I have a real problem calling the riders of BART from Contra Costa county "mass transit riders". Yes, they do ride the train for PART of their commute, but almost all of them leave their houses in fossil-fool powered wheelchairs. They are, at best, mixed-mode commuters.

I notice you omitted Sacramento from your list of cities that put back in part of their trolley systems in the '80s. Mayor Ann Ruden fought valiantly to get a single line in from East Sac through downtown and out to North Sac. She was public enemy number one (she's killing our businesses, construction is making a mess of traffic, yadda yadda)until the trains began to run. Suddenly, she was the savior of downtown. Since then, everyone has been fighting to get the system expanded into their neighborhoods. Sadly, I doubt there will ever be sufficient funds and will to expand the light rail to the size of the murdered trolley system that once existed there.

It sure does suck when reality contradicts our personal stories. I regularly meet people who consider themselves environmentalists and yet terrorize innocent pedestrians and cyclists. If you are a regular traveler by plane or car, you are not an environmentalist (assuming you are not physically disabled). You may be a wonderful person but you are not an environmentalist. Get over it.

...but where I live most of that list sounds pretty inviting. I'll cast my vote for the smart guy.

Here in Oregon, we understand that the South is not just the Confederacy. This state was settled by southerners and remains the most racist locale West of the Rockies. The hanging effigy of Senator Obama near Portland is no less scary than one in Kentucky. Hell, we have had nearly as much Klan activity here as most "Southern" states. I have yet to meet my first black or Hispanic male who can drive a single week without being stopped for "driving while black/brown".

through these watery eyes. This was a very touching piece, at least to me. I only wish Uncle Mark was still alive to marry Uncle Joe and witness the defeat of this hateful proposition. Perhaps I will live to see the end of both AIDS and discriminatory laws.

A very secular Amen to that.

This story is a little old (two or three years), but as I recall, for every two jobs created by Wal-Mart, a community loses three local jobs that paid better. Intelligent local leaders will still resist this organization.

“I wish I had been wiser,” Ayers said. “I wish I had been more effective, I wish I’d been more unifying, I wish I’d been more principled.”

That statement pretty well sums up how I feel about my youth. I suspect 'most everyone feels that way to some degree. It is getting so damned hard to find monsters anymore.

My partner and I rode our bikes forty miles to hear Jesse Jackson inspire us with impossible dreams twenty years ago. Tonight, and for the past score of months, President-elect Obama inspired us with those same dreams, now achieved.

I'm sure some of Jackson's emotion is from a sense of being one-half a generation too early, but I wager he is quite proud of how far we have come as a nation since he started the Rainbow Coalition. It is a shame the first black President has to take over during such a mess, but I can't imagine a more capable and intelligent leader during such trying times.

Everyone seems to be aware that 70% of blacks voted for prop 8, but how about the education breakdown? College graduates opposed adding homophobia to the CA Constitution while non-college graduates favored it. We'll get nowhere by blaming ethnic groups for this outcome (especially those people who have historically been and still are victims of bigotry). We can make headway by making education accessible to more people. President-elect Obama has committed to this and we should put our bitterness aside to help make this happen.

My tear ducts are suffering from an overuse injury. I spent half the day teared up from the polling place stories and then totally lost it when the cameras showed Jesse Jackson during our next President's acceptance speech. I never thought I would live long enough to see a black President. Throw in the fact that he may well be the most intelligent President in our history and I am a very happy man.

It was a truly memorable day, perhaps made all the more so by the fact that I was with a group of wingnut McCain supporters when he came on the tube to concede. The sound had been off (it was in a karate dojo) and no one had heard any results. They honestly believed it would be a close contest and were stunned at the unified voice of America repudiating their ideology.

The Rs have controlled the congress (and White House) for many decades; you just didn't notice it because many of them held office as Ds. The blue-dog Ds have always supported the worst of the right-wing agenda: unending war, xenophobia, income and wealth inequality, no citizen privacy, homophobia and race-baiting. The last time our government actually worked was prior to Ford. I, for one, am glad to give the Democrats a shot at fixing these disasters that the fascist wing of the Republican party have created.