There's no question, this will be an historic election. See this Judy Wodruff vid asking people to video their voting experience. Are we allowed to take videos in our poll booths and/or at our election sites?? If not can't we just carry a camera into the booth with us and capture our personal experience? If not then WHY not?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiWfpwR-6Lc
Governor Sarah Palin’s Office Refuses to Accept Letter from America’s Moms
MomsRising.org Attempts to Deliver Letter Asking Governor’s Positions on Family-Friendly Issues
See pictures of the attempted delivery here
Fifteen DC-area moms and MomsRising.org Executive Director Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner were turned away this afternoon when they attempted to deliver a letter to Governor Sarah Palin asking her to share her positions on issues like health care, paid sick days and flexible work options. The group was attempting to deliver the letter to the State of Alaska office in Washington, DC.
The letter was signed by nearly 22,000 moms, dads and others from across the United States who would like to know what a McCain/Palin administration would do to support America’s families.
“We are extremely disappointed that we were not even allowed to deliver this letter today,” said Rowe-Finkbeiner. “Health care, paid sick days, paid family leave and afterschool programs are among the issues that are top-of-mind for many families. We were told that we need to mail in our letter and we’re going to do that. We are still counting on Governor Palin to respond to us. ”
The letter says in part:
“It was dazzling to see a mom on the stage at the Republican convention accepting the Vice Presidential nomination. There are too few mothers in the boardrooms and high levels of political office. As members of MomsRising.org we celebrate your path from PTA to Vice Presidential candidate, but we didn't hear much in your speech about what you and your party will do for mothers and families.
“… Our nation can’t afford to ignore the issues of mothers and families any longer. We want to know where you stand on the issues which are critical to mothers like healthcare, fair pay, paid family and medical leave, afterschool programs, childcare/early learning, paid sick days, and flexible work options.
“With now three-quarters of American mothers in the labor force, but a societal structure which hasn’t caught up to that modern reality, we, as a nation, are at a crisis point for our families. Bottom Line: Mothers want to ensure the well-being of their families. No mother should have to choose between taking care of a sick child and feeding her child. And no mother should have to choose between taking her child to the doctor and paying rent.
“Governor Palin, if elected Vice President of the United States, how will you support mothers and families?”
The full text is available on the MomsRising.org web site at www.momsrising.org. MomsRising.org will mail the letter to Governor Palin’s four regional offices, her Washington, DC office and McCain/Palin campaign offices.
The letter is part of MomsRising.org’s MomsVote ’08 effort, which includes Get-Out-the-Vote activities, debate watches, voter registration and educating the candidates about issues that matter to America’s families, like paid family leave, flexible work options, afterschool programs, health care for all children and affordable child care.
___________________________________________________
Moms Need to be Heard
The MomsRising. org team has written five questions we'd like to see posed to both Palin and Biden in that debate (see the questions below (2)). Let's get these questions to the debate moderator so the American public gets a chance to hear both candidates, side-by-side, answering the same questions.When you click the link above, you'll send a message to Gwen Ifill and cc both of the presidential campaigns to let them know that over 21,000 voters want to hear them talk about these issues (which impact millions of Americans) at the debate.Tell your friends to email Gwen Ifill, too! She needs to know how deeply important these issues are for millions of Americans--and that we demand they be addressed now!Thank you!--Kristin, Joan, Mary, Katie, Laura, Roz, Ashley, and the entire MomsRising. org Team1. MomsRising members are tracking all of the candidates' speeches, tallying any mention of issues that impact moms. See their tallies at www. momsrising. org/candidatesbingo. If you plan to watch the presidential debate tomorrow, September 26th, you can tally the issues, too! Get your scorecard at www. momsrising. org/bingocard -- and keep an eye out for opportunities to get involved as the campaigns continue!2. Our questions:* Right now, the birth of a child is the number one cause of a "poverty spell" in America, and 1/4 of families with young children are living in poverty. Do you support a policy to provide paid family and medical leave to parents following birth or adoption of a new child?* Nearly 1/2 of all full-time, private sector workers in the U.S. have no paid sick days. Do you support a policy to provide paid sick days for workers to use when they or their children get sick?* In most American families, both parents work outside the home. Please tell us what your administration would do to help parents secure excellent, affordable childcare?* Studies show that moms are paid 73 cents and single moms are paid about 60 cents to the dollar for doing the exact same job as men. Do you support the Fair Pay Restoration Act and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act? * A child is born every 41 seconds without healthcare. What kind of Health Care Policy could Americans expect in your administration?
Debate Barr!!!!
Remember Ross Perot? He was the short, old guy from Texas who ran for president in 1992 under a third party called the "Reform" ticket.
But lo and behold, as Sen. John McCain seeks to delay a bout with his Democratic rival, and with a debate date hanging precariously on a ledge tomorrow, there might be an opportunity to widen the public discourse.
Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, who once served Georgia as a Republican, has asked once again to be included in the presidential debate, at this moment still scheduled for Friday evening.
"Given Senator McCain's political stunt to avoid the debate, I ask that Friday's debate moves forward without him, as I am more than willing to step in to participate," Barr said in Thursday morning press statement.
The Bailout Explained
Candy Metaphor-Rachel Maddow
Mistakes are made and learning must happen but, if we as a country will bailout irresponsible companies, then I see no reason not to bailout homeowners who have been duped by companies. Gov’t is supposed to be for the people, by the people…not for corporations by corporations…
You can send this to your representatives:
I do not support this bailout..for the reasons this article has sited: Judicial Modification of Loans Would Save 600,000 Homes: Purchase of Securities Will Save Nonevia The Center for Responsible Lending: A resource for predatory lending opponents The subprime crisis is severe and will get worse.Current law excludes homeowners from relief available to yacht owners and subprime lenders.Judicial modification would be effective and cost the Treasury nothing. The Benefits * No cost the U.S. Treasury. * Narrowly targets families who would otherwise lose their homes, and excludes families who do not need assistance. Helps maintain property values for families who live near homes at risk of foreclosure. Saves American families not facing foreclosure $89 billion in wealth by avoiding 600,000 foreclosures by their neighbors. * Complements programs that rely on voluntary loan modifications or servicer agreement to refinance for less than the full outstanding loan balance. Voluntary modifications and refinances are the goal. Judicial loan modification would induce more voluntary modifications outside bankruptcy because everyone would know the alternative, just as occurred under Chapter 12, which was passed to modify loans on family farms in the late 1980’s. Please consider this information carefully
I do not support this bailout..for the reasons this article has sited: Judicial Modification of Loans Would Save 600,000 Homes: Purchase of Securities Will Save Nonevia The Center for Responsible Lending: A resource for predatory lending opponents
The subprime crisis is severe and will get worse.Current law excludes homeowners from relief available to yacht owners and subprime lenders.Judicial modification would be effective and cost the Treasury nothing.
The Benefits * No cost the U.S. Treasury. * Narrowly targets families who would otherwise lose their homes, and excludes families who do not need assistance. Helps maintain property values for families who live near homes at risk of foreclosure. Saves American families not facing foreclosure $89 billion in wealth by avoiding 600,000 foreclosures by their neighbors. * Complements programs that rely on voluntary loan modifications or servicer agreement to refinance for less than the full outstanding loan balance. Voluntary modifications and refinances are the goal. Judicial loan modification would induce more voluntary modifications outside bankruptcy because everyone would know the alternative, just as occurred under Chapter 12, which was passed to modify loans on family farms in the late 1980’s.
Please consider this information carefully
How his students characterize him: NYTimes: The College Issue-Case Study
He came across as very practical and down to earth. I think that reflects who he is as a person and his experience organizing and in the legislature.” Dan Johnson-Weinberger, who lobbies for progressive causes in Illinois, agreed that his former professor isn’t likely to emerge as an ideological liberal if he indeed makes it to the White House. “Based on what I saw in the classroom, my guess is an Obama administration could be summarized in two words,” he said. “Ruthless pragmatism.”
Here's an example of a postcard I did, dont forget you can get blank ones from the post office..and make your own design
Please Come and Make your own postcard or donate postcard postage. I have 140 to handwrite. This postcard drive will be ongoing–weekly (see dates below) until Oct. 11th (Sat.). When hopefully we will wrap this up. You can even make an appointment to come by and help! If you want to be involved, contact me via email:
hera at yewess dot us
Event Dates:
9/18 My Birthday! 9/22 9/29 10/6
The text on the back says:
Dear Voter, The Obama/Biden ticket has an extremely detailed and heavily researched plan for change. I urge you to go online and check it out. Obama realizes the best way to improve things is to invest in our most precious resource, U.S. citizens, so we all can make this country stronger.
find it here: http://chartjunk.karmanaut.com/taxplans/
Tax Plans (that’s one for you, nineteen for me).
There’s a graph that Obama supporters are sending around, showing the differences between the Republican and Democrat tax cut proposals. It shows that Obama is not in fact planning to raise taxes - he’s planning to cut them for all but the very, very rich. I couldn’t help but notice though - the graph is still massively weighted towards the interests of the super-rich. For example, the bottom two-thirds of the population are given only a third of the space on the graph, while the top 0.1% of the population - one in a thousand people - gets almost 10%. What’s more, an “average tax cut” is then given, which seems to have been derived from taking a total of the nine income brackets shown and dividing it by nine. Journalists should really volunteer to take remedial arithmetic, you know. Once again, this ignores that one of the brackets represents one thousandth of the population.
This post links to bi-partisan fact checking sites
Why I am voting for Obama
-- The man knows the constitution. Senior Lecturer of Constitutional Law-12 years teaching at The University of Chicago's law school with "one of the nation's top legal theorists"http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/was_barack_obama_really_a_constitutional_law.html
-- He realizes that the United States is made up of nothing more than its citizens. Policies that help working- and middle-class Americans might not be in the short term interests of the wealthy, but they will ultimately make the whole country stronger. He also recognizes that we are at a critical point in our history and most people want to be actively participating in making things better in the US and the world.
--20 years experience
four years in the U.S. Senate representing Illinois
In the spring, he would attend the Illinois legislative sessions. It seems a fairly safe bet that, like most legislators, his constituent work — fielding phone calls and helping people in his district — went on year round. Press reports indicate he did a small amount of private law practice during the summer.
he was a state senator in Illinois for eight years.
He also was a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago law school during that time.
His schedule from the school shows him teaching two or three classes in the fall and winter terms — usually Constitutional Law III: Equal Protection and Substantive Due Process; Voting Rights and the Democratic Process; and Current Issues in Racism and the Law.
which to me means he understands that you have to work at making change, both within Washington and outside
So that's eight years as a public official in Illinois, bringing our total to 12 years.
He worked three years as a community organizer in Chicago before going to Harvard Law School. We won't count the junior-level business experience as working "on behalf of families who are having a hard time," but the community organizing work does seem to fit the bill. That brings his work experience to 15 years.
At Harvard, Obama began to receive national attention. He became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review and was recruited heavily by law firms around the country. (He met his future wife, Michelle Robinson, as a summer associate at the Chicago firm Sidley Austin.)
He graduated in 1991. He ran Illinois Project Vote, a voter registration drive, for much of 1992, and then accepted a position with the Chicago firm Miner, Barnhill & Galland. The firm specialized in political and civil rights work and neighborhood economic development work. He also began teaching at the University of Chicago in 1993. He was elected to the Illinois state Senate in 1996 and took office in 1997, so his full-time work after law school comprises five years. That gets us to 20 years.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/390/
--His plan is comprehensive and well thought out. The sections include:Civil Rights, Defense, Disabilities, Economy, Education, Energy and Environment, Ethics, Faith, Family, Fiscal (Responsibility), Foreign Policy, Healthcare, Security, Immigration, Iraq, Poverty, Rural, Service, Seniors and Social Security, Technology, Urban Policy, Veterans, and Women.The plan is then broken down further into problems and possible solutions.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/
Tell All your Pro-Choice Friends to get busy for this election. WOmen's lives are at stake! Is this how we want our daughters to be treated?
From Feministe
quoted from PostWar
italics mine
In 1966, to increase the population — a traditional ‘Romanianist’ obsession — [Ceausescu] prohibited abortion for women under forty with fewer than four children (in 1986 the age barrier was raised to forty-five). In 1984 the minimum marriage age for women was reduced to fifteen. Compulsory monthly medical examinations for all women of childbearing age were introduced to prevent abortions, which were permitted, if at all, only in the presence of a Party representative. Doctors in districts with a declining birth rate had their salaries cut. The population did not increase, but the death rate from abortions far exceeded that of any other European country: as the only available form of birth control, illegal abortions were widely performed, often under the most appalling and dangerous conditions. Over the ensuing twenty-three years the 1966 laws resulted in the death of at least ten thousand women. The real infant mortality rate was so high that after 1985 births were not officially recorded until a child had survived to its fourth week — the apotheosis of Communist control of knowledge. By the time Ceausescu was overthrown the death rate of new-born babies was twenty-five per thousand and there were upward of 100,000 institutionalized children.
In 1966, to increase the population — a traditional ‘Romanianist’ obsession — [Ceausescu] prohibited abortion for women under forty with fewer than four children (in 1986 the age barrier was raised to forty-five). In 1984 the minimum marriage age for women was reduced to fifteen. Compulsory monthly medical examinations for all women of childbearing age were introduced to prevent abortions, which were permitted, if at all, only in the presence of a Party representative. Doctors in districts with a declining birth rate had their salaries cut.
The population did not increase, but the death rate from abortions far exceeded that of any other European country: as the only available form of birth control, illegal abortions were widely performed, often under the most appalling and dangerous conditions. Over the ensuing twenty-three years the 1966 laws resulted in the death of at least ten thousand women. The real infant mortality rate was so high that after 1985 births were not officially recorded until a child had survived to its fourth week — the apotheosis of Communist control of knowledge. By the time Ceausescu was overthrown the death rate of new-born babies was twenty-five per thousand and there were upward of 100,000 institutionalized children.
Do I think that the Republican party and anti-choice organizations give one hoot about “life”? Nope. Not when their policies bring a whole lotta death. Do I think they give one hoot about decreasing the abortion rate? Nope. Not when they oppose policies which do just that.
end quotes-----
Amen Sister
via feministing
As was pointed out by puppyfist and Kinderplatz in comments, Sarah Palin isn't exactly supportive when it comes to teen moms who aren't her daughter. She slashed funding for Passage House, a transitional home for teenage mothers that gives young women a place to "live with their babies for up to eighteen months while they gain the necessary skills and resources to change their lives."
Michelle Cottle at The Plank has the story.
Quoted from Feministing: McCain, Palin and working mothers
The media are clamoring to ask whether she can juggle her children and her career. But they aren't saying a peep about whether she wants to enact policies that will make it easier for women -- especially women who do not enjoy the privilege that Palin and McMorris Rodgers do -- to perform this balancing act. Where does Palin stand on S-CHIP? On fair pay? On paid family leave? I have no idea. But her running mate, John McCain, was rated by the Children's Defense Counsil as the worst senator for children. He supports businesses who discriminate on the basis of gender. He attempted to weaken the Family and Medical Leave Act. And he supported Bush's veto of S-CHIP. (Gloria Feldt and Carol Joffee have more.)The real story here is not how Sarah Palin chooses to balance her own life. It's about whether she (and McCain) are committed to making these choices easier for all women. And clearly, the answer is no.
Where does Palin stand on S-CHIP? On fair pay? On paid family leave? I have no idea. But her running mate, John McCain, was rated by the Children's Defense Counsil as the worst senator for children. He supports businesses who discriminate on the basis of gender. He attempted to weaken the Family and Medical Leave Act. And he supported Bush's veto of S-CHIP. (Gloria Feldt and Carol Joffee have more.)
The real story here is not how Sarah Palin chooses to balance her own life. It's about whether she (and McCain) are committed to making these choices easier for all women. And clearly, the answer is no.
Here's another article of interest about Republicans and policies to benefit working mothers
Who pays Palin's Child Care...
By ALAN S. BLINDER'
1. Partisan Growth Divide
....the United States economy has grown faster, on average, under Democratic presidents than under Republicans.
The stark contrast between the whiz-bang Clinton years and the dreary Bush years is familiar because it is so recent. But while it is extreme, it is not atypical. Data for the whole period from 1948 to 2007, during which Republicans occupied the White House for 34 years and Democrats for 26, show average annual growth of real gross national product of 1.64 percent per capita under Republican presidents versus 2.78 percent under Democrats.
That 1.14-point difference, if maintained for eight years, would yield 9.33 percent more income per person, which is a lot more than almost anyone can expect from a tax cut.
2. Partisan Inequality Divide
...when Democrats were in the White House, lower-income families experienced slightly faster income growth than higher-income families — which means that incomes were equalizing. In stark contrast, it also shows much faster income growth for the better-off when Republicans were in the White House — thus widening the gap in income.
Conclusion:
The two Great Partisan Divides combine to suggest that, if history is a guide, an Obama victory in November would lead to faster economic growth with less inequality, while a McCain victory would lead to slower economic growth with more inequality. Which part of the Obama menu don’t you like?
Alan S. Blinder is a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve. He has advised many Democratic politicians.
She's no saint.
(for deciding to parent a child with DS)
Also.........
From Bitch Phd The Weekly Standard has a Point
1.Experience doesn't matter.
2.We should treat Palin as a serious candidate. I took little convincing on this point.
Three of us covered one apartment building...most people were not home. I was the paper keeper after a not so wonderful experience at someone's door. 9 for Obama! 2 refused. Three re- registered to current address.
Several people were very enthusiastic about the campaign, we even got a few people to fill out their volunteer form and give it back to us!
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-streetart23-2008aug23,0,1939831.story
