Hype or hope?

Senator Barack Obama (D-Il) finally announced his Presidential candidacy today. You can watch his speech in full here.

I’m still not too sure whether the reality will match the hype. But if the reality matches the rhetoric the next couple of years are going to be a helluva ride.

His final, poetic paragraphs are stirring stuff:

As Lincoln organized the forces arrayed against slavery, he was heard to say: "Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought to battle through."

That is our purpose here today.

That's why I'm in this race.

Not just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform a nation.

I want to win that next battle - for justice and opportunity.

I want to win that next battle - for better schools, and better jobs, and health care for all.

I want us to take up the unfinished business of perfecting our union, and building a better America.

And if you will join me in this improbable quest, if you feel destiny calling, and see as I see, a future of endless possibility stretching before us; if you sense, as I sense, that the time is now to shake off our slumber, and slough off our fear, and make good on the debt we owe past and future generations, then I'm ready to take up the cause, and march with you, and work with you.

Together, starting today, let us finish the work that needs to be done, and usher in a new birth of freedom on this Earth.

Is it just me, or is there more than a hint of Bartlet to such soaring rhetoric?

Sale of the (18th) Century

You’re the first elected Muslim congressman in the USA. You want to swear your oath of office using the Qur’an. But you want to deflect the inevitable reactionary criticism that will follow. What do you do?

Well, Minnesotan Democrat Keith Ellison has come up with an ingenious solution, as reported by IndianMuslims.info:

When Keith Ellison takes his individual ceremonial oath of office today (4th of Jan), it is to be with one hand upon Thomas Jefferson’s copy of the Quran.

Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, requested to take the oath upon Jefferson’s personal copy of George Sale’s 1734 translation of the Koran, commonly called the Alcoran of Mohammed is published in London in 1764.

The two-volume work, which resides in the Library of Congress’ Rare Book and Special Collections Division, is one of nearly 6,500 titles sold to Congress by Jefferson in 1815 to replace the Congressional Library that had been destroyed when the British burned the Capitol during the War of 1812.

Why the Dems won't impeach President Bush

“Two words; Dick Cheney.”

Incoming Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV).

New film: What the US Democrats and UK Tories have in common

Uploaded for your viewing pleasure: my reflections on the US mid-terms, drawing a few tentative parallels between the Dems and Tories.



If you don't want to watch, or have a steam-powered Interweb connection, you can read what I've got to say here.