October 7, 2008 - 10:25 a.m. or so

Both today and yesterday, MSNBC has been airing what appears to be full stump speeches from Sarah Palin.

As I write this, they have been playing her speech in Jacksonville, Fla for ten full minutes, and it's still going on. No comments...

I thought Barack was terrific -- strong, clear, knowledgeable. I thought McCain, to be fair, showed some of his knowledge in a good way. But he's too old, he's from the 20th century, the country doesn't need him now.

Plus I thought in some ways McCain...

John McCain has become a liar.

And as a citizen of the beautiful state of Pennsylvania, I can tell you that every morning on my television for the last month, McCain has been lying about Barack Obama's position on raising taxes.

Obama has been saying he would raise the...

I can understand the media running with the story of Obama choosing not to opt into public funding for a day or so of programming. And it's true, early in his run he said he was in favor of using public funding, before his candidacy took off and he discovered...

I always heard the phrase the Bully Pulpit without hearing the word "bully" in it.

The phrase, of course, simply means that the president has easy and frequent access to the American people to make his case. It seemed a logical and useful thing for the...

I live in Bucks County, PA, and over the weekend I canvassed for Obama out of the Quakertown campaign headquarters.

My actress friend Alice Playten came out from New York to join me. She's had a long career in musical theatre -- she was in the...

The Reverend Wright homilies were very disturbing, no question.

I thought Barack Obama's speech, which finished just minutes ago, was brilliant, nuanced, healing and shows him to be incredibly worthy as a candidate. I hope America is interested enough in progress to embrace this man. We would be lucky,...

Good morning. How are you today?

I'm aware Super Tuesday is tomorrow, and I wanted to do something else to convince more people to vote for Barack Obama.

In my last post, I quoted part of the speech Obama gave opposed to invading Iraq. He gave it...

My "blink" is that we need Barack Obama. We're lucky to have a transformational candidate, and we damn well better take advantage of that luck.

When I look at the biggest problems facing us, I think of

1.) Global Warming/Climate Change
2.) the need for alternative, non-oil-coal energy...

Update: Well, Hillary won New Hampshire, not by an enormous amount, but she won it. Some of what I wrote below was based on what "seemed" to be happening with Obama, and the fact he had been ahead in the polls in New Hampshire.

But the polls were wrong,...

Dear Editor,

I am 28 years old. Some of my friends say that the war on terror is a mistake, and furthermore "terror" is an abstract noun, it's not a country, and you can't wage war on an abstract noun. My friends, especially Peter Wilkins, say that there...

I had CNN's Situation Room on in the background, when I saw the sight of Senator John McCain and Senator Joseph Lieberman on my TV screen. As you probably know, Lieberman has endorsed Republican McCain for President.

(You also know but for any who have forgotten: Lieberman was a...

I like Thanksgiving as a holiday; it's my favorite one after the storming of the Bastille. However, I've been having trouble feeling grateful recently.

I'm disturbed by the state of the world, and the state of the country.

As William Wordsworth wrote, "The world is too much with us."...

This is a free associative rant, triggered by a friend who wrote me asking me why I'd been so silent for a while (both in email and on the Huffington Post). I hope it's of interest. If it isn't, please cut me some slack (and/or stop reading).

My friend offered...

They're trying to get us psychologically primed for bombing Iran.

As early as today (Tuesday, September 25, 2007) the Kyl-Lieberman amendment (No. 3017) may be voted on.

It is non-binding, but it is a "sense of the Senate" amendment basically saying the Senate views Iran as a danger...

Freedom's Watch ads.

Once again, selling the lie that 9/11 and invading Iraq are connected. THEY ARE NOT.

Once again, pretending that fighting in Iraq, which never had Al Qaeda in it until we invaded, is somehow connected to fighting the people who attacked us on 9/11....

I only saw some of Vice President's appearance on Larry King last night.

Did you see the Bill Moyers program on the lead-up to the Iraq war in which he traced how the administration leaked to the New York Times what turned out to be a debatable report about...

Will this long presidency of George W. Bush ever be over?

Living through it is starting to seem like some ghastly, upsetting novel in which the hero is the country, and the president is this disturbing, pig-headed, oblivious villain who makes things worse and worse and worse.

And as with...

I've been in theatre as a playwright for 33 years now (yikes), and I've recently started to receive those kinds of awards that come to you for being around for a while -- most notably a couple of weeks ago I was "awarded" a star on the sidewalk outside the...

Pretty hard apparently.

I just saw this headline on the Huffington Post:

Clinton Ducks Answer on Whether Homosexuality Is 'Immoral'

In the short article -- part of a blog called "The Caucus" on the New York Times website -- Hillary Clinton is asked if she agrees...