I did not listen to the Romney speech for two reasons. One, I can't stand to listen to the Republican agenda. I don't want to hear their debates, their "ideas" for the country or their worship of George Bush. It makes my stomach turn. Two, the claims of Mormonism by Mormons ring hollow, and don't think for one moment that they don't have an agenda for this country. It's the same one they have when they send their little pasty-looking "missionaries" to your door. To overthrow democracy and institute theocracy. They have a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding, but like Bush in his heyday, they're going to give it one hell of a try, and any more such attempts would be disastrous for the nation. Romney is only less contemptible than Rudy Giuliani. Slightly less. No wonder the GOP base is in dismay. Don't be fooled by the pearly whites. This nakedly amoral opportunist has nothing more to bring to the table than more radicalism. It's like the bombing of Iraq. Since the bombing didn't work, the Right's solution is "Let's bomb them some more."

Danger: GOP Brain trust at work.

Clinton, Edwards, Obama...

Any of the current slate of Democrats would do a better job than ANY of the odious Republicans running. I personally feel that either John Edwards or Barack Obama would be the ones who actually speak for the broadest swath of the electorate, the broadest cross section of America. But with the horse race changing on the GOP side (A Baptist preacher named Huckabee has the lead over the pretty-boy Mormon; who knew?), whoever wins will have to mount a very strong general election campaign and not assume for one moment that the Republicans will implode as in 2006 (although they very well could). They will not go quietly. Whoever the Democratic nominee is, that person must understand that the Republicans worship power and nothing else, not the country, not the Constitution, not the rule of law. Use that very clear record against them and the GOP will be banished into political obscurity for the next generation or so, and we can go about the work of getting our country back.

I am as elated as nearly anyone that Barack Obama has won the Iowa Caucuses. It's a significant and historic event. This has never happened in the history of the Union. But once again, it's another sign that we as a nation are beginning, I say beginning to see black people as human beings and understand our shared human condition as well as our shared condition as Americans, particularly over the last 7 years of the anti-democratic, anti-American Bush Administration. In a collective sense, we are beginning to understand that our petty bigotries don't matter when we're all being stepped on and squeezed by the tyranny of small minds. And who best to articulate that cruel reality than someone of color who, like so many people of color in this country, feel it more acutely than another white man who may empathize, but can never really know? Who better to articulate that the solution may be all of us coming together to defeat that tyranny of small minds that doesn't end with the departure of Baby Brat Bush?

The GOP in IA anointed a Baptist minister who, despite his folksy charm and skill with a bass guitar and amazing weight-loss story, still believes that morality is all about who you're sleeping with and under what circumstances, still believes women are less than men under God, and still thinks the Bible should be the basis for law in this country. So that tyranny is still very much with us, and Obama's showing in Des Moines, Dubuque, or Council Bluffs, IA didn't end that. It did show however that we can overcome it. Calling Obama or Edwards or Hilary "hope mongers" is insulting and cynical. Obama's win shows that we're better than that if we just remember who we are.