brought to tears

why is it that whenever i watch obama speak, i almost invariably get misty-eyed.

seriously, our president has an uncanny ability to weave many disparate things into a powerful and moving speech.  he is a speaker that is above and beyond anything i’ve seen in my lifetime.  maybe when malcom x or martin luther king jr. were around i could say the same about them, but we have no equivalent in recent history.  dubbya was not it.

i finally watched the full speech from last week about obama’s health care plan.  what struck me was just how much he was using ideas from republicans.  it made me wonder how anyone could say he wasn’t reaching across the isle — i got the impression that his attitude was, if you’ve got a good idea, let’s use it.  it doesn’t matter where it comes from.  following up on initiatives set out by john mccain and dubbya himself just made my respect for barack go two notches higher (and, in turn, my respect for g-dub and mccain).

seriously, where is all the opposition coming from?  you just need to listen to him talk to know it’s all misrepresentation.  why are people so threatened?  is it because he’s black?  because he’s intelligent?  because he has a goal in mind and will not stop until he reaches it?  heaven forbid we have a president with an actual agenda — one that doesn’t involve killing people.

if you haven’t seen the speech you need to.  the excerpt on the barackobama/whitehouse.gov site doesn’t do it justice.  barack obama doesn’t speak in sound bytes — his speeches are like lectures, but ones you want to hear, not those boring lectures from high school about economics.  i found the speech divided into 6 parts by TheRaceCard on YouTube ripped from C-SPAN.  (it’s now also available on barackobama.com) you should thank him.  here’s all 6:

We did not come to fear the future.  We came here to shape it.