I used to be rather ashamed of being from Illinois.

Not anymore.

 

I've been to Springfield, plenty of times, where "Abraham Lincoln Walks At Midnight" and Vachel Lindsay, who voted the socialist ticket once looked out at the governer's mansion - smack dab next to his birthplace and recalled "The Eagle That Is Forgotten."

Forgotten no more John Peter Altgeld and Carl Sandburg who wrote of the "Strange Friend and Fiendly Stranger" that was Abraham Lincoln and once greeted an actor dressed as Linoln on a Michigan beach with a simple: "Good Morning, Mr. President," then walked on lost in "The Prairie Years."

I feel found in "The Prairie Years," after Barack Obama officially launched his presidential campaign on the steps of the old Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, his wife and two children by his side.

You go Obama. Go straight to the White House, which has long hankered for a black man. Take the hopes and dreams of a new generation of Americans - "there is no black, there is no white" - with you.

We will be with you just as Jesse Jackson who put to rest the "dilemma" of "is he Black enough?" with this: "Most of our fathers were white; our mothers were

black."

Quote that one, alot, spinmeisters.

I voted for him once. I voted for him again and I'd still vote for him except both of us are voting for Barack Obama now, the greatest writer and speaker to

run for President since, oh shall we say, A. Lincoln.

Not enough experience?

Just remember how William Seward and most of his other former rivals and future cabinet members underestimated an actually very successful prairie lawyer from the flatland.

Don't underestimate this one.

Put your money where you mouth has been and your faith back where it belongs in this great experiment. Maybe it can survive even Shrub?

It can certainly overcome Hillary, who insists her vote in favor of "Bush's folly" was A-OK. It also can surely outlast "America's mayor" but not mine, Rudy G. who "praised Bush" in Sacramento recently.

Really Rudy, even the guvernator doesn't praise Bush these days, at least in public, or as long as Maria is still within earshot.

So, go do what I'm going to do tomorrow. Re-register as a Democrat, if you haven't already. But, only for one reason - to help elect the next President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama.

As the rapper Common puts it: "Why does Bush pretend to look for Osama?, Let's impeach him and elect Obama!"

Let's.

I may even start being proud of having been born in Rockford, a great place to buy gas between Chicago and Galena.

It is the home of Cheap Trick, after all.

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