UTAH SECULAR VOTER FOR OBAMA

Attention YouTubeforObama Adminstrator Jeremy

Ellis Dean Hovey — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:04:09 EST

Why am I blocked from YouTubeforObama? http://hk.youtube.com/user/PeskyAtheist Please tell me.

ACORN Obama Campaign RESPONSE

Ellis Dean Hovey — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 20:14:34 EDT

ACORN Obama Campaign RESPONSE

(Please copy this message and post it everywhere. Send to media. Blog it. Post it.)

(This is a reply from watchdog@barackobama.com ~Neil)

Thanks for sending in the email about ACORN.

This smear has been gaining popularity lately as people look for explanations for our economic crisis -- and smear artists looking to destroy Barack see an opening. Every word of it is dishonest and manipulative.

Email smears like this are part of a broader, shadowy strategy to scare people who aren't very familiar with Barack by spreading false information.

Here are the facts:

Barack Obama was never an ACORN community organizer.
Barack was never an ACORN trainer and was never an employee of ACORN.
ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack led in 1992.
As an attorney, Barack worked with the U.S. Department of Justice to represent ACORN and other voter's rights groups in a lawsuit to enforce the widely praised federal Motor Voter Law in Illinois.
The Huffington Post has laid out the evidence showing the truth about Barack, ACORN, and these smears. See:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/05/smears-contradicted-obama_n_132098.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/03/obama-camp-debunks-voter_n_131686.html

There's no way to stop these dangerous, misleading viral emails one-by-one, but together we can take the political process back from the cynical politics of deception. We can all start by spreading the truth about Barack Obama.

Forward this email to everyone else who received the ACORN smear, then head to Fight The Smears <http://www.fightthesmears.com> to get details about more smears and see what else you can do: Fight The Smears: http://www.fightthesmears.com

Here are a few facts about Barack Obama that people might be interested to learn:

* Barack Obama is working for middle class Americans. The Obama-Biden tax plan includes a tax cut of $1,000 for more than 150 million working Americans. The plan will also eliminate income taxes altogether for more than 7 million senior citizens who make less than $50,000 per year. Finally, Obama's plan will provide an average of $500 to 10 million homeowners, the majority of whom earn less than $50,000 per year. Learn more about the Obama-Biden tax plan: http://www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/#tax-relief
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/url.cfm?ID=411693
* Barack Obama knows that the problems we're facing in this election are too serious to let the politics of manufactured controversy and fake outrage dominate. He wants to bring our troops home from Iraq, so we can focus on Afghanistan and track down the terrorists who attacked us. And he's proposed a detailed plan for using alternative energy sources to relieve America's dependence on foreign oil within 10 years and put millions of Americans to work.
See more about Obama's plan for change here: See Barack's detailed plan for America: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/planforchange_ad/
* After being raised by a single mother and by his grandparents in a modest household, Barack studied hard and won scholarships and loans to attend Columbia University and later Harvard Law School, where he became president of the Harvard Law Review. After law school, he returned to Chicago, where he helped disadvantaged citizens work for better jobs and better schools. Barack later went on to teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago, helping to educate the community leaders of tomorrow. Read more about Barack Obama: http://www.barackobama.com/learn/meet_barack.php

Please forward this to anyone you know who has received this smear email about Barack. Together we can make sure these negative and divisive attacks don't affect this election.

Thanks for your help,

Obama for America

INVITATION TO ALL MORMONS TO VOTE THEIR CONSCIENCE

Ellis Dean Hovey — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 12:19:01 EDT

INVITATION TO ALL MORMONS TO VOTE THEIR CONSCIENCE

LDS Church encourages member involvement in political process

By Carrie A. Moore
Deseret News

Published: Monday, Sept. 22, 2008 12:28 a.m. MDT

While the LDS Church has long affirmed its political neutrality regarding political parties, platforms and candidates, it is reminding its members of their duty to vote and of the church's right to speak out on political and social issues.

In a letter sent to priesthood leaders dated Sept. 11 to be read from the pulpit in LDS congregations nationwide on Sunday, the church's First Presidency titled its message "Political participation, voting and the political neutrality of the Church."

Church leaders each year read a statement of political neutrality from the pulpit and encourage members to get involved in the political process, but this year's letter differed from previous years in the urgency with which it encourages individual political participation.

"As citizens, we have the privilege and duty of electing office holders and influencing public policy. Participation in the political process affects our communities and nation today and in the future," the letter reads.

"Latter-day Saints as citizens are to seek out and then uphold leaders who will act with integrity and are wise, good, and honest. Principles compatible with the gospel may be found in various political parties."

Particularly in Utah, many public and social commentators have for decades equated the LDS Church with the Republican Party, though church officials have made it clear in past statements that they support a two-party system.

"Therefore, in this election year, we urge you to register to vote, to study the issues and candidates carefully and prayerfully, and then to vote for and actively support those you believe will most nearly carry out your ideas of good government," the letter said.

As in the past, the letter affirms the church's "neutrality regarding political parties, platforms, and candidates. The Church also affirms its constitutional right of expression on political and social issues."

In June, the First Presidency sent a letter to church leaders in California — also to be read from the pulpit — asking church members to "do all you can" to uphold traditional marriage. The move came following a ruling earlier this year by the California Supreme Court that overturned a previous referendum outlawing gay marriage.

Voters there will decide in November whether to approve the proposed amendment, and opponents have grown increasingly vocal in their criticism of the church's stance and the political involvement of its members.

E-mail: carrie@desnews.com

-----

First Presidency Issues Letter on Political Participation

SALT LAKE CITY | 22 September 2008 | The following letter was issued by the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on September 11, 2008, to be read to Church congregations throughout the United States:

Political Participation, Voting, and the Political Neutrality of the Church

As citizens we have the privilege and duty of electing office holders and influencing public policy. Participation in the political process affects our communities and nation today and in the future.

Latter-day Saints as citizens are to seek out and then uphold leaders who will act with integrity and are wise, good, and honest. Principles compatible with the gospel may be found in various political parties.

Therefore, in this election year, we urge you to register to vote, to study the issues and candidates carefully and prayerfully, and then to vote for and actively support those you believe will most nearly carry out your ideas of good government.The Church affirms its neutrality regarding political parties, platforms, and candidates. The Church also affirms its constitutional right of expression on political and social issues.

Sincerely yours,

    Thomas S. Monson
    Henry B. Eyring
    Dieter F. Uchtdorf
    The First Presidency

Greetings!
LDS Members are invited to join Mormons for Obama!
This is a group dedicated to bringing together members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS or Mormon) who support Barack Obama.
We encourage all people to participate with their local Obama groups (i.e. Utah for Obama).
Please read Obama's speech on faith.
Also, please use the blog feature for discussions, and make announcements over the listserv. The listserv is now moderated.
The Mormons for Obama email discussion group can be found here.
Visit the Mormons for Obama Store!
Some other Mormon groups for Obama:
Oregon Mormons for Obama 08
AZ Mormons for Obama
Latter Day Saints (Mormons) for Obama
DFW Mormons for Obama

Want to know what happens when we sing Fox's praises?

Ellis Dean Hovey — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 12:36:15 EDT

Share what you think have been FOX's ugliest moments
Dear [Pesky],
It is deeply detrimental to the longterm interests of democracy when Democrats praise and support FOX News. This would be true regardless of who that Democrat is, but it's particularly heinous when Terry McAuliffe, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is singing their praises.
"Let me congratulate FOX," McAuliffe said this past week, "because you were the first ones to call [the Pennsylvania primary] for Hillary Clinton." McAuliffe, who is also chairing Clinton's Presidential committee, actually echoed the FOX mantra by calling them "fair and balanced." What is so dangerous about McAuliffe's praise is that FOX is now using his words as a TV ad to prove just how fair and balanced they are. The rest of us know the truth:
Watch the video: http://bravenewfilms.org/watch/26883200/36988?utm_source=rgemail
Jonathan put together this video as a reminder of how exceedingly unfair and imbalanced FOX actually is. These are just a few gems to let McAuliffe and others know that FOX is the foe, has always been the foe, and will continue to be the foe of accurate reporting.
Please help us in this quest by sharing what you think have been FOX's ugliest moments. Then Digg this story and spread the word. We will send the list to McAuliffe as a firm reminder that he must not applaud FOX!
Yours,
Robert Greenwald,
and the Brave New Team
---
Brave New Films is located at 10510 Culver Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232. You can get our latest videos on email, iTunes, RSS, Facebook, and YouTube here. To stop receiving the latest videos from us, click here.

A Message From Howard Dean

Ellis Dean Hovey — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 21:49:17 EDT

Dear Friend,

A recent report by the Associated Press has revealed that the Republican National Committee is pulling together a joint fund with John McCain called the "Victory Committee." Its goal is to raise $120 million -- which they're sure to spend trying to destroy our candidates.

We've seen this before -- we know they're already launching attacks on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. And while they're tearing them down, they'll try to spin John McCain to the American people.

It's a $120 million makeover fund, designed to make everyone forget about the last eight years of John McCain, George Bush, the war, the economy, Katrina, and a stunning lack of competency.

We can't let John McCain and the RNC get away with it -- Hillary and Barack need us to fight back while they're trying to win the nomination.

That's why I'm making an urgent request for you to help us with a contribution today -- we have to keep up. They've got a head start, but we can stay competitive if you make a contribution right now:

http://www.democrats.org/competitive

This $120 million fund is about more than just money and negative ads though -- it goes to the core of what John McCain pretends to be.

As a "maverick reformer," he has repeatedly claimed to be a crusader for campaign finance reform, but he has shown little regard for campaign finance law. At the same time, he's staffed the highest levels of his campaign with Washington lobbyists, with one of them going so far as to work out of McCain's campaign bus.

I emailed at the end of February about McCain's decision to break the law and unilaterally withdraw from primary matching funds. We filed a complaint with the FEC that many of you signed your support for, but it has been unable to act.

So yesterday, we sued the FEC to force an investigation into whether McCain has violated campaign finance law. We refuse to let his campaign go unchecked, and we'll do whatever it takes to make sure he is held accountable.

It takes a lot to raise $120 million, but John McCain's staff of lobbyists knows they can count on checks from their friends and special interests. They can't raise the money they need without it.

So this is what we're up against -- a $120 million fundraising push, an opponent who's already broken campaign finance law, a team of lobbyists who have plenty of friends to help them get the cash they need to trash our candidates, and an FEC that is unable to act on our complaint.

We need to stay competitive, and the only way to do that is for you to make a contribution right now:

http://www.democrats.org/competitive

Your contribution means we stay competitive. It means we can go out and respond to the Republican attacks while Hillary and Barack work to become our party's nominee.

And your support means we can show the Republicans that, as in 2005, 2006 and 2007, Democrats plan to compete everywhere -- and win.

Thanks for all that you do,

Howard Dean

Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee, www.democrats.org.
This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

Democratic National Committee, 430 S. Capitol St. SE, Washington, DC 20003

Contributions or gifts to the Democratic National Committee are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.

DNC, 430 S. Capitol St. SE, Washington DC 20003

Tax Aid Threatens Religious Liberty

Ellis Dean Hovey — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 02:05:38 EDT

Press Contacts: Joe Conn & Rob Boston Phone: 202-466-3234 Fax: 202-466-2587
www.au.org/press Forward this message to family and friends View this email in your web browser

April 17, 2008

Tax Aid To Religion Harms Faith And Draws Government Into Religious Affairs, Interfaith Coalition Tells Appeals Court

Religious, Civil Liberties Organizations Urge Court To Strike Down City Grants To Detroit Houses Of Worship

Using public funds to repair Detroit houses of worship violates the U.S. Constitution and threatens the independence of religious groups, a coalition of religious and civil liberties groups has told a federal appeals court.

In a friend-of-the-court brief filed today, seven organizations urged the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to rule against aid to churches that was distributed by the City of Detroit Downtown Development Authority in 2006.

The money was given to three downtown churches to repair their facades and for landscaping and lighting upgrades to spruce up sections of the city prior to the Super Bowl. A federal district court said the aid did not advance religion.

Organizations joining on the brief included the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty; American Jewish Committee; Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America; the Hindu American Foundation; Americans United for Separation of Church and State; The Interfaith Alliance Foundation and Americans for Religious Liberty.

“Americans have a long tradition of offering voluntary support to houses of worship,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director. “Coercing taxpayers to provide this aid is a monumental violation of the right of conscience.”

The legal brief in American Atheists, Inc. v. City of Detroit Downtown Development Authority argues that government aid to religion usually ends up doing more harm than good.

“The lessons of history are compelling: Governmental aid to construct and maintain houses of worship degrades religion and distorts government,” asserts the brief.

The brief goes on to argue, “[T]he grant recipients here are not just religiously affiliated: They are full-fledged churches. So the district court’s approval of public funding for repairs would have been especially noxious to those who adopted the First Amendment…. And it would have been equally offensive to those who sought to maintain their cherished religious freedom by ensuring that their houses of worship could never develop an unhealthy dependence on governmental largesse.”

The brief draws extensively on history and cites the works of religious liberty pioneers such as James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Roger Williams and others.

* * * *

Americans United is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom.

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A joint project of Americans United
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Phone (202) 466-3234 * Fax (202) 466-2587 * auactivist@au.org * www.au.org

Political Count.com a.k.a. FloridaCounts.com

Ellis Dean Hovey — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:15:36 EDT

THIS POST IS ABOUT AWARENESS:

OBAMA HAS BITTER PILL TO SWALLOW: http://www.floridacounts.com/index.php?news=2228
OBAMA ADMITS REMARKS ON SMALL TOWN AMERICA WERE WRONG, BUT REFUSES TO APOLOGIZE: http://www.floridacounts.com/index.php?news=2222
OBAMA BLUNDER MAY GIVE HILLARY THE OPENING SHE NEEDS: http://www.floridacounts.com/index.php?news=2226
BILL CLINTON FOUNDATION LINKED TO CHINA FIRM: http://www.floridacounts.com/index.php?news=2229
OBAMA, JIMMY HOFFA JR., TOUT ECONOMIC POPULISM: http://www.floridacounts.com/index.php?news=2227
CHENEY "INTERESTED" IN OBAMA'S PASTOR OF 20 YEARS: http://www.floridacounts.com/index.php?news=2217
RICHARDSON SAYS HE ENDORSED OBAMA BECAUSE HE WAS UPSET: http://www.floridacounts.com/index.php?news=2225
TV ADS DO A LOT OF TALKING FOR DEMS IN PENNSYLVANIA: http://www.floridacounts.com/index.php?news=2223
EXPERIENCE NOT ALWAYS THE DECIDER: http://www.floridacounts.com/index.php?news=1588
GOVERNOR RENDELL A BIG VOICE FOR HILLARY IN PENNSYLVANIA: http://www.floridacounts.com/index.php?news=2232
BLOODY WEEK: 19 AMERICAN TROOPS KILLED IN IRAQ: http://www.floridacounts.com/index.php?news=2224
If you subscribe or go to PoliticalCount.com, it shows that you care about the 2008 election, you care about issues, and you care about people in your community, in our country and the world.
(PLEASE NOTE: IN THE STATE OF FLORIDA, THE SITE IS KNOWN AS FLORIDACOUNTS.COM).

John McCain's Minister of War

Ellis Dean Hovey — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:37:43 EDT

Check out this article! It describes the close attachment of John McCain and the Republican Party to the Rev. John Hagee in San Antonio. Rev. Hagee preaches an Armageddon theology in which he calls for the U.S. to attack Iran. Top republicans flock to this guy's church services.

http://www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20080401ministerofwar.cfm

Scary stuff!

EVANGELICAL POLITICS

John McCain's Minister of War
by Lou Dubose | April 1, 2008
JOHN MCCAIN NEEDED AN EVANGELICAL TO EMBRACE and send a message to the Christian right that he will do their bidding, even if he's not quite one of them. He settled on San Antonio End-Timer John Hagee.
McCain has never been tight with the nation's evangelical community. While running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, he described Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as "agents of intolerance." When George W. Bush visited Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, in 2000, McCain was unforgiving. He assumed that the Christian university's official position on the Roman Catholic Church—it is the "Great Whore of Babylon" and its Pope is "the Anti-Christ"—could be turned against Bush, along with Bob Jones U's official ban on interracial dating.
"If I had been invited to go to Bob Jones," McCain said in 2000, "sure, I'd have gone. And I'd have told them 'Get out of the 16th and into the 21st century. What you're doing is racist and cruel.' Instead, Governor Bush went there and never said a word. I would never ever do such a thing."
Bush beat McCain in South Carolina, with the support of the Christian right. Since then McCain has been ingratiating himself with the nation's evangelicals. In 2006 he delivered the commencement speech at Liberty University, with the university's founder Jerry Falwell at his side. McCain would go on to say that the Constitution defines the United States as a Christian nation. Somewhere along the way, he changed his religious affiliation from Episcopalian to Baptist.
And now John Hagee.
PREACHING PROSPERITY—The social critic Lenny Bruce used to say, "Show me a preacher who has two suits where there is another man who has none, and I'll show you a fraud." Bruce died long before the advent of the Prosperity Gospel, which spawned a generation of millionaire ministers. The Rev. John Hagee is decidedly in the two-suit category.
In 2003 San Antonio Express-News reporter Analisa Nazareno wrote a long investigative profile of Hagee's ministry. Nazareno reported that Hagee's compensation package was $1.25 million a year. Hagee and his wife, Diana (who has earned more than $100,000 a year from the church business), lived (and still live) in a 5,200-square-foot classical revival house in an exclusive gated community in San Antonio. The house is valued at $736,960 on the 2007 tax rolls. A Hagee trust owns a 7,969-acre ranch in South Texas. And the Hagees own more than $1 million worth of unimproved property in San Antonio, according to the local tax assessor.
The campus of Hagee's Cornerstone Church includes a spacious 5,000-seat sanctuary and a 50,000-square-foot media center, from which Hagee says he broadcasts to 115 television stations and 110 radio stations. Nazareno described a media conglomerate, Global Evangelism Television (GET), that has brought in more than $18 million a year.
In 2003 John Hagee was the highest-paid director of a non-profit corporation in San Antonio. By 2004 he was the highest-paid preacher in the country, according to FreeGoodNews, a Christian non-profit advocacy group that monitors the compensation packages of ministers. (Hagee's financial figures are no longer available. He merged his non-profit GET with Grace Church, which has no physical location and no phone number, so it is no longer required to file annual financial disclosures with the IRS. While he was filing, however, salaries were set by a non-profit board controlled by the Hagee family.)
Three paragraphs into her story, the Express-News reporter got to Hagee's revenue source:
An emotional, energetic half-hour of song praising the glory of God passes. Then Hagee tells ushers at his 5,000-seat Cornerstone Church to "take their positions."
With the dozens of men bearing glinting platters in the aisles, and six cameramen capturing the moment, Hagee instructs church members to hold their money toward the heavens. The thousands repeat after him: "Give and it shall be given."
"When you give, it qualifies you to receive God's abundance," he tells his listeners. "If God gives to you before you give to him, God himself will become a liar. . . . If you're not prospering, it's because you're not giving."
John Hagee's accumulated net worth derives from contributions and the sale of his books, videos, and tapes. Spend a Sunday at Cornerstone and it becomes evident that the basic tenet of the Prosperity Gospel—when you give, you receive God's abundance—isn't working for most congregants. Rev. Hagee battens on 18,000 working-class whites and Hispanics who call Cornerstone their spiritual home. This is a Wal-Mart congregation that spends one day a week in the tony San Antonio suburb where Hagee built his church.
TWENTY MILLION ARMAGEDDONITES—Hagee's theology is at best bizarre and at worst toxic. It is rooted in the teachings of apostate Anglican preacher John Nelson Darby, who left the Church of England in the 1820s to found his own sect. Pre-millennial Dispensationalism divides the world into seven epochs, or "dispensations." According to Darby's eschatological calendar, mankind is nearing the end of the penultimate dispensation. The final dispensation will be 1,000 years of peace, which arrive after Christ's defeat of the Anti-Christ (and Satan) at Armageddon. For Hagee, this is not a metaphor but a place in the Middle East. Hagee's eschatology also involves "the Rapture"—the physical ascent into Heaven of sanctified and reborn Christians.
Before all that can come to pass, however, certain biblical prophecies have to be fulfilled: the reunification of biblical Israel under Jewish control; the in-gathering of the world's Jewry to the parts of their ancestral home made up of Israel, Judea and Samaria; the rebuilding of the Temple (on the spot now occupied by one of three of Islam's most sacred mosques); etc.
Hagee's focus on End-Times prophecy has turned him toward American foreign policy in Israel and Palestine.
He's not alone.
American Conservative co-publisher John Basil Utley cites Christian writer Gary North's estimate that 20 million Americans are Armageddonites. "Many of them," Utley writes, "have an ecstatic belief in the cleansing power of apocalyptic violence."
John Hagee is committed to the cleansing power of apocalyptic violence. He preaches it. He writes about it. And he puts his money—or his congregants' money—where his theology is. Hagee has raised more than $8.5 million for Israel, much of it used to relocate Jews from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to settlements in the West Bank—to Hagee the eastern extension of biblical Israel. Only after a critical mass of Jews have been concentrated in Greater Israel can the End-Times prophecies begin to unfold.
ISRAEL'S PROPHETIC ROLE—Hagee's attitude toward Jews is peculiar. He loves them, but only so much and for so long. In his book Jerusalem Countdown: A Prelude to War, Hagee blames the Jews for the anti-Semitism that has dogged them for 5,000 years.
"It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God's chosen people, to their covenental responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day," he writes.
Hagee claims that Jews are responsible for "birth[ing] the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come . . . it rises from the judgment of God upon his rebellious chosen people."
Nonetheless, these Jews must return to Israel—the Holocaust helped that along, attempts to create a Palestinian state are slowing it down—before the apocalyptic conflagration at Armageddon can take place. Then Christ can return. Those Jews who recognize Christ at his Second Coming as the Messiah will be saved, but most will perish. Some Pre-millennial Dispensationalists have calculated the precise number of Jews who will survive Armageddon, the Rapture and all that: 144,000; that is, 12,000 representatives of each tribe of Israel.
Go figure.
THE CATHOLIC QUESTION—Despite his protestations to the contrary, Hagee is also hard on Catholics. In a bizarre video clip posted online by Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse, Hagee stands before an elaborate iconographic chart depicting the Christian cosmogony. At the End Times end of the timeline a slutty woman in a red dress rides a three-headed feline monster. In her hand the woman holds a Eucharistic chalice.
Pointer in hand, Pastor Hagee elaborates: "This is the Great Whore of Revelation 17. This is the Anti-Christ system. This is the apostate Church," he says. "In this cup, if you read it in the Book of Revelation, is the blood of the saints. This is talking principally about the blood of the Jewish people. Where? From the Crusades that happened back here. From the Spanish Inquisition. From the Holocaust. When Adolph Hitler came to power he said, 'I'm not going to do anything in my lifetime that hasn't been done by the Roman Church in the past 800 years. I'm only going to do it on a greater scale and more efficiently. . . .'"
"God said, 'I gave you the time to repent but you did not,'" he explains. "This false cult system that was born in Genesis 10 and progressed through Israel and became Baal worship, God said the day is going to come when I cause this beast to devour this apostate system. So you can say very clearly that while the church is in heaven, this false system is going to be devoured by the Anti-Christ."
Catholics take issue with that. As do some Jews, whose blood ends up in the chalice for what appears to be their own fault.
All this would be harmless enough (perhaps) if confined to Rev. Hagee's temple. But John Hagee has a constituency that extends beyond his congregation. He used that constituency to build a foreign-policy advocacy organization—Christians United for Israel (CUFI)—that is now pressing for a pre-emptive war with Iran. CUFI brought 4,500 End Times activists to Washington for its July 2006 inaugural event, followed by a day of lobbying on the Hill.
Hagee was straightforward in announcing his agenda: "The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West," he said. He saw this step as "a biblically prophesied End Time confrontation . . . which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation . . . and the Second Coming of Christ."
A REPUBLICAN RELIGION?—John McCain has been pressed to renounce Hagee. He cannot. Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader, whose unsolicited "endorsement" created a problem for Sen. Barack Obama, can preach religious hate. But he works on the fringe of American religion and politics and is an unlikely guest at anyone's White House. The influence of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright—Obama's longtime pastor who is cut from a different cloth than Farrakhan—doesn't extend beyond the African-American community in Chicago. The Republican Party, on the other hand, is deeply invested in John Hagee and his followers.
On the Sunday before the 2006 election, for example, Texas governor Rick Perry and sixty other candidates (almost all Republicans) stood before the altar at Cornerstone Church with Hagee, each candidate angling for an election-day bounce with evangelical voters.
But John Hagee is bigger than Texas. In 2000 he was on presidential candidate George W. Bush's "values team." Since then the right wing of the Republican Party has responded to Pastor Hagee's altar call. In 2002, Republican majority leader Tom DeLay was the keynote speaker at Hagee's "Night to Honor Israel." In 2006 Hagee met with Elliot Abrams, Bush's fervently pro-Israel deputy national security adviser. Hagee later said he and Abrams are largely in agreement regarding Middle East policy.
Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Rick Santorum (R-PA) attended the 2006 Washington, D.C., kickoff of Christians United for Israel, standing by as Hagee called for an End Times war on Iran. Senators John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, old acolytes from Texas, were also present. (Under Karl Rove's tutelage, Cornyn started his political career with a pilgrimage to Cornerstone Church.) Party chair Ken Mehlman joined Hagee on the speaker's platform. President Bush sent a pre-recorded message.
Joe Lieberman (I-CT) got most of the media attention at CUFI's second annual gathering, in 2007, because the Jewish senator compared Hagee to Moses. But Republican house whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) attended and John McCain also joined the pro-Israel Christians when they met in Washington in July. McCain praised Hagee for "doing the Lord's work in Satan's city." That's not San Antonio but Washington.
This Palm Sunday John Hagee was in the pulpit in San Antonio, preaching his "Vote the Bible" sermon. Hagee warmed up the 8:30 a.m. crowd with hymns, some sung by his son (Pastor Matt), who is being groomed to take over the family business.
Then the senior pastor used "Jabez's Prayer" as a prelude to the collection, asking congregants who were tithing to hold their envelopes above their heads. God answered Jabez's prayer "to bless me and enlarge my territory." The prayer is used by Prosperity Gospel ministers to encourage giving so that God will give back.
The sermon was a bellicose endorsement of John McCain, without mentioning the candidate by name. "The surge in Iraq is working," Hagee roared. "Voting the Bible" means refusing to vote for any candidate who will "cut and run" from Iraq. Hagee told his congregation that an account of "first just war" is found in Genesis 14. As Hagee explicates the text, the 318 men Abram led across the desert in pursuit of enemies who had attacked his family were "Abram's Israeli commando unit" avenging and killing "ancient Iraqis."
"Jesus was no peacenik!" Hagee said. "Jesus is going to fight in it himself, against the enemies of Israel!"—in the battle of Armageddon.
Hagee's Christian Zionists return to Washington, D.C., in July. They will hear from the usual neocon suspects: William Kristol, Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes, Clifford May. The secular architects of the Iraq War are now pushing war with Iran and again are eager to sit down with extremist Christians who can help make it happen. Sen. Joe Lieberman will be back, this time to deliver the keynote speech at the "Night to Honor Israel."
John McCain is not yet listed on the program.
Copyright © 2008 Public Concern Foundation Inc.

FROM THE REDDEST OF THE RED STATES:

Ellis Dean Hovey — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:14:02 EDT

FROM THE REDDEST OF THE RED STATES:

Utah superdelegate Wayne Holland endorses Obama!
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:15:34
Subject: Utah superdelegate Wayne Holland endorses Obama!
From: Nikki Norton nikkinorton23@hotmail.com
Utah Democratic Party Chairman Wayne Holland formally endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president today.
Read:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/UtahforObama/listserv-message/GwgGxDW5

Holland's announcement gives Obama one more coveted superdelegate as he continues to compete with New York Sen. Hillary Clinton for the nomination.

Read more here:
http://utahamicus.blogspot.com/2008/04/chair-of-utah-democratic-party.html

Email Wayne and say thanks:
wholland@utdemocrats.org

Or call him to say thank you:
801-328-1212 (office)

Is Obama "Diversity" a Farce (I'm beginning to wonder)

Ellis Dean Hovey — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 10:01:00 EDT

PESKY REPLIED TO RHONDA BARNES Tuesday, April 08, 2008 7:33 PM:
di·ver·si·ty–noun, plural -ties.
1. the state or fact of being diverse; difference; unlikeness.
2. variety; multiformity.

It seems to me your message, in and of itself, is "questionable content". You advertise yourself as "Diversity": diversity of what? The fine points of difference between various Christian sects? Are these what you are claiming as "Senator Obama's standards"? I don't think you quite understand what Senator Obama's standards ARE.

Please feel free to invite Barack Obama here to speak for himself if you feel that is the case. If I have misunderstood his message I would very much like to know about it now, before election day arrives.

"Diversity"... last time I checked, I am an atheist and soldierette is a Christian. Last time I checked, we had the same goal in mind: get Senator Obama into the White House. I was under the impression you shared that goal. Perhaps I was wrong.

----- Original Message -----
From: Rhonda Barnes
To: Diversity4Obama
Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 6:52 PM
Subject: [DiversityforObama] Please use respectful conversation in our email
To our Diversity Members

As administrator of our group I have had many complaints about how some of our dialog has been in the past 4-5 weeks. I am specifically asking "peskyathiest" and "solierette" to be more respectful and keep up to Senator Obama's standards in this campaign.

Remember that each of us have the right to report any "questionable" contant to the Obama campaign. At the same time, our country has "freedom of speech".

Yet the purpose of this group is to bring diversity together, not tear us apart. Please let all of us respect each other. We are also not hear to tear down Hillary or any other candidate. Let's stick to the issues. Our goal is to help support Senator Obama.

Thank you.
Rhonda Barnes-Pouliot
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This email was sent to 482 members of Diversity4Obama
Listserv email address: DiversityforObama@groups.barackobama.com
IN A PRIVATE MESSAGE TO PESKYATHEIST JUST MOMENTS AFTER WRITING THE ABOVE MESSAGE TO THE GROUP, RHONDA BARNES SENT A MESSAGE VIA PESKY'S BLOG STATING:
You are being removed form our group Rhonda (Barnes) Pouliot 4/8/08 9:31PM
Sender: Rhonda (Barnes) Pouliot
Subject: You are being removed form our group
Received: 4/8/08 9:31PM

I am sorry, but due to many complaints and also my assessment that you have crossed the line from normal healthy debates to actual harassment and vulgarity I do not believe you are adding value to our cause to help get Senator Obama elected.
Rhonda Barnes Pouliot
IN MY ESTIMATION, RHONDA BARNES' ACTION IS CLEARLY REFLECTIVE OF THE ZERO ACCEPTANCE OF DIVERSITY WITHIN HER GROUP. I THINK SHE SHOULD RENAME HER GROUP OR CEASE BEING ITS ADMINISTRATOR.

Thank you, Soldierette!!

Ellis Dean Hovey — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 19:58:10 EDT

PLEASE ALSO SEE . . .

Barack Obama Endorse Church/State Separation AND All About Church/State Separation

AN ATHEIST'S OPEN LETTER TO ALL THEIST OBAMA SUPPORTERS

Thank you, Solja. This atheist would be more than proud to call you -- a Christian -- my Friend.
It's at trying times like this that genuine human beings like you somehow manage to renew my belief in the essential goodness of other human beings. It's human beings like you that renew my hope that reason will someday eradicate all the absurdities that divide the human race. In people like you I see the hope that someday our children or grandchildren will speak of racial & religious divides as conditions of the past. You are a diamond amongst lumps of coal.
But I think you are wasting your breath trying to reason with the people you just addressed; truth & justice isn't what matters most to the greedy & power-hungry likes of those who intentionally prey on herd mentality.
I can be a patient man . . . and time is on the side of reason.
~PeskyAtheist
"The wolves prey upon the lambs in the darkness of the night, but the bloodstains remain upon the stones in the valley until the dawn comes and then the sun reveals the crime to all." ~Kahlil Gibran

----- Original Message -----
From: Soldierette!!
To: Diversity4Obama
Sent: Saturday, April 05, 2008 2:24 PM
Subject: Re: [DiversityforObama] Enough

Y'all are all such a bunch of hypocrits. It's sad when people act like they can't read and go off on someone simply because he wants a right to speak his opinions, JUST like everyone else in this group.

Pesky doesn't HAVE to agree with you. Hell, I don't agree with y'all most of the time, because you're one-sided. Your way or the high way, or do you say it? The high road? Phsst! It's all a bunch of bullsh*t how y'all have treated him.

Look, I am a Christian woman. My mom was raised in a holiness church, which by all accounts, is now called church of christ. As a kid growing up in DC, I attended Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist churches. I married a Catholic, and divorced the same. My current friend is the son of a southern preacher and teaches Sunday school, and my closest friend is in Iraq. He's not only the son of a preacher (his mom), but his 6 uncles and aunts are ALL preachers as well. My own kids went to a Lutheran church for most of their childhood. Out of allllll of these people that I know or are associated with, NOT ONE OF THEM judges people on their beliefs in God. You are acting like the very people that our soldiers are fighting in Iraq! They think that THEIR God is THE God of ALL Gods, and are not only willing to die for their God, but they are willing to kill others because of their beliefs, however seemingly radical to us.

Now I just got online for the day and my email is filled with a bunch of bullies jumping on one man that simply wanted a voice. So WHAT he's an Atheist! WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE HIM? Those without sin, please cast the first stone! Judge NOT or else be judged! Are you sitting there on your fake pews passing judgment on that man because he doesn't believe what you believe? Because it can NOT be what he has said in this group because ALL he's continously said is that WE SHOULD NOT PARTICIPATE IN SMEARING HILLARY CLINTON, BUT THAT WE SHOULD ALL HAVE FULL ACCESS TO ALL INFORMATION REGARDING THIS ELECTION.

What the hell is wrong with that? Are you people illiterate or something?

After seeing the BLATANT discrimination against the man because of his religion, having God in my heart for EVERYONE, NOT JUST THOSE WHO BELIEVE WHAT I BELIEVE, there is no way that I can just sit here on the fence and watch as if I don't see what you're doing to him.

LOOK AT HIS PROFILE PICTURE. He is NORMAL! http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/blog/PeskyAtheist

He doesn't have HORNS or a TAIL or anything like that. You encounter Atheists every day of your life and you just don't know it because people sometimes treat them JUST LIKE this group has been treating "PeskyAthiest". Do you realize how many people don't actually believe there's a higher power? What makes you RIGHT and them wrong? You have no PROOF of anything! What you have is FAITH that there is actually a God up there. There's a lot of people who ask for proof, and I see nothing wrong with that. As I said, I am a Christian, but who the hell am I to judge someone else' beliefs? I don't know much about the Jewish faith but I worked once for a Jewish attorney and his wife. I loved these people like family because they were nice to me and respected me as a person. I asked a lot of questions about their beliefs because I did not know anything about it. The ONE thing that I took away from those conversations is that they believe in God, and that Jesus died on the cross, but they do not believe that he arose. I wasn't offended by it. That's what they believe, even though it is different from what I have been taught.

So my point is, YOU ARE NOT THE AUTHORITY ON GOD! Stop the blatant and OBVIOUS discrimination against him because he has done nothing wrong in this group! If he were black, I'd call you all racists! It's the same thing! You gang up on him based on his screenname, which happens to be a declaration of his religious beliefs.

But then you put "Hussein" as your own middle name as a sign of solidarity. So is Barack the ONLY person that is worthy of this same level of respect? This same level of tolerance is not afforded to another Barack supporter? Because after all, "Hussein" is associated (thanks to the media) with terrorism and radical muslims (who believe that you ALL should die because of where you were born). Hypocrits!

And the last thing I'm going to say about what I saw in an email was someone (you know who you are Mr.) who antagonized "PeskyAtheist" in his private email. This was NOT in the group. It was through one-on-one email. PeskyAtheist cussed him out in email, and well he should have. Try that with me and you'll get worst! Nobody has to put up with your blatant BS. He didn't disrespect this group. He replied to a disrespectful group member privately then that member posted that private email in the group, as PROOF that PeskyAtheist disrespected the group. Are you kidding me? And the people in this group accept that? You, sir, are a hypocritical troublemaker and a FAKE. Then all of the SHEEP and FOLLOWERS just pile on the man as to make it appear that everyone agrees in the group. Well, I don't! It's WRONG and you guys are LIARS when you continue to say that he did something wrong. YOU ARE THE ONES THAT ARE WRONG, and just because you are more vocal (negativity usually gets more press!), doesn't make you right.

You need to check yourselves because MY God don't like ugly!

Solja~

On Sat Apr 5 12:14 , "Ronald R. Bisson " sent:

Can't be a Man, reminds me to much of my former wife: a lovely woman a great
mother, but I will say I have been happily divorced for 25 years this month.

----- Original Message -----
From: <anetboddie@aol.com>
To: "Diversity4Obama" <DiversityforObama@groups.barackobama.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 05, 2008 1:26 PM
Subject: [DiversityforObama] Re: Re: Enough

> DITTO. There was no reasoning with this individual. I do find it
> interesting that although no one seems to know this person we all are
> assuming that this is a male. Then again I may be wrong now that I
> think about it. I believe that this is the teen age nephew or something
> of one of the members. This person does appear to be very immature.
> Perhaps someone might remember the email from a woman about getting her
> nephew involved. Now I'm concerned somewhat that he may gain access
> under another I.D. or via the relative that introduced him.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: carlosg903@aol.com
> To: Diversity4Obama <DiversityforObama@groups.barackobama.com>
> Sent: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 12:48 pm
> Subject: [DiversityforObama] Re: Enough
>
>
> Re: Pesky
>
> Tanya
> "ditto"...I took the "high road" by blocking his emails.
>
> To the group members and all other groups who may receive this; Shall
> we All Join the "High Road"?
>
> Carlos
> "Realizing the Obama Faith for 08"
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tanya <tanyafaison@yahoo.com>
> To: Diversity4Obama <DiversityforObama@groups.barackobama.com>
> Sent: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 2:36 am
> Subject: [DiversityforObama] Re: Re: Re: Enough already
>
> Ive blocked Peskys address in my emails. I was in another group where
> he acted argumentative...Just an option for those that are sick of it,
> because he doesnt stop.

Barack Obama Endorse Church/State Separation AND All About Church/State Separation

Ellis Dean Hovey — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 07:18:36 EDT

THIS BLOG POST WAS MADE FOR EVERYONE, BUT IT WAS MADE ESPECIALLY FOR ALL ATHEIST-CENSORING PRO BARACK OBAMA THEIST-DOMINATED GROUPS --
(Particularly the Diversity4Obama & One Million MySpace Friends for Obama'08!* groups)
-- WHERE CONTROLLING MEMBERS THINK THAT BARACK OBAMA WOULD CONDONE THEIR ANTI-AMERICAN BEHAVIOR ON HIS OWN WEBSITE:
MY BARACK OBAMA BLOG: Barack Obama Only Presidential Candidate to Endorse Separation of Church and State
1 FREEDOM FIRST VIDEO: Everything You Always Wanted to Know about the Separation of Church and State … but Were Afraid to Ask!

Bill of Rights
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Obama Wins Most Texas Delegates

Ellis Dean Hovey — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 01:10:23 EDT

Obama Wins Most Texas Delegates
3/31/2008
WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Barack Obama has won the overall delegate race in Texas thanks to a strong showing in Democratic county conventions this past weekend.
Obama picked up seven of nine outstanding delegates, giving him a total of 99 Texas delegates to the party's national convention this summer. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won the other two, giving her a total of 94 Texas delegates, according to an analysis of returns by The Associated Press.
Texas Democrats held both a presidential primary and caucus. Clinton narrowly won the popular vote in the state's primary March 4, earning her 65 national convention delegates to Obama's 61.
Precinct caucuses began immediately after polls closed primary night and quickly devolved into chaos in many parts of the state because of an unprecedented turnout of more than 1 million Democrats. The state party was never able to provide complete results from the caucuses, which is why the AP withheld nine delegates.
The precinct caucuses elected delegates to about 280 county and state senate district conventions on Saturday. The AP awarded the remaining delegates based on results from Saturday's conventions, showing Obama with about 58 percent of vote, compared to 42 percent for Clinton.
Obama won 38 delegates through the caucus/convention system, and Clinton won 29.
The final delegate allocation will be decided at the party's state convention June 6-7, and the numbers could change if either campaign is unable to maintain the level of support they had over the weekend.
Obama leads the overall race for the Democratic nomination with 1,631 delegates, including separately chosen party and elected officials known as superdelegates. Clinton has 1,501, according to the latest AP tally.
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
FROM LINK

Open Letter to Hillary Clinton From a Wellesley College Alumna

Ellis Dean Hovey — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:13:24 EDT

Open Letter to Hillary Clinton From a Wellesley College Alumna

February 19, 2008

by Linn Cohen-Cole

Dear Hillary,

By polling logic, I should be your supporter - Democrat, older woman, white, liberal. I was even in a dorm with you in college. I have pulled for you for years. But something this past summer fundamentally changed my responsibility to my children and grandchildren. In the time I have left in my life to protect them and others, I need to speak out.

I saw a News Hour piece on Maharastra, India, about farmers committing suicide [see here and here]. Monsanto, a US agricultural giant, hired Bollywood actors for ads telling illiterate farmers they could get rich (by their standards) from big yields with Monsanto’s Bt (genetically engineered) cotton seeds. The expensive seeds needed expensive fertilizer and pesticides (Monsanto, again) and irrigation. There is no irrigation there. Crops failed. Farmers had larger debt than they’d ever experienced.

And farmers couldn’t collect seeds from their own fields [see here and here] to try again (true since time immemorial). Monsanto “patents” their DNA-altered seeds as “intellectual property.” They have a $10 million budget and a staff of 75 devoted solely to prosecuting farmers [here]. Since the late 1990s (about when industrial agriculture took hold in India), 166,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide and 8 million have left the land.

Farmers in Europe, Asia, Africa, Indonesia,South America, Central America and here, have protested Monsanto and genetic engineering for years.

What does this have to do with you?

You have connections to Monsanto through the Rose Law Firm where you worked and through Bill who hired Monsanto people for central food-related roles. Your Orwellian-named “Rural Americans for Hillary” was planned withTroutman Sanders, Monsanto’s lobbyists.

Genetic engineering and industrialized food and animal production all come together at the Rose Law Firm, which represents the world’s largest GE corporation (Monsanto), GE’s most controversial project (DP&L’s - now Monsanto’s - terminator genes) [here], the world’s largest meat producer (Tyson), the world’s largest retailer and a dominant food retailer (Wal-Mart) [here].

The inbred-ness of Rose’s legal representation of corporations which own controlling interests in other corporations there and of corporate boards sharing members who are also shareholders of each other’s corporations there, is so thorough that it is hard to capture. Jon Jacoby, senior executive of the Stephens Group - one of the largest institutional shareholders of Tyson Foods, Walmart, DP&L - is also Chairman of the Board of DP&L and arranged the Wal-Mart deal. Jackson Stephens’ Stephens Group staked Sam Walton and financed Tyson Foods. Monsanto bought DP&L. All represented at Rose.

You didn’t just work there, you made friends. That shows in the flow of favors then and since. You were invited onto Walmart’s board, you were helped by a Tyson executive to make commodity trades (3 days before Bill became governor), netting you $100,000, Jackson Stephens strongly backed Bill for Governor, and then for President (donating $100,000).

Food and friends, in Clinton terms: Bill’s appointed friend Mike Espy, Secretary of Agriculture, who immediately significantly weakened federal chicken waste and contamination standards, opening the door to major expansion of Tyson’s chicken factory farms. Espy resigned, indicted for accepting bribes, illegal contributions, money laundering, illegal dispersal of USDA subsidies, …. Tyson Foods was the largest corporate offender.

But what Bill did for Monsanto “genetic engineering” goes beyond inadequate concepts of giving corporate friends influence: He unleashed genetic engineering into the world. And then he helped close off people’s escape from it.

Genetic engineering is many orders of magnitude different from “normal” (even polluting) business in its potential biologic ramifications. The warning myth of Pandora’a Box - letting irretrievable things rush out into nature - has become real. The harrowing change to the world from nuclear fission and fusion is the closest parallel.

What did Bill do?

1. Bill’s put Monsanto people in at the FDA, as US Agricultural Trade Representatives, on International Biotechnology Consultive Forums, and more … (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/072600-03.htm) or http://www.monitor.net/monitor/9904b/monsantofda.html or http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Revolving-Door.htm

2. Bill’s FDA gave Monsanto permission to market rBGH (a GE bovine growth hormone), the first genetically engineered product let loose on us (or did tomatoes with fish DNA get there first?).

3. Despite reports of bovine illness and death, Bill’s FDA did not recall it or put warnings on it. Even “a very angry, very vocal nationwide consumer base” had no impact.

4. Bill’s FDA wouldn’t even label rBGH as “present” in milk.

5. When dairy farmers tried to label their own milk rBGH-free so the public could choose [more on rBGH and labelling here], Bill’s USDA threatened all dairies that their products could be confiscated from stores. Michael Taylor, USFDA Deputy Commissioner, was formerly Monsanto’s counsel.

6. How were consumers to protect their family, given Bill’s FDA enforced public blindness, except to buy only organic? But Bill’s FDA tried to close off that last escape, proposing to include in “organic” standards, “the dirty three” a: genetic engineering of plants and animals, use of irradiation in food processing and use of municipal sewage sludge as a fertilizer. The FDA backed down.

Had this gone through, Monsanto could have finally labeled rBGH milk … as “organic.” And animal waste from factory farms, a pollution nightmare for Tyson and others, could have been sold as fertilizer.

USDA head Dan Glickman: “This is probably the largest public response to an [Agriculture Department] rule in modern history.” In fact the response was 20 times greater than anything ever before proposed by the USDA.

Personally, I resent years of effort to protect my children and now grandchildren, from that crap.

Politically, Bill sided against small farmers and against the public’s right to know, and with Monsanto.

A snap shot of our food:

Oils: Sheep died in India after feeding on Bt cotton fields. We feed our children Bt cotton, as cottonseed oil in peanut butter and cookies.

Grains: 49% of US corn acreage was planted in Bt corn in 2007. A French study proved Monsanto’s GMO corn causes kidney and liver toxicity.

Soft drinks and candy have highly concentrated Bt corn, in the form of high fructose Bt corn syrup. The US food system depends most on two crops, soy (90% GMO, 90% of traits owned by Monsanto) and corn, the largest crop (60% GMO, nearly 100% Monsanto traits). “[E] ssentially our entire food supply is genetically modified, to the benefit of one company.” The Grocery Manufacturers of America in 2000 estimated that 70 percent of US food contains GM traits.

Meat: Steroids bulk up atheletes. Monsanto steroids bulk up animals - more weight, more profit. We feed our children steroids in meats. Is this why our children are fattening, like Hansel and Gretel?

Poultry: Bill’s USDA weakened chicken waste and contamination standards and attempted to allow sewage sludge as fertilize crops. I will say more about disease from industrialized poultry farms waste, at the end of this letter.

Milk: Over 30 scientific publications have shown increased levels of IGF-1 in milk with rBGH increases risks of breast cancer by up to seven-fold, also increasing colon and prostate cancers risks. Canada, 29 European nations, Norway, Switzerland, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa ban U.S. rBGH dairy products. Bill’s USFDA put no restrictions, no warning labels (not allowing labels at all).

American children eat that food and drink that milk, Hillary. Coincidentally, American children are increasingly fat and sick.

Here, Bill ignored pleas for labeling. Abroad, Bill ignored intense international objections over the same issue - unlabeled US food exports - badly straining trading relations. Monsanto’s “good ole boy,” he betrayed American families at the deepest levels conceivable - their family’s health and their democratic right to know. He betrayed our rural life and American family farmers - backing corporation deceit and control, over honesty and clean farming.

But, Hillary, it is one thing to not label a regular ‘ole food product to sell it, and quite another to sell a suspected-dangerous food product (rBGH), but Bill’s administration didn’t label (or stop) a well-known, terrifying threat - Mad Cow Disease.

Bill’s FDA’s August, 1997 regulation permitted “known TSE-positive [Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy] material to be used in pet food, pig, chicken and fish feed,” only requiring the label to read “Do not feed to cattle and other ruminants” in the US.

Monsanto added to the problem. “There is evidence that rbST use [Monsanto’s GE bovine growth hormone] reduces the useful lifespan of a dairy cow. … Given that the incubation period for BSE is at least three to five years and perhaps longer, rbST-treated cows could harbor “hidden” BSE. That is, they might be infected but still asymptomatic when sent to slaughter.” http://www.consumersunion.org/food/bgh-codex.htm

Bill let TSE into our entire food chain. And who owned the feed and slaughter and genetic engineering corporations which benefitted?

Please, tell me, Hillary, what he could possibly have gotten in friendship or favors, that could ever justify his exposing millions of people to this?

With genetic engineering itself, Bill did something to the whole world, which tried to object. Words are inadequate to express how astoundingly immoral, beyond human bounds and conceit and power, that was.

“Even for the biggest “winners,” it is like winning at poker on the Titanic.” Jerry Mander: Facing the Rising Tide

He had no right

Do you hear that?

Bill had sex from Monica Lewinsky. That’s “dinky immoral.” That’s chicken feed immoral - excuse the Tyson pun, excuse the TSE-laced pun. Bill let genetic engineering lose on NATURE itself.

Our way of life is likely to be more fundamentally transformed in the next several decades than in the previous one thousand years…Tens of thousands of novel transgenic bacteria, viruses, plants and animals could be released into the Earth’s ecosystems…Some of those releases, however, could wreak havoc with the planet’s biospheres. — Jeremy Rifkin, Biotech Century

Bill did this to us, like it was some nothing and he, some big dumb ass Southern boy, just smiling and getting in good with the Big Boys, thinking about as much about the consequences of something this immense and about us human beings out here, as he thought about you, when he was unfaithful with Monica. Just one big fool getting off on the power and used to getting away with things.

Terminator genes, developed by DP&L, a Rose Firm client, prevent seeds from “working” after only one season. Farmers “must” repurchase (patents and suing not certain enough control, it seems). Those “killing” genes pose the apocalyptic risk of breaking out into nature. Natural seeds could fail, too. Nature could fail.

Far-fetched?

GMO fields are already contaminating normal species Berkeley Professor of Microbiology, Ignacio Chapela, wrote an open letter, warning the Mexican government about just this breaking out phenomenon happening in maize

And it has already happened with weeds - pesticide resistant GMO seeds break lose and weeds become pesticide-resistant Superweeds. [here]

But Bill’s USDA spokesman, Willard Phelps said the USDA wanted the technology to be `widely licensed and made expeditiously available to many seed companies.’

Genetic Engineering is often justified as a human technology, one that feeds more people with better food. Nothing could be further from the truth. With very few exceptions, the whole point of genetic engineering is to increase sales of chemicals and bio-engineered products to dependent farmers. — David Ehrenfield: Professor of Biology, Rutgers University [also see previous link]

Hillary, one third of the world’s bee colonies have collapsed [here]. Gone. Farmers in India are killing themselves. Farmers and bees. Since organic farmers in India are fine and organic farmers report no colony collapse [here], what does these farming catatrophes say about “industrial agriculture” [here]

Mad Cow Disease is another direct result of industrial agriculture. And now ……. transnational poultry factories are implicated as the source of bird flu [here]. Small scale poultry farms and wild birds seem not to be the problem [just as small farmers are not the issue in Mad Cow Disease], and yet “initiatives are multiplying to ban outdoor poultry, squeeze out small producers and restock farms with genetically modified chickens. … http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2006/2006-02-27-01.asp “Of the few outbreaks that did occur in [Laos], more than 90% broke out in commercial poultryoperations, not free-ranging flocks.”

Monsanto (and others) is currently working with the USDA to force small farmers to tag every animal with a global tracking device (NAIS - National Animal Identification System). Allegedly related to food safety, Monsanto and others would be creating a vast corporate digital library on every move of small farmers’ livestock.

But small farmers do not create the contaminated environments, do not supply the feed, do not grind up diseased animals into feed (how Mad Cow began) and then sell it. In fact, their farming methods, free range and small scale, are significantly healthier and safer for animals and food than the massive concentration of animals by corporate industrial agriculture.

Monsanto is also aggressively pushing for state laws to limit farmers’ right to choose what to plant and the public’s right to exclude GE plants from their communities.

Cattle bloated by steroids, lapse and loss of 10,000 year old normal seeds [here], immense pollution from factory farms [here], deadly-disease-ridden feed, world-wide bee colony collapse, poisoned soil and depleted water supplies, Superweeds, lawsuits against farmers, loss of family farms, and … India farmers killing themselves in what may be the largest mass suicide in recorded human history (on average … one farmer suicide every 30 minutes since 2002 - The Hindu 1.30.08) - that is industrial agriculture.

Monsanto and Tyson are two of the largest industrial agricultural corporations in the world. Industrial agriculture is represented by your Rose Law Firm.

Your claim to care about food safety is terrifying double-speak given what Bill did and who you take donations from. Your idea of a Department of Food Safety would centralize control of food - in whose corporate connected hands? You talk tough about labeling food - ah, but “foreign” food - a sleight of hand tricking a public desperate for safe US food. You talk about food safety but Bill degraded food in every imaginable way and prevented minimally sane labeling.

I am a person before I am a woman. Your gender means nothing. It is a media distraction. Your policies on health and food and women and children, are meaningless in the face of connections that have threatened those groups profoundly, connections you have never denounced.

Monsanto uses child labor in India, primarily very young girls, exposing them to a lethal pesticide 13-14 hours a day, for pennies in pay. But you take donations from their lobbyists. You say you care about black people but as the poorest people in this country, they are least able to buy organic and are forced to eat the contaminated foods Bill let into our food system. The National Black Farmers Association has a boycott out on all Monsanto products.

Do you eat organic?

So, who are you with, hapless black consumers and black farmers, or Monsanto? Mothers left to give their children rBGH milk, or Monsanto? Women exposed to 7 times greater risk of breast cancer, or Monsanto? Desperate farmers in India and young children forced into child labor in cottonseed factories there, or Monsanto? Animals suffering [here] from lives in filthy cages and disgusting feedlots, shot up with steroids and hormones and antibiotics, or Monsanto? Our children who eat candy with high fructose Bt corn syrup associated with kidney and liver toxicity, or Monsanto?

Edwards was right about your corporate connections. I just didn’t understand until I saw that PBS show and read about Monsanto, how personally affected my children and grandchildren, and all people around the world, have been.

I will not vote for you. I will vote for someone who will commit themselves to work on behalf of small farmers and real food and decent treatment of animals and to end this industrialized agricultural nightmare that is taking us off a cliff.

Linn Cohen-Cole, Atlanta

Disclaimer: I am not a scientist. I have read for months on this subject, and am including only a tiny portion of the horrifying things I have learned. I am expressing my opinion as person and may be wrong. Perhaps things are swell out there and rBGH is fabulous and TSE-laced feed is great, and genetic engineering is the best thing since manna. But I am scared for my family and I have not only a right to say so but an obligation to do so. I am angry that Monsanto was allowed the influence it had and has done the things it definitely seems to have. I am disgusted by industrialization of every tender and beautiful part of our world and hope, for all our children’s sake, we are not too late to pull back.

view Celsias projects related to this topic >>

Obama Says Clinton Should Keep Running

Ellis Dean Hovey — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:22:32 EDT

Obama Says Clinton Should Keep Running
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — Barack Obama refused Saturday to go along with other Democrats who are calling for Hillary Rodham Clinton to step away from the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
"My attitude is Senator Clinton can run as long as she wants," Obama said.
Obama told reporters he did not agree with one of his supporters, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, when he said earlier this week that Clinton cannot win the nomination and should therefore drop out. "I hadn't talked to Pat about it," Obama said.
At stops throughout the day, Clinton raised the question of whether she should leave the race — eliciting loud jeers from supporters.
"There are some people who say we should just stop these elections. 'Enough people have already voted, what's a few million more?'" Clinton said in Louisville, Ky. "I don't know about you but I'm glad Kentucky is going to be voting and you'll be choosing because it's such an important election." The state holds its primary May 20.
Campaigning in Pennsylvania, her husband, Bill Clinton, said party insiders looking to resolve the contest should step back and allow the process to move forward.
"We just need to relax and let this happen. Nobody's talking about wrecking the party," the former president said. "Everywhere I go, all these working people say: 'Don't you dare let her drop out. Don't listen to those people in Washington, they don't represent us.'"
The campaign on Saturday released a fundraising e-mail, signed by Bill Clinton, asking supporters to challenge talk of his wife departing the race by sending a check to her campaign.
"There's no better way to tell Hillary that you support her staying in than to make a contribution to her campaign," he wrote.
Obama offered a bit of tough love to Pennsylvania voters, saying some industrial and manufacturing jobs may not return to this steel region, but others could take their place.
Clinton also stressed job creation at campaign stops in Indiana and Kentucky, vowing to help manufacturers transition to new industries like clean energy and ending tax breaks for American companies that ship jobs overseas.
"I think this election, particularly here in Indiana, is about jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs," the former first lady said.
Jobs and the economy are front and center in the remaining primary contests between the two Democratic hopefuls. Pennsylvania, which holds its primary April 22, has seen its manufacturing base and especially its steel industry weakened in recent decades, as has Indiana, which votes May 6.
While campaigning in Ohio, another big manufacturing state, both Clinton and Obama criticized free trade deals and insisted the other candidate was not as reliable a protector of U.S. jobs. Clinton won that state's March 4 primary.
In Johnstown, a woman employed at a call center told Obama that 200 of her co-workers had lost jobs after the work was outsourced to India. She blamed free trade and asked what the Illinois senator would do about it.
"I don't want to make a promise that I can bring back every job that's left Johnstown. It's just not true. Some of those jobs aren't going to come back," Obama answered.
"What I can do is try ... to create an environment in which jobs are being created," he said, adding that they "may not be the same jobs that left and don't come back."
Speaking in Indianapolis, Clinton tied many of the region's economic woes to U.S. trade policy and to President Bush's laissez-faire approach to China, where numerous America jobs have been shipped in recent years.
"We are now deeply in debt. We owe money to everybody, not just to China but to Mexico and practically any other country you can think of. We are $9 trillion in debt," she said.
Obama, who is on a six-day bus tour through Pennsylvania, toured a factory that makes the wires that eventually become Slinky toys. He played with a Slinky through the visit.
Asked whether voters might be turned off by talk of some jobs not coming back, Obama said he was trying to give the phone worker a clear answer.
"The point I was making is that the same jobs are probably not going to come back. We're not going to suddenly see Bethlehem Steel reopen," he said. "What we're going to see is potentially some specialty steel of the sort that we saw at Johnstown Wire that has created a niche that can grow."
Also Saturday, former Democratic contender John Edwards made his first public comments on the race since dropping out two months ago.
"I have a very high opinion of both of them," Edwards said of Obama and Clinton at the Young Democrats of North Carolina convention. "We would be blessed as a nation to have either one of them as president."
At the same event, Chelsea Clinton said her travels have opened her eyes to sexism.
"I didn't really get how much sexism there still was in our country until I was at a rally with my mom in New Hampshire, and someone came up to me and said, 'I just can't see a woman being commander in chief,'" the former first daughter said.
She has always been supported by both the men and women in her family, she said. "I have been so profoundly more grateful than I have ever been over the past few months for my parents because of that."
© 2008 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

National Academy of Sciences: Science, Evolution, and Creationism

Ellis Dean Hovey — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 23:47:01 EDT

OBAMA 08! (The National Academy of Sciences keeps all US Presidents well-informed.)

Science, Evolution, and Creationism ...
Read this FREE online!
Full Book | PDF Summary | Podcast

The National Academies Press
The National Academies Press (NAP) was created by the National Academies to publish the reports issued by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council, all operating under a charter granted by the Congress of the United States.

Spies Among Us

Ellis Dean Hovey — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 18:41:23 EDT

Spies Among Us
By Laurie Singh - Mar 17th, 2008 at 6:00 am EDT
SEE LINK

Condoleezza Rice Speaks on America’s “Birth Defect”

Ellis Dean Hovey — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 03:23:53 EDT

Mar 28 2008
4:03 pm
Condoleezza Rice Speaks on America’s “Birth Defect”
Two weeks ago, when Barack Obama was on flames for his pastor’s statements, and some, almost equating being black to being anti-American. I wondered what Condoleezza Rice, flying around the world as our Secretary of State, how does that black American feel about race in America?
Yesterday, a Washington Times reporter asked Condoleezza Rice about the upcoming 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s death and how she thinks race relations have developed since then. ~ “Rice hits U.S. ‘birth defect’
Obviously, Barack Obama opened this box, Condoleezza refused to take sides politically, saying only that she heard Barack Obama’s speech and it was “important” that Mr. Obama “gave it for a whole host of reasons.”
Judging by the openness of her answer, calling the history of race in America a “birth defect” and explaining the context of the founders vs. blacks in this country and how it affects generational thinking, even today, it’s obvious she was with Barack all the way.
The preview..
“I sit in my office and the portrait immediately over my shoulder is Thomas Jefferson. And sometimes I think, what would he think of this black woman Secretary of State as his successor? What would he think that the last two successors have been black Americans..”
Take a listen.

Barack Obama on "The View" - March 28,2008

Ellis Dean Hovey — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 21:05:07 EDT

Barack Obama on "The View" (FOUR PARTS - March 28,2008):
1 - Hot Topics-The Hotel Bible-Pastor Wright
2 - Obama and his relationship with Pastor Wright
3 - The first three things you will do
4 - Campaign Tone and Taxes
Provided by YouTube user pe11201
REF LINK

Dem Chairman Dean Says Attacks Getting Too Personal

Ellis Dean Hovey — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:15:11 EDT

Dean Says Attacks Getting Too Personal

HILLARY’S STACK OF LIES

Ellis Dean Hovey — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 09:08:52 EDT

HILLARY’S
STACK
OF LIES!

LATEST POLLS AND DELEGATE TOTALS

Ellis Dean Hovey — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 03:01:25 EDT

LATEST POLLS AND DELEGATE TOTALS

VIDEO PREVIEWS: Obama will be on "The View" 3/28

Ellis Dean Hovey — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 02:13:59 EDT

----- Original Message -----
From: SisObama08
To: Diversity4Obama
Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2008 10:43 PM
Subject: [DiversityforObama] VIDEO PREVIEWS: Obama will be on "The View" 3/28
This is a Must See on Friday. Especially how these women have been so anti-Obama and I actually never watch this show. A video preview shows them almost flirting with Obama. Don't forget to see or set your machines.
http://abc.go.com/daytime/theview/index
Sis

Does Hillary hear only what she wants to? - or - Is Hillary hearing things?

Ellis Dean Hovey — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:18:59 EDT

Democratic race over? Clinton doesn't think so
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent
Thu Mar 27, 11:45 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Somebody forgot to tell Hillary Clinton the Democratic presidential race is over and Barack Obama won.
Obama has captured more state contests, more votes and more of the pledged convention delegates who will help decide which Democrat faces Republican Sen. John McCain in November's presidential election.
But Clinton, a New York senator who has flirted with disaster before in the back-and-forth nominating battle with Obama, shrugs off growing predictions of doom and still sees at least a narrow path to victory.
"I hear it in the atmosphere," Clinton said of the increasingly loud chatter about whether she should drop out and let Democrats focus on the general election campaign.
"But the most common thing that people say to me ... is 'Don't give up, keep going. We're with you.' And I feel really good about that because that's what I intend to do," she told reporters on Tuesday.
Clinton has not been hearing those words of encouragement from a chorus of media commentators and Obama supporters who have questioned why she is pursuing her uphill fight to catch the Illinois senator.
The Politico newspaper declared Clinton "has virtually no chance of winning." A New York Times columnist called her campaign "the audacity of hopelessness" -- a pun on Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope."
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Cabinet member for her husband Bill, the former president, said it was time for Democrats to rally around Obama -- and was called a "Judas" by Clinton loyalist James Carville for his views.
Clinton and her campaign aides have worked hard to debunk the idea the race is over, holding daily conference calls to tout their viability and issuing a lengthy memo to rebut the "myth" that Clinton cannot win.
"In a campaign with dozens of unexpected twists and turns, bold prognostications should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism," the memo said.
But Clinton needs almost everything to go her way in the next few months.
She had a setback last week when her push for revotes in Michigan and Florida failed. Her victories there did not count because the contests were not sanctioned by the national party. She also faced an uproar this week over her misstatements about coming under sniper fire on her arrival in Bosnia in 1996.
TARGET: SUPERDELEGATES
The Clinton case for victory in the Democratic nomination fight is built on the backs of nearly 800 superdelegates -- elected officials and party insiders who are free to support anyone.
With 10 nominating contests remaining, Clinton lags Obama by more than 100 in the count of pledged delegates won in the state-by-state voting since January and has little chance of catching Obama.
But neither candidate is on track to win the 2,024 delegates needed to clinch the nomination -- making superdelegates the ultimate kingmakers.
Both camps have wooed them heavily, with Obama contending they should follow the will of Democratic voters. By the last nominating contests on June 3 in Montana and South Dakota, Obama says, he will have won the most votes and delegates.
Clinton says she offers the best chance of beating McCain in November.
To help her make that argument she needs to close the gap on Obama by rolling up big wins in many of the remaining contests, beginning on April 22 with Pennsylvania.
"The Obama campaign is trying to persuade everybody that this is over. I hope they don't get their hands on the federal budget because they surely can't count," said Clinton adviser Harold Ickes.
"We think that both candidates are going to be within a hair of each other by the time the last state votes. At the end of this process, neither candidate will have the nomination" and superdelegates will decide," Ickes said.
Clinton says she has won more big, diverse states crucial to Democratic hopes in November like Ohio, New Jersey and California, proving her worth in a general election battle.
The longer she continues, the more chance Obama might slip up and make a mistake that turns the tide of the campaign. Clinton has made it clear she will not consider bowing out of the race until all of the states have concluded their voting.
At that point, Democrats hope, a winner will emerge without the battle continuing all the way to the August party convention in Denver.
"I think that what we have to wait and see is what happens in the next three months, and there's been a lot of talk about what-if, what-if, what-if. Let's wait until we get some votes," Clinton said.
(Editing by Patricia Wilson and Frances Kerry)
(To read more about the U.S. political campaign, visit Reuters "Tales from the Trail: 2008" online at http: blogs.reuters.com/trail08/)

FROM LINK

Bloomberg Looks Ready To Endorse Obama

Ellis Dean Hovey — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:35:20 EDT

Bloomberg Looks Ready To Endorse Obama

Thursday, March 27, 2008 9:09 AM

By: Newsmax Staff

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s introduction of Barack Obama at a speech is sparking speculation that he’s about to endorse Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination.
This is the second time Bloomberg has appeared with Obama at an event in the past four months, according to CBS News.
Obama on Thursday is delivering a speech on the economy at Cooper Union College in Manhattan.
Bloomberg, who had considered running for the White House as an independent, has said his endorsement is up for grabs and he hoped the candidates would adopt a bipartisan approach.
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

FROM LINK

HILLARY'S IRISH PEACE FANTASY

Ellis Dean Hovey — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:13:20 EDT

HILLARY'S IRISH PEACE FANTASY

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

Published on FOXNews.com on March 21, 2008.

"I was deeply involved in the Irish peace process"

Those words were uttered by Hillary Clinton — with a straight face!

Ever since she began her campaign for the presidency, Hillary and Bill Clinton have both boldly — and falsely — claimed that she played an important role in the Irish peace process. Suddenly rewriting history, they’ve claimed that her success in bringing peace to Ireland is all part of the vast experience that makes her qualified for the White House.

It’s funny that they both forgot to mention her magical diplomatic skills in their respective memoirs.

But now her recently released White House schedules show that Hillary’s assertions are one big fantasy. Hillary’s role in all of the Irish visits were no different than any other first ladies, the ones who didn’t think that accompanying the president to a foreign country was a major diplomatic coup.

The daily schedules show that Hillary visited Ireland on numerous occasions with the President. For the most part, her role was to stand next to him, shake hands, and occasionally introduce him before he gave a speech. Sometimes, she met with women’s and children’s groups.

For example, on a trip to Ireland in late November and early December in 1995, she attended the speech given by the president in Derry, Northern Ireland. Her role: to shake hands after the speech. Later that day, the first couple traveled to Belfast, where they lit the Christmas tree outside of City Hall. After the Lord Mayor announced the winners of the annual "letter writing and poster contest," Hillary read excerpts from the children’s letters.

When the Clintons flew to Dublin the next day, Mrs. Clinton toured the National Gallery, where she signed the guest book. In the afternoon, she did give a 25 minute speech to about 350 women from all over Ireland. This meeting seems to be at the heart of her exaggerated contentions that she helped the peace process by bringing both sides together. But published reports indicate that the women advocating peace in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic were well known to each other long before the meeting. And a 25 minute speech outside of government channels was hardly the cause of the end of a bitterness that began almost a hundred years ago. Immediately afterwards, she introduced the president to a crowd of 30,000 people at Trinity College, where he spoke to the Irish people.

In 1997, she participated in a roundtable discussion with students in Northern Ireland and met with representatives of various Youth Councils.

In September 1998, she accompanied the president when he made a speech to the people of Northern Ireland. Noble Peace Price Laureate David Trimbell was present. He recently had this to say about Hillary’s role in the peace process:

“Hillary Clinton had no direct role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland and is a "wee bit silly" for exaggerating the part she played.”

He continued:

"I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around," Her recent statements about being deeply involved were merely "the sort of thing people put in their canvassing leaflets" during elections. "She visited when things were happening, saw what was going on, she can certainly say it was part of her experience. I don’t want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player.”

When the President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, visited the White House, Hillary was not invited to her Oval Office meeting with the president. Instead, she hosted an informal coffee for Mr. Robinson.

How could they discuss important peace matters without Hillary?

On another trip, in October 1999, when she was already a Senate candidate, Hillary gave a Millenium Speech in Galway.

In January 1999, she did a "drop-by" for 15 minutes to say hello to women from Northern Ireland. Later, in June, she did another 15 minute "drop-by" to see the Children’s Friendship Project of Northern Ireland.

After she was elected to the Senate, in December 2000, she attended a reception in Dublin for prominent Irish women, visited the Guinness Store, and the Belfast Opera. She made some short remarks at the Opera.

On October 24, 1997, Hillary received a briefing on Ireland from a group that included George Mitchell, Larry Butler of the NSC, and Randy Bell, from the Ireland Office of the State Department and members of her staff that was held immediately before meeting with Mary Robinson, then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. A week later, she went to Ireland for a dinner at Dublin Castle for 22 people, and a roundtable discussion with 10 students.

Does that sound like the schedule of a woman who was instrumental in the Irish peace process?

By the way, even with her limited schedule that did not involve the president, Hillary routinely took five or six of her own staff people on the Irish trips.

But her claim to any role in the Irish peace process is pure fantasy.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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HILLARY IN BOSNIA: THE TRUE STORY

Ellis Dean Hovey — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 06:31:33 EDT

UPDATES:

(JUST FOR FUN) HILLARY IN BOSNIA: THE TRUE STORY

(DEAD SERIOUS) HILLARY IN BOSNIA: THE TRUE STORY

Hillary Clinton "misspoke" (LIED) about sniper fire. She "misspoke" (LIED) a second time trying to cover her first lie. Then "misspoke" (LIED) a third time when she told the world that she speaks "millions" of words per day. Do the math.

REFER TO PREVIOUS BLOG ENTRIES:

Just what we need in the White House -- another pathological liar . . .

Clinton: Oops, she did it again! Does she talk too much or what?"

Just what we need in the White House -- another pathological liar . . .

Ellis Dean Hovey — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:43:34 EDT

"We would NEVER Expose a First Lady to Sniper Fire!"

SEE: YOUTUBE VIDEO

REF: MY PRIOR BLOG POST

VETERANS TO PROTEST JOHN MCCAIN IN SALT LAKE CITY THURSDAY MARCH 25TH '08

Ellis Dean Hovey — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:00:59 EDT

George Muller, U.S.A.F. Lt. Col. (ret), of Veterans for Peace has initiated a protest of John McCain who will be in Salt Lake on Thursday March 27th '08.
The protest starts at 10:30am in front of the Grand America Hotel at 555 South Main Street where McCain is participating in a fundraising event.
Look for George's "Arlington Utah" combat boot remembrance of U.S. soldiers fallen in Iraq. It's the trailer display you have seen at recent protests and events.

Clinton: Oops, she did it again! Does she talk too much or what?"

Ellis Dean Hovey — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:55:44 EDT

Clinton 'Misspoke' About '96 Bosnia Trip

By ANN SANNER, Associated Press Writer

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Hillary Rodham Clinton visits Montgomery Community College in Blue Bell, Pa. She corrected the Bosnia account in Philadelphia. Associated Press photo by Charles Dharapak

Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign said she "misspoke" last week when saying she had landed under sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia as first lady in March 1996. She later characterized the episode as a "misstatement" and a "minor blip."

The Obama campaign suggested the statement was a deliberate exaggeration by Clinton, who often cites the goodwill trip with her daughter and several celebrities as an example of her foreign policy experience.

During a speech last Monday on Iraq, she said of the Bosnia trip: "I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base." (YouTube video of Clinton's Bosnian trip: www.youtube.com/user/PonyGumbo )

According to an Associated Press story at the time, Clinton was placed under no extraordinary risks on the trip. And one of her companions, comedian Sinbad, told The Washington Post he has no recollection either of the threat or reality of gunfire.

When asked Monday about the New York senator's remarks about the trip, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson pointed to Clinton's written account of it in her book, "Living History," in which she described a shortened welcoming ceremony at Tuzla Air Base, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

"Due to reports of snipers in the hills around the airstrip, we were forced to cut short an event on the tarmac with local children, though we did have time to meet them and their teachers and to learn how hard they had worked during the war to continue classes in any safe spot they could find," Clinton wrote.

"That is what she wrote in her book," Wolfson said. "That is what she has said many, many times and on one occasion she misspoke."

Asked about the issue during a meeting with the Philadelphia Daily News' editorial board on Monday, Clinton said she "misspoke."

"I went to 80 countries, you know. I gave contemporaneous accounts, I wrote about a lot of this in my book. You know, I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things — millions of words a day — so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement," she said.

A spokesman for rival Barack Obama's campaign questioned whether Clinton misspoke, saying her comments came in what appeared to be prepared remarks for the Iraq speech. His campaign's statement included a link to the speech on Clinton's campaign Web site with her account of running to the cars. Clinton's campaign said what is on the Web site is not the prepared text, but a transcript of her remarks, including comments before the speech in which she talked about the trip to Bosnia.

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a written statement that Clinton's Bosnia story "joins a growing list of instances in which Senator Clinton has exaggerated her role in foreign and domestic policymaking."

The Obama campaign statement also links to a CBS News video of the Bosnia trip posted on YouTube, which shows Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, walking across the tarmac from a large cargo plane, smiling and waving, and stopping to shake hands with Bosnia's acting president and greet an 8-year-old girl.

"This is something that the Obama campaign wants to push 'cause they have nothing positive to say about their candidate," Wolfson said Monday.

Clinton's written account contradicts her comments last Monday about the welcoming ceremony.

Just after the speech, Clinton reaffirmed the account of running from the plane to the cars when she was asked about it during a news conference. She said was moved into the cockpit of the C-17 cargo plane as they were flying into Tuzla Air Base.

"Everyone else was told to sit on their bulletproof vests," Clinton said. "And we came in, in an evasive maneuver. ... There was no greeting ceremony, and we basically were told to run to our cars. Now, that is what happened."

Former Army Secretary Togo West, who accompanied Clinton to Bosnia, said he was not surprised "that there could be confusion" when someone who has taken a number of trips tries to recall details of a particular trip 12 years earlier.

"The important thing is that she was there. Our soldiers saw she was there and heard her and knew that our country cared about them and what they were doing," West told the AP during a telephone interview.

___

Clinton: "I say a lot of things — millions of words a day . . ."
LET'S DO THE SIMPLE MATH:
"Millions" is at least 2,000,000 words per day.
2,000,000 words divided by 24 hours per day equals 83,333 words per hour.
83,333 words per hour divided by 60 minutes equals 1,388 words per minute.
1,388 words per minute divided by 60 seconds equals 23 plus word per second.
CAN YOU IMAGINE SAYING TWENTY-THREE WORDS PER SECOND NONSTOP FOR TWENTY-FOUR HOURS?
HILLARY CLINTON MUST TELL HERSELF NOT TO EXAGGERATE AT LEAST A ZILLION TIMES PER DAY!
OOPS, SHE BLIPPED AGAIN!

IN MEMORIAM: 70,000 Innocent Iraqi Citizens Dead To US Cluster Bombs

Ellis Dean Hovey — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:31:12 EDT

RE:

A MESSAGE ESPECIALLY FOR ANYONE WHO WILL BE IN UTAH ON MARCH 25TH '08:

and

MEDIA RELEASE: PEOPLE FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE OF UTAH

-----

Alyce Rocco wrote: Yesterday (3/24/08) at 1:16 pm EDT

"70,000 innocent Iraqi citizens dead to US cluster bombs."

PeskyAtheist replied today:
Yes, we tend to think only of our own. And it is so easy for too many of us to ignore or forget all the innocent Iraqis who've died or been maimed as a result of the un-American aggression of Bush & Company. It's as if so many American people also think that dying and suffering is an acceptable way of life for the Iraqi People. I agree with you, let us remember the innocent Iraqi People who also wanted/want to stay alive to enjoy peace, prosperity, good health and happiness.
LET US ALSO MEMORIALIZE THE INNOCENT IRAQI PEOPLE WHO HAVE ALSO SUFFERED & DIED.

Associated Press: Obama in US Virgin Islands

Ellis Dean Hovey — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:42:51 EDT

Obama in US Virgin Islands
48 minutes ago
CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama is spending some down time in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Obama was keeping such a low profile that his presidential campaign would not say where he is staying, and local officials were also mum. An official at Government House in the capital, Charlotte Amalie, would only confirm that Obama was in St. Thomas, the most populated island. Tourists said they spotted him on the beach Sunday.
The Illinois senator is popular in the U.S. Virgin Islands, which in February gave him three delegates in the race for the Democratic nomination. Rival Hillary Rodham Clinton did not win a delegate at the caucuses. Six superdelegates will go to the August national convention; four have backed Clinton and two have endorsed Obama.

FROM LINK

MEDIA RELEASE: PEOPLE FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE OF UTAH

Ellis Dean Hovey — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:58:11 EDT

Utah Papers
Salt Lake Tribune: US death toll in Iraq war hits 4,000
Deseret News: Green Zone in Iraq is hit hard
-----------------------
Around the World:
Reuters: U.S. toll in Iraq hits 4,000
Aljazeera: US death toll in Iraq hits 4,000
Times Online: Roadside bomb takes American death toll in Iraq to 4,000
Bloomberg.com: Four U.S. Soldiers Die in Iraq; War Toll Is at 4,000
Los Angeles Times: U.S. toll in Iraq reaches 4,000

MEDIA RELEASE : PEOPLE FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE OF UTAH

MEMORIAL VIGIL TO COMMEMORATE THE 4000TH U.S. SERVICE MEMBER DEATH

6:00 pm TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 2008

Sidewalk in front of Federal Building ? 100 South State Street ? Salt Lake City, Utah

Contact information: 801-201-0219 or 801-631-2998 - info@utahpeace.org

03.23.08 Salt Lake City ? People for Peace and Justice of Utah (PPJ) is organizing a memorial vigil to commemorate the 4000th U.S. Soldier Death in Iraq and all the lives lost in the Iraq War. This event will be held as thousands of people across the country will engage in memorial vigils or other events this week to commemorate those lost and call for peace in Iraq.

"While the 4,000th death is no more or less important than any of the other deaths, it is only natural to pause and think about the human cost of war when we reach such a grim milestone," states Deanna Taylor, participant with PPJ. "Every life counts, whether it's one of 4,000 U.S military deaths or one of the more than 1,000,000 Iraqi deaths."

Vigil goers are asked to bring signs and battery operated candles. There may be some speakers during the vigil.

Participants will also send a message to the Bush administration, as further preparations are being implemented to send more troops to Iraq:

No more troops to Iraq - End it now. Stop the War. Sto the Lies.

Original Announcement since January:

Since January, People for Peace and Justice of Utah has been announcing that when the news hits the papers that the 4,000th U.S. soldier has been killed in Iraq, we will hold a vigil the DAY AFTER that announcement in Utah papers.

It looks like, based on today's(Sunday, March 23rd) pending confirmed numbers, that announcement will occur tomorrow.(see chart below) in the Utah papers.

***Therefore*** Please make plans to attend our vigil on Tuesday, March 25th, 6pm, 100 State Street, on the sidewalk in front of the Federal Building in downtown Salt Lake city.

March 16, 2008: 4000th U.S. Solider death is fast approaching.
Listen to the psa - http://www.utahpeace.org/4000soldiervigilmix.wav

Gather for a memorial vigil the day after the newspapers publish this grim milestone.
Sidewalk in front of Federal Building, 100 South State Street, SLC
Bring signs, battery candles, flashlights

More information:

Iraq Coalition Casualty Count: http://icasualties.org/oif/

Eileen McCabe?801-201-0219; Deanna Taylor, 801-631-2998, info@utahpeace.org

www.utahpeace.org

Excellent photo and interview opportunities.

Hillary versus Barack

Ellis Dean Hovey — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:31:49 EDT

Hillary v. Barack

Stephen Colbert has set up a contest to help students in PA.

Please spread THIS far and wide everybody!

Letter from Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright to Jodi Kantor of the New York Times

Ellis Dean Hovey — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:07:12 EDT

March 11, 2007

Jodi Kantor
The New York Times
9 West 43rd Street
New York,
New York 10036-3959

Dear Jodi:

Thank you for engaging in one of the biggest misrepresentations of the truth I have ever seen in sixty-five years. You sat and shared with me for two hours. You told me you were doing a “Spiritual Biography” of Senator Barack Obama. For two hours, I shared with you how I thought he was the most principled individual in public service that I have ever met.

For two hours, I talked with you about how idealistic he was. For two hours I shared with you what a genuine human being he was. I told you how incredible he was as a man who was an African American in public service, and as a man who refused to announce his candidacy for President until Carol Moseley Braun indicated one way or the other whether or not she was going to run.

I told you what a dreamer he was. I told you how idealistic he was. We talked about how refreshing i t would be for someone who knew about Islam to be in the Oval Office. Your own question to me was, Didn’t I think it would be incredible to have somebody in the Oval Office who not only knew about Muslims, but had living and breathing Muslims in his own family? I told you how important it would be to have a man who not only knew the difference between Shiites and Sunnis prior to 9/11/01 in the Oval Office, but also how important it would be to have a man who knew what Sufism was; a man who understood that there were different branches of Judaism; a man who knew the difference between Hasidic Jews, Orthodox Jews, Conservative Jews and Reformed Jews; and a man who was a devout Christian, but who did not prejudge others because they believed something other than what he believed.

I talked about how rare it was to meet a man whose Christianity was not just “in word only.” I talked about Barack being a person who lived his faith and did not argue his faith. I talked a bout Barack as a person who did not draw doctrinal lines in the sand nor consign other people to hell if they did not believe what he believed.

Out of a two-hour conversation with you about Barack’s spiritual journey and my protesting to you that I had not shaped him nor formed him, that I had not mentored him or made him the man he was, even though I would love to take that credit, you did not print any of that. When I told you, using one of your own Jewish stories from the Hebrew Bible as to how God asked Moses, “What is that in your hand?,” that Barack was like that when I met him. Barack had it “in his hand.” Barack had in his grasp a uniqueness in terms of his spiritual development that one is hard put to find in the 21st century, and you did not print that.

As I was just starting to say a moment ago, Jodi, out of two hours of conversation I spent approximately five to seven minutes on Barack’s taking advice from one of his trusted campaign people a nd deeming it unwise to make me the media spotlight on the day of his announcing his candidacy for the Presidency and what do you print? You and your editor proceeded to present to the general public a snippet, a printed “sound byte” and a titillating and tantalizing article about his disinviting me to the Invocation on the day of his announcing his candidacy.

I have never been exposed to that kind of duplicitous behavior before, and I want to write you publicly to let you know that I do not approve of it and will not be party to any further smearing of the name, the reputation, the integrity or the character of perhaps this nation’s first (and maybe even only) honest candidate offering himself for public service as the person to occupy the Oval Office.

Your editor is a sensationalist. For you to even mention that makes me doubt your credibility, and I am looking forward to see how you are going to butcher what else I had to say concerning Senator Obama’s “S pi ritual Biography.” Our Conference Minister, the Reverend Jane Fisler Hoffman, a white woman who belongs to a Black church that Hannity of “Hannity and Colmes” is trying to trash, set the record straight for you in terms of who I am and in terms of who we are as the church to which Barack has belonged for over twenty years.

The president of our denomination, the Reverend John Thomas, has offered to try to help you clarify in your confused head what Trinity Church is even though you spent the entire weekend with us setting me up to interview me for what turned out to be a smear of the Senator; and yet The New York Times continues to roll on making the truth what it wants to be the truth. I do not remember reading in your article that Barack had apologized for listening to that bad information and bad advice. Did I miss it? Or did your editor cut it out? Either way, you do not have to worry about hearing anything else from me for you to edit or “spin” because you a re more interested in journalism than in truth.

Forgive me for having a momentary lapse. I forgot that The New York Times was leading the bandwagon in trumpeting why it is we should have gone into an illegal war. The New York Times became George Bush and the Republican Party’s national “blog.” The New York Times played a role in the outing of Valerie Plame. I do not know why I thought The New York Times had actually repented and was going to exhibit a different kind of behavior.

Maybe it was my faith in the Jewish Holy Day of Roshashana. Maybe it was my being caught up in the euphoria of the Season of Lent; but whatever it is or was, I was sadly mistaken. There is no repentance on the part of The New York Times. There is no integrity when it comes to The Times. You should do well with that paper, Jodi. You looked me straight in my face and told me a lie!

Sincerely and respectfully yours,

Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. ,Senior Pastor
Trinity United Church of Christ

-----

SOURCE OF ABOVE LETTER:
----- Original Message -----
From: Monique Hayes
To: One Million MySpace Friends for Obama'08!
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2008 6:39 AM
Subject: [OneMillionMySpaceFriendsforObama08] Copy of Rev. Wright's letter to Jodi Kanton of the NY Times

A MESSAGE ESPECIALLY FOR ANYONE WHO WILL BE IN UTAH ON MARCH 25TH '08:

Ellis Dean Hovey — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 09:53:22 EDT

A SPECIAL MESSAGE BELOW FOR THE PEOPLE OF UTAH AND FOR LIKE-MINDED VISITORS:

March 23rd, 2008
By ROBERT H. REID – 36 minutes ago

BAGHDAD (AP) — A roadside bomb killed four U.S. soldiers in Baghdad on Sunday, the military said, pushing the overall American death toll in the five-year war to at least 4,000.The grim milestone came on the same day that rockets and mortars ... http://votersforpeace.us/index2.php

-----

Dear Everyone:

Since January, People for Peace and Justice of Utah has been announcing that when the news hits the papers that the 4,000th U.S. soldier has been killed in Iraq, we will hold a vigil the DAY AFTER that announcement in Utah papers.

It looks like, based on today's pending confirmed numbers, that announcement will occur tomorrow.(see chart below) in the Utah papers.

***Therefore*** Please make plans to attend our vigil on Tuesday, March 25th, 6pm, 100 State Street, on the sidewalk in front of the Federal Building in downtown Salt Lake city.

Original Announcement:
4000th U.S. Solider death is fast approaching.
UPDATE: As of March 23, 2008, the DOD confirmed death toll of U.S. Soldiers in Iraq is 3,996
Gather for a memorial vigil the day after the newspapers publish this grim milestone.
6pm - Sidewalk in front of Federal Building, 100 South State Street, SLC
Bring signs, battery candles, flashlights
Info: 801-631-2998 or Info.
Listen to the psa - http://www.utahpeace.org/4000soldiervigilmix.wav

-----

Greetings.
The following notice is courtesy Kim Spangrude:
To honor the 4,000 fallen American soldiers, and the countless Iraqi individuals who have also lost their lives in this ongoing battle, we will be gathering in front of the Federal Building in Salt Lake City tonight (Monday, March 24, 2008) at 6:00 p.m. to hold a solemn witness to the war in Iraq. Bring candles; dress in black is encouraged, and signage respectful to the occasion is welcome. A gong will be softly struck during the vigil.
With Peace, Kim Spangrude
Utah MFSO (Military Families Speak Out)Greetings.
The following notice is courtesy Kim Spangrude:
To honor the 4,000 fallen American soldiers, and the countless Iraqi individuals who have also lost their lives in this ongoing battle, we will be gathering in front of the Federal Building in Salt Lake City tonight (Monday, March 24, 2008) at 6:00 p.m. to hold a solemn witness to the war in Iraq. Bring candles; dress in black is encouraged, and signage respectful to the occasion is welcome. A gong will be softly struck during the vigil.
With Peace, Kim Spangrude
Utah MFSO (Military Families Speak Out)

Winter Soldier: Ignored by the Media and the Presidential Candidates

Ellis Dean Hovey — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:27:48 EDT

March 23 2008

Winter Soldier: Ignored by the Media and the Presidential Candidates
By Joshua Frank / March 19th, 2008

It could have been the defining moment of the campaign season. But last weekend’s Iraq Winter Solider Hearings were not only ignored by the corporate press, they were also snubbed by the mainstream candidates including alleged antiwar Democrat, Barack Obama.

None of this should come as much of a surprise if you’ve been watching Obama backpedal over the last few months. Somehow the Democratic frontrunner seems to believe Hillary’s defeat will only come about if he steers clear of a legitimate peace platform, merely paying lip-service to the conflicts in the Middle East instead.

While John McCain pronounces the US will be in Iraq for ten more bloody decades, Hillary and Obama aren’t raising any qualms in their policy papers. In fact, as author Jeremy Scahill has pointed out, Obama’s plan for Iraq not only includes continued funding for the gargantuan US Embassy in Baghdad, the senator also wants to leave at least 40,000 troops to roam about the country and allow mercenary forces like Blackwater to operate above the law indefinitely. Hillary Clinton, of course, seconds Obama’s thirst for more occupation and both senators aren’t the least bit hesitant to leave “all options on the table” in regard to Iran.

Warmongers all of them.

Sadly, many have unwittingly gulped the Kool-Aid this year, swallowing the notion that Barack Obama somehow represents a mild, pragmatic antiwar position. Even Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo, who usually provides keen insight into our militarized political sleaze, believes Obama may be the real deal.

“Clearly, Obama is the candidate the neoconservatives fear and loathe: the loathing is on account of his antiwar views, at least when it comes to Iraq, and the fear stems from the fact that campaigning against him will be difficult,” Raimondo recently wrote. “Hillary they can handle: she’ll mobilize the troops and weld together the fractured Republican coalition in opposition.”

The Republican establishment certainly deems Obama a serious threat. Not for the reasons Raimondo notes, however. The neocons fear Obama because of his grassroots support, not his “antiwar views”. Simply put: Obama is not antiwar but his following seems to be. At least when it comes to the turmoil in Iraq. But a true antiwar movement should not get behind a candidate that promises to pander to Israel and continue an aggressive policy toward Iran — which includes threatening to murder the poor bastards if they don’t comply with our hypocritical demands.

On the contrary, those who oppose war ought to oppose candidates that support Empire in any of its ugly forms.

The differences between the big three campaigns at this point are only marked by rhetorical persuasions and not on the ground strategy. Iran will be threatened, Israel will be funded, and the war in Iraq will rage on despite it all.

Movements are most effective when they remain independent, refusing to wrangle their pleas in the circus of electoral politics. The tearful testimonies given by our bold veterans during last weekend’s hearings are an indication that dissent is growing, not only among the public, but also among the military. And that’s a good thing. Americans are becoming fed up with perpetual war and the political machinery that enables it.

Without a doubt Barack Obama would love to capitalize on this mounting disgust. But co-opting our efforts won’t end the war, it will simply finish off the movement that is seeking to end it.

Source: Dissident Voice

Joshua Frank is co-editor of Dissident Voice and author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush (Common Courage Press, 2005), and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the forthcoming Red State Rebels, to be published by AK Press in June 2008. Read other articles by Joshua.

Pentagon will not send Adm. Fallon to Congress on Iraq

Ellis Dean Hovey — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:10:46 EDT

March 23, 2008

Every American,

I am writing to you because there is an urgent need for action today.

The Pentagon has decided not to allow the outgoing Commander of the U.S. Central Command, who was responsible for the overall military strategy and actions in the Middle East, to testify before Congress. See article below for details.

This is a time of critical foreign policy decision making and the American public needs to have testimony under oath from Admiral Fallon. News reports indicate Admiral Fallon left due to disputes with the White House over whether a military attack on Iran should be pursued.

The U.S. should not move toward a military attack on Iran without public discourse on the subject. These should include congressional hearings where people like Admiral Fallon testify under oath about whether opening a third front of combat makes sense at a time when things are going so poorly in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

We request you do the following (doing all three will take less than one minute!):

Thank you for your time. We appreciate you taking action on this important request.

Sincerely,
Kevin Zeese
Executive Director
VotersForPeace

--------------------------------------------------------------

Pentagon will not send Adm. Fallon to Congress on Iraq

REUTERS
Reuters North American News Service

Mar 21, 2008 12:06 EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Adm. William Fallon, who is resigning after a magazine reported he was challenging the White House over Iran, will not appear before Congress to discuss the war in Iraq, the Pentagon said Friday.

Only Gen. David Petraeus, top U.S. officer in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker will go to Capitol Hill in April to update lawmakers on the war, said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell.

"I know there have been requests in fact from members of Congress to have Admiral Fallon testify with Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker and I can tell you Admiral Fallon will not be testifying," Morrell said.

Fallon, commander of U.S. Central Command headquarters responsible for the Middle East, said earlier this month that he would quit after Esquire magazine described him as urging President Bush to avoid war with Iran.

Fallon cooperated with the author during the article's preparation but strongly criticized the story after it appeared.

He will hand responsibility to his deputy by the end of March but will remain an active-duty four-star officer.

Petraeus and Crocker are expected to testify to Congress in early April, offering lawmakers their first update on the war since the two went to Capitol Hill in September.

"The process that we used last time worked quite well and we're going to stick with that again this time," Morrell said.

Morrell pinned the decision against Fallon's testimony to his resignation, saying Fallon would no longer be acting Central Command commander.

Asked if the Pentagon was concerned that lawmakers would use Fallon's appearance to ask questions about Iran, Morrell said, no. (Reporting by Kristin Roberts, Editing by Jackie Frank)

Source: Reuters North American News Service

Take the VotersForPeace Pledge! "I will only vote for or support federal candidates who make a speedy end to the war in Iraq, and preventing any future war of aggression, a public position in his or her campaign."

VotersForPeace
2842 North Calvert Street
Baltimore, MD 21218
301-270-2355

Copyright 2006 - 2008 VotersForPeace.US All rights reserved

Recruit This Young Musician For Obama!

Ellis Dean Hovey — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 20:38:39 EDT

Folks, this is just a temporary message.

You really must hear this young man in the UK play his keyboard: http://www.blogtv.com/Shows/48407

What Jeremiah A. Wright REALLY Said:

Ellis Dean Hovey — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 04:55:50 EDT

FOX NEWS Lied On Barack Obama's Pastor Jeremiah A. Wright!
FOX NEWS, Tell The WHOLE Story About Barack Obama's Pastor Jeremiah A. Wright!

PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT:

Ellis Dean Hovey — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 19:30:01 EDT

Greetings. This is a long announcement and very short notice, but it looks like something well worth the time, if you can fit it in.

=================================

Wheels of Justice will roll into town this coming week. The educational tour in a bio-diesel bus always includes speakers who can talk about their grass-roots solidarity work against the occupations in Iraq and in Palestine. There are five pages of brief bio's of activists involved at <http://www.justicewheels.org/> - among them are Iraq Veterans Against the War founding member Kelly Dougherty, Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness, Anna Baltzer and Joe Carr.

Coming to Utah next week are Ed Kinane who was in Iraq most of 2003 - before, during and after the U.S. invasion - and journalist Mark Turner who just returned from nine months in the West Bank of occupied Palestine. Hannah Mermelstein takes Mark's place after Tuesday (read their activist bio's at the justicewheels website, excerpts are below).

Bus organizer for the Utah segment of their travels is Henry Norr. Henry was a technology reporter and regular columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle in 2003; he was fired after getting arrested in protests against the U.S. invasion. The Chronicle was already unhappy with him for his public speaking on his International Solidarity Movement trip to Palestine. Henry had been in Palestine again before the end of 2003 when the Chronicle made a generous settlement to end his lawsuit against the newspaper.

Bus driver Bill Hill spent time in Federal prison after blocking the doors to the Federal building in his home town of Tucson, Arizona to protest the 1991 Gulf War. A military veteran who drove a tank in Vietnam, Bill now also drives a bus for the Pastors for Peace.

You are invited to meet these inspiring activists who will be in Conference Room A of the Salt Lake downtown public library at 7pm on Monday evening March 24.

They are also making presentations on Tuesday 12noon in room 403 of the Computer Science building at UVSC/UVU in Orem and on Thursday 12noon in room 161 of the Union Building at the UofUtah.
___________________

Mark Turner is a human rights activist and the founder of the Research Journalism Initiative, an educational media exchange designed to foster better understanding of international conflict issues. Mark recently returned from a nine month stay in the West Bank, Palestine, where he has been engaged in non-violent direct action against violations of international human rights law since 2002. Mark is the director of Ripples Cross, a full length documentary about the experiences of foreign activists in Palestine. His own video footage of Israeli military incursions into the West Bank city of Nablus and its refugee camps has been published by media outlets across the world including the BBC, al Jazeera, Reuters and the Associated Press. The Research Journalism Initiative is the continuation of Mark's work to support non-violent conflict resolution and reconciliation through education, and to build alternatives to the established corporate media in the United States.

Ed Kinane, 62, has long been committed to nonviolence and social justice. Ed is a retired educator. He used to teach math and biology in a one-room Quaker school in rural Kenya and anthropology in a community college near Seattle. He is also a writer of letters to the editor, op-eds, articles and reviews. Off and on since the seventies he has been an editor of the Syracuse Peace Council's Peace Newsletter.

During the late eighties and early nineties Ed worked with Peace Brigades International providing protective accompaniment to local activists in Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti and Sri Lanka threatened by death squads (some financed by U.S. military aid). Ed was chair of PBI's Sri Lanka Project and a member of the PBI national coordinating committee.

During the mid- and late-nineties Ed worked closely with School of the Americas Watch, a grassroots organization seeking to expose and close the U.S. Army's notorious anti-insurgency training school at Fort Benning, Georgia. For his protests against the SOA Ed has twice served time in federal prisons. Upon his release, he served on the SOA Watch national board.

In February 2003 Ed joined the Voices' Iraq Peace Team, remaining in Baghdad throughout "shock and awe" until the invasion's end. In August 2003 he returned to Baghdad with Voices for ten weeks to help monitor the occupation. Back in the States Ed has worked against the U.S. occupation of Iraq and has spoken to many classes, congregations and communities about his Iraq experience. He has done two tours already with the Wheels of Justice throughout the U.S.

Hannah Mermelstein worked with the International Women's Peace Service (www.iwps.info) in the West Bank for 8 months between 2003-2005, joining Palestinians in nonviolent resistance against occupation and documenting and intervening to interrupt human rights abuses. In 2005 she co-founded a program called Birthright Unplugged (www.birthrightunplugged.org), which brings mostly North American Jews to Palestine to expose them to realities of life under occupation and encourage them to become part of the solution; and brings Palestinian youth who live in refugee camps to Jerusalem, the sea, and their ancestral villages. Hannah feels called to work to stop the injustices that are happening in her name as a Jew and with her money as an American. While in the US, Hannah is involved in local organizing and activism, and has spoken about her experiences at universities, high schools, churches, synagogues, and homes.

AN ATHEIST'S OPEN LETTER TO ALL OBAMA SUPPORTERS

Ellis Dean Hovey — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:09:29 EDT

Hello all,

I write this only to let all of you know that blacks & whites, theists & atheists stand together today in our support of Barack Obama . . .

I am an atheist and a former Mormon-turned-Born Again Christian. We (you & I) share a common heritage, common needs & a common goal.

I am not so unlike many of you who are theists. We are Americans with the same First Amendment Rights. Paradoxically speaking, I would stand beside you to fight for your First Amendment Right to worship your "God" in any manner you choose in your place of worship and in places where the First Amendment guarantees you a right to do so. I would fight for your right so long as your intent is not to make me or mine a captive audience to your beliefs and so long as your actions do not extend to the neutral areas of our society (government or publically-funded schools, etc) that should remain secular. I would fight against you only if your intent was to infringe upon my First Amendment Right as an American to not believe in your god.

I am supportive of the below-listed secular organizations that support Obama for US President:

Coalition of Secular Voters
Home
Organizations
The links below are to other organizations that have missions related to the mission of the Coalition of Secular Voters. If your organization would like to be included here please contact us at csv@secularvoters.org.
Related Organizations
Secular Coalition for America
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
First Freedom First
Freedom From Religion Foundation
Center for Inquiry
Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers
Americans for Religious Liberty
People for the American Way
Godless Americans Political Action Committee
Secular Student Alliance
National Center for Science Education
American Humanist Association

The following is a list of secular BarackObama.Com groups:

AgnosticsforObama
AtheistsforObama
HumanistsForObama
LasVegasAtheistsAgnosticsforObama
FreethinkersPasadenaCA
SkepticsForObama
PennsylvaniaAtheistsAgnosticsforObama
SecularistsforObama

Finally, I am not loyal to any particular political party. My vote will always go to the presidential candidate that I deem will be best-suited to lead America. This election my choice is a resounding "OBAMA 08!!!"

Black, white, brown, red, yellow, olive, theist or atheist -- people are people.

We the peoplel share the same basic needs and the rights to choose our sources of happiness.

One thing we can all agree on: No matter what its source, love is real. And what is "love"? No matter what its kind or degree, love is where the happiness of one is essentiial to the other. :)

Sincerely,

PeskyAtheist

What Barack Obama Could Not (and Should Not) Say

Ellis Dean Hovey — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:25:46 EDT

Sam Harris

What Barack Obama Could Not (and Should Not) Say

Posted March 21, 2008 | 12:59 PM (EST)

Barack Obama delivered a truly brilliant and inspiring speech this week. There were a few things, however, that he did not and could not (and, indeed, should not) say:

He did not say that the mess he is in has as much to do with religion as with racism--and, indeed, religion is the reason why our political discourse in this country is so scandalously stupid. As Christopher Hitchens observed in Slate months ago, one glance at the website of the Trinity United Church of Christ should have convinced anyone that Obama's connection to Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. would be a problem at some point in this campaign. Why couldn't Obama just cut his ties to his church and move on?

Well, among other inexpediencies, this might have put his faith in Jesus in question. After all, Reverend Wright was the man who brought him to the "foot of the cross." Might the Senator from Illinois be unsure whether the Creator of the universe brought forth his only Son from the womb of a Galilean virgin, taught him the carpenter's trade, and then had him crucified for our benefit? Few suspicions could be more damaging in American politics today.

The stultifying effect of religion is everywhere to be seen in the 2008 Presidential campaign. The faith of the candidates has been a constant concern in the Republican contest, of course--where John McCain, lacking the expected aura of born-again bamboozlement, has been struggling to entice some proper religious maniacs to his cause. He now finds himself in the compassionate embrace of Pastor John Hagee, a man who claims to know that a global war will soon precipitate the Rapture and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (problem solved). Prior to McCain's ascendancy, we saw Governor Mitt Romney driven from the field by a Creationist yokel and his sectarian hordes. And this, despite the fact that the governor had been wearing consecrated Mormon underpants all the while, whose powers of protection are as yet unrecognized by Evangelicals.

Like every candidate, Obama must appeal to millions of voters who believe that without religion, most of us would spend our days raping and killing our neighbors and stealing their pornography. Examples of well-behaved and comparatively atheistic societies like Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Denmark--which surpass us in terrestrial virtues like education, health, public generosity, per capita aid to the developing world, and low rates of violent crime and infant mortality--are of no interest to our electorate whatsoever. It is, of course, good to know that people like Reverend Wright occasionally do help the poor, feed the hungry, and care for the sick. But wouldn't it be better to do these things for reasons that are not manifestly delusional? Can we care for one another without believing that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and is now listening to our thoughts?

Yes we can.

Happily, Obama did a fine job of distancing himself from Reverend Wright's divisive views on racism in America, along with his fatuous "chickens come home to roost" assessment of our war against Islamic terrorism. But he did not (and should not) acknowledge that the worst parts of Reverend Wright's sermons, as with most sermons, are his appeals to the empty hopes and baseless fears of his parishioners--people who could surely find better ways of advancing their interests in this world, if only they could banish the fiction of a world to come.

Obama did not say that religion's effect on our society, and on the black community especially, has been destructive--and where it has seemed constructive it has generally taken the place of better things. Religion unites, motivates, and consoles beleaguered people not with knowledge, but with superstition and false promises. Surely there is a better way to bring people together in the 21st century. The truth is, despite the toothsomeness of his campaign slogan, we are not yet the people we have been waiting for. And if we don't start talking sense to our children, they won't be the ones we are waiting for either.

Obama was surely wise not to mention that Christianity was, without question, the great enabler of slavery in this country. The Confederate soldiers who eagerly laid down their lives at three times the rate of Union men, for the pleasure of keeping blacks in bondage and using them as farm equipment, did so with the conscious understanding that they were doing the Lord's work. After Reconstruction, religion united Southern whites in their racist hatred and the black community in its squalor--inuring men and women on both sides to injustice far more efficiently than it inspired them to overcome it.

The problem of religious fatalism, ignorance, and false hope, while plain to see in most religious contexts, is now especially obvious in the black community. The popularity of "prosperity gospel" is perhaps the most galling example: where unctuous crooks like T.D. Jakes and Creflo Dollar persuade undereducated and underprivileged men and women to pray for wealth, while tithing what little wealth they have to their corrupt and swollen ministries. Men like Jakes and Dollar, whatever occasional good they may do, are unconscionable predators and curators of human ignorance. Is it too soon to say this in American politics? Yes it is.

Despite all that he does not and cannot say, Obama's candidacy is genuinely thrilling: his heart is clearly in the right place; he is an order of magnitude more intelligent than the current occupant of the Oval Office; and he still stands a decent chance of becoming the next President of the United States. His election in November really would be a triumph of hope.

But Obama's candidacy is also depressing, for it demonstrates that even a person of the greatest candor and eloquence must still claim to believe the unbelievable in order to have a political career in this country. We may be ready for the audacity of hope. Will we ever be ready for the audacity of reason?

Sam Harris is the author "The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation." He can be reached at http://www.samharris.org/

Democratic registration brisk in PA

Ellis Dean Hovey — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:38:26 EDT

Democratic registration brisk in PA

By PETER JACKSON, Associated Press Writer

POSTED to LINK 1 hour, 51 minutes ago

WAYNE, Pa. - Pennsylvanians are rushing in record numbers to sign up as Democrats so they can vote in the April 22 presidential primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Many are lured by the historic drama of two U.S. senators vying to be the first black or female president. But the two campaigns also are busily recruiting independents, disgruntled Republicans and those who weren't previously registered at all.

Obama's effort has generated the most fanfare as his campaign has laid down a steady drumbeat of radio ads and e-mails leading up to the deadline for switching or joining parties.

"For real change, register as a Democrat by Monday, March 24," advise Obama ads airing throughout the state.

Only registered Democrats can vote for their party's candidates in the state's April 22 primary, and Obama is hoping the recruits will help him overcome Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's solid lead — 12 points in one poll taken last weekend. At stake are 158 delegates to this summer's Democratic national convention — the biggest bloc of delegates still to be awarded.

Since last fall's election, statewide Democratic enrollment has swelled by more than 111,000 — an increase of about 3 percent in less than six months that state elections Commissioner Harry VanSickle said is apparently unprecedented. With days to go, Democratic registration is barely 5,000 votes shy of a record 4 million.

"The volume is very large, very steady," said Jim Forsythe, director of voter services in Chester County, a Philadelphia suburb where Democratic enrollment grew by nearly 7 percent — the second-largest gain among the 67 counties.

The smaller statewide enrollments of Republicans and voters not registered in either party have both declined slightly.

Neither the Obama nor Clinton campaigns will offer a public estimate of how much they contributed to the increased registration, and certainly other factors are at work.

But hundreds of Obama volunteers have stepped up their voter registration efforts in recent weeks on the streets, on college campuses and in nightly telephone canvassing among the nearly 1 million registered independent voters. In earlier Democratic primaries where independents could vote, Obama has outpolled Clinton, 54 percent to 40 percent, according to exit polls.

The Clinton campaign has also mounted a major registration effort in Pennsylvania, the first time in the primary season it has done so. While the former first lady has drawn most of her support in other states from traditional Democratic "base" voters, her aides believe she is positioned strongly enough in Pennsylvania to draw a significant number of independents, especially independent women.

The Clinton campaign is using extensive phone banks to identify likely switchers, targeting voters "who fit the profile'" of the New York senator's supporters and sending them registration applications upon request, said campaign spokesman Mark Nevins.

While all of Obama's ads urge non-Democrats to join the Democratic Party, he is using some regional targeting as well. The ad in the Pittsburgh and Harrisburg areas is tailored to young voters, mentioning Obama's opposition to the Iraq war and his plan to help loan-burdened college students. In the Philadelphia area, Obama's ad specifically talks to Republicans and independents unhappy with the country's direction and then recounts Obama's role in passing ethical reforms.

An Obama supporter, Russell Simmons, co-founder of Def Jam Records, announced a "Hip-Hop Team Vote: Turn up the Vote" campaign at the University of Pennsylvania on Wednesday that he hopes will register 15,000 to 20,000 voters before Monday. The group plans to use public service announcements from hip-hop recording artists and actors, including Jay-Z, LL Cool J, Wyclef Jean and Will Smith.

Heightened interest in the Democratic contest and disenchantment with the Bush administration have likely spurred many Pennsylvanians to join the party on their own. More than a few Republicans have switched sides — at least for the primary.

At a makeshift registration center that Obama volunteers set up on a sidewalk recently in this affluent Philadelphia suburb, one woman boasted that she and five friends — like her, all Republicans — had simultaneously changed their registrations to Democratic to vote for Obama, who she called "a fresh face" in politics.

"I do feel he's honest. I think he's hard-working, and I think he can understand what the people are going through," said Linda Lemmon of Kennett Square.

But asked whether she would remain a Democrat through the general election, she replied, "I can't say that."

Mining the state's computerized voter registry for trends, the Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees elections, has found that:

• Since January, more than 100,000 Pennsylvanians who were not previously registered to vote did so.

• In that time, more than 68,000 registered voters changed their affiliation to one of the major parties, with those switching to Democratic registration outpacing those turning Republican by more than 3-1.

• The nine counties with the biggest percentage increases in Democratic enrollment since last fall — more than 5 percent — are mainly in two tightly contested areas — the Philadelphia suburbs and the state's vast central region. Despite the changes, Republicans still outnumber Democrats in all those counties.

One man who registered to vote for the first time at the Obama station here in Wayne was Tzvetan Tzonev, a newly naturalized citizen from Bulgaria.

But Tzonev said Clinton will get his vote, because Bill Clinton was president when he first arrived in this country and times were better then.

"It was a fantastic time," Tzonev said. "We thought maybe she will kind of continue this period of time, and we'll be out of all this mess."

One woman who stopped at the Obama table was Nina D'Iorio, already registered as a Democrat. She was carrying a bag of books including two by Obama.

D'Iorio said she was leaning toward him and wanted to learn more about him. While she longs to "see a strong, powerful woman thrive" as president, she worries that former President Clinton might hold his wife back.

Obama, she said, has "that JFK feel."

___

Associated Press Writer Beth Fouhy and AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.

MSNBC POLL: HOPE IS IN THE AIR!

Ellis Dean Hovey — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:18:14 EDT

LOOK FOLKS, OBAMA IS STILL ON TOP IN THIS MSNBC POLL BY A LARGE MARGIN!

REFER TO LINK.

On The Lighter Side

Ellis Dean Hovey — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 05:04:19 EDT

MSNBC OBAMA CARTOONS
(Click above link to enjoy!)

A Simple Secular Note: OBAMA '08!

Ellis Dean Hovey — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:09:13 EDT

To all,
Barak Obama's speeches have been absolutely awesome and I respect everyone's right to perceive for themselves the source of our candidate's profound insights -- but I have to say that I heard nothing in any of Obama's speeches that could not have come from the mind of a genuine human being.
Remember that Barak Obama's mother was the most influential person in his life and know that what you observe in him today is for the most part the personification of his free-thinking secular mother.
"We need not take refuge in supernatural gods to explain our saints and sages and heroes and statesmen, as if to explain our disbelief that mere unaided human beings could be that good or wise." ~ Abraham Harold Maslow
I'm confident the history-making best of Barak Obama is yet to come!
Obama '08!
~PeskyAtheist

MSNBC POLL: 'A more perfect union'

Ellis Dean Hovey — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 21:44:56 EDT

March 18: Democratic Sen. Barack Obama delivers the most racially pointed speech yet of his presidential campaign.

'A more perfect union'

Video Full speech

Full transcript of Obama's speech

Live Vote

Do you think Sen. Barack Obama successfully tackled the issue of race in his speech?

Yes. He answered the tough questions and wasn't afraid to be honest.

No. He didn't ease my concerns about the divisive comments of his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

I don't know. I need more time to review the points of his speech.

Do you think the country is ready for a black president?

Yes. Obama proved he is ready to lead and bridge the racial divide.

No. The underlying racial issues in this country have yet to be resolved.

I don't know. I want to see how this speech is received by both black and white voters.

***********

THE RESULTS I SAW AFTER I VOTED:

Do you think Sen. Barack Obama successfully tackled the issue of race in his speech? * 155531 responses

Yes. He answered the tough questions and wasn't afraid to be honest.
68%

No. He didn't ease my concerns about the divisive comments of his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
25%

I don't know. I need more time to review the points of his speech.
6.9%

Do you think the country is ready for a black president? * 153148 responses

Yes. Obama proved he is ready to lead and bridge the racial divide.
67%

No. The underlying racial issues in this country have yet to be resolved.
19%

I don't know. I want to see how this speech is received by both black and white voters.
13%

Not a scientific survey. Click to learn more. Results may not total 100% due to rounding.

Press Release: Humanists Debate Alternative Views on Iraq War

Ellis Dean Hovey — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:20:40 EDT

Press Release

Humanists Debate Alternative Views on Iraq War

March 18, 2008

FROM: http://www.americanhumanist.org/press/IraqDebate2.php

In recognition of the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, and in a spirit of the free exploration of ideas, the American Humanist Association is publicizing alternative humanist views on U.S. military involvement in Iraq.

Articles pro and con appeared in the January/February 2008 issue of the Humanist magazine. And today the organization posted a debate on its Humanist Online Web site.

"Even when most humanists are on one side of a question, as they are on this one, respect for dissenting views remains a staple of humanist thought," said Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association. "That's why we are letting two views battle it out today."

The first article posted, "Fighting for Iraq: a Case for Liberation," is by Jende Huang, who argues, "The justification for [liberating Iraq] can be drawn from Enlightenment values as well as common human decency. The dignity of the individual, the power of the life of the mind, and the creative potential of all of humanity are values that can and should be extended to all peoples. . . . The reluctance to extend such basic considerations as universal human rights to those living on foreign soil is disturbing. The tragedy of the Left is in its newfound unwillingness and inability to apply the idea of 'justice for all,' to, well, all."

T. F. Kelley offers a counter argument in a web extra article titled "A Case of Invasion" in which he writes, "Sadly, Iraq has not been liberated; it has been conquered, occupied, and decimated by any definition. . . . What happened after Baghdad fell were not missteps, they were disastrous blunders with enormous consequences. I feel no obligation as a progressive to follow a fool's path to obvious disaster, nor would I expect any humanist or anyone else to do so."

You can read Huang and Kelley's articles on the Humanist website (www.thehumanist.org). Read Huang's article at http://www.thehumanist.org/humanist/Huang.html and Kelley's article at http://www.thehumanist.org/humanist/Kelley-extra.html. You may also read an extension of the debate on the Humanist blog, Rant and Reason, at blog.thehumanist.com.

Though individual humanists may differ, however, the American Humanist Association as an organization, informed by this longstanding debate, takes a clear position. The AHA was opposed to Congress authorizing the original use of troops (http://www.americanhumanist.org/press/iraq.htm), opposed to Bush's decision to start a unilateral war (http://www.americanhumanist.org/press/Iraq031703.html), and supported efforts to bring the troops home (http://www.americanhumanist.org/press/decofpeace.php).

"We stand firm with those who say five years is too long," Speckhardt concluded, "and call for decisive action to end a conflict that continues to make matters worse."

# # #

The American Humanist Association (www.americanhumanist.org) advocates for the rights and viewpoints of humanists. Founded in 1941 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., its work is extended through more than 100 local chapters and affiliates across America.

Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism, affirms our responsibility to lead ethical lives of value to self and humanity.

FROM: http://www.americanhumanist.org/press/IraqDebate2.php

Germans Would Vote for Him

Ellis Dean Hovey — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 21:19:22 EDT

The following article is from our March 2008 issue.

Germans Would Vote for Him Why Barack Obama fascinates Europeans – By Christoph Keese

German’s favorite politician at the moment is Barack Obama. Every popularity poll shows the American hopeful for the Democratic presidential nomination beating the German chancellor, as well as party and regional leaders. The leading news magazine, Der Spiegel, put Obama on its cover a few weeks ago. The headline read: “The Messiah Factor − Barack Obama and the Yearning for a New America.”

The article called Obama a type of “pied piper” and said, “Obama is carried by a wave of enthusiasm that is fed by the desires and dreams of a new generation of voters. America wants to be loved again. People want a new Kennedy to heal the wounded country.”

That hope for a messiah is contagious. In the next issue, Der Spiegel printed a letter to the editor from a reader in the rural Rhineland. He wrote that Obama was a personification of the alternative to so many career politicians who “chat their way through trivial TV talk shows with their selfishness, lust for power and self-importance.” The reader ended by pleading “Barack, please come to Germany!”

Another reader was even more deeply touched. He wrote that he was skeptical at first but then he did some research: “I watched Obama’s speech in New Hampshire with tears in my eyes. I happily let myself be convinced of the substance behind his sentences.”

A survey by the weekly Stern showed that 43 percent of Germans would vote for Obama if they could, while only 39 percent would vote for Hillary Clinton. More than half of the men polled preferred the senator from Illinois. A trawl of Internet forums reveals numerous comments: “We need an Obama in Germany,” read one. “He is not the emperor with no clothes like our politicians. He is better than anyone we have.”

There are, of course, also skeptics: “He hasn’t proved anything yet,” went one. “It’s all a facade, no content,” read another. But they are in the minority.

A certain initial euphoria can be expected among average citizens. But the degree of respect that Obama commands at even the highest levels of the German government is amazing. Officially, the authorities are neutral. There is no public hint of preference for either Republicans or Democrats or for a particular candidate. But behind closed doors, there is a clear stand in favor of Obama.

Germany is governed by a grand coalition of the center-right (the Christian Democratic and Christian Social Union) and the left-leaning Social Democrats (SPD). So it certainly can’t be taken for granted that the leadership of both camps would be impressed with Obama’s charisma and energy. But Obama doesn’t split German politicians along left-right lines. The tone he strikes seems above partisan politics.

There are whispers that he is vague about where he really stands. Some detect questionable aspects to his foreign policy statements, such as his public intimations that he would take a harder line with Pakistan. Those government sources point out that you can’t deal with a known nuclear power the same way the U.S. did with Iraq. But nobody in the German government sees that as a reason to deny his qualifications for the presidency.

On the contrary, right across party lines, many German politicians long for a President Barack Obama. They brush off any reservations. “Almost anyone who survives the difficult process of the primary elections is qualified to become president,” said one top official. “The process is so hard that unsuitable candidates soon drop out of the race. Once somebody is in office, either he himself, or with the help of advisors, can avoid making big mistakes.”

German politicians accord Obama professional respect most of all for the elegance with which he avoids committing to specific policy measures, which reduces his vulnerability to attack. It’s something every politician wants and very few achieve.

During Germany’s most recent federal elections in 2005, the CDU in particular learned the hard way how many votes can be lost when the rival party picks apart a concrete tax concept during an ongoing campaign. Obama appears immune to that kind of attack.

These are the main underpinnings of Obamania in Germany:

First comes the appeal of the new, the charm of the unfamiliar and the veil of distance. It’s still unclear what Obama stands for politically. His ethnic origins seem exotic and he’s anti-establishment. In a fit of romanticism, Germans hope that somebody like that can score a point against the establishment.

Although Germany’s newspapers are full of stories about the U.S. primary campaign, the reality is that we are about 4,000 miles away from the action, putting us at a geographic and psychological distance. This has given rise to the nebulous myth of a new Kennedy. Germans are pleased to think they are witnessing the birth of such a rare phenomenon. Taken together, all this makes up a slightly dreamy, fairytale-like component to their approval.

The second reason is more concrete. Obama represents a different, more colorful, more ethnically diverse America than Hillary Clinton or George W. Bush. Millions of Germans have traveled to and in the U.S. as tourists, students or on business. They know it’s an ethnically diverse country and think it is high time, after 230 years, that a representative of that diversity takes up residence in the White House.

Sociologist and commentator Wolf Lepenies has won the German book trade industry’s peace prize and is a highly respected intellectual. As early as July 2007, in an article for the “Welt am Sonntag” newspaper, he said that Obama’s most astute political choice was, rather than presenting himself as a black candidate, in laying claim to being the embodiment of cultural diversity in the U.S.

Obama expressed that magnificently in his 2004 keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention when he said, “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America – there is the United States of America.”

“Barack Obama’s political vision can’t be defined with the common metaphor of a melting pot,” said Lepenies. “He sees the power of the U.S. not in merging cultures but in maintaining cultural and racial diversity.”

Germans also favor Obama’s style. Even in the heat of campaign battles, he has not yet been drawn into mudslinging. He seems to float above daily politics but without losing sight of the needs of ordinary people. That combination strikes a deep chord. It reveals the longing for a political class that displays moral leadership.

Torsten Krauel, correspondent in Washington for Germany’s Die Welt, sees it this way: “The Democrats are receptive to that. Since the 1980s, Kennedy’s party has been in the grip of selfish social and community lobbying groups, who often engage in narrow-minded rhetoric and are easily hurt.” He thinks that is one reason why voters are so enthusiastic about the way Obama defines the present in terms of a broad horizon, saying, “Clinton’s rethoric reveals the kind of self-pity that voters have had enough of. With Obama, they sense a new attempt to fulfill the American dream.”

Finally, Obama articulates something that has fallen completely out of fashion in the midst of the realpolitik of the past decades − a political vision for society. He goes beyond the next four years and looks at entire decades. He calls upon people not to see the world around them as unchangeable. He tells people who are stuck in a rut or a poorly-paid job, who are angry at the decay of public services, who go through life bent under the burden of their situations − he tells these people that things can change if the will is there.

So is this empty pathos? No. In reality it’s a self-evident truth. Yes, we can. Participating in public life and a change for the better are possible. Politicians have too often concealed that fact.

German politics is also populated by small-minded and constrained pragmatists. How refreshing and invigorating it is to see somebody who beckons us toward new horizons. You hear it and think, of course, why not? You only live once.

Those accusing Obama of empty pathos are gravely mistaken. Nothing is more profound, more real and welcome than the yearning for participation, change and improvement − be it in Germany or the U.S.

– Christoph Keese is editor-in-chief of the weekly, Welt am Sonntag.

FROM: http://www.atlantic-times.com/article.php?recordID=1

Iraq Fax-in: Let's Show Congress How We Feel

Ellis Dean Hovey — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 14:17:29 EDT

Iraq Fax-in: Let's Show Congress How We Feel

March 19 marks the 5th Anniversary of Bush's disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq - yet there is no end in sight.

The costs so far are staggering: 4,000 young Americans killed, tens of thousands maimed... 1 million Iraqis killed, millions maimed... $562 billion in tax dollars stolen from our children... $3 trillion cost to our economy through veterans care, weapons replacement, higher oil prices, and the collapsing dollar. All that in just 5 years!

We elected a Democratic Congress in 2006 to bring our troops home, but they keep giving Bush blank checks. Incredibly, Congress will soon vote on another $102 billion blank check.

On this 5th Anniversary, it is time for everyone who hates this occupation to do something about it. And we're making it as simple and effective as we can.

We're calling it the Iraq Fax-In. It's like a sit-in, only you can do it from home.
http://iraqfaxin.com

1. Fax an image to Congress that visually expresses how you feel about the invasion and occupation of Iraq. We've posted a few ideas, but we welcome all of yours!
http://iraqfaxin.com

2. Email your Representatives by signing our "Out of Iraq" petition on the right side here:
http://iraqfaxin.com

And thanks for all you do to make the world a better place.

_______

Fox Attacks Obama

It's no surprise that FOX has been at it again: smearing, distorting, attacking Obama. What is infuriating and requires IMMEDIATE ACTION is that so many in the media have been catching the FOX virus and spreading it. By way of a cure, we bring you the next installment in our highly successful FOX Attacks series. Together, we have battled them effectively, halted their fake debates, and put pressure on Bill O'Reilly for his attacks on homeless vets. And so far, over 6 million people have seen FOX Attacks.

Watch the video, send it to your friends, and then demand the media stop spreading the FOX virus. Let them know they can't keep parroting FOX's smears against Barack Obama without hearing from us. Sign the petition, and we'll make sure the heads of all the mainstream media's news divisions see it. You can even express your outrage visually by including your picture.

http://foxattacks.com/virus?utm_source=dems

_______

Resist in March

On March 19, peace and justice organizations will hold actions around the country and in Washington, DC to demand an end to the funding of the occupation, along with the impeachment of the president and vice president who launched it. For the full range of activities, see http://resistinmarch.org

_______

MARCH 19, 2008 (Wednesday) Nonviolent Civil Resistance in All 435 Congressional Districts and in the Nation's Capital on the Fifth Anniversary of the Occupation of Iraq

Locations in each congressional district, to be determined locally, will include congressional offices (Congress Members and Senators will be in their districts on this day), federal buildings, military recruiters, weapons makers, war profiteers, or corporate media outlets. In Washington, with Congress out of town, the focus will be on war profiteers in the military industrial disaster-capitalism complex. Events will include roles for people not wanting to risk arrest.

http://www.5yearstoomany.org

LOCAL EVENTS: Post Yours! Update it.

FIND LOCAL EVENTS AT http://5yearstoomany.org AND IN A SEPARATE LIST AT http://worldagainstwar.org

WASHINGTON DC EVENTS: Join us!

Resources for nonviolent activism: HERE.
Resources for promoting your event in the media: HERE.
Flyers and posters with room for local info: HERE.
Ideas for local actions: HERE.

#####

Forward this message to everyone you know!

To subscribe, create a free Democrats.com account here:
http://www.democrats.com/user/register

WAR & PEACE

Ellis Dean Hovey — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:57:42 EDT

WAR

PEACE

People for Peace and Justice of Utah

Yes, there IS a peace community in Utah - the reddest U.S. State!

Barak Obama's Mother

Ellis Dean Hovey — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 08:43:27 EDT

The Long Run

A Free-Spirited Wanderer Who Set Obama’s Path

By JANNY SCOTT

Published: March 14, 2008

Courtesy of the Obama family

Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro with son Barack in Hawaii.

The Long RunA Mother’s Influence

This is part of a series of articles about the life and careers of contenders for the 2008 Republican and Democratic presidential nominations.

Interactive Graphic Milestones: Barack Obama

RelatedTimes Topics: Barack Obama

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The latest political news from around the nation. Join the discussion.

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Courtesy of the Obama Family

Ms. Soetoro, right, during her trip to Indonesia from 1988 to 1992. She married an Indonesian, moved to Jakarta and became an anthropologist.

In the capsule version of the Barack Obama story, his mother is simply the white woman from Kansas. The phrase comes coupled alliteratively to its counterpart, the black father from Kenya. On the campaign trail, he has called her his “single mom.” But neither description begins to capture the unconventional life of Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro, the parent who most shaped Mr. Obama.

Kansas was merely a way station in her childhood, wheeling westward in the slipstream of her furniture-salesman father. In Hawaii, she married an African student at age 18. Then she married an Indonesian, moved to Jakarta, became an anthropologist, wrote an 800-page dissertation on peasant blacksmithing in Java, worked for the Ford Foundation, championed women’s work and helped bring microcredit to the world’s poor.

She had high expectations for her children. In Indonesia, she would wake her son at 4 a.m. for correspondence courses in English before school; she brought home recordings of Mahalia Jackson, speeches by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And when Mr. Obama asked to stay in Hawaii for high school rather than return to Asia, she accepted living apart — a decision her daughter says was one of the hardest in Ms. Soetoro’s life.

“She felt that somehow, wandering through uncharted territory, we might stumble upon something that will, in an instant, seem to represent who we are at the core,” said Maya Soetoro-Ng, Mr. Obama’s half-sister. “That was very much her philosophy of life — to not be limited by fear or narrow definitions, to not build walls around ourselves and to do our best to find kinship and beauty in unexpected places.”

Ms. Soetoro, who died of ovarian cancer in 1995, was the parent who raised Mr. Obama, the Illinois senator running for the Democratic presidential nomination. He barely saw his father after the age of 2. Though it is impossible to pinpoint the imprint of a parent on the life of a grown child, people who knew Ms. Soetoro well say they see her influence unmistakably in Mr. Obama.

They were close, her friends and his half-sister say, though they spent much of their lives with oceans or continents between them. He would not be where he is today, he has said, had it not been for her. Yet he has also made some different choices — marrying into a tightly knit African-American family rooted in the South Side of Chicago, becoming a churchgoing Christian, publicly recounting his search for his identity as a black man.

Some of what he has said about his mother seems tinged with a mix of love and regret. He has said his biggest mistake was not being at her bedside when she died. And when The Associated Press asked the candidates about “prized keepsakes” — others mentioned signed baseballs, a pocket watch, a “trophy wife” — Mr. Obama said his was a photograph of the cliffs of the South Shore of Oahu in Hawaii where his mother’s ashes were scattered.

“I think sometimes that had I known she would not survive her illness, I might have written a different book — less a meditation on the absent parent, more a celebration of the one who was the single constant in my life,” he wrote in the preface to his memoir, “Dreams From My Father.” He added, “I know that she was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known, and that what is best in me I owe to her.”

In a campaign in which Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, has made liberal use of his globe-trotting 96-year-old mother to answer suspicions that he might be an antique at 71, Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed for this article, invokes his mother’s memory sparingly. In one television advertisement, she appears fleetingly — porcelain-skinned, raven-haired and holding her toddler son. “My mother died of cancer at 53,” he says in the ad, which focuses on health care. “In those last painful months, she was more worried about paying her medical bills than getting well.”

‘A Very, Very Big Thinker’

He has described her as a teenage mother, a single mother, a mother who worked, went to school and raised children at the same time. He has credited her with giving him a great education and confidence in his ability to do the right thing. But, in interviews, friends and colleagues of Ms. Soetoro shed light on a side of her that is less well known.

“She was a very, very big thinker,” said Nancy Barry, a former president of Women’s World Banking, an international network of microfinance providers, where Ms. Soetoro worked in New York City in the early 1990s. “I think she was not at all personally ambitious, I think she cared about the core issues, and I think she was not afraid to speak truth to power.”

Her parents were from Kansas — her mother from Augusta, her father from El Dorado, a place Mr. Obama first visited in a campaign stop in January. Stanley Ann (her father wanted a boy so he gave her his name) was born on an Army base during World War II. The family moved to California, Kansas, Texas and Washington in restless pursuit of opportunity before landing in Honolulu in 1960.

Courtesy of the Obama Family

Ms. Soetoro on her Indonesian trip.

The Long RunA Mother’s Influence

This is part of a series of articles about the life and careers of contenders for the 2008 Republican and Democratic presidential nominations.

Courtesy of the Obama Family

Ms. Soetoro during her field trip from 1988 to 1992. She died in 1995 of cancer.

In a Russian class at the University of Hawaii, she met the college’s first African student, Barack Obama. They married and had a son in August 1961, in an era when interracial marriage was rare in the United States. Her parents were upset, Senator Obama learned years later from his mother, but they adapted. “I am a little dubious of the things that people from foreign countries tell me,” the senator’s grandmother told an interviewer several years ago.

The marriage was brief. In 1963, Mr. Obama left for Harvard, leaving his wife and child. She then married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian student. When he was summoned home in 1966 after the turmoil surrounding the rise of Suharto, Ms. Soetoro and Barack followed.

Those choices were not entirely surprising, said several high school friends of Ms. Soetoro, whom they remembered as unusually intelligent, curious and open. She never dated “the crew-cut white boys,” said one friend, Susan Blake: “She had a world view, even as a young girl. It was embracing the different, rather than that ethnocentric thing of shunning the different. That was where her mind took her.”

Her second marriage faded, too, in the 1970s. Ms. Soetoro wanted to work, one friend said, and Mr. Soetoro wanted more children. He became more American, she once said, as she became more Javanese. “There’s a Javanese belief that if you’re married to someone and it doesn’t work, it will make you sick,” said Alice G. Dewey, an anthropologist and friend. “It’s just stupid to stay married.”

That both unions ended is beside the point, some friends suggested. Ms. Soetoro remained loyal to both husbands and encouraged her children to feel connected to their fathers. (In reading drafts of her son’s memoir, Mr. Obama has said, she did not comment upon his depiction of her but was “quick to explain or defend the less flattering aspects of my father’s character.”)

“She always felt that marriage as an institution was not particularly essential or important,” said Nina Nayar, who later became a close friend of Ms. Soetoro. What mattered to her, Ms. Nayar said, was to have loved deeply.

By 1974, Ms. Soetoro was back in Honolulu, a graduate student and raising Barack and Maya, nine years younger. Barack was on scholarship at a prestigious prep school, Punahou. When Ms. Soetoro decided to return to Indonesia three years later for her field work, Barack chose not to go.

“I doubted what Indonesia now had to offer and wearied of being new all over again,” he wrote in his memoir. “More than that, I’d arrived at an unspoken pact with my grandparents: I could live with them and they’d leave me alone so long as I kept my trouble out of sight.” During those years, he was “engaged in a fitful interior struggle. I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America.” Ms. Soetoro-Ng recalled her mother’s quandary. “She wanted him to be with her,” Ms. Soetoro-Ng said. But she added: “Although it was painful to be separated from him for his last four years of high school, she recognized that it was perhaps the best thing for him. And she had to go to Indonesia at that time.”

That time apart was hard for both mother and son.

“She longed for him,” said Georgia McCauley, who became a friend of Ms. Soetoro in Jakarta. Barack spent summers and Christmas vacations with his mother; they communicated by letters, his illustrated with cartoons. Her first topic of conversation was always her son, her female friends said. As for him, he was grappling with questions of racial identity, alienation and belonging.

“There were certainly times in his life in those four years when he could have used her presence on a more daily basis,” Ms. Soetoro-Ng said. “But I think he did all right for himself.”

Fluent in Indonesian, Ms. Soetoro moved with Maya first to Yogyakarta, the center of Javanese handicrafts. A weaver in college, she was fascinated with what Ms. Soetoro-Ng calls “life’s gorgeous minutiae.” That interest inspired her study of village industries, which became the basis of her 1992 doctoral dissertation.

Joe Wrinn/Harvard University

Barack Obama in 1990 when he was elected president of the Law Review at Harvard.

The Long RunA Mother’s Influence

This is part of a series of articles about the life and careers of contenders for the 2008 Republican and Democratic presidential nominations.

“She loved living in Java,” said Dr. Dewey, who recalled accompanying Ms. Soetoro to a metalworking village. “People said: ‘Hi! How are you?’ She said: ‘How’s your wife? Did your daughter have the baby?’ They were friends. Then she’d whip out her notebook and she’d say: ‘How many of you have electricity? Are you having trouble getting iron?’ ”

She became a consultant for the United States Agency for International Development on setting up a village credit program, then a Ford Foundation program officer in Jakarta specializing in women’s work. Later, she was a consultant in Pakistan, then joined Indonesia’s oldest bank to work on what is described as the world’s largest sustainable microfinance program, creating services like credit and savings for the poor.

Visitors flowed constantly through her Ford Foundation office in downtown Jakarta and through her house in a neighborhood to the south, where papaya and banana trees grew in the front yard and Javanese dishes like opor ayam were served for dinner. Her guests were leaders in the Indonesian human rights movement, people from women’s organizations, representatives of community groups doing grass-roots development.

“I didn’t know a lot of them and would often ask after, ‘Who was that?’ ” said David S. McCauley, now an environmental economist at the Asian Development Bank in Manila, who had the office next door. “You’d find out it was the head of some big organization in with thousands of members from central Java or someplace, somebody that she had met some time ago, and they would make a point of coming to see her when they came to Jakarta.”

An Exacting Idealist

As a mother, Ms. Soetoro was both idealistic and exacting. Friends describe her as variously informal and intense, humorous and hardheaded. She preached to her young son the importance of honesty, straight talk, independent judgment. When he balked at her early-morning home schooling, she retorted, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”

When Barack was in high school, she confronted him about his seeming lack of ambition, Mr. Obama wrote. He could get into any college in the country, she told him, with just a little effort. (“Remember what that’s like? Effort?”) He says he looked at her, so earnest and sure of his destiny: “I suddenly felt like puncturing that certainty of hers, letting her know that her experiment with me had failed.”

Ms. Soetoro-Ng, who herself became an anthropologist, remembers conversations with her mother about philosophy or politics, books, esoteric Indonesian woodworking motifs. One Christmas in Indonesia, Ms. Soetoro found a scrawny tree and decorated it with red and green chili peppers and popcorn balls.

“She gave us a very broad understanding of the world,” her daughter said. “She hated bigotry. She was very determined to be remembered for a life of service and thought that service was really the true measure of a life.” Many of her friends see her legacy in Mr. Obama — in his self-assurance and drive, his boundary bridging, even his apparent comfort with strong women. Some say she changed them, too.

“I feel she taught me how to live,” said Ms. Nayar, who was in her 20s when she met Ms. Soetoro at Women’s World Banking. “She was not particularly concerned about what society would say about working women, single women, women marrying outside their culture, women who were fearless and who dreamed big.”

The Final Months

After her diagnosis, Ms. Soetoro spent the last months of her life in Hawaii, near her mother. (Her father had died.) Mr. Obama has recalled talking with her in her hospital bed about her fears of ending up broke. She was not ready to die, he has said. Even so, she helped him and Maya “push on with our lives, despite our dread, our denials, our sudden constrictions of the heart.”

She died in November 1995, as Mr. Obama was starting his first campaign for public office. After a memorial service at the University of Hawaii, one friend said, a small group of friends drove to the South Shore in Oahu. With the wind whipping the waves onto the rocks, Mr. Obama and Ms. Soetoro-Ng placed their mother’s ashes in the Pacific, sending them off in the direction of Indonesia.

FROM: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/14/us/politics/14obama.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

The World Wants Obama

Ellis Dean Hovey — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 08:12:30 EDT

The Global movement supporting Obama is growing

All around the world an energetic and unprecedented movement is growing in support of Senator Obama's bid to become the 44th US President. Examples of the worldwide movement include:

In Trinidad, calypso legend The Mighty Sparrow sings "Barack the Magnificant", and in Jamaica reggae star Cocoa Tea sings "We Want Obama".
In Egypt a humanitarian worker has written letters to dozens of superdelegates urging them to back Obama.
In China a dramatic Obama rally is being planned on the Great Wall.
In Gaza a Palestinian student has been making hundreds of campaign phone calls to the US over the internet, whenever he has electricity and is not under Israeli bombardment.
In Kenya, Obama is so popular that a beer has been named after him!
On the internet there over 40 international Obama fan groups on Facebook, many with more than 500 members, focused on Denmark, France, Indonesia, Tanzania and many other countries. There are also dozens of blogs and websites.

And wherever opinion polls have been conducted, comparing him with Clinton and McCain, Senator Obama is consistently the favourite candidate by a wide margin, for example:

74% in Japan
71% in Brazil
68% in Holland
64% in South Africa
61% in Britain
54% in Iraq
48% in Switzerland

On an interconnected and interdependent planet, the policies of the US have a huge impact on our lives. After the long and arrogant Bush years, Senator Obama looks different, he sounds different and millions of non-Americans believe he will behave differently towards them. They may not agree with all his current policies, and they understand that he will face difficult choices and compromises when he is in office. However, they trust him to do his best because he has demonstrated strong principles and a willingness to listen and engage constructively, even with countries that have been seen as America's enemies.

Come and learn more about this international movement at www.TheWorldWantsObama.org and share your views on the connected Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-World-Wants-Obama-Coalition/10606473687

Obama leads, but the game isn't over

Ellis Dean Hovey — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 07:58:54 EDT

Obama leads, but the game isn't over

March 14, 2008

It's not exactly halftime. Most states have voted, and more than 80% of the delegates have been divvied up. Still, with more than five weeks left until the April 22 primary in Pennsylvania, the Democratic presidential race has entered a lull of sorts. So now seems a good time to pause and take a look at the scoreboard:

* Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois has won 29 contests to 17 for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, if you include her disputed Michigan and Florida victories.

* Obama leads in the popular vote by just under 700,000 votes: 13.4 million for Obama, 12.7 million for Clinton. His lead holds up even if Michigan and Florida's votes are included.

* The delegate count varies, depending on who is doing the tallying, but news organizations and other independent aggregators give Obama a lead of about 100 to 150 delegates. (The Associated Press, which The Times uses for its head count, has Obama ahead 1,602 to 1,497.)

The Clinton campaign is quick to point out that her victories include most of the largest states, including California, Ohio and Texas. Which brings us to Pennsylvania.

Clinton may be trailing in the popular vote and delegate count, but her campaign has whipped Obama when it comes to setting expectations and spinning results. (Rule of thumb: The states Clinton has won are important; the ones that Obama has won aren't.)

"The path to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. goes through Pennsylvania, so if Barack Obama can't win there, how will he win the general election?" Clinton strategists asked, rhetorically, in a memo this week. "After setbacks in Ohio and Texas, Barack Obama needs to demonstrate that he can win the state of Pennsylvania."

Not so fast, says the Obama campaign, mindful that Pennsylvania -- demographically and politically -- looks a lot like Ohio. "Our campaign will not be defined by Pennsylvania," campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters.

Maybe North Carolina. The Tar Heel State votes two weeks after Pennsylvania, on May 6, and looks more promising for Obama.

--

Mark Z. Barabak

SEE: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-trailtop14mar14,0,80868.story

Clinton strategist claims Obama 'can't win the general election'

Ellis Dean Hovey — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 16:19:47 EDT

Clinton strategist claims Obama 'can't win the general election'

Mark Penn, a top adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, told reporters today that rival Sen. Barack Obama "can't win the general election," according to our friends at USA TODAY's On Politics blog.

Listen for yourself by clicking here.

A Peaceful Solution

Ellis Dean Hovey — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:35:24 EDT

"A Peaceful Solution" was written by Willie & Amy Nelson on April 29th, 2007 at 3:03am on the bus in California, on the way to Coachella -- and they have given the song away freely to help make the world a better place! So no licensing restrictions apply.
Share the dream. Share the song. Sing it at all your Obama '08 events!

A Peaceful Solution

There is a peaceful solution. It’s called a peace revolution.
Now let’s take back America.
There’s a war and we’re in it, but I know we can win it.
So let’s take back America.

It’s a dream, so believe it.
Now get ready to receive it.
And let’s take back America.

And when the war is over and we’ve won it,
Let’s remember how we done it so we don’t have to do it again.

There is a peaceful solution. It’s called a peace revolution.
Now let’s take back America.
There’s a war and we’re in it, but I know we can win it.
Now let’s take back America.

There was a peace resolution
And a peaceful revolution.
And the peaceful solution saved America.

Willie Nelson sings "A Peaceful Solution"

Rattlesnake Annie & Amy Nelson sing "A Peaceful Solution"

DO YOUR OWN RENDITION: The Willie Nelson Peace Research Institute

PS: * * * * * * * * * *

Willie Nelson is donating proceeds from his single "What Ever Happened to Peace on Earth?" to the National Veterans Foundation.

Whatever Happened To Peace On Earth?

There's so many things going on in the world
Babies dying
Mothers crying
How much oil is one human life worth
And what ever happened to peace on earth

We believe everything that they tell us
They're gonna' kill us
So we gotta' kill them first
But I remember a commandment
Thou shall not kill
How much is that soldier's life worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth

(Bridge)
And the bewildered herd is still believing
Everything we've been told from our birth
Hell they won't lie to me
Not on my own damn TV
But how much is a liar's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth

So I guess it's just
Do unto others before they do it to you
Let's just kill em' all and let God sort em' out
Is this what God wants us to do

(Repeat Bridge)
And the bewildered herd is still believing
Everything we've been told from our birth
Hell they won't lie to me
Not on my own damn TV
But how much is a liar's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth

Now you probably won't hear this on your radio
Probably not on your local TV
But if there's a time, and if you're ever so inclined
You can always hear it from me
How much is one picker's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth

But don't confuse caring for weakness
You can't put that label on me
The truth is my weapon of mass protection
And I believe truth sets you free

Willie Nelson discusses & sings "Whatever Happened To Peace On Earth?"

Winter Soldier Broadcasts: Iraq and Afghanistan

Ellis Dean Hovey — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:46:32 EDT

http://www.5yearstoomany.org/article.php?id=73

WINTER SOLDIER: IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN

Winter Soldier will feature testimony from U.S. veterans who served in those occupations, giving an accurate account of what is really happening day in and day out, on the ground. The four-day event, March 13-16, will bring together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and present video and photographic evidence. In addition, there will be panels of scholars, veterans, journalists, and other specialists to give context to the testimony. These panels will cover everything from the history of the GI resistance movement to the fight for veterans' health benefits and support.

How to Access Winter Soldier Broadcasts

TV BROADCAST -- LIVE COVERAGE

(1) Free Speech TV: March 14 and 15, 9:00am ? 9:00pm EST

On the DishNetwork: Channel 9415

Free Speech TV is a full-time national satellite channel that reaches over 20 million homes in the United States via satellite broadcast on the DishNetwork. They will carry two full days of Winter Soldier.

(2) Link TV: March 14th and/or 15th (times to be announced)

On the DishNetwork: Channel 9411
On DirectTV: Channel 375

Link TV has yet to determine how much of Winter Soldier they will broadcast and at what times. Check the IVAW website for exact times.

(3) Your local public access channel via Free Speech TV
Public access television stations across the the country have been supplied with consumer DishNetwork satellite dishes and setup units that enable them to receive Free Speech TV programming. Already there are over 150 cities that downlink DishNetwork satellite broadcasts and rebroadcast the programming on their cable channels. All cable systems -- Time Warner, Comcast, Adelphia, etc. -- are required by franchise agreements to provide public access channels to local communities as part of their basic package. Contact your local public access cable channel and ask them to carry all or part of Free Speech TV's Winter Soldier broadcast. If your local public access channel has not acquired a DishNetwork satellite system yet, they can easily and inexpensively do so by ordering an installation of the system from the DishNetwork.

(4) Direct from Satellite
Many colleges and universities, public access cable stations and media centers have KU Band digital satellite dishes. They can tune their satellite dish to the following coordinates and bring in the signal live from Washington, DC. Local news channels can also pick up the broadcast by tuning their satellite dishes to the following coordinates:

Satellite: HORIZONS 2 (Ku) Dig
Transponder: 16 - Ch C
Orbital Slot: 74° WL
Bandwidth: 9 MHz
Downlink Freq: 11984.5 (H)
Carrier Access: Intelsat America (800)631-3562
Satellite Time: 9:00-21:00 ET

RADIO BROADCAST -- LIVE COVERAGE
KPFA, the Pacifica Radio Network's station in the Bay Area, will be broadcasting live coverage of the hearings on this schedule (all times times are east coast):

Friday, March 14 from 10 am to 7 pm
Saturday, March 15 from 9 am to 7 pm
Sunday, March 16 from 10 am to 4 pm

Pacifica will also be uploading the broadcast to their KU satellite, so any radio station that has access to the KU satellite or a KU webstream mirror should also be able to download that live broadcast. Radio stations that are part of the Pacifica affiliate program should all have access to the KU satellite. If your local station does not have access, or if they are not sure, please contact us at organizing@unitedforpeace.org so we can help them make the necessary links.

LIVE WEB STREAMING
(1) Streaming video will be accessible at ivaw.org from Thursday, March 13, through Sunday, March 16.

(2) Streaming audio will be accessible at KPFA.org from Friday, March 14, through Sunday, March 16.

Coalition of Secular Voters Community Website Launch

Ellis Dean Hovey — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 05:39:54 EDT

Coalition of Secular Voters Community Website Launch

It's time to get this site off the ground. The idea behind this site is basically to provide a communication and coordination tool for citizens who are concerned about the encroachment of religious influences in American government and politics. As everyone in America should be aware, Evangelical voters and the so-called "Religious Right" have exerted a strong influence on American politics at both the national and local levels for the past 30 years. The ability of these voters who exert such a major influence over American politics comes largely from the organization of these voters and the high turnout of these voters to the polls for elections at every level, from school board elections to presidential elections.

The goal of this website is to constitute a communications hub for matters of importance to citizens and voters who wish to protect and promote secular government and to encourage the type of organization, participation, and visibility that is required to effectively oppose the political influence of pro-theocratic voters.

This is just the beginning for this website, and there will be many more changes and improvements as time goes on. This is very much a community based project and will require the participation of members to make it a success. The content for this website will, by and large, come from the membership. Ideas on how to expand and improve are welcomed.

The original idea was to have a separate blog for every single state, but doing so would require an upgrade of the license for this site, which costs $1,000, so we are holding off on that for now. Unfortunately that means that local issues will have to be posted to regional blogs instead of state by state blogs, but if things go well then hopefully we will be able to upgrade to accommodate more blogs down the road to have a blog for each state so that local issues can be more appropriately catalogued. Nevertheless, the regional blogs should be enough to get us started.

Even if you do not wish to contribute content, if you support the mission of this organization then please join the site as a show of support!

Thank you,

CSV Published Jan 26 2008, 06:53 AM by CSV

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The links below are to other orgnaizations that have missions related to the mission of this orgnaization. If your orgnaization would like to be included here please contact us at csv@secularvoters.org.

Related Organizations

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FROM SECULAR VOTERS DOT ORG

(NOTE: TO BE CLEAR, I AM NOT THE SOURCE OF THE ABOVE-MENTIONED "Secular Voters" WEBSITE. I AM JUST A MESSENGER-BOY.)

Celebrities host national Separation of Church and State event - March 26th

Ellis Dean Hovey — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 03:25:35 EDT

Celebrities host national Separation of Church and State event - March 26th

Put this event down on your calendar.

On Wednesday March 26th Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Interfaith Alliance will be hosting a national Separation of Church and State event with the participation of major activists and celebrities. The event will be hosted in 25 cities around the country and simulcast (I'm not sure to where) by Progressive Media Agency.

The locations for this are:

AR Little Rock Breckenridge Stadium 12 5:00pm
CA Sacramento Natomas Marketplace Stadium 16 6:00pm
CA Mountain View Century Cinemas 16 6:00pm
CA San Diego Mira Mesa Stadium 18 6:00pm
CA Woodland Hills Promenade 16 6:00pm
CO Denver Denver Pavilions 15 7:00pm
FL Jacksonville Regency Jax 24 6:00pm
FL Tampa Citrus Park Stadium 20 6:00pm
GA Atlanta RGL Perimeter Pointe 10 6:00pm
IL Woodridge Cinemark @ Seven Bridges 5:00pm
IN Indianapolis Galaxy Stadium 14 5:00pm
MA Boston Fenway 13 6:00pm
NC Raleigh Movies @ North Hills 14 6:00pm
NY New York Union Square Stadium 14 6:00pm
OH Columbus Georgesville Square Stadium 16 6:00pm
OK Oklahoma City Tinseltown USA 5:00pm
OR Portland Lloyd Center 10 Cinema 6:00pm
PA Harrisburg Harrisburg 14 6:00pm
PA Philadelphia Riverview Plaza 17 6:00pm
SC Columbia Sandhill Cinema 16 6:00pm
TN Nashville Opry Mills Stadium 20 Plus Imax 5:00pm
TX Austin Metropolitan Stadium 14 5:00pm
TX Houston Houston Marq*e Stadium 23 5:00pm
VA Glen Allen Virginia Center Stadium 20 6:00pm
WA Seattle Pacific Place 11 6:00pm

Learn more about the event here: http://www.firstfreedomfirst.org/simulcast-event/learn-more/

RSVP for the event here: http://www.firstfreedomfirst.org/big-event/

Discuss meeting up for the event among CSV members in our forum here: http://secularvoters.org/forums/p/67/144.aspx#144

FROM: http://secularvoters.org/blogs/announcements/archive/2008/03/08/celebrities-host-national-separation-of-church-and-state-event-march-26th.aspx

FOR LEGAL INFORMATION ON IMPLEMENTING NATIONAL HEALTH CARE REFORM . . .

Ellis Dean Hovey — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 02:50:18 EDT

. . . CONTACT:

Please reply to cnewhall@cnewhall.com
Clark Newhall MD JD
Physician & Attorney
Law Office at
57 W. 200 South, Suite 101
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
www.cnewhall.com
801-363-8888
Fax 801-596-8888
If Newhall is online, you can chat with him at cnewhall@hotmail.com or skype him at
Skypename: cnewhall

(NOTE: I, PeskyAtheist, am not Clark Newhall.)

Barack Obama Only Presidential Candidate to Endorse Separation of Church and State

Ellis Dean Hovey — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 17:09:15 EDT

Barack Obama Only Presidential Candidate to Endorse Separation of Church and State Of all the major presidential candidates running for the office of President of the United States in 2008, Barack Obama is the only one, in either party, to explicitly and strongly endorse separation of church and state.

You may be aware that Obama does appeal to religious faith and that he does speaking openly about his own religious faith, but he also clearly understands the difference between personal belief and government policy. Having said that, Barack Obama does certainly endorse religion in general and uphold religion as a valuable part of what he believes is the fabric of society.

Here is what Barack Obama has said about separation of church and state:

I went to a Catholic school in a Muslim country, so I was studying the Bible and catechisms by day, and, at night, you'd hear the [Muslim] prayer call. My mother was a deeply spiritual person. Her view always was that underlying these religions was a common set of beliefs about how you treat other people and how you aspire to act, not just for yourself, but also for the greater good. I am a follower, as well, of our civic religion. I'm a big believer in the separation of church and state. I am a big believer in our constitutional structure. I'm a law professor at the University of Chicago teaching constitutional law.
Chicago Sun-Tim, "I have a deep faith", 2004
For one, the separation of church and state in America has preserved not only our democracy but also the robustness of our religious practice. After all, during our founding, it was not the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of this separation; it was the persecuted religious minorities concerned that any state-sponsored religion might hinder their ability to practice their faith.

This separation is critical to our form of government because in the end, democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. If I am opposed to abortion for religious reasons but seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

This might be difficult for those who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, but in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice. Politics involves compromise, the art of the possible. But religion does not allow for compromise. To base one's life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime; to base our policymaking on them would be dangerous.
Politics need not abandon religion, 2006

Obama's positions on religion are complicated though, and he has done a tremendous job of simultaneously appealing to religious voters while strongly supporting separation of church and state. Indeed some could argue that his open endorsement of religion in general affords him the ability to speaking in favor of secular government. Obama's views on religion and separation of church and state are no doubt, as he himself has said, highly influenced by his diverse background and upbringing. He comes from a mixed Christian and Muslim background and his mother happens not to have been a member of any particular religious group. He notes that his mother was very "spiritual" and felt that all religions shared some core elements of truth. Obama was, of course, also a law student at Harvard. With this diverse background it is no wonder that Barack Obama supports separation of church and state, and he appears to have done a good job of walking the fine line between personal belief and public policy making.

While Barack Obama does clearly speak to the religious interests of voters, and does in some cases tout the role of religion in benefiting society, he also speaks more strongly, and more directly, to the issue of separation of church and state than any of the other presidential candidates. Published Jan 27 2008, 05:49 AM by CSV