It was an amazing night. The long wait has ended. We are vindicated. The nightmare is over. The neocons are done for. We have taken back our country.
Colorado is Blue.
Free at last. We're free at last. Thank God Almighty, we're free at last.
I'm going to bed. I just read some upbeat stuff here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/02/latest-presidential-polls_n_140177.html
Feels like I've done all I can. I even think I've worried all I can, at least for today.
I am so sorry Obama's grandmother didn't make it a couple more days. Sort of like Moses not making it into the Promised Land, I guess. Mythologically speaking. Or however you view those things.
This evening, I received an email from Barack (we all did) asking me to vote and help others do the same. I couldn't help myself--I replied to that email (it hasn't bounced) asking him to please, please, please win this election. I told him:
Yes you can! Yes you can! Yes you can!
You want one word to sum up the mood among Obamacans today? Don't look for it in Webster's--look in Weinreich, the Yiddish dictionary: You've got shpilkes, everybody -- plain and simple.
Shpilkes (pronounced: SHPILL-kuhz) is a case of nerves + excitement + anticipation that knows no bounds. No English word even comes close. 'Pins and needles' and 'sitting on tenterhooks' are poor second cousins to real shpilkes (the kind we have now).
Okay, you admit you've got shpilkes--the first step in any self-help campaign. What do you do about 'em?
The more energy you spend for the Obama-Biden Campaign, the less energy you'll have for those shpilkes.
So, get out there and volunteer -- one last time!
John McCain may claim fame as a campaign finance reformer, but he sure knows how to get around his own reforms. In recent disclosure statements, the McCain campaign revealed that McCain-Palin coffers were boosted by hefty contributions from a married couple named Hassan Alaghband and Farah Asemi. The couple allegedly resides in Colorado (though no evidence of that was turned up in an Internet search) and each contributed $70,100 to the GOP presidential campaign.
Why is are these people contributing over $140,000 to the coffers of campaign finance maverick John McCain and his running mate Sarah “we’re-both-mavericks” Palin? This, in spite of the $2,500-per-person limit of McCain-Feingold?
It is not easy to gather information on the politically philanthropic couple; but Hassan’s father Vahid Alaghband is the well-known Iranian-born businessman and Chair of the Balli Group; and Hassan is a director of the largely-family-run company. According to the company’s web site, Balli is among the world’s largest privately-owned, independent commodity traders. Headquartered in the United Kingdom but running operations out of a global network of offices including some in the US, the Group specializes in the trading of primary industrial and consumer commodities, including steel and other metals, chemicals, and agricultural products. Balli Group enjoys sales exceeding $1billion (US), not including sales from its subsidiaries.
According to Internet sources at www.prnewsnow.com, one subsidiary, Balli Real Estate group operates in the UK and UAE (yes, that’s United Arab Emirates). This company’s $3.5 billion portfolio (http://www.balli-re.com/property-portfolio.htm ) includes major real estate projects in Dubai.
As much as I do not want to participate in the xenophobia follies stirred up by the GOP’s low-road campaign tactics, I would LOVE to attend a Palin town hall meeting just to throw a couple of burning questions at that over-zealous, manipulative-but-charismatic hypocrite, like “When you talk to your base about the “true Americans” you want to “fight” for, are you talking about your campaign’s sugar daddies, Hassan Alaghband and Farah Asemi?
When mega-donors like the Alaghbands are busily protecting their billions in off-shore investments by funnelling large amounts of cash into the campaign chest of John “Country First” McCain, I can't help but conclude that McCain and Palin are a pitiful pair of frauds.
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Whoa, there, all of you well-meaning friends and family who, in the past two weeks, have been sending me some of the most hilarious belly-laughing Palin-based humor--from the Couric interviews, to debate Bingo cards filled with maverick, you-betcha, and by golly. You're getting us nowhere fast, and the McCain ticket is diminishing the slim DEM lead in a number of the Obama Campaign's must-win battleground states.
Instead of wasting your time (and mine) with these forwards, I urge you to walk on down to your nearest Obama headquarters and volunteer you time. Phone banks are operating practically 24/7. If you don't want to leave home, no problem. You can volunteer from your computer desk by clicking the barackobama.com site, signing up to help, and calling voters in the battleground states. Get unregistered voters to register (the last day for voter registration states in many states is October 6th) and encourage undecided voters to vote for the Democratic candidates so we can take back our country. The Campaign has masterfully assembled lists of the voters we need to speak to.
If you want to get outdoors as you volunteer, simply click the links on barackobama.com and volunteer to Walk your Neighborhood; and if you insist on sticking to UTube, Digg the Obama ads that your friends forward you.
Let's face it -- we haven't got a moment to spare. Our shared goal is to have Obama remain at the top of the polls and to keep the momentum going. We can't rest while he is still within the margin of error in any battleground state.
The Obama campaign has made it easy for you to get involved. Thanks for your help if you've been volunteering--and get in there and help if you haven't.
Barack Obama's performance in the first presidential debate was admirable -- showing that you don't have to be a sycophantic saber rattler to appear presidential. You can use diplomacy to effectively cut through lies and manipulative attempts at intimidation.
While McCain showed that he is a good name dropper (finally differentiating himself from George W Bush), he proved himself an even better inventor of facts. During the debate, Obama never tired of catching McCain in his lies, context omissions and distortions. If he appeared defensive and McCain didn't, it was because Obama fights with the facts and McCain simply makes stuff up. We've been watching McCain's nasty, deceptive ads on Colorado TV for weeks (and it doesn't work here: Obama's numbers have done nothing but rise since these ads began), and the debate was more of the same.
The response to McCain's cynical, detached performance showed that in today's Internet-enriched world, you can fool some of the people for a short time (maybe a half-hour or so!) before the vast Internet fact-checking machine swings into action (oblivious to the giant media conglomerates, whether they be liberal or conservative - who cares??), showing who lies and who doesn't. If you think McCain didn't deliberately lie, then you're left with the alternative explanation that he doesn't have a good enought grasp of the key facts required of our nation's top leader.
Here's a good example from the Washington Post's fact checkers: When discussing what ways he would save money in the federal budget, McCain said, "Look, we're sending $700 billion a year overseas to countries that don't like us very much." This is a line he used in his campaign acceptance speech, but [as a listener would assume] he was not talking about foreign aid. That only amounts to $39 billion a year, most of which is economic aid to strategic allies. McCain instead is talking about the amount of money that Americans spend on foreign oil, though some experts think that figure is a bit high. It certainly is not part of the federal budget.
And perhaps the sleaziest fact-twisting was delivered with McCain’s innuendo that dishonestly reframed Obama’s private, choice-based healthcare plan as ‘socialized medicine’. As is well documented, Obama is not advocating a state-run health system.
I expect that Independent voters can see McCain's credibility 'trust' bank is as bankrupt as the financial system free-for-all he's supported for all of his years in Washington. Once you've blown your capital, it is excruciatingly difficult to build it back up. We're seeing this play out daily in the 'other' market scenario where trust was misplaced by the American people in bought-and-sold leadership that doesn't give a damn about Main Street, no matter how many times they use the word in political posturing now.
Friday night's debate showed John McCain to be more of the same. And, for helping Americans see that picture more clearly, I say: congratulations on a job well done, Barack!
Republican presumptive presidential nominee Senator John McCain thinks he can re-state his previously expressed support of a long-term US presence in Iraq to get more votes. Instead, at his speech this morning in Columbus, he dug himself in deeper.
It is difficult to imagine a US voter who has not seen McCain declaring cavalierly that we could be in Iraq for another one hundred years, for all he knows or cares. Now, he says we will be mere peacekeepers in Iraq in five years. Not only is McCain not credible on this point, he has clothed his 'restatement' in phrases that smack of the Bush administration's lies that got us into Iraq in the first place--saying that we bombed Iraq 'so that America might be secure in her freedom'.
This is such nonsense (there were, ahem, no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; the Neocon sword rattling run-up to the Iraq war was based upon myth and bad intelligence practices) that we must now understand, if we didn't when we saw McCain embrace the President, that McCain stands for nothing more than a continuation of the lies, secrets, and deceits we have been enduring for almost eight years--to the extreme detriment of our economy, our reputation amongst our allies, and our outlook.
It is time for change in Washington. Real change. That's why we support Obama.
Recent celebration in the Clinton ranks triumphantly touting a new journalistic support should actually be cause for alarm in the Clinton ranks. Says Richard Mellon Saife, editor of the the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the conservative newspaper in Pennsylvania that recently endorsed Mrs. Clinton:
"In sharp contrast, Clinton is far more experienced in government — as an engaged first lady to a governor and a president, as a second-term senator in her own right," the paper said. "She has a real voting record on key issues. Agree with her or not, you at least know where she stands instead of being forced to wonder."
As if this weren't enough to scare you, the Clinton press release goes on to inform us that Clinton met with the Tribune-Review's editorial board, including Scaife, last month. Afterward, Scaife wrote an editorial titled "Hillary, Reassessed," declaring how impressed he had been by the former first lady.
"Her meeting and her remarks during it changed my mind about her," Scaife wrote.
Hm. Just as we never knew how Mr. Scaife stood (he stood staunchly against the Clintons when Bill was being impeached; now, due to some kind of expediency we aren't fully informed about, or, more likely, some policy change toward the right on Hillary's part), he stands with them.
How would you like to vote for Hillay and have her change *her* mind about her campaign promises??? Like the economic boosts for the Middle Class, or the War in Iraq? ??????
Obama's landmark speech on racism in America is undoubtedly the most amazing piece of public oratory since Obama's speech to the DNC. Many will agree that this speech is on a par with 'I Have a Dream'.
Hillary seems to be trying to deflate the impact of Obama's unifying efforts for her own personal gain. We can only conclude that she is as a big a disappointment as the Republicans (we can see it ourselves: their style is her style).
Obama's people need to get right out there ASAP and make some comments to deflate her misleading poll talk. After clicking lots of links about Hillary being up in ' the polls', including several that purported to include the date of the aforementioned speech within the time covered by the polls, this is what I finally discovered, buried in the story:
But no polls have come out yet measuring the impact of Obama's much-praised speech on race Tuesday in which he condemned the inflammatory remarks of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., but sought to place them in a larger context of America's racial history and challenges.
Shameful and misleading to bury this information. Hillary Clinton is in charge. We must insist that she be accountable for this kind of manipulation of the truth.
