Eight years is ENOUGH, ENOUGH, ENOUGH!!
Oh, and incidentally,
Gallup Daily: Obama Moves Ahead, 48% to 42% before the speech!
Here are the awesome sentences recapturing his 2004 theme:
“The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America - they have served the United States of America.”
No way. No how. No McCain. — Hillary Clinton

Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, We are Free At Last!!!
Barack, this is your moment!

This was mainly a voter survey with a detailed script for the caller to follow. Out of those 27 calls, I got into conversations with a mere four people. Most had their answering machines on and we didn’t leave messages then. Of the four people I chatted with, one was a strong Democrat, one a strong Republican, and two others kind of mixed. One of the “mixed” ones was hard for me to hear and I got into a too extended conversation with him I think. Two or three gave me outright refusals: “I don’t reveal my preferences over the phone.”, and one woman berated me for all those calls she’d been getting from Democrats. I found that strange because on the sheet supplied by the state Democratic party there’s a space for checking off “refused”. Are these voter sheets simply recycled afresh and the old ones stored away? Hope not.

Well, all told, my experience was tolerable but after thinking it over for a few days I decided not to go back for another session. And this after getting superlative pep talks at the Oxford County Democrats annual summer BBQ at beautiful Bryant Pond by the likes of Steve Rowe, Maine Attorney General, Cathy Newell, chair of the Oxford County Democrats, and Ben Tate, the youthful coordinator for the Obama Campaign in Maine. But hey, although I’m gung-ho in spirit, my body sometimes has trouble keeping pace. And anyway, what the hell, there’re plenty of other volunteers who could take my place, aren’t there?

Soul?? Did I mention soul? Well, of course, there’s no soul, only this mysterious feeling or being that is us? But I’m starting to ramble now. Let’s get back on track. How about checking out the UUA website? And here’s the UU news agregator: UU Updates. Oh, and here’s the link to the UU church I go to: Norway UU. And here’s our sister church: West Paris UU. By the way, Norway and West Paris are towns in the great state of Maine, not a country in Scandinavia and the west end of Paris, France. HAHA! UUs have a sense of humor.

Another thing I ought to mention is that these two churches started out as Universalist churches. Only recently, since 1960 if that’s recent, has the Unitarian label been slapped on in front of the Universalist handle. But that’s another story for another time.

Cheers, and happy infinite religiosity to everyone!

UPDATE: McCain doesn’t even know how many mansions he owns.

Siddiqui is a 36-year old Pakistani woman who when young was sent to America by her father, along with her two siblings, for education. But in 2003 while she was living in Karachi, Pakistan, with her parents and three children she suddenly disappeared. She was arrested on July 17 of this year on false charges, according to her lawyer, Elaine Whitfield Sharp, who says she has proof that Siddiqui was being held at Bagram Air Base for the past five years.

Sharp also says Siddiqui appears traumatized, is very passive, and is “like a person who has been excessively institutionalized.” I got this information from this NPR article. Eric Alterman has further details and links here. Particularly interesting is the investigation by Tim Bella at ProPublica, Mystery Surrounds Case of Terror Suspect. Here is a 3-minute video, The Case Against Aafia Siddiqui, from Aug 6, 2008, on AlJazeera:

I doubt there is anything like this in the American media.