The BobboSphere: Don't believe everything you think.

A lot of people are comparing Barack Obama to Franklin Roosevelt and wondering if Obama can pull off a new New Deal in the face of our catastrophic financial crisis. It's a good question and one that needs to be asked. But I'm going to ask another question. I wonder if Barack Obama could become the 21st century Abraham Lincoln.

I was raised to love this country by parents who struggled through the Great Depression and World War II. My mom once saved up 17 cents to buy her mother a coal bucket as a Christmas gift. My dad was the son of Scottish immigrants. He went to war and visited some of the worst hellholes in Europe as  the Fighting Thunderbirds of the 45th infantry went up the boot of Italy to Anzio and later to southern France and into Germany. After the war he took a job with the Veteran's Administration to help the GI's move on to better lives than the ones they had in miserable muddy foxholes.

I learned from them that poverty does not have to be permanent and that evil can be overcome. They were proud New Deal Democrats who knew that government was supposed to be of the people, for the people and by the people.

They took us kids to the Civil War battlefields around the D.C. area so we would hopefully never forget the sacrifices that it takes to advance human rights and extend freedom to all.

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­­­The Straight Talk Express is arguably the most famous bus in America right now. Riding around in the conveyance favored by everyday working class people is a nice touch really. It makes McCain seem like one of us. It's true that McCain now flies around in a Boeing 737 of the same name, equipped with first class seats for himself and his entourage, but it's the bus that people see and remember.

Buses remind us of going to work bleary-eyed in the morning crowded together with lots of strangers and then coming home exhausted at night crowded together in the same way. Buses are about enduring extreme heat and cold waiting for them to arrive. They are about the fear of being late to work when you miss one, or when it breaks down or gets stuck in traffic. They are about the fear of waiting for one at night in a dicey part of town, hoping that you won't become another mugging or rape statistic.

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"It's changin' out there. Just like last time. There's a storm comin' Harry. And we all best be ready when she does."-- Rubeus Hagrid from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

We do love anniversaries here in the USA. This year it was the 40th anniversary of 1968, one of those years like 1776, 1860, 1929, 1941 and 2001 where we stood at some kind of societal crossroads.

Of course the problem with anniversarial history is that the only time we're supposed to think about our history is when the Corporate Media waves its digital wand and provides us with a safely sanitized version that doesn't threaten the present Established Order.