I remember the first time I heard Obama speak was at the last convention and I thought, “Damn. He’s going to be a star.”

The New York Times has a fantastic timeline on the history of the Democratic National Convention that you can see here.

And if you are so inclined, Michelle Obama’s speech is kick-ass. It’s twenty minutes, but I think it’s worth it.

I think it’s a good choice.

—————–

update

Funny. I’ve read a few blogs from people saying that they aren’t pleased and remember how he treated Anita Hill. I think maybe my memory is bad because I remember something else. I remember how he went after Thomas. That was when I was first aware of Biden and I liked him for it because I was so against Thomas. . .

How odd.

Anyway.

I think it’s a good choice and I am a feminist.

Home keyboard has still not been replaced because last weekend I didn’t fancy going to the Apple store in the middle of iPhone mania. I’ve never understood people that get excited about gadgets the way they do about stuff that’s important. Like when I skipped a class to wait in line ffor hours or Episode 1 Star Wars tickets. (Thanks George. Thanks again for destroying my favourite childhood movies.)

Not having a space bar is difficult to write anything longer than a Facebook update. The way around that is to copy and paste a space but that isn’t a barrel full of monkeys either. The other way around it is to use my work computer. Which is what I am using now.

I’m trying to properly write a play and I am trying to focus. On the bottom of page 11 at the moment on the ‘puter. Wrote 4 ½ pages long hand last night. I have bits in my head so now I’m discovering how to string the bits together and trying to shut off the part of me that says, “You know this really sucks ass.”

I give you another Max line which was inspired by my friend Al:

MAX: You know I have no interest in history other than what I can use to mock other nationalities. Specifically Americans, The French, Germans and the Welsh.

For those of you that are theatre inclined and also know my struggle with dramatic action (I tend to write good lines but have a hard time with plot) I think I have it under control. . . but it is still early days. So yeah. Trying to focus.

There’s been lots of things I’ve wanted to write about but I didn’t have the energy and I didn’t want to write my usual flippant posts because there are a lot of things going on in the news.

Quickly. . . The New Yorker Cover. So obvious it is satire. So obvious what they are doing. Obama camp seriously messed up by taking the PC route. That said, a lot the Hilary supporters that are rolling their eyes would have tweaked if a similar cover had been done for Ms. Clinton. I’m just saying. I’m a bit sick of all the black/white thinking- and no I’m not talking about race.

The economy. Hoping the current pound to dollar rate stays similar as it makes it easier to pay off my student loans.

Christopher Hitchens. I’ve long had conflicting feelings about the gentleman due to watching a couple of debates with Robert Scheer at the LA Times Festival of Books where Hitchens defended the US Iraq war position. It wasn’t only folks on the right that lost their mind after 9/11 as few lefties did too and in my mind Hitchens was one of them. That said, the man is far more clever and possesses more intelligence than my right foot. And I also don’t have a lot of time for people that just parrot back my views back at me so I do appreciate his willingness to say things that can be unpopular in certain circles.

I do think, however. . . he can be a bit of a cock.

The last few years I’ve caught a few of his pieces where he has surprised me. He has said that he didn’t think waterboarding was torture. His editor thought he should look into it a bit more. . . This month in Vanity Fair he has an article on waterboarding where he submits himself to it. You can read the article here and watch a video of it here.

Yes. It is torture. And guess what. It’s wrong.

Funny. I remember the first time I lost a bit of love for America. I think I was 12. I found out about the Japanese Interment camps and the injustice of it made me so angry. Much like a relationship with a lover when you first realise that they aren’t perfect, so was my first realization that there was a lot of dust bunnies under America’s bed.

I do love my country. (Well. It isn’t my country anymore. I don’t belong there. And I don’t belong here really. I need to find a secluded island somewhere where I do nothing but sit in the sun and have a house boy bring me cold drinks with little umbrellas.) I love America in a co-dependant way that you love an alcoholic, or a wife beater or someone with borderline personality disorder. “Oh, he just does that because he loves me. He wants to know where I am and make sure I don’t get into trouble. In fact, it’s my fault. I need to behave better. I make him slap me around.”

That segues into something that blew my little mind. I’ve long been pissed at my alcoholic, wife beating, borderline personality disorder county for Guantánamo. No huge surprise there.

Last night I read on Amnesty International about Omar Khadr (who is a Canadian citizen) and watched the video of his being interrogated in 2003. Khadr has been at Gitmo since he was 16 for war crimes and allegedly throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier.

Yes. 16.

I don’t want to get into a is he guilty or innocent debate, (although there is certainly doubt given the initial report was altered in order to cast blame on Khadr) and a US Military Judge has thrown the case out due to his not being prooved to be a “unlawful” enemy combatant, but you have to ask yourself, why was it reasonable to keep anyone in prison for so long without a trial especially at a place like Gitmo, especially if they were 15 when they were first taken into custody?

I’m rather ashamed of myself that I didn’t know about him sooner.

Sigh. There’s other things I could blather on about but I’ve taken too long to write this. And now my blood pressure is up.

Oh, yeah. And the weather is rubbish today.

Big thanks to the work mate that forwarded it to me. . .

America Rules England Sucks - Watch more free videos

Robert Redford in Lions for Lambs

I watched Lions for Lambs on the plane over and this speech affected me so much I took the time to fight with the entertainment system to transcribe it.

After we checked into the hotel, Mark and I took the Metro into DC and walked around the mall. The last time I had been in DC I was a 16 year old puppy. Being there as a 37 year old woman seeing all the young things that were zygotes when I was their age, I had a fresh appreciation of how annoying I must have been.

It was a beautiful day. Bright, warm. All the usual clichés.

We walked past the Washington monument, the WWII memorial up to the Lincoln memorial and then stumbled on the Vietnam memorial. It starts out so small when the US ‘officially’ became involved in Vietnam in 1955, then the granite full of names tower over you until Saigon fell in 1975. So many names.

The granite reflects your face back at you.

In the DC airport there was a shop called ‘America’ with cheap jingoistic tchotchkes and cardboard cut-outs of McCain and Obama being used to sell tee shirts.

People can wear a tee shirt and say, “This is who I am. This is what I stand for.” They can buy a tee shirt that was probably made in a sweatshop and they can walk away and think that means something.

I protested the war before it started, walking down the street holding a sign. A big sign that said, “This is who I am. This is what I stand for.” But I haven’t done anything. I haven’t done anything real.

What might happen if we all stood up today and did something? If we took action that said, “This is who I am. This is what I stand for.”

What terrifies me is how many people would just shrug. And that I would be one of them.

For Democrats in this country, the choice has been difficult. Now, it is almost excruciating. The freshness and vitality of Barack Obama versus the experience and doggedness of Hillary Clinton. In the wake of the endless nightmare of the Bush years, Democrats seem to want someone truly exceptional. They seem to want a candidate who will actually have a chance at cleaning up some of the mind-blowing mess that George Bush has created in eight years. Unlike the Republicans, who elected Bush twice and who organized a recall of California Governor Gray Davis and replaced him with body-builder/action star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who went on to lead California into an even bigger fiscal mess than the Davis years saw, Democrats want substance as much as electability. Gore seemed a likely choice, but Gore would have none of it.

Edwards was right on many important issues, but seemed green in the post-9/11 world. He isn’t, actually, but appearances trumped his ideas and rhetoric. Now we have two people remaining on the eve of Super Tuesday and the most significant question is “Which one can beat McCain?” Hillary Clinton has done everything right. She stood by her husband and endured the ridicule of Republican bullies like Newt Gingrich during what must have been the worst time of her life. She rewrote her own epitaph by crawling out from under the rubble of her marital troubles and became a Senator in a state where the egos in the political arena are as oversized as New York’s skyline. She studied hard, as she always has, and she won. Twice. She became a role model for all other women in politics. She is smart. She is tough. And most people agree that she will probably run a better White House than any other candidate that has taken the field.

But Hillary Clinton is wrong on the war in Iraq and that should matter a lot in this race. Critics of Hillary Clinton who are leaders in the Democratic Party that I have spoken to privately believe that she is too much like McCain to offer voters a meaningful choice. “Voters will choose a real Republican over a fake Republican every time,” one politico said to me, slashing at Clinton for her tilt toward the right on the war.

“The Clintons don’t know when to get off the stage,” another offered, suggesting that eight years of Bush and the war on terror seem to have pushed the Bill Clinton years, where Hillary will remain inexorably framed in the minds of many, into a bygone political era.

Barack Obama represents hope to many and some in Clinton’s camp have underestimated how much Americans are hungering for that hope in 2008. Obama is clearly not McCain. He is young. He is against the war and he is inexperienced. Republicans, to their shame, will trumpet McCain’s experience over Obama’s, running as fast as they can from the fact that Gore was the smarter, tougher and more experienced candidate in 2000. Republicans don’t care about anything but winning. That’s why they put forth candidates like Reagan, Arnold and Bush. By the time they reach the end of their first term, it’s assumed they have all the experience they need. Like their nephew at the bank.

Which candidate will have the best chance against McCain? The experienced one or the exciting one? The one who is smart and tough and whose stances on some issues are oh-so-similar to those of the presumed GOP opponent? Or the less experienced, less tested one who has many Americans believing that someone more like them may make a return to the White House? During the Democratic debates, I wanted someone to ask one question. “Do you believe that any of the people sitting in this audience have as much hope of becoming president as you do?” I think that should matter, because the presidency of this country has become the exclusive preserve of legal elites and political or corporate barons. And our country is suffering as the result of it.

Vote on Tuesday. And let’s begin the job of defeating John McCain, and his continuation of the Bush nightmare, right now.

The Yes We Can Song

by will.i.am

I was sitting in my recording studio watching the debates…
Torn between the candidates

I was never really big on politics…
and actually I’m still not big on politics…
but 4 years ago, me and the black eyed peas supported Kerry…
And we supported Kerry with all our might…
We performed and performed and performed for the DNC…
doing all we could do to get the youth involved…

The outcome of the last 2 elections has saddened me…
on how unfair, backwards, upside down, unbalanced, untruthful,
corrupt, and just simply, how wrong the world and “politics” are…

So this year i wanted to get involved and do all i could early…

And i found myself torn…
because this time it’s not that simple…
our choices aren’t as clear as the last elections …
last time it was so obvious…
Bush and war
vs
no Bush and no war…

But this time it’s not that simple…
and there are a lot of people that are torn just like i am…

So for awhile I put it off and i was going to wait until it was decided for me…

And then came New Hampshire…

And i was captivated…

Inspired…

I reflected on my life…
and the blessings I have…
and the people who fought for me to have these rights and blessings…

and I’m not talking about a “black thing”
I’m talking about a “human thing” me as a “person”
an American…

That speech made me think of Martin Luther King…
Kennedy…
and Lincoln…
and all the others that have fought for what we have today…

what America is “supposed” to be…

freedom…
equality…
and truth…

and thats not what we have today…
we think we are free…
but in reality terror and fear controls our decisions…

this is not the America that our pioneers and leaders fought and
died for…

and then there was New Hampshire

it was that speech…
like many great speeches…
that one moved me…
because words and ideas are powerful…

It made me think…
and realize that today we have “very few” leaders…
maybe none…

but that speech…

it inspired me…
it inspired me to look inside myself and outwards towards the world…
it inspired me to want to change myself to better the world…
and take a “leap” towards change…
and hope that others become inspired to do the same…
change themselves..
change their greed…
change their fears…
and if we “change that”
“then hey”..
we got something right…???…

1 week later after the speech settled in me…
I began making this song…
I came up with the idea to turn his speech into a song…
because that speech effected and touched my inner core like nothing in a very long time…

it spoke to me…

because words and ideas are powerful…

I just wanted to add a melody to those words…
I wanted the inspiration that was bubbling inside me to take over…

so i let it..

I wasn’t afraid to stand for something…
to stand for “change”…
I wasn’t afraid of “fear”…
it was pure inspiration…

so I called my friends…
and they called their friends…
in a matter of 2 days…
We made the song and video…

Usually this process would take months…
a bunch of record company people figuring out strategies and release dates…
interviews…
all that stuff…
but this time i took it in my own hands…
so i called my friends sarah pantera, mike jurkovac, fred goldring, and jesse dylan to help make it happen…
and they called their friends..
and we did it together in 48 hours…
and instead of putting it in the hands of profit we put it in the hands of inspiration…

then we put it on the net for the world to feel…

When you are truly inspired..
magic happens…
incredible things happen…
love happens..
(and with that combination)

“love, and inspiration”

change happens…

“change for the better”
Inspiration breeds change…

“Positive change”…

no one on this planet is truly experienced to handle the obstacles we face today…
Terror, fear, lies, agendas, politics, money, all the above…
It’s all scary…

Martin Luther King didn’t have experience to lead…
Kennedy didn’t have experience to lead…
Susan B. Anthony…
Nelson Mandella…
Rosa Parks…
Gandhi…
Anne Frank…
and everyone else who has had a hand in molding the freedoms we have and take for granted today…

no one truly has experience to deal with the world today…

they just need “desire, strength, courage ability, and passion” to change…
and to stand for something even when people say it’s not possible…

America would not be here “today” if we didn’t stand and fight for
change “yesterday”…
Everything we have as a “people” is because of the “people” who fought for
change…
and whoever is the President has to realize we have a lot of changing to do

I’m not trying to convince people to see things how i do…
I produced this song to share my new found inspiration and how I’ve been moved…
I hope this song will make you feel…
love…
and think…
and be inspired just like the speech inspired me…

that’s all…

Let’s all come together like America is supposed to…
Like Japan did after Hiroshima…

that was less than 65 years ago…
and look at Japan now…

they did it together…
they did it…

“We can’t?…

Are you serious..?..

WE CAN!!!

Yes we can…
A United “America”
Democrats, Republicans and Independents together…
Building a new America

We can do it…
“TOGETHER”

Please visit www.yeswecansong.com

Thank you for reading and listening…
will.i.am

One of my old tirades against the sexism in America used to be , “Even Pakistan has had a female Prime Minister.”

Pakistan is a different place than it was ten- fifteen years ago and I know she wasn’t perfect. . . but goddammit.