Hello, my name is Susan Pfeifer (many of you may know me as mediasusan2@gmail.com) and I am asking for your vote for the California Democratic Party Central Committee. I have been a home owner in San Francisco and California 12th Assembly District for 30 years and an active Democrat for many years.
In October, 2008 the San Francisco Democratic Party awarded me the 2008 Sue Bierman award as Grass Roots Volunteer of the Year for my activities on behalf of the Obama campaign and the San Francisco Democratic Party.
I was elected an Obama Delegate from the 12th Congressional District to the Democratic National Convention in Denver. I created over 115 volunteer events on www.my.barackobama.com, which prompted the Obama campaign to seat me in the front row at Invesco Field for Obama’s historic acceptance speech in Denver. I have made literally thousands of phone calls, registered voters, walked precincts, been a precinct captain, was the San Francisco weekend phone bank coordinator , and ran the SF Obama campaign satellite phone bank in the Western Addition.
I attended the 2008 California State Democratic Convention as a proxy. I am an active member of the West Side Democratic Club; Sunset Democratic Club, Democracy Action (Alec Bash, President) and an officer with San Francisco for Democracy. Other activities have included setting up voter registration tables all over San Francisco and Daly City where I have registered literally thousands of voters. I believe involvement in the Democratic Party is not a spectator sport so I get out there and make things happen.
I have been endorsed by State Senator Leland Yee, Melanie Nutter (SFDCCC) and Alicia Wang (Vice-Chair of the California Democratic Party). The California Democratic Party needs people with experience and commitment. If elected, I will represent Assembly District 12 with energy, honor and dignity.
The 12th Assembly District Caucus will be:
Sunday, January 11th
Westlake Park - Dolger Center (101 Westlake Blvd. - Daly City)
Sunset Blvd. becomes Westlake Blvd. Westlake Park is about 1/4 mile north of
John Daly Blvd.
Registration: 12 noon - 2 pm
Voting starts at 2 pm
Electing: 6 males + 6 females
You can register early at: www.cadem.org (upper right corner under "Get Involved"). I suggest you pre-register to save time. You may sign in and vote anytime between noon - 2pm and leave - or you may stay for candidate speeches starting after 2pm and vote then. You MUST either be signed in or in line by 2 pm in order to vote.
There will be several candidate slates but you may vote for any 6 male and 6 female candidates you choose.
Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Here is a sampling of the world's reactions to Barack Obama's victory in the U.S. presidential election.
``It's America showing some maturity,'' said Greg Ryan, 38, a financial planner in Sydney, Australia, adding Obama will be a more ``peaceful'' president than George W. Bush. ``America's gone too far down that world policeman thing.''
Obama's victory is a ``generational change'' and he may take global warming more seriously. ``That's the big picture isn't it, the environment. The war over water is going to be bigger than the war over oil in the long run.''
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&refer=home&sid=aoR_RoR0WGgc
God bless America
God bless Obama & Biden
In our little ways we have all tried to make the best of our time especially in context of how we all have committed time and energy to make America the abode of haven for humanity.
The rest is in God's hands.
As my mother will tell me, "MY PROBLEM IS THE RECIPE THAT GOD US TO PROVIDE ME WITH PROGRESS AND PROSPERITY", I am also passing this blessed saying across the nation and ask everyone of us to believe, trust and hope for there is nothing impossible for the almighty.
God bless USA
God bless Obama and Biden
Please read this OUTSTANDING interview by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/22/votes
It explains how the 2004 election was stolen through computer fraud, and how this is being set up again. Already, there are examples of votes being switched by election machines. This predicts a possibility that the election will be stolen, and then the narrative will be that there was a "Bradley Effect". Or alternately, that an Obama win is not legitimate because of ACORN. This effort is being propagated by right-wing zealots who don't believe the people (pro choice, by and large) should have their votes counted.
I hope the Obama Campaign is working on this issue.
My father is one of the most patient men I have ever come across in life and he used to tell us the story about the tortoise and the hare and how even though the hare can run at a tremendous speed yet he was defeated by the tortoise in the race to the finish line. As my dad will say it was not the lack of energy or velocity that made the fast running hare to loose to later, but rather its inability to exercise patience, humility, consideration and respect for others.
Whenever I think about Sen. Obama, my father’s many folktales comes to life especially in context of how fairytale they might look but still have the pure elements of reality it them. Through out my childhood I grew up learning to be very obedient, humble, patient and respectful especially to my elders and I am now responsible for passing these same qualities to the next generations too.
Obama is an admirable talented articulate and authentic personality that have whether so many storms in life to be where he is right now! The mere fact that in the face of obsessed provocation from his rivals he remained calm conspicuously endear him to my heart and energize within me the desire to emulate and exemplify his characteristic in my life too.
While many of us might have articulated the slogan family first and by implication country first, in Obama’s case he is living out the slogan for us to see. In other words action speaks louder than voice. In this life how many times have we allowed other people to slap us on one cheek and then we turn around and allow then to slap the second one? Given the kind of movies we watch and the mentality of Hollywood action films, such an attitude will be mistaken for cowardice or timidity. However in his case such comparison does not exist instead, with his humble heart and ever forgiven soul he is ready to move on even with the hurt.
I was wearing my Move On Obama T-shirt, and an Asian American woman said - "you look just like him! Without the glasses, you'd be a ringer." Of course, she made my day.
Then she said, "be like him."
That floored me.
For the first time in many, many years, we have a leader worthy of emulation.
Obama will bring back a sense of dignity and respect to the White House, and inspire us all to work towards the future of our country and the world.
Just caught The Early Show on CBS from Nashville. The crowd shots were an enthusiastic wall of Obama supporters, without a McCain supporter in sight. When John Rich came out to sing his "Raising McCain" campaign song (as Harry Smith said, "for First Amendment" balance) , the crowd was respectful but assertive, with several people moving into the shot to dance next to Rich with their Obama signs. Rich was respectful in return, giving an Obama supporter a hug.
What a great picture of American democracy!
Also, I was deeply moved to see such broad multicultural support for Obama in a pretty red state. As a person of color, to see this kind of unity and enthusiasm for another person of color....well, it brings tears to my eyes. It is liberating and inspiring, and warms my heart. "Only love can conquer hate."
Yes We Can!
Barack will keep it on the issues - the economy, war, energy and education/building our country's material and personal infrastructure.
McCain will snidely imply that Barack is naive and unfit, and use every favorable opportunity to dismiss Barack. He will talk in general terms about the economy and believing in the country. He will toss a laundry list of accusations about Obama's plans hoping that something sticks.
Barack will emphasize he believes in the country too - but not in the policies that have put the country in peril. John McCain has been supporting the failed policies of Bush - and he's no maverick.
Barack should also find an opportunity to emphasize: "I am a patriot, and I put my country and its people first; I am a Christian and I am guided by my faith which emphasizes compassion and social justice for everyone, not just the superrich."
Brokaw will probably ask each of them to respond directly to the recent attacks launched by the other campaign. Barack hopefully will dismiss the concern just the way he did in the Democratic debates, and also add something like: "Let's see, McCain wants to make me guilty by a minor association with a former domestic terrorist, whose actions then I despise, but who is now a respected professor. I'm questioning John's past association with a convicted felon - an association which the Congress of the United States called questionable. That's John McCain's actual behavior and judgment on an issue central to the economy. Listen folks, the McCain campaign is just trying to scare you and divert attention away from the economy."
I wonder if Brokaw will ask something like "Do you respect or even like your opponent?"
I'm predicting it will be a good night for us.
If you were paying close attention to the debate tonight, Joe Biden emerged as a clear winner. Yes, Palin was cutesy and folksy, and she didn't sound as stupid as she seemed the last two weeks. What do you expect - she's been preparing for days with the "best minds" of the McCain campaign.
She looked like a slogan slinger to me. Her mantras were "Obama will raise your taxes" "we will go after greed and corruption on Wall Street" and "I will promote Energy Independence." Her statements about Barack Obama were outright slanders. Her support for energy independence relies mainly on "drill baby drill" which panders on this popular sentiment, but ignores reality. Meanwhile, McCain has been against a whole slew of alternative energy proposals, and for deregulation, which fueled "greed and corruption".
Most shockingly, she said Obama was 'waving a white flag of surrender' on Iraq. A complete distortion and lie.
Bill Clinton said once, "If one guy is trying to scare you, and the other is trying to get you to think, vote for the guy who's getting you to think." The clear choice is Obama-Biden.
Palin: slogan slinger who distracts, misleads, slanders and panders. Also, I was struck by her facial expressions. She seemed hostile to me - her micro-expressions ran against the "agreeable" approach she was taking, making me believe she's quite mean underneath all that folksy talk. Also, Palin just plain didn't answer a bunch of questions, she just spouted talking points on whatever she'd been told by pollsters plays well in Peoria. (Examples: she didn't answer q's about deregulation, or "talk straight" about same sex benefits.)
Biden was comprehensive, connected, and real all throughout. Big lines:
"Facts matter" (pointing out truths about what General McClellan said about Afghanistan);
"Past is prologue" (McCain no different than Bush, voted with him most of the time, despite Palin's obfuscating attempts to distance their ticket from Bush - they're gonna be governing with the same folks, people!)
"John McCain is no maverick" (this was a high point, as Biden gave an impassioned attack on McCain's supposed strength);
McCain will build "The ultimate bridge to Nowhere" talking about how McCain's health care plan will be unfair and effectively dump 5-20 million people off health insurance.
"John McCain - God love him - but he's been dead wrong" on war policy.
Finally, Biden really connected with me as he spoke of his personal tribulations, and his conversations with Main Streeters. He sounds so much more credible on his connections to the working class than Palin does.
----
A side note: what to say about McCain....
He is out of touch. Can we trust a man who sings songs about "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran"? A man who clearly seems petty - he was unwilling to even be cordial to Obama in the Senate yesterday.
We need bigger leaders. Leaders who are not rash, reckless or impulsive. Leaders who have the best interests of common Americans and the nation at heart. Leaders who have the courage of their convictions, and the clear headedness to stay cool under pressure. We need Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Let's put on our game faces, let's fill the country with the strength of our positive spirit, and let's give em the 411 on 11/4!
The only way they will win is if we let them!
I just saw the first part of Charlie Gibson's interview with Sarah Palin.
She's not appealin'.
She looked nervous and flustered, did not know the first thing about any of the issues - other than a couple of index card soundbites, i.e. "we will not second-guess the Israeli's on their National Defense". She really couldn't explain her 'task from God' quotes.
I look forward to seeing more of her on ABC tomorrow on World News Tonight and 20/20.
But I predict the reaction from most of America will be:
"I said thanks, but no thanks, to that woman from Nowhere."
Sorry, I just had to say that. That's the meanest thing I've said on this blog. Oh, except that McCain is a liar. But that's true.
Lies, smears, distortions, phony outrage, hypocrisy.
That's what the McCain-Palin campaign is all about. Reformed Maverick (not Maverick Reformer) John McCain has taken the Rove playbook to new depths of disgust.
Examples are rife: the phony outrage over Barack's comment on McCain's economic policy - "like putting lipstick on a pig" - which was perversely construed to be a slander on Palin, who, as it turns out, uses lipstick. Who knew?
And McCain's blatant lies in his Education commercial. Every statement in that ad is a blatant lie, as parsed by the NYT today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/us/politics/11checkpoint.html
We cannot allow these people to win. We have to call a spade a spade. That dog won't hunt. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. A stitch in time saves nine.
How about an ad: "John McCain - dishonor at the gate: McCain and Palin lie about their records and distort Obama's. Do you want a leader who lies, one who wants to pull the wool over your eyes to sell you a real life Bridge to Nowhere? That's not change. That's politics as usual. Vote for the candidate who tells you the truth, who doesn't stoop to smears - the candidate who has a vision for the future and the integrity to help America achieve it. Vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Proud Americans."
or "My mother says that at the end of the day, what you have left is your honor, and your good name. What will John McCain have left at the end of this campaign? He has lied repeatedly and his campaign is trying to swindle America out of our future. He comes from the party that took a record surplus and squandered it in record debt. The party that has wrecked our economy. Vote for Obama and Biden. Real Americans for change." etc.
Write your own ad in the comments section.
I we are considering personalities and the qualities that come with it, Sen. Obama will be one out of many that is most uniquely and ably qualified person in the current political dispensation to lead the country from its prevailing socio-economic squalor. However it is not personalities at all that are of the outmost important but rather issues.
In fact I do completely disagree with O’Reilly assumptions that the current dispensation is more of personality than issues principally because the governor of Alaska with her fresh face but archaic mentality of executive power abuse and egocentrism is the running mate of Sen. John McCain. Americans know better than that if the conservatives and their cohorts both in the political arena and talk shows think that they can fool the people and therefore usurp the fierce urgency of our time which invariably is the obvious necessity of reclaiming the country from the claws of the incumbent and his cronies such as McCain.
Without an iota of doubt the choice of Palin may have helped uplift the image of Sen. McCain, it however does not change the equation about the lethargic and inimical socio-economic articulations of that combination. Where does McCain stand on the economy? According to him Americans are having the best of time and their pragmatic pains is only a mental rather than a physical experience.
Ugh. The convention I just witnessed was a travesty. While the Democrats were upbeat, unified and focused, the Repubs showed off their personal attack skills. For me, it showed clearly that the independent, insurgent John McCain is no more. He was completely unable to control his convention to put forth the post-partisan image he wants to project to swing voters. Instead, we got full-on partisan rancor for the entire convention, including Palin's speech, and then McCain tries to say he's different.
Let us be clear - he will not be different. He will be unable to control his conservative wing. He will do what it takes to stay in power with his base, which means no change at all in the economy, immigration, health care, the war, FISA, and on and on.
He is running a campaign to smear Barack Obama and deceive people about his intentions to promote "change". He is not ready to lead. He was not even ready to lead his own convention.
If you take racism out of the picture, Barack will win this election by 2 to 1, a Johnson landslide. It's that clear. Instead, we have to motivate to fight for every vote. I hope everybody will put in the time every week for the next 60 days to make sure we put Barack and Joe over the top, to get the country we deserve - Republicans, Democrats, and Decline-to-states.
Do the Republicans take the American people for fools? Lindsey Graham was on This Week today, and he was stacking up Palin's experience to Obama's. Give us a break. He sounded like a fanatic zealout, full of distortions and lies to support his twisted world view. If Palin had been a Democrat, he would have been the first out of the gates to savage her. He cares nothing about the truth, just about propagating his tenuous hold on power. I was disgusted by this attack animal.
The main reason we're all dumbfounded by Palin is because she hasn't been even mentioned in the news for most of the year. Tim Pawlenty, also a governor, was rumored to be on McCain's shortlist, and we had the chance to get used to him. Maybe Palin will grow in stature once we're more familiar with her, but right now, it looks like a desperate attempt to secure the Republican conservative base, or a cynical ploy to sway women voters to vote against their interests and for their gender. I don't think women are this stupid, frankly.
Let's take another angle on the experience issue, one that I haven't heard much from the supposed pundits. (By the way, does anyone else feel that the pundits are become more and more obviously irrelevant to gauging the mood of the country, or even as neutral judges of the campaign proceedings?)
Let's leave aside every professional activity that Barack Obama has engaged in. Leave aside his outstanding academic achievements. Leave aside his community organizing. Leave aside his years in the State Senate and Senate. Leave aside his many accomplishments in the legislature. Leave aside his bestselling books. (That's an awful lot to leave aside, by the way.) "What has he done?" Lindsey Graham asked today. Well, I'll tell you: he has created and run a massive grassroots campaign that has transformed the landscape of American politics. He has inspired millions of average Americans with his clarity, intelligence, honesty, and leadership. He has addressed race in a transcendent way. He is a political phenomenon in a way that no other politician in memory can claim. Barack Obama is a transformational leader.
This is why Lindsey Graham is shaking in his boots.
This year, the Democrats, led by Barack Obama and Joe Biden, will lay waste to the politics of fear that Graham's party has thrived on in the last decade. In the years to come, Obama will reshape the national dialogue, invigorate the national spirit, and bring us many steps closer to the fulfillment of the promise that this great nation holds for its people and the world.
I had a conversation with a friend who took issue with the idea that one person, a leader, could create change. She is right, of course. That's the motto that Barack Obama places at the head of even this very website: "I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington. I'm asking you to believe in yours."
I am imagining the day he wins this election. I can see people celebrating in the streets, people kissing like that famous photo in the streets of New York when World War II ended. We've waited a long time for this. We will make history, together.
More than anything, Sen. Biden was emphatic in his condemnation of the abysmal conditions that Americans are going through in the current administration and lay down in an unequivocal terms why a vote for McCain is the same and synonymous to the perpetuation of another four years of the inglorious incumbent term in office.
It is true and one does not need to belong to any party to understand and visualize the authenticity of the argument that Biden is making on behalf of Americans, not even for himself nor for Obama but for the entire humanity.
As we all may have known the country is adequately positioned to affect the world in a ripple manner that is synonymous to the chain reaction of the nuclear reaction in that events in the USA can either spill over to the other part of the world faster with greater intensity than it is initially perceived. For instance on foreign affairs, the incapacitation of the country’s ability to respond to crises that otherwise it should be at the forefront is basically as a consequence of the bad choices that had been made by some of our leaders.
What an extraordinary week in an already memorable year. Sunday--after a full day of work at the office--I was extremely fortunate to have the rare opportunity to watch Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduce Senator Barack Obama here in San Francisco. I was so proud of the San Francisco for Obama team, that turned out a crowd of 500 to show their support for Senator Obama in front of the Fairmont Hotel.
On Tuesday, Filipinos for Obama had its first formal kick-off event. We turned out a crowd of more than 150 Filipino Americans to enlist their support in uniting pinoys behind Senator Obama. I was so proud to be there and get to speak to the crowd about our plans for empowering Filipino Americans to make a difference in this election.
And then on Friday at work, my brother-in-law interrupted my day to put my 18-month-old nephew, Luke, on the phone, so I could hear him say "Obama!" in his adorable baby voice.
Needless to say, that call made my day. Like many of you, last night I was anxiously awaiting my text message from the Obama campaign--until CNN finally spoiled it for me. (I did finally get my text around midnight PST). Senator Joe Biden will be a terrific Vice President--not only will he be a great campaigner, but I actually think he and Senator Obama will govern well together. They are not in lockstep on every issue, which I think makes sense for the number two spot on the ticket.
After another Saturday of working--I do have a non-Obama job--I stopped by our San Francisco Obama phonebank. And now I'm trying to pack for the week. Perhaps I'm being overly ambitious, but I hope to update you from the ground!!
(Photo of Senator Obama courtesy of Dr. Mary Davidson)
