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Electing Barack Obama president was the first step in redeeming American democracy. The second step must be indicting ex-president George W. Bush, giving him a fair trial, finding him guilty of many criminal acts and putting him in prison. Forget revenge. Think rule of law and justice.

When the electorate, predominantly Republican, will elect a Democrat, rather than their convicted felon incumbent Sen. Ted Stevens, there is hope and reason to work within the Vote Out Incumbents Democracy movement and organization. Congratulations Alaska, on narrowly doing the right thing. We empathize with the only other choice being a Democrat.

As always, elections are about variables so myriad as to make polling effective only in trend for some elections, and entirely unreliable in others. It appears to me this 2008 election however, is about a crisis in confidence toward authority, and the presidential winner will be the person having shown the most credible judgement.

McCain/Palin and other Republican politicians running for office are throwing the 'socialist' tag at their Democratic opponents in the hopes it will stick to voter's foreheads while lining up to vote. Rather odd and illogical tactic unless they are targeting voters who have been oblivious to the socialist doubling of the national debt by Republicans these last 7 and 3/4 years.

The last of the debates is now history. According to polls, Sen. Obama won each and every one of them. According to the polls, Obama is ahead in enough battleground states to make the Electoral College map his for the next 4 years. Obama put together and ran an immensely successful grass roots campaign. His judgment and decisions in the management of his campaign suggest that he can be an effective president. Why then, the semi-subconscious suspicion that Obama will not become our next president?

America has a future. American's have a future. In many ways, it will not look like our past. What is happening right now is a revolution, a political, economic, and cultural revolution. There is no choice about it. When Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, certain concepts and ideas were put to the test, and in 2007 and 2008, those concepts and ideas brought our economy crashing down, driving 10's of millions of voters to leave the two major political parties, and opening the door to dramatic cultural change going forward.

It is never easy to communicate wisdom. Even more difficult to do so in an engaging way that makes it very, very easy to read and understand. Mickey Z. has accomplished this difficult task in his new book No Innocent Bystanders. This book is designed to reach deep into a person's consciousness, pierce normal psychological defenses, and overcome a lifetime of facile rationalizations. This is a book to inspire a revolution spirit in Americans, the kind needed to achieve what Thomas Jefferson had the wisdom to say our nation would need: a revolution every generation or so.

The title of this article (above) is the name of the Bill which passed the Senate last night. It is voluminous and the time between its issuance from the Banking Committee to its vote on the floor likely precluded most Senators from having time to read it themselves. But rest assured their staffers did. Visit and support the Sunlight Foundation for the full text of the Bill. Or, read this article, for an overview of what is happening, the rest of us can understand.

Three days ago, the world took a half step that had one foot on the cliff and other other over the abyss. Fed Chairman Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Paulson, and Congressional Leaders gathered in an emergency meeting and observed to the shock of many, the other foot stepping into the abyss. They agreed in unison and immediately to pivot the dangling foot back onto the cliff side. The abyss was a run on money market funds around the globe, which was poised to take place in hours or days, at most, creating a global financial meltdown.

There is nothing as depressing as to be right about calamity foreseen and have such warnings go unheeded. To see what is coming, take advantage, and walk away, allows one to feel intelligent, profit from the knowledge, and avoid looking back at the suffering of others who didn't see what is happening. This, of course, would be the corporate executives and Republicans in power who fought against regulation and oversight since 1994, and won.