After Monday’s DNC lovefest, I was worried that the Democrats were going to follow the ridiculous 2004 Convention strategy of avoiding direct attacks on the Republicans. Fortunately, Tuesday was markedly different. Rather than merely engaging in warm and fuzzy rhetoric, the Democrats turned up the heat through specific policy analysis and strong critiques of the GOP. Here’s my daily report card of the major players:

Dennis Kucinich
Grade: A

Although he didn’t appear in primetime, Dennis Kucinich set the tone for the day by giving a thrilling 5-minute “Wake Up!” speech. During an election season marked by conversation about the middle class, it was refreshing to hear about the plight of poor people. His remarks reminded us why, in a perfect world, Kucinich would be the nominee instead of Obama.

Brian Schweitzer
Grade: A

Similar to Obama’s 2004 address, Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer stole the show with a powerful and entertaining primetime address. Governor Schweitzer’s incisive analysis of our energy problems, as well as his unabashed critiques of John McCain got the crowd excited and the issues on the table. Does this make Montana winnable? Maybe not. Still, Schweitzer gave the best speech up to that point and enriched his political future.

Mark Warner
Grade: B+

Despite his billing as the keynote speaker, Mark Warner was clearly the opening act for Hillary Clinton. In this role, Warner skillfully and insightfully linked issues of technology, science, education, military, and the global economy. Although his speech lacked energy, as well as more explicit critiques of McCain, Warner performed excellently as Hilary’s backup.

Hillary Clinton
Grade A-

With her back firmly against the wall, Hillary Clinton gave one of the most significant speeches of her career. After celebrating the success of her campaign, she asked her constituency a simple but poignant question, “Did you do all of this for me, or for the people who are suffering?” Also, by explicitly appealing to the feminist tradition, Hillary attempted to connect Obama to the female demographic that has been so elusive to him. Did she do this out of sincerity? Of course not. Should she have unequivocally said that Barack was qualified to be president? Yes, which is why she didn’t get a full A. Still, if Obama wins the general election, it would be hard not view this speech as a critical factor

Why We Work
By Matthew Birkhold

We live in a society where the entire economy of several small towns and cities is centered around weapons production or the prison industry.  In these places, if we are not at war and if prisons and jails aren’t full, unemployment increases.  When unemployment increases, the unemployed begin to strain the economy and employed people end up supporting them in one way or another.

Because nobody wants to support the unemployed, we tend to leave the creation of jobs to people we think know better than us.  Our willingness to rid ourselves of responsibility for the health of our own society has placed us in a position where we now have to live with the reality massive military and prison industrial complexes.  Consequently, every one out of one hundred people in the US are now behind bars and we are involved in a war that may last a hundred years.

The fact that several corporations have capitalized on this gross number of incarcerated people for profit, and the fact that regular working people have voiced little opposition to this practice, speaks volumes about what works means to those of us who live in the US.

If you ask most young people why they go to school they may very well say, “to get an education.”  If you then ask then why it’s important that they get an education, they will probably say, “So I can get a good job that will pay me a lot of money.”  In the US we work to make money.  There is nothing wrong with making money.  I sure could use more than I currently have.  However, when we work solely to make money we only take from society and don’t give back.

We have gotten ourselves in the prison-military mess we are currently in because millions of people have simply said, “I need a job and don’t care what it is.” Because of this, we have to do something better for young people.  If young people simply continue what our parents and we have done, there will be no black folks left in the street and the military draft will have to be reinstated.  We must create jobs and an attitude towards work that will contribute to society’s health.

As a society we have reached the point where working only to make money so that we can consume products produced in US prisons and Southeast Asia for 30 cents a day has become a danger to our continued lives.  We must, as Dr. King warned forty-one years ago, quickly become a person oriented society instead of thing oriented society we currently live in.

How we do this is up to us.  Somehow though, we must find a way to turn our labor into a process that contributes positively to the health of the world in which we live.  Whether we start a more thorough recycling program at our place of work or we organize our coworkers into a collective that helps students with homework after school we have to change why we work.  Somehow we must come to see how what we do at work impacts the rest of society.

Matt Birkhold is a Binghamton, NY based writer and educator.  He can be reached at birkhold(at)gmail(dot)com.        

Obama Modifies ‘Yes We Can’ Message To Exclude Area Loser

COLUMBIA, SC—In a nationally televised speech Friday, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama altered his vision of a unified America to exclude Dayton, OH loser Nate Walsh.

According to Obama, the 32-year-old Walsh, who has lived with his parents intermittently since receiving his associate’s degree in 2001 and still does not have a credit card in his own name, no longer figures into the senator’s long-term plan of rallying Americans from all walks of life around a common, higher purpose.

“People of South Carolina, people of the world, this is our time, this is our moment,” Obama said before 72,000 supporters at the University of South Carolina’s Williams-Brice Stadium. “That is, unless you live in apartment 3L at 1254 Holden St., you watched Money Train on TBS last night at 3 a.m., and your name is Nate Walsh.”

“I have always said that the change we seek will not come easy, that it will not come without its share of sacrifice and struggle,” Obama continued. “And the last thing we need is dead weight like Nate Walsh adding another 20 or 30 years to the process.”

The speech, entitled “A More Perfect Union Minus Nate Walsh,” was 26 minutes long and contained the words “change” 12 times, “hope” 16 times, and “Nate,” in conjunction with the phrase “with the exception of,” 34 times.

Although Obama remained vague on issues such as health care and foreign policy, the Illinois senator was praised for finally publicly addressing the issue of Nate Walsh. Obama took a hard-line stance on Walsh, calling the part-time driving-range employee the lone aspect of America he doesn’t believe in, a citizen who can languish in the past for all he cares, and “on top of everything else, kind of a jerk.”

For the rest of the story, click here.

Today’s photo of the day comes from Philadelphia, where the First Place Philadelphia Phillies beat the hell out of the also-ran New York Mets. As always, the Phillies played like it was September, and so did the Mets.

Today’s video of the day comes from Day Two of the Democratic National Convention, where Dennis Kucinich, Brian Schweitzer, and Hillary Clinton gave very powerful and significant speeches. Did Hillary say and do enough?