Blue Hearts

Hi All,

And Happy Birthday to Bill!!!

Lots of great articles following. Definitely review them for talking points on making those conversions. It's possible that the facts might change some people's minds or pull to our side those that are on the fence.

Thanks to those of you who came by on Tuesday. George Mayer came to instruct us on registering voters. He and Mary Taves are working full time on getting volunteers trained and scheduled to register in the Brookside/Plaza areas. Thank you to George and Mary and all who are sacrificing their lives to provide this service.

Without further ado, happy reading.

Kristin

HUMOR




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Tina Fey As Sarah Palin On SNL
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/13/tina-fey-as-sarah-palin-o_n_126249.html
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http://www.bitoffun.com/notes/Clinton_Got_A_Blow_Job.htm
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Funny. k

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2008/09/22/080922sh_shouts_saunders?currentPage=1
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There are fewer than two months until the election, an election that will decide the next President of the United States. The person elected will be the president of all Americans, not just the Democrats or the
Republicans. To show our solidarity as Americans, let's all get together and show each other our support for the candidate of our choice. It's time that we come together, Democrats and Republicans alike.

If you support the policies and character of Senator Obama, please drive with your headlights on during the day.

If you support John McCain, please drive with your headlights off at night.

Thank you for your participation.

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While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75 year old rancher,whose hand was caught in the gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Palin and her bid.

The old rancher said, "Well, ya know, Palin is a 'Post Turtle'". Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a 'post turtle' was.

The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a 'post turtle".

The old rancher saw the puzzled look on the doctor's face so he continued to explain.

"You know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong up there, and she doesn't know what to do while she's up there, and you just wonder what kind of dummy put her up there to begin with".
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GENERAL

"dominant left wing media"

Joseph Goebbels perfected the technique of telling a lie often enough magically turned it into truth. Karl Rove improved on the model.

FOR THE FIFTH, AND I HOPE LAST TIME, TAKE OFF YOUR BLINDERS: And no wonder, this is how you fellows get your info: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,226857,00.html

FIRST: A little education for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias#Studies_and_theories_of_media_bias
and: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=121

SECOND: How it is done: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3612

"The myth of the pro-Obama media is the same as the myth of the liberal press, and it has been created by a standard strategy: Right-wing pundits declare repeatedly and vociferously that the media are biased in favor of liberals; centrist media pundits, who generally prefer critiques from the right because they don’t make a structural challenge to their work, concede that they have a point; and progressive critics, excluded from both the pro-establishment and the right-wing talk shows that dominate the media, go unheard. As with most myths, one part of the “Obama lovefest” story is true: There has been substantially more coverage of Obama than any other candidate. In every year Tyndall studied except 1988, the candidate of the party that didn’t hold the White House has gotten more coverage. It’s logical for the media to give more coverage to a less familiar candidate; having a longer, contested primary campaign also helps. Andrew Tyndall observed (Tyndall Report, 7/25/08): “Obama gets more positive coverage, more negative coverage and more trivial coverage. Who else has stories filed about them on how he shakes hands with his wife?” Even that particular “trivial” story was often portrayed negatively, such as the description of it as a “terrorist fist jab” on Fox News Channel (6/6/08).

There is simply no left-wing equivalent to Rush Limbaugh’s three-hour assaults on Barack Obama every weekday. The few liberal outlets where McCain is critiqued systematically, such as Air America or MSNBC’s Countdown With Keith Olbermann, are vastly outnumbered in airtime and audience by Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Bill O’Reilly and many other right-wing talk show hosts who use their platforms to launch regular attacks against Obama.

Much like the earlier media tropes about Al Gore (lied about inventing the Internet) or John Kerry (coward and traitor), it scarcely mattered whether the accusation of inexperience was true; the media has made it conventional wisdom by force of repetition.

Meanwhile, journalists seem to take on faith McCain’s “vast foreign policy expertise and credibility on national security,” as NBC anchor Brian Williams put it in a Democratic primary debate (2/26/07). Or as Newsweek’s Evan Thomas declared (PBS’s Charlie Rose, 2/8/08), McCain “can be pretty out there, using words like ‘surrender,’ because who is really going to question John McCain?” Extra! Update (4/08) cited “the media’s gentle treatment of McCain’s ludicrous claim” that Shiite Iran was backing the militant Sunni group Al-Qaeda in Iraq as an example of how the corporate press “seems eager to advance the idea that McCain’s Vietnam experience gives him sound judgment about foreign policy never mind his actual record.”

In fact, a closer look at Obama’s supposed coverage advantage reveals a consistent media double standard on scrutiny of the candidates. Obama’s apparently innocuous connection to corrupt fund raiser Tony Rezko received extensive attention, while McCain’s lead role in the Keating Five savings and loan scandal is treated as old news and generally ignored by the press. The coverage of Obama’s former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright went on endlessly, while McCain’s embrace of controversial right-wing preacher John Hagee received far less media attention. The media denounced Obama’s “flip-flop” on public campaign financing almost in unison, while paying much less attention to McCain’s reneging on his legally binding promise to accept public financing for his primary campaign.

As noted by FAIR’s Peter Hart in Extra! (5–6/08) and Eric Alterman and George Zornick in the Nation (7/7/08), it is difficult to find even one subject where the press has truly held McCain’s feet to the fire while giving Obama a break from scrutiny. If corporate media are in love with Obama, they sure are picking a funny way of showing it.

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I'm a little confused.

If you grow up in Hawaii , raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."
Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, a quintessential American story.

If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well-grounded.

If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 6,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and three children and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values
don't represent America 's.

If your husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

And finally, if you're famous for your quick temper, you're the one to have your finger on the button.

Okay, much clearer now.

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Eve Ensler is renowned for her play, 'The Vagina Monologues', and for her work to end violence against women.

EVE ENSLER, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist best known for "The Vagina Monologues", wrote the following about Sarah Palin.

Drill, Drill, Drill

Posted September 8, 2008 | 01:18 PM (EST)

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, 'It was a task from God.'

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, 'Drill Drill Drill.' I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

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Check out the largest political rally ever in Alaska! Evidently the "liberal" media missed it.

http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/alaska-women-reject-palin-rally-is-huge/

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A must-see. K

This video (see link below), 'A Noun, A Verb and a POW.' is an interview with a former Naval Academy classmate and fellow POW of John McCain, Dr. Philip Butler. Dr. Butler explains in no uncertain terms why John McCain should not be president. It is certainly one man's refutation of the oft made claim that McCain is a unique, celebrated war-time hero.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLWEDMLmjKk
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Kind of interesting if you put any value in education...

Obama:
Occidental College - Two years.
Columbia University - B.A. political science with a specialization in international relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

Biden:
University of Delaware - B.A. in history and B.A. in political science.
Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

vs.

McCain:
United States Naval Academy - Class rank 894 out of 899 ....(5 from the bottom.)

Palin:
Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester
University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in journalism
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This was a letter to a friend of mine. The goals are good, but do the ends justify the means? K


Since the subprime lending woes started, I have argued that responsibility should rest squarely on the shoulders of greedy lenders who made loans that they knew or should have known would end up in foreclosure--planning to take back the properties and sell them to make even more money. My husband has argued with me that such loans were the result of political pressure by Liberals who wanted to make it possible for poorer and working class Americans to own their homes.

This afternoon, I decided to trace backward in search of the source of the encouragement for making loans to Americans who wanted to enjoy homeownership and who had not qualified in the past. Surprise! surprise! It was part of George W. Bush's "Ownership Society," along with privatizing Social Security and Health Care.

For those who think I am making this up, all they need to do is read the President's Press Release from the White House on August 9, 2004 at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/08/print/20040809-9.html to find Bush's claim of responsibility for opening up loans to minorities: "In June 2002, President Bush issued 'America's Homeownership Challenge' to the real estate and mortgage finance industries to encourage them to join the effort to close the gap that exists between the homeownership rates of minorities and non-minorities. The President also announced the goal of increasing the number of minority homeowners by at least 5.5 million families before the end of the decade. Under his leadership, the overall U.S. homeownership rate in the second quarter of 2004 was at an all time high of 69.2 percent. Minority homeownership set a new record of 51 percent in the second quarter, up 0.2 percentage point from the first quarter and p 2.1 percentage points from a year ago."

The Press Release opens with a direct quote from a speech made by George W. Bush on June 17, 2004: "The more ownership there is in America, the more vitality there is in America, and the more people have a vital stake in the future of this country." Boy! was he ever right about that!! ALL American have ended up having a vital stake in these failed loans and the subprime lending induced economic crisis that has resulted.

This press release really should be tied around Republicans' necks, since there may be many people who have blamed this on Democrats as bleeding heart facilitators for minorities and poorer Americans. Let's give the President he claimed for himself. After all, George W. Bush in 2004 bragged in his press release from the White House that this expansion of homeownership was done "under his leadership"!

I thought you might enjoy hearing what I found.
Lyn
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I like the side-by-side chart they have created. K

There are just 50 days until we elect a new president.

This choice has tremendous implications on the future of our country. True Blue Women's mission is to advocate and educate voters regarding candidates' views on the key issues that affect women's lives everywhere: Health Care, Education,
Social Justice and the Environment.

To that end we have prepared the True Blue Women Presidential Scorecard comparing Senators Obama and McCain on these four critical issues. We urge you to read it and share it with others. We believe the facts speak for themselves and make it clear that Barack Obama is the candidate who can change America for the better.

http://www.truebluewomen.org/Presidential.pdf

It is tempting to fall prey to disgust with the lying and hateful commercials being "approved" by John McCain, which are now called into question by credible news sources. It is also difficult to watch Sarah Palin divert attention away from McCain's regressive stances on the issues that matter to you.

These are crucial days. Please commit to working to elect Barack Obama by doing as many of the activities as possible that are listed on our Website.

Think. Act. Hope. VOTE!

Sincerely,
The Board of Directors of True Blue Women

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Make a donation to Planned Parenthood in Sarah Palin's name. And here's the good part: when you make a donation to PP in her name, they'll send her a card telling her that the donation has been made in her honor! You can make a donation for as little as $5.00!

Here's the link to the Planned Parenthood website:

https://secure.ga0.org/02/pp10000_inhonor

You'll need to fill in the address to let PP know where to send the "in Sarah Palin's honor" card.

McCain/Palin for President
1235 S. Clark Street
1st Floor
Arlington , VA 22202

This could be the best donation you've made in a long time!

Pass it on...

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Today in Salon: Friday September 19, 2008

Sarah Palin's Dead Lake

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/09/19/palin/?source=newsletter

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Unfreakingbelievable!! K

Sam Stein
stein@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting From DC
Bizarre McCain Remarks Appear To Reject Spain As Ally

September 18, 2008 02:12 AM

UPDATE: McCain Meant To Reject Spain Meeting, Adviser Says

Late Wednesday night, news made its way from the other side of the Atlantic that John McCain, in an interview with a Spanish outlet, had made a series of bizarre responses to a question regarding that country's prime minister.

"Would you be willing to meet with the head of our government, Mr. Zapatero?" the questioner asked, in an exchange now being reported by several Spanish outlets.

McCain proceeded to launch into what appeared to be a boilerplate declaration about Mexico and Latin America -- but not Spain -- pressing the need to stand up to world leaders who want to harm America.

"I will meet with those leaders who are our friends and who want to work with us cooperatively," according to one translation. The reporter repeated the question two more times, apparently trying to clarify, but McCain referred again to Latin America.

Finally, the questioner said, "Okay, but I'm talking about Europe - the president of Spain, would you meet with him?" The Senator offered only a slight variance to his initial comment. "I will reunite with any leader that has the same principles and philosophy that we do: human rights, democracy, and liberty. And I will confront those that don't [have them]."

The implication seemed fairly clear: McCain was refusing to commit to meet with Zapatero, the "socialist" party leader, whose country is a member of NATO and intricately involved in many of America's global financial and national security objectives.

Already, several explanations are being offered to explain McCain's statements. As Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo opined: "The great majority [of those who have weighed in] appear to think the McCain was simply confused and didn't know who Zapatero was -- something you might bone up on if you were about to do an interview with the Spanish press. The assumption seems to be that since he'd already been asked about Castro and Chavez that McCain assumed Zapatero must be some other Latin American bad guy. A small minority though think that McCain is simply committed to an anti-Spanish foreign policy since he's still angry about Spain pulling it's troops out of Iraq."

Story continues below
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If, in fact, that latter group is correct and McCain was just putting voice to an adversarial stance, it could be as quizzical as if he didn't know Zapatero's name in the first place. Indeed, such a take on U.S.-Spain relations puts McCain in a far more hard-lined position than even the Bush administration, which has warmed to the Spanish leader after a rocky initial period. Indeed, the State Department's website touts the Zapatero government, which came to power in April 2004, for supporting "coalition efforts in Afghanistan" as well as "reconstruction efforts in Haiti" and counterterrorism tasks across the globe.

That Zapatero immediately withdrew Spanish forces from Iraq upon entering office, it seems, is being chalked up for what it is: an electoral promise the prime minister made good on. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice touched on this during press briefing in June 2007.

"The United States and Spain are allies," she said. "We're in NATO together; we are serving together in Afghanistan. A lot of our conversation today was about that, working together on any number of issues. We've had our differences... [but] I feel that the relationship is warm. We had a good discussion today... We're allies. But when we have differences, we will express them. I think there's no secret that out of the Iraq war, we had a particular difference in the timing of the withdrawal. But that's behind us now, and we need to look forward and look to areas on which we can cooperate and work together."

Only days earlier, Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, made much the same case in an interview with El Pais.

"I think that we got off to a bad start with President Zapatero's government," he declared. "There were various issues that got in the way. But the fact is, and the reason for this trip, is that the United States and Spain need to work together on a common agenda. Spain is one of the most successful European states of the last generation in terms of where Spain was in 1965 and where Spain is today. You weren't in 1965 the ninth or tenth largest economy in the world. You weren't a country that was fabulously productive, affluent and a leader in Europe. In 1965 you were some place else. Look at Spain now."

The truth is, even McCain has been willing to extend an olive branch to the Zapatero government in the past. John Aravosis of AmericaBlog - a fluent Spanish speaker - noted that McCain gave an interview to El Pais back in April in which he said that the differences between the U.S. and Spain should be swept under the rug.

And thus, the Senator finds himself in what appears to be an embarrassing if not potentially damaging proposition: either admit to confusing the name of the Spanish prime minister, a tough pill to swallow even with the built in perception that he is the candidate with foreign policy know-how, or explain away a position on U.S.-Spain relations that appears far outside the mainstream.

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I have created my own catchy phrase that reflects my thoughts on this Presidential race:

Racists Rationalize

How racism works:

What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?
What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said "I do" to?
What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no longer measured up to his standards?

What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?
What if Obama were a member of the "Keating 5"?
What if McCain were a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are? This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.

Mary M. Gaylord
Sosland Family Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Harvard Yard, Cambridge MA 02138
--
Jane R. Dickie
Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies.
Hope College.
Holland, MI 49423
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Excellent article. K

"A call to arms"
How to handle the fury brought on by this election? Register voters, hit the streets, pray. Stop talking about her. Talk about Obama.
By Anne Lamott

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/09/16/anne_lamott/index.html

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Palin pick means McCain is like Bush

By PAUL BEGALA | 9/16/08 4:49 AM EDT

As the political class prattles on about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, we are overlooking the most important aspect of her selection as the GOP running mate: what it says about John McCain.

And what it says is, he's just like George W. Bush.

In choosing Palin, McCain was in full Bush mode. Like Bush, he followed his gut, ignored advice from experts and acted on impulse. In fact, McCain's rash and reckless choice of Palin makes Bush look downright careful by comparison — so McCain may well be more Bushian than Bush himself. If you liked eight years of a president who went with his gut, acted on impulse and gambled our nation's future on a hunch, you'll love John McCain.

Let's take a test. Who does the following describe: A wealthy and hot-tempered rebel, he spent half his life fighting to live up to a famous father and grandfather, encouraged always by an indomitable mother. A self-described moderate on the campaign trail, he courts ultra-right-wing preachers behind the scenes and promises to appoint stridently conservative judges. A multimillionaire who supports more tax cuts for more millionaires, he surrounds himself with supply-siders and calls for policies that would drive us deeper into debt. The chief cheerleader for the war in Iraq, he said we'd be "welcomed as liberators" and angrily challenges anyone who questions his distorted and out-of-touch view of reality.

A self-styled reformer, his Kitchen Cabinet is stocked with Washington lobbyists. Deeply out of touch on economic issues, he repeats nostrums like "the fundamentals are strong" even as the fundamentals are deteriorating. He carefully courts the press, who suck up to him even though he supports authoritarian policies like wiretapping Americans without a court order. He is supported by oil company lobbyists and supports drilling in some of our most sensitive ecosystems. Although he gladly accepts government health care for himself, he would abandon you to take on colossal insurance corporations on your own. Charming and disarming at first blush, his wit masks a petulant temper and a self-righteous streak that even members of his own party worry about.

If you guessed George W. Bush, you're right. And if you guessed John McCain, you're also right.

Aided by a team of a dozen researchers and writers, I spent months going through McCain's record. In ways both large and small, frightening and funny, on matters of both style and substance, and on issues of policy and politics, McCain represents a continuation of the Bush years. His defenders — and they are legion in the national press corps he accurately calls his "base" — will howl, but a clear-eyed reading of the record makes a compelling case that on nearly all of the things that matter most, John McCain would be more of the same.

The war hero part of McCain's biography is indeed real. But the notion that he is a maverick and the argument that he's a reformer are myth. McCain has in fact voted with President Bush 91 percent of the time, and yet otherwise sensible people call him a maverick. Sports fans, being less gullible than politicos, would never call a baseball player who hit from the right side of the plate 91 percent of the time a lefty. Yes, there have been brief apostasies (apparently 9 percent of the time), but even when he has broken with Bush, over time he has recanted his heresy and fallen back in, as he has done on taxes. McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts in 2001, but now he proposes making the Bush tax cuts permanent. That's like marrying a girl you wouldn't date.

And, like Bush, McCain has a remarkable affinity for lobbyists. His campaign has, by my count, 134 lobbyists serving as bundlers or advisers or staff members. He has chosen to associate himself with people who have lobbied for foreign dictators, big oil companies and every corporate special interest you can think of. And yet he gets away with calling himself a reformer. Now, 134 lobbyists are not lining up to support McCain because they actually believe he's a reformer. If John McCain's a reformer, I'm a Hassidic diamond merchant.

If Barack Obama can get every voter to learn just two numbers, he will be president. Those numbers are 91 and 134. If by Election Day every American knows McCain votes with Bush 91 percent of the time and has 134 lobbyists in his campaign, then the myth of the maverick reformer will be dead. And with it, McCain's chances of following his unlikely soul mate as president.

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A must-read for environmentalists. K

http://www.salon.com/env/feature/2008/09/20/john_mccain_environment/index.html
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Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

By Gloria Steinem
September 4, 2008

Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and Misogyny to win 18 million votes.

But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for
women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."

This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience.

Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."

She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and
gays" ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing
ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she
opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to s hoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling.
She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of
fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.

So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband.

Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.

Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and Most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.

And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal
outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on
their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.

This could be huge.

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September 11, 2008, 10:29 pm
Judith Warner: No Laughing Matter
TAGS: LIBERALS, MEDIA, SARAH PALIN
“You can stand on my wagon, if you want.”

I tend, when I’m not in big crowds, to forget that I’m short. In Republican crowds, I find, I feel particularly small.

And dark. And unsmiling. And uncoiffed, unmade-up and inappropriately dressed.

For the McCain/Palin rally in Fairfax, Va., on Wednesday, the organizers had asked people to wear red. I – unthinkingly – had dressed in blue, which was somewhat isolating.

I was isolated, too, because, unable to find the press area in the crowd of about 15,000, I was out with the “real” people. Which meant that I could hear everything from the podium and from the onlookers around me, but could see nothing, not, at least, until the mom beside me stopped struggling to balance atop her Little Tikes wagon with two toddlers in her arms and another screaming at her feet, and offered me a go at the view.

(“It’s Sarah. Sarah’s going to be the vice president,” she had told the little girls, clad in their matching polka dot dresses. “Sarah Palin.”)

She was a nice woman. She told me history was in the making. She told me where to get lunch. She handed me back my reporter’s notebook when one of her almost-two-year-old twins, fixing me with a dark look of mistrust, took it away. “Liberal media, eh?” her solemn eyes glared. “Well, watch what you say about my mommy and Our Sarah.”

Do not think for a moment that I was being paranoid.

Fred Thompson had warmed up the crowd, his familiar old district attorney’s voice restored to full bombast, and he’d been in fine form, denouncing – to loud boos from the crowd — the “lawyers and scandal mongers and representatives of cable networks” (boos from the crowd) who were at that very moment descending upon Alaska looking for dirt on their Sarah.

“I hope they brought their own Brie and Chablis with them,” he’d said, to raucous laughter, as I willed myself to disappear, remembering, with a shudder, that my children had demanded Brie for breakfast only that morning.

I should have been finding this funny. My whole plan, after all, had been to write something funny this week about the whole Sarah Palin phenomenon. I’d arrived at an if-you-can’t-beat-’em-laugh-at-’em kind of a juncture, I suppose.

I’d planned to make attending the McCain/Palin event a silly sort of adventure. I’d invited a friend who has six kids to come with me. I figured funny things were bound to befall us in Palin-Land, where, collectively, we’d have eight children between us (a funny thought in and of itself.) A Harold and Kumar Escape from the Barracuda sort of storyline was the idea – until my friend, done in by one too many sleepless nights, declined to accompany me, and I had to venture off alone.

And, forced to make new friends on the spot, discovered that the Palin Phenomenon is no laughing matter.

Those who think that it is — well, as Thompson warned on Wednesday, “they’ve got another thing coming.”

I made my first friend on the shuttle bus that took us from a nearby mall, where we’d been instructed to park, to the field where the rally was held. She was from Leesburg, Va., an ardent McCain supporter, conservative and self-described “soccer mom,” who grew up in Pennsylvania among girls who went hunting with their Dads.

Sarah Palin, she told me, “just seems like a regular person.”

I did not argue with her. One does not argue when making new friends. And besides, we had so many other things to bond over. We talked about kids with issues. She had a son with A.D.H.D., cousins with Asperger’s and dysgraphia, and a nephew with autism. (“They’re lucky they live in New Jersey. New Jersey’s pretty progressive,” she said.)

We talked about the moral vacuity of modern parenting. “I see extreme spoiling, self-absorption,” she said. “Constant bringing the kids up to love themselves without reflecting on how they affect others.” We talked about the disastrous lack of respect that children now show adults and institutions, and about the ways this lack of respect translates into a very ugly sort of lack of decorum and a lack of basic manners: “This 10-year-old, my daughter’s friend, she comes over and throws down a magazine with John McCain on the cover. ‘Here’s friggin John McCain,’ she says. ‘Let’s see what lies he’s going to tell now.’” She continued: “These 10-year-olds think they’re better than me. That they don’t have to say hello. That they think I’m beneath them.”

You go girl, I was thinking, in so many words, until the talk turned back to politics: “So often these kids that are so incredibly full of themselves, I find their parents are Democrats. The Democrats, they hate ‘us,’ the United States, but they love ‘me,’ that is, themselves,” she said.

I heard a lot more talk that day about the need for respect – and about arrogance and selfishness and about Democrats and liberals who think way too highly of themselves.

Fred Thompson on the liberal media: “This woman is undergoing the most vicious assault … all because she is a threat to the power they expected to inherit and think they’re entitled to.”

Businessman Scott Maclean on the Democratic Party: “Their attitude is: you don’t get it and they don’t expect you to get it because they’re smarter than you – and I hate that.”

I heard, repeatedly, a complaint about sterile individualism, about selfishness and the desire for a revalidated “us” – from John McCain’s boilerplate attack on “me-first Washington” to this curious reflection, from a mother of nine, on the field with eight of her children, on the question of whether she, like Palin, could ever imagine balancing the demands of her large family against a high-profile political career like Sarah’s.

“My daughter asked me, ‘Mom, would you do that if you had the opportunity?,’” she recalled, as the six-year-old in question looked on. “I said ‘I don’t know. Maybe she was born to do that. Maybe that’s the sacrifice she has to make to serve her country.’”

The daughter lifted high her hand-painted, flower-adorned Palin sign.

“She’ll really be a big step forward for women,” the mother said.

No, it wasn’t funny, my morning with the hockey and the soccer moms, the homeschooling moms and the book club moms, the joyful moms who brought their children to see history in the making and spun them on the lawn, dancing, when music played. It was sobering. It was serious. It was an education.

“Palin Power” isn’t just about making hockey moms feel important. It’s not just about giving abortion rights opponents their due. It’s also, in obscure ways, about making yearnings come true — deep, inchoate desires about respect and service, hierarchy and family that have somehow been successfully projected onto the figure of this unlikely woman and have stuck.

For those of us who can’t tap into those yearnings, it seems the Palin faithful are blind – to the contradictions between her stated positions and the truth of the policies she espouses, to the contradictions between her ideology and their interests. But Jonathan Haidt, an associate professor of moral psychology at the University of Virginia, argues in an essay this month, “What Makes People Vote Republican?”, that it’s liberals, in fact, who are dangerously blind.

Haidt has conducted research in which liberals and conservatives were asked to project themselves into the minds of their opponents and answer questions about their moral reasoning. Conservatives, he said, prove quite adept at thinking like liberals, but liberals are consistently incapable of understanding the conservative point of view. “Liberals feel contempt for the conservative moral view, and that is very, very angering. Republicans are good at exploiting that anger,” he told me in a phone interview.

Perhaps that’s why the conservatives can so successfully get under liberals’ skin. And why liberals need to start working harder at breaking through the empathy barrier.
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"dominant left wing media"

Joseph Goebbels perfected the technique of telling a lie often enough magically turned it into truth. Karl Rove improved on the model.

FOR THE FIFTH, AND I HOPE LAST TIME, TAKE OFF YOUR BLINDERS: And no wonder, this is how you fellows get your info: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,226857,00.html

FIRST: A little education for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias#Studies_and_theories_of_media_bias
and: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=121

SECOND: How it is done: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3612

"The myth of the pro-Obama media is the same as the myth of the liberal press, and it has been created by a standard strategy: Right-wing pundits declare repeatedly and vociferously that the media are biased in favor of liberals; centrist media pundits, who generally prefer critiques from the right because they don’t make a structural challenge to their work, concede that they have a point; and progressive critics, excluded from both the pro-establishment and the right-wing talk shows that dominate the media, go unheard. As with most myths, one part of the “Obama lovefest” story is true: There has been substantially more coverage of Obama than any other candidate. In every year Tyndall studied except 1988, the candidate of the party that didn’t hold the White House has gotten more coverage. It’s logical for the media to give more coverage to a less familiar candidate; having a longer, contested primary campaign also helps. Andrew Tyndall observed (Tyndall Report, 7/25/08): “Obama gets more positive coverage, more negative coverage and more trivial coverage. Who else has stories filed about them on how he shakes hands with his wife?” Even that particular “trivial” story was often portrayed negatively, such as the description of it as a “terrorist fist jab” on Fox News Channel (6/6/08).

There is simply no left-wing equivalent to Rush Limbaugh’s three-hour assaults on Barack Obama every weekday. The few liberal outlets where McCain is critiqued systematically, such as Air America or MSNBC’s Countdown With Keith Olbermann, are vastly outnumbered in airtime and audience by Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Bill O’Reilly and many other right-wing talk show hosts who use their platforms to launch regular attacks against Obama.

Much like the earlier media tropes about Al Gore (lied about inventing the Internet) or John Kerry (coward and traitor), it scarcely mattered whether the accusation of inexperience was true; the media has made it conventional wisdom by force of repetition.

Meanwhile, journalists seem to take on faith McCain’s “vast foreign policy expertise and credibility on national security,” as NBC anchor Brian Williams put it in a Democratic primary debate (2/26/07). Or as Newsweek’s Evan Thomas declared (PBS’s Charlie Rose, 2/8/08), McCain “can be pretty out there, using words like ‘surrender,’ because who is really going to question John McCain?” Extra! Update (4/08) cited “the media’s gentle treatment of McCain’s ludicrous claim” that Shiite Iran was backing the militant Sunni group Al-Qaeda in Iraq as an example of how the corporate press “seems eager to advance the idea that McCain’s Vietnam experience gives him sound judgment about foreign policy never mind his actual record.”

In fact, a closer look at Obama’s supposed coverage advantage reveals a consistent media double standard on scrutiny of the candidates. Obama’s apparently innocuous connection to corrupt fund raiser Tony Rezko received extensive attention, while McCain’s lead role in the Keating Five savings and loan scandal is treated as old news and generally ignored by the press. The coverage of Obama’s former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright went on endlessly, while McCain’s embrace of controversial right-wing preacher John Hagee received far less media attention. The media denounced Obama’s “flip-flop” on public campaign financing almost in unison, while paying much less attention to McCain’s reneging on his legally binding promise to accept public financing for his primary campaign.

As noted by FAIR’s Peter Hart in Extra! (5–6/08) and Eric Alterman and George Zornick in the Nation (7/7/08), it is difficult to find even one subject where the press has truly held McCain’s feet to the fire while giving Obama a break from scrutiny. If corporate media are in love with Obama, they sure are picking a funny way of showing it.

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Flunking Economics
__
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, September 19, 2008; A19

John McCain was telling the truth when he said that economics wasn't his strong suit. In response to what many economists have called the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the Republican nominee has sounded -- and let's be honest here -- totally, embarrassingly and dangerously clueless.

His now-famous remark Monday about how "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" would almost by itself be enough to justify my assessment. But he committed what was probably an even worse gaffe on Tuesday when, as the behemoth insurance company AIG teetered on the brink, McCain took a stand. "I do not believe that the American taxpayer should be on the hook for AIG," he said. "We cannot have the taxpayers bail out AIG or anybody else."

Within hours, the federal government had bailed out AIG to the tune of $85 billion. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and others who know how Wall Street works understood that if AIG were to collapse, much of the financial system might follow.

McCain quickly changed his tune, saying the government was "forced" to rescue AIG because of "failed regulation, reckless management and a casino culture on Wall Street." That sounds okay, but wait a minute. If he had any idea what he was talking about -- if he had any inkling of how big AIG is, or how central the company has become -- then why on earth would he have taken a stand against a bailout in the first place? Doesn't he have economic advisers who could fill him in?

Oh, I forgot. McCain's top economic guru, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, was busy explaining to reporters that McCain, as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, "helped create" the BlackBerry. The McCain campaign quickly dismissed Holtz-Eakin's remark as a "boneheaded joke," but it was delivered with an awfully convincing deadpan. The blogosphere lit up with comparisons to Al Gore's alleged claim to have invented the Internet.

Adding insult to injury, one of McCain's most vocal campaign surrogates -- former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina -- volunteered that McCain wasn't qualified to run a major corporation. She gave the same assessment of Sarah Palin, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, but the McCain campaign's high command was so piqued that it canceled Fiorina's planned television appearances.

In an attempt to get back on message, McCain released new television ads Wednesday on the subject of the economy. "I'll meet this financial crisis head-on," he says in one. "I won't tolerate a system that puts you and your family at risk. Your savings, your jobs -- I'll keep them safe."

In fairness, Obama hasn't come up with a magic bullet to solve the financial crisis, either. There are differences, though. For one, Obama's proposals for action -- a stimulus plan, protection for homeowners in peril of foreclosure, increased regulation -- are more specific than McCain's. For another, Obama blames the crisis on "an economic philosophy that sees any regulation at all as unwise and unnecessary." McCain now calls for better regulation, too -- after enthusiastically playing a major role in the frenzy of deregulation that helped create this awful mess.

In other words, McCain is running against his own record.

To cite one example, McCain backed landmark legislation in 1999 that removed the walls between banks, investment firms and insurance companies. That bill allowed a company like AIG to expand beyond its traditional insurance business -- which is still profitable -- into exotic new products that ultimately brought the company down.

McCain, who told the Wall Street Journal in March that "I'm always for less regulation," now asks voters to believe he will be a champion of tough, unblinking oversight. He's shocked and outraged that Wall Street's preening Masters of the Universe threw a drunken toga party and smashed all the furniture -- but he helped buy the beer and told the cops to look the other way.

Here's something that really ought to grab everyone's attention: McCain supports George W. Bush's idea of channeling at least some Social Security funds into "personal accounts" that individuals would invest on Wall Street. Some of that money would have been entrusted to firms such as Bear Stearns (failed), Lehman Brothers (failed) and Merrill Lynch (sold at a fire sale). Imagine what this crisis would be like if Americans' Social Security benefits were evaporating along with their housing values and their 401(k) accounts.

This is the man who's going to reform the economy?

eugenerobinson@washpost.com
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From my friend. k
This is an interesting side by side on how the candidates view science. believe me, i didn't read it word for word. just the questions that i was interested in. you might want to pass it onto your wonkish science friends...

www.sciencedebate2008.com

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LOCAL

This is from a Blue Hearts friend. I thought it might help encourage any of you who are hesitant to get involved. K

Dear friends, I decided that instead of sitting at home reading the paper, watching CNN and looking up the latest polls and feeling utter despair that I needed to DO something. I went to Obama’s headquarters on Friday and felt much better just being there. This is the 3rd presidential campaign where I have volunteered and this office is much more organized than any of the previous ones. The office is on Gillham Plaza, just north of Linwood where Costco is, on the west side of the street. The office is open daily, with hours going into the evening. You can go any time without notifying them and stay as long as you want. You can select from a variety of activities. I did data entry, my son went today and did phone banking, and they also need people to assist with voter registration anywhere you’d like to do this. You can be a resident of any state and register in any other state, i.e. a Kansas resident can register people in Mo. There were many volunteers there of all races, ages, walks of life and both sexes. There was even a father/son team of volunteers who had come from CA to assist. It was heartwarming. You can also get Obama signs at the office for $8. I hope to see you there. I guarantee you’ll feel better, and I hope our efforts and those like us around the country can assist Obama and Biden in becoming our next leaders. Hope to see you there.
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Here are some more local opportunities, just in case you aren't on these mailing lists. K

On Sunday, September 21st, we're organizing MoveOn for Obama parties around the country. We'll kick off a huge effort to call swing-state MoveOn members and get them out volunteering for Obama! There's a party in Kansas City. Can you make it?


Dear MoveOn member,

Looking for a way to make sure the McCain-Palin sleaze-o-rama doesn't derail Barack Obama's historic candidacy?

With a few hours of your time, you could produce a bunch of new Obama volunteers in Ohio, Michigan, or on one of the other key swing states. Here's how:

This Sunday, we're throwing parties where we'll get together, hop on the phone and call 200,000 swing-state MoveOn member to get 'em out talking to voters.

And since this week is MoveOn's 10th birthday, we'll celebrate with cake and ice cream after we hit the phones.

There's a party in Kansas City—can you make it on Sunday?

Here are the details:

Host: Sue B—fellow MoveOn member
Where: 40th and Holmes (in Kansas City)
When: Sunday, Sep. 21, 2008, at 4:00 PM

Here's the link to get the full address and RSVP:
http://pol.moveon.org/event/events/event.html?event_id=73048&id=13889-9571044-GMw7LBx&t=3

If you're looking to help Obama this weekend, here's your best chance to do it. These parties are the next step in our massive MoveOn for Obama project—our effort to mobilize huge numbers of MoveOn members to be a part of the Obama campaign. Plus, they'll be a great opportunity to have fun with other Obama supporters near you.

So sign up to attend a party, bring your cell phone and charger, and drag a few friends along to the event!

Hope you can join us, and thanks again for all you do.

–Adam, Lenore, Matt, Ray and the rest of the team
P.S. Can't make this event? Here are a few other events near you:

MoveOn for Obama Party
63rd st, two blocks west of Wornall, Kansas City at 4:00 PM—RSVP

MoveOn for Obama Party
Lori & Roberta's home, Mission at 4:00 PM—RSVP

MoveOn for Obama Party
2301 East 109th, Kansas City at 4:00 PM—RSVP

MoveOn for Obama Party
75th and Antioch, Overland Park at 4:00 PM—RSVP

Want to support our work? We're entirely funded by our 3.5 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.

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Help us make a difference. K

There are many that don't like to get directly involved with campaigns but here is a way to make our effort expand and needs your assistance. We are making a separate push in Missouri to purchase over 30,000 yard signs to be distributed to supporters of Senator Obama in suburban and rural areas of Missouri. These signs will not be going to the urban areas of KC and STL where our support is already strong. The signs will be distributed in areas of central and southern Missouri, as well as outlying suburbs of KC and STL, where voters might need a little more reassurance by seeing a sign in a neighbor's yard that voting for Senator Obama is OK. I realize that some of you live outside of Missouri but this is too important to think about the State Line.

In the next week, we want to identify 1,000 people who are willing to donate $100 each for yard sign purchase. If you are willing to be one of the donors, come out and join many others at Harpers. If you can't make it, send check to the below address


Make out checks to the Missouri State Democratic Party.

Mail the check to Sophie McCarthy 4 East 56th Terrace Kansas City, Mo 64113 But try to make it down to Harper's

Please Join Us! Historic Journey: Round Two Debate Watch & Fund Raiser

Hosted By:
Pat Jordan/Sharon & John Hoffman/Marion Wheeler
Robert Barrientos/Kristin Amend/Ursula Terrasi
Gregory Glore/Marti Rigby

Thursday, October 2nd
5:00 pm to 7:00 pm

Harper's - 18th & Vine
$100 or Whatever You Can Give

No Reservations Required

Stop by for Volunteer Sign Up
Pick Up Yard Signs/Bumper Stickers/Buttons

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For any lawyers or paralegals or law students. k


Below I've provided you with the website and some information about the how, what, and when of volunteering to protect voters on election day. Feel free to forward to anyone who you think would be supportive and might be interested.

We are asking for volunteers who can work all day at the polls, either inside or outside. You, or anyone you send this to who has questions can always reach me at the office, 314 361 0700 x.230, or by email, afb3@georgetown.edu.

Our campaign website's voter protection volunteer sign-up page is

http://my.barackobama.com/counselforchange

Once you have been there you'll see that we ask for basic personal data as well as information about availability and what experience people have. Please provide this URL to any interested and possibly available lawyer, law student, or paralegal you know so that we can get as many signed up to work as possible. We will need a large number of volunteers on election day.

Some additional information about the process:

We will offer a one-shot training with multiple opportunities to attend so everyone can find a time that works for them. It will be in mid- to late-October. We will work with people to make sure that everyone gets trained.

The largest need for volunteers is in St. Louis City and County and Kansas City and Jackson County. In addition, challengers—individuals assigned to be inside—must work in the jurisdiction in which they are registered. As a result, lawyers who sign up are likely to be sent to polling places relatively close to home. People who have access to a car and can travel may be assigned to places further afield, however, so volunteers should be prepared for that.

Volunteers will need to vote absentee so they are able to arrive at the polling place before it opens and stay until it closes. As the volunteers will likely be working at a polling place not their own, they will only be able to vote if they vote absentee. Absentee ballots will be available starting September 23 and for hand-delivered absentee ballots, they may be submitted until the day of the election. (Presumably the day before since people will be working on election day.)

If the information about the absentee ballots is confusing, don't worry. More guidance on absentee voting will be provided during the training.

Thanks for your offer to assist and don't hesitate to contact me if you have questions, concerns, or thoughts on how to make the process better.

Thanks,

Adam Bobrow
Deputy Voter Protection Coordinator
Missouri Campaign for Change
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Please join us. K

Fellow Change Agents:

We have 17 days remaining to register thousands of voters. Only 17 days. The Missouri registration deadline of October 8 is growing closer by the minute. Please help us reach out and help people in our area both register for the first time as well as update their registrations.

We have a big weekend planned and the weather forecast is perfect. We’ll be covering both the Plaza Art Fair and the Un-Plaza Art Fair as well as our normal Waldo/Brookside weekend voter registration drive. Let’s blanket our area and leave no unregistered voter behind.

Everyone has made plans to take off both November 3 & 4 so you can help us get out the vote … right? After we get tens of thousands of people registered to vote we must get them to the polls. Be a part of the most massive Get Out The Vote movement in history.

Check http://mo.barackobama.com for the most up-to-date list of events in your neighborhood and throughout the city.

Here are the Waldo/Brookside/Plaza area voter registration opportunities for today through Sunday, September 27:

Plaza Art Fair Friday Voter Registration – 4PM & 6PM
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gs7t39
The Plaza Art Fair. Do we really need to say more? We need LOTS of volunteers to cover this event. Please contact George Mayer via e-mail ( gmayer@everestkc.net ) or phone (816-523-3535) for information about training and available shifts.

Saturday, September 20
Waldo/Brookside/Plaza Voter Registration – 9AM, 11AM & 1PM
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gplj9z
Voter registration is not a spectator sport. If you want your team to win you MUST get involved! Come join us as we help people register to vote throughout the Waldo, Brookside and Plaza areas from State Line to Troost. We had a great time last Saturday in this area so we’re going to kick it up a notch. We’ll meet at Sharps Restaurant (128 W 63rd St) for 2 hour shifts beginning at 9AM, 11AM and 1PM. Please arrive 15 minutes early so we can provide you with both training and materials and then see you off to the area where you’ll make a difference in this election.

Plaza Art Fair Saturday Voter Registration – 9AM, 11AM, 1PM, 3PM & 5PM
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gs7t9t
The Plaza Art Fair. Do we really need to say more? We need LOTS of volunteers to cover this event. Please contact George Mayer via e-mail ( gmayer@everestkc.net ) or phone (816-523-3535) for information about training and available shifts.

Sunday, September 21
Waldo/Brookside/Plaza Sunday Voter Registration – 11AM & 1PM
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gpljsm
Voter registration is not a spectator sport if you want your team to win! Come join us as we help people register to vote throughout the Waldo, Brookside and Plaza areas from State Line to Troost. We had a great time last Saturday in this area so we’re going to kick it up a notch. We’ll meet at Sharps Restaurant (128 W 63rd St) for 2 hour shifts beginning at 11AM and 1PM. Please arrive 15 minutes early so we can provide you with both training and materials and then see you off to the area where you’ll make a difference in this election.

Plaza Art Fair Sunday Voter Registration – 10AM, Noon, 2PM & 4PM
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gs7t2k
The Plaza Art Fair. Do we really need to say more? We need LOTS of volunteers to cover this event. Please contact George Mayer via e-mail ( gmayer@everestkc.net ) or phone (816-523-3535) for information about training and available shifts.

Monday, September 22
Waldo/Brookside/Plaza Daily Voter Registration – Monday 8AM – 8PM
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gpg5dq
Please see the September 19 listing for details.

Tuesday, September 23
Waldo/Brookside/Plaza Daily Voter Registration – Tuesday 8AM – 8PM
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gpg5db
Please see the September 19 listing for details.

Wednesday, September 24
Waldo/Brookside/Plaza Daily Voter Registration – Wednesday 8AM – 8PM
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gpg5ds
Please see the September 19 listing for details.

Thursday, September 25
Waldo/Brookside/Plaza Daily Voter Registration – Thursday 8AM – 8PM
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gpg5dp
Please see the September 19 listing for details.

Friday, September 26
Waldo/Brookside/Plaza Daily Voter Registration – Friday 8AM – 8PM
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gpg5dw
Please see the September 19 listing for details.

Saturday, September 27
Waldo/Brookside/Plaza Voter Registration – 9AM, 11AM & 1PM
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gplj9z
Voter registration is not a spectator sport. If you want your team to win you MUST get involved! Come join us as we help people register to vote throughout the Waldo, Brookside and Plaza areas from State Line to Troost. We had a great time last Saturday in this area so we’re going to kick it up a notch. We’ll meet at Sharps Restaurant (128 W 63rd St) for 2 hour shifts beginning at 9AM, 11AM and 1PM. Please arrive 15 minutes early so we can provide you with both training and materials and then see you off to the area where you’ll make a difference in this election.

Sunday, September 28
Waldo/Brookside/Plaza Sunday Voter Registration – 11AM & 1PM
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gpljsm
Voter registration is not a spectator sport if you want your team to win! Come join us as we help people register to vote throughout the Waldo, Brookside and Plaza areas from State Line to Troost. We had a great time last Saturday in this area so we’re going to kick it up a notch. We’ll meet at Sharps Restaurant (128 W 63rd St) for 2 hour shifts beginning at 11AM and 1PM. Please arrive 15 minutes early so we can provide you with both training and materials and then see you off to the area where you’ll make a difference in this election.
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