I just called to cancel a hotel room that I had booked almost one year ago for the inauguration. At the time I booked it the price of the room with a king size bed was $89.00 per night. When I called tonight to cancel the room the manager told me it was now going for $300.00 per night.
WOW! Too bad I didn't auction it off on the web or this site. But I am an honest person and do not believe in taking advantage of a situation such as this. I did put it up on the site before cancelling so someone could have taken advantage of the hard to get room in DC.
Oh well, I wish the best to everyone lucky enough to be attending this huge event. I will be calling in to work, sitting in my house, and watching from our TV but my heart and my soul will be there along with the friends I have made through the Obama Campaign. Katie has promised me awesome pictures and a hug to Barack.
Hello MYBO family,
I just want to let people know about my new business.
www.greenteastop.com
come visit me and see what I have.
Mark
On October 14th, the Barack Obama campaign lost one of its biggest grassroots supporters who was diagnosed one year ago with pancreatic cancer.
Beth Wehrman of LeClaire, Iowa was involved in the campaign from its onset in Iowa. She traveled into the Davenport office frequently to make calls, stuff envelopes, enter data into computers, knock on doors, etc. so she could see the end result, Barack Obama as our next POTUS.
Beth was a dedicated wife, mother, grandmother, nurse, and friend. She will be missed by many people.
Beth had been hospitalized for treatment just prior to the Iowa caucus. She was in the hospital when she received a phone call from Barack. It thrilled her to be able to speak directly with Barack and let him know about how her insurance was handling her case amongst other things. Her most recent honor was to see Barack again in September when he was in town for a small town hall gathering with undecided voters. In fact,she had just been released from the hospital earlier that day. She would not miss this for anything. Her strength and family were with her through it all. Her goal had been to see Barack Obama elected. I am sorry to say that she didn't make it. Only 19 days out but she just could not hang on.
To top it off, her husband was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer. He was honored by being the republican turned Obama supporter who introduced Barack at the town hall in Davenport.
My thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of Beth's. My special message to them, we will celebrate Barack's victory and toast Beth as the avid supporter she was.
Howard Dean the Chairman of the Democratic and a pioneer of internet campaigning is going to be in Davenport Iowa Wed. morning at St. Ambrose University 10:30 - 11:30 A.M.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/earlyvotingevent/gs5glr
Stop all of this blogging and go out there, get to work for Barack and for America.
If half of the efforts put into blogging and then emailing everyone to read their special blogs we could have registered 200 more voters, knocked on 200 more doors, or made 200 more phone calls.
GET TO WORK!
Here is a new tool on BarackObama.com to help you see if your registered, see where to vote, as well as vote EARLY.
https://www.voteforchange.com/index_obama.php
This one here smells like a computer virus that nobody has ever seen before! MAKE IT GO VIRAL!!! FORWAAARRDD!!
August 29, 2008
Putin Suggests U.S. Provocation in Georgia Clash
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY
MOSCOW -- As Russia struggled to rally international support for its military action in Georgia, Vladimir V. Putin, the country's paramount leader, lashed out at the United States on Thursday, contending that the White House may have orchestrated the conflict to benefit one of the candidates in the American presidential election.
Mr. Putin's comments in a television interview, his most extensive to date on Russia's decision to send troops into Georgia earlier this month, sought to present the military operation as a response to brazen, cold war-style provocations by the United States. In tones that seemed alternately angry and mischievous, he suggested that the Bush administration may have tried to create a crisis that would influence American voters in the choice of a successor to President Bush.
"The suspicion would arise that someone in the United States created this conflict on purpose to stir up the situation and to create an advantage for one of the candidates in the competitive race for the presidency in the United States," Mr. Putin said in an interview with CNN.
He added, "They needed a small victorious war."
Mr. Putin did not specify which candidate he had in mind, but there was no doubt that he was referring to Senator John McCain, the Republican. Mr. McCain is loathed in the Kremlin because he has a close relationship with Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and has called for imposing stiff penalties on Russia, including throwing it out of the Group of 8 industrialized nations.
Mr. Putin offered scant evidence to support his assertion, and the White House called his comments absurd. But they underscored the depth of the rift between Moscow and Washington over the Georgia crisis, which flared three weeks ago when the Georgian military tried to reclaim a breakaway enclave allied with Russia. They also suggested that the Russian leader was deeply concerned about the possibility that Mr. McCain, widely viewed here as having a strong bias against Russia, could become president.
Only last spring, Mr. Putin, the president at the time, held a summit meeting with Mr. Bush in which the two expressed personal affection for each other and sought to smooth over tensions in the bilateral relationship.
Russia has been struggling to persuade the outside world to back its action in Georgia. On Thursday, China and four other countries meeting with Russia for the annual summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security alliance, declined to back Russia's military action in a joint communiqu�.
Mr. Putin's interview came after his prot�g�, President Dmitri A. Medvedev, spoke to several foreign news outlets this week as part of a concerted move by the Kremlin to counter Georgia's public relations offensive in the international media. Mr. Medvedev's tone was less harsh, though he also criticized the West.
On Thursday, Mr. Putin, now prime minister, also said Russian defense officials believed that United States citizens were in the conflict area supporting the Georgian military when it attacked the separatist region of South Ossetia.
"Even during the cold war, during the time of tough confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, we have always avoided direct clashes between our civilians, let alone our servicemen," Mr. Putin said. "We have serious reasons to believe that directly, in the combat zone, citizens of the United States were present."
"If the facts are confirmed," he added, "that United States citizens were present in the combat zone, that means only one thing -- that they could be there only on the direct instruction of their leadership. And if this is so, then it means that American citizens are in the combat zone, performing their duties, and they can only do that following a direct order from their leader, and not on their own initiative."
In Washington, the White House spokeswoman, Dana M. Perino, dismissed Mr. Putin's remarks. "To suggest that the United States orchestrated this on behalf of a political candidate just sounds not rational," she said.
She added, "It also sounds like his defense officials who said they believe this to be true are giving him really bad advice."
A senior Russian defense official, Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, said at a news conference in Moscow on Thursday that Russian forces had found a United States passport in a ruined building near Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia. The position, he said, had been occupied by Georgian Interior Ministry forces.
"What was the gentleman's purpose of being among the special forces and what he is doing today, I so far cannot answer," General Nogovitsyn said, holding up what he said was a color copy of the passport. He said members of the Georgian unit had been killed, and the building destroyed.
When the war broke out, the United States had about 130 military trainers in Georgia preparing Georgian troops for service in Iraq. The American Embassy in Tbilisi said these trainers were not involved in the fighting; about 100 remain and are assisting with the delivery of aid to Georgia that is arriving on military planes and ships.
General Nogovitsyn said the passport was in the name of Michael Lee White of Texas, but gave no information on whether Russians believed that he was a member of the United States military. The United States Embassy in Georgia told The Associated Press that it had no information on the matter.
Mr. Putin said in the CNN interview that Russia had thought that the United States would prevent Georgia from attacking South Ossetia, but suggested that he now believed that the Bush administration encouraged Mr. Saakashvili to send in his military.
"The American side in fact armed and trained the Georgian Army," Mr. Putin said. "Why hold years of difficult talks and seek complex compromise solutions in interethnic conflicts? It's easier to arm one of the sides and push it into the murder of the other side, and it's over. It seemed like an easy solution. The thing is, it turns out that it's not always so."
The Georgia conflict has become a flash point in the United States presidential campaign, with Senator McCain assailing what he refers to as "revanchist Russia" and asserting that he is far more qualified to handle such a crisis than the Democratic candidate, Senator Barack Obama.
Mr. McCain has long been friendly with Mr. Saakashvili, who has said he talks to Mr. McCain regularly. Mr. McCain's top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, has worked as a lobbyist on behalf of the Georgian government, and Mr. McCain's wife, Cindy, traveled to the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, this week on a humanitarian aid mission.
All these ties, combined with Mr. McCain's criticism of Russia, have earned him a kind of notoriety in Moscow. When Parliament passed a resolution this week urging that Russia recognize the independence of the two breakaway enclaves, some lawmakers not only praised the courage of the South Ossetians, but also threw a few barbs at Mr. McCain.
Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting.
Obama raps McCain for ignorance of his own houses
By MATT APUZZO Associated Press Writer
In this Feb. 5, 2008 file photo, Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., watches Super Tuesday election returns from the kitchen area of his home in Phoenix, Ariz. Days after he cracked that being rich in the U.S. meant earning at least $5 million a year, McCain acknowledged that he wasn't sure how many houses he and his wealthy wife actually own. (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- John McCain may have created his own housing crisis. Hours after a report that the Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting didn't know how many homes he and his multimillionaire wife own, Democratic rival Barack Obama launched a national TV ad and a series of campaign stops aimed at portraying McCain as wealthy and out of touch.
With the economy the top issue in the race, Obama sought to turn McCain's gaffe into one of those symbolic moments that stick in voters' minds.
Think John Kerry sailboarding or the first President Bush wowed by a grocery store checkout scanner, Michael Dukakis riding in a tank or Gerald Ford eating a tamale with the husk still on.
"I think - I'll have my staff get to you," McCain told Politico when asked Wednesday how many houses he owns. "It's condominiums where - I'll have them get to you."
Later, the McCain campaign told Politico that McCain and his wife, Cindy, have at least four in three states - Arizona, California and Virginia.
Property records reviewed by The Associated Press show McCain and his family appear to own at least eight homes: A ranch and two condos in Arizona; three condos in Coronado, Calif.; a condo in La Jolla, Calif.; and another in Arlington, Va. The number of houses is a bit trickier to determine since the ranch has at least four houses and a two-story cabin on it.
Last week McCain cracked that being rich in the U.S. meant earning at least $5 million a year. His latest comments gave Democrats an opportunity to suggest that McCain cannot relate to ordinary voters.
Campaigning in Chester, Va., Obama said: "I guess if you think being rich means you've got to make $5 million and if you don't know how many houses you have, it's not surprising you might think the economy is fundamentally strong." He returned to the McCain remark later, saying of teachers: "Most teachers hold themselves accountable. They didn't go into teaching to make money. They don't have seven houses."
The Obama campaign also announced 16 campaign events across the country to highlight the comment and try to turn the tables on McCain's effort to cast him as an elitist. In the battleground state of Michigan, Obama's campaign asked volunteers to guess how many houses McCain owns, a contest dubbed, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire: McCain Edition."
While both sides are trying cast the other as too rich to understand the working class, the truth is neither candidate is hurting for money.
McCain's tax returns showed a total income of $405,409 in 2007. According to her 2006 tax returns, Cindy McCain had a total income of $6 million. Her wealth is estimated by some at $100 million, based on her late father's Arizona beer distributorship. She has not released her 2007 returns, which she files separately from her husband.
Obama and his wife, Michelle, reported making $4.2 million in 2007.
In the 2004 campaign, Republicans tried to use wealth against Kerry even though President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were multimillionaires themselves. In 2005, Kerry reported a net worth between $165 million and $235 million, most of it controlled by his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.
Underscoring how seriously the McCain campaign takes the house controversy, the Republican National Committee responded with a Web site highlighting Obama's ties to Chicago businessman Antonin "Tony" Rezko, a friend and contributor who was convicted in June on more than a dozen felonies in a corruption scandal.
Obama and his wife bought their home in Chicago in 2005 for $1.6 million after getting advice from Rezko. The corruption case had no connection to Obama, and Obama has said it was a mistake to work with Rezko on buying the house.
"Does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon really want to get into a debate about houses?" asked McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers.
However, the campaign got one thing wrong: Hawaii has no private beaches. Obama, who was born in Hawaii and spent most of his youth there, visited relatives during a recent vacation and joined the public swimming and surfing in the ocean.
In a forum last week with the Rev. Rick Warren, McCain was asked to define the word "rich" and to give a figure. After promoting his tax policies, McCain said: "I think if you are just talking about income, how about $5 million?" The audience laughed, and he added: "But seriously, I don't think you can - I don't think seriously that - the point is that I'm trying to make here, seriously - and I'm sure that comment will be distorted - but the point is that we want to keep people's taxes low and increase revenues."
Asked the same question at the forum, Obama said those making $250,000 and higher are in the top 3 to 4 percent and "doing well."
Come join us at the Labor Day Parade in East Moline
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/communityservice/gpgy5j
August 21, 2008
Obama camp links McCain to Abramoff scandal
Posted: 02:11 AM ETFrom CNN Ticker Producer Alexander Mooney
Obama's campaign is out with a tough new campaign ad featuring Jack Abramoff.
(CNN) — Barack Obama's campaign is linking John McCain to the infamous Jack Abramoff scandal that ended several Republicans' political careers three years ago in a new campaign ad hitting Georgia airwaves Wednesday.
The 30-second spot is the Obama campaign’s second negative ad in the past 24 hours. It attacks the Arizona senator for his association with former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed, one of the Republicans implicated in the scandal.
The ad also seems to suggest McCain didn't call Reed to testify before a Senate panel he chaired in return for political favors.
“When the Senate investigated, the senator in charge never even called Reed to testify….And that senator? John McCain. And who’s now raising money for McCain’s campaign? Ralph Reed," the ad's narrator says. "For 26 years in Washington, John McCain’s played the same old games. We just can’t afford more of the same.”
The TV spot sparked a sharp rebuke from McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers, who called it "ridiculous," and noted Obama's connection to Bill Ayers, the current University of Chicago professor and one-time leader of the militant group "Weather Undeground."
“If Barack Obama wants to have a discussion about truly questionable associations, let’s start with his relationship with the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers, at whose home Obama’s political career was reportedly launched," Rogers said. "Mr. Ayers was a leader of the Weather Underground, a terrorist group responsible for countless bombings against targets including the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon and numerous police stations, courthouses and banks."
Reed, who lost a bid in 2006 for lieutenant governor of Georgia, had promoted a McCain fundraiser last week in the Atlanta area that netted the presumptive Republican nominee $1.75 million in campaign cash. Though Reed did not attend the event (after intense Democratic criticisms), he circulated "special invitations" to several Republicans in the Atlanta area seeking donations.
That prompted several watchdog groups to call on McCain to cancel the event — although his campaign noted the fundraiser was sponsored by the Republican National Committee, not Reed.
Barack Obama bites back against John McCain
Senator Barack Obama has stiffened his rhetoric against Senator John McCain, after complaints within Democratic ranks that he was allowing attacks to go unanswered.
By Alex Spillius in Washington Last Updated: 9:01PM BST 20 Aug 2008
As the White House race heated up ahead of the first party convention next week, the Democratic candidate has said his Republican rival "doesn't know what he's up against" in this election and challenged him to stop questioning his character and patriotism.
Mr McCain had said Mr Obama "tried to legislate failure" in the Iraq war and had put his ambition to be president above the interests of the United States.
Apparently enjoying getting under his rival's skin, Mr McCain said yesterday: "Senator Obama got a little testy on this issue. He said that I am questioning his patriotism. Let me be clear: I am not questioning his patriotism, I am questioning his judgment."
Mr Obama also for the first time hit back at personal attacks on his popularity in McCain campaign advertisements which compared him to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.
"Our job in this election is not just 'win,' although I'm a big believer in winning," Obama said. "I don't intend to lose this election. John McCain doesn't know what he's up against.
"He can talk all he wants about Britney (Spears) and Paris (Hilton), but I don't have time for that mess," Mr Obama said.
Despite vowing to eschew negative tactics, Mr Obama yesterday launched a series of hard-hitting advertisements in swing states that verged on contravening his pledge.
They portrayed Mr McCain as a member of the wealthy elite disconnected from the struggles of ordinary families. One used a Jan 2008 quote from the Arizona senator: "I don't believe we're headed into a recession".
Another presented a mock book of Economics by John McCain, with Chapter Two titled $10 Billion A Month In Iraq. The Republican has been a staunch advocate of the war from its inception.
A decorated Vietnam war veteran and member of the Senate armed services committee, Mr McCain has sharply questioned whether the 47-year-old Obama has the experience and character necessary to serve as commander in chief.
He also has spoken out strongly against Russia's invasion of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, using Obama's absence from the campaign trail during a Hawaiian holiday last week to take a hard line against Moscow.
Mr Obama has always vowed not to let attacks go unanswered, having seen the disastrous effects of John Kerry's failure in 2004 to respond quickly to slanderous questions about his war record in Vietnam.
But political brawling goes against his nature, and his campaign will try as far as possible to stay above the fray, keeping its powder dry for the final eight weeks of the campaign, which follow the end of the Republican convention on Sep 4.
According to some Democratic strategists, that is the right course of action. "Over the summer we have seen a bit of a rope-a-dope strategy, but at the conventions we will see the dynamic of the campaign change," said Dan Gerstein, who worked on Al Gore's 2000 campaign.
After Mr Obama has formally accepted the party's nomination in front of 75,000 people on Aug 28, he believes the Illinois senator's campaign will launch a sustained counter-attack, linking McCain to fellow Republican George W Bush. "You will hear the phrase 'Bush's third term' a lot," he added.
by Ted Robbins
Listen Now [4 min 16 sec] add to playlist
Kathleen Hensley Portalski displays newspaper clippings of her father in World War II, as well as snapshots of herself as a child with her father.
Portalski is shown with her late father, Jim Hensley, who also was Cindy McCain's father.
Read the original profile on Cindy McCain.
Nicholas Portalski, whose mother is McCain's half sister, says it's "very, very hurtful" that he and his mother haven't been recognized.
All Things Considered, August 18, 2008 · Last Tuesday, NPR broadcast a story about Cindy McCain's business and charity work. In it, Ted Robbins described McCain as the only child of Jim Hensley, a wealthy Arizona businessman. The next morning, NPR received an e-mail from Nicholas Portalski of Phoenix, who heard the story with his mother.
"We were listening to the piece about Cindy McCain on NPR, All Things Considered, and it just struck us very hard," Portalski said.
His mother, Kathleen Hensley Portalski, is also Hensley's daughter.
The Portalski family is accustomed to hearing Cindy McCain described as Hensley's only child.
She's been described that way by news organizations from The New Yorker and The New York Times to Newsweek and ABC.
McCain herself routinely uses the phrase "only child," as she did on CNN last month. "I grew up with my dad," she said then. "I'm an only child. My father was a cowboy, and he really loved me very much, but I think he wanted a son occasionally."
McCain's father was also a businessman — and twice a father.
"I'm upset," Kathleen Portalski says. "I'm angry. It makes me feel like a nonperson, kind of."
Who Is Kathleen Hensley Portalski?
Documents show Kathleen Anne Hensley was born to Jim and Mary Jeanne Hensley on Feb. 23, 1943. They had been married for six years when Kathleen was born.
Jim Hensley was a bombardier on a B-17, flying over Europe during World War II.
He was injured and sent to a facility in West Virginia to recuperate. During that time, while still married to Mary Jeanne, Hensley met another woman — Marguerite Smith. Jim divorced Mary Jeanne and married Marguerite in 1945.
Cindy Lou Hensley was born nine years later, in 1954.
She may have grown up as an only child, but so did her half sister, Kathleen, who was raised by a single parent.
Portalski says she did see her father and her half sister from time to time.
"I saw him a few times a year," she says. "I saw him at Christmas and birthdays, and he provided money for school clothes, and he called occasionally."
Jim Hensley also provided credit cards and college tuition for his grandchildren, as well as $10,000 gifts to Kathleen and her husband, Stanley Portalski. That lasted a decade, they say. By then, Jim Hensley had built Hensley and Co. into one of the largest beer distributorships in the country. He was worth tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars.
Sole Inheritor To Hensley's Estate
When Hensley died in 2000, his will named not only Portalski but also a daughter of his wife Marguerite from her earlier marriage. So, Cindy McCain may be the only product of Jim and Marguerite's marriage, but she is not the only child of either.
She was, however, the sole inheritor of his considerable estate.
Kathleen Portalski was left $10,000, and her children were left nothing. It's a fact Nicholas Portalski says his sister discovered the hard way.
"What she found in town — on the day of or the day before or the day after his funeral — was that the credit card didn't work anymore," Nick says.
The Portalskis live in a modest home in central Phoenix. Kathleen is retired, as is her husband. Nicholas Portalski is a firefighter and emergency medical technician looking for work.
They say it would have been nice if they were left some of the Hensley fortune.
They also say they are Democrats, but Nicholas Portalski says he had another reason for coming forward.
"The fact that we don't exist," he says. "The fact that we've never been recognized, and then Cindy has to put such a fine point on it by saying something that's not true. Recently, again and again. It's just very, very hurtful."
Kathleen Portalski says she'd like an acknowledgment and an apology.
NPR asked the McCain campaign — specifically, Cindy McCain — to comment or respond. Neither replied.
Rachel Gets Her Own MSNBC Show
by Keith Olbermann
Tue Aug 19, 2008 at 02:05:19 PM PDT
Happy Now? The network will be formally announcing this tomorrow, but I am pleased to inform you in this fully authorized leak, that as of Monday, September 8, our mutual friend Ms. Maddow will become host of her own show, on MSNBC, at 9 PM Eastern Time. And, yes, we will be making another unofficial announcement of this on tonight's edition of Countdown. My guest to analyze the Rachel Maddow news will be Rachel Maddow.
Let me answer the key questions in advance: 1) No, she will not be serving as a VeeJay introducing music clips or cartoons. 2) No, I don't think we have the name of the show chosen yet. She wanted to use "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" and I said, that's where I draw the line. 3) No, the format isn't set, though there have been a lot of discussions out there and they have all centered on how to best allow her to both give her laser-quality insights while soliciting the opinions of others. 4) Yes, I had something to do with it. 5) Yes, you had something to do with it. 6) Yes, this is why I never really responded to any of the 41,754 comments that all pretty much read "And get Rachel her own show, nitwit." 7) No, I'm not sure it will replay later in the evening but I bloody well hope so. 8) Yes, I did like the description of her in The Nation: "Everything about her radiates competence and a deft, bright careerism." 9) Billy Loes. A teammate of Hodges in 1950, an opponent of Adcock in 1954, an opponent of Colavito in 1959, a teammate of Mays in 1961. 10) No, this actually happened pretty quickly. Less than five months between first paid appearance and own show is pretty fast. I believe I still hold the MSNBC record: I came back to guest host for three days in 2003 and 39 days later I had a contract to do the 8 PM show. With people as talented like Rachel, getting it locked down quickly is a good thing. 11) No, I have no idea who will start guest hosting Countdown. Took me five years to find her. Dammit! Why didn't I think of this! She can't be the guest host any more! I knew I'd forgotten something! 12) No, there will not be pie. Well, you may bring your own pie, but I can't be bothered with pie now! I have to go find another guest host. Dammit.
