Dear friends,

I watched Nader on democracynow.org last nigh. He was spot on: he said the Republicans are succeeding by terrifying the democratic constituency and its supposed representatives; their crazed talk operates to do this; on Obama's speech that he talks well on a limited set of topics (Obama never uses the word poverty or referred to it -- huge numbers of people in the US live on poverty -- nothing at all to explain why his administration has only food stamps to offer and why so many need them); that Obama does very liittle of what he talks decently about domestically but as to foreign policy: shameful was Nader's word and Nader's outline of what the US does under Obama rehearsed what Martin Luther King said the US was doing shortly because MLK was murdered. The hypocrisy of the man was what Nader dwelt on without using the word more than once if at all, but he did use the word coward for him and appropriately.

He also said the democrats and Obama present silence and a vaccuum as the answer to all the Republican insults, charges, misinformation and lies. Yes. And how dangerous this is. Yes. And that many people will stay home and not vote as they have no one to vote for.

We -- the Admiral and I -- did keep Burns' night. We had lamb-burgers (replacing haggis), neeps in honey-butter sauce (replacing tatties). Wine and port (replacing whiskey). The admiral read in his Scots' accent,  "To a mouse, on turning her up in her nest w/a plough." We toasted Burns in candlelight and talked of his hard life and other poems for a while..


J.W. Turner, Dumblain Abbey, Scotland -- executed not too long after Burns's death (1796)

Sylvia