Sad news for tree-lovers. I had put two Obama yard signs in our yard, along with a yard sign for the WA State Democratic Governor, Christine Gregoire, who is running again for governor this year. Sometime during the night of Oct. 14th, not only were our yard signs taken, but our young tree in front of one of them was hacked and fatally wounded.
I was prepared for stolen yard signs, but not for harm to an innocent tree. The tree wasn’t voting for Obama – and even if it were, that doesn’t mean its life had to be taken. I am very saddened by this cruel act. I had decided to make a donation to Obama in memory of the tree. Today I realized that there may be other tree-lovers and Obama supporters out there who would also want to commemorate our sapling with a donation to Obama’s campaign.
Therefore, the fundraiser on my Obama profile page. I have matched the first $200 donated. This gave me the opportunity to make the donation I had planned to, as well as use this act by “those ones” to help our candidate even more!
YES.WE.CAN move beyond hate and ignorance!
Everyone should make a suggestion to the campaign that they man a booth at or outside the Health and Fitness Expo before the marathon. They could have stickers we can add to our bibs or suggestions on how to make a tyvek bib of your own for your back with stickers. They should also contact the Kenyan runners and see what they could wear to support Barack. Unless there are a lot of suggestions like this the idea won’t get high enough in the organization for anything to happen. Do this for NY too. Do it today - time is short and they get more than 10,000 emails a day.
Ryan Hall, Me and 26.2 for Obama Shirt
Ryan Hall was in Chicago promoting the charity World Vision and supporting the World Vision Charity Runners. I haven't seen any other 26.2 for Obama shirts yet but I know 8 have been purchased. I have run in the Cara Ready to Run 20 miler and with the Nike RunChi training club and received lots of positive comments. My favorite part of the shirt is the reverse side 'Run 10-12-08, Vote 11-4-08, Obama 08'. I want to see more Obama shirts on 10-12. On zazzle.com you can find my shirt and the runners for Obama shirt by searching for 'Runners for Obama' and you can find the 'We run for Obama' shirt by searching for that text. I suggest getting a large sized singlet to wear over your regular technical shirt. After running the 'Ready to Run 20 miler' 4 more shirts were purchased. All proceeds (10% Commision) will be applied to my fundraising goal of $262 or more.
Mary from CT created the Chicago Marathon Event. If you are running the marathon join it. She has her TShirt on order. I made my own and got a great response running with the Nike training session 20 mile run last weekend. The Nike/CARA Ready to run 20 miler is coming up on the 21st. Go to Zazzle and get my 26.2 for Obama or the We Run For Obama shirt. I am suggesting the singlet over your own tech shirt because the material from zazzle is smooth and sticks a little when wet.
It took Zazzle a week and a half for me to get my shirt at the lowest cost shipping over a weekend and Labor day. Ordering today should get you a shirt by early next week.
While we are at it - how about a $26.20 donation from everyone. Remember that McCain is still a Republican no matter how he tries to portray himself.
I've got links to new articles and a couple of informative new posts on my blog
http://theenlightenedpatriot.blogspot.com
Please check it out!
Yesterday's presentation of Joe Biden as the vice presidential candidate was a really hot time for all those who attended. I was in the crowd on the old state capitol building lawn from around noon until the speechifying was over.
I arrived in Springfield around 11:20 and the line to enter the grounds was already snaking back and forth on several streets.for about the first ten minutes, it was stationary and volunteers were milling along the line asking folks to volunteer to go to various states to help canvas, organize and get out the vote in November. The line started moving slowly forward and gradually picked up 'steam'. both figuratively and literally. the temp was about 90 and the sun was out most of the time. Around noon, the line split in two directions, and slread out the crown a little, just before the line of tables, metal detectors and US Marshalls checking the crowd for things of a dangerous nature I finally reached the lawn about 12:15. Only about an hour and 45 minuters before the event kicked off. I spent the time wandering around and chatting with people and hoping for some water to fall from the sky to cool us off, but none fell. At around 1:55 pm, thje music ended.
The first speaker was the mayor of Springfield. He chatted at the crowd for just a minute and then introduced the father of one of the first casualties of the Afghanistan war. He talked for about a minute about veterans issues. He then introduced a local springfield preacher, who led the group in a brief prayer. The music went back on but only for about 30 seconds.
Barack came out and the crowd went wild. He spoke to the crowd for about 20 minutes about why he picked Joe Biden as his running mate. It sounded good to me. He then introduced Joe Biden. Joe talked for about 20 minutes how impressed he has been with Barack and the honor it is to be selected as someone's running mate for the highest elective offices in the country.
I think we have a great team and I will work to the best of my abilities to get them elected in November.
Hi, I invite you all to join a new group, NYC Runners for Obama. The purpose of the group is to enable Obama supporters to train and run together throughout the summer, and to try and create some free press for Barack at the New York City Marathon, which falls 2 days before Election Day.
The group will begin running together in real life in New York's Central Park beginning Tuesday July 8th. The runs will probably be in the evening around 6:45 pm, but if there is enough interest and demand others may run early in the morning before work as well. Probably not me, I like my beauty sleep, but some people may. ;-)
There will be a training program devised by myself and other cagey marathon vets and coaches, and we will post it online on the group's homepage. We will also use the site as a forum for discussing running, answering questions about NY and the race, etc.
People from all over the country (and the world for that matter) who will be coming to NYC this November 2nd are welcome to join, and you can be part of the team through the magic of the Internet!
In keeping with the spirit of our friends at the group Runners for Obama, we are going to come up with an Obama running shirt and try and get as many people as we can to wear it during the race. It will be a nice reminder about who to vote for on Tuesday to the 40,000 participants, the million plus people in the crowds lining the streets of the 5 boroughs, and the tens of millions watching footage of the event on the news.
We are also going to reach out to the many grassroots Obama groups in the New York City area to set up cheering zones along the course to wave signs and yell for us (and Obama) at the same time during the race.
Please join the group if you are interested and if you know of anybody who is running New York or lives in the area and would like to get involved, please share the group with them.
Thanks,
Bob
Obama '08!!
Last Sunday evening I attended the San Francisco fundraiser that has been the center of recent political jousting. The next day, when asked about the talk Obama delivered, I too commented about his answer to a question he was asked about Pennsylvania. Over the past week, though, I have had a Rashomon-like experience concerning those remarks.
Clinton, McCain, and media pundits have parsed a blogger's audio tape of Obama's remarks and criticized a sentence or two characterizing some parts of Pennsylvania and the attitudes of some Pennsylvanians. In context and in person, Senator Obama's remarks about Pennsylvania voters left an impression diametrically opposed to that being trumpeted by his competitor's campaigns.
At the end of Obama's remarks standing between two rooms of guests -- the fourth appearance in California after traveling earlier in the day from Montana -- a questioner asked, "some of us are going to Pennsylvania to campaign for you. What should we be telling the voters we encounter?"
Obama's response to the questioner was that there are many, many different sections in Pennsylvania comprised of a range of racial, geographic, class, and economic groupings from Appalachia to Philadelphia. So there was not one thing to say to such diverse constituencies in Pennsylvania. But having said that, Obama went on say that his campaign staff in Pennsylvania could provide the questioner (an imminent Pennsylvania volunteer) with all the talking points he needed. But Obama cautioned that such talking points were really not what should be stressed with Pennsylvania voters.
Instead he urged the volunteer to tell Pennsylvania voters he encountered that Obama's campaign is about something more than programs and talking points. It was at this point that Obama began to talk about addressing the bitter feelings that many in some rural communities in Pennsylvania have about being brushed aside in the wake of the global economy. Senator Obama appeared to theorize, perhaps improvidently given the coverage this week, that some of the people in those communities take refuge in political concerns about guns, religion and immigration. But what has not so far been reported is that those statements preceded and were joined with additional observations that black youth in urban areas are told they are no longer "relevant" in the global economy and, feeling marginalized, they engage in destructive behavior. Unlike the week's commentators who have seized upon the remarks about "bitter feelings" in some depressed communities in Pennsylvania, I gleaned a different meaning from the entire answer.
First, I noted immediately how dismissive his answer had been about "talking points" and ten point programs and how he used the question to urge the future volunteer to put forward a larger message central to his campaign. That pivot, I thought, was remarkable and unique. Rather than his seizing the opportunity to recite stump-worn talking points at that time to the audience -- as I believe Senator Clinton, Senator McCain and most other more conventional (or more disciplined) politicians at such an appearance might do -- Senator Obama took a different political course in that moment, one that symbolizes important differences about his candidacy.
The response that followed sounded unscripted, in the moment, as if he were really trying to answer a question with intelligent conversation that explained more about what was going on in the Pennsylvania communities than what was germane to his political agenda. I had never heard him or any politician ever give such insightful, analytical responses. The statements were neither didactic nor contrived to convince. They were simply hypotheses (not unlike the kind made by de Tocqueville three centuries ago ) offered by an observer familiar with American communities. And that kind of thoughtfulness was quite unexpected in the middle of a political event. In my view, the way he answered the question was more important than the sociological accuracy or the cause and effect hypotheses contained in the answer. It was a moment of authenticity demonstrating informed intelligence, and the speaker's desire to have the audience join him in a deeper understanding of American politics.
There has been little or no reaction to the part of the answer that was addressed to the hopelessness of inner city youth who have been rendered "irrelevant" to the global economy. No one has seized upon those words as "talking down" to the inner city youth whose plight he was addressing. If extracted from an audio tape HuffPost Blogger Fowler, those remarks could (and may yet) be taken out of context as "Obama excuses alienation and violence by urban youth." But in context, Senator Obama's response sounded like empathetic conclusions and opinions of a keen observer: more like Margaret Mead than Machiavelli.
As the week's firestorm evolved over these remarks at which I was an accidental observer, I have reflected upon the regrettable irony that has emerged from Senator Obama's response to a friendly question: no good effort at intelligent analysis, candor -- and what I heard as an attempt to convey a profound understanding of both what people feel and why they feel it - goes unpunished. Such insights by a political candidate might otherwise be valued. In a national campaign subject to opposition research, his analytical musing has instead created an immense amount of political flak.
Now and "in this time," to invoke one of the candidate's favorite riffs, such observations and remarks shared among supporters are just a push of a record button on a tape recorder away from being spread across the internet to be dissected by political nabobs. What struck me immediately after the fundraiser as so refreshing turned out to be a moment Senator Obama is forced to regret. Today we marvel at de Tocqueville insights about American communities. Apparently, such commentary is valued as long as it is three centuries old and doesn't come from the mouth of a contemporary observer who might be elected president.
So much for the political ironies. But there is one more personal observation that was missed.
I happened to be on the balcony when Senator Obama's vehicles arrived and he emerged from the Secret Service SUV. Obama shouted the friendly greeting "How are you guys up there doing?" to the group of us looking down from the balcony and then said, "You have to excuse me, I need to call my kids in Chicago now." All of us stood and watched the leading candidate for the Democratic party nomination for president have a short conversation with his kids before he entered a fundraiser to make his remarks.
No tape of that conversation has emerged as yet. Who knows how casual remarks of a father to his children or his wife on a cell phone could be spun to support the argument that as a father speaking to his kids two time zones away before they go to bed, his comments sounded as if he "looked down" upon them. Given his relative height and the age of his kids, he probably does. But that would be precisely as relevant to his capacity to unite and lead this country as were the remarks at the fundraiser that have been so deconstructed over this past week.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-coleman/i-was-there-what-obama-re_b_96553.html
Ft. Wayne, IN was energized yeaterday with the first trip by Sen. Obama to this city. Prior to this trip the Clinton's had made two, one by the Senator and one by the former President and we were only 2% behind in a local poll (within the margin for error). I HOPE with this appearance the local community will be energized and we can build momentum now through May 6! We need a weekend push for registration, particularly high school and college and then we need to get the vote out by getting people to the polls! I am getting a late start today. I need to go for a long run, an hour to 1 and 1/2 hour. But following the run I head down to Obama headquarters and get working again.
By the way, ANY RUNNERS FOR OBAMA out there, have any of you created or found running shirts with campaign slogans on them? I have cotton ones but was wondering about moisture wicking shirts.
Attention: Central Floridian Obama supporters
You are invited to get out and support the community while promoting Obama! The Trailblazer 5K is a walk or run on March 15th, 8:00 AM at the Timacuan Country Club in Lake Mary! The entry fee is $20 in advance/$30 day of race and all the proceeds go to finishing the Children's Playground and Splash Park in Lake Mary. Wear your Obama shirts and bring any stickers you may have to hand out! Let's get his name out and let Florida know what Obama really stands for!
Hope to see you there!
KB
I have been so inspired by this campaign. I spent the afternoon phone banking at my local democratic HQ. A year ago I would have never imagined I'd be spending a Saturday making calls soliciting support for a political candidate. For that matter blogging, sign waving, or reading every word a health care plan. I have been down on my fundraising attempts. I set the goal of $ 1000 but since I am not soliciting at work I feel as if I have reached a road block. Can anyone can help out with ideas or contributions ?
Denise
Running for change.Saturday, May 24, 2008.Start time: 11:00 a.m.Start location: Intersection of Wall Street and Broadway in New York City.Join me on a run for political change -- political change from a government that caters primarily to an elitist few, to a government of, for and by the people, catering to the greater good.We'll run from Intersection of Wall Street and Broadway, New York City, to J Hood Wright Park (near George Washington Bridge), New York City. See Google Map.Then continue from J Hood Wright Park over George Washington Bridge to Constitution Park in Fort Lee, New Jersey. See Google Map.Then proceed from Constitution Park in Fort Lee, New Jersey to end (for the day) at Veterans Memorial Park in Ridgefield, New Jersey. See Google Map.See you there!For those of you interested in continuing the run to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., you can continue the run with me in subsequent days -- lodge to lodge, 26 miles every day till we get to D.C.Click this link for the rest of the path to D.C.!For those of you interested in continuing the run to the beginning of the American Discovery Trail in Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware, here's the Google Map link.I considered taking the America Discovery Trail (see website) from Delaware to California, but recently decided against doing the coast-to-coast run in one fell swoop due to time contraints. Even at a rate of 26 miles per day, excluding rest days, I would neither make it to California from Delaware before the general election (which was my initial intent) nor make it there before the inauguration of the next president.Still, I believe that change will not to be achieved if we are only engaged during the elections and then become disengaged thereafter. For that reason, I intend to run for a month, every three months, until I reach California, continuing from my last end point after each 3-month break pursuing life's other demands.Let's make positive change happen! See you on the road! Looking forward to a great workout!
I was glued to the tv in January of 1977. My brother and I watched Alex Haleys series, Roots. I was enraged when they hurt kunta kinte. I could not understand why people were treated differently because of the color of their skin.
lack of education is at the root of racism and related violence. I think if people are uneducated and dont understand the world, different cultures, languages they are more likely to fear people who are different. But It is also the way people are able to hold on to a sense of belonging. If they can see that they are a part of one group to the exclusion of others without their skin type it makes them feel stronger. These are usually people that did not have a solid and supportive family base. Each day they look for people to validate and accept them. I guess some of this is a the root of the gang problem. Though growing up in New York i never knew gangs even existed. Such conflict is built on disrespect for differences rather than embrassing differences.
I am lucky to have received a good education...It is so important for people to learn about foreign countries and to live in different cultures. My 10th grade summer was spent fully immersed in a Spanish culture : summer abroad in Lugo spain.
I continued my spanish studies during my second semester at Vassar College. I took classes in art history, English history,political science and continued to work on my spanish. Soon after I entered college I wanted to look at the history of race relations in our country. I took a Course called Race and American Law, African American politics, American politics, African religions, islamic traditions, African Geography and Great books classics non-western world.
I decided to spend my junior year abroad in kenya with the school for international training. Ironically i ended up going to kenya around the same time as Obamadid. Another coincidence is that the family i lived with is from the same tribe as Obamas father. The Luo tribe.
And i only hope that my host family in kenya is safe amidst all the recent conflict. I hope to contact kenneth, Anthony, davina,donald, beatrice, Jennifer and vincent. Honestly Obamas campaign has given me so much hope and belief in myself and the paths that i have taken up until now. It gives validity to so many of my pursuits.
If Obama becomes president for one it will help the united states in the area of racial relations. I believe the world will open up and there will be a greater connection between us and places like East Africa. We will know more about them and they will know more about us. Why? because the president will care. Hopefully more people will be given the opportunity to study abroad and learn about their own roots (or others for that matter) whether their ancestors were from Gambia, Kenya, Spain, Sweden, Germany, India, Israel, Poland, China or Pakistan. This in turn will help strengthen our relations with foreign countries.
I certainly hope it will be easier to reach my kenyan family by phone. I have wriiten them a letter but dont know if they have received it.
The good news is that I have gotten in touch with my kenyn family and they are safe. They are 20 years older and smarter!
Like any typical student, I avoided writing papers and I often stayed up all night trying to get them done after putting them off. I almost always regretted it, except one time that stands out in my mind. This guy with an odd name was speaking about Iraq on my campus at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, and my friend and I went to hear him because a professor said we should. Sometimes I’d do anything to avoid homework.
He spoke passionately and made such a complex issue seem so simple: Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th, and the war would turn out to be a deadly and costly mistake. At the time, most people would have thought he was completely crazy. But he turned out to be completely right.
Surprisingly, he also talked about how our factories are closing, many of our schools are lacking adequate funding, and meanwhile most politicians aren’t doing much to solve the problems. The problems, he said, were too much arguing between the political parties, too much money going to candidates from corporate lobbyists, and too many Americans being divided against each other and forgotten in the process.
I left thinking that the Illinois State Senator would probably change if he ever became more powerful. But that is definitely not the case: He still wants to ignore political party divisions and solve the real problems Americans face in their everyday lives, he still believes America would be safer if it hadn’t invaded Iraq, and he still thinks we should hunt down those who attacked us on 9/11 and give them justice.
Barack Obama’s message hasn’t changed since that day in 2003 when I met him, and I can promise you that he knows what our country’s biggest problems are and how to fix them. And I know that not only because I met him but also because he’s not accepting checks from lobbyists so he will listen to us instead.
Nathan Schackow
Just wanted to give an update to the Runners for Obama page about the Samson Stomp 5K run in Milwaukee yesterday. I think I was the only one crazy enough to show up for the run from the Runners for Obama group. I did run it, a tad slow, but I finished. I think it was -24 wind chill, so the fact that I finished was good enough for me. Anyway, I wish we could have had a whole group together but mother nature conspired against us. :(
So the run was sort of a bust... no sense dwelling on it. I will be back to phone banking at the office starting tonight. I hope to see some of the people who signed up for the run join me there in the coming weeks.
