Joined a conference cal with CD1 coordinators and there is an update for travelling to NV. The NV folks are taking over, since there are so many groups going from CA, it has been getting unwieldy for them to coordinate through the local coordinators.
So now the procedure is to go to the Drive for Change site at http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/nvdfc and register there. Also, housing will no longer be arranged, unless you signed up for it already. So as I understand it you have to be able to pay for a hotel or stay with friends/family if you want to go.
That's the update. Keep making phone calls from home, attend a Debate Watch Party, or show up on Saturdays at Dem Headquarters at 2:30 pm to do phone banking or get new info.
Thanks, Jennifer
Hi all,
Just wanted to introduce myself, Jennifer Berman, new travel coordinator for Humboldt/Del Norte. Agreed to do it last week and am just familiar with what needs to be done.
I just set up a new event at my house this weekend - you should get a notification about it via the group listserves.
CAN ANYONE TRAVEL TO RENO THIS WEEKEND FOR CANVASSING? This is one of the weekends set aside for Northern California travelers.
You need to provide your own transportation and lodging, but I can help with coordination with folks in Reno.
Feel free to give folks you know my phone number/email and have them contact me.
I am excited to be in contact with all of you who have sustained this campaign until now - I am really feeling the urgency now!
Thanks, Jennifer 822-6171, casadelmar1234@sbcglobal.net
A lot has happened in the last two weeks!...We need to get the word out about Obama!!Come to Dem Hqtrs. in Eureak this saturday to help get the word out! Can you make signs, hang them around town, make calls, etc. We Need YOU!!
Wow!!..Here we are!..I look forward to seeing some new faces at Lost Coast Brewery in Eureka tonight!
Come on down and watch the Iowa Caucus results as they come in from 6 to 9 pm.
When I read this book, I wanted to share it. It actually makes me nervous to be this hopeful about our political process, and now I find myself unable to feel otherwise. I am circulating this book with confidence that people can recognize the difference between authenticity and bullshit.
Requests:
1) Read it. If you find it sitting untouched for more than three days, pass it along.
2) When you finish the book, write a brief personal inscription, and pass it along.
3) Consider buying extra copies and passing them along. Think logorithmically.
4) If you feel inspired, participate in the campaign.
5) If it strikes you as fun, email me at: gatito@gotsky.com.
Thank you for participating.
This book belongs to everyone!
3) Consider buying extra copies and passing them along. Think Logorithmically.
IOWA FALLS
Barack Obama looked as if he needed a smoke and he needed it bad.
Everyone knows you’re not supposed to make two big changes at once. But Michelle Obama’s price for letting her husband run was that he quit.
So there he was, trying to meet the deep, inexhaustible needs of both Iowa activists and the global press behemoth on his first swing across the state, while giving up cigarettes.
He was a tad testy. Traipsing around desolate stretches of snowy — and extremely white — Iowa to go into living rooms and high school gyms and take questions like “Are you willing to stand up for independent family farmers?” makes me want to sneak out for a drag, too, and I don’t even smoke.
“I’ve been chewing Nicorette all day long,” he told reporters at a press conference in Ames on Sunday, where he was getting irritated at suggestions that he lacked substance and at the specter of his vanishing privacy. And, oh yes, at the accusation by the Australian prime minister (sounding two sheep short of a paddock) that Mr. Obama’s deadline to get out of Iraq made him Al Qaeda’s dream candidate.
The Illinois senator didn’t have on an implacable mask of amiability, as Hillary did in Iowa. He didn’t look happily in his element, like Bill Clinton. But he certainly didn’t look as if he was straining to survive the Q .& A.’s, as W. did in the beginning.
Beyond his smooth-jazz façade, the reassuring baritone and that ensorcelling smile, the 45-year-old had moments of looking conflicted.
In the lobby of the AmericInn in Iowa Falls on Saturday night, he seemed a bit dazed by his baptism into the big-time. He was left munching trail mix all day while, he said, “the press got fed before me.”
Everything was a revelation for him: The advance team acronym RON, for Rest Overnight. Women squealing. “I saw a hat,” he noted with a grin, “that said, ‘Obama, clean and articulate.’ ”
Senator Obama’s body language was loose — and he’s so slender his wedding band looked as if it was slipping off — but there was a wariness in his dark eyes.
He is backed up by a strong, smart wife and a professional campaign team, but he doesn’t have a do-whatever-it-takes family firm with contract killers and debt collectors, like Bush Inc. and Clinton Inc.
He was eloquent, if not as inspiring as his advance billing had prepared audiences to expect. He made his first Swift-boat-able slip when he had to apologize for talking about soldiers’ lives “wasted” in Iraq. He sounded self-consciously pristine at times, as if he was too refined for the muck of politics. That’s not how you beat anybody but Alan Keyes.
After talking to high school journalists, he took a sniffy shot at the loutish reporters who were merely whispering where’s the beef: “Take some notes, guys, that’s how it’s done.”
No fewer than three times last week, Mr. Obama got indignant about the beach-babe attention given to a shot of him in the Hawaiian surf.
Using the dreaded third person that some candidates slip into, he told the press that one of their favorite narratives boiled down to “Obama has pretty good style, he can deliver a pretty good speech, but he seems to prioritize rhetoric over substance.” After an ode to his own specificity, he tut-tutted, “You’ve been reporting on how I look in a swimsuit.”
He poses for the cover of Men’s Vogue and then gets huffy when people don’t treat him as Hannah Arendt.
For some of us, it’s hard to fathom being upset at getting accused of looking great in a bathing suit. But his friends say it played into this Harvard grad’s fear of being seen as “a dumb blond.” He has been known to privately mock “pretty boys” (read John Edwards, the Breck Girl of 2004).
He doesn’t lack confidence, but he’s so hung up on being seen as thoughtful that he sometimes comes across as too emotionally detached and cerebral with crowds yearning for an electric, visceral connection. J.F.K. mixed cool with fire.
For a man who couldn’t wait to inject himself into the national arena, and who has spent so much time writing books about himself, the senator is oddly put off by press inquisitiveness.
When The Times’s Jeff Zeleny asked him on his plane whether he’d had a heater in his podium during his announcement speech in subzero Springfield, Mr. Obama hesitated. He shot Jeff a look that said, “Are you from People magazine?” before conceding that, unlike Abe Lincoln, he’d had a heater.
Take some notes, senator, that’s how it’s done.
