"Fired Up is the funniest movie i've ever, it made me wish that i could do police academy 4 all over again, but this time with less cock smuggling" - steve guttenberg.....the trailer is under videos!!

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama: Iowa Caucus Night
Des Moines, IA | January 03, 2008
Thank you, Iowa.

You know, they said this day would never come.

They said our sights were set too high.

They said this country was too divided; too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose.

But on this January night - at this defining moment in history - you have done what the cynics said we couldn't do. You have done what the state of New Hampshire can do in five days. You have done what America can do in this New Year, 2008. In lines that stretched around schools and churches; in small towns and big cities; you came together as Democrats, Republicans and Independents to stand up and say that we are one nation; we are one people; and our time for change has come.

You said the time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that's consumed Washington; to end the political strategy that's been all about division and instead make it about addition - to build a coalition for change that stretches through Red States and Blue States. Because that's how we'll win in November, and that's how we'll finally meet the challenges that we face as a nation.

We are choosing hope over fear. We're choosing unity over division, and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America.

You said the time has come to tell the lobbyists who think their money and their influence speak louder than our voices that they don't own this government, we do; and we are here to take it back.

The time has come for a President who will be honest about the choices and the challenges we face; who will listen to you and learn from you even when we disagree; who won't just tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to know. And in New Hampshire, if you give me the same chance that Iowa did tonight, I will be that president for America.

Thank you.

I'll be a President who finally makes health care affordable and available to every single American the same way I expanded health care in Illinois - by--by bringing Democrats and Republicans together to get the job done.

I'll be a President who ends the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas and put a middle-class tax cut into the pockets of the working Americans who deserve it.

I'll be a President who harnesses the ingenuity of farmers and scientists and entrepreneurs to free this nation from the tyranny of oil once and for all.

And I'll be a President who ends this war in Iraq and finally brings our troops home; who restores our moral standing; who understands that 9/11 is not a way to scare up votes, but a challenge that should unite America and the world against the common threats of the twenty-first century; common threats of terrorism and nuclear weapons; climate change and poverty; genocide and disease.

Tonight, we are one step closer to that vision of America because of what you did here in Iowa. And so I'd especially like to thank the organizers and the precinct captains; the volunteers and the staff who made this all possible.

And while I'm at it, on "thank yous," I think it makes sense for me to thank the love of my life, the rock of the Obama family, the closer on the campaign trail; give it up for Michelle Obama.

I know you didn't do this for me. You did this-you did this because you believed so deeply in the most American of ideas - that in the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.

I know this-I know this because while I may be standing here tonight, I'll never forget that my journey began on the streets of Chicago doing what so many of you have done for this campaign and all the campaigns here in Iowa - organizing, and working, and fighting to make people's lives just a little bit better.

I know how hard it is. It comes with little sleep, little pay, and a lot of sacrifice. There are days of disappointment, but sometimes, just sometimes, there are nights like this - a night-a night that, years from now, when we've made the changes we believe in; when more families can afford to see a doctor; when our children-when Malia and Sasha and your children-inherit a planet that's a little cleaner and safer; when the world sees America differently, and America sees itself as a nation less divided and more united; you'll be able to look back with pride and say that this was the moment when it all began.

This was the moment when the improbable beat what Washington always said was inevitable.

This was the moment when we tore down barriers that have divided us for too long - when we rallied people of all parties and ages to a common cause; when we finally gave Americans who'd never participated in politics a reason to stand up and to do so.

This was the moment when we finally beat back the politics of fear, and doubt, and cynicism; the politics where we tear each other down instead of lifting this country up. This was the moment.

Years from now, you'll look back and you'll say that this was the moment - this was the place - where America remembered what it means to hope.

For many months, we've been teased, even derided for talking about hope.

But we always knew that hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it.

Hope is what I saw in the eyes of the young woman in Cedar Rapids who works the night shift after a full day of college and still can't afford health care for a sister who's ill; a young woman who still believes that this country will give her the chance to live out her dreams.

Hope is what I heard in the voice of the New Hampshire woman who told me that she hasn't been able to breathe since her nephew left for Iraq; who still goes to bed each night praying for his safe return.

Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire; what led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation; what led young women and young men to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedom's cause.

Hope-hope-is what led me here today - with a father from Kenya; a mother from Kansas; and a story that could only happen in the United States of America. Hope is the bedrock of this nation; the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us; by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is; who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.

That is what we started here in Iowa, and that is the message we can now carry to New Hampshire and beyond; the same message we had when we were up and when we were down; the one that can change this country brick by brick, block by block, calloused hand by calloused hand - that together, ordinary people can do extraordinary things; because we are not a collection of Red States and Blue States, we are the United States of America; and at this moment, in this election, we are ready to believe again. Thank you, Iowa.

First off....You guys gave some great recommendations.
It makes me love Myspace. Keep it coming.
Still the Best book ever written by an American Author;
Sophie's Choice by William Styron. The man has an unmatched mastery of the English language. A mind-altering tragedy on the most epic of scales while consistently maintaining the most personal and isolated connection I've ever felt in any piece of literature. A book that redefined the depths and heights of the human condition. A book that redefined the existence of true evil in it's purest form… a form of disimpassioned, monotony, and inaction… an evil without the simplistic brushstrokes of romanticized villains and Hollywood grandeur. This book is what books should me. This book is what art should be. An undeniable idea-philosophy-story-picture brought into your life that is so powerful, you have no choice but to redefine perspective accordingly.
Thomas Mann – The Magic Mountain: 700 pages of obsession with a woman dying, stealing her x-rays describing the way her fingers bend as she smokes a cigarette. Comes to a astonish crescendo as he gets drunk and literally gushes the perfect blend of love, death, obsession, depravity, and hopeless bourgeois magic.
Ayn Rand – The Fountainhead: Dominique Francon might be my favorite female character ever developed.
Tom Robbins – Still life with Woodpecker: Best schizophrenic love story ever written.
Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughter House Five: So it goes. Fire bombing of Dresden as only Vonnegut could tell.
Milton – Paradise Lost: Never recovered from that one.
John Kennedy Toole – Confederacy of Dunces: Pure fantastic entertainment
Salinger – For Esme' with love and Squalor: I would like to think I've moved past my Holden Caulfield period.
Dostoevsky – The Grand Inquisitor: Think about it…true right? We would to.
Morrison – Song of Solomon: her best
Augusten Burroughs – Running with Scissors (the movie sucked!)
Pigs at the Trough - Those fuckers!!! Ethics legislation reform!!! Lobbyists should be banished (Exxon mobile 39.5 billions dollars profit last year?!?!?!?) I can't even breathe...i had to set this book down soo many times.
Early Bukowski – My god, my god. This guy lived it.
Blood Diamonds - Greg Campbell. I will never buy a diamond as long a i live. Because of the impossibility of determining whether or not it's a conflict diamond; a diamond with the blood of 1000's of women and children at the hands of Sierra Leone's RUF's, a diamond that helped fund the liquidation of 100's of millions of dollars for Al Qaeda 2 months prior to 9/11. Aziz Nassour or Alpha Zulu was brought into Liberia under the knowledge of President Charles Taylor and skirted customs and kept in governmental run safehouses. Flown to meetings with RUF rebels on Liberian Governmental Helicopters, bought 100's of millions of dollars of uncut diamonds and smuggled them out of the country directly providing Al Qaeda with liquid assets that couldn't be frozen in the international market. Oh and Fuck De Beers. Price fixing, marketing manipulating, monopolizing rat bastards. 2 months salary my ass. I'm gonna buy my baby's mama a pony!

Pillowman - It's a play. Saw it on Broadway with Billy Crudup but it's gone now... The terrifying words are great even without him and his fancy cheekbones.
Devil in the White City: Read is straight through. Perfect blend of fiction and history.
Thoreau – Walden: Helped shape my youth and absolute need for solitude and solo travel.
Richard Wright – Uncle Tom's Children: Gave Native Son a run for it's money.
Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky...Died during the nazi occupation of France. Her manuscripts were found 60 years and later and a fucking masterpiece was translated...layers of French Society in a brilliant transformation that reveals our true nature in the midst of defeat, compromise, and hypocrisy. Artificial nobility lost...love, hope, and a natural nobility found.
Anything on Neo-Cons, Imperial Hubris, Foreign Policy, Fanatics or fundamental anything…Halliburton, Oil for food embargos, Nigerian Delta attacks, Chechnya, Janjiweed, Blood diamonds, African infrastructure, capitalistic tyranny.. this could go on for hours…more later

"Homegrown Democrat" by Garrison Keillor.

Here's a little taste:

"The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified in to the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, fundamentalist bullies, Christians of convenience, hobby cops, misanthropic frat boys, cigar monkeys, ninja dittoheads, shrieking midgets, tax cheats, cheese merchants, cat stranglers, goldbrickers, gun fetishists, pill pushers, chronic nappers, nihilists in golf pants, backed-up Baptists, bozos on horseback, panjandrums of Ponzi marketing and the grand pooh-bahs of Percodan, mouth breathers and tongue thrusters, testosterone junkies, oversexed hedgehogs, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, line jumpers, randy preachers, marsupial moms and chirpy new anchors, UFO scholars, shroomheads, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, wizened aliens, aluminum siding salesmen, little honkers out ot diminish the rest of us, braying, smirking, scratching on the national blackboard, Newt's evil spawn, disciples of their Etch A Sketch president with a voice like a dial tone, rigid, incurious, isolated mand, not much introspection going on here, no inquiring minds eager to learn about the world, not much chance of anyone picking up a book not on the official reading list and hearing a still small voice, a dull and rigid man supspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions in general, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured slogans trying to walk, whose millions of supporters are awakening to the damage this man has done to our country. George Bush: the No. 1 reason why the rest of the world thinks we're deaf, dumb, and dangerous."