fry and serve it, too...

the media doesn't recognize their own elitism and insularity - that we out here have been LONG ready for a worthy, able woman or minority OR a woman minority candidate for President - women and minorities are friends and heroes to of women and men and whites! they're the ones who are trying to maintain their status and ability to pull strings for their kids to get into the "right" colleges and best jobs - but regular people everywhere wonder when the media will get this is NOT the issue they are trying to make it and that the losing clintons are trying to make it -

bill clinton never was the first black President and now he's shown himself willing to use blacks just like he used monica lewinsky - and i wish more blacks would see THAT handwriting on the wall - no one seems to mean anything to bill clinton - not his wife or his daughter or any woman or any person... we were pretty fooled, a lot of us, from 1994-1997... and We Won't Be Fooled Again, as the rock anthem goes...

the clintons preferred to tear the country apart in 1998 rather than step down due to their own shameless behavior and covering up... now, 10 years later, they've preferred to TRY to tear the party apart AND the country, whatever it takes to get them installed again...

if they were to win [and they won't - i'd bet EVERYthing on barack and michelle winning this thing and moving into the White House just 10 LOOONNNNGGGG months from now], not only would i vote Nader... i'd vote Nader and then MOVE outisde of this failed experiment in nobility... greedy capitalists will take everyone else down - always have, always will....

i'm sorry to have to write so much

carrie sheridan — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 22:23:16 EDT

that is critical of the clintons - but the silence is deafening otherwise - the elephants and the 800-lb gorillas that follow them everywhere go unaddressed and unchallenged by [our supposedly free] press, lost in staged gimmickry, things like Hill-a-copters in Iowa and HillRaisers everywhere - the phoniest rahrah feminista sloganeering and posturing by a bunch of women who don't look so happy after all and who aren't aging gracefully -

secure women beloved by their husbands don't have to talk any talk, they are living proof and their actions and loveliness and authenticity say it all -

anyone who has to hue and cry about it ain't experiencing it - a lot of sound and fury that led a generation of women down a wanting road at best - that turned the choice to work to a necessity to work and no one got happier or calmer or deeper in the process...

time to re-evaluate a world where the clintons are allowed to put themselves forward to occupy a slot better filled by a better human and a loving couple and family - it'd go a long way to showing the rest of us what this looks like when it's real and true... and, boy, have we forgotten what it's SUPPOSED to be like...

we don't need [any more] "strong women" -

carrie sheridan — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 22:16:52 EDT

we need better men -

the clintons personify this fallout from the Feminist Movement that sacrificed humanist values and ideals...

we don't need an Avenging First Lady who has focussed on her professional ambitions out in the world perhaps to compensate crushing disappointments in her marriage that failed to validate her as a woman as only a man CAN validate a woman [women confirm and support each other's femininity and womanhood... but most of us will gladly admit that we feel most like girls when we are being treated that way by a guy we like or love VERY much And There Is Nothing Wrong With That - it's one of the sweetest things in life for either sex] --- otherwise we are all just humans and have so much more in common than what differentiates us [needs for comfort and love and belonging and pride in the way we conduct our selves and leave our lives in a 360 view] -

we need a sweet REGULAR family of a man who happily tells the world that his wife is the Love of His Life and the rock of the family he is the head of - michelle is a truly strong woman who can lean on her husband and who follows his lead when he's right and corrects his course when he could be more right...

for 30 years, i have been waiting to see the Men's Movement... i cheered the Million Man March and have watched occasional coverage of the "Promise Keepers" with fascination - knowing we women want our husbands and sons and fathers to be good men so that we can be wonderful women.

barack obama is "a good man". how do i know? because "a wonderful woman" says so - and she should know. i am LOVING watching these two, this couple, show America how it's done... i love to see glimpses of nancy and paul pelosi, of al and tipper gore, of bob and elizabeth dole - and few others... these powerful love experiences [as tipper described her lifelong attachment to al gore] are the best energy to be around, even better when there is a slew of kids that issued forth from the True Lasting Love between two people who regard each other so highly...

i think we'd forgotten how it COULD be - it's what i'd wish for my daughter, for all daughters... and for all sons... of America. Real True Abiding Lasting Everlasting LOVE and commitment that makes each other more and better and stronger -

sad, bereft to see them trying to take barack down

carrie sheridan — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 11:30:49 EDT

because they resent his ability to lift us up -

i was lucky to be able to work the Nashua rally on primary night in New Hampshire - it was the best day of my life EVER that had nothing to do with something good happening for me personally - it was a political woodstock and you half-expected to hear Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young playing in the background...

it was hope revivified and brought out of the vault from 40 years ago - that maybe this country COULD BE all it was meant to be and should be and needs to be...

i found so many other people Just Like Me... who showed up to Do For, give... it was all What Can We Do, let's get together, here's my idea... community like i have never experienced [granted, i was an uncool kid from small-town kansas who didn't even know about woodstock until the album came out] and like i never expected to see in my lifetime...

since the phenomenon of "wilding" in new york city in early 1989, i have moaned and groaned "does decadence ALWAYS have to follow prosperity?!"

i have watched Dr. Ben Carson on C-Span and got to see him talk at Yale in spring 2002 - and am pained when i hear him trying to awaken people to the "bread and circuses" epidemic sweeping this culture of sports and entertainment - trying to enlighten us all that a meaningful life of purpose and a deeply committed marriage and family is what has made him happy, joyous, fulfilled and, yes, RICH!

i have been fighting mad for two months since hillary clinton told andrea mitchell that barack hadn't done the necessary "spadework" on the eve of the New Hampshire primary as the clinton-shaheen machine was pulling out all the stops to avert a personal disaster for them the next day...

then when andrew cuomo said on primary morning that barack couldn't "shuck and jive" his way to winning the nomination - i couldn't believe it when i saw that on the internet - but it was true...

and i have been so mad i could spit since monday night, january 7... i had asked bill clinton to STOP the "meanness" and "manipulations" the previous friday at his appearance at UNH Durham --- and it did little more than give them all pause over the weekend...

my question and his We Gotta Do It spin was reported by Ben Smith on The Politico site within hours- and, again, in a New York Times front-page story 2 days later...

and 2 months later, they are still playing the race card and not being statesmen enough to step forward to say that race and gender ARE not and CAN not be topic A of this party fight because it isn't preparation at all for the competition with john mccain who GOT "mc-cained" in South Carolina in 2000 and who has no taste or tolerance for such irrelevancies when the country is going to hell -

i'm past mad and i'm terribly sad - for all of us. barack and michelle will pull and lead us through - they've LIVED this their whole lives... i've only lived it for two months... and i just want to cry for hours and throw up - as i wonder "WHEN will we ever learn?"