matching tracksuits

At 11:45, we’re in fourth period. A young man, who is often, quite honestly, extremely disruptive, sits silently at the back of a bunch of desks crowded in front of the television. The invocation begins and the young man bows his head. He is soon wiping tears from his eyes. Other students look at him, smiles on their faces, but they say nothing. As the pastor begins reciting the Lord’s Prayer, the young man joins in. He says his “amen,” smiles at those around him, puts his head down on his hands, watches, and waits.

Fourth period watches

As Obama begins to take the oath, the African American boys — and they are a majority in that class — sit rapted in attention. I don’t think I would be exaggerating to say that I see a certain spark of hope and self-confidence in their face as they watch someone who could look like an uncle or older cousin become the most powerful man on the planet.

While the speech, in their view, drags on (in my view: one of the most nuaunced speeches about our nation I’ve ever heard), the old habits return: the silliness, the talking, the 13-year-old-ness. In short, all the behaviors that make several of them “at risk” students, students who are “underachievers.”

Still, for that moment, it seemed they saw in themselves what I see: potential.

Today was a great day to be a teacher.

Listen to David Duke on the Obama election.

stormfront_radio-dr_david_duke-11-04-08-obama_response.mp3 (audio/mpeg Object)

Obama is really going to advance radically the Zionist neocon agenda.

You probably won’t make it through more than the first six, seven minutes — I couldn’t, anyway.

Headlining The Nation:

It was hot as Hades on June 5 in the little mountain town of Bristol, Virginia. But that didn’t stop hundreds of southwest Virginians–in the most staunchly Republican part of a state that hadn’t voted Democratic for president since 1964–from streaming into the local high school gym to whoop it up for a liberal, mixed-race fellow from Chicago with a mighty suspicious moniker. Fresh off his lopsided, nomination-clinching primary victory in North Carolina, Barack Obama had chosen–to the mystification of political experts–to launch his general election campaign not in the “battlegrounds” of Pennsylvania or Ohio but in a remote Southern backwater containing 17,000 souls who’d given George W. Bush 64 percent of their vote in 2004.
A New, Blue Dixie.

I wasn’t in the States for the 2004 presidential election. I watched from afar, in my small apartment above an elementary school in southern Poland. It was, in fact two, rooms (each with a bath) joined by a opening not in the original plans. It took me almost six months to convince the powers that be to join two useless rooms into one small apartment. My internet connection was supplied by the village planning office across the hall.

It was all done Polish style: “We’ve got a router with an open connection if you’re interested,” the gentleman who worked in the office informed me one day. “If you want, we can run a bit of network cable over to your apartment.” So we took a drill with a very long bit, drilled through the walls just above the doors, and stretched a cable through to my apartment.

Returning from school that Tuesday, I bounced around the internet, looking for very early results: it was only nine in the morning on the East Coast, so there wasn’t much information yet. Throughout the night, I checked; throughout the night, it became clearer that Bush had won. When I finally went to bed, it was with the strange realization that it was the second time — in a row — that I’d gone to bed not knowing the outcome of the election.

And today? Will it be any different?

If Dixville Notch, New Hampshire is any indication, we’ll know relatively quickly:

In Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, 100 percent of registered voters — all 21 of them — cast their ballots just after midnight in the first moments of Tuesday morning. For the first time in 40 years, the town voted Democratic in the presidential election, 15-6. (CNN)

Whatever the outcome, one thing seems sure: people around world are paying closer attention to this US election than to almost any other in history.

Update

I’m doing this more for my own use than anything else — got it via Thud.

And for glowing red SC: