Election '08 rundown - personal overview

Apologies to anyone who's run across this site and wondered where all my sociopolitical bloviation disappeared to -- the truth is, the latter days of the election season were so extremely emotional and controversy-laden all around that I was spending the vast majority of my time on LiveJournal and Facebook because their friending system allowed for a much faster (and existent) response time on opinions posted, as well as on comments to others' posts. The real-time factor there was a bit more insistent than the "publically-viewable and globally-searchable" factor over here. Obviously, I need more friends and hecklers on this thing.

As a comprehensive follow-up, though, I will give you all the major highlights of my campaign coverage, insofar as I can gather them together here.

But first.....here's where I stand personally. I live in suburban Cook County, Illinois, about 35 minutes by train from downtown Chicago. My interests, in a nutshell, are those of the minority against the majority who thinks they have the sole right to determine the way things ought to be. By reason of almost every possible category except that of the color of my skin, I am either a member of a relatively dispossessed (and often-demonized) minority -- or simply dispossessed. I am not wealthy and never have been; I lack (through this perpetual financial insecurity) a graduate or post-graduate degree that might give my words some automatic credence with others who rely upon those things as a sign of qualification. I lack powerful connections of family or friendship that might make my life easier by helping me along. I am not mainstream. And I refuse to have the wool pulled over my eyes by those who merely pretend to answer the needs of the people, or who manipulate their fears to drive them into a fold.

That said.....you can add my profile to the list of those who have favoured Barack Obama from the very advent of his run for president.