I have many friends in Alaska.
Some have lost their homes and everything they own as a result of ice breakup & flooding on the Yukon River.
The State of Alaska (read: Gov. Palin) has just done photo ops but nothing much to help the villages that have been devastated.
For under $14, we can, one at a time, send a box of much needed supplies, or send a cash donation to various funds or the Red Cross in Fairbanks (which is supporting the relief and recovery efforts in the villages).
Please read: http://www.themudflats.net/2009/05/17/rural-update-report-on-flooding-in-eagle/
The photos will gobsmack you.
I'm one of the Obama quilters "Piecemakers for Change".
Rox from Bermuda couldn't financially support our quilt, but she helped by spreading the word about hte quilt.
But even more amazing.....
I got a UPS package today from Rox....
It had a Bermuda Rum Cake for me but even better was a postal money order in an amazing amount for my local food pantry.
The Obama family keeps working and I'm still in tears with this huge donation to my local food pantry.
Rox, you are just exactly what Obama wanted us to step up to and be part of the solution... you are my hero, and I thank you sooo much on behalf of my local pantry!
It's 28 degrees outside and I have just three sticks of firewood left for the woodstove before hubby comes home tomorrow night (he's a power lineman gone four nights out of seven every week unless there's storm damage and then he could easily be away a month)
Anyway, I've spent these past few hours watching DesertRat/DoveDan's video. He's done wonderful videos for us Quilters for Obama, but he's also done many MANY other wonderful videos for the campaign.
About an hour ago, I started to look for any similar uplifting videos for McCain.
It's very VERY sad...
McCain videos are just sort of Big & Rich or Hank Wiiliams Jr. C&W remake-slightly-change-lyrics. There might even be a Gretchen Wilson thingie but I couldn't bear it because I'm a huge country music fan (thank God for Brooks & Dunn and other musicians!)
Anyway, during my search for an "uplifting" McCain song (which I didn't find) I *did* find this little gem!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX6qvzx_wUs&feature=related
Stick with it, because it's really REALLY good!
Saturday night we traveled 100 miles west for the 90th birthday of our Uncle Ray.
Toward the end of the celebration, Peggy (Uncle ray's 86-year-old wife), sat down next to me to chat. We had a wonderful conversation about farming and green issues them she quietly said "I want this stupid election to be over and done with, I'm sick of all of it."
I agreed with her but also expressed polite surprise and asked "why?"
She said she as so sick and tired of the nastiness and that John McCain scares the bejeebers out of her. I then shared actress Betty White's joke about John McCain's email illiteracy: "John thinks email is still by carrier pigeon...problem is Sarah Palin is shooting them out of the air before they arrive." (I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist.)
Aunt Peggy is a HUGE supporter of animals, both domesticated and wild, and she LOVED the Betty White joke.
Aunt Peggy also quietly informed me that she and Uncle Ray have already sent in their absentee ballots. She said Uncle Ray at the beginning said that he would NEVER vote for a black man, but McCain's nastiness and "something is wrong in his brain" plus Sarah Palin....that has scared the crap out of Uncle Ray, so he cast his absentee ballot for Obama/Biden.
So, there you have it, first hand, from the redneck Bible-thumping elders in Kentucky!
From the West Virginia Gazette, electronic voting machine probs are already being reportted by voters in West Virginia!
http://wvgazette.com/News/200810180251
The US Supreme Court sided with the State of Ohio in overturning a GOP win in the Appellate Court regarding challenges new voter registrations since January. YAY!!!!!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/17/supreme-courts-ohio-decis_n_135596.html
Tonight, Wednesday, October 15, is the last chance to donate or write a short "why I want to win the quilt".
The drawing will take place Tuesday, October 21, in Tucson, AZ. (A member of the Obama campaign will be on hand!)
Quilters from across America got together early in July to create this incredible king-sized quilt to raise funds for the campaign. Right now, we are just $1,560 away from our goal of $15,000. The quilters have themselves taken on all of the costs involved in making this one-of-a-kind work of art.
Go to
http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/maingroup/QUILTERSFOROBAMA
for details.
from personal experience I'm here to tell everyone this started back in the 1980s.
My first husband, a steel worker in Illinois almost all his working life (God rest his soul) had a mortgage from the 1970s and mortgage insurance....
He got sick from Crohn's Disease, the mortgage got "shopped around" (by the banks and/or mortgage companies without our input or permission) several times in the late 1980s.
He got sick, the last mortgage company refused to honor our mortgage insurance policy, that was supposed to cover payments when he was sick, with a nasty letter (even though we NEVER missed a payment when he was off work!)
I called and also sent a registered letter to the Attorney General to the State of New York (that's where the latest mortgage company was located) and really REALLY vented (and also copied it to the mortgage company!
Guess what?
The remainder of our mortgage was "forgiven" within a month!
Moral of the story: Stand UP!!!! Do NOT be scared or brow-beatened when it comes to your rights and what you have paid for!
My first husband, God rest his soul (again), died 14 years ago. But he won against the mortgage industry and he also won against Social Security disability, which denied him, after working 36 years, but then reversed he decision because we took the time and effort to appeal (three pages, single space in excruciating detail.. .uncontrollable farts were involved and anyone familiar with end-stage Crohn's Disease knows what I'm talking about).
Always, ALWAYS! Never be afraid to fight back for what you have paid for!
Hands up!
During the debate, who else heard McCain (snarling his response to Obama saying North Korea was a threat to be dealt with) say that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright went to Korea???
For me, that was even a more major gaffe than not being able to pronounce the names of foreign heads of state (or even being cognizant who was actually a foreign head of state).
I know where I was!
I was at my local farmers' market at 6 am and had to be at jury duty at 9 am....
I got to the courthouse (a one mile walk uphill) and a friend of mine who was a worker there was in tears telling me here son got to Los Angeles..I was clueless but sympathetic...
All I can say is that my farmers' market income absolutely died on 9/11 and never recovered. There are lots of factors invoved....the tanking economy not the least Wall Street...
I'm fighting the energy crisis for years....the cost of fuel for my trucks, my tractors, the cost of my seed and feed and fertilizer...those have more than TRIPLED but my income has dropped more than two decades.
My customers are still on the fixed income they had at 9/11 and they get in my face about raising prices without recognizing my increasing costs.
And it suddenly occurred to me that Wall Street and corporations and Washington can arbitrarially raise THEIR prices but us working people have to play by the rules because we're all stuckwith the freaking bill that we didn't sign on for!
Did anyone else notice that McCain was having the scarey yellow-teeth wide smile and then the creepy smirky grin in the limited press photo-op presidential meeting and everyone else was grimacy (I made a new adverb/adjective for "grimace") or looking like they wanted to barf?
This is soooo surreal....
what on earth is going on with McCain and Palin?
McCain wrecks the bipartisan thing on the economy and says after the silly photo-op meeting "I'd rather lose the election..yada yada yada"
And now the House Republicans (and one of them is mine who backs GWB all along the line....sigh...) want to add something that will add private funding WITH tax and regulatory relaxation....
EXCUSE ME!!! Is that EXACTLY what got us into this this current problem? (I personally refuse to recognize it as the end of the earth crisis that the Bush administration want us to believe.)
And then Palin makes this incoherent Russia-Alaska-Putin flying in Alaska's airspace nonsense in the Couric interview.
and the hard core Republican base believes all of this are game savers????
It's all completely psychotic!
And I say that as a Republican for Obama and I have emailed both of my Kentucky senators and my regional rep (all of them Republicans) AGAIN tonight about this!
Let's stop the insanity!!!!
Hope y'all love this veterans' song as much as I do...
"Before You Go"
http://www.managedmusic.com/php/BYGIndex.php?page=playBYG
As a Christian I'm really concerned about Ms Palin:
Forget the unfortunate pregnancies, forget the internet rumors of infidelty.
Sarah Palin is picking and choosing her Biblical beliefs to suit herself.
I live in a very narrow-minded area of the country that believes the Bible (translated by a white man, King James, to "fit" his world view at the time) but I draw the line at the pentecostalists rolling on the floor, handling serpents, speaking in tongues, drinking poison (all in the OT) believing the Bible is the complete written word of God and speaking in tongues is the only true "Christian" thing. Give me a break for daring to be a "thinking female" even though I'm not a governor of a tiny population state.
Speaking of the Bible and its strictness, Sarah Palin is completely disregarding her own Pentacostalist teachings:
Corinthians 14:34-35: "Let you women keep silence in the churches; for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home; for it is a shame for women to speak in church."
OK, that part of the New Testament is complete crap, and I say that as a Christian. I happen to live in one of those "bitter" communities with the silly clinging to guns. I don't "cling" to my guns…I have them and use them as needed in life (mostly to fill up my freezer with whitetail deer, much as I love Bambi but I can't afford to buy meat at the grocery stores the last two or three years). As for religion, I'm a Christian and I'm an old white woman who will NOT be shut up.
Mind you, but Sarah Palin, pretty and combative as she is in the political world, apparently picks and chooses the Bible to fit her own situation...but I suppose that works for her. Just let her allow ME to allow my Christian beliefs to work for me. I will NOT be silenced either and I don't need the Bible to tell me to "shut up in church".
Apparently, Sarah wants to make the Bible "fit" her worldview so SHE can speak but other women are apostate if we dare to question her.
paula ... who will never shut up and my husband said "yep, pretty much what I expected from you and "go girl!".
...I'm off to bed now because it's going on 1:30 am here but I just wanted to say I got POLLED on Monday!!!
First time in 20 years I've been polled.
I have always lied in the past but this time I was proud to NOT LIE, being as I'm a "bitter religion & guns" 50-something white woman farmer in Appalachia.
I proudly told the pollster I was an older white women Republican who refuses to vote for McCain/Palin...I've been an Obama supporter for years (I lived in Illinois when Obama was a community organizer and remember that!)
McCain just said that foreign people need special work visas and "come on in to America" incentives because they are better educated than Americans.
And I'm sick and tired that McCain is now yadada yada on community service but STILL does not deny Palin's dissing of community service...
and I'm saying this as a Republican...
He is straight faced talking about how great community service is when Palin dissed community service as "without the responsibilities".
I am indeed a community organizer/service person volunteering for folks who are in need and MY income last year was $12,500...McCain is embarassing me tonight, but of course he doeesn't have to worry or even WORK,,,,,sigh.......
I live in a very narrow-minded area of the country that believes the Bible (translated by a white man, King James, to "fit" his world view at the time) but I draw the line at the pentecostalists rolling on the floor, handling serpents, drinking poison (all in the OT) believing the Bible is the complete written word of God and speaking in tongues is the only true "Christian" thing. Give me a break for daring to be a "thinking female".
paula who will not shut up and my husband just said "yep, pretty much what I expected from you and "go girl!".
First...stop looking at the polls. I'm actually feeling more confident that some folks here are worried about the polls and the so-called McCain "convention bounce"...we need to stay focused and NOT be complacent!Second...check out Robert Creamer's blog at Huffington Post. He's outlining what we ALL should do to take action (and I've been saying this for months):http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/frightened-by-mccains-pos_b_125111.html
Let's NOT take the low road and make unsubstantiated rumors go viral. (We KNOW the McCain campaign claims that WE are the ones behind the pointless internet rumors, even though we aren't the ones.)Let's INDEED demand focus on issues. (We KNOW the McCain campaign wants to focus on personalities because they can't discuss issues and despite the fact WE CAN discuss issues.)Let McCain/Palin believe they have this election in the bag. (We KNOW they can't compete with the truth.)Yes we can! But ONLY if we keep working as if all the "powers that be" say we're behind and want us to believe that, even though we KNOW we aren't!And, BTW, I am indeed an eastern Kentucky Republican for Obama/Biden.
[edited to try to make the link "clickable"]
