We Get Spam

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

This is a very enjoyable song musically, an interesting video with a number of guest and cameo appearances, and it’s especially timely tonight, the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s I have a dream speech, and the night Barack Obama gave his acceptance speech as the Democratic candidate for President of the United States.

You can view full details of the video, including a list of performers, at this YouTube site.

As happy as I am with outcome of the Democratic primaries, it’s not without some sadness that I note that we’ve yet to elect a woman as our national leader, lagging behind many other countries in the world.

In that spirit, I really liked Hillary’s line (from her concession speech):

Although we weren’t able to shatter that hardest, highest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you it’s got about 18 million cracks in it.

There may still be one or two people (see previous post) who aren’t clear on who’s the presumptive Deomocratic presidential nominee, but as the graphic below shows, the world at large doesn’t share this confusion.

We’ll save our final congratulations until August and November, but for now let’s acknowledge the historical significance of Barack Obama winning the Democratic presidential primary race.

If you are curious how my original, tepid, support (acknowledgement of the inevitable was more like it) for Hillary evolved into strong support for Obama, a couple of things stand out, beyond his general message of hope and strength and plans to

Barack’s speech on race relations, which acknowledges the real issues facing our country in an honest and adult manner really should be observed in its entirety.

It’s nice to be spoken to as an adult.

The other thing, I have to admit, is a video that came out a couple of months before the aforementioned speech. Yes We Can, simply put, is a inspiring and persuasive musical vision of a world that I grew up in; a time when America was a can-do nation; a time when we lead the world; a time that is within our power, today, as Americans, to bring back to reality.

we are one people; we are one nation; and together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast; from sea to shining sea –

Yes. We. Can.