In front of crowds in the 100,000 range, Obama summed up his campaign with this statement:

In one week, you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election; that tries to pit region against region, city against town, Republican against Democrat; that asks us to fear at a time when we need hope. In one week, at this defining moment in history, you can give this country the change we need. In one week, we can choose hope over fear, unity over division, the promise of change over the power of the status quo. In one week, we can come together as one nation, and one people, and once more choose our better history. That’s what’s at stake. That’s what we’re fighting for.

This will likely be the standard Obama line throughout the week, barring anything unexpected.

We are getting some desperate things on the other side, however. One 527 television commercial in Pennsylvania and Ohio is bringing up Reverend Wright again (not something which McCain himself has endorsed). A fake flier has appeared in Hampton Roads, Virginia which, according to a newspaper article from The Virginian-Pilot says:
…article continues at: Under The LobsterScope

Too bad they launched this latest desperate tactic on the same day that the senior senator (from Alaska no-less) is convicted on multiple counts of corruption. Awe too bad, darn reality keeps getting in the way.

Defeat isn’t such a hard pill to swallow if you wash it down with humility.

Question: When Obama is sworn in on January 20th, will that mark the official fufillment of the Civil Rights Movement?

I kinda wish there were some vocal people out on Obama’s left flank who were running around saying “Redistribution? Redistribution? You want to talk about taking money out of people’s pockets? OK, fine. Let’s talk about it. Pallet loads of cash to Iraq? No-bid contracts for Haliburton, and so many others? Jack Abramoff? Dick Cheney? Ted Stevens? Seven-house McCain?

Hellooooo! The GOP believes in full-scale redistribution of wealth – from taxpayers into the pockets of the rich, and their cronies.”

That would, of course, be too radical and “socialist” for the Obama campaign itself. But I would like to hear that point being made somewhere.

The debate shouldn’t be about redistribution or not, it’s about where the money comes from, and where it goes. Personally, I’m fine with having a few thousand of the millions those AIG guys got get redistributed my way. But I’m an unreal American.

Nice.

It just occurred to me: there was something beneficial (for the Right) in having a president whose utterances were unparseable: “Uhhhh… strategery… water driblets… Bin Laden… uhhhh… security… nucular… uhhhhh….” You couldn’t play cut & paste with those utterances in any manner that would make Dubya sound even half as nefarious as his administration truly was.

Obama, otoh, says a lot of smart, deep stuff… offers up many, many big words that can be snipped and shifted, rendered assbackwards and out of context, so that the electorate is bewitched, bothered and bewildered by a bunch of things Obama neither said nor implied.

I think it’s too late, though, for the fridge-magnets poetry contest. Too many neo-centrist Republicans have stepped up for Obama. And Obama’s campaign doesn’t let this crap slide.

Actually, I would love to hear a real discussion about distribution of wealth, and so called socialism in this country. Channeling all wealth and all power upward is what the Rs are all about. And that’s fine – if they want to be greedy, myopic pickpockets – so be it.

But the masses of flag sucking halfwits in this country – who got conned into carrying water for these greedy bastards – and who are watching their economic lives circle the drain because of policies enacted by the same – deserve a real discussion, nay an education, about wealth redistribution. I say bring it on.

If the United States continues in its economic nosedive, that discussion is going to come anyway. Better now – before people get really angry that their lives have washed away – than later.