I've watched this whole clip twice in the last 30 minutes - I feel a kind of hope when I listen to Edwards speak that I haven't felt in a long, long time. It scares me that I almost feel foolish to fantasize about a president that would put these corporations-gone-amuck in their place, institute a policy that would quickly lead to universal health care (it's really pissing me off lately that I live in the *only* industrialized country that has no form of universal health care, I've been sick the last four weeks, I'm on my last pair of contacts, I need to go to the dentist about 2 years ago, etc), because it seems like such a pipe-dream from where we are at now.

It, in a way, blows my mind that the conservative base has any forward momentum at all to it. That anyone can look around and go, you know, we just got the wrong guy in office, another 4 to 8 years of similar policy should turn things around. Give me a break - all the Republican candidates are a joke, and I don't mean in a simplistic caricature kind of way, I mean in a strictly policy-speaking way.


I donated money to the Edwards campaign several days ago - even though I have no money to my name, no income, no job... I donated anyways. I always think of my home-state, Michigan, and the shape it's in now. How it's on the verge of collapse, you could argue in many areas it's past that point. But the only candidate, out of both parties, that I can see truly re-instituting the things that helped Michigan thrive for so long, is Edwards. The labor-unions are now crippled after 30 years of Reagan-like treatment, our tariff policy is near-retarded currently, which has helped lead to "the sucking sound" that Perot (yes, the funny little Texan who ran for president years ago) warned us all about. We are seeing tax-re-distribution and concentrated wealth in this country that hasn't been seen since the 30s. The country has a negative-one savings rate... yes, a negative savings rate.

Like I said, I feel foolish sometimes to think, in several years, things could be so radically different - but what's the point of living here if there's no hope? Here's to living in a "We" society, and not a "Me" society.

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64 days was the exact length of Pedal's production, the number of days we were out on the road. It feels really exciting to be releasing episodes again, I've been editing and filming the last few nights till 5 in the morning, and although it's been hell on my cold, I've had a blast doing it.

I'm anxious to get started on part 2 - when Amanda and I originally began writing the production related episodes, we were expecting to fit everything into 3 cuts. But that doesn't look to be the case any longer - we're finding we have a lot more to say, and many different layers of the whole experience to cover.


We'd love to hear your feedback - it will help greatly in deciding what questions to answer in what order. Thanks for watching.

Note: If you'd like to watch this episode in 1280x720 HD, click here :)