Our accounts and blogs on MYBO are still active, and still free! How kewl is that!
So, we've elected the man, now what? Well updates from the White House are making tree-hugging liberals think we've died and gone to Heaven (Summerland for my fellow neo-pagans). And each day deepens my Presidential Crush:
1/22/09: Obama's third Executive Order issued on his second day in office will see Guantanamo Bay closing in a year's time and emphasizes detainee constitutional privilege of the writ of habeas corpus and enforces standards of the Geneva Conventions. His fourth Order in the same day forms a task force of high level officials to determine future detainee policy
Wait, it gets better, his next Order, issued on the same day, ensures lawful interrogations--effectively taking care of that torture problem we've been having since 2007. The order creates a task force of high level officials to "study and evaluate whether the interrogation practices and techniques in Army Field Manual 2 22.3, when employed by departments or agencies outside the military, provide an appropriate means of acquiring the intelligence necessary to protect the Nation." Thus examining existing interrogation techniques.
And it gets still better! This same order also deals with CIA "dark" prisons: The CIA shall close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it currently operates and shall not operate any such detention facility in the future."
Three dark blots removed from the conscience of the nation in one day.
But one wonders. In that fifth Order there's this statement: "From this day forward, unless the Attorney General with appropriate consultation provides further guidance, officers, employees, and other agents of the United States Government may, in conducting interrogations, act in reliance upon Army Field Manual 2 22.3, but may not, in conducting interrogations, rely upon any interpretation of the law governing interrogation -- including interpretations of Federal criminal laws, the Convention Against Torture, Common Article 3, Army Field Manual 2 22.3, and its predecessor document, Army Field Manual 34 52 . . . ."
Is this intended to prevent lower rank military personnel from again taking the fall for bad decisions on interrogations? Does this put that onus on higher level officials? Is anyone familiar with military law reading my blog???
Well we've only covered one day, and it gets better. . . so I hope Jimmy Carter doesn't get too jealous while I wallow for several blog entries on how Obama has saved the New World--oh make that Renewed World: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/a_national_day_of_renewal_and_reconciliation/
Until next time Renewed Nation . . . . .
P.S. As promised! Informative links! http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing_room/executive_orders/
This is an interesting and exciting article in the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/10/AR2008111000013.html?wpisrc=newsletter.
On November 4, 2008, President-elect Barack Obama issued a challenge to every citizen of the United States. In a world of hope, his message will be answered by those beyond the barrier of borders or the positions of the past.
Barack Obama said,
"This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice. So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other."
Thanksgiving is celebrated in the United States on November 27. I invite every one of you to find a reason to give thanks and share it with another person. I encourage you to reach out to others in your family and community so that no one will be lost or alone for at least this one day. Individual acts of caring and kindness do not require government programs, formal organizations, or economic stimuli.
I challenge you to act NOW!
p.s. pass this message along, thanks.
Thanks for everyone's hard work in electing Barack President of the UNITED States of America.
Winning the election was the easy part. Now comes the challenge of governing a country that has struggled with division, an economy becoming increasingly less fairand less healthy, energy challenges, and a strained relationships with other nations.
Barack will need our continued help as he transitions to leadership. He will need our help to continue to challenge our leaders to work for the best interests of the entire nation. We will need to make some sacrifices when required.
Let's work for positive change.
Yes we can!
Hello, everyone!
When I watched the presidential debates, I was struck by the intelligence and thoughtfulness of Barack Obama's answers. However, I noticed that he seemed determined to uphold Roe vs. Wade, and I wondered why this was so vital. Here is what I've found out.
Roe vs. Wade hinges on a woman's right to privacy. It ensures that any medical decision, including the decision whether to have an abortion or not, will be made by the woman and her doctor and/or spiritual advisor, and NOT by the state. If it is overturned, there is a danger that the state could mandate medical procedures, as well as forbid them. This may seem unlikely -- but look at how the Bush administration has been whittling away at our right to privacy in other areas! The consequences could be very frightening if we let the governement take over decisions about health care!
Also, the Bush administration, for all its supposed opposition to abortion, has done nothing to reduce the actual number of abortions in this country. With Obama, we will have a chance for better education and better care for women in all walks of life. This way, we may finally be able to reduce the number of abortions in this country.
I know that some people are concerned that doctors and health care providers may be foreced to perform abortions unless the procedure is made illegal. This is absolutely NOT the case. Under our current laws, no one can be forced to take part in an abortion, and Barack Obama will uphold these laws.
Please remember, abortion may be an abomination, but it is NOT an "Obamamnation!" And Catholics who support Obama are not baby killers!
Thank you, everyone, and please vote your conscience!
~Deirdre J.
It turns out that Barack Obama has ancestors/relatives in Co. Offaly! My dad is thrilled! And check out what they're singing in pubs these days.
I'll be posting about more serious issues later on today -- in the meantime, enjoy!
PBS has an online poll posted asking if Sarah Palin is qualified. Apparently the right wing knew about this in advance and are flooding the voting with YES votes.
The poll will be reported on PBS and picked up by
mainstream media. It can influence undecided voters in swing states.
Please do two things -- takes 20 seconds.
1) Click on link and vote yourself.
Here's the link:
http://www.pbs.org/now/polls/poll-435.html
2) Then send this to every single Obama-Biden voter
you know, and urge them to vote and pass it on.
The last thing we need is PBS saying their viewers
think Sarah Palin is qualified.
This has been one wonderful ride! As the campaign has progressed, we have gained energy and a stronger feeling that we will indeed bring about the changes we need in this country to move us forward.
Volunterring for the campaign beginning last year in South Carolina, I have enjoyed experiencing some of the earliest victories. We have kept pushing and are almost there. Let's keep working hard these last few days to bring about a victory for Barack and for ourselves.
I plan to head to West Virginia tomorrow to make sure we remain fighting in all 50 states. I hope to see an all out effort everywhere.
Yes we can!!!
Check it out everybody -- It's official! Sarah Palin has been in the habit of "spreading the wealth" all over Alaska.
Here's the article:
AP Article on Sarah the Socialist
Enjoy!
And to think she accuses our future president (I hope) of socialism! Scandalous!
More later -- have to run. I'll put up the article about Roe vs. Wade and the right to life after we're done with Halloween stuff.
Happy Halloween, everybody!
I attended debate parties for the three presidential debates and watched the VP debate in the comfort of my own home. It has been an exhilirating experience. My husband (John) and I met some wonderful neighbors at the first debate party and enjoyed the company of like-minded folks at the Phoenix AZ Democatic HQ for the other two. Last night at the debate party at the HQ we were photographed by an Arizona Republic photographer and WAHLAAA!!! we were on the front page of the Republic this morning, wearing our new T-shirts with our "I voted early" stickers.
This is the first campaign in which I have been active. I find that it has been a tremendously rewarding experience (with or without the picture)!
If you haven't gotten involved yet, there's still time! Come on out and make your voice heard. If you have been involved, thanks, keep up the good work. We're not done yet!
Tonight's debate strengthened my belief that we need change in the U.S. and we need it now. Only one candidate stayed focused on the issues that truly face our citizens and that was Barack. We need to open our wallets, pound the pavement, and hit the phone lines to ensure he is the one moving to Pennsylvania Avenue on January 20.
Get fired up and be ready to go.
Yes, we can make the change to a better America.
"While we were working to eliminate these pork barrel earmarks, he voted for nearly a billion dollars in pork barrel earmark projects," Sen. John McCain said tonight, "including, by the way, $3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago, Ill."
McCain's right.
Check it out on Obama's Senate page, where he posts his earmark requests:
"Adler Planetarium, to support replacement of its projector and related equipment, $3,000,000.
"One of its most popular attractions and teaching tools at the Adler Planetarium is the Sky Theater. The projection equipment in this theater is 40 years old, and is no longer supported with parts or service by the manufacturer. It has begun to fail, leaving the theater dark and groups of school students and other interested museum-goers without this very valuable and exciting learning experience."
STARMASTER Models ZMP and ZMP-TD
More information STARMASTER combines the benefits of the dumbbell design with the state-of-the-art starball concept. The projectors responsible for the fixed stars are located on a central projector sphere - the starball. The planet projectors installed in front of it can be controlled individually and independently of each other. The extremely bright and brilliant artificial starlit sky is made possible by fiber-optical projectors, a special development of Carl Zeiss. Stars, Sun and Moon are as bright to install the Starball in domes even larger than 18 m in diameter. The traditional division into 32 star fields has been abandoned in favor of a smaller number of projectors. With 12 powerful wide-angle lenses, the starball now offers more space for other projectors, for example for constellation outlines. Another novelty is the integration of the Sun and Moon projectors in the starball. This permits the midnight sun to be demonstrated for the first time without obstructions in the north or south. However STARMASTER offers a lot more. Further options include spaceflights through the solar system, following the Star of Bethlehem, solar eclipses in the next millennium and many others.
This is interesting information on ex-con voting rights. I think the issue is long overdue for exploratiion.
RICHMOND, Va. (Associated Press) -- Undaunted by the heat, James Bailey spent his late-summer afternoons walking Virginia's bleakest neighborhoods on the hunt for ex-cons _ each a potential voter who might cast the decisive ballot in this hotly contested state.
Finding them isn't the hard part. It's getting them to admit that a past mistake has kept them from the ballot box.
"People are really, really reluctant to say, 'I lost my rights to vote,'" Bailey said of his quest, which continued in the run-up to Monday's registration deadline in Virginia for the November election.
Nationally, there are roughly 4 million released felons whose convictions have cost them the right to vote at least temporarily, if not permanently. To return to the ballot box, felons must negotiate suffrage laws that vary from state to state, in many cases working with election officials who can be both unfamiliar with the law and hostile to former convicts seeking to register.
Such challenges matter little to Bailey and others trying to return former criminals to voter rolls, an effort they consider crucial in light of the results of the past two presidential elections: A shift of a few hundred votes in Florida in 2000 would have changed the outcome of the presidential race, and the results in 2004 came down to a margin of 119,000 votes in Ohio.
The nonprofit groups and individual activists making the push on felons' behalf agree the effort is broader this year than in previous elections, even if they aren't necessarily making a coordinated push. They expect that effort to benefit Barack Obama more than John McCain, given that the population of former felons is disproportionately black.
Obama has co-sponsored a Senate measure that would allow all ex-felons to vote, but his campaign isn't directly targeting ex-felons for registration. His campaign does include relevant info on its Web site and educates volunteers so they can explain state laws to those who may not realize they have the right to vote, said spokesman Kevin Griffis.
"All we're trying to do is make sure that, if someone is eligible, that they know their rights and that if they want to vote, they can take part," Griffis said Tuesday. "I think there's a lot of misinformation out there. Even people who may have been guilty of a misdemeanor feel like the felony laws apply to them and say they can't vote."
McCain has said states should decide whether felons have voting rights. But he personally believes ex-felons should forfeit certain rights when they commit a serious crime and that the right to vote should be restored only on a case-by-case basis _ much like Virginia's process.
Roughly 13 percent of black men nationwide have lost the right to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's School of Law, which advocates the reform of felon voting rights. Black ministers, civic leaders and activists believe they are a rich source of votes for Obama.
"Of course I would go with Barack," said Deshawn Tatem, a dreadlocked drug dealer-turned-activist from Chesapeake, Va. But he's never cast a ballot. "Right at 18, I caught the felony."
Tatem has never made the time to fill out an application to restore his voter rights, a request that would have to be approved by the governor. That means there's no way he'll be able to vote in November.
In Florida, where a new rule means more than 115,000 former felons who completed their sentences are now able to vote, civil rights attorney Reggie Mitchell said he's nonpartisan when he calls felons at home to give them information about registering to vote. But he also acknowledges the obvious.
Blacks represent "about 40 percent of the people who've gotten their rights lost and restored," Mitchell said. "With an African-American running, and such a critical mass, this could have a tremendous impact."
Kenneth Glasgow served 14 years on robbery and drug charges in Alabama. Now a pastor, Glasgow launched a voter registration drive inside the prisons in Alabama, where state law allows voting by felons convicted of lesser crimes such as possession of small amounts of drugs, battery or attempted burglary _ even while still serving a sentence.
Glasgow, a Democrat, estimates as many as 70,000 felons in Alabama might be eligible to vote but haven't registered. Bringing them to the polls, he said, has the potential to alter the state's political landscape.
"It's not a black-white thing," Glasgow said. "It's that people will see Republicans standing against having people's rights restored while the Democrats aren't."
The state Department of Corrections halted Glasgow's registration drive after two days because of complaints from the chairman of the Alabama Republican Party that registering inmates without adequate monitoring could lead to voter fraud. Fewer than 80 inmates filled out registration forms. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has filed suit challenging the prison commissioner's decision to stop the registration drive.
Only two states _ Maine and Vermont _ place no limits on voting due to a criminal conviction; even prison inmates can cast a ballot. Kentucky and Virginia are the only two states that permanently bar felons from voting, although the governors of those states can restore voting rights to individuals.
Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear streamlined the process in March, and has since restored the rights of more than 740 released convicts. Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine promised to fast-track applications for voter restoration that his office received by Aug. 1, adding three people to his staff to process applications before Monday's registration deadline.
Applications in Virginia jumped from 76 for all of July 2007 to 138 in a single week this summer. Kaine, the governor for nearly three years, had restored the rights of 2,633 felons as of Monday, according to his spokesman, Gordon Hickey.
Laws in the other 46 states are varied, some of them a relic of the Jim Crow era, according to the Brennan Center. Eight states permanently bar felons convicted of certain crimes from voting, while the others restore the right after a sentence is completed, including parole, or as soon as an inmate is released from prison.
Faulkner Fox, who leads organizing efforts for the group "Durham for Obama" in North Carolina, said volunteers there frequently explain to shocked ex-felons that they can register to vote.
The confusion isn't limited to felons. Researchers at the Brennan Center and the American Civil Liberties Union interviewed election officials in 23 states from 2003 to this year. In a report released Wednesday, the groups said many officials in those states didn't understand voter eligibility rules for felons or how they can register to vote.
Among the problems: officials telling those convicted of misdemeanors they had lost the right to vote, failing to distinguish between probation and parole, and illegally demanding documentation. The researchers also found election officials who said they wouldn't help a felon register, which concerns civil rights groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
"We still find election officials at the polls in too many cases only ask African-American males if (they) have a felony offense," said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP Washington bureau.
The confusion works both ways. In some cases, the researchers found election officials willing to register felons who were not yet eligible to cast a ballot under that state's law _ a potential case of criminal voter fraud.
The ACLU, the NAACP and others support a nationwide standard that would restore voting rights to all inmates once they leave prison.
"Once a single local election official misinforms a citizen that he is not eligible to vote because of a past conviction, it is unlikely that citizen will ever follow up or make a second inquiry," the ACLU and Brennan Center report said. "The citizen will mistakenly believe that he is ineligible to vote for years, decades, or maybe the rest of his life."
But getting the information right, and then registering felons, isn't a guarantee of results. Tatem, the former felon from Virginia, isn't sure how much of a difference people like him will make.
"If they got their rights tomorrow, most of them probably still wouldn't vote," he said. "When you've been caged for so long, you can leave that cage open and some folk won't go through."
If you're sitting down to write a letter to the editor somewhere and weren't sure where to start, I'd like to suggest that you check out my personal blog where I've been giving a reason a week to vote for Barack Obama as President. Aside from the text itself, which you may or may not want to adapt, each entry has links to issue pages and other materials you might find helpful.
To see the "Why Vote Obama" entries, visit:
http://alaskanlibrarian.wordpress.com/category/whyvoteobama/
If you're writing about some issue where you need a particular fact or quote, feel free to e-mail/message me and I'll see if I can find it for you.
I agree with Joe Bidden and Sen. Mikulski has a neat sense of humor!
STERLING, Va. (Associated Press) -- Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden said Friday that "ending the cowboy mentality of the Bush-McCain era" is part of the solution to the country's financial crisis.
"These guys have worshipped at the shrine of deregulation," Biden told about 1,000 supporters at a women's issues rally at a park in Loudoun County, a Virginia suburb of Washington that has been a key battleground in what is generally regarded as a swing state.
Biden jabbed at republican presidential candidate John McCain's response to the economic crisis, noting that until recently he had said the nation's economic fundamentals are sound.
"Something happened to John on the road to Damascus," Biden said.
Biden said there needs to be short-term, immediate intervention to "staunch the bleeding" in the financial markets and that in the long term, "we have to have a major, major overhaul of how the financial system works."
"There are all kinds of ideas Barack (Obama, the Democrats' presidential candidate) and I are putting together right now, but you can't do it haphazardly," said Biden. "Part of the solution is ending the cowboy mentality of the Bush-McCain era."
The McCain campaign countered Biden's rally with a "Women for McCain" press conference a few miles down the road. Susan Allen, wife of former U.S. Sen. George Allen, R-Va., and Jeri Thompson, wife of former GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson, criticized Biden for remarks they characterized as linking higher taxes to patriotism.
"I don't want Joe Biden in my pocketbook. I'm patriotic enough," Allen said.
Allen called Biden "the gift that keeps on giving" and said he is prone to gaffes.
"He does mean well. It's just that things tumble out wrong," said Allen, whose husband's re-election campaign and possible presidential ambitions were thwarted after he referred to a low-level worker on his opponent's campaign as "Macaca."
Republicans jumped on Biden after he said in an interview Thursday: "We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people," Of those who would pay more, he said: "It's time to be patriotic ... time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut."
At Friday's rally, Biden said "there are a lot patriotic people out there making more than $250,000. ... We just haven't asked anything of them in this crisis."
Obama and Biden have said they will let lapse Bush administration tax cuts for people earning more than $250,000 a year. McCain favors keeping the tax cuts in place.
U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., helped introduce Biden at the rally, referring to Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin as "George Bush in earrings."
