I agree with those who find the vice-presidential nominee an interesting move by McCain, one which may give insight to the way he would govern with a little out-of-the-box approach.
It is rather difficult though to see it as much more than electioneering, an explicit appeal to the disappointed supporters of Hillary Clinton and a pandering to McCain's wobbly religious conservative base, which rejoiced over the selection of an anti-abortion evangelical Christian. In the final analysis, I don't see Sarah Palin as an outstanding choice, as Focus on the Family Action founder and chairman James C. Dobson proclaims. In fact, I think the choice appears more a cynical and self-serving maneuver by McCain, which serves only to improve his own chances for election. It does not, in any way I see, strengthen the ticket or ensure the future leadership of the country, should something happen to McCain. An aspect, which I believe Barack Obama's choice in fact fulfills well. Personally, this closed the deal for me. Such squandering of myriad possible strengthening choices, focussing only on his own election strategy at the expense of the strength and integrity of the office itself is so contemptuous as to disqualify him for consideration to the office of President. One may not agree and one need not agree with every single point of Obama's platform, but it is more and more apparent that he is a more intelligent choice and that McCain is ultimately controlled by the party that has led the country to the state it is in today. My hope is that all, the Christian right-wing conservative included, will find it in both heart and mind to cast a vote that considers all the broad interests and concerns of the political race for government of America, and not focus on casting a vote to promote the positions of one of America's many religions.
/Kevin
Paid for by the Committe for Kevin Donovan for U.S. Ambassador to Denmark :-)
I don’t know why I didn’t hear about it from David Plouffe first, but it is great.
http://factcheck.barackobama.com/
Enjoy,
Michael Rupp
aka:WNYmathGuy
The documents subsequently linked below should be redistributed to any Obama Supporter you know. The documents are the official rules for delegate selection and petitioning in New York State. This is vital to getting our favorite on the ticket for the primary race.
“The Guide to Becoming a Delegate to the 2008 Democratic National Convention is at
http://www.geocities.com/wnymathguy/GuideToDelegate08DNC.pdf
“Overview of Becoming a Delegate to the 2008 Democratic National Convention is at
and “A Fact Sheet about the 2008 Delegate Selection Plan” is at
http://www.geocities.com/wnymathguy/2008delegateFactSheet.pdf
I noticed this final version of the rules isn’t so long and lawyerly as the proposal was.
Enjoy and good luck to you.
Sincerely,
a.k.a. WNYmathGuy
If you are not a New York Group, or a group with New York residents, I sent this to you in error.
At the end of this past Spring I made a Yahoo!Group for New York Obama supporters.http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NYforObama/
Perhaps you ask, "WHY ANOTHER GROUP!"
If you did ask that... The reason is because we have no place on any Obama group or page to store files for redistribution. I have created a PDF of the Delegate rules for New York State and stored it in the files section. Also their is no semi-static place to store important links to outside resources. This group has a links section that is very organize-able. When we post a link in a blog, it gets lost over time as new blogs post. It also has a database, and polls section which could be used to store the name and number of the senior organizer in your district, or the named and accepted delegate for each district.
All these features will make us more effective. The rest of the many features on that group will not. If you are a serious volunteer I urge you to try the group. I tried to make as many features available as I could without you needing a Yahoo! ID, but some may require you to sign in on Yahoo. If you do not have a Yahoo! account, they will let you have one for free, but you don't need to make a new email address to do that. You can just tell them during account creation that you already have an email account.
That's all for now
Ooh-Rah! for Barack!
Michael Ruppa.k.a WNYmathGuy
P.S. also see http://www.geocities.com/wnymathguy/DelegateSelection/DelegateSelection.htmfor a web version of the Delegate rules.
Hello to all,
Quite some time ago I thought I would be a better Obama volunteer if I knew how Barack's position on the issues compared to the other candidates. I was swimming in information trying to do an objective comparison of our position compared to other candidates. They name their positions different so you can't line them up easily for side by side comparisons. I realized after reading some of the posts before the "Walk For Change" that I wasn't the only one with the desire to study the issues.
I completed this website about 1 day before the walk for change, but chose not to mention it because I felt the sense of urgency was leaving us. I feel the timing is right now to announce the "Issue Browser" that I made. It is a free Geocities page, I built it with information from each candidates website, but mistakes may have accidentially been introduced. Please, please feel free to tell me about any improvements or repairs that I should make to it.
I organized the issues by comparing the US Constitution as it relates to powers of the President and then SUBJECTIVELY slotted each candidates individual issue into one or more of the constitutional powers. Any input from Political Science type people would be really appreciated; I'm a math, finance, mechanical type of thinker, and I am aware their is a LOT that I don't know. I invite help from Communications type people too, as I sometimes don't get my message across clearly.
Please note that free Geocities pages are not allowed to link to anything else on the internet; links only point to files in the pages own directory. I forced in text strings of web sites so you could read them and type them in an address bar if intrested, but I can't make them linkable. I did before and Yahoo! closed down my site and deleted all the files.
Michael E. Ruppa.k.a WNYmathGuy
