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Sir Gorpster - Gene McPhail (OSWEGO, IL)

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"...Why vote OBAMA? ..the fierce UrGeNcY of NOW....."

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Yes We Did

By Sir Gorpster - Gene McPhail - Nov 8th, 2008 at 3:55 pm EST

Also listed in: DeKalb, IL - Obama 08 | Environmentalists for Obama | Iowa Action Team

Hello,

This is my last blog. I never have been so involved in an election. I never donated so much time, energy, or money. I knocked on doors, I made phone calls, I visited a battleground state 4 times including spending the last 4 days in Ames, IA, with my son, daughter-in-law, and future grand-kid.

I also wrote comments in many newspaper web sites during the primary and election season.

My HOPE began in 2004 when ,like many people,
I saw OBAMAs convention speech and thought to myself "why can't he be our candidate?".

Now, we find ourselves on the other end of all that work. What can we do now? Everyone must support some difficult investments into our infrastrucutre and actually change our culture from one of waste and carelessness to one where we take care of ourselves and our planets future. Big investment now will allow us to stop sending billions on oil that destroys our planet.

Billions on education reform will enable us to attract good and great teachers and reduce stress on parents and students trying to figure out how to pay for science based education needed in the current economy.

The investment we make in health-care reform can reduce waste and allow us to put resources where it is needed. It will be a mix of free market incentives but include simple less wasteful "insurance" system that will immediately improve mental health just by getting most people covered and not having to worry about the next medical disaster that can put them on the street. Country First attribute will allow us to build a nearly free (co-pay progressive system) for most of our health care needs and still allow free market forces to encourage well run hospitals and doctors to prosper.

We may have to stay focuses and fight for theses issues as the big companies that benefit from the current system will fight it with lies. Anyone doubts this just watch SICKO.

So many other things will require people to support OBAMA and fight the lies. Guess this might not be my last blog.

Gene McPhail

--
I'm a card-carrying member of the ACLU and encourage you to join! Check out http://www.aclu.org/.

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MCCAIN WAS A POW, PLAYING THE POW CARD

By Sir Gorpster - Gene McPhail - Aug 23rd, 2008 at 8:58 pm EDT

Also listed in: 7 groups

I am so tired of hearing about how MCCAIN was a POW.

"How they could they this about a former POW?"

"This is a guy that lived in one house for 5 years, in Hanoi"

How could John MCCAIN, a former POW, have cheated by not staying in the "cone of silence".

Defending his views on healthcare:

"John MCCAIN did get inadequate care from another government for some time."

ABOUT ABBAs "Dancing Queen" being his favorite music:

"I stopped evolving my music taste when my plane was shot down by a SAM."

Young Turks Spell it out in this clip.

We should preface every opinion about MCCAIN with "without discretiting his 5 years of service to the country as a POW" and also "This is NOT an ATTACK on Cindy MCCAIN".

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WHere is the BAttleground?? Trends

By Sir Gorpster - Gene McPhail - Jul 30th, 2008 at 1:42 pm EDT

Also listed in: Indiana Action Team | Iowa Action Team

Trends

AK^-, AL^---, AR^-, AZ^-,
CA^++++, CO=, CT^+++, DE++, FL^=, GA-, HI**, IAv+,
ID=--, ILv+++, IN+=, KSv--, KY+--, LAv--, MA^++++, MD^++++, MEv+++, MI^+,
MN=++, MO^=, MS^-, MT^=, NC^=, ND=-, NEv---, NH^+, NJ^++, NM^+,
NVv-, NY^+++,
OH^=, OK^--, ORv++, PA^++, RI^++++, SCv-, SDv-, TNv---, TX^=,
UTv-----, VA^=, VT^**, WAv++, WI^++, WV^--, WY^--

KEY ^ O is increasing v O is decreasing or flat - loosing 5% each = tied + 5% each ** + over 25%

<> <> Even in most places where OBAMA is loosing he is gaining supporters. Many traditional battelgrounds are looking to be safer. OBAMA has been advertising heavy in FL while McCain ad effort is focused in four states -- Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

These early efforts look like wishful thinking for MCCAIN to me.

<> NEXT STEP: WE MUST GET THE SUPPORTERS TO THE POLLS ON ELECTION DAY!

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draft summary: by Barack today in Berlin

By Sir Gorpster - Gene McPhail - Jul 24th, 2008 at 5:25 pm EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

What has always united us – what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America's shores – is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.

Participate in the Reaffirm the Bill of Rights pltatform virtual meeting... by posting your comments

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ReAffirm the BIll of Rights (Platform Meeting

By Sir Gorpster - Gene McPhail - Jul 23rd, 2008 at 9:32 pm EDT

ONLINE at http://my.barackobama.com or via email sirgorpster@gmail.com, facebook, or myspace. If you agree to "reaffirm the bill of rights" as part of the platform send send me your comments and suggestions for wording etc for the final platform statement that should be "consensus language should be put in a sentence or two, at most, a short paragraph".

I think this is needed since the last 7 years have been trashing our freedoms.

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MCCAIN and GRAHM: "mental recession"

By Sir Gorpster - Gene McPhail - Jul 13th, 2008 at 5:57 pm EDT

Also listed in: 6 groups

Former senator Phil Gramm says the nation is in a "mental recession," not an actual one. TMP captures the issue with this snipet:

The problem is MCCAIN has been name dropping GRAHM all year as his economics mentor. Now, how can he say he does not speak for MCCAIN? Is there any reason to think he is flipping on the status of GRAHM?

Probably not.

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Why We Need Change - A Reminder

By Sir Gorpster - Gene McPhail - Jul 10th, 2008 at 7:39 pm EDT

Also listed in: Iowa Action Team

See the 35 articles of impeachment in KUCINICH's IMPEACHMENT RESOLUTION 6.11.2008 . It is scary reminder of why we need to put OBAMA in the White House!

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Happy 4th of July: Forces of Change

By Sir Gorpster - Gene McPhail - Jul 4th, 2008 at 3:27 pm EDT

Also listed in: 9 groups

The newsproject.org has nice video clip about one of our founding progressive heros Thomas Paine.

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George Carlin: Voting

By Sir Gorpster - Gene McPhail - Jun 26th, 2008 at 8:28 pm EDT

Carlin on Voting.

I sad he won't get a chance to vote for change we can believe in this November.

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McCain Raising Money for Campaign??

By Sir Gorpster - Gene McPhail - Jun 20th, 2008 at 12:46 pm EDT

Today in Chicago John McCain is raising money for presidential election BUT yesterday he announced he was taking public financing promised not to exceed the limits.

SO, why is raising money?

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McCain flip-flopping about Iraq/Troops Coming Home

By Sir Gorpster - Gene McPhail - Jun 13th, 2008 at 5:56 pm EDT

"McCain Should Know Better" Commentary by Olbermann, June 12, 2008,
pokes fun at Sen. McCain flip-flopping about Iraq/Troops Coming Home:

http://www.youtube.com/v/cLHfK4l_tTk

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MCCAIN FLIP-FLOPS now Supports OBAMA Iran Sanctions Enabling Act of 2007

By Sir Gorpster - Gene McPhail - Jun 3rd, 2008 at 11:00 am EDT

See the links:

The Bill news release: http://obama.senate.gov/press/070516-obama_frank_lan/

June 2, 2008 during hisspeech to AIPAC MCCAIN FLIP-FLOPPED:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/trailhead/archive/2008/06/02/mccain-s-divestment-dance.aspx

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OBAMA and CUBA

By Sir Gorpster - Gene McPhail - May 29th, 2008 at 2:24 pm EDT

Hello,
We need to push openess with Cuba. Freedo always wins when pushed from the bottom. OBAMAs flip-flop on Cuba was a mistake. He should stick with his instinct as in this 2004 clip:

All the evidence shows that the more exchange between different peoples the more freedom of information will occur that will lead to more freedom.
The soviet style communism is history, it is just a matter of time, the old failed methods won't work (embargo) and are hypocritcal to what we stand for.
Castro was able to blame all Cubas problems on the embargo and it was easy to lead the Cubans with us as the the bad bogeyman to blame. Taking that away will do Cuban people the favor of enabling them to see that their problems are the fault of their own leaders and failed system.

Gene McPhail

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Appeasement and BUSH

By Sir Gorpster - Gene McPhail - May 16th, 2008 at 9:40 pm EDT

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement:

"Appeasement, literally: calming, reconciling, acquiring peace by way of concessions or gifts (the verb 'to pay' also goes back to the Latin 'pax' = peace). Most commonly, appeasement is used for the policy of accepting the imposed conditions of an aggressor in lieu of armed resistance, usually at the sacrifice of principles."

I have decided the best example of "appeasement" recently is the strategy Gen. David Petraeus turned to when the surge was not working. Sunni insurgents are now on the U.S. payroll.

Maybe another is how our "allies" responded to BUSH buillying tactice in 2003 to couge up a few troops for the "coalition". Just enough to appease GWB so he can say they are with us:

Albania: 120 troops (2/07)
Armenia: 46 current (2/07)
Australia: 2,000 invasion - 550 current (2/07)
Azerbaijan: 150 troops (2/07)
Bosnia and Herzegovina: 36 troops (2/07)
Bulgaria : 462 troops 155 current (2/07)
Czech Republic: 300 peak - 99 current (2/07)
Denmark: 460 current (2/07)(deployed 7/03)
Dominican Republic: 302 troops (withdrawn 5/04)
El Salvador: 380 troops (2/07)
Estonia: 35 current (2/07)
Georgia: 500 invasion - 900 current (2/07)
Honduras: 368 troops (withdrawn 5/04)
Hungary: 300 troops (withdrawn 3/05)
Iceland: 2 troops (withdrawal date unknown)
Italy: 1,800 troops (deployed 7/03 - withdrawn 11/06)
Japan: 600 troops (deployed 1/04 - withdrawn 7/06)
Kazakhstan: 27 troops (2/07)
Latvia: 136 peak - 125 current (2/07)(deployed 4/04)
Lithuania: 53 troops (2/07)
Macedonia: 40 troops (2/07)
Moldova: 24 invasion - 11 current (2/07)
Mongolia: 131 troops - 160 current (2/07)
Netherlands : 1,345 troops (withdrawn 3/05)
New Zealand: 61 troops (deployed 9/03 - withdrawn 9/04)
Nicaragua: 230 troops (withdrawn 2/04)
Norway: 150 troops (withdrawn 10/05)
Philippines: 51 troops (deployed 7/03 - withdrawn 7/04)
Poland: 194 invasion - 2,500 peak - 900 current (2/07)
Portugal: 128 troops (withdrawn 2/05)
Romania: 600 current (2/07)
Singapore: 192 troops (withdrawn 3/05)
Slovakia: 103 troops (withdrawn 1/07)
Slovenia: 4 current (2/07)
South Korea: 3,300 invasion - 2,300 current (2/07)
Spain : 1,300 troops (withdrawn 4/04)
Thailand: 423 troops (withdrawn 8/04)
Tonga: 45 troops (deployed 7/04 - withdrawn 12/04)
Ukraine: 1,650 troops (deployed 8/03 - withdrawn 12/05)
United Kingdom: 45,000 invasion - 7,100 current (2/07)
United States: 250,000 invasion - 140,000 current (2/07)

Note: UK really got tricked into this as they thought we would attack only as a last resort.

Stole these from

http://theiraqinsider.blogspot.com/2007/03/coalition-of-leaving-foreign-troop.html

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MCCAIN vs OBAMA on fighting climate change

By Sir Gorpster - Gene McPhail - May 13th, 2008 at 2:03 pm EDT

So, yesterday MCCAIN made the news as he turned green but how does it compzare with Baracks plan?

I Just copied the article from

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/13/politics/animal/printable4090647.shtml

NOTE: OBAMA uses an auction system see why below:

John McCain And 100% Auctions
May 13, 2008

(Political Animal) JOHN McCAIN AND 100% AUCTIONS....On Monday, John McCain outlined his climate change policy, which includes a cap-and-trade program:

We will cap emissions according to specific goals, measuring progress by reference to past carbon emissions. By the year 2012, we will seek a return to 2005 levels of emission, by 2020, a return to 1990 levels, and so on until we have achieved at least a reduction of sixty percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050.

....As part of my cap-and-trade incentives, I will also propose to include the purchase of offsets from those outside the scope of the trading system....Through the sale of offsets — and with strict standards to assure that reductions are real — our agricultural sector alone can provide as much as forty percent of the overall reductions we will require in greenhouse gas emissions....Over time, an increasing fraction of permits for emissions could be supplied by auction, yielding federal revenues that can be put to good use.

It's great that McCain acknowledges the reality of climate change and great that he acknowledges that we need to do something about it. But his cap-and-trade proposal is pretty weak tea.

For starters, its goal of a 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 is less aggressive than Barack Obama's plan, which calls for a reduction of 80%. Since the plan will probably get watered down in Congress, that's a bad place to start.

Second, there are the offsets. It's not impossible to do offsets right, but in the reality we live in they're almost certain to be used as little more than a fig leaf that gives the appearance of doing something while delaying real action on GHG reductions. Promises of "strict standards" notwithstanding, this is an area where you definitely want to see the fine print before you sign up.

Third, McCain's cap-and-trade plan initially gives away emission permits instead of auctioning them. I mentioned a few days ago that that a 100% auction of emission permits is what distinguishes a real plan from a fake one, and later that day Mike O'Hare begged to differ: "The difference between a giveaway and an auction of the same total emissions is not a difference in environmental outcome or the economic cost of getting to it; it's only a matter of whose ox is gored." That's true, but it's worth unpacking that gored ox a bit.

Environmentally speaking, it doesn't matter whether you auction permits or give them away. What matters is the cap. If you cap total emissions at 90% of current levels (and enforce it), then that's what you'll get no matter which kind of system you use. And since both systems allow permits to be traded between companies, they each provide similar levels of economic efficiency. Our ox lurks elsewhere.

Here's the difference. If you auction permits, then power plants and other GHG emitters have to buy permits to operate, and this raises their cost of doing business. This will get passed along to consumers and energy prices will go up. The revenue from the permits will go to the government, just like a tax.

If you give away permits instead, common sense suggests that since there are no additional costs to emitters, they won't raise their prices. But it turns out this isn't true. Thanks to the opportunity cost of the permits, they'll raise their prices just as much as if they'd bought the permit in an auction. (This isn't just a theory, either. That's how the European cap-and-trade system worked initially, and prices really did go up. If you want the gritty detail on why it works this way, read this paper.) So: power plants end up raising their prices, but since the emission permits are free their costs don't change. Result: a huge windfall profit for GHG emitters. Some get more and some get less, but the overall net result is lots of extra profit, with the biggest polluters getting the biggest profit.

That sounds ~~Republican~~ bad enough already, but it gets worse. All cap-and-trade programs increase energy prices — it's like a carbon tax. But carbon taxes are heavily regressive, and a cap-and-trade program with a permit giveaway is even worse. Not only would the resulting higher energy prices hit the poor more heavily than rich, just as they would with a carbon tax, but in addition, thanks to the windfall profits, the rich would actually benefit from increased earnings in their investment portfolios. An auction system, by contrast, (a) doesn't provide windfall profits for corporations and (b) since the federal government collects the auction fees it can use them to ameliorate the disproportionate impact on the poor. It can spend some of the money on clean energy R&D; it can spend part of the money on mass transit; and it can spend part of the money by simply giving it back to taxpayers in a way that reduces the regressive nature of the original tax.

Finally, there's a political reality here. A system that gives away permits is highly vulnerable to legislative fiddling. Just as with tax policy, it's all too easy to favor certain industries over others by doling out different permit levels, and all too easy for the whole thing to turn into yet another form of corporate welfare. It's a lot harder to do that with an auction plan, which simply sets a nationwide permit level for GHGs and then makes companies buy them in a publicly traded system. It's not impossible for legislators to game the system — it's never impossible for legislators to game the system — but it's a lot harder.

So that's that. A cap-and-trade system with a 100% auction provides revenue for green research; it reduces the regressivity of the tax hit; and it helps keep lobbyists from gaming the system. The giveaway method, conversely, is highly regressive; provides windfall profits for big polluters; and would almost certainly end up as a congressional pork barrel that eviscerated the original emission targets bit by bit by bit. It just goes to show that policy details matter. Take your pick.

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GOP Voter Strategically Voting for CLINTON

By Sir Gorpster - Gene McPhail - May 2nd, 2008 at 6:24 pm EDT

See the analysis on GOP strategic voting for HRC:

http://strategicvoting.blogspot.com/

Also, intrade statistically analysis shows MCCAIN and HRC chances are correlated.

This means people betting on MCCAIN think his chances are better against HRC.

So, why do Clinton supporters think "she has the best chance" agaisnst MCCAIN

when even the GOP voters are trying to get her elected?

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Who is the Next First Lady

By Sir Gorpster - Gene McPhail - Apr 16th, 2008 at 9:52 pm EDT

WHY NOT!

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Bush's War - from PBS's Frontline

By Sir Gorpster - Gene McPhail - Mar 27th, 2008 at 1:15 am EDT

Bush's War

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Time To Confront/Contest McCain as "foreign policy expert"

By Sir Gorpster - Gene McPhail - Mar 24th, 2008 at 9:17 pm EDT

see TPM on McCain Myopia

http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/20080320_tpm_on_mccain_myopia/

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GALLOP POLL fact and comments

By Sir Gorpster - Gene McPhail - Mar 21st, 2008 at 6:27 pm EDT

SOME FACTs from this week news
Gallop polls made the news earlier this week (Tuesday) when Clinton surged in the "democrat preferred" poll but it has closed again (today) to a statistical tie. RE: http://www.gallup.com

Meanwhile, in other gallup polls of everybody (D + R + I) Hillary Clinton is rated
as "honest and trustworthy" by 44% of Americans, far fewer than say this about John
McCain (67%) and Barack Obama (63%).
In the favorable/unfavorable poll
John McCain's 67% favorable rating (U=27%) is the highest of any of the three major candidates running for president, and ties for his highest in Gallup polling history. But Obama Barack Obama's favorable rating is now at 62% (U=33%) a new high.
Whereas Hillary Clinton's favorable rating, 53%, is significantly lower than those of the other two candidates while her unfavorable rating is much higher at 44%.
MY OPINION PAGE:
Hillary Clinton's most optimistic appeal in Nationwide election is limited by the high unfavorable rating - that is difficult to change for such a well known person.

Among most Democrats either Clinton or Obama would be a satisfactory candidate so the
few % difference between the two in the often mentioned "Gallup Daily Election Poll"
(based on Democratic and Democratic leaning voters) is not as important in determining the
best candidate.

Gene McPhail

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